MIGNE.APP

Patrologia Latina · Vol. 114 ·

EPISTOLA II B. JOANNIS

One book of the Glossa ordinaria — the whole gloss, book by book.

PL 114, coll. 703–706  ·  Latin from the Migne printing  ·  New English translation  ·  column numbers follow the original plates, not the Garnier reprint

Anselm of Laon and his school

Anselmus Laudunensis et schola

twelfth century

The masters of the cathedral school of Laon, gathered around Anselm (c. 1050–1117), to whom the making of the Glossa ordinaria on the Bible is traditionally credited. The gloss is a school's work rather than one man's: it draws its comment from the Fathers — Rabanus, Isidore, Bede, Jerome, Gregory — and names them as it goes, and it grew by accretion over generations. Migne prints it under the name of Walafrid Strabo, an ascription now known to be mistaken.

ARGUMENTUM.

Usque adeo ad sanctam feminam scribit, ut eamdem dominam non dubitet litteris appellare, ejusdemque filiis testimonium, quod ambulent in veritate, perhibet.

THE ARGUMENT.

So far does he write to a holy woman, that he does not hesitate to call her lady in his letter, and he bears witness to her sons that they walk in truth.

CAPUT UNICUM.

VERS. 1.-- Non ego. Scripturus contra haereticos qui a veritate exciderunt, dicit omnium qui veritatem noverunt, unam esse dilectionem in sanctos ut similitudine catholicorum ab haereticorum deterreat 705Asocietate. Omnes enim fideles in una veritate consentiunt, haeretici in erroribus se invicem impugnant.

VERS. 4.-- Gavisus sum valde. Quasi dicat: Quod tenetis, tenete. Nihil aliud ab haereticis recipite, quia in his quae habetis gaudeo; nihil aliud ad salutem vobis superaddi expeto. Cum ergo gaudeam de vestro bono principio, ne me faciatis dolere defectu vestro, quia ut sollicitus custos, omnia quae circa vos fiunt cognosco. Ambulantes in veritate. Positus est Adam in paradiso, ut operaretur et custodiret illud. Operatio, effectus provectionem: custodia, perfectionis ipsius statum atque constantiam designat.

VERS. 8.-- Videte vos, etc. Istis talibus ne consentiatis, sed potius attendite qualiter sitis perfecte 705Binstructi ad fidem et constantiam. Sed ut mercedem plenam accipiatis, id est verum Deum plena cum jucunditate capiatis, perseverando in doctrina vobis tradita, et non consentiendo eorum errori.

VERS. 9.-- Et non permanet. Si quis separat se a 706Adivina doctrina, ut extra rectam fidem conversationemque mandatorum Dei sit, separat se a Deo ne habeat Deum. Per actualem et contemplativam vitam fit alicujus Deus ei manifestando qui est Creator omnium. Qui permanet. Manet in evangelica doctrina, qui secundum eam sapit et agit; separat se ab illa is qui aliter sapit et agit.

VERS. 10.-- Nec Ave ei dixeritis. Quia signum videtur consensus erroris, hoc enim dicimus amicis quorum opera nobis placent, et vos si forte decepti non essetis, alii tamen per talem vestram familiaritatem possent decipi, qui crederent illos placere vobis, et sic crederent illis.

VERS. 12.-- Plura habens. Intelligite hanc admonitionem vobis fore perutilem, quia ad confirmationem 706Billius, decrevi etiam venire ad vos, nec tamen ex toto interim potui silere.

VERS. 13.-- Salutant te. Sicut adversariis veritatis prohibet dicere: Ave, ita econtra electos ex persona electorum salutat.

THE ONLY CHAPTER.

VERS. 1.-- Not I only. About to write against the heretics who have fallen away from the truth, he says that of all who have known the truth there is one love toward the saints, so that by the likeness of catholics he may deter them from 705Athe fellowship of heretics. For all the faithful agree in one truth; heretics attack one another in their errors.

VERS. 4.-- I rejoiced greatly. As if he should say: What you hold, hold. Receive nothing else from the heretics, because I rejoice in these things which you have; I seek that nothing else be added to you unto salvation. Since therefore I rejoice at your good beginning, do not make me grieve at your falling away, because, as a watchful guardian, I know all the things that are done about you. Walking in truth. Adam was placed in paradise, that he might work and keep it. Working designates the advancement of the effect; keeping designates the state and the constancy of that perfection itself.

VERS. 8.-- Look to yourselves, etc. Do not consent to such men as these, but rather consider in what manner you are perfectly 705Binstructed unto faith and constancy. But that you may receive a full reward, that is, that you may lay hold of the true God with full gladness, by persevering in the doctrine delivered to you, and by not consenting to their error.

VERS. 9.-- And abideth not. If anyone separates himself from the 706Adivine doctrine, so as to be outside the right faith and the manner of life of the commandments of God, he separates himself from God, that he may not have God. Through the active and the contemplative life he who is the Creator of all becomes the God of someone, by manifesting himself to him. He that abideth. He abides in the doctrine of the Gospel who thinks and acts according to it; he separates himself from it who thinks and acts otherwise.

VERS. 10.-- Neither say ye Ave to him. Because it seems a sign of consent to error, for this we say to friends whose works please us; and if perchance you were not deceived, others nevertheless might be deceived through such familiarity of yours, who would believe that those men pleased you, and so would believe them.

VERS. 12.-- Having more things to write to you. Understand that this admonition will be very useful to you, because for the confirmation 706Bof it I have determined to come to you also, nor yet could I meanwhile be altogether silent.

VERS. 13.-- They salute thee. As he forbids to say Ave to the adversaries of the truth, so on the contrary he salutes the elect in the person of the elect.

On this text

Cruces for this work — where the plate is defective or the reading uncertain →

The Glossa ordinaria is the standard medieval commentary on the Bible — the gloss a reader of Scripture met in the margins of the page, drawn from the Fathers and built up in the schools of the twelfth century. What Migne prints, and what is translated here, is an abridged nineteenth-century recension of it: the marginal glosses only, without the interlinear layer, and 58 of the roughly 73 books — Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor prophets and the Maccabees are absent from it altogether. Migne places the whole under the name of Walafrid Strabo, an ascription scholarship has long since given up; the attributions inside the text — (RAB.) for Rabanus, (ISID.) for Isidore, (CHRYS.) for Chrysostom — are his source's and are not always reliable either. They are printed as he printed them. The second letter of John is thirteen verses long, written to a woman the writer calls a lady, and the gloss reads it throughout as a warning against heretics — down to the refusal of the ordinary greeting, Nec Ave ei dixeritis, on the ground that a greeting looks like consent. An English of the Rusch text does exist for these letters — Sarah van der Pas and John Litteral, The Glossa Ordinaria: Epistles of St. John 1–3 (Consolamini, 2015), made from Adolph Rusch's 1480/81 editio princeps. That is a different recension from this one, and the two do not print the same gloss; what is here is Migne's abridgement, englished independently. The gilt column marks carry Migne's own numbering: migne.app/pl/114/703d resolves to the opening.