Prolégomènes à l'histoire textuelle du Rituel cathare occitan
Authors: Harris Marvyn Roy 
Published: June 2024

There is a need to rectify certain mistaken notions propagated in recent years concerning the textual traditions of the Occitan Catharist Ritual and the New Testament found in MS PA 36 of the Bibliothèque municipale of Lyon. Without doubt, the manuscript was not copied prior to the midthirteenth century, and in all probability, not before 1280. The New Testament is a copy of an earlier Occitan model. Though we cannot know the number of copies which might have intervened between the original Occitan translation and the Lyon copy, Samuel Berger was probably correct in assuming that it is a direct copy from the original translation. Was the Occitan Ritual originally written in that language, or was it translated from a latin model related to the Latin Rituel published by Christine Thouzellier ? Nothing in the latter, written down in Italy prior to 1235-1240, supports A. Borst's thesis that it was translated from an Occitan version. The ceremonies contained in both the Occitan and Latin rituals were certainly administered in the spoken languages of the recipients. The Latin version was never intented to be administered in that language. It is possibly a model in an international language which could have been read, even translated, by an educated Cathar, whether a speaker of Italian or Occitan. The presence in the Occitan Ritual of a collection of liturgical recitations in Latin points to the obligatory use of certain Latin texts, e.g., the Lord's Prayer and John 1 : 1-17, and invocations during the various ceremonies. The presence there of these Latin passages does not furnish an argument for the Ritual having been originally written in Occitan, since a translator using a Latin model, and knowing that practice, would not have translated these into Occitan. The quality of the Latin in the Occitan Ritual reflects the oral transmission of persons not accustomed to the use of Latin. While certainly not translated from the Latin Ritual that we know, the Occitan version contains linguistic evidence that it was translated from a Latin model with phrasing closely related to our only known Latin version. The Latin tradition of the Occitan Ritual is certainly much older than the copy which we have of it, possibly going back to the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, as supposed by Christine Thouzellier. The smoothness of the Occitan text, with respect to the language of the Occitan New Testament in the same codex, shows that the translation incorporated a living phraseology. The language, as well as that of the accompanying New Testament, shows the undeniable imprint of the Occitan spoken in the former county of Foix (Ariège) and the neighboring areas of the old province of Bas Languedoc to the south of Toulouse and in western Aude. Nevertheless, one finds in the Ritual certain forms which appear to be either Italia-nisms or traits from the medieval Occitan-speaking area of the Cottian Alps, e.g. andam for excep¬ ted anam. This fact raises the possibility for the Occitan Ritual of a model written in a dialect from one of those areas. One can envisage also the possibility that a Fuxean or Languedocian, belonging to an expatriate group of Cathars, could have translated it from a Latin model.

The Occitan Ritual contains thirty-two biblical quotations, only one of which is from the Old Testament. The New Testament quotations belong to a textual tradition which Berger identified a century ago, dubbing it the "Languedocian version". The best Latin versions come from the areas of Carcassonne, Narbonne, and the Pyrenees, hence the name. The New Testament of MS PA 36 and the five representatives of the Waldensian tradition belong to that tradition as do the two manuscripts containing the earliest German New Testament. The doubts expressed by Christine Thouzellier concerning the existence of Berger's Languedocian version are unwarranted and even detrimental to the advancement of Occitan biblical studies if they discourage scholars from making use of the texts belonging to that tradition. This is especially true for editors seeking to establish the texts of the Old Occitan biblical translations. Two examples are given here of situations in which the consultation of various Languedocian versions could have enhanced a recent edition of an Old Waldensian New Testament. Christine Thouzellier's mistaken assertion, repeatedly made in her writings, to the effect that the Lyon New Testament is a direct translation from MS BN, lat. 342 stems from her misreading of a passage from Berger's 1889 Romania article. Though an excellent representative of the Languedocian tradition, it is doubtful that BN, lat. 342 served as the model for the translation of the Lyon New Testament. In anticipation of a later study of the issue, one example is presented here which contradicts such a filial relationship. Miss Thouzellier's investigations showed quite correctly that the biblical quotations in the Latin Ritual were not translated from the Occitan New Testament in MS PA 36. Likewise, she maintained that those found in the Occitan Ritual were not taken from that New Testament, a position which is literally exact. However, she did not study the question of whether the biblical quotations of the Occitan and Latin rituals belong to the same "Languedocian version" as the Lyon New Testament.

The author proposes to examine in a future article the textual tradition of the New Testament quotations in the Occitan Ritual.