Theodoret’s Commentary on the Psalms (CPG 6202) survives in a considerable number of manuscripts. For the direct tradition (that is, not including Catenae manuscripts) we know of more than 80 witnesses, the earliest of which (all in minuscule) go back to the 9th and 10th centuries. From this period alone we have ten witnesses which are more or less complete. Some have faired not so well as others and have lost entire quires of parchment, with the remainder sometimes bound in the wrong order (such as Ra 9023, Ra 9027 and Ra 9049).

As the first and last parts of a codex are especially prone to wear and tear, Theodoret’s Protheoria in Psalmos at the beginning of his work (PG 80, 857A1–865B6) is especially vulnerable to a loss of text. And indeed the Protheoria is missing in the oldest witness Ra 9003 (which only has the commentary for Psalms 50:15–144:1, except a fragent from Ps 49:11–17), while Ra 9049 only has a fragment. Of the 10th century witnesses, only six still have the entire text (Ra 9035, Ra 9050, Ra 9071, Ra 9074, Ra 9075 and Ra 9077), and two of those have suffered a loss of leaves at the beginning where the text has been supplied from another source (Ra 9075: 13th century, Ra 9071: 17th century [f. 1r–1v]). Two Theodoret witnesses with a frame catena from the 10th century, Ra 9045 (Oxford, Bodl., Auct. T. 4. 19) and Ra 9081 (Athens, ΕΒΕ, 4 and Cambridge/MA, Houghton Library, Gr. 13), are lacking the first part too. Regarding only those witnesses which present Theodoret’s Commentary on the Psalms as a continuous text (not as a framed catena to the Psalter text), the list is as follows:

Accordingly, the number of early witnesses for Theodoret’s Protheoria is reduced to six, two of which are incomplete (Ra 9049 and Ra 9071).

This makes it all the more important to account for any additional textual witnesses, which can be found among the Psalter manuscripts bearing prefaces.

The secondary tradition: Theodoret among the Psalm prologues

The purpose of this article is to add a few manuscript witnesses to the list above which transmit Theodoret’s Protheoria in part or as a whole. Theodoret’s Commentary on the Psalms has been a prominent part of the Catenae tradition. The ramifications of this group of manuscripts have been the subject of major studies for more than a century and shall not be explained here. Suffice it to say that the Psalter Catenae did not only use his Protheoria as a preface to the Psalms, but also an excerpt from his commentary on Psalm 1:1 (PG 80, 865B11–D8). For example, three representatives of the Catena type VI Karo-Lietzmann (CPG C19) – Ra 1121 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barocci 235, f. 10r) and Ra 1178 (Rome, BAV, Vat. gr. 1789, f. 3v) and Ra 1021 (Athos, Ἰβήρων 597, f. 7v) – feature Theodoret's commentary on Psalm 1:1 in their series of prefaces, while two main manuscripts with Catena type XV Karo-Lietzmann (CPG C28), Ra 1138 (Paris, BNF, Gr. 146, f. 13v–24v) and Ra 1177 (Rome, BAV, Vat. gr. 1422, f. 13v–24v), conclude their prefatory section with exhaustive quotes from Theodoret's introductions to the individual Psalms (Pss 1–150).

Not all Catena manuscripts include prefaces. When they do, the prefatory material can differ quite a lot in content and length. Within the corpus of earlier manuscripts, particularly those from the 10th through 12th centuries, at least seven attest the complete text of Theodoret’s Protheoria.

What is striking is that Theodoret’s Protheoria appears in various Catena types which made use of the direct tradition of their sources (instead of older Catenae). According to Dorival, Ra 1026 and Ra 1134 represent the primary Constantinopolitan chain dating from the early 8th century,⁷ while Ra 113 belongs to a chaîne mixte dating from the mid-8th century at the earliest.⁸ The other manuscripts, in Dorival’s opinion, belong to other Catena traditions originally assembled the 9th and 10th centuries.⁹ That is not to say that these particular witnesses used the the same antigraph for Theodoret’s Protheoria as they did for his commentary. In fact, we cannot be sure which prefaces (if any) were present in the earlier stages of these Catenae. However, given the age of the manuscripts and the fact that their antigraphs used the direct tradition of Theodoret, they can be expected to critically inform our analysis of the textual history of the Protheoria in Psalmos.

In addition to these substantial older witnesses, there are a few manuscripts transmitting only short excerpts from the Protheoria. Ra 1125 for example, whose main part is from the 10th century, was augmented in the 16th century with excerpts from Theodoret's Protheoria in Psalmos and his commentaries on Psalms 1, 2, 18 and 109.

However we have gained a considerable number of additional witnesses for Theodoret’s Protheoria, and their collation will inform any future edition of his Psalm commentary.