After publishing the critical edition of Andrew of Saint Victor’s Expositio super Ysaiam in Brepols’s Corpus Christianorum series in 2021 (volume LIII C), Frans van Liere (hereafter: F.v.L.) has also produced an excellent English translation of this important twelfth-century commentary for the Corpus Christianorum in Translation series. F.v.L., a first-rate Latinist and scholar of the Victorines, has probably studied the Old Testament commentaries of Andrew more, and more thoroughly, than any other scholar alive today. He prefaces his translation with a very helpful introduction that treats, inter alia, Andrew’s use of Jerome and various Jewish sources as well the Victorine’s particular exegetical approach to Isaiah. Here F.v.L. suggests an explanation for one of the characteristic features of Andrew’s commentary, namely its general lack of Christological exegeses of passages that Christians tend to understand and interpret as prophecies of Jesus Christ (e.g., Is. 7, 14, 45, 52/53): “Possibly Andrew did not think it necessary to make the Christological sense explicit because it was already sufficiently presented in Jerome’s commentary” (15). F.v.L. maintains that the authority of Jerome’s Christological interpretations “freed Andrew to open up to the exploration of the Hebraica veritas, and to show an appreciation for Jewish exegesis that makes him one of the most interesting exegetes of the twelfth century” (15).
The modern reader of this translation, depending on his or her perspective and commitments, may take the paucity of Christological readings as a strength or, alternatively, as a weakness of Andrew’s Isaiah commentary; but this is a strength or weakness of Andrew’s exegesis itself, of course, rather than of this English translation. Overall, F.v.L.’s translation of Andrew’s text is excellent: accurate, clear, and very readable. His skill as a translator shines through on nearly every page of his translation. As a particularly noteworthy example, F.v.L. renders Andrew’s Latin sentence, in commenting on Is. 2:10-12, “Superbus est proprie excellentie nimius amator” thus: “A proud person is someone who loves his own excellence too much” (80). Using a relative pronoun and clause here produces a much better translation than would a more literal rendering of Andrew’s predicate nominative “amator” with its modifiers, such as “A proud person is an excessive lover of his own excellence.” Sometimes Andrew offers very interesting interpretations and explanations, on which F.v.L.’s translation and notes shed additional light. In commenting on Is. 10:32, He shall shake his hand over the mountain of the daughter of Zion, the hill of Jerusalem, Andrew says that Mount Zion is a small mountain or hill “not much larger than the one that is called Mount Saint Geneviève” (146-47), on which comment F.v.L. adds a helpful explanatory note about Mount Saint Geneviève in relation to Paris and the Victorine community (147, n. a).
At times the translation is less clear and consistent than it might have been. Two examples should suffice. First, at various points in his commentary Andrew, aiming to describe how the prophet intends his words to signify, uses the Latin adverb “sinedochice,” which means “by synecdoche,” that is, by the figure of speech according to which a part is used for the whole, or the whole is used for a part. See, e.g., the Latin edition in CCCM LIIIC, 37, 41, 69, 98, 117. F.v.L. renders these five occurrences of “sinedochice” as “pars pro toto,” “pars pro toto,” “synecdochally,” “pars pro toto,” and “pars pro toto,” respectively (85, 90, 123, 162, 187). Readers may well wonder why F.v.L. often “translates” this Latin word “sinedochice” with another Latin phrase, “pars pro toto.” Many readers will, of course, know what “pars pro toto” means, but some, including many students, may not. Because “synecdochally” (123) is not a commonly-encountered English adverb, F.v.L. could have maintained consistency in his renderings by translating each occurrence of Andrew’s adverb using the English phrase “by a part for the whole.” On occasion F.v.L. uses the phrase “by synecdoche” (181), which is also a clear equivalent translation, but again the issue is the lack of a single, consistent English translation.
A second example comes from Andrew’s commentary on Is. 5:11-12, where the prophet declares: Woe to you who rise early in the morning to follow drunkenness, and to drink until the evening, to be inflamed with wine. The harp and the lyre and the drum and the pipe and wine are in your feasts; and the work of the Lord you regard not, nor do you consider the works of His hands. On this text, Andrew comments: “...opera manuum Domini, qui omnia que sunt cum non essent fecit ut essent” (CCCM LIIIC, 49). F.v.L. translates these words as “...the work of the hands of the Lord, who made all things that have come into being, before they even were” (100). This rendering has the unfortunate consequence of making it sound as if Andrew is saying that the Lord made all things that exist before they actually existed. But what Andrew seems to intend here is a sort of summary statement of the traditional doctrine of creation from nothing. A clearer, more accurate translation of Andrew’s Latin, therefore, might read something like this: “…the Lord, who made all existing things exist after they were not.” Andrew is here making the important theological point, particularly in light of Isaiah’s sharply critical words against those who fail to recognize the works of God’s hands, that all creatures that exist were literally nothing--that is, non-beings--before the Lord brought them into existence.
In spite of such issues, which are few and far between, F.v.L. has produced an excellent translation of Andrew of Saint Victor’s Expositio super Ysaiam that every scholar and student of medieval scriptural exegesis will want to have in his or her personal library, ideally alongside the critical Latin edition. All who are interested in understanding the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, particularly its historical-contextual meaning, will also find this volume useful and illuminating. In its paucity of Christological readings, this commentary differs fundamentally from the Isaiah commentaries of other medieval Christian exegetes, such Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. But Andrew’s commentary, particularly in F.v.L.’s accurate and accessible translation, is equally worthy of study alongside those of the great thirteenth-century masters. Highly recommended!