The Manna of the Soul: Meditations for Each Day of the Year, by the Italian Jesuit Paolo Segneri (1624–1694), in the original La Manna dell’Anima, is one of the enduring fruits of the Catholic Reform. One of the most celebrated preachers of his age, “after St. Bernardine of Siena and Savonarola, Italy’s greatest orator,” Segneri preached before the papal court and reformed the Italian pulpit. For every day of the year the Manna sets a short text of Scripture and a few points of consideration, that the reader may turn the day into prayer.
This Modern English edition follows the public-domain translation published by Benziger Brothers (New York, 1892), which appeared there under the anglicized name Paul Segneri. Segneri’s Victorian English has been gently brought into contemporary usage: the old thou / thee / thy pronouns and archaic verb endings (givest, doth, hath, shalt) are rendered as we speak today, while his vocabulary, cadence, and meaning are kept as they were.
The words of Holy Scripture are left in their traditional Douay–Rheims form. Within each modernized meditation, the sacred text keeps its familiar voice, set apart in quotation, as Segneri’s own reflection carries it forward in plain modern English.
A few passages are wanting or defective in every extant copy of the 1892 English: notably the opening of June 26, and, through corruption in the print itself, portions of June 19 and June 27. These have been supplied in fresh translation from Segneri’s Italian original.
Prepared by Sancta Clara Press as a companion to the original 1582/1609 Douay-Rheims Bible (the translation of Gregory Martin) and to the Daily Douay-Rheims with Meditations.