The better Bruno

TheTorah.com has a fine article by Mordechai Cohen on Bruno and Solomon "Rashi" ben Meir, saint-scholars each in our traditions.

By the eleventh century A.D., it appears that the "Antiochene School" had more-or-less died in the West as long before in Egypt. Ephrem survived here only in name, via pseudepigraphs; the (relative) moderate Nestorius was condemned. Bruno revived the plain sense of scripture, which Syrians would call peshitta. (Jews had a similar word, pishut, whether cognate or loan.)

Bruno is mostly forgotten today - I literally needed a Jew to teach me. But that seems mostly because he's been overshadowed, by students like Thomas Aquinas then Duns Scotus (Cohen brings Nicholas of Lyra). Bruno was certainly widely-read at the time. One might consider Salieri's influence on Beethoven and Liszt. Now Rav/Prof Cohen would add Rashi to Bruno's students, if backhanded.

Maghrebi/Andalusi and Byzantine Jews existed and had been composing their own commentaries, preceding Rashi. But Rashi did not read Arabic nor Greek, so used none of these. Rashi didn't have Latin either... exactly. He did have Old French however, which wasn't yet as far from Vulgar Latin as it is now. I see that Rashi says פשוטו של מקרא rather than construct-state. The man has to be reading this like a Frenchman or Aramaean would, peshuto de miqra.

Cohen further claims that Latin Christians held to the Psalter more than to Torah. I don't know if that is true but it is assuredly possible; the Psalter was clearly the prime influence of the poetic memra genre among the Syrians, together arguably preceding actual-Bible to the Late Antique Araby. Either way, Bruno took more interest in the Psalter, composing a painstaking commentary upon that.