GRADUALS, PSALMS. — Fifteen Psalms (119–33 according to the Vulgate; 120–34 according to the Hebrew) that form a brief collection by itself, inserted into the fifth book of the Psalter. The name derives from the Latin translation (canticum graduum) of the title *Shir ha-maʿalot*, which would be better rendered as “song of ascents” or “of going up.”
To date, no secure explanation of this strange expression has been presented that is accepted by all. Some, focusing on the use of the Hebrew verbal root to describe the return from exile, believe that the Gradual Psalms were composed or sung on that occasion. Others see in the term a reference to the practice of singers in the Temple on the “steps” that led from the women’s court to that of the Israelites. Some moderns, moreover, have wished to discern in the title an indication of the poetic genre of these poems, in which a “gradation” or “progressive concatenation” of ideas may be noted. The most probable hypothesis is still that which explains the name as a reference to the custom of singing these Psalms during the annual pilgrimages, as the Israelites “went up” to Jerusalem or made their way to the Temple mount.
Gradual — Title page of the *Graduale Romanum*, Giunta ed., Venice 1386 — Rome, copy in the Library of the Istituto Nazionale d’Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte.