Eadwine Psalter

Last updated

A typical page, with the start of Psalm 136/7 "By the rivers of Babylon.." ("Super flumina Babylonis...") Eadwine psalter - Trinity College Lib - f.243v.jpg
A typical page, with the start of Psalm 136/7 "By the rivers of Babylon.." ("Super flumina Babylonis...")
Detail from the prefatory cycle; the parable of Dives and Lazarus Eadwine psalter - Morgan leaf M.521 (recto) (cropped, Dives and Lazarus).jpg
Detail from the prefatory cycle; the parable of Dives and Lazarus

The Eadwine Psalter or Eadwin Psalter is a heavily illuminated 12th-century psalter named after the scribe Eadwine, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury (now Canterbury Cathedral), who was perhaps the "project manager" for the large and exceptional book. The manuscript belongs to Trinity College, Cambridge (MS R.17.1) and is kept in the Wren Library. It contains the Book of Psalms in three languages: three versions in Latin, with Old English and Anglo-Norman translations, and has been called the most ambitious manuscript produced in England in the twelfth century. As far as the images are concerned, most of the book is an adapted copy, using a more contemporary style, of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, which was at Canterbury for a period in the Middle Ages. There is also a very famous full-page miniature showing Eadwine at work, which is highly unusual and possibly a self-portrait. [1]

Contents

In addition to this, there is a prefatory cycle of four folios, so eight pages, fully decorated with a series of miniatures in compartments showing the Life of Christ , with parables and some Old Testament scenes. These pages, and perhaps at least one other, were removed from the main manuscript at some point and are now in the British Library, Victoria and Albert Museum (with one each), and two in the Morgan Library in New York. [2]

It was produced around the mid-century, perhaps 1155–60, [3] and perhaps in two main campaigns of work, one in the 1150s and the other the decade after. [4] It was sometimes called the "Canterbury Psalter" in the past, as in the 1935 monograph by M. R. James, but this is now avoided, if only to avoid confusion with other manuscripts, including the closely related Harley Psalter and the Great Canterbury Psalter (or Anglo-Catalan Psalter, Paris Psalter), which are also copies made in Canterbury of the Utrecht Psalter.

Contents

Text

The Nativity of Jesus on the recto of the British Library page ChristamsStoryBLAddMS37472Fol1r.jpg
The Nativity of Jesus on the recto of the British Library page

The book is large, with 281 vellum folios or leaves (two-sided) in Cambridge, measuring an average 455 by 326 millimetres (17.9 in × 12.8 in). [5] The four detached leaves have presumably been trimmed and are now 400–405 mm x 292–300 mm. [6] The texts are: "a calendar, triple Metrical Psalms ... canticles, two continuous commentaries, two prognostications". [7]

The three main different Latin versions of the Psalms are given side by side. In the order they occur on the verso pages, these are the "Gallican" version, a translation from the Greek Septuagint which was used by most of the Western church, the "Roman", the Gallican version as corrected by Saint Jerome from the Hebrew Bible, which was used by churches in Rome, [8] but was also an Anglo-Saxon favourite, especially at Canterbury. [9] Last comes the "Hebrew" version, or Versio juxta Hebraicum, Jerome's translation from the Hebrew Bible. [10] The columns reverse their sequence on recto pages, so that the Gallican column, which has a larger text size, is always nearest the edge of the page, and the Hebrew nearest the bound edge. [11]

Between the lines of the text of the psalms, the "Hebrew" version has a translation into contemporary Norman-French, which represents the oldest surviving text of the psalms in French, the "Roman" version has a translation into Old English, and the "Gallican" version has Latin notes. [12] The Hebrew version was "a scholarly rather than a liturgical text", and related more to continental scholarly interests, especially those at Fleury Abbey. [13]

There are a number of Psalters with comparable Latin texts, and a number of luxury illuminated psalters, but the combination in a single manuscript of the scholarly psalterium triplex with a very large programme of illumination, and translations into two vernacular languages, is unique. [14] The psalter was "a tool for study and teaching" rather than a display manuscript for the altar. [15]

The Old English translation contains a number of errors which "have been explained as the result of uncritical copying of an archaic text at a time when the language was no longer in current use". [16]

Illumination

The manuscript is the most extensively decorated 12th-century English manuscript. There are 166 pen drawings with watercolour (a traditional Anglo-Saxon style), based on their counterparts in Utrecht, which lack colour. [17] There are also the four painted leaves, now detached, with the biblical cycle, with some 130 scenes; there may have been at least one more page originally. [18] These may be referred to as the "Picture Leaves". [19] At the end of the book there is the full-page portrait of Eadwine, followed by drawings with colour showing Christ Church, Canterbury and its water channels, one over a full opening, and the other more schematic and on a single page. These are thought to be at least afterthoughts, added to what were intended as blank flyleaves, as found in a number of other manuscripts. [20] Throughout the text very many initials are decorated, with over 500 "major" initials fully painted with gold highlights, mostly at the first letter of each of the three text versions of each psalm. [21]

The prefatory miniature cycle is divided stylistically. Of the eight pages, six and a half are in one style, but most of the Victoria and Albert folio in another. This is usually thought to mark a change of artist. The two styles can be related to those of the St Albans Psalter and the Lambeth Bible respectively. Though comparison with the Utrecht-derived images in Cambridge is complicated by the different technique and the many stylistic features retained from the original, the first artist seems closest to these. [22]

The idea of such a cycle was already about, and one key exemplar was probably the 6th-century Italian St Augustine Gospels, a key relic of the founder of the cathedral's rival St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury, where it then was, though it has also since found its way to a Cambridge college. This has one surviving page (of an original three, at least) with compartmented scenes of the life of Christ, which include many miracles and incidents from the ministry of Jesus rarely depicted by the High Middle Ages. The Eadwine pages include one of these scenes, from the start of Luke 9, 58 (and Matthew 8, 20): "et ait illi Iesus vulpes foveas habent et volucres caeli nidos Filius autem hominis non habet ubi caput reclinet" – "Jesus said to him: The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests: but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." [23] For the iconography of the prefatory cycle, see below.

The copies of Utrecht images are compressed to fit the different format, but generally rather close. However, the sense of the landscape setting suffers considerably. Kenneth Clark commented that "the Utrecht Psalter is full of landscape motives taken from Hellenistic painting, and its impressionistic scribbles still imply a sense of light and space. There is no simpler way to show the triumph of symbol over sensation in the middle ages than to compare its pages with [their Eadwine Psalter equivalents]." [24]


Comparison of Utrecht and Eadwine Psalters
Utrecht Ps63 (cropped) (cropped2).jpg
One of the illustrations in the Utrecht Psalter copied in the Eadwine Psalter. Psalm 63 (Vulg.), 64 (AV): "Exaudi, Deus...". [25] Click on images to enlarge.
Illustration from Eadwine Psalter.jpg
Eadwine, folio 108v. The psalm begins (NIV): "Hear me, my God, as I voice my complaint; protect my life from the threat of the enemy. 2 Hide me from the conspiracy of the wicked, from the plots of evildoers. 3 They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim cruel words like deadly arrows." The literal rendering of metaphor is a characteristic of the Utrecht tradition of illustration.

Eadwine and his portrait

Eadwine at his desk Unknown-artist-eadwine-the-scribe-at-work-eadwine-psalter-christ-church-canterbury-england-uk-circa-1160-70.jpg
Eadwine at his desk
The large Canterbury waterworks plan, f.284v-285r Eadwine psalter - Waterworks in Canterbury.jpg
The large Canterbury waterworks plan, f.284v-285r

It is unclear who Eadwine was and what role he played in the creation of the manuscript; the documentary traces of monastic Eadwines (and Edwins and Adwins etc) of about the right time and place are few, and hard to fit to the facts and statements of the manuscript. The inscription around the portrait declares that he is sriptorum princeps (sic), "prince of scribes" (or "first among scribes"), [26] so he was probably one of the many scribes working on the manuscript, but probably also playing the main role in deciding the contents and organizing the work. He may also have paid for it, though he was certainly not the prior of Canterbury at the time, as these are all known, and Wybert or Wibert (r. 1153–1167) was prior for the most likely periods for the book's creation. [27]

His portrait is clearly of the conventional type of an author portrait, at this period most often seen in evangelist portraits at the start of the Gospels. These look right or forward to the pages following containing their work. Eadwine's is placed at the end of the book, after the text, so he looks left, back over it. [28]

As recorded by M. R. James:

"The following inscription in green and red capitals surrounds the picture beginning at the top on L.

SCRIPTOR (supply loquitur). SRIPTORUM (sic) PRINCEPS EGO NEC OBITURA DEINCEPS LAVS MEA NEC FAMA. QVIS SIM MEA LITTERA CLAMA. LITTERA. TE TVA SRIPTVRA QUEM SIGNAT PICTA FIGURA Ɵ- (top L. again). -Ɵ PREDICAT EADWINVM FAMA PER SECULA VIVUM. INGENIUM CVIVS LIBRI DECUS INDICAT HVIVS.

QVEM TIBI SEQUE DATVM MVNVS DEUS ACCIPE GRATVM."

which translates as:

Scribe: I am the chief of scribes, and neither my praise nor fame shall die; shout out, oh my letter, who I may be. Letter: By its fame your script proclaims you, Eadwine, whom the painted figure represents, alive through the ages, whose genius the beauty of this book demonstrates. Receive, O God, the book and its donor as an acceptable gift. [29]

The portrait, and the waterworks drawings that follow it, have sometimes been seen as later additions, though more recent scholarship is moving away from this view. [30] The portrait might then be a memorial added to commemorate a notable figure of the monastery in a book he had been closely associated with, [31] with the waterworks drawings also acting as a memorial to Prior Wibert, who had done considerable work on the water system. Some scholars see both aspects of the script and the portrait as evoking Eadwig Basan, the most famous of English scribes (and perhaps also the artist of the miniatures in his manuscripts), who was a monk at Christ Church Canterbury over a century earlier, in the last decades of Anglo-Saxon England. [32]

Scribes, artists and history

At least ten scribes contributed to the texts, at least five of them contributing to the Old English text, and at least six artists, who may overlap with the scribes. It is difficult to tell many of these apart. [33] It seems likely that Eadwine contributed to the scribing, but his hand cannot be confidently identified. However, at least according to T. A. Heslop, the bulk of the illumination, over 80% of the prefatory cycle and over 90% of the miniatures in the psalms and canticles, is by a single artist, who he calls the "Principal Illuminator". [34] To Heslop, the diverse styles and limited "guest appearances" of the other artists suggests that they are mobile laymen employed for the task by the monastery, of the sort who were even at this early date beginning to take over the illumination of manuscripts. [35]

The dating of the manuscript has been much discussed, mainly on stylistic grounds (regarding both the script and the illustrations), within the broad range 1130–1170. On folio 10 there is a marginal drawing of a comet, with a note in Old English (in which it is a "hairy star") that it is an augury; following the comet of 1066 the English evidently took comets seriously. This was thought to relate to the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1145, but another of 14 May 1147 is recorded in the Christ Church Annals, and the 1145 one is not. There were further comets recorded in 1165 and 1167, so the evidence from astronomy has not settled the question. Such a large undertaking would have taken many years to complete; the Anglo-Catalan Psalter was left unfinished in England, like many other ambitious manuscript projects. [36]

The current broad consensus is to date most of the book to 1155–60, but the portrait of Eadwine and the waterworks drawings to perhaps a decade later. [37] The large waterworks drawing shows the cathedral as it was before the major fire of 1174, which provoked the introduction of Gothic architecture to the cathedral, when William of Sens was brought in to rebuild the choir. The period also saw the momentous murder of Thomas Becket in 1170, and his rapid canonization as a saint in 1173; however his feast day is not included in the calendar. [38]

The book is included in the catalogue of the library of Christ Church made in Prior Eastry's inventory in the early fourteenth century. It was given by Thomas Nevile, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to Trinity College, Cambridge in the early seventeenth century, presumably without the prefatory folios, which are thought to have been removed around this time. The binding is 17th-century. [39]

Morgan leaf M.521 (recto); miracles and parables of Jesus. The last square has the story of the Prodigal Son in 8 scenes. Eadwine psalter - Morgan leaf M.521 (recto).jpg
Morgan leaf M.521 (recto); miracles and parables of Jesus. The last square has the story of the Prodigal Son in 8 scenes.

By the early 19th century the detached folios were in the collection of William Young Ottley, the British Museum's print curator and a significant art collector, but no admirer of medieval art. At the sale in 1838, after his death in 1836, the sheets were individual lots and bought by different buyers. [40] The Victoria and Albert Museum's sheet fetched two guineas (£2 and 2 shillings). It was bought by the museum in 1894. [41] One of the two sheets in the Morgan Library passed through various hands and was bought by J.P. Morgan in 1911 and the other was added in 1927, after his death. [42] The British Museum bought their sheet in 1857. [43]

All the surviving parts of the original manuscript were reunited in the exhibition English Romanesque Art, 1066–1200 in London in 1984, though the catalogue entries, by Michael Kauffmann, did not relate the loose sheets to the main Cambridge manuscript, [44] although Hanns Swarzenski in 1938 and C. R. Dodwell in 1954 had already proposed this. [45]

Scenes in the prefatory miniatures

Morgan leaf M.521 (recto), detail with the story of the Prodigal son Eadwine psalter - Morgan leaf M.521 (recto) (cropped Prodigal Son).jpg
Morgan leaf M.521 (recto), detail with the story of the Prodigal son

These pages "contain by far the largest New Testament cycle produced in England or anywhere else in the 12th century", with some 150 scenes. [46] The emphasis on the miracles and parables of Christ was most untypical in Romanesque cycles in general, which concentrated almost exclusively on the events commemorated by the feast days of the liturgical calendar. Ottonian cycles such as that in the Codex Aureus of Echternach still show the miracles and parables, but the cycle here has more scenes than any Ottonian one. Sources for the selection of scenes are probably considerably older than the 12th century, and might possibly go back as far as the St Augustine Gospels, of about 600, which were then at Canterbury, and no doubt more complete than now, or a similar very early cycle. [47]

On the other hand George Henderson argued that the cycle may have been planned specially for the Eadwine Psalter, based on direct reading of the bible, with the New Testament scenes sometimes "following the sequence of a particular gospel, at times constructing an intelligent first-hand synthesis of more than one gospel." [48]

There is usually thought to have been a fifth sheet covering the Book of Genesis, especially as there is one in the Great Canterbury/Anglo-Catalan Psalter, which has a closely similar cycle. [49] The emphasis on the life of David, who appears in 5 scenes, as well as the Tree of Jesse, is appropriate for the figure regarded as the author of the psalms. [50]

All the pages use a basic framework of twelve square compartments divided by borders, which may contain a single scene, or several. In the latter case, usually they are divided horizontally to give two wide spaces. Within these two or more scenes may be contained without formally interrupting the picture space. The scenes shown can be summarized as: [51]

Morgan Library, M 724 [52]

British Library

Morgan Library, M 521 [53]

Victoria and Albert Museum

Notes

  1. Gerry; Trinity Coll., MS. R.17.1; on its fame: Ross, 45; Karkov, 299
  2. Gerry: "New York, Morgan Lib., MSS M.521 and M.724; London, British Library, Add MS 37472; London, V&A, MS. 661"
  3. Karkov, 289; Gibson, 209
  4. Gerry
  5. PUEM
  6. Zarnecki, 111–112
  7. PUEM
  8. Trinity
  9. Karkov, 292
  10. Trinity
  11. Trinity
  12. Trinity
  13. Karkov, 292
  14. See Karkov, 292, PUEM on multi-lingual MS., and Gibson, 26 on prefatory cycles in pasalters.
  15. Dodwell, 338
  16. Zarnecki, 119
  17. Gibson, 25; Dodwell, 338
  18. Gibson, 25
  19. Gibson, 26, 43
  20. Dodwell, 357
  21. Gibson, 25
  22. Gibson, 25–27, 59–60; Dodwell, 336–338
  23. Gibson, 29; Dodwell, 338
  24. Clark, Kenneth, Landscape into Art, 1949, p. 17 (in Penguin edn of 1961)
  25. Utrecht version
  26. Michael Kaufmann in Zarnecki, 119 translates as "prince"; below P. Heslop as "chief"
  27. Gibson, 184; Ross, Chapter 3; Karkov, 289; Dodwell, 355–359
  28. Gibson, 183–184; Karkov, 299–300
  29. Translation by P. Heslop in Gibson, p.180, quoted by Karkov, 302
  30. Karkov, 299–301, 304–306
  31. Karkov, 304–306; Ross, 49; Dodwell, 357 argues against this
  32. Karkov, 295–299; Gibson, 24, 85–87
  33. PUEM, Karkov, 289, who has been followed where counts differ.
  34. Gibson, 59
  35. Gibson, 61
  36. Dodwell, 338–340; Gibson, 61, 164
  37. Karkov, 289; V&A; Gerry; PUEM; Dodwell, 357 – some with variations of phrasing
  38. Dodwell, 357
  39. PUEM; V&A
  40. Zarnecki, 111–112
  41. V&A
  42. Morgan Library CORSAIR online entries, M521 and M724; Zarnecki, 111–112
  43. Zarnecki, 111
  44. Zarnecki, #s 47–50, 62
  45. Gibson, 25–27
  46. Zarnecki, 111
  47. Zarnecki, 111–112; V&A. However Dodwell, 336–337 allows for a good deal of originality from the Canterbury artists.
  48. in Gibson, 35–42
  49. Zarnecki, 111
  50. Dodwell, 336
  51. Zarnecki, 111–112, lists all of them
  52. Morgan
  53. Morgan

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Paris</span> 13th-century English monk, historian, and illustrator

Matthew Paris, also known as Matthew of Paris, was an English Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He wrote a number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were written in Latin, others in Anglo-Norman or French verse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Kells</span> 8th-century illuminated manuscript Gospel book, held in Trinity College, Dublin

The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Ireland, Scotland or England, and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from each of these areas. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination. The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Psalter</span> Volume containing the Book of Psalms

A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters were the books most widely owned by wealthy lay persons. They were commonly used for learning to read. Many Psalters were richly illuminated, and they include some of the most spectacular surviving examples of medieval book art.

The Old English Bible translations are the partial translations of the Bible prepared in medieval England into the Old English language. The translations are from Latin texts, not the original languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St Augustine Gospels</span> 6th century gospel book in England

The St Augustine Gospels is an illuminated Gospel Book which dates from the 6th century and is currently housed in the Parker Library in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It was made in Italy and has been in England since fairly soon after its creation; by the 16th century it had probably already been at Canterbury for almost a thousand years. It has 265 leaves measuring about 252 x 196 mm, and is not entirely complete, in particular missing pages with miniatures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vespasian Psalter</span> 8th century Anglo-Saxon psalm book

The Vespasian Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter decorated in a partly Insular style produced in the second or third quarter of the 8th century. It contains an interlinear gloss in Old English which is the oldest extant English translation of any portion of the Bible. It was produced in southern England, perhaps in St. Augustine's Abbey or Christ Church, Canterbury or Minster-in-Thanet, and is the earliest illuminated manuscript produced in "Southumbria" to survive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anglo-Saxon art</span> English art of the Anglo-Saxon period

Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of England, whose sophisticated art was influential in much of northern Europe. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions. By the time of the Conquest the move to the Romanesque style is nearly complete. The important artistic centres, in so far as these can be established, were concentrated in the extremities of England, in Northumbria, especially in the early period, and Wessex and Kent near the south coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Otho-Corpus Gospels</span> Manuscript in the British Library

The Otho-Corpus Gospels is a badly damaged and fragmentary 8th century illuminated manuscript. It was part of the Cotton library and was mostly burnt in the 1731 fire at Ashburnham House. The manuscript now survives as charred fragments in the British Library. Thirty six pages of the manuscript were not in the Cotton collection and survived the fire. They are now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Utrecht Psalter</span> Ninth-century illuminated psalter

The Utrecht Psalter is a ninth-century illuminated psalter which is a key masterpiece of Carolingian art; it is probably the most valuable manuscript in the Netherlands. It is famous for its 166 lively pen illustrations, with one accompanying each psalm and the other texts in the manuscript. The precise purpose of these illustrations, and the extent of their dependence on earlier models, have been matters of art-historical controversy. The psalter spent the period between about 1000 to 1640 in England, where it had a profound influence on Anglo-Saxon art, giving rise to what is known as the "Utrecht style". It was copied at least three times in the Middle Ages. A complete facsimile edition of the psalter was made in 1875, and another in 1984 (Graz).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stowe Psalter</span>

The Stowe Psalter is a psalter from the "2nd or 3rd quarter of the 11th century", at the end of Anglo-Saxon art. The text includes the Gallican version of the Psalms, followed by the Canticles with an interlinear Old English gloss.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gospels of Máel Brigte</span>

The Gospels of Máel Brigte is an illuminated Gospel Book, with glosses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">St. Albans Psalter</span>

The St Albans Psalter, also known as the Albani Psalter or the Psalter of Christina of Markyate, is an English illuminated manuscript, one of several psalters known to have been created at or for St Albans Abbey in the 12th century. It is widely considered to be one of the most important examples of English Romanesque book production; it is of almost unprecedented lavishness of decoration, with over forty full-page miniatures, and contains a number of iconographic innovations that would endure throughout the Middle Ages. It also contains the earliest surviving example of French literature, the Chanson de St Alexis or Vie de St Alexis, and it was probably commissioned by an identifiable man and owned by an identifiable woman. Since the early 19th century it has been owned by the church of St. Godehard in Hildesheim, Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, but is now stored and administered at the nearby Dombibliothek in Hildesheim Cathedral. A single leaf from the manuscript is at the Schnütgen Museum, Cologne; one further leaf, and one further cutting, are missing from the volume, their whereabouts unknown.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ramsey Psalter</span>

The Psalter of Oswald also called the Ramsey Psalter is an Anglo-Saxon illuminated psalter of the last quarter of the tenth century. Its script and decoration suggest that it was made at Winchester, but certain liturgical features have suggested that it was intended for use at the Benedictine monastery of Ramsey Abbey, or for the personal use of Ramsey's founder St Oswald.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harley Psalter</span>

The Harley Psalter is an illuminated manuscript of the second and third decades of the 11th century, with some later additions. It is a Latin psalter on vellum, measures 380 x 310 mm and was probably produced at Christ Church, Canterbury. The most likely patron of such a costly work would have been the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, possibly Æthelnoth, who was consecrated in 1020 and remained at Canterbury until 1038.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunterian Psalter</span>

The Hunterian Psalter is an illuminated manuscript of the 12th century. It was produced in England some time around 1170, and is considered a striking example of Romanesque book art. The work is part of the collection of the Glasgow University Library, cataloged as Sp Coll MS Hunter U.3.2 (229), which acquired the book in 1807. It derives its colloquial name, the "Hunterian Psalter", from having been part of the collection of 18th century Scottish anatomist and book collector William Hunter, who willed his collection to the University. It has also at times been known as the "York Psalter", owing to its supposed northern English origin in the city of York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Winchester Psalter</span>

The Winchester Psalter is an English 12th-century illuminated manuscript psalter, also sometimes known as the Psalter of Henry of Blois, and formerly known as the St Swithun's Psalter. It was probably made for use in Winchester, most scholars agreeing that the most likely patron was the Henry of Blois, brother of Stephen, King of England, and Bishop of Winchester from 1129 until his death in 1171. Until recent decades it was "a little-studied masterpiece of English Romanesque painting", but it has been the subject of several recent studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mac Durnan Gospels</span>

The Mac Durnan Gospels or Book of Mac Durnan is an illuminated manuscript Gospel book made in Ireland in the 9th or 10th century, a rather late example of Insular art. Unusually, it was in Anglo-Saxon England soon after it was written, and is now in the collection of Lambeth Palace Library in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leofric Missal</span> 10th-century illuminated manuscript from England

The Leofric Missal is an illuminated manuscript, not strictly a conventional missal, from the 10th and 11th century, now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University where it is catalogued as MS Bodl. 579.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Canterbury Psalter</span>

The Great Canterbury Psalter is an early 13th- and mid 14th-century illuminated manuscript with the shelfmark MS lat. 8846 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. It was made in two different locations and moments in time: at Canterbury around 1200 and in Catalonia around 1340. It is the last of a series of copies of the Utrecht Psalter made in Canterbury, following the Harley Psalter and the Eadwine Psalter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiberius Psalter</span>

The Tiberius Psalter is one of at least four surviving Gallican psalters produced at New Minster, Winchester in the years around the Norman conquest of England. The manuscript can now be seen fully online at the British Library website.

References

Further reading