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Detailed record for Additional 38116
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| Title |
Psalter (The 'Huth Psalter') |
| Origin |
England, N (Lincoln or York?) |
| Date |
4th quarter of the 13th century |
| Language |
Latin and French (Anglo-Norman) |
| Script |
Gothic, written below the top line |
| Decoration |
11 full-page framed miniatures in colours on gold grounds (ff. 8v-13v). 2 full-page historiated initials in colours on gold grounds with zoomorphic and foliate decoration (ff. 14v, 119v). 6 historiated initials with display script and partial borders with birds, animals, and foliate and grotesque decoration (ff. 35, 48, 60v, 89, 103v, 105v, 119v). 24 calendar roundels in colours. 2 initials have been removed (ff. 60, 73). Framed initials in gold on rose and blue grounds with decoration in white. Alternating small initials in gold with pen-flourishing in blue or in blue with pen-flourishing in red. Line-fillers in red and blue with gold. |
| Dimensions in mm |
236 x 162 (145 x 90) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 174 (+3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning and 3 at the end) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
Post-1600. Brown leather with gold tooling. Marbled endpapers. |
| Provenance |
Entries in the calendar (ff. 2-7) and litany (ff. 164-169) of northern English saints, including St Hugh of Lincoln (in blue) suggest a Lincolnshire/Yorkshire origin.
Obit of Robert de Upton (perhaps the witness to a charter at Kingswood Abbey in 1280) added to the calendar for 2 August, c.1300 (f. 5v).
Alfred Henry Huth (b. 1850, d. 1910), book collector, his bookplate inside the upper binding and in his catalogue: The Huth Library, 5 vols (London: Ellis & White, 1880), IV, pp. 1191-92; bequeathed by him to the British Museum in 1910 (see Catalogue of the Fifty Manuscripts (1912), no III). |
| Notes |
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
Contents include
f. 1v: A short text with rules for calculating Easter in Latin and French;
ff. 2-7v: Calendar, with late 14th-century additions;
ff. 14v-150: Psalter, Gallican version;
f. 150-174: Canticles, litany and additional material.
The style of illumination has links to the William of Devon group and the Salvin Hours, British Library, Additional 48985. |
| Select bibliography |
Catalogue of the Fifty Manuscripts & Printed Books bequeathed to the British Museum by Alfred Huth (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1912), pp. 2-4.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), II: English 12th and 13th Centuries (1915), pl. 12 c-d.
The British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the years 1911-1915, 2 vols (London: British Museum, 1969), I, Descriptions, pp. 14-16.
Eric. G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1926), p. 1128.
Eric G. Millar], British Museum Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 4 (London: British Museum, 1928), pls 21, 22.
Günther Haseloff, Die Psalterillustration im 13. Jahrhundert : Studien zur Geschichte der Buchmalerei in England, Frankreich und den Niederlanden Kiel [n.pub.], 1938), p. 61.
Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art 4, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1968), p.167.
Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Manuscript (Oxford, 1979), pl. 31.
François Avril and Patricia Danz Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VIIe - XXe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1987), p. 162.
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, no.167.
Ruth Dean and Maureen Bolton, Anglo-Norman Literature, A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), no. 343.
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 212, 217, 224, 252, 258.
Naomi Reed Kline, Maps of Medieval Thought: The Hereford Paradigm (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001) p. 65.
Ruth Mellinkoff 'One is good, two are better: the twice-appearing ass in a thirteenth-century English nativity.' New Offerings, Ancient Treasures: Studies in Medieval Art for George Henderson, ed.by Paul Binski and William Noel (Stroud, 2001), pp. 325-42.
Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pl. 180.
F. O. Büttner, ‘Der illuminierte Psalter im Westen’, in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. by F. O. Büttner, (Belgium: Brepols, 2004), pp. 1-106 (p. 15). |
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f. 6v
October |
f. 8v
God enthroned with scenes from the Creation |
f. 9
Scenes from Genesis |
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f. 10
Scenes from the Nativity |
f. 11v
The Crucifixion |
f. 12v
The martyrdoms of four saints |
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f. 13
The trials of three saints |
f. 13v
The Last Judgement |
f. 14v
Tree of Jesse |
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f. 35
Coronation of King David |
f. 60v
A fool admonished by a sage |
f. 103v
Three monks chanting |
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f. 119v
The Trinity and the Coronation of the Virgin |
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