Blickling Psalter

Blickling Psalter, also known as Lothian Psalter, is an 8th-century Insular illuminated manuscript containing a Roman Psalter with two additional sets of Old English glosses. The manuscript is in the collection of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, MS M.776.

The earlier of the two sets is the oldest surviving English translation of the Bible, albeit a very fragmentary one. It consists of 26 glosses, either interlinear or marginal, scattered throughout the manuscript. These so-called "red glosses" are written by a single scribe mostly in red ink in what is known as West Saxon minuscule, an Insular script found, for example, in charters of Æthelwulf, King of Wessex from 839 to 858. The glosses were first published in by E. Brock in 1876. A number of corrections were subsequently offered by Henry Sweet in 1885, and by Karl Wildhagen in 1913.

Only some of the psalms originally contained in the Blickling Psalter survive: Psalms 31.3–36.15 on folios 1–5, Psalms 36.39–50.19 on folios 6–16, and Psalm 9.9–30 on folio 64.

The Psalter is sometimes included in the Tiberius group, a group of manuscripts from Southern England stylistically related to the Tiberius Bede (such as Vespasian Psalter, Stockholm Codex Aureus, Barberini Gospels and Book of Cerne).

The Psalter was in the library at Blickling Hall until 1932, when it was auctioned by Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian at the American Art Association where it was bought by A. S. W. Rosenbach, who sold it to the Morgan Library.

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 McGowan 2007, p. 205
  2. 1 2 "Blickling psalter (MS M.776)". Morgan Library & Museum. Retrieved 29 September 2026.
  3. ↑ According to Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People 4.24, 7th-century poet Cædmon retold Biblical stories in Old English verse (see Stanton 2002, p. 103); his only surviving work, the 9-line-long Cædmon's Hymn, is not of this type
  4. ↑ Bede is reported by his disciple to have been working on a translation of the Gospel of John into Old English at the time of his death, reaching as far as chapter 6 verse 9 (Epistola Cuthberti de obitu Bedae, Cuthbert's Letter on the Death of Venerable Bede, see 1845 translation by John Allen Giles); nothing of this work is known to survive (see Wansbrough 2008, p. 537)
  5. ↑ Stanton 2002, p. 104: "[After Cædmon and Bede] are the psalter glosses <...> which date from the ninth to the twelfth centuries."
  6. ↑ McGowan 2007, p. 205: "The earliest layer of psalter-glossing in Anglo-Saxon England was made in red ink in <...> the ‘Blickling Psalter’"
  7. ↑ Roberts 2011, p. 61: "The first glossed psalters extant from Anglo-Saxon England have ninth-century glossing. Earliest perhaps is the scattering of glossing in red ink added to the eight-century Blickling Psalter."
  8. ↑ McGowan 2007
  9. ↑ But also in black ink on folio 64r/v, "quite possibly" by the same scribe, see Crick 1997, pp. 68–69
  10. ↑ Gretsch 2000, p. 105 n. 78
  11. ↑ Crick 1997
  12. ↑ Brock 1876
  13. ↑ Sweet 1885, pp. 122–123
  14. ↑ Wildhagen 1913, pp. 16–19[432–435]
  15. ↑ Psalm references broken down by folio, 1r: 31.3–11, 1v: 32.1–12, 2r: 32.12–33.2, 2v: 33.3–15, 3r: 33.16–34.3, 3v: 34.4–13, 4r: 34.13–23, 4v: 34.23–35.6, 5r: 35.6–36.3, 5v: 36.3–15, 6r: 36.39–37.10, 6v: 37.11–20, 7r: 37.20–38.7, 7v: 38.8–39.4, 8r: 39.4–13, 8v: 39.13–40.4, 9r: 40.5–14, 9v: 41.2–10, 10r: 41.10–42.5, 10v: 43.2–11, 11r: 43.11–22, 11v: 43.22–44.5, 12r: 44.6–17, 12v: 44.17–45.9, 13r: 45.9–46.9, 13v: 46.10–471.2, 14r: 47.12–48.10, 14v: 48.11–19, 15r: 48.19–49.8, 15v: 49.8–19, 16r: 49.20–50.7, 16v: 50.8–19, 64r: 9.9–21, 64v: 9.21–30 (see Pulsiano 2001, p. lv)
  16. ↑ Brown 2011, p. 134
  17. ↑ Brown 2005, p. 282
  18. ↑ Crick 1997, plate VII
  19. ↑ Pulsiano 2001, p. xxxvii; plagę. uestigia published as plagæ uestigia in Brock 1876, p. 255, and as plagae vestigia in Sweet 1885, p. 122 (æ, ae and e caudata (ę) represent the same sound)
  20. ↑ cicatrices is Latin for "scars", plagae vestigia is Latin for "traces of wounds", same as Old-English dolgsuaþhe, compound of dolg ("wound") and suaþhe ("traces", see Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: entry + addenda)

References

  • relevant plates (V–VIII) are available online between pages 24 and 25 of another article in the same volume of the journal, doi:10.1017/S026367510000209X