Psautier dit de saint Louis - BNF Lat10525 f1v

Two lavishly illustrated

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, the ...

psalter 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 we ...

s are known as the Psalter of Saint Louis (and variants) as they belonged to the canonized King

Louis IX of France Louis IX (25 April 1214 – 25 August 1270), commonly known as Saint Louis or Louis the Saint, was King of France from 1226 to 1270, and the most illustrious of the Direct Capetians. He was crowned in Reims at the age of 12, following the ...

. They are now in Paris and

Leiden Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...

, and are respectively good examples of French

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

and English Romanesque illumination.

Paris

The Pari
Psalter of St. Louis
(

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

MS Latin 10525) was made for Louis sometime between the death of his mother Blanche of Castile in 1253 and his death in 1270. Done in the elaborate Rayonnant style and richly gilded, the manuscript contains 78 miniatures of

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...

scenes starting at the story of

Cain and Abel In the biblical Book of Genesis, Cain ''Qayīn'', in pausa ''Qāyīn''; gr, Κάϊν ''Káïn''; ar, قابيل/قايين, Qābīl / Qāyīn and Abel ''Heḇel'', in pausa ''Hāḇel''; gr, Ἅβελ ''Hábel''; ar, هابيل, Hāb� ...

and ending with the coronation of

Saul Saul (; he, , ; , ; ) was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the first monarch of the United Kingdom of Israel. His reign, traditionally placed in the late 11th century BCE, supposedly marked the transition of Israel and Judah from a scattered tri ...

, a calendar of feast days, prayers and the 150

psalms The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived ...

. The psalter is in excellent condition and considered a relic of Louis IX, who was canonized in 1297.

Leiden

Th
Leiden St Louis Psalter
(Leiden, University Library: BPL 76A), was originally produced for Geoffrey Plantagenet, Archbishop of York, probably in northern England in the 1190s. It is in Latin, with some inscriptions added in French, on parchment, with 185 folios, 24,5 x 17,7 cm. in size, 23 miniatures and historiated initials. This manuscript passed into the hands of Blanche of Castile after Geoffrey's death, and, as religious manuscripts often were, was used to teach the future saint King Louis IX how to read as a child, as a 14th-century inscription below the

Beatus initial Beatus vir (; "Blessed is the man...") are the first words in the Latin Vulgate Bible of both Psalm 1 and Psalm 112 (in the general modern numbering; it is Psalm 111 in the Greek Septuagint and the Vulgate). In each case, the words are used to r ...

(illustrated right) records. After the king's death it passed through a number of royal owners, including the Valois Dukes of Burgundy, being regarded as a relic of the saint, before reaching the

University Library An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution and serves two complementary purposes: to support the curriculum and the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic librar ...

in 1741.Nigel Morgan, ''A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles'', Volume 4: ''Early Gothic Manuscripts'', Part 1 1190–1250'', Harvey Miller Limited, London, 1982, , pp. 61–62.

Notes

Bibliography

* Günter Haseloff, ''Die Psalterillustration im 13. Jahrhunderts.: Studien zur Geschichte der Buchmalerei in England, Frankreich und den Niederlanden.'' Inaugural-Dissertation, Georg August Universität zu Göttingen, 1938. * Victor Leroquais, ''Les psautiers, manuscrits latins des bibliothèques publiques de France.'' Mâcon, Protat frères, 1940–41. *

Robert Branner Robert Branner (January 13, 1927 – November 26, 1973) was an American art historian, archaeologist, and educator. A scholar of medieval art, specializing in Gothic architecture and illuminated manuscripts, Branner was Professor of Art History a ...

, ''Manuscript painting in Paris during the reign of Saint Louis : a study of styles.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. * Harvey Stahl, ''Picturing kingship. History and painting in the Psalter of Saint Louis.'' University Park, Pa., Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. {{Authority control Illuminated psalters Manuscripts of Leiden University Library Bibliothèque nationale de France collections Louis IX of France