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 Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

glosses A gloss is a brief notation, especially a marginal or interlinear one, of the meaning of a word or wording in a text. It may be in the language of the text or in the reader's language if that is different. A collection of glosses is a ''glossar ...

.McGowan 2007, p. 205 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 In linguistics and pedagogy, an interlinear gloss is a gloss (series of brief explanations, such as definitions or pronunciations) placed between lines, such as between a line of original text and its translation into another language. When gloss ...

marginal Marginal may refer to: * Marginal (album), ''Marginal'' (album), the third album of the Belgian rock band Dead Man Ray, released in 2001 * Marginal (manga), ''Marginal'' (manga) * ''El Marginal'', Argentine TV series * Marginal seat or marginal c ...

, 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 West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

, an

Insular script Insular script is a Middle Ages, medieval script (styles of handwriting), script system originating in Ireland that spread to England and continental Europe under the influence of Hiberno-Scottish mission, Irish Christianity. Irish missionaries ...

found, for example, in

charters A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified. It is implicit that the granter retains superiority (or sovereignty), and that the reci ...

of Æthelwulf,

King of Wessex This is a list of monarchs of the Kingdom of the West Saxons (Wessex) until 886 AD. While the details of the later monarchs are confirmed by a number of sources, the earlier ones are in many cases obscure. The names are given in modern English f ...

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 Henry Sweet (15 September 1845 – 30 April 1912) was an English philologist, phonetician and grammarian.''Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language'', as hosted oencyclopedia.com/ref> As a philologist, he specialized in the Germanic lang ...

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 British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius C. II, or the Tiberius Bede, is an 8th-century illuminated manuscript of Bede's '' Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum''. It is one of only four surviving 8th-century manuscripts of Bede, another of which h ...

(such as

Vespasian Psalter The Vespasian Psalter (London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian A I) 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 ...

Stockholm Codex Aureus The Stockholm Codex Aureus (Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, MS A. 135, also known as the Codex Aureus of Canterbury and Codex Aureus Holmiensis) is a Gospel book written in the mid-eighth century in Southumbria, probably in Canterbury, wh ...

Barberini Gospels The Barberini Gospels is an illuminated Hiberno-Saxon manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reprodu ...

and

Book of Cerne The Book of Cerne (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ll. 1. 10) is an early ninth-century Insular or Anglo-Saxon Latin personal prayer book with Old English components. It belongs to a group of four such early prayer books, the others ...

).Brown 2005, p. 282

Notes

References

* E. Brock (1876) ''The Blickling Glosses'', in: Richard Morris (1876) ''The Blickling Homilies''
Volume II
pp. 251–263 *
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pdf available online
:* relevant plates (V–VIII) are available online between pages 24 and 25 of another article in the same volume of the journal, * * * Jane Roberts (2011) "Some Psalter Glosses in Their Immediate Context", in: ''Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England: Collected Essays'', pp. 61–7
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Henry Wansbrough Henry Wansbrough (born Joseph Wansbrough, 1934) is an English biblical scholar, Catholic priest, and monk of Ampleforth Abbey. From 1990 to 2004, he served as Master of St Benet's Hall, Oxford. Biography Born as Joseph Wansbrough on 9 Octob ...

(2008) "History and Impact of English Bible Translations", in: ''Hebrew Bible / Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation: II: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment'', pp. 536–55
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* {{cite book, author1=Karl Wildhagen, title=Studien zum Psalterium Romanum in England und zu seinen Glossierungen (in geschichtlicher Entwicklung), date=1913, url=https://archive.org/details/studienzumpsalte00wild, accessdate=10 June 2016, language=de Hiberno-Saxon manuscripts 8th-century illuminated manuscripts Illuminated psalters Old English

See also

Notes

References