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Add MS 70000
- Record Id:
- 032-002043438
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002043438
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000046.0x0002d3
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161519443.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 70000
- Title:
-
Psalter (‘The Percy Psalter’)
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript is an illuminated Psalter made in York in the last quarter of the thirteenth century. It is the first part of the Percy Hours (Add MS 89379), which originally formed a single-volume Psalter-Hours.
ff. 1r-2r: added prayers in a 14th-century hand, including the opening to the Gospel of St John;
ff. 2v-15r: calendar of the diocese of York;
ff. 14v-15r: list of 43 selected feasts;
f. 15v: added prayers in a 14th-century hand;
ff. 16r-131r: Psalter, imperfect (Psalms 1-67:31, 68:6-108);
ff. 131v-132v: added hymn to the Virgin Mary in a 14th-century hand, and a genealogy of Christ with calculations of years and generations in a 16th- or 17th-century hand;
ff. 133r-167r: Psalter, imperfect (Psalms 110:4-150).
f. 167v: the opening to Canticles (continues Add MS 89379, f. 1r).
f. 168r-v: a section from the Office of the Dead, a leaf displaced from Add MS 89379, after f. 25.
Decoration:
8 large historiated initials in colours and gold at the major divisions of the Psalms (the opening page of Psalm 68 is missing): Psalm 1, Tree of Jesse (f. 16r); Psalm 26, David slaying Goliath, and the Anointing of David (f. 39v); Psalm 38, David pointing to his mouth, before Christ (f. 55r); Psalm 51, David with three prisoners (f. 65r); Psalm 52, a fool and a person committing suicide, with Christ looking down from heaven (f. 66r); Psalm 80, David playing the bells (f. 97r); Psalm 97, David with a choir (f. 113v); Psalm 101, David in prayer with Christ looking down from heaven (f. 115v).
Calendar with 24 miniatures of the labours of the months and zodiac signs, partly damaged by trimming (ff. 2v-14).
Borders with marginal images, including scenes from the bestiary, in colours and gold: animals and hybrids (ff. 2v-14r); a stag hunt, with portraits of a lady and knight and 3 coats of arms (f. 16r); lions licking their cubs, with a magpie (f. 39v); the capture of a unicorn, with hybrids, a pelican feeding its young, and an owl (f. 55r); a beaver hunt, with a centaur, boar and crane (f. 65r); the capture of an antelope, with an owl, rabbit, bird and fighting cocks (f. 66r); a monkey hunt, with jays, a somersaulting woman, a hybrid and rabbits; a ?yale hunt, with an owl, a duck and a dog (f. 113v); two mermaids (f. 115v).
2-line initials at the opening to all the remaining Psalms, in blue or pink on gold grounds, each containing a hybrid creature, extending into bar-borders on 3 sides of the page.
Numerous initials in gold with blue pen-work decoration, or in blue with red pen-work decoration. Line-fillers in gold, red, and/or blue.
Added drawings by John Doharty, c. 1760 (see Provenance, below), including calligraphic decoration and depictions of buildings (e.g. ff. 78v, 79r, 80v, 81r, 135r-137r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002043438", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 70000: Psalter (‘The Percy Psalter’)" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002043438
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002043438
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- https://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_70000 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1275
- End Date:
- 1299
- Date Range:
- 4th quarter of the 13th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Materials: Parchment.
Dimensions: 175 x 120 mm (written area: 110 x 75 mm).
Foliation: ff. iv + 168 (f. i is a paste-down, ff. ii-iii are paper flyleaves at the beginning and f. iv is a paper flyleaf at the end).
Script: Gothic.
Binding: Post-1600. Red leather covers with gold tooling.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Northern England, York.
Provenance:
A couple, probably Robert de Percy of Bolton Percy (b. 1245, d. 1323) and his first wife, Margery de Everingham (d. before 1317): portraits of a lady and knight are depicted on the Beatus page with coats of arms or five fusils conjoined in fess azure, gules a lion rampant possibly vair, and or a lion rampant sable, as well as or a lion rampant sable impaling or five fusils conjoined in fess azure (f. 16r) (see Jackson, 'Pursuing the Percys' (2022)).
Downes family, 16th century: noted births and deaths in the calendar, and the same hand appears to have added hymns at the end of the Hours portion (Add MS 89379, f. 100v).
John Doharty the Younger, surveyor, of Worcester, c. 1760: added notes and sketches in margins throughout both volumes. He claims 'This curi: manuscript was orig. writ for one of m[y] mother's fam[ily]' (f. 17r).
Darell family of Calehill, Kent, 19th century: ownership inscriptions on the flyleaves, ‘E Darell, esq. Calehill’ struck through (f. iiv), and ‘Philip Darell, Calehill, given him by his aff. Mother 8 Feb. 1838’ (f. iiir).
An unidentified religious house: its sale, Christies, London, 28 June 1972, lot no. 18; purchased by Clark Stillman (see below).
Clark Stillman, New York: his address label 'E C Stillman, 24 Gramercy Pk, New York N Y 10003' on the flyleaf (f. i); exhibited at Providence, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Transformations of the Court Style, Gothic Art in Europe 1270 to 1330, in 1977 (exhibition catalogue, no. 45); purchased by the British Library from Clark Stillman in 1990, with the aid of a grant from the National Art Collections Fund.
- Information About Copies:
-
Complete digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at https://bl.uk/manuscripts/.
Select digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/welcome.htm
- Publications:
-
Transformations of the Court Style, Gothic Art in Europe 1270 to 1330, the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2-27 Feb 1977 (Providence, Rhode Island: Department of Art, Brown University, 1977), no. 45, pp. 122-23 [exhibition catalogue].
Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 5 (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), I, no. 11a, pp. 20-22; II, pl. 25.
Janet Backhouse, 'A Psalter from the Diocese of York', The Art Quarterly of the National Art Collections Fund, 4 (1990), 24-29.
Peter Kidd, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Sam Fogg, 1999), pp. 30-32 [exhibition catalogue].
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler, The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library (London: Harvey Miller, 2005), p. 210-11, 213 n. 7 [exhibition catalogue].
Scot McKendrick and Kathleen Doyle, Bible Manuscripts: 1400 Years of Scribes and Scripture (London: British Library, 2007), p. 122, fig. 109.
Richard W. Pfaff, The liturgy in medieval England: a history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 448.
Eleanor Jackson, 'Pursuing the Percys: the original owners of the Percy Psalter-Hours', Journal of Medieval History, 48:4 (2022), 524-45, available online at [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03044181.2022.2098529] [accessed on 1 August 2022].
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)