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Add MS 36929
- Record Id:
- 032-002055444
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002055444
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000039.0x0000d6
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100165149079.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 36929
- Title:
-
Gallican Psalter with Canticles (The 'Psalter of Cormac')
- Scope & Content:
-
Psalter in the later recension of the Gallican version, with prefatory material and Canticles beginning and ending imperfectly (a leaf lacking at the beginning and two at the end):
f. 1r: Part of the treatise, De Psalmorum usu, here with the rubric, 'Expositio sancti Augustini in psalmis', incipit, 'Si vis pro peccatis tuis', explicit, 'in psalmis invenies';
f. 1v: A brief formula with the rubric, 'Absolutio Bernarddi', incipit, 'Absolvimus te, frater, vice beati Petri';
f. 1v: A prayer with the rubric, 'Ante psalmos oremus', incipit, 'Suscipere digneris, domine, hos versiculos', found in many early psalters, such as Cotton MS Vespasian A i, f. 1v, Cotton MS Tiberius C vi, f. 30r, Cotton MS Vitellius E xviii, f. 17v, Harley MS. 2904, f. 2v, Additional MS. 21927, f. 12v;
ff. 2r-179v: Psalter and Canticles, with rubrics of short allegorical interpretations, similar to those in Cotton MS Vespasian A i (f. 9r) up to Psalm 57. In the margin of Psalm 1 to 7 the Divisiones of Cassiodorus are also noted. Psalms 7, 15, 20, 26 and 28 have the words of the antiphon prefixed, apparently by the original hand; a few are also added to later Psalms but by a more recent hand. The Canticles, in the Vulgate version, following Psalms 1, 100 and 'Pusillus eram' at the end, occur similarly in another Irish manuscript, Cotton MS. Vitellius F xi.
Decoration:
3 full rectangular frames with zoomorphic and interlace decoration in red, yellow, green and purple before the beginning of Psalms 1, 51, and 101 (ff. 1v, 59v, 121v), the first with added text inside, the other two empty but with traces of erased images. 3 large initials in purple and blue, with dots, foliate and zoomorphic decoration, on red grounds with interlace patterns of yellow, terminating in animal or human heads at the beginning of Psalms 1, 51 and 101 (ff. 2r, 60r, 122r). A full frame with panels and zoomorphic terminals in red, yellow and green around text (f. 1r). Initials with interlace and zoomorphic decoration at the beginning of each Psalm in red, yellow, purple, green and/or blue, some outlined with red dots. Small initials in-filled with colour at the beginning of each verse. Line-fillers in red. The polyphonic colophon on f. 59r, has notes on a four-line stave in red.
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002055444", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 36929: Gallican Psalter with Canticles (The 'Psalter of Cormac')" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002055444
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002055444
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
-
1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100165149079.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- Latin
- Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1150
- End Date:
- 1199
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 12th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Letter of introduction required to view this manuscript.
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: parchment.
Dimensions: 175 x 130 mm (text space: 130 x 80/90 mm).
Foliation: ff. 179 (+ a modern paper insert with bibliography at the beginning and a paper insert at the end).
Collation: i-xv12 (ff. 1-172), xvi7 (ff. 173-179).
Script: Insular minuscule.
Binding: 16th century. ?German binding of wooden boards covered with tooled leather.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin: Ireland
Provenance: Copied by the Irish scribe, Cormac, probably for Cistercian use: the polyphonic colophon on f. 59r states, 'Cormacus scripsit hoc psalterium ora pro eo. Qui legis hec ora pro sese qualibet hora' and the Psalter is in the later Gallican version associated with the Cistercians.
Re-bound, probably in Germany in the 16th century.
Bought by the British Museum from J. Halle of Munich, 9 April, 1904 for £225.
- Information About Copies:
-
Full digital coverage available for this manuscript: see Digitised Manuscripts at http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts.
- Publications:
-
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1900-1905 (London: British Museum, 1907), pp. 259-60.
Francoise Henry and G. I. Marsh-Micheli, 'A Century of Irish Illumination (1070-1170)', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 62 (1962), 101-64 (p. 101).
Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Insular Manuscripts: 6th to the 9th Century, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 1 (London: Harvey Miller, 1978), no. 78.
K. M. Openshaw, 'The Symbolic Illustration of the Psalter: an Insular Tradition', Arte Medievale, 6 (1992), 47-48.
David Howlett, 'The Polyphonic colophon to Cormac's psalter', Peritia, 9 (1995), 81-91.
Martin McNamara, 'The Psalms in the Irish Church', in The Bible as Book: The Manuscript Tradition, ed. by John L. Sharpe III and Kimberly Van Kampen (London: British Library, 1998), pp. 89-103 (p. 91).
Peter Harbison, The Golden Age of Irish art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998), pp. 252, 267-68 (pl. 171).
Martin McNamara, The Psalms in the Early Irish Church (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), pp. 84-85.
Susan Rankin, 'Between oral and written: thirteenth-century Italian sources of polyphony', in Un millennio di polifonia liturgica tra oralità e scrittura, ed. by Giulio Cattin e F. Alberto Gallo(Bologna: Società editrice Il Mulino, 2002), pp. 75-95 (pp. 75-78)
K. D. Hartzell, Catalogue of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1200 containing Music (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), no. 121.
Martin McNamara, The Bible and the Apocrypha in the Early Irish Church (A.D. 600-1200), Instrumenta Patristica et Mediaevalia, Research on the Inheritance of the Early and Medieval Christianity, 66 (Turnhout, Brepols, 2015), pp. 131-209 (pp. 132, 165-176).
Elizabeth Duncan, ‘A History of Gaelic Script, A.D. 1000-1200’ (Unpublished doctoral thesis, Aberdeen, 2010), pp. 52-53, 71, 84, 98, 162-67, 182, 266-67, 273, 275, 283, 287.
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)