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.[1]

The earlier of the two sets is particularly notable for being the oldest surviving English translation of the Bible, albeit a very fragmentary one.[2][3][4][5][6] It consists of 26 glosses, either interlinear or marginal, scattered throughout the manuscript.[1] These so-called "red glosses"[7] are written by a single scribe mostly in red ink[8] 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.[9][10] The glosses were first published in by E. Brock in 1876.[11] A number of corrections were subsequently offered by Henry Sweet in 1885,[12] and by Karl Wildhagen in 1913.[13]

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.[14]

The Psalter is sometimes included in the Tiberius group,[15] 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).[16]

  • Blickling Psalter, folio 6r, detail, with an early-9th-century Old English gloss in the right margin[17]
  • Blickling Psalter, folio 6r, right margin: early-9th-century Latin / Old English gloss plagę. uestigia dolgsuaþhe, for Latin cicatrices[18][19]

See also

Notes
  1. McGowan 2007, p. 205
  2. 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
  3. 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)
  4. Stanton 2002, p. 104: "[After Cædmon and Bede] are the psalter glosses <...> which date from the ninth to the twelfth centuries."
  5. McGowan 2007, p. 205: "The earliest layer of psalter-glossing in Anglo-Saxon England was made in red ink in <...> the ‘Blickling Psalter’"
  6. 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."
  7. McGowan 2007
  8. But also in black ink on folio 64r/v, "quite possibly" by the same scribe, see Crick 1997, pp. 68–69
  9. Gretsch 2000, p. 105 n. 78
  10. Crick 1997
  11. Brock 1876
  12. Sweet 1885, pp. 122–123
  13. Wildhagen 1913, pp. 16–19[432–435]
  14. 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)
  15. Brown 2011, p. 134
  16. Brown 2005, p. 282
  17. Crick 1997, plate VII
  18. 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)
  19. 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 Anglosaxon Dictionary: entry + addenda)

References
  • E. Brock (1876) The Blickling Glosses, in: Richard Morris (1876) The Blickling Homilies, Volume II, pp. 251–263
  • Michelle P. Brown (2005). "Mercian manuscripts? The "Tiberius" group and its historical context". In Michelle P. Brown; Carol A. Farr (eds.). Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe. pp. 281–291. ISBN 9781441153531. google books preview
  • Michelle P. Brown (2011). "Writing in the Insular world". In Richard Gameson (ed.). The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain. The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain Volume 1: c.400–1100. Cambridge University Press. pp. 121–166. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521583459.005. ISBN 9780521583459.
  • Julia Crick (1997). "The case for a West Saxon minuscule". Anglo-Saxon England. 26: 63–79. doi:10.1017/S0263675100002118. 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, doi:10.1017/S026367510000209X
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