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Christian Hebraism and the Ramsey Abbey Psalter

The psalter was the most characteristic type of richly illuminated book produced in England during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. From the Windmill to the Luttrell Psalter, these manuscripts are known for their elaborate initial pages containing the exuberant foliate and figural decoration which is the hallmark of the so-called East Anglian style. The artistic invention of the artists of these manuscripts is, in fact, generally directed towards the marginal decoration, while the representations within the initials themselves are standardized. An exception to this rule is the Ramsey Psalter, an early fourteenth-century book now divided between the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (MS M. 302) and the library of the Abbey of St. Paul in Lavantthal in Carinthia, Austria (Cod. xxv/2, 19),1 for it offers unique and perplexing departures from contemporary formulas of psalm illustration. The psalter was made before 1310 for use at the Abbey of the Virgin, St. Benedict and All Virgins at Ramsey, Huntingdonshire. Commissioned by the cellarer, Walter of Grafham, it was probably intended as a gift to the abbot of the time, John of Sawtry.2 The manuscript contains the standard types of illustration for English Gothic psalters: originally ten historiated initials-of which nine survive-and a series of full-page miniatures of Old and New Testament subjects at the beginning of the volume. At the end of this prefatory narrative cycle there is also a unique sequence of miniatures referring specifically to the history of Ramsey Abbey: scenes of its foundation, dedication, its benefactors, and episodes from the lives of its patron saints.3 Equally unusual are the subjects of a number of the historiated initials illustrating the psalms at the liturgical divisions of the manuscript. The standard themes for English psalters of the period are: Psalm i, David playing the harp (or sometimes the Tree of Jesse); Psalm xxvi, a king pointing to his eyes; Psalm xxxviii, a king pointing to his tongue; Psalm li, David and Goliath