Melisende Psalter
The Melisende Psalter (also: Melisande Psalter , British Library, MS Egerton 1139) is an illuminated Psalter , which in the years around 1140 probably on behalf of Fulk V of Anjou for his wife Melisende , the Queen of Jerusalem was made .
Seven scribes and illuminators who worked in the Crusader- built scriptorium in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem were involved in the creation of the Psalter. Measuring 21.6 cm by 14 cm, it is a personal use psalter, not a liturgical psalter. It consists of a total of 211 parchment leaves .
The Psalter is the most important example of art from the Crusader states and combines the artistic styles of Roman Catholic Europe, Orthodox Byzantium and the Islamic Orient.
Today the manuscript is in the British Library in London and the binding is in the British Museum separately . It was acquired by the British Museum in 1845 from the Great Charterhouse , the mother abbey of the Carthusian Order .
The Melisende Psalter
The Melisende Psalter is divided into four sections:
- Illustrations from the New Testament
- a calendar
- Psalm texts
- Saints prayers
New Testament
The first 12 folios contain 24 illuminations of scenes from the New Testament . As usual in Western European psalters, these are at the beginning, but they depict scenes that were more frequently depicted in the Eastern, Orthodox liturgy. They were made by a monk named Basileus, who signed the last of these 24 illuminations.
The calendar
Folios 13-21 contain a calendar that closely resembles calendars from England for the same period. It may have been copied from the Winchester Psalter . Mainly the English holy days are noted in the calendar. Only three dates relating to the Crusader states are mentioned - the capture of Jerusalem on July 15 , the death of Baldwin II on August 21, and the death of his wife Morphia on October 1. On each page of the month there is a depiction of a zodiac sign in the Romanesque style, but with Islamic influences. The second illuminator was active in this section.
The psalter
Folios 22 to 196 contain the actual text of the psalter, which consists of the psalm verses from the Vulgate and is written in a northern French script. The initials of each psalm are executed in gold on a purple background and each occupy the back ( verso ) of a page. Stylistically, they show influences from Italian and Islamic book illumination and can be ascribed to a third illuminator.
Saints prayers
On folios 197 to 211 there are prayers to nine saints, each accompanied by a representation of the respective saint. The text was written by the scribe who also edited the Psalter. The illuminations come from a fourth illuminator who painted in a Romanesque-Byzantine style. There is some blank space in this section that suggests it has not been completed.
The cover
The binding consists of ivory carvings, which are decorated with turquoise and other precious stones. They show scenes from the life of King David and from the Psychomachia of Prudentius on the obverse and another king, who is probably Fulk himself, on the reverse. The inscription "Herodius" on the back could be the name of the artist. The spine of the book was decorated with Byzantine silk and silver thread, and embroidered with red, blue and green Greek crosses.
literature
- Hugo Buchthal : Miniature painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem . Pindar Press, London 1986, ISBN 0-907132-29-4 (reprinted London 1957 edition).
- Jaroslav Folda: The art of the crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098-1187 . CUP, Cambridge 1995, ISBN 0-521-45383-6 .
- Bianca Kühnel: Crusader art of the twelfth century. A geographical, an historical, or an art historical notion? . Verlag Mann, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-7861-1743-8 .
- Jonathan Riley-Smith : Illustrated history of the crusades ("The Oxford history of the crusades"). Campus-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-89340-068-0 .
- Barbara Zeitler: The distorting mirror. Reflections on the Queen Melisende Psalter . In: Robin Cormack et al. a. (Ed.): Through the looking glass. Byzantium through British eyes; papers from the twenty-ninth spring symposium of Byzantine Studies, London, March 1995 . Ashgate Books, Aldershot, 2000, ISBN 0-86078-667-6 .
