St. Blasien Psalter

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The St. Blasien Psalter , also called Dyson Perrins Psalter after a previous owner , is a magnificent liturgical manuscript from the Middle Ages.

History of origin

The illuminated codex was created in the St. Blasien monastery around 1240. It was probably intended for the Berau Benedictine monastery . From 1279 the manuscript was also decorated with pictures. The book format is 22.5 cm high and 16 cm wide, the work has 156 parchment sheets this corresponds to 312 pages, each of which is painted or lettered on both sides. It contains 19 full frames and two fields. It probably came to St. Georgen or Ochsenhausen from Berau, where it was used for church services .

Stations

In Augsburg it was newly bound by the bookbinder Jörg Schapf between 1469 and 1486. After that it was most likely owned by Hans Mülich (court painter in Munich). In 1667 Lukas Walther from Augsburg used it as a family Bible. Presumably it appeared in Paris in the early 19th century and was owned by François Ambroise Didot . It remained in the famous printer family until the library auction in 1888 and fetched the highest price in the auction. The buyer was the painter and collector Charles Fairfax Murray (1864-1941), he kept the manuscript for 18 years, then he sold it to Lord Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864-1958), the inventor of Worcester sauce .

Further whereabouts

After his death, his manuscript collections were sold in three auctions at Sotheby’s (1960). The Württemberg State Library wanted to participate in the bid to acquire the book for the state of Baden-Württemberg , but the sum of 725,000 DM used by the state and donors was not enough. The manuscript went to the New York antiquarian Hans Peter Kraus for DM 730,000 . He then offered the book to the country for DM 760,000 - the offer was rejected.

Kraus waited 13 years for a buyer. The Stuttgart private collector Dr. Paul Beck finally acquired the manuscript for DM 900,000. The St. Blasien Psalter from the Beck Collection in Stuttgart was sold to an anonymous collector through Sotheby's for over DM 6 million through an auction on June 16, 1997.

literature

  • Wolfgang Irtenkauf : From St. Blasien into the whole world, on the history of the so-called St. Blasien Psalter , in: Heimat am Hochrhein XXIV., Pp. 61–70, 1999
  • Sotheby's: The Beck collection of illuminated manuscripts, Auction 16 June 1997. London, 1997 (auction catalog)
  • Harry Bober : The St. Blasien Psalter , Kraus, New York, 1963

Individual evidence