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Abstract
In the High Middle Ages many illustrious western European psalters contained prefatory cycles of Old and New Testament pictures; the late Anglo-Saxon Tiberius Psalter is often cited as the first such psalter. Scholars have discussed the unique iconography of some of its numerous pictures but there has been no integrated study of the manuscript, nor has attention been given to numerous questions posed by the appearance of such an innovative decorative scheme in a psalter. This interdisciplinary study addresses questions of origin and purpose and sets the psalter into functional, pictorial and ideological contexts.
Chapter 1 analyses the unique selection of prefatory texts. Sources include Carolingian prayerbooks, a canon law collection and a homiliary. Most of the texts serve the penitential needs of the individual. They must have been assembled primarily for private devotional use by a churchman.
Chapter 2 considers pictorial sources of three portraits of King David and chapter 3 analyses the narrative David scenes. The portraits fuse material from an old Carolingian psalter and a more recent Anglo-Saxon work. The narrative David iconography is close to that of famous pre-Iconoclastic Byzantine monuments and probably derived from a pre-Iconoclastic psalter with prefatory pictures, like the aristocratic psalters of Byzantium.
Chapter 4 shows that the many Christological pictures were mostly drawn at random from contemporary and earlier Anglo-Saxon works, supplemented with imagery from homiletic, devotional and poetic material.
Chapters 5 and 6 address issues of program. Chapter 5 explores the roots of the overall David/Christ typology in symbolic and typological programs of older Insular psalters. We see that the prefatory typological cycle is a fusion of such schemes with the Byzantine tradition for prefatory David scenes in psalters. Chapter 6 examines detailed typologies linking individual pictures. Two linked themes are apparent; the conquest of evil and the reception of the Holy Spirit, both presented as Davidic and Christological paradigms for the user of the psalter. The cycle embraces the baptismal period in the liturgical calendar; the pictures would have allowed the user to reenact the spiritual battles of his catechuminate, the remission of his sins and the reception of the Holy Spirit.