The Scribe Looks Back: Anglo-Saxon England and the Eadwine Psalter

Any consideration of twelfth-century views of the Anglo-Saxon past should take account of the Eadwine Psalter: Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R. 17. 1, produced under the patronage of Prior Wibert at Christ Church Canterbury c.1155-60.1 The Eadwine Psalter is the work of at least ten monastic scribes and six artists.2 Eadwine, for whom the manuscript is named, may have been one of the scribes, possibly the main scribe; alternatively, he may have been in charge of designing the book or overseeing the project. Alternatively, some believe he may have been the manuscript’s patron or possibly held a combination of these roles. Whatever his actual involvement in the production of the manuscript, however, the book itself presents him both verbally and visually as its scribe, and he will therefore be described as such in this chapter. In terms of its contents, the Eadwine Psalter is a scholarly collection of texts rather than a book designed for everyday use. It is a psalterium triplex, meaning that it brings together the three translations of the psalter text attributed to Jerome, the Gallicanum (the main text of Eadwine), the Romanum and the Hebraicum (both written in smaller script and narrower columns which run parallel down the sides of the page). The manuscript also contains an interlinear translation of the Romanum into Old English, and an interlinear translation of the Hebraicum (which is incomplete) into Anglo-Norman French, the parva glosatura or glossa ordinaria (a standard gloss or commentary on Psalms 1-150), a series of exegetical prologues, a calendar, tituli and collects, prognostics and, of course, the illuminations, which I have described elsewhere as providing both a comprehensive visual narrative and a gloss on the written text, that is, the psalms conveyed thorough a different form of language.3 In addition to the drawings that accompany the psalter text, the book includes at its end the famous Eadwine portrait and drawings 1 Portions of this chapter are based on C.E. Karkov, The art of Anglo-Saxon England, Woodbridge 2011, 175-8.