There are also several portraits of David in profile or three-quarter view, on fols. Almost every folio features a decorative border around the first word of each psalm, enhanced with animal heads or foliage at the edges. Instead, they consist of simple pen drawings in red or blue ink. The illustrations and decorations are not ornate and do not appear to be done by a professional artist. The Hebrew script is an Ashkenazi gothic semi-cursive, except for each psalm's first word, which is written in square gothic in blue or red ink in the margin. 5 The text is written in one column, to be read right to left, on parchment. The manuscript consists of fifty-one folios and measures 145 × 100 mm. Although not every folio is quite so full of notes and artistic flourishes, each contains at least a dozen glosses in Latin or French. One reader has written Hebrew words in the margins with an accompanying Latin translation, and he, or another scholar, adds French marginal glosses as well. 4 An unidentifiable creature in blue and red ink spans the top margin of the page, looking down at the text as though it wants to devour the words. 3 The first word of Psalm 1, ashrei (אשרי), is decorated in red and blue ink with a profile of King David wearing a crown and playing a harp, all in the style of a typical penwork initial of the period. 621 reveals an active readership that spanned centuries. Some medieval psalters accompanied medieval Jewish commentaries on the biblical book. 1 Since Psalms are traditionally recited in Jewish holiday and lifecycle ceremonies, the Hebrew psalter also appeared as a section in liturgical prayer books. There are many examples of small Hebrew psalters, some with decorative elements or elaborate illuminations. 621 contains at least three late medieval and early modern hands whose unique marginal and superscriptum notes in Hebrew, Latin, and French belie an interest in and passable competency in Hebrew.Īlthough the Hebrew psalter did not have the same popularity in the Jewish world that the Latin psalter held in the Christian world, the Hebrew counterpart appears in parts of Christian Europe beginning in the twelfth century. However, the remnants of previous thirteenth-century readers, whose notes pepper this manuscript with Latin and French glosses, display a solid command of Hebrew. The hand belongs to Thomas Gascoigne, a fifteenth-century vice chancellor of Oxford who clearly did not assume his contemporary readers of the psalter to be well-versed in the Hebrew language. 621"), a thirteenth-century Hebrew psalter, a later hand has written in Latin, "hic incipit psalteriu m hebraic um et debet legi modo retrogrado" (Here begins a Hebrew psalter, and it must be read backwards). ON FOLIO 1R of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley Oriental 621 (hereafter "Bodl.
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