Welcome to 31 Days of Medieval Manuscripts, a month-long series introducing the fascinating and brilliant world of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
The Luttrell Psalter (British Library Add. MS 42130) is a 14th-century English psalter now at the British Library. It’s a particularly beautiful manuscript and is celebrated for its use of color and gold, representations of King David, profusion of “lively and often humorous images” of rural English life in the Middle Ages, and wide usage of detailed animal imagery in the margins.1 The Psalter was created for an English lord named Sir Geoffrey Luttrell around 1320 or 1340. We can see Sir Luttrell dressed as a dashing knight in an illustration from the manuscript, shown below.

The psalter is a book of Psalms – 150 Old Testament songs important in both Christianity and Judaism. Psalters had been the most common manuscript for lay people (though generally only very rich ones) to own in the early Middle Ages, since they could sing Psalms as part of their daily worship. By the time of the Luttrell Psalter, however, the book of hours (discussed on day two of this series) had supplanted the psalter for that purpose. Because religious tradition credits the Biblical King David as the Psalms’ author, psalters tend to abound with illustrations of David, usually playing the harp.

It’s not the King David illustrations for which the Luttrell Psalter is famous, however. That honor would go to the profusion of colorful illustrations in the borders and margins. The most exciting of them depict medieval people going about their daily lives. It’s really fascinating to see ordinary medieval Europeans doing ordinary things as depicted by their contemporaries, but we should not necessarily see them as documenting reality. They’re probably more like ideal versions of what a rich man like Sir Geoffrey wanted to think ordinary life looked like. Along with a variety of fun and quirky animals, these daily life illustrations are a great example of marginalia, a phenomenon we will explore in much greater detail in tomorrow’s post.
Turn the pages of the Luttrell Psalter on the British Library’s website.
- “Luttrell Psalter“. British Library. Accessed October 10, 2023. ↩︎
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