Utrecht Psalter - Additional Texts

Additional Texts

After the Psalms, like many psalters the manuscript includes various canticles and other material, including the Canticles of Isaiah the Prophet (Is 12 and Is 38), and a third Canticle of Isaiah (1 Samuel 2:1-10). The canticle of Moses the Prophet (Ex 15:1-13) includes 17-20 added on the lower margin. The canticle of Habakkuk (Hab 3) follows with the canticle of Moses to the children of Israel (Deut 32:1-43). The following canticle is the blessing of the three children, then the Te Deum attributed to St. Ambrose of Milan, the Benedictus of Zachary (Luke 1:68-79) with a nativity group, and the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). The Magnificat is accompanied by an illustration of the Virgin holding a small child which is not the child Jesus, but a representation of her "spirit" (exultavit spiritus meus). The Nunc Dimittis (Luke 2:29-32) folio includes the Gloria in Excelsis. Next follows the “Oratio Dominica secundum Matheum” (Matt 6:9-13), with the Apostles' Creed on the same folio. In the illustration for the creed, the Virgin holds the child Jesus with a cruciform halo.

Next comes the Athanasian Creed. The illustration appears to be a group of churchmen, with a central figure wearing the pallium of an archbishop. This need not be Athanasius at the council of Nicea; it may also be Ebbo, or it may represent an archbishop generically as personifying the doctrinal orthodoxy of a creed. The psalter's creed had been mentioned by James Ussher in his 1647 De Symbolis when the manuscript was part of the Cotton library, but it was gone by 1723 (Vinton, 161). When the psalter was rediscovered again in the 19th century, it was thought to be the oldest manuscript containing the Latin text of the creed (Schaff, 70), as some thought the psalter dated from the 6th century. The oldest manuscripts of the Athanasian creed date from the late 8th century (Chazelle, 1056). After this is the "Apocryphal psalm", Psalm 151.

The Psalter is bound with 12 leaves of a different Gospel book written in uncial characters with a text similar to the Codex Amiatinus. These leaves date from around 700 and show characteristics typical of an Anglo-Saxon scribe (Lowe, 273), and is the only other text identified as by the same scribe as the St Cuthbert Gospel, working at Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Abbey (T. Julian Brown, Stonyhurst Gospel, 7-10). The psalter was at one time also bound with the Reculver charter (Birch, 77), but this was later removed (Benson, 14). Robert Cotton may have bound them together due to their similar folio size.