Latin Psalters - Divisions

Divisions

Apart from the schemata described below, it was customary in medieval psalters to divide the text of the psalms in numerical sequence into sections or divisions, the start of which were typically marked by a much larger and more decorated initial letter than for the other psalms. The "B" of Psalm 1, Beatus Vir, usually was the most enlarged and decorated, and often those two words occupied a full page, the rounded shape of the letter being very suitable for decoration. These are often referred to as "Beatus initials". In Early Medieval psalters a three-fold division with decorated letters at Psalms 1, 51, 101 was typical, but by the Gothic period French psalters were often divided into eight sections, and English ones into ten, at Psalms 1,26,38, 51, 52, 68, 80, 97, 101 and 109.