Macclesfield Psalter

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The Macclesfield Psalter is regarded as a national treasure in the United Kingdom

The Macclesfield Psalter is a lavishly illuminated manuscript from the English region of East Anglia, written in Latin and produced around 1330. The psalter, or book of Psalms, contains 252 beautifully illustrated pages and is named after its most recent owner, the Earl of Macclesfield.

Having rested unrecognised on the shelves of Shirburn Castle for several centuries, finally revealed when the library was catalogued for sale, the Macclesfield Psalter was put up for auction at Sotheby's in 2004. Cambridge University's Fitzwilliam Museum attempted to purchase the Psalter, but the initial bid was won by the Getty Museum of Malibu, California, for £1.7 million. The Psalter subsequently became a cause célèbre as, under British law, the American museum had to gain permission to export the Psalter. The Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art gave the Psalter a starred rating and a temporary export bar was placed on the Psalter until February 10, 2005. In response, the Fitzwilliam Museum, with a contribution from the National Art Collections Fund raised the funds necessary to buy the Psalter (noted for its gaudy, vivid images and its coarse Pythonesque humour) in the United Kingdom. The Psalter can now be viewed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Like other luxury psalters, the Macclesfield Psalter was likely intended for private reading instead of public use in church. It is thought to be by the same scribe as two other psalters from the so-called East Anglian group, the Stowe Breviary and the Douai Psalter.

This ornament shows Doeg the Edomite beheading the priests of Nob

The chief splendour of the Psalter, however, is indisputably the illumination, which is unusually lavish. There are some full-page miniatures at the start, and throughout the book each new verse begins with a small gilded initial against an ornate background of rose and pink. The initials at the traditional major divisions of the Psalms take up most of the page, and as is usual, the B of "Beatus vir ...", the start of Psalm 1, has the largest of all, a magnificent Jesse Tree. The main initials show religious scenes, either from the life of King David or events from the life of Christ that the Psalms were believed to pre-figure. The smaller initials contain various images, including kings, queens, peasants and bishops. The margins of many pages are heavily decorated with abstract designs that constantly sprout into plant shapes, and contain many small "marginal grotesques" of no obvious religious relevance.

The Psalter abounds in images of grotesques and drolleries that today are considered humorous. These images include grotesques with faces on their bottoms, three-headed monsters with hairy noses, a dog in a bishop's costume, an ape doctor giving a false diagnosis to a bear patient, rabbits jousting and riding hounds and a giant skate terrorising a man.

The original patron of the Psalter is unknown, as it appears that a coat of arms has been cut from the pages in various places throughout the Psalter. It is thought that the original owner could possibly have been John de Warenne, 8th Earl of Surrey, the possible patron of the Gorleston Psalter. The Psalter also contains an image of a Dominican order friar, who may have been the owner's confessor and may also have been involved in the production of the psalter.