Glossing The Psalms

This study proposes a new view of glossing as a universal phenomenon. Starting from the Psalter, a centrepiece of devotion and education in early medieval Europe, it combines historical sociolinguistics, comparative philology, manuscript studies and cultural history in order to assess and compare the interface of Latin with Old Irish, Old English, Old Frisian, Old Saxon and Old High German within the context of its multilingual and textual culture. The close study of thirteen glossed manuscripts, such as the Anglo-Saxon Vespasian Psalter and the Old Irish Milan Glosses, reveals when and why scribes switched from Latin into the vernacular, how the vernacular was used in studying Latin, how glosses interact with construe marks and punctuation, and how such manuscripts were intended to be read in a period covering the seventh to the twelfth centuries and in an area stretching from Ireland to Central Europe. The book is an essential textbook for specialists in the growing field of glossing, and also reaches out to scholars of early medieval liturgy, education, palaeography and Christian literature.

In "Slay them not", Linda Stone focusses on the existence and use of anti-Jewish polemic, and its roots, present in the three closely-linked twelfth-century glosses on the Psalms, written by Anselm of Laon, Gilbert of Poitiers and Peter Lombard.

The first of three volumes, this book is an edition of forty psalters written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England, half of which are glossed in Old English. The work is an invaluable tool for comparative gloss scholarship, for the study of the influence of vocabulary, the interpretation of glosses, the study of relations among psalters, and the study of the Latin text of the psalms in Anglo-Saxon England. It also presents new insights on the development of centres of learning and the impact of the psalter on literary tradition. Each volume addresses a group of fifty psalms. This landmark in Old English studies is the first attempt at a completely comprehensive edition. As an original and much-needed contribution to early medieval scholarship, it not only provides a standard edition of texts based on all known Anglo-Saxon psalters but also synthesizes many studies of psalter scholarship from the earliest times.

Annie Sutherland explores the many versions of the vernacular psalms which circulated in the late Middle Ages, raising questions about interactions between Latinity and vernacularity in the period and situating the translated psalms in a literary and theoretical context.

An examination of how The Book of Psalms shaped medieval thought and helped develop the medieval English literary canon.

Towards the end of the twelfth century, powerful images of laughing kings and saints began to appear in texts circulating at the English royal court. At the same time, contemporaries began celebrating the wit, humour, and laughter of King Henry II (r.1154-89) and his martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Thomas Becket (d.1170). Taking a broad genealogical approach, Laughter and Power in the Twelfth Century traces the emergence of this powerful laughter through an immersive study of medieval intellectual, literary, social, religious, and political debates. Focusing on a cultural renaissance in England, the study situates laughter at the heart of the defining transformations of the second half of the 1100s. With an expansive survey of theological and literary texts, bringing a range of unedited manuscript material to light in the process, Peter J. A. Jones exposes how twelfth-century writers came to connect laughter with spiritual transcendence and justice, and how this connection gave humour a unique political and spiritual power in both text and action. Ultimately, Jones argues that England's popular images of laughing kings and saints effectively reinstated a sublime charismatic authority, something truly rebellious at a moment in history when bureaucracy and codification were first coming to dominate European political life.