[Psalter | Psalterium]

Nuremberg: Friedrich Creussner, [1484-1485]

[160] of [164] leaves (but missing text leaves supplied in early manuscript) | 4to | [a^8(-a1 blank) b^8 c^8(-c6,7 replaced in ms) d-t^8 v^6 x^6(-x6 blank)] (signatures from BMC) | 178 x 140 mm

Creussner's third psalter, set in a satisfying gothic textura strongly reminiscent of Gutenberg's first types. The psalter was a medieval necessity, used by clergy and laypeople alike as a guide to daily prayer (and sometimes even to teach young children how to read). Given its critical role in religious life, it unsurprisingly became a staple of 15th-century printing, with some 250 incunabular editions recorded. Despite such proliferation, many of these early editions have left few witnesses. Some surely perished from use, like so many everyday texts, while others would have been discarded in favor of improved editions, especially after the Council of Trent standardized the liturgy in the next century. ¶ A typical psalter contained the Psalms, of course, as the name would suggest, but also incorporated a variety of other devotional elements, too. In this respect, the psalter functioned as a kind of precursor to the Book of Hours, which eventually eclipsed the psalter as the private devotional text of choice. Our edition follows the traditional eight-part ferial structure, anchored by Psalms 1, 26, 38, 52, 68, 80, 97, and 109, each of which starts with a large four- or five-line initial in red. (Nothing says psalter quite like that grand opening initial 'B'.) This organization facilitated the complete recitation of the psalms every week: one group for each matins throughout the week, and an eighth for daily vespers. Other psalms are here marked by two-line initials, and following Psalm 150 are Canticles of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Anne, Moses, Habakkuk, The Three Youths, Zachary, the Virgin Mary, Simeon, and Augustine and Ambrose. The book closes with The Athanasian Creed. ¶ The psalter was also fundamentally an aid for vocal performance, "the kernel of the tradition of performance of the complete cycle of Psalms that was the basis of participatory Catholic liturgy in the Middle Ages" (Duggan, "Psalter"). To be sure, Kathi Mayer grouped another 1484 Creussner edition with the British Museum's liturgical music incunabula. And the very first printed psalter, Fust and Schöffer's magisterial 1457 edition, included some notated music, underscoring the genre's role as musical aid from the very start. For centuries, the psalms provided a kind of background soundtrack to daily living—and not just for the clerical class, but for laypeople, too, "who repeatedly sang its songs in the regular rhythm of worship and life" (Barshinger). Most printed psalters, like ours, lacked printed notation. Beyond the technical challenge posed by the printing of music, it simply wasn't necessary. Everyone knew the tunes, and simple visual cues could be enough to prep the vocal chords. Speaking of the psalter's iconic opening initial 'B', for example, Mary Kay Duggan remarked that this letter alone was “sufficient for recall of the first verse of the first psalm, whose musical melody was so well known that it was never printed” ("Reading"). ¶ It's a fantastic early book, this copy no less so for its arresting binding: heavily tooled leather in gold, silver, and red, dominated by a bird and floral motif, with a lovely red tulip in the lower corner of the front cover. Decorated off the volume, the leather was likely prepared as wallpaper. The technique had been in Europe for some time and reached northern Europe around 1500, where it became especially popular in the Low Countries. Hans Fugger covered the walls of his 16th-century Augsburg home with leather, and the fashion reached its peak in the next century. "However, the enduring nature of leather was to prove a problem: the significant investment involved in acquiring leather wallpaper made it prohibitively costly for owners to change to other styles, and the layers of gilding and varnish transformed the leather wall coverings into almost inert, immutable matter. Leather wallpaper was too durable and gradually lost its value as a competitive tool as other novelties emerged...By the late seventeenth century, leather wallpaper had largely fallen out of fashion in Europe" (Rublack). ¶ Such leather certainly wasn't limited to walls. It was commonly used to upholster furniture, too, and in some 18th-century colonial American fire screens. And obviously it was occasionally used for books, though these were an unusual application. The wallpaper's much larger scale of design would seem an obvious deterrent. But craftspeople gonna craft. In 1927, Max Joseph Husung described a particularly early 15th-century leather wallpaper binding. He cites other examples, and makes a tantalizing reference to a monastic library "in the south, all of whose books are said to be bound in leather wallpaper." ¶ We suspect our leather is 17th-century, and possibly Dutch. Bird and floral patterns were popular in The Netherlands, and "the tulip became one of the most popular motifs on Dutch gold leather wallpapers of the 17th century" (Thümmler and Gerner). While 16th-century wallpapers relied for their texture on the use of small tools, the Dutch introduced in the early 17th century a technique for deep, large-scale embossing. Our leather appears to have benefited from that technique, perhaps with a bit of compression over the years. At the same time, our leather uses a combination of small geometric tools common on Italian leather wallpaper of the late baroque period, something we find to be much less common on Dutch leathers. ¶ A vital late medieval genre and companion to song, in a captivating binding, and thoroughly annotated.

PROVENANCE: Consistently annotatedthroughout, in at least two different hands, with annotations on more than a hundred pages (excluding simple psalm numbers, or the abbreviated Gloria scattered throughout). Some, like single-word additions on fols. 2v and 3r, make minor corrections to the text. Most are antiphons, versicles, and responses that would have been sung, with some annotations running to half a dozen lines. See, for example, antiphons Servite domino in timore in the lower margin of Psalm 7 (fol. 5v) and Domine Deus meus te speravi on fol. 8r. Many of the antiphons are preceded by aña, an abbreviation for antiphona. Lengthier annotations often include Latin abbreviations for versiculus (e.g., fol. 19r) or responsorium (e.g., fol. 24r). We find at least one attempt at erasing an annotation (fol. 34v), and occasional text struck through, presumably in response changes in the liturgy. These additions are not unusual, and similar to the early annotations in another incunable psalter we handled. To be sure, Duggan notes that rubrics for psalm performance “could be printed but most often had to be written by hand by the owner in blank space provided in printed editions, thus allowing regional variation" ("Reading"). ¶ Our fol. 22 and 23 here appear in fine, early manuscript copies, very sympathetic to the gothic style, even with a decorative line filler at the end of the second leaf. Early printed liturgical books are commonly found with early manuscript substitutions. See, for example, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek's copy of our psalter. Not only were they vulnerable to rapid deterioration from constant use, but the printed text was also subject to revision—sometimes because authorities called for a textual change, other times because the owner's local diocese adhered to a different reading. ¶ With the obliterated blue ink stamp of the Bibliothek Öttingen-Wallerstein, on both the front fly-leaf and rear paste-down. Our psalter was probably among the many Öttingen-Wallerstein books sold over the course of the early 20th century, especially by Munich booksellers Karl & Faber. Most of what remained in the 1980s was sold to the Augsburg University Library. We've corresponded with staff at Augsburg, and rest assured that its copy remains safely on the shelf. And as always, feel free to inquire about export documentation, something we take seriously. ¶ Embossed armorial stamp with initials RMF in the front fly-leaf.

CONDITION: Bound in old leather wallpaper, as described above; single fore-edge strap from the same leather, with a wire catch on the front cover (presumably missing a piece of knotted cord or some other means of fastening). Rubricated throughout, with eight large four- or five-line initials, many two-line initials, and countless single-line initials added by hand. ¶ Trimmed close at the top margin, occasionally affecting the top line of text, and resulting in the loss of some marginalia in the upper margin (see fol. 5v, for example); occasional marginalia trimmed in the lower margin (e.g. fol. 20v); a number of marginal repairs and reinforcements, especially at the inner margins (including a small patch of cloth in the lower margin of fol. 6v, and at least two patches are manuscript waste); the inner margin repair to fol. 122r covers some text, which has been handwritten on the repair; some dozen leaves wormed in the lower margin, quite a few of them repaired, affecting some annotations; finger soiled throughout, the book clearly well used, with both soiling and wear a noticeably worse near the end of the volume (the later psalms were among those sung daily rather than weekly); a few small holes in the first few leaves, affecting text. Leather worn, and much of its color lost; cords frayed or broken, and the hinges split, but the text block still attached to the lower spine by means of adhesive. The text block remains firmly intact, and the leather wallpaper binding, in any condition, is a terrific survival.

REFERENCES: ISTC ip01044600; Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century Now in the British Museum, v. 2, p. 452-453 (IA. 7780); Hans Bohatta, Liturgische Bibliographie des XV. Jahrhunderts (1911), p. 52, #889; Quaritch, A Catalgoue of Rare and Valuable Works (1903), p. 28, #84 (dated ca. 1472, something we occasionally see repeated; "This impression is probably one of Creussner's early productions, and does not seem to be later than 1472") ¶ On the content: Mary Kay Duggan, “Reading Liturgical Books,” Incunabula and Their Readers (British Library, 2003), p. 71 (“users of liturgical books are not merely readers but also singers or even performers"), 72 (cited above, and with production stats of incunabular liturgical editions; “Incunable liturgical psalters were read by the intended audience of clerics and religious and a few men and women of Europe’s cities”), 74 (cited above, also attesting the psalter's role in early education; "In the late fifteenth century visitations by bishops to each place of worship in the diocese were begun and a part of their protocol was an inventory of liturgical books to enforce the purchase of reformed texts. As a result of such visitations through the end of the sixteenth century, most incunable liturgical books were destroyed, to be replaced by the new editions prescribed by the Council of Trent."), 77 (“Not just reading but writing was required of the owners of many liturgical editions. Owners often had to provide a liturgical calendar, music notation in blank space provided, and in the liturgical psalter rubrics and incipits for any texts or songs beyond the psalms required for the Hours of the Office. The ability to write Latin and plainchant may have been common in the monastery, where liturgical manuscripts existed from which to copy the needed information.”), 78 (“provenance records of extant incunables tell us that all choirbooks, almost all missals and breviaries, and most liturgical psalters belonged to clerics or religious”), 81 (“by the middle of the fifteenth century smaller, more portable liturgical books had begun to proliferate,” including “the quarto psalter for the residents of choir stalls whose memory was failing and who were unable to make out the letters of the large psalter”); Mary Kay Duggan, “The Psalter on the Way to the Reformation: The Fifteenth-Century Printed Psalter in the North,” The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages (SUNY, 1999), p. 154 (cited above; “While at the outset printed liturgical psalters were intended for religious and clerical users, the proliferation of printed copies were increasingly sold to a broader audience that included lay”); Janet Backhouse, The Illuminated Page (1997), p. 65 (in the early gothic age: "The psalter was the basis of all regular devotion, both communal and personal"); Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World (2019), p. 235 (on later Dutch Reformed psalm books: “The absence of musical notation became, indeed, the norm rather than the exception"); Kathi Meyer, "The Liturgical Music Incunabula in the British Museum: Germany, Italy, and Switzerland," The Library Ser. 4 20.3 (1939), p. 292, #74 (the other 1484 Creussner psalter); Andrew Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office (1995), p. 225-227 (on the organization of psalters); James McKinnon, "The Late Medieval Psalter: Liturgical or Gift Book?" Musica Disciplina 38 (1984), p. 138 ("The psalter had at an earlier date been the common lay prayer book on both the Continent and in England. The Book of Hours came about by the accumulation of devotional material at the end of the psalter and eventual the omission of the 150 psalms."); David P. Barshinger, Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms (2014), p. 77 (cited above); Kristen Collins, Peter Kidd, and Nancy K. Turner, The St. Albans Psalter: Painting and Prayer in Medieval England (2013), p. 43 ("The language of the psalms permeated all aspects of monastic life in the Middle Ages. The psalms formed the core of the monastic office, daily prayers, and ceremonies that structured a monk's life...Throughout the early and high Middle Ages, the psalter was also the preeminent manual for personal devotion among the laity. Christina of Markyate was said to have sat with her psalter on her lap 'reading and singing...the psalms day and night.'"); Richard L. Crocker, An Introduction to Gregorian Chant (2000), p. 130 ("from early times singing was an essential part of the use of psalms for meditation"); Konrad Haebler, The Study of Incunabula (1933), p. 134 (for music in the 1457 Psalter) ¶ On the binding: Ulinka Rublack, "Matter in the Material Renaissance," Past & Present 219 (May 2013), p. 80 (a very brief summary of production technique), 84 (cited above); Sabine Thümmler and Caroline Eva Gerner, Goldrausch: Die Pracht der Goldledertapeten (2006), p. 79 (cited above); Max Joseph Husung, "Ledertapete als Buchdeckelbezug im XV. Jahrhundert," Archiv für Buchbinderei Zeitschrift für Einbandkunst 27.2 (Nov 1927), p. 119-120 ("But here, in the 15th century, it is not about adopting a wallpaper pattern to the book cover, but rather about adopting the material, the wallpaper itself"); Bericht des Curatoriums (Prague, 1903), p. 20-21 (cites eight leather wallpapers, six of them 17th-century, including a gold-embossed pattern of animals and birds) ¶ With special thanks to Oliver Duntze at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin for his assistance with the Öttingen-Wallerstein provenance.

Item #825