Lessons in Leadership and Liturgy in the Winchcombe Psalter

Abstract

ABSTRACTVisual illustration of the Psalms in devotional manuscripts could play a key role in guiding English responses to the Psalms. This paper examines the unusual illustrations added to a combined New Testament and Psalter made for the Benedictine abbey of Winchcombe c.1130–40, now Dublin, Trinity College MS 53. I first consider its depiction of the royal ancestry of Christ and then explore its illustrations to Psalm 1. I argue that these images, displaying the exemplary morals and conduct of ancient Biblical kings, encouraged pictorial meditation on the subject of good Christian rulership. I link an unusual image of David dancing to the cult of St Kenelm at Winchcombe, and suggest it may have emphasised the importance of liturgical performance as a means of spiritual renewal and purification. Finally, I consider the manuscript’s possible ownership, speculating that the manuscript may have been produced to mark the 1138 arrival at Winchcombe of Abbot Robert, a kinsman of King Stephen, but abandoned unfinished during the twelfth-century civil wars between Stephen and the Empress Matilda.