A 9th-Century Ambrosian Psalter

Despite the huge number of articles we have published over the years about the Ambrosian Rite, we have shown very few examples of ancient Ambrosian liturgical books, many of which are in libraries where digitization is either going at a snail’s pace, or not at all. So I was very happy to stumble across this Ambrosian Psalter, which is in the Bavarian State Library in Munich, a collection that has been digitized with classically Germanic thoroughness. (BSB Clm 343) The library’s website says that it was produced in Milan, “as early as the last decades of the ninth century”, but Nicola found an Italian website that puts it in the last third of the 10th century. (A friend of ours who knows a lot about liturgical manuscripts thinks the latter more probable.) It was in the library of the dukes of Bavaria by 1580, but it is not known how it got there.

In the Ambrosian Office, there are no psalms at Matins of Sunday. Instead, three canticles from the Old Testament are said; these are placed after the Psalms in this manuscript. At Matins of Saturday, the canticle of Moses in Exodus (15, 1-19) is said, followed by Psalm 118, divided into two sections in winter, but in summer, four, which are said in alternate weeks. (In St Charles Borromeo’s reform, the four-division system is used all year.) The psalms of Roman Matins for the weekly cursus, 1-108, are divided into ten groups called “decuriae”, which are said over the ten ferial days of two weeks; however, unlike in the Roman system, none of the psalms which are used at other Hours (4 at Compline, 50 at Lauds, etc.) are omitted. The first decuria is psalms 1-16, the second, psalms 17-30, then so on by tens. This seems to be why the decorations in the manuscript are placed with the first of each group of ten psalms (1, 11, 21 etc.) although this arrangement only partly corresponds to the decuria system.

At the beginning of the psalter is a portrait of King David, along with four of the people to whom some of the psalms are attributed by their titles, Asaph, Heman, Ethan and Idithun, all shown writing in books.

Many of the psalms have a few lines of exegetical explanation written before them; before Psalm 1 only, this text is written in large caps within a frame: “This psalm has no title for this reason, that nothing ought to be put before our head, the Lord and Savior, of whom it is about to speak, since it (i.e. the psalm) talks about his holy incarnation, and the avenging of the wicked.”

“Here begins the book of Psalms”

The beginning of Psalm 1. As is typical of liturgical books in this period, the decorative elements for the most part have no particular correspondence with the text they accompany.

Psalm 11

Psalm 21, which Our Lord recited while on the Cross, with the prefatory explanation, “In this psalm, Christ speaks to the Father of His Passion, and it reminds (us) to praise the Lord with faith, because in His resurrection He has ruled over the Catholic Church.” In this case, the highly stylized peacock eating a snake is deliberately chosen as a symbol of Christ. Dead peacocks take a long time to decay, since their meat is very salty, and their feathers are already dead anyway, and so it was popularly believed in the ancient word that they do not decay at all. They were therefore used by Christians as a symbol of the incorruption of Christ’s body, and of the general resurrection of the bodies of all men in incorruption at the end of the world. The snake, of course, is a symbol of death and the devil destroyed by Him.

Psalm 31

Psalm 41. The Ambrosian Rite still to this day uses a recension of the Latin text of the Psalms older than that produced by St Jerome, and which differs in many places from the Vulgate Psalter. Here, for example, the Psalm begins with the word “sicut”, where Jerome’s version has “quemadmodum.”

Psalm 51, “the voice of the prophet speaking about Judas or the antichrist”, the figure represented inside the initial with the snake. This is said in reference to the opening words, “Why dost thou glory in malice?” 

Psalm 61, with a young Christ driving His Cross down the throat of a dragon, which of course also represents the devil.

Psalm 71, with the preface as follows: “In Solomon (to whose authorship it is titled), the prophet, foretelling the coming of Christ, says that He is to be adored by all kings, because He redeemed the human race from the devil.”

Psalm 81, with a figure of the adult Christ

Psalm 91

Psalm 101

Psalm 111. Like the psalm that precedes it, this is an alphabetical psalm in Hebrew, and the names of the Hebrew letters are therefore written in the margin next to the individual verses. It is not evident who the cleric bowing before Christ and receiving a book from Him is.

Psalm 121

Psalm 131

Psalm 141