English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 explores vernacular translation, adaptation, and paraphrase of the biblical psalms. Focussing on a wide and varied body of texts, it examines translations of the complete psalter as well as renditions of individual psalms and groups of psalms. Exploring who translated the psalms, and how and why they were translated, it also considers who read these texts and how and why they were read. Annie Sutherland foregrounds the centrality of the voice of David in the devotional landscape of the period, suggesting that the psalmist offered the prayerful, penitent Christian a uniquely articulate and emotive model of utterance before God. Examining the evidence of contemporary wills and testaments as well as manuscripts containing the translations, she highlights the popularity of the psalms among lay and religious readers, considering how, when, and by whom the translated psalms were used as well as thinking about who translated them and how and why they were translated. In investigating these and other areas, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300-1450 raises questions about interactions between Latinity and vernacularity in the late Middle Ages and situates the translated psalms in a literary and theoretical context.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.