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.

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.

The psalms are at the heart of Christian devotion, in the Middle Ages and still today. Learned early and sung weekly by every medieval monastic and cleric, the psalms were the language Christ and his ancestor David used to speak to God. Powerful and plaintive, angry and anguished, laudatory and lamenting: the psalms expressed the feelings and thoughts of the individuals who devised them and those who sang them privately or publicly in Anglo-Saxon England many generations later. Psalters from Anglo-Saxon England are the largest surviving single group of manuscripts, and also form a very significant percentage of the fragments of manuscripts extant from the period. Psalters were central to the liturgy, particularly for the daily Office, and were the first schoolbooks for the learning of Latin and Christian doctrine. Moreover, from Anglo-Saxon England comes the earliest complex of vernacular psalter material, including glossed and bilingual psalters, complete psalter translations, and poems based on individual psalms and on psalmic structures. The lament psalms are remarkably similar to the Old English elegies in both form and imagery, and the freedom with which vernacular adaptors of the psalms went about their work in Anglo-Saxon England suggests an appropriation of the psalter not as the sacred and unchanging Word but as words that could be turned to use for meditation, study, reading, and private prayer. Worth investigation are both individual figures who used the psalms such as Bede, Alfred, and Aelfric, and also the unknown compilers and scribes who developed new layouts for psalter manuscripts and repurposed earlier or Continental manuscripts for use in Anglo-Saxon England. In Latin and in the vernacular, these codices were central to Anglo-Saxon spirituality, while some of them also continued to be used well into the later Middle Ages.

This comprehensive study explores the relationship between Old English translations of Latin psalters and a unique Old English verse paraphrase of psalm 50 containing Latin psalm-verses in its text. A date and place of composition for the «Kentish Psalm 50» can be proposed by comparing it with the vernacular vocabulary of the glossed psalter versions of psalm 50. Discussion of the Latin psalter-texts of psalm 50, the poem in its manuscript, the liturgical tradition of penance behind this psalm, and the lexical comparison present new insight into the writing of liturgical verse like «Kentish Psalm 50».