Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1980, Blaðsíða 182

164
The European Background
In an article from 1960 Frangoise Henry has re-examined the
problem of the psalters of three divisions which appear on the Con-
tinent in the ninth century, and which have generally been considered
an Irish innovation, propagated by the Irish emigrants.22 The venerable
forefather of the Irish psalters, St. Columba’s seventh-century Cath-
ach, is not a tripartite psalter. Unfortunately, no Irish psalter has
survived between the Cathach and a group of three Irish psalters,
dating from the tenth and eleventh centuries. The organization of these
three psalters - and of the Irish medieval psalters of later date - is
well-known, with the Old Testament canticles and a prayer after each
tier of fifty psalms: one prayer and three canticles after ps. 50 and ps.
100, one prayer and one canticle after ps. 150.23 Bannister thought
that the tripartite, ninth-century psalters reproduced an Irish pre-
Caroline, eighth-century pattern. From a study of the decoration of
these psalters, Frangoise Henry reaches the same conclusion, even
though this type of psalter has not actually been traced in the wake of
the Irish emigrants to the Continent; however, some of the ninth-
century Caroline decorated psalters in three divisions reveal influence
of Irish art.
Another article, also from 1960, by H. Schneider, deals with the
psalter divisions in general, in particular with the psalters of fifteen
divisions, that is, as far as their scheme of decoration is concemed.24
When A. Goldschmidt in 1895 edited his pioneer work on the St.
Albans psalter in Hildesheim, the Irish origin of the psalter of three
divisions was considered an established faet, and Goldschmidt thought
that the psalter of fifteen divisions was a further development of the
Irish psalter on its wanderings towards Central Europe, and to the
famous scriptorium of St. Gall. However, on a re-examination of the
group of decorated psalters of fifteen divisions, dating from the ninth to
the eleventh century, Schneider traces their origin not to St. Gall, but
to Milan. In Milan, Schneider also finds the fifteen-divisioned psalter
22 Francoise Henry, Remarks on the Decoration of Three Irish Psalters: Proceed-
ings of the Royal Irish Academy, 61 C, no. 2 (Dublin 1960), pp. 23-40.
23 H. M. Bannister, Irish Psalters: Journal of Theological Studies, 12 (Oxford
1911), pp. 280-84.
24 H. Schneider, Die Psalterteilung in Fiinfziger- und Zehnergruppen: Festschrift
Albert Stohr. Hg. L. Lenhardt, 1 (Mainz 1960), pp. 36-47.