Macclesfield Psalter

It is rare that a major, previously unknown medieval illuminated manuscript turns up. It is of particular personal interest in that my wife wrote her dissertation on a closely related manuscript, the Gorleston Psalter. The newly discovered manuscript is due to be sold at Sotheby's in London in June; the first article with illustrations that I have been able to find is here.

The background to the discovery and sale is fascinating as well, as the Telegraph reports:

One of Britain's greatest privately-owned libraries is to be sold for more than £10 million because a bitter family dispute has forced its owner, the Earl of Macclesfield, to leave his ancestral home in a medieval castle.

Thousands of books and manuscripts are to be sold in a series of auctions at Sotheby's beginning next month because the earl was ordered to leave Shirburn Castle in Oxfordshire after a court case which pitted him against his brother and other relatives. . .

When auction house experts arrived to catalogue the contents of the library, one of the finest but least known in Britain, they discovered what one of them, Paul Quarrie, called "an intellectual treasure house".

"The library really exists as it was left in about 1750, an extraordinary intellectual time capsule in a house that is itself a time capsule," said Mr Quarrie.

It has been reported that the Macclesfield Psalter was found inside another book. Was it really tucked inside, or might it have been bound with another text? Not much available at the Sotheby's site yet, not even a press release -- but I'm sure they are very busy indeed getting everything catalogued. Seems very unlikely that the psalter would be allowed to leave the UK.

UPDATE: Sotheby's catalog for the first installment (March 16) of Macclesfield material is now up here.

NOTE: The Sotheby's press release is still not available at their website, though it is there referenced. A copy of it is available at this Dutch site, however. The section relating to the Psalter follows:

Macclesfield Psalter (circa 1325):
Undoubtedly an exceptional discovery, this 14th century illuminated Psalter is estimated at £800,000-£1,200,000. Entirely unknown to scholars and hidden from sight for hundreds of years, it comprises 252 leaves and is illustrated with two full-page miniatures, a half-page miniature, 11 historiated initials, and thousands of exquisite miniatures in the margins throughout the volume. Almost every page contains scenes of animals, birds, people, monsters, grotesques, fables and vignettes of daily life. It appears, in fact, to have been illuminated by the actual artist of the Douai Psalter. Since the Douai manuscript was almost completely destroyed in the First World War and is known mostly from old photographs, the Macclesfield Psalter is now by far the most important record of the work of one of the very great medieval East Anglican artists.

The Douai Psalter, incidentally, was buried for safekeeping during the war; the metal box was not completely sealed, however, with predictable results. All the sadder in that the manuscript was in pristine condition. The Macclesfield Psalter is reportedly rather small, especially in comparison to the grand scale of other psalters of the same group; it is also fairly worn, from early reports.

UPDATE: As of June 1, still no online catalog for the sale -- though I'm told the print version is out, and the regular MSS sale catalog for the 22nd is online already.

UPDATE: The sale catalog is online here; the entry for the Macclesfield Psalter, lot 587, is here.

NOTE: I'm afraid the catalog entry is a bit of a disappointment. The notion of a MSS workshop in Gorleston, for example, is completely unsupported by any evidence -- Norwich is usually posited as the likely place of origin of this group of East Anglian MSS. And the proposal that the Macclesfield, Gorleston, and Douai Psalters were all made to be used in the same church is also untenable: while the collects, calendar, and litany are nearly identical in Douai and Macclesfield, they are very different from those of Gorleston. Overall, it's a pity Sotheby's didn't make better use of those scholars who have studied this MS family most closely -- most would have been happy to comment, if consulted.

UPDATE: The catalog errors now have been picked up and further disseminated through the Telegraph's Object of the week feature, published the day before the sale.

Posted by David on February 22, 2004 12:08 PM