Description

The so-called Southampton Psalter (now housed at Cambridge, St John's College, MS C. 9) was copied and decorated in Ireland in the late tenth or early eleventh century. It contains a full text of the Psalms (in the Gallican version), selected Canticles and prayers, as well as numerous accompanying glosses, mainly in Latin with some in Irish. The glosses, which appear to have been composed around the mid-ninth century, are quite unique both as a collection and (in an Irish context) for their allegorical (rather than historical) approach to interpreting the Psalms. Although they bear witness to dependence on certain Hiberno-Latin Psalter commentaries, their primary source is an anonymous commentary from southern Gaul composed in the early seventh century, the Glosa Psalmorum ex traditione seniorum. The present edition is the first one of this codex unicus whose glosses shed new light on Psalter exegesis in Early Medieval Ireland. This edition is part of the Scriptores Celtigenae subseries.