Leaf from the 'Psalter of St. Romuald', in Latin, manuscript on vellum [northern Italy, mid-ninth century]

provenance

From the celebrated 'Psalter of St. Romuald', which was believed to have been written by the saint, and perhaps more plausibly was owned by him. He was an eleventh-century Italian ascetic and the founder of the Camaldolese order. His vita was written by the great Peter Damian a decade or so after the death of the saint in 1025/7. The Psalter was complete when Jean Mabillon saw it in the sacristy of the monastery of Camaldoli, Tuscany, in March 1686. He records the belief of the community at Camaldoli that it had been written by the saint himself (Museum Italicum, 1687, II, p.181, doubtless following the report in the Vita Romualdi, ch.50, that the saint was ordered by God to undertake a commentary on the Psalms). After that time leaves were occasionally removed from the volume, as sacred relics of the saint, and when Magnoald Ziegelbauer saw the volume in 1750 it was wanting many leaves (Centifolium Camaldulense, 1750, p.71). The remnant of the manuscript still remains as a relic at Camaldoli. The present leaf bears an early eighteenth-century paper label recording that it was discovered along with other relics by Giovanni di Poggio Baldovinetti and shown to the Florentine antiquary Domenico Manni (1690-1788). It was acquired by Aldo Olschki (1893-1963), with other items formerly owned by Domenico Manni; thence to Bernard Rosenthal and Quaritch, Bookhands V, cat.1147 (1991), no.5; Schøyen MS 620.

text

The manuscript was written about a century before St. Romuald was born. If it belonged to the saint, it was already of venerable age. It is a Carolingian glossed Psalter, in the Gallican version, and the present leaf includes Psalms 99:3-4 and 100:1-8, and a fuller version of the commentary published by Migne, Pat.Lat.26, cols.821-1270.

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