Ask the Scholar

This page from Psalm 51 has an illuminated letter Q. Inside the letter is an image of Judas hanging from a tree. At the bottom of the page, Saint Clare holds a monstrance (the vessel used to display the host during the eucharist) while two nuns kneel beside her in adoration.This Psalter, with an additional Office of the Dead, was created in the late thirteenth century in northeastern France. A large quantity of Franciscan saints in the calendar and litany, as well as marginal imagery of them, suggests that the original owner had a strong affinity for that order. The manuscript was likely begun for one patron but finished for another, given a change in scribal and artistic hands and the addition of heraldry from Psalm 109 onward. Arms for the Fieschi family, as well as a birth notice in the calendar, identify the manuscript's first owner as Leonardo dei Fieschi, a Genoese nobleman (d. 1331). Among a multitude of drolleries, the manuscript contains a number of unusual marginal vignettes depicting SS. Francis, Clare, and Elisabeth of Hungary. One image of St. Francis (fol. 139v) is heavily worn, which may be evidence of devotional touching by the manuscript's owner.