Ownership Inscription And Decorated Initial, In A Commentary On The Psalms

The Psalms was the single most important Old Testament biblical book in a monastic community: psalms formed part of almost every service and mass, every day. It is therefore natural that the Psalms received special attention from medieval commentators, and several commentaries on the Psalms were written in the 12th century.

This copy of a very rare text comes from the Benedictine abbey at Ramsey, about 10 miles north of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire. The text on this page, with a decorated initial ‘A’, is a prologue to the main text.

The Ramsey ownership inscription (‘Liber monasterii Rameseye’), probably cut from a former flyleaf, has been pasted into the top margin.

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