Luttrell Psalter
Psalterium Luttrell
Exsultate Deo adiutori nostro; iubilate Deo Iacob. Sumite psalmum et date tympanum.
Our renderingSing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, sound the tambourine.
What it is
The Luttrell Psalter (British Library, Add MS 42130) was commissioned by Sir Geoffrey Luttrell (1276–1345), lord of Irnham in Lincolnshire, as a personal devotional book and intercessory instrument for his soul and those of his family. Its 309 vellum folios contain a liturgical calendar, the 150 psalms, canticles, Mass liturgy, antiphons for the dead, and the most celebrated marginalia in English manuscript art — scenes of rural labour, knights, music-making, grotesques, and a donor portrait of Sir Geoffrey in full armour. The Luttrell family were landed gentry rather than royal, so this psalter represents the wider diffusion of personal psalter devotion among the English landed classes rather than strictly court practice. Its modern popularity as an art-historical document substantially exceeds its medieval circulation, which was confined to a single household.
Why it still matters
The Luttrell Psalter's integration of the 150 psalms with scenes from the full texture of daily rural and domestic life offers Christians today a reminder that psalm-prayer was meant to sanctify ordinary existence; the British Library's digitised version allows the psalms to be prayed alongside their incomparable visual commentary.
Kept alongside
Psalterium (Psalter for royal and court devotion)
Psalterium
The Latin Psalter — the 150 biblical Psalms with liturgical additions — was the primary daily prayer book of every medieval royal household chapel, used for the Divine Office and private devotion. Hungarian royal scriptorium production is attested under Béla III (1172–1196), who patronized manuscript production at Esztergom, and the Pray Codex's sacramentary component presupposes the Psalter's daily use. While no specific Arpad or Anjou royal psalter survives with a named owner, the Anjou court's documented Bolognese manuscript commissions make royal psalter-hours all but certain, and the psalter was the universal foundation of medieval Christian prayer life without exception. Weekly recitation of all 150 Psalms was the structural backbone of the Divine Office as practiced in every Hungarian royal chapel of this era.
Gospel Sequences (Four Evangelical Readings)
Passiones / Sequentiae Evangeliorum
The Gospel Sequences are four short selected readings — John 1:1–14 (the Prologue), Luke 1:26–38 (the Annunciation), Matthew 2:1–12 (the Magi), and Mark 16:14–20 (the Great Commission) — which open virtually every Book of Hours as the first devotional text after the calendar. They were read in this deliberate theological order: first the eternal mystery of the Incarnation, then the historical moment of the Annunciation, then the Nativity proclaimed to the nations, then the mission of the Church to the world. The sequence gave every prayer session a Christological foundation before the Hours of the Virgin and the Penitential Psalms commenced. For noble children learning Latin from the Book of Hours, these four passages were among the first complete scriptural texts committed to memory.
Seven Penitential Psalms with Litany of the Saints
Psalmi Poenitentiales cum Litaniis Sanctorum
The Seven Penitential Psalms — Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, and 143 — together with the ensuing Litany of the Saints form a discrete devotional unit present in every Book of Hours associated with the Medici queens: Smith-Lesouëf 42, NAL 82, and MS. Douce 112. In Smith-Lesouëf 42 this section is introduced by a full-page miniature of King David at prayer, linking royal penitence to its scriptural archetype. The Litany that follows invokes God's mercy through the intercession of apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins, concluding with prayers for both the living and the dead. These texts served as the recognised penitential devotion for royal persons during periods of crisis, war, and personal bereavement.