Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine (Fécamp Psalter)
Psautier d'Aliénor d'Aquitaine
Dominus regit me et nihil mihi deerit; in loco pascuae ibi me collocavit.
Our renderingThe Lord governs me and I shall lack nothing; in a place of pasture he has settled me. (Psalm 22:1–2, Gallican text)
What it is
The Psalter known as the Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, KW 76 F 13) is an outstanding 12th-century Norman manuscript with clear Byzantine influences, containing a calendar including the Labours of the Months, a full set of psalms, and canticles. The Koninklijke Bibliotheek has proposed that it was made for Eleanor of Aquitaine c. 1185, identifying a kneeling female donor portrait as Eleanor, but scholars have characterised this attribution as circumstantial: the vair-lined cloak worn by the donor is found in many contemporary images of noble women and does not conclusively identify Eleanor. The manuscript is certainly related to other Norman English psalters of the period, and the attribution to Fécamp Abbey as its place of production remains a hypothesis. Its rich visual programme combines Norman Romanesque and Byzantine stylistic currents in a way typical of high-quality late-12th-century Channel-region production.
Why it still matters
The Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine—fully digitised by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek—gives today's Christian direct access to a 12th-century devotional rhythm; the Labours of the Months calendar is an evocative frame for seasonal prayer, anchoring each month's psalms in the ordinary rhythms of agricultural and creaturely life.
Kept alongside
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (in Primers and Books of Hours)
Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum BMV) was the core devotional text of virtually every medieval Primer and Book of Hours, and the single text most frequently prayed by royal and noble children in their formal religious formation. Originally a monastic supplement to the Divine Office, attested from approximately the mid-8th century and reinforced at the 1095 Council of Clermont, it became the foundation of lay piety by the 12th–13th centuries. Eleanor of Castile purchased 'seven primers' in 1289 for royal household use, and every English royal nursery Primer from the 14th to 16th centuries placed the Little Office at its heart. Its cycle of canonical Hours — structured around psalms, hymns, the Magnificat, Benedictus, Nunc Dimittis, and Marian antiphons — provided the daily devotional architecture of court piety across five centuries.
Jesu dulcis memoria (The Sweet Memory of Jesus / Jubilus rhythmicus de nomine Jesu)
Dulcis Iesu memoria (Jesu dulcis memoria)
A 42-stanza Latin poem in four-line rhyming stanzas, surviving in its earliest form in a Bodleian manuscript (MS Laud. Misc. 668) dated to the end of the 12th century. Likely composed by an anonymous English Cistercian rather than Bernard himself, but medieval attribution to Bernard circulated universally from the 13th century onward, embedding it in the Bernardine devotional canon read in Cistercian houses and their noble patron networks. The poem provided the texts later used as Office hymns for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus and was known as the 'Rosy Hymn' in medieval literature. Its Plantagenet-England provenance and Cistercian origin make it era-typical for court chapel use.
Orationes sive Meditationes (Prayers and Meditations)
Orationes sive Meditationes
A collection of nineteen prayers and three meditations composed by Anselm of Bec between c. 1070 and 1085, representing the founding documents of western affective devotion. Anselm sent a personalised copy to Princess Adelaide of Normandy (daughter of William the Conqueror) in 1081 in response to her request for psalms, adding long intimate prayers addressed to individual saints. He later sent a 'Matildan recension' of twenty-two prayers and meditations to Countess Matilda of Tuscany during his second exile (1103–6), composing at least one prayer (Oratio 1) expressly for her use. The prayers are cast in a new mode of intense psychological self-examination, designed to arouse compunction, love, and fear of God in private reading.