Sankt Florian Psalter (Psałterz Floriański)
Psalterium trilingue / Psałterz floriański
Bog jest obrona moya, i zbawiciel moy; bog moy pomoziciel moy.
Our renderingGod is my defence and my saviour; my God is my helper.
What it is
The Sankt Florian Psalter is a richly illuminated trilingual psalter containing all 150 Psalms in Latin, Old Polish, and Middle High German, with two prologues by Ludolph of Saxony, the Athanasian Creed, and musical notation for canticles. Anjou heraldry, the letters 'mm,' and the Polish eagle device link it conclusively to Queen Jadwiga (r. 1384–1399), of the House of Anjou, wife of Władysław II Jagiełło; scholarly consensus holds that the commission was interrupted by her death in July 1399 and completed for another patron. The Polish text is the oldest surviving complete translation of the Psalter into Polish, making it a foundational document of both Polish literature and Polish Christian devotion. Held at St Florian Abbey in Austria from 1637 to 1931, it was purchased by the Polish government and now resides in the National Library of Poland, Warsaw (BN Rps 8002 III).
Why it still matters
The Polish psalms of the Florian Psalter are available in scholarly editions and retain their meditative power; praying them in the language Jadwiga's scribes rendered them connects a reader directly to the oldest stratum of Polish Christian prayer, offering a sense of historical and spiritual continuity that no modern translation can replicate.
Kept alongside
Psałterz Puławski (Puławy Psalter)
Psałterz puławski (Psalterium ferianum)
The Psałterz Puławski is a parchment codex of 312 pages organised as a ferial psalter, with all 150 Psalms distributed through the days of the week in the tradition of the Divine Office, each psalm preceded by an allegorical and historical argument and introduced by an illuminated initial in late Gothic style. Held at the Czartoryski Museum in Kraków (ms. 1269), its earliest documented ownership is a 1533 dedication to the Komorowski family, placing it definitively in the Jagiellonian period though without proven court connection. The Old Polish translation is representative of the 15th-century Kraków school of vernacular biblical rendering and testifies to growing lay demand for Scripture in the native tongue. The manuscript is a landmark witness to the living psalter tradition that preceded the Reformation's explosion of Polish Bible translation.
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum BMV) — court Hours usage
Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a daily cycle of eight canonical Hours — Matins through Compline — composed of Psalms, Marian hymns, antiphons, and responsories drawn from the Latin liturgical tradition. It forms the devotional core of both the Prayer Book of Sigismund I (1524, British Library Add. MS 15281) and the Hours of Bona Sforza (1527, Bodleian MS Douce 40), both illuminated by Stanisław Samostrzelnik and structured around the royal couple's daily chapel observance at Wawel. The opening versicle — Deus in adiutorium meum intende — anchors every Hour and has structured Christian prayer across monastic, royal, and lay communities since the early Middle Ages. Still recited today by tens of thousands of lay Catholics and religious, it is among the most continuously prayed liturgical texts in the Western Christian tradition.
Omni die dic Mariae (Daily, Daily Sing to Mary) — Hymn found with St Casimir
Omni die dic Mariae
Omni die dic Mariae is a Latin Marian hymn of 48 stanzas drawn from Bernard of Cluny's De Contemptu Mundi (c. 1140), which became inseparably identified with the Jagiellonian prince Casimir (1458–1484) when a personal copy was reportedly found in his coffin during the translation of his relics in 1604. Contemporary hagiographers describe Casimir as spending nights in prayer before locked church doors, refusing marriage in honour of his vow of virginity, and devoting his interior life entirely to Mary and the Eucharist — the hymn's spirit perfectly reflects that formation. Casimir was canonized in 1521 and his feast (March 4) elevated to a feast of Poland-Lithuania; from the early 17th century the hymn circulated explicitly as 'the prayer of St Casimir,' embedding it in Jagiellonian dynastic piety. The 1604 coffin discovery is treated by some historians as a pious tradition rather than a verified archaeological find, but the cult association is firmly documented from that date onward.