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Among the finest illuminated manuscripts produced in England during the second half of the fourteenth century for the noble Bohun family is a psalter now at Lichtenthal Abbey in Baden-Baden. The volume was probably made for Mary, heiress of Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton, shortly after her marriage to Henry of Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) in 1380/1 and certainly before her death in 1394 at the age of twenty-four. It is also probable that one of Mary's daughters, Blanche, inherited the psalter and brought it with her to Germany when she married Ludwig, count-palatine of the Rhine, in 1402. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the psalter was in the possession of the abbess of the Cistercian convent of Lichtenthal, and there it has remained, except for a short period during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Lichtenthal Psalter is richly illustrated. Twelve historiated initials and borders or bas de page scenes at the main text divisions include seventy-nine Old Testament subjects, from Creation to the raising of the Brazen Serpent, twentyone of them on the Beatus page alone. The work of the artist, John de Teye, sparkles with variegated color and pattern, and tooled gold, all concentrated or compacted in extremely small areas, since the page size is only about 7 x 5 inches and the historiated initials are not more than 1.5 inches in height. Characteristic of English manuscript illumination of the second half of the fourteenth century, vivacity of gesture, active movement, and abundance of surface detail override the construction of figural substance or spatial illusion.
At the end of the Lichtenthal Psalter is an illustrated devotional text known as the Short Office of the Cross, here in Anglo-Norman instead of the normal Latin, followed by a common Latin prayer to the Virgin and Saint John, which begins “O beata et intemerata.” Ordinarily a component of books of hours rather than psalters, in its normal Latin form the Short Office of the Cross consists of a quatrain (sometimes identified as an “antiphon”) on an event of the Passion of Christ, a response, and a prayer for each of the canonical hours, Lauds excepted. Unlike longer offices, such as the Hours of the Virgin or the Hours of the Passion, there are no Psalms or lessons.
This collection of essays pays tribute to Nancy Freeman Regalado, a ground-breaking scholar in the field of medieval French literature whose research has always pushed beyond disciplinary boundaries. The articles in the volume reflect the depth and diversity of her scholarship, as well as her collaborations with literary critics, philologists, historians, art historians, musicologists, and vocalists - in France, England, and the United States. Inspired by her most recent work, these twenty-four essays are tied together by a single question, rich in ramifications: how does performance shape our understanding of medieval and pre-modern literature and culture, whether the nature of that performance is visual, linguistic, theatrical, musical, religious, didactic, socio-political, or editorial? The studies presented here invite us to look afresh at the interrelationship of audience, author, text, and artifact, to imagine new ways of conceptualizing the creation, transmission, and reception of medieval literature, music, and art.
EGLAL DOSS-QUINBY is Professor of French at Smith College; ROBERTA L. KRUEGER is Professor of French at Hamilton College; E. JANE BURNS is Professor of Women's Studies and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Contributors: ANNE AZÉMA, RENATE BLUMENFELD-KOSINSKI, CYNTHIA J. BROWN, ELIZABETH A. R. BROWN, MATILDA TOMARYN BRUCKNER, E. JANE BURNS, ARDIS BUTTERFIELD, KIMBERLEE CAMPBELL, ROBERT L. A. CLARK, MARK CRUSE, KATHRYN A. DUYS, ELIZABETH EMERY, SYLVIA HUOT, MARILYN LAWRENCE, KATHLEEN A. LOYSEN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, EDWARD H. ROESNER, SAMUEL N. ROSENBERG, LUCY FREEMAN SANDLER, PAMELA SHEINGORN, HELEN SOLTERER, JANE H. M. TAYLOR, EVELYN BIRGE VITZ, LORI J. WALTERS, AND MICHEL ZINK.