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The Original Owner of the Fitzwarin Psalter

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2011

Nicholas Rogers
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Extract

The Fitzwarin Psalter (Paris, B.N. MS lat. 765) is one of the most striking English manuscripts of the fourteenth century. Its miniatures are characterized by bold compositional experiment and a mannered figure style of extreme emotional intensity. The conventional name of the manuscript derives from the presence of two shields in the lower border of the Beatus page (fol. 23), which were identified by Francis Wormald as those of the families of Fitzwarin and Clevedon. But he was unable to find any evidence connecting the two families by marriage. He dated the Psalter to the third quarter of the century, and in this has been followed by Lucy Sandler. However, in an important study of the Fitzwarin Psalter and related manuscripts, Lynda Dennison demonstrated that, for stylistic reasons, the Psalter (with the exception of a bifolium, fols. 21-22) must be dated to the mid-1340s. This redating prompts a re-examination of the question of the identity of the original owner.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Antiquaries Journal , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , September 1989 , pp. 257 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1989

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References

Notes

Wormald, F., ‘The Fitzwarin Psalter and its allies’, J. Warburg Courtauld Inst., 6 (1943), 71-9;Google Scholar Dennison, L., ‘“The Fitzwarin Psalter and its allies”: a reappraisal’, in Ormrod, W. M. (ed.), England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, 1986), 42 66 (with full bibliography at n. 7);Google Scholar Sandier, L. F., Gothic Manuscripts 1285-1385 (Oxford, 1986) no. 120, col. pi. opp. I, 33, ills. 314-7;Google Scholar Avril, F. and Stirnemann, P. D., Manuscrits enluminés d'origine insulaire VIIe-XXe stick (Paris, 1987) no. 202, pis. N, O, LXXXIV-LXXXVI;Google Scholar Alexander, J. and Binski, P. (eds.), Age of Chivalry. Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (London, 1987), no. 685.Google Scholar

Wormald, op. cit. (note 1), 75.

Dennison, op. cit. (note 1), especially 46-63.

C[okayne], G. E., The Complete Peerage, Gibbs, V. et al. (eds.), 13 vols. in 14, (1910-59) (London, 1926), v, 512-13Google Scholar. It is possible that he was a half-brother of Sir Fulk FitzWarin, Lord FitzWarin (d. 1349), since Ives FitzWarin’s will gives the name of Sir William’s mother as Margaret, whereas Sir Fulk’s mother was Alianore de Beauchamp ( Gibbons, A. and Davy, E. C., Wantage Past and Present (London, 1901), 44 Google Scholar; Complete Peerage, v, 499-500).

Mitchell, R.W. (ed.), Ashmolean Roll (Peebles, 1982), nos. 82, 396.Google Scholar

Gibbons and Davy, op. cit. (note 4), 115.

Ellis, R. H., Catalogue of Seals in the Public Record Office, Personal Seals, 2 vols. (London, 1978), 1, P301.Google Scholar

Birch, W. de G., Catalogue of Seals in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols. (London, 1894), III no. 10361.Google Scholar

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 18 vols. (continuing series, 1904-) (London, 1916), IX, Edward III, 94-5.

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1330-1334 (London, 1893)) 31; 1334-1338 (London, 1895) 179.

Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1334-1338, 387.

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 18 vols. (London, 1935), XI, Edward III, 65.

Park, D., ‘Form and Content', in Norton, C. et al., Dominican Painting in East Anglia: The Thornham Parva Retable and the Musee de Cluny Frontal (Woodbridge, 1987), 51 n. 99, pl. 84.Google Scholar

The Protevangelium account may be found in James, M. R. (trans.), The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford, 1924), 39 40 Google Scholar. An influential recension was that in the Legenda Aurea ( Graesse, T. (ed.), Jacobi a Voragine Legenda Aurea, 2nd ed., (Leipzig, 1850), 587-8Google Scholar).

On the iconography of the Nativity of the Virgin in general see Lafontaine-Dosogne, J., Iconographie de l’Enfance de la Vierge dans l’empire Byzantin et en Occident, 2 vols., (Brussels, 1964-5)Google Scholar. English examples of depictions of Joachim in the context of Marian cycles include the Psalter of Henry of Blois ( Haney, K. E., The Winchester Psalter: an Iconographic Study (Leicester, 1986), 82, 92, figs. 3, 7Google Scholar); a New Testament Picture Book of c. 1200 and a Book of Hours from the de Brailes workshop ( Morgan, N., Early Gothic Manuscripts (I) 1190-1250, London, 1982, nos 16, 73Google Scholar); alb apparels of the second quarter of the fourteenth century and panels from orphreys of the late fourteenth century ( Christie, A. G. I., English Medieval Embroidery (Oxford, 1938), 176-8, 196-8, pis. CXXXVII, CLVIIGoogle Scholar); and a window of c. 1420 in the south choir aisle at York Minster ( Davidson, C. and O’Connor, D. E., York Art: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art Including Items Relevant to Early Drama, (Kalamazoo, 1978), 35 Google Scholar).

On the mostly post-medieval iconography of St Joachim, with and without St Anne, see Lexikon der Christlichen Ikonographie, (Rome and Freiburg, 1974), VII, cols. 60-66.

It is to be found on fol. 122 of Oxford, Exeter College MS 47, written out c. 1355-60/1, and on fol. 164v of B. L. Egerton MS 3277, written out c. 1360/1, both originally prepared for Humphrey de Bohun, 6th Earl of Hereford, but does not occur in Vienna, Ö.N.B. Cod. 1826*, begun for the same earl in the late 1340s. It also occurs on fol. 7v of Schloss Pommersfelden MS 2934(348) and fol. 229v of Bodl. MS Auct. D.4.4, both written out for Humphrey, 7th Earl of Hereford, shortly before his death in 1372/3. Auct. D.4.4, illuminated c. 1370-2/3, only has an ornamental initial. The initial in the Pommersfelden fragment, illuminated c. 1375-80, has an iconic image of SS. Joachim and Anne, while those in Egerton 3277 and Exeter 47, datable to the early 1380s and the 1390s respectively, have narrative images of the Meeting at the Golden Gate. For a full discussion of these books see L. E. Dennison, ‘The Stylistic Sources, Dating and Development of the Bohun Workshop ca 1340-1400’, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1988), passim. Bohun interest in this devotion may be linked with a succession crisis in the family. The 6th earl died unmarried, and his nephew the 7th earl left only two female co-heirs.

e.g. Uppsala, Universitetsbibliotek C.12 and C.502, both written at Vadstena c. 1500; and the following Syon manuscripts: Cambridge, Magdalene College MS II, a Diurnale of the 1430s or 1440s; Oxford, University College MS 25, Various Offices, of the early sixteenth century (Litany of the Sick); B. L. Cotton Appendix xiv, Hours of the Holy Ghost, etc., of the late 1480s or 1490s (Litany of the Sick); and a binding fragment from a mid-fifteenth-century Breviary found at Syon Abbey in 1987. Most Syon litanies belong to an earlier recension, which omits SS Joachim and Joseph.

The feast of St Joachim was assigned to 20 March by Julius II (1503-13), and was adopted as a minor double, on this day, by the Observant Franciscans in 1505. The Carmelites had decided to observe it as a double on 16 September in 1498 ( Holweck, F. G., A Biographical Dictionary of the Saints (St Louis, Mo., 1924), 529 Google Scholar; Leroquais, V., Le Bréviaires Manuscrits des Bibliothèques Publiques de France 6 vols. (Paris, 1934), 1, cix, cxiiGoogle Scholar). A Mass of SS Joachim and Anne is provided as an alternative to that of St Anne on 26 July in Paris, B.N. lat. 871, a late fifteenth-century Missal of the use of Bordeaux.

cf. Brandenbarg, T., ‘St Anne and her family: the veneration of St Anne in connection with concepts of marriage and the family in the early modern period’, in Dresen-Coenders, L. (ed.), Saints and She-Devils: Images of Women in the 15th and 16th centuries (London, 1987), 101-27Google Scholar.

Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, 18 vols. (London, 1938), XI, Edward III, 362-3.

Ibid., 57-9.

V.C.H., Berkshire, IV (London, 1924), 323. On the tomb of Sir William and Amice FitzWarin see A. Gardner, Alabaster Tombs of the Pre-Reformation Period in England (Cambridge, 1940), 38, 48, fig. 129.

Christopher Hohler has identified the litany as a member of the Augustinian family of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and has noted links with the litany of the Huth Psalter (Avril and Stirnemann, op. cit. (note 1), 162).

Dennison, op. cit. (note 1), 62.