The Blessed and the Wicked

The illuminated initial letter ‘B’, for ‘Beatus’, which opens Psalm 1 in the Rutland Psalter (c.1260), is a complex artwork with two primary and seven secondary medallion scenes.

Of the latter, the medallion at the upper right depicts the creation of Eve, and the bottom right shows her, having been beguiled by the serpent, offering the forbidden fruit to Adam. The bottom left medallion shows Christ with the scales of judgement, while the upper left represents a shepherd who appears to be sorting sheep. The three smaller medallions running down the left-hand side of the page develop a Christian Creation-to-Judgement theme. In the uppermost one, Christ stands holding fruit in each hand, suggesting that Adam and Eve may eat from any tree in the Garden, except the one he identifies in the medallion below as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9, 17).

The recollection of Genesis 1–3’s binary opposites (permission and prohibition, good and evil, divine blessing and divine judgement) seems intended to echo the binary structure of Psalm 1. The connection is visually reinforced by the bottom of these three small medallions, in which we again see the figure of Christ holding the scales of judgement.

The two larger scenes occupying the upper and lower orbs of the letter ‘B’, amplify and apply the theme of separation of right from wrong. In the lower of the two, we see Solomon making his famous judgement (1 Kings 3:16–28), discerning by wisdom which of the two supplicant women is the true mother of the child. Above him, we see his father David the Psalmist with harp in hand. This is a very familiar motif in illuminated Beatus pages, but here, most unusually, David is looking out at the viewer, eye-to-eye, so to speak, with his lips pursed as if singing. With the fingers of his right hand plucking the strings of his harp (depicted with great accuracy), he seems to be inviting us to enter into this first song in the Psalter in its description of the opposition of the ‘blessed’ to the ‘wicked’. In the context of the larger page, it becomes part of a whole history of human fall and redemption.

This is one of the most beautiful of extant medieval Jewish illuminated manuscripts. Although works like this were infrequent in Jewish orthodoxy because of the strictures of the second commandment (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8), the motif of David as a kind of Orpheus, the revered musician of Greek and Roman mythology, offered a tempting opportunity to draw an analogy.

In a fourth-century fresco painting in the catacombs of Peter and Marcellus in Rome, one also finds such Orpheus images in reference to Christ. Similar but earlier images are in some instances Mithraic. In Christianity as well as in Judaism, syncretism is establishing a way of connecting a powerful pagan myth to a biblical motif, in the Christian version of which Christ, of the lineage of David, similarly evokes a restoration of Edenic fruitfulness and peace.

Overt parallels between Orpheus and the Psalmist go back to at least the third century CE. Hellenistic culture had a powerful influence on the Jewish imagination in which the singing of Orpheus was perceived as a natural anticipation of David’s sacred music. The linking of Orpheus with David in visual tradition is seen as early as the synagogue paintings at Dura-Europos (completed before 244 CE). What is more, the synagogue mosaics in Gaza dated to 508 CE closely resemble this illumination from the Rothschild Miscellany even though they are almost a millennium apart.

Here, under the framed first word of the text, Ashrei (‘blessed’), we see King David seated with his harp in the midst of a terrestrial paradise. The garden is watered by a pleasant stream, and it contains all manner of trees laden with ripe fruit; indeed fruit is scattered all over the ground. The Psalmist likewise is fruitful, and his music is a source of harmony and tranquillity for all the creatures of the garden, restoring Edenic health; animals both clean (the deer) and unclean (the rabbit/hare) draw close to listen (Leviticus 11:3, 6).

As by his playing of the harp Orpheus brings nature and the animals into tranquil harmony, so by his lyrics the Psalmist provides for a restoration in the human heart of original garden home and fruitful purpose.

In the later Middle Ages, illuminations of the Psalms often appeared in Books of Hours, collections of Christian texts and prayers in which the Psalms frequently featured. The British Library’s MS Harley 2935 (fol. 88), offers a splendid, late-fifteenth-century French example.

It is clearly made for a wealthy household or royal court and diverges in interesting ways from images made for monasteries and churches. Here, in an illumination made to introduce a group of Psalms known as the Penitential Psalms, King David kneels at a prie-dieu (a prayer desk) with the biblical text open before him, harp in hand. The text may be ‘the law of the Lord’ (Psalm 1:2) on which he has been meditating, his harp assisting. Behind him is a sideboard with a ewer for water and four plates, indicating that he has arisen early, washed, dressed, then betaken himself to prayer. At his window there suddenly appears the Lord, Christ, whose Law (in this Christian reading) he has been contemplating, resplendent in glory and holding a traditional sign of his eternal sovereignty, a globe surmounted by a cross.

We see that while David may be a great king, he is only a servant of the melech ha ‘olam, the King of the Universe. An unusual element in this image is the pure white dog, gazing at David as he prays. This may be a sign of David’s fidelitas (hence ‘Fido’), but also perhaps of the faithfulness of God towards the man who ‘walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers’ (Psalm 1:1).

Although not explicitly associated with Psalm 1, this illumination encourages us to think about it (and perhaps all the Psalms) as court counsel, as well as a personal call to faithful meditation upon the law of the Lord ‘day and night’ (v.2).