Hunterian Psalter

The work is part of the collection of the Glasgow University Library, cataloged as Sp Coll MS Hunter U.3.2 (229), which acquired the book in 1807.

[1] The original text of the Hunterian Psalter, all written in the same hand, consists of the 150 psalms from Jerome's Versio Gallicana revision of the Vulgate Bible, Biblical canticles and liturgical texts, and numerous illustrations, over more than two hundred pages of heavy vellum.

These are the earliest English miniatures to have gold leaf backgrounds incised with patterns of lines and dots.

[2] Many of the illustrations and historiated initials seem to have been truncated at the top, perhaps the result of the book having been poorly re-bound at some time.

It has been suggested that it was produced for Roger de Mowbray (d. 1188), a prominent 12th century crusader and religious benefactor known to have founded a number of Augustinian and Cistercian monasteries and nunneries.

For most of its history, it was thought to have been the product of a scriptorium in the north of England, owing to its inclusion of a number of northern saints such as Oswald of Northumbria and John of Beverley (who very seldom occur outside northern manuscripts), although modern scholarly consensus puts its likely origin in the southwest of England.