Chludov Psalter

The Chludow Psalter is an illuminated Byzantine manuscript from the mid-9th century. He is the eldest of three surviving illuminated harps of this period. Subject of a part of his miniatures is the iconoclastic controversy in the Byzantine Empire in the first half of the 9th century. The unusually polemical style of the work is the passion of the iconoclast controversy against the Ikonodulen. A unique feature is its use of cartoon style as a form of political discourse in a liturgical text book.

History

After Nikodim Kondakov the Psalter was in the studio monastery in Constantinople Opel. Other scholars believe that the liturgical cited in the text answers were given only in the Hagia Sophia and that the Psalter was therefore made ​​in the imperial workshops of Constantinople Opel in 843, shortly after the return of Ikonodulen to power.

It kept the Psalter on Mount Athos, to the Russian Slavic Viktor Grigorovich brought him to Moscow in 1847. There he acquired the Old Believers merchant and art collector Alexei Ivanovich Chludow whose name he was given. As part of the legacy of the Psalter - Chludow went to the monastery of St. Nicholas, and is since 1917 in the State Historical Museum in Moscow kept (Moscow, Hist. Mus. MS. Gr.129d ).

Description

The Psalter measures 195 mm x 150 mm and contains 169 Folia. The outer edge of the pages were left blank in the rule for illustrations. Text and captions consisted of small uncials, of which you wrote about many about three centuries later, with roughly drawn minuscule. The book contains the Psalms in the version of the Septuagint and the responsory that occurred during their recitation according to the liturgy of the Hagia Sophia.

The Chludow Psalter is considered the first Psalter in which the representations contain additional textual explanations of the drawings as well as small arrows pointing from the text on images in order to clarify to which line refers to the illustration. The contents of the miniatures is not restricted to the canonical Christian subjects - the edges of the manuscript represent the historical figures of the era of the Byzantine iconoclasm, the miniatures reflect the conflicts in the social life of the era resist.

On folio 67r of Chludow Psalter the miniaturist illustrated the Psalm 69, verse 21: " You give me gall to eat and to drink vinegar for my thirst. " (Ps 69.22 LUT). In the background the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is shown on Calvary. A soldier reaches Christ, dipped in vinegar sponge on a pole. In front of it is a representation of the last iconoclastic Patriarch of Constantinople Opel, John VII Grammatikos that extinguishes a Christ - image with a similar sponge on a pole. John Grammatikos caricatured it, here as on other sites, with tangled, extending in all directions hair to make him look ridiculous in the elegant Byzantines.