|
| |
Medieval Rural Life in the Luttrell Psalter
From: The British Library
| By:
Janet Backhouse |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Luttrell Psalter, one of the greatest and most expensively procured holdings of the British Library, contains numerous illustrations that provide an invaluable source of information about daily life during the mid-fourteenth century. Illuminated-manuscript specialist Janet Backhouse explains what the illustrations in this collection of Latin psalms and canticles tell us about contemporary farming and medical practice. |
 he Luttrell Psalter, written and illuminated in England during the second quarter of the fourteenth century, is famous as a source of pictorial information about everyday life in the Middle Ages. Those who wish to study the daily routine of the ordinary medieval man or woman are gravely disadvantaged by the lack of direct source material. The humdrum activities of the countryside, however essential to the common good, seldom attracted the attentions of the poets and chroniclers who have left narrative records of more immediately important people and events. Social historians must instead turn to legal documents, court records and account rolls for their basic information and must hope to find visual evidence in contemporary painting and sculpture. |
Fortunately for our general understanding of the Middle Ages, contemporary art, though largely produced in devotional contexts, did rely heavily upon the idiom of its time for much of its content. For example, supporting characters in well-known biblical episodes are routinely depicted in the dress and accessories of their artist's own lifetime. During the period which produced the Luttrell Psalter, there was a vogue for elaborate marginal imagery, which incorporated much that can be taken as a reflection of the everyday contemporary world. |
 | |
| Stacking sheaves in the Luttrell Psalter. | |
|
Recent discussion of this phenomenon has attempted to explain the choice of subject matter in the Luttrell book and in other major psalters by referring to the neighbouring text, identifying individual images with particular themes, phrases, single words and even syllables that could have triggered the illuminator's imagination. Here, however, we shall be taking the marginal scenes of the Luttrell Psalter at their face value, as representations of episodes of daily life as it was lived in England early in the fourteenth century. |
The manuscript first came to public notice in 1794, when the miniature of Sir Geoffrey Luttrell with his wife and daughter-in-law was reproduced, accompanied by a brief description of the content of the book, which then belonged to the Weld family of Lulworth Castle, in Dorset. In 1839, a generous selection of details was engraved for publication by the Society of Antiquaries and the importance of the manuscript was widely established. In 1896 the Trustees of the Lulworth Settled Estates deposited it on loan at the British Museum for the benefit of scholars, and in 1929, after protracted and often difficult negotiations, it was sold to the nation for the then unprecedented sum of 30,000 guineas (£31,500). Today it is numbered Additional MS 42130, and is one of the greatest treasures in the care of the British Library. It is normally to be seen in the library's galleries in London, where it continues to attract and intrigue both specialist scholars and the visiting public. In recent years it has been the subject not only of traditional publications but also of film, video and interactive presentations. |
As its familiar title suggests, the Luttrell Psalter contains the psalms and canticles, in Latin, preceded by a calendar of church festivals and saints' days and followed by a litany with collects and the Office of the Dead. It is a large book, composed of 309 leaves of sturdy, well-prepared vellum, each measuring approximately 360 by 245 millimetres (14 by 9 5/8 inches), contained in a modern binding of dark-brown morocco. A single scribe was responsible for the whole of the text, using a magnificent and unusually large, square liturgical script, which seems designed to be legible at a distance. |
Divisions are indicated by a carefully planned hierarchy of initials, from small gold or coloured letters, set off by panels of contrasting penwork at the beginning of every psalm verse, to large historiated initials, several lines high, at the opening of each of the liturgical divisions of the psalter. The text is also embellished with illuminated line-fillers, many of which, especially near the beginning of the volume, enclose animal and human figures, heavenly bodies, plants, implements and vessels. |
The marginal decoration, which incorporates the contemporary scenes for which the manuscript is so famous, was originally intended to extend throughout the book. Although it was never completed, this marginal decoration is to be found on well over 200 of the 309 leaves. Conceived on a much bolder scale than similar decoration found in other manuscripts of the period, it includes elements of pure fantasy as well as biblical scenes, figures of saints and naturalistic motifs. The project was in every respect a lavish one, and the decision to embark upon it was ambitious. It represents an immense investment of both time and money and cannot have been undertaken lightly. Indeed, it makes a very strong and positive statement about the status of the man who was responsible for the commission. |
The crops cycle
The most celebrated sequence of pictures in the manuscript, representing the annual cycle of the growing of crops, is the work of the major hand. Agricultural subjects of this kind are commonly found representing the labours of the months in decorated calendars as far back as the eleventh century, but they are less usual in other contexts, at least as a coherent sequence. |
 The cycle opens with the skilled and essential task of ploughing. The ploughman appears a man of maturity and experience, well wrapped up against the cold and wearing protective gloves, as is his assistant. The different elements of the plough, to which two pairs of oxen are yoked, are shown in considerable detail and include a mallet, presumably required should any part of the implement become clogged with soil. The task of the assistant is to keep the team moving smoothly, as the ploughman himself needs both hands to control the implement, the depth of the furrow depending entirely upon his ability to hold down the plough. |
 | |
| Sowing in the Luttrell Psalter. | |
|
Ploughing is followed by sowing. The sower, also warmly dressed and with one of his gloves tucked into his belt, dispenses seed from a specially designed wicker basket supported by a cord around his neck. Fresh supplies are in a sack, already suffering the attentions of a large black bird, either a rook or a crow. A second would-be marauder is chased away by the sower's dog, one of the liveliest of the many animals portrayed in the manuscript. Next, the seed has to be protected by a layer of soil. This is achieved by the use of a horse-drawn harrow, while the birds are held at bay by a young man armed with a rope sling and a supply of good round stones. |
 | |
| Breaking clods in the Luttrell Psalter. | |
|
The next picture shows a man and a woman breaking up clods with heavy mallets. Both appear quite elderly, and she is apparently finding it very tough work. As the young corn begins to grow, it has to be weeded. A man and a woman together undertake this task. He is protected by the ubiquitous heavy gloves, which, seen here, are constructed with a thumb and two divisions for fingers, rather than four. The artist shows the growing crop quite clearly, with individual heads of green corn above ribbonlike leaves. The weeds are apparently thistles and are removed at a respectful distance, with the aid of a forked stick and a cutting blade on a long handle. |
 At harvest time, all available labour is required. The ripe grain, which seems from the length of its beard to be barley, used in the making of ale and for feeding livestock, is being cut by the handful by a team of three women armed with sickles. Once again one of them is clearly finding the work hard. A man comes behind them, binding the cut stems with cords of twisted straw.  On the following page, men carry the sheaves two by two to be stacked. Finally in this coherent sequence we see a heavily laden wagon carrying the crop in from the fields. The wagon has spiked wheels for extra grip and three villagers are throwing their whole weight behind it, but the three horses still have difficulty in hauling their load up the steep side of the margin of the page. |
 | |
| Harvest wagon from the Luttrell Psalter. | |
|
One or two further marginal scenes can be added to the series, to take the story of the agricultural year a little further. In the early part of the manuscript, among the pages decorated by one of the lesser artists, we are shown two men engaged in threshing. They are beating the grain out of a sheaf with the aid of flails, made of two staves joined loosely together, probably with a joint made of horn. |
 | |
| Threshing in the Luttrell Psalter. | |
The manuscript also contains miniatures of two mills, to which grain would have been taken to be ground into flour for bread making. One is a water mill, shown as a small timber-framed building with a thatched roof and a well-appointed door with a heavy lock. The artificial barriers feeding the water of the river into the mill leat are depicted, and woven fish traps are positioned with their wide mouths facing the flow of the stream, a fish and an eel already lured inside. Waterpower had been harnessed for many centuries and had made an essential contribution to every settlement. Large numbers of mill sites all over England can still be identified with entries in the Domesday survey of 1086. |
 Wind power represented a slightly more recent advance in technology. The windmill in the Luttrell Psalter is of the type known as a post mill. The long beam on which the sower's fierce little dog is now sitting was used to manhandle the mill into a position where its sails could take advantage of the current direction of the wind. Grain is being delivered in sacks by a straining woman and a man on horseback. There were at least two windmills on the Luttrell estates, one in Nottinghamshire and the other at Irnham. |
 Taken as a whole, this series of illustrations representing the cultivation of the land during the early fourteenth century offers a very truthful record, at least as far as the technical details are concerned. The activities shown correspond very closely to those described in Walter of Henley's treatise on husbandry, written about the middle of the previous century. Many of these often backbreaking tasks changed very little until well into the present century, when mechanical alternatives to basic manpower were gradually introduced. What the manuscript cannot of course offer is any reflection of the complex relationships in land tenure and service between a manorial lord and his tenants on which medieval rural life was founded. It should also be noted that the remarkably neat and colourful garb of the labouring peasantry is unlikely to mirror the truth. Sir Geoffrey Luttrell's artist was producing images that suited the eyes of his aristocratic patron rather than an accurate record for the benefit of the twentieth-century social historian. |
|
| |
