Old English Glossed Psalters: Psalms 1–50. Edited by †Phillip Pulsiano. Toronto Old English Series, 11. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001. Pp. lv + 739. $100.

An important body of evidence for Anglo-Saxon culture are the Latin psalters (or fragments thereof) which have survived from the period, some forty altogether, in date ranging from the early eighth to the late eleventh century. Fifteen of these psalters have an even more immediate interest for Old English scholars since they also contain an accompanying Old English gloss, inserted between the lines and arranged as a word-for-word translation of the Latin text. Such glossed psalters, it would seem, were a characteristic tool of Anglo-Saxon pedagogy and no doubt many other copies have been lost. For example, a thirteenth-century inventory of manuscripts at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, lists a "Psalterium totum interlineatum anglicano" which does not match any of the surviving witnesses (see N. R. Ker, "Books at St. Paul's Cathedral before 1313," in Studies in London History Presented to Philip Edmund Jones, ed. A. E. J. Hollaender and William Kellaway [1969], p. 59). This interest in the psalms is hardly suprising given their central role in both the monastic educational system (they were the text from which students learned to read and write Latin) and Christian liturgy (they were the base text of the Divine Office).

Patrick P. O'Neill
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill