Description
This psalter was produced in Ottobeuren from 1583 onwards, as can be inferred from the title page. It was written by a local Benedictine monk David Aicheler (1544-96), whose name appears twice in the book. Aicheler, who became abbot of Andechs in 1588, is also named in the homage poem by Johannes Dominicus Hess. The work on the manuscript took Aicheler at least another year, i.e., up to 1584. Some of the holidays mentioned in the calendar that have been accented by red ink clearly point to Ottobeuren. The most remarkable of these holidays are the feast of the seven sons of Felicitas - including the church patron Alexander - on July 10; the remembrance day for Rupert, abbot of Ottobeuren from 1102 to 1145, on August 16; and the date of the consecration of the church, September 28. In addition, the two Ottobeuren patron saints, Alexander and Theodore, are highlighted by the book illumination. The manuscript is illuminated with 36 body color initials or gold initials at the beginning of particular psalms, canticles, and hymns. In addition, there are 37 historiated initials, 19 of which are in the section of the psalter. At the end of the manuscript, on leaf 230 verso, is the aforementioned poem by Hess. A monk and humanist poet who died in 1594, Hess was among the first six brothers of the Franciscan monastery in Salzburg and had come from Ingolstadt to Salzburg in 1583. In his verses he mentions the scribe, David Aicheler; the artist, "Werlinus", and the bookbinder who produced the codex, Pantaleon Straub (died 1599). Straub was a pharmacist and bookbinder in Ottobeuren. He finished his work on the codex probably by the year 1586. The psalter was possibly among the valuable manuscripts that in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars, were handed to the French general Claude Jacques Lecourbe (1759-1815). In 1895 the codex was owned by "abbé J. Meuret, curé de Sorel-Moussel" and then acquired by the State Library later on
Author
Beatrice Hernad