What you need to know to play medieval charades
The eleventh-century Harley Psalter is an English adaptation of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, produced in the ninth century. Each of the Psalms in these great manuscripts is cleverly illustrated by focusing on individual words or phrases that appear in the text.
So what you see is not 'narrative art' in the traditional sense, where a story progressively unfolds visually (by way of example, you might think of illustrated scenes from the Old Testament in medieval manuscripts, or your own modern comic strips), but rather you get to participate in the artist's game of 'which-bit-am-I?' Hence, the art historian William Noel coined the phrase ‘medieval charades’, which is what you're about to play. Oh yes you are!
The eleventh-century Harley Psalter is an English adaptation of the Carolingian Utrecht Psalter, produced in the ninth century. Each of the Psalms in these great manuscripts is cleverly illustrated by focusing on individual words or phrases that appear in the text.
So what you see is not 'narrative art' in the traditional sense, where a story progressively unfolds visually (by way of example, you might think of illustrated scenes from the Old Testament in medieval manuscripts, or your own modern comic strips), but rather you get to participate in the artist's game of 'which-bit-am-I?' Hence, the art historian William Noel coined the phrase ‘medieval charades’, which is what you're about to play. Oh yes you are!
Psalm 2, The Harley Psalter. © The British Library Board, London, British Library, Harley MS 603, folio 2r. Click on the image to go to the online facsimile.
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Psalm 2, The Utrecht Psalter, Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32 (Rheims, c.830), folio 2r. By permission of the Utrecht Library. Click on the image to go to the online facsimile.
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