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Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry

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The psalter of Isabelle, Queen of England 1308–1330:

Isabelle as the audience
Anne Rudloff Stanton

Available online: 30 Apr 2012

To cite this article: Anne Rudloff Stanton (2002): The psalter of Isabelle, Queen of England 1308–1330: Isabelle as the
audience, Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 18:4, 1-27

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1 - In 1936 HildaJohnstone began the
rehabilitation of the Queen in 'Isabelle, the
She-Wolf of France', History, 21 (1936),
pp. 208-18. See more recently Sophia
Menache, 'Isabelle of France, Queen of
England: A Reconsideration', Journal if
Medieval History, 10 (1984), pp. 107-24, and
John Carmi Parsons, 'The Intercessory
Patronage of Queens Margaret and Isabelle
of France', Thirteenth-Century England VI:
Proceedings if the Durham Conference 1995, eds
Michael Prestwich et al. (Rochester, 1997),
pp. 145-56.
2 - Preserved in Public Record Office,
EhOI/333/29, and EhOI/393/4 fols 6-10.
This inventory was discussed in Susan
Cavanaugh, 'A Study of Books Privately
Owned in England: 1300-1450', PhD
dissertation (University of Pennsylvania,
1980). II, pp. 457-60; see also Suzanne Lewis,
'The Apocalypse oflsabelle of France: Paris,
Bib!. Nat. MS Fr. 13096', Art Bulletin, 72
(1990), pp. 224-60.
3 - Egbert thoroughly described the codex in
'A Sister to the Tickhill Psalter: The Psalter
of Queen Isabelle of England', Bulletin if the
New York Public Library, 39 (1935), pp. 759-88,
which was updated for The Tickhill Psalter and
Related Manuscripts (New York: New York
Public Library, 1940), ch. II and Appendix II.
Bibliography on the codex to 1985 is
available in Lucy Freeman Sandler, Gothic
Manuscripts 1285-1385, Survey of Manuscripts
Illuminated in the British Isles v (London,
1985) cited hereafter as Sandler no. 27;to this
may be added Debra Hassig, 'Marginal
Bestiaries', Animals andthe Symbolic inMediaeval
Art andLiterature, ed. 1. A. J. R. Houwen
(Groningen, 1997), pp. 171-88.
4 - John Carmi Parsons, 'The Pregnant
Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval
Construction of Motherhood', in Medieval
Mothering, eds John Carmi Parsons and
Bonnie Wheeler (New York, 1996), p. 44.
WORD & IMAGE, VOL. 18, NO.
The psalter of Isabelle, Queen of
England 1308-1330: Isabelle as the
audience
ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON
Isabelle of France has long been vilified for her role in the deposition of
her husband Edward II in 1327- Recent studies, however, have reevaluated her
activities and are more likely to present her as a canny diplomat than as
the 'She-wolf of France'. 1 Interest in her role as an art patron and collector is
based largely on the survival of an inventory drawn up after her death in
August 1358, which lists some thirty-six books in addition to jewels, relics,
tapestries, and panel paintings." One of the few extant codexes associated with
this inventory is the Isabelle Psalter (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek,
cod. gall. 16), in which the psalms are presented in both Latin and French
and are decorated with a complex tapestry of biblical stories, bestiary scenes,
and heraldic imagery. The identification of the Munich psalter with the
salterium coopertum cum uno panno de serico of the queen's inventory is necessarily
tentative, but our placement of the book in Isabelle's hands 50 years earlier
is fairly certain: not only are the heraldic arms of England and France
prominent in the psalter, but one historiated initial depicts a queen kneeling
between these arms (figure I). The stylistic evidence adduced by D. D. Egbert
in the I930S pointed to an early fourteenth-century date for the psalter which,
in conjunction with the heraldry and the image of the queen, led him to
suggest that the manuscript was produced as a gift for Isabelle between her
betrothal in 1303 and her marriage in 1308.3 The goal of the current study is
to examine the psalter as a gift given to Isabelle, a rz-year-old princess-bride,
and to explore some of the ways in which this very young woman might have
understood the complex imagery between its covers. The bilingual texts and
discrete but complementary visual narratives in the Psalter provide visual
metaphors for the official, maternal roles Isabelle assumed at the very time
she received her gift, so that the manuscript becomes a matrix of ideas
suitable to the use of a young woman who was destined to become a 'matrix
of future kings'."
Although we can sometimes identify the names of the original owners
of illuminated manuscripts, the Isabelle Psalter joins an elite few whose
patronage context can be discussed beyond the level ofidentification. Isabelle
was a queen of some notoriety, and coronation documents, chronicles,
and other historical sources provide a fair amount of information about her
life. In addition she was the daughter of Philip IV of France and Jeanne of
Navarre, and thus a member of the much-studied Capetian dynasty. The
visual culture of her youth has been well documented, and we can speculate
on the type of educational background she may have received before her
marnage.
I, JANUARY-MARCH 2002 t
ISSN 0266-6286 t 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www. t andf.co. uk! journals/tfl oz666286.html

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Inherent in my approach is the premise that images were believed to
have a significant effect on their viewers, an assumption that has been of
increasing interest in recent studies of medieval art. 5 The quantity and
quality of art supported by Isabelle's ancestors suggests that they held the
same assumption. We can expect that the princess would have benefited
from at least some of the educational programs outlined by various authors
for her ancestors, from Louis IX and Vincent of Beauvais, to Durand of
Champagne, who wrote the Speculum Dominarum for Isabelle's mother around
the turn of the century.f The directives in these texts focus on the moral
upbringing of women and girls and emphasize the qualities of obedience and
humility over intellectual abilities. Good role models, and indeed good
books, were important tools for a moral, virtuous lady's education.
The visual environment in which Isabelle spent her early years was
marked by the high level of literary and artistic patronage maintained by
her ancestors. She was certainly acquainted with some of the best-known
monuments of Capetian patronage, such as the windows of the Sainte-
Chapelle, and she may have seen at least some of the Bibles moralisees,
the psalter intended for Louis IX, or the Somme le roi written for her father's
education at the behest of her grandfather, all of which visually encoded
polysemous lessons on kingship that art historians are still deciphering? Her
2 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON
Figure I. Isabelle in Prayer, Isabelle Psalter,
fa!. 94, detail (by permission of the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
5 - Discussed throughout in Michael
Camille, Mirror in Parchment: the Luttrell
Psalter and the Making if Medieval England
(Chicago, 1998), and most recently in
Kathryn A. Smith, The Neville of Hornby
Hours and the Design of Literate Devotion',
Art Bulletin, 81 (1999), pp. 72-92.
6 - David O'Connell, The Instructions if Saint
Louis (Chapel Hill, 1979); Rosemary Barton
Tobin, Vincent if Beaumas' 'De Eruditione
Filiorum Nobilium', the Education if Women,
American University Studies Series XIV:
Education, Vol. 5 (New York, 1984)
especially ch. 5; Alice Hentsch, DelaLiuaature
didactique du Moyen Ages'adressant specialement
auxfemmes (Cahors 1903, reprinted Geneva,
1975), pp. 99-103; N. Beriou etaI., eds, Prier au
Moyen Age: Pratiques etExperiences (ve-xoesiecles),
Temoins de Notre Histoire (Turnhout, 1991),
pp. 239-41.
7 - Several recent dissertations and books
have explored Capetian visual culture:
Daniel H. Weiss, Art and Crusade in the Age
if Saint Louis (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Gerald B. Guest,
'Kings, Queens, and Clergy: Figures of
Authority in the Thirteenth-Century
Moralized Bibles' (New York University,
Institute of Fine Arts, unpublished PhD
dissertation, 1998); Alyce Jordan, 'Material
girls:Judith, Esther, narrative modes and
models of queenship in the windows of the
Ste-Chapelle in Paris', Word & Image, 15
(1999), pp. 337-50, and idem, Visualizing
IG.ngship in the Windows if the Sainte-Chapelle,
ICMA Monographs (forthcoming).

8 - Paul C. Doherty, 'The Date of Birth of
Isabelle, Queen of England 13°8-133°,'
Bulletin rifthe Institute ofHistorical Research, 48
(1975), pp. 246-8.
9 - Jeffrey S. Hamilton, Piers Gaoeston, Earl
rifCornwall 13°7-1312: Politics and Patronage in
the Reign ofEdward II (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1988), p. 38, reads Edward's
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activities as deliberate insults to the French;
see also J. R. Maddicott, Thomas cf Lancaster
13°7"1322: A Study in the Reign ofEdward II
(London: Oxford University Press, (970),
p. 83 and P.C. Doherty, 'Isabelle, Queen
of England, 1296--1330' (Oxford University,
unpublished PhD dissertation, (977), p. 26.
Pierre Chaplais, Piers Caveston: Edward II'S
Adoptive Brother (New York: Oxford University
Press, (994), p. 104, argues instead that Piers
may also have been the king's chamberlain
and in charge of keeping safe his private
belongings, so that when Edward sent his
wedding gifts to Piers he was acting in a very
conventional manner.
10 - See the Annales Paulini in Chronicles
rifthe Reigns rifEdward 1 andEdward II, I,
ed.William Stubbs, vol. I (London, (862),
pp. 260--2. L. G. Wickham Legg, English
Coronation Records (Westminster, 19or),
pp. 81-130, edited and translated the ordo
in the late fourteenth-century Liber Regalis,
which was first used for the 1308 event.
II - Chaplais, Caveston , pp. 42-3, sees Piers's
high profile at this event as a conscious
gesture on the part of Edward, a clear
repudiation of his father's regime and of
the will of the magnates.
12 - Elizabeth A. R. Brown, 'The Political
Repercussions of Family Ties in the Early
Fourteenth Century: The Marriage of
Edward II of England and Isabelle of France',
Speculum, 63 (1988), pp. 583-8; Doherty,
'Isabelle', pp. 30-2.
13 - Egbert, Tickhill Psalter, discussed the
whole stylistic group, which was reevaluated
in 1985 by Sandler, Cothic Manuscripts I,
pp. 25-6 and vol. II, nos 26 and following.
The combination of elements in the calendar
and litany of the Isabelle Psalter that suggests
both the York diocese and the south accords
well with the movements of the court during
this period.
14 - Michael Camille, Image onthe Edge: onthe
Margins ofMedieval Art (New Haven, 1992),
and Mirror in Parchment.
background thus suggests that she was capable of understanding the texts
and images of her Psalter as a framework and guide for her behavior, as a
mirror for a queen.
Isabelle was most likely born in late 1295 or early 1296.8 Her marriage to
Edward of Carnarvon was settled by treaty in 1299, and they were officially
betrothed in 1303; the event itself took place at Boulogne on 25January 1308.
From the very beginning Isabelle's career as queen seems to have been
marked by a disconcerting duality between expectation and reality. A queen's
influence over her husband was supposed to be very strong, because of her
ability to present him with heirs and the unavoidable corollary of her sexual
attractiveness. Yet the rz-year-old Isabelle immediately was presented with a
rival for her husband's attentions in the person of Piers Gaveston, a minor
Gascon noble whose influence over the king was already a matter of great
concern for the English barons. Edward had made the unprecedented decision
to name his friend as regent when he sailed to his wedding, and he sent the best
of the wedding gifts back to Piers in a move that may have been a calculated
insult to his father-in-law? The coronation of the new king and queen was
held in Westminster Abbey, on 25 February; chronicles and documents such
as the Liber Regalis provide some records of this event. 10 Again Piers Gaveston
was placed in a position of honor, for he carried the crown of Edward the
Confessor and wore an ostentatious outfit of royal scarlet, the color specified
for the queen's robes in the Liber Regalis. Four months earlier Edward had
ordered tapestries with 'the arms of the king and of Piers Gaveston, against the
king's coronation'; if these were on view as well, the close relationship of
the king and his knight was emphasized at a highly inappropriate time. II
Members of Isabelle's family present at the coronation were furious over the
apparent preference for Piers over Isabelle. Financial matters would inflame
the situation even further since it would be four months before Isabelle could
use any funds settled on her by the marriage contract. Opposition to Piers
solidified Isabelle's relationship with the barons and her own aunt, Edward I'S
widowed Queen Margaret, and this coalition of English nobility and French
royalty succeeded in exiling Piers in early July of 1308.12
As Egbert argued in his study of the Isabelle Psalter, the marriage and the
coronation would have provided good opportunities for the presentation of
the psalter to the new queen. The psalter was produced by one of the artists
who worked on several extant manuscripts for a variety of clerical and lay
patrons, including the Tickhill Psalter whose patron, John Tickhill, was the
prior of Worksop Abbey.i'' The codex now contains 131 folios, with losses of
at least 19 folios that were carefully mapped out by Egbert. It is thus fairly
slim, and at 288 x 200 mm is easily held in one's hands. As noted above, its
psalms and canticles are presented in parallel Latin and French texts, so that
when Isabelle opened her book the Latin psalms were on the left, in black
ink, and the French versions were on the right in red ink.
The Isabelle Psalter is of great interest beyond its patronage context.
The bilingual structure of its texts extends to its page design and to the figural
decoration of its initials and margins: the Latin psalms are decorated with
Old Testament stories, and the French psalms with bestiary scenes and
heraldry. The relationships between the marginal paintings, the historiated
initials, and the texts provide opportunities for complex readings of the sort
that have been suggested for other marginalia-rich manuscripts of the period.i"
3
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Such readings are given a different resonance, however, by the fact that the
Isabelle Psalter is one of the earliest manuscripts to include entire narrative
sequences in its margins, rather than the single scenes more typical of the
genre. Thus the glossing function of such images must in this case be seen
in the context of competing narratives, which were organized into a clear
hierarchy based on the language and importance of the texts they accompany.
The Latin and French incipits of the surviving major psalm divisions
are marked by large initials and bas-de-page scenes that narrate the life of
David, so that the opening of each reading appropriately emphasizes a figure
who was the supposed author of the psalms, as well as an important model
for kingship. This sequence suffered the most losses, with only nine folios
remaining from a possible twenty, but even these hint at a program very
suitable for a wedding or coronation gift. After theJesse Tree and the Anointing
of David at Psalm I (figure 2), missing folios at Psalm 26 are followed by
the marriage of David and Michal (figure 3), and the episode from I Kings
Ig:rr-I6 where she saves him from Saul's soldiers. Missing folios around five
of the main psalm divisions all obscure the narrative, but the remaining scenes
that depict the marriage of David and Bathsheba at Psalm g6, and David's
last days in the company of Abishag at Psalm IOg (figure 4), emphasize the
importance of the female characters of this story." Given the emphases else-
where in the manuscript, it is appropriate to suggest that the missing scenes
included David's coronation and marriage to Abigail, his meeting with
4 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON
Figure 2. Jesse Tree; Anointing of David
and other David scenes, Isabelle Psalter,
fols 7v-8 (by permission of the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
15 - Egbert believed that the psalms of the
Isabelle Psalter were divided into eight parts,
as is typical of French psalters, so that Psalms
51 and WI would not have been emphasized.
Neverthcless, among the losses in the Isabelle
Psalter are the folios that could have carried
initials marking these two added divisions, at
Psalms 51 and WI, and indeed historiated
initials on those folios might help explain
their disappearance. The other psalters made
by the same workshop incorporate the ten-
part division, which makes it even more likely
that the Isabelle Psalter would have followed
the more typical English format.
 Figure 3. David marries Michal; David and
Saul, Isabelle Psalter, fo!. 35v (bypermission ~.
--.
of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
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Bathsheba, and the birth of Solomon. These scenes would intensify the
resemblance of the biblical narrative to the contemporary circumstances of
the young Isabelle.
The second biblical sequence of the Isabelle Psalter includes 238 Old
Testament initial and marginal paintings that depict scenes from the
Creation to the events just preceding David's coronation (figures 6, 9)' Such
a lengthy Old Testament sequence finds a few predecessors in English psalter
prefaces, while in sheer number of episodes per story it echoes the kinds of

5
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French cycles Isabelle would have known in her youth, such as the Bibles
moralisees. 16 The Old Testament scenes decorate the ordinary Latin psalms
and provide a historical backdrop for the David narrative at the major
incipits, and for the psalms themselves. When placed in the margins these
paintings are anchored onto the page with foliate bar borders that extend
into the other margins of the pages, unifying the marginal scenes with the
text blocks.
The Old Testament stories of the Isabelle Psalter seem to have been
structured in units for daily viewing that matched the psalm divisions. For
6 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON
Figure 4. Bathsheba, David, and Abishag;
Burial of David and Judgment of Solomon,
Isabelle Psalter, fo!' 82 (by permission of the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
16 - Egbert, Tickhill Psalter, Appendix II,
discusses the sources of each biblical scene
in the Vulgate and in the Historia Scholastica.
Its narrative was often presented more like
a contemporary romance: see Nigel Morgan,
'Old Testament Illustration in the Thirteenth
Century', The Bible in the Middle Ages: Its
Irifluence on Literature andArt, ed. Bernard
S. Levy (New York, 1992), pp. 172-4.

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17 - Christopher de Hamel estimates that 'it
takes only about three and a half minutes to
mumble through one of the shorter offices' of
a book of hours; see A History if Illuminated
Manuscripts, znd edn (London, 1994), p. 174.
18 - In the appendix to Beasts andBirds if the
Middle Ages, eds WiIIene Clark and Meradith
McMunn (Philadelphia, 1989), p. 199, the
editors place the Munich codex with the
'Transitional' group established by Florence
McCulloch in Mediaeval Latin andFrench
Bestiaries, revised edn (Chapel Hill, 1962).
In 'Marginal Bestiaries' Hassig discusses the
bestiary sequence within the context of
bestiary development.
19 - Folios 16, 61, and 62 contain heraldic
initials but lack bestiary marginalia, and both
fols 16 and 62 face Old Testament marginal
scenes.
20 - Pace Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, p. 178,
who notes that any didactic relationship
between psalm texts and bestiary
moralizations in the Isabelle Psalter is
coincidental because 'the cycle adheres
closely to the order of the Physiologus',
although she amends this judgment
somewhat in the later 'Marginal Bestiaries',
p. 175 n. 18, where she points out that 'strict
adherence to the Physiologus roster of
creatures was more typical of the earlier
(twelfth-century) bestiaries'. At this writing
WiIIene Clark is preparing an edition of the
H text.
instance, the story of Abraham now begins on fol. 26v after the rmssmg
Psalm 26, and the story ofJoseph begins on fol. 36v after Psalm 38; Isabelle's
Monday morning reading would have been illustrated by Abraham, and
Tuesday mornings she would have begun with Joseph. I should note that
when a folio provides no initials to illuminate, the margin was left blank as
well. The designer declined the opportunity to continue the narrative in the
margin in favor of moving to the next available initial and thus kept the story
physically linked to the sacred text. This leads me to suggest that the biblical
stories created a narrative reading pattern for the Latin psalms; we can
imagine Isabelle following the Old Testament stories while reading her French
psalms on the facing pages, with the visual narrative and the vernacular
translation supplying a historical and contemporary continuity for the Latin
psalms. This organization presents the images in tandem with the texts -
another example of the innovative bilingual quality of the queen's psalter.
Indeed the marginal stories may have provided more continuity from page to
page than the text, a reversal of the usual juxtaposition of smoothly flowing
text and single, isolated marginal figures. This may have been one practical
solution to an age-old problem; although a queen was presumed to be pious,
the regimen of daily psalm readings would have been harder to maintain
than the shorter and more direct devotions available in books of hours.'?
The inclusion of vernacular psalms written in a pleasing red ink, and visual
narratives sprinkled throughout the Latin verses, tailor the venerable devotions
in a way seemingly calculated to engage and hold Isabelle's attention during
each daily reading.
Just as the French verses translate the Latin psalms into a contemporary
language, the visual vernacular decorating the French pages translates biblical
history into royal genealogy and contemporary morality. The historiated
initials of most of the French psalms contain thirteenth- and fourteenth-
century coats of arms; I shall discuss those in more detail below. The margins
of the first 77 French psalms also stage a parade of bestiary images, including
beasts, birds, and one 'fish' (the Whale) before the sequence ends on fol. 64
(figures 5, 13-14, 17)·18 Unlike the biblical scenes, these episodes are not
anchored to the text block within a border; they are isolated figures, floating
freely in the bas-de-page, and only rarely are they accompanied by landscape
elements. Several of the folios within this range are unadorned, as is the case
in the Old Testament sequence; the same pattern of 'no initial, no margin'
does not apply, however, which suggests that the bestiary was spaced so
that certain beasts would accompany certain psalms or parts of the Old
Testament story.'? The marginal bestiary of the Isabelle Psalter has been
linked to a specific rescension, the 'H' Physiologus, and its animals are
organized into the same categories although it does not follow its source text
exactly."? Nevertheless, the kind of typological, moralizing reading made
possible by these combinations would have been familiar to Isabelle if, as
seems probable, she had had some exposure to a moralized Bible or the
typologies of the Somme le roi. At the very least the inclusion of the bestiary
scenes, signifying in their simple representation well-known moral anecdotes,
would have underlined the moral strength of the psalter for Isabelle and thus
increased its value as a good book, following the precepts of Capetian
educational ideals for women.
7

A ....... .....;;.c(,
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.',
The Old Testament imagery discussed above had a venerable tradition
in psalter design, although the way the stories are presented in the Isabelle
Psalter is unusual. On the other hand, while bestiary scenes appeared in
psalters and books of hours, and links between certain beasts and certain
psalms were clearly understood, the categorized bestiary in the margins
ofIsabelle's prayer book was unprecedented." The only other comparable
sequence appears later in the Queen Mary Psalter, which may have been
commissioned by Isabelle between 1316 and 1321 for the use of her
own family;" Significantly, while these marginal bestiaries are based on
different recensions of bestiary texts both incorporate an unusual number of
8 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON
Figure 5. Lion and Lioness, Isabelle Psalter,
fo!' 9 (by permission of the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
21 - Lilian M. C. Randall discusses one
instance of a bestiary image in 'An Elephant
in the Litany: Further Thoughts on an
English Book of Hours in the Walters Art
Gallery ryv. 102)', Beasts andBirds of the Middle
Ages, pp. 106-33. See also the index in her
Images in the Margins.
22 - London, BL MS Royal 2B.vn,
fols. 85v-131; Sandler no. 56. George
Warner, Oyeen Mary's Psalter (London, 1912);
Anne Rudloff Stanton, 'The Queen Mary
Psalter: Narrative and Devotion in Gothic
England' (University of Texas at Austin,
unpublished PhD dissertation, 1992); idem,
'From Eve to Bathsheba and Beyond:
Motherhood in the Queen Mary Psalter', in
Women andthe Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence,
eds Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor,
The British Library Studies in Medieval
Culture (London, '997), pp. 172-89; Anne
Rudloff Stanton, The Oyeen Mary Psalter:
a Study of Affect andAudience, Transactions
of the American Philosophical Society
(forthcoming). See also Hassig, 'Marginal
Bestiaries'.
 Figure 6, Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar,
Isabelle Psalter, fol. 26v, detail (by permission
of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich),
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012
23 - Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, ch. 1I.
Hassig also suggests female audiences for
two bestiaries that included a significant
number of female creatures and lacked or
downplayed the fire-rocks entry; see p. 176.
The firestones are omitted completely in the
Queen Mary Psalter bestiary,
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female animals, Animal mothers like the Tigress and the Pelican are a staple
of bestiary imagery, but the Isabelle Psalter includes the Lioness, suckling her
cub (figure 5), the female Centaur, touching a male (figure 14), a ewe fought
over by two rams (fol. 39), a cow suckling a calf while watched by two bulls
(fol, 41), and a hen pecking grain while two cocks fight (fol, 55)' In this context
it is interesting to note that while the firestones are included on fol. 25, they
are depicted only as male and female heads surrounded by flames, rather
than the typical full-length figures that have been taken as misogynist echoes
of Adam and Eve figures. 23
Other aspects of the Isabelle Psalter focus on women and their roles within
the family. The Jesse Tree at Psalm I, as noted above, emphasizes David's
9
 lineage and the continuation of that line through the Virgin. The facing
scene of David's anointing, encrusted like the Jesse Tree with the heraldic
family of Isabelle and Edward, connected their marriage and coronation
with the genealogy of Christ. I have already mentioned the life of David
in the main initials, in which one-third of the surviving episodes emphasize
his wives and concubines. A similar profile can be discerned in the Old
Testament sequence, which includes several images of marriage and birth,
for instance the weddings of Moses and Tarbis (fo1. 47v), and Salomon and
Rahab (fo1. 71V), and the births of Cain (figure 16) and Samson (figure g).
Even the very rare story of Abraham's concubine Hagar is allotted eight
scenes in the Isabelle Psalter, more than in any other Gothic cycle I have
found (see figure 6). Few Gothic visual cycles depict her, and most were likely
produced in royal contexts. She appears in one or two scenes in the Psalter of
St Louis in Leiden, which was made for Geoffrey Plantagenet and owned
later by Blanche of Castile, and in thirteenth-century French monuments
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

like the Oxford Bible moralisee, most likely in England by the late thirteenth
century; she is granted four scenes in the Queen Mary Psalter (figure 7).2 4 24 - The St Louis Psalter is Leiden,
Bibliotheque Royale MS Lat. 76A, fo1. 12V;
Among later devotional books, Hagar is found only in the initials of the Bohun the moralized bible is in Oxford, Bodleian
Psalter-Hours, which may have been a wedding gift for Mary de Bohun on Library, MS Bodley 270B, fol. 13v. Stanton,
her marriage to Henry of Bolingbroke, later Henry IV, in 1380 (figure 8).25 'From Eve to Bathsheba and Beyond', p. 175,
and Guest, 'Kings, Queens, and Clergy',
In the Isabelle Psalter, a long sequence of the events leading to Samson's
pp. 152 - 7.
birth, and his youth, are captured within initials that break up the long 25 - Oxford, Bodleian Libr. MS Auct.D+4;
Psalm lI8 (figure g). Again the romanticized Samson story in the Queen see Sandler no. 138 for the placement in
Mary Psalter provides a parallel in its inclusion of pre-natal scenes and its Mary's hands. The manuscript was fully
described in M. R.James and Eric G. Millar,
emphasis on the hero's youth (figure 10). The physical aspects of motherhood The Bohun Manuscripts (London: Roxburghe
punctuate the narrative of the Isabelle Psalter: Eve nurses Abel while Cain Club, 1936), pp. 23-32. Hagar is also found
watches on fo1. 13v; Hannah nurses Samuel on fo1. g6v. Six scenes of Hannah in six scenes in the enigmatic Egerton
Genesis (London, BL MS Egerton 1894;
praying for a child and then nursing and educating Samuel, and the
Sandler no. 129, c.1350-c.1375); for a
inclusion of Bathsheba's intercession for Solomon at the important division thorough description and facsimile see
for Psalm 109, further emphasize the importance of mothers as protectors of M. R. James, Illustrations ofthe Book r!f Genesis
(Oxford: Roxburgh Club, 1921). It is not
and intercessors for their children.
known whether this manuscript once formed
Given the genealogical themes that weave together the Old Testament part of a devotional ensemble or a larger
itself, it is not surprising that mothers and sons are emphasized in the bible storybook. The identity of its patron
Psalter's biblical narrative. And certainly an emphasis on biblical role models is also a mystery, but its picture-book
presentation, Anglo-Norman captions, and
was a commonplace in medieval didactic material aimed toward women. extended representations of female
But in 1308 the adolescent audience of this particular story had just been characters might suggest a female audience.
crowned queen of England, during a ceremony that underscored these
biblical women as models of queenship. The ordo for the coronation, and other
associated activities, directed Edward to emulate David and Solomon, as well
as Abraham, Moses, and Joshua, while Isabelle's exemplars included queens
such as Esther, but also mothers such as Sarah, Hannah, and of course Mary. 26 26 - Legg, English Coronation Records, pp. 82,
89, 255, and 266-9· For a discussion of
This confluence of event and image might well have heightened Isabelle's
these role models in the English coronation
response to the characters in her Psalter, and increases the possibility that she ordo, see John Carmi Parsons, 'Ritual and
saw the progress of images in this book, from the prominent crowned Virgin Symbol in the English Medieval Queenship
and anointing of David in the Beatus initial to the marriages, births, and to 1500', Women and Sovereignty, ed. Louise
O. Fradenburg, Cosmos 7 (Edinburgh 1992),
nurturing of children that follow, as a script for her future life. pp. 60-n
It is no great surprise that this illuminated psalter was tailored to fit the
perceived needs of its intended owner. A few other fourteenth-century English
manuscripts present visual Old Testament sequences; some of these can be
linked to specific owners, and one may argue that the choice of episodes

10 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

 Figure 7. Abrah am and Hagar, Qu een
Mary Psalter (MS Royal 2B.vii) fol. gv
(by permission of the British Library,
London).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012
27 - T he gendering of imagery has been
explored in other man uscript contexts; see
for instance Madeline H. Caviness, 'Patron
or Matron? A Capetian Bride and a Vade
Mecum for her Marriage Bed', Speculum,
68 (1993), pp. 333- 62, and her forthcoming
study of manuscripts made lor members
of the contemporary Capetian court.
28 - Egbert, Tlckhill Psalter, ch. 1 and
Appendix I.
to be illustrated was linked to the gender of the intended audience." The
earliest of these manu scripts is the Ti ckhill Psalter, which will be discussed
in more detail below because of its close conj unction in date and decorative
vocabulary to that of the Isabelle Psalter. Its narrative scenes proceed in large
historiated initials and precisely delineated marginal scenes and focus on the
life of Kin g David, reflecting the biblical ruler' s autho rial role as well as
his function as a priestly exemplar suitable for the clerical audi ence of the
codex." The Queen Mary Psalter has already been mentioned as a source of
comparanda for O ld T estament and bestiary imagery. It most likely was
produced for Isabelle's use a decade later, during the years when the queen
was involved in courtly diploma cy and in the education of her children;
its iconography reflects her cha nged needs with an increased represent ation
of biblical heroes as children and a focus on the importance of responsible
II
 Figure 8. Abraham and Hagar, Bohun
Psalter-Hours (MS Auct. D+4) fa!. 105
(by permission of the Bodleian Library,
University of Oxford).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

-,

kingship. The Queen Mary Psalter supplies the closest analogue to the
Isabelle Psalter in terms of the breadth and shaping of its iconography, while
the Tickhill Psalter, despite its narrower focus on the life of David, remains
closest to Isabelle's manuscript in its style, decorative vocabulary, and its
placement of the biblical narrative in the margins and initials of the psalms.
In the latter codex, the artist of the Isabelle Psalter joined others to work
for a male clerical patron, John Tickhill of Worksop Abbey. Although his
psalter was left incomplete, it contains nearly five hundred narrative scenes
in its major initials and lower margins (figures 12, 18). These primarily tell the
story of David, and include 47 scenes that depict women. David's wives Michal,

12 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

 Figure g. Samson scenes, Isabelle Psalter,
fol, 8gv (by permission of the Bayerisch c
Staa tsbibliothek, Munich).

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Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

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Abigail, Bathsheba, and several nameless concubines are represented,

yet
female characters are present in only ro% of the episodes, a much
lower
percentage than either the Queen Mary Psalter or the Isabelle Psalter
.
O f course, the extended David narrative of the T ickhill Psalter
offers
fewer opport unities for the representation of the female charac ters
who
provid e the many genealogical transitions in the larger Old T estame
nt
narrative. Nevertheless, since the Tickhill and Isabelle Psalters seem to
have

l3
 Figure 10 . Annunciation of the Birth of
Samson, Qu een Mary Psalter (MS Royal
2B.vii) fol, 42V (by permission of the British
Library, London ).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

i
ontoltlc ftlt.:a-:Jntplbn dlorrgtlo\llntlt\
nt·\1: IClllI ~C lur ~lIInmt1\tm 1ft \lIC

been made at nearly the same time, often making use of exactly the same
decorative motifs, I would suggest that the choice of narratives is in itself
significant.
Indeed, a similarly gendered choice of Old T estam ent stories seems to
have shaped two later manu scripts that may have been made between 1380
and 1394 for Mary de Bohun and H enry of Bolingbroke, who would become
Hen ry IV in 1399.29 The Psalter for Henry is punctuated with scenes from the 29 - Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts I , pp. 34-6,
life of David in the miniatures at its incipits, while the psalm divisions of discusses the Bohun style group and the
difficulties of assigning several of the
Mary 's Psalter-Hours are illustrated with scenes from Genesis that includ e manu scripts to specific memb ers of the
two depictions of H agar (see figure 8). As in the Isabelle and Qu een Mary family. Henry's Psalter is Cambridge,
Psalters, one-third of the Old T estament scenes marking Mary's psalms Fitzwilliam Museum MS 38-1950; see
Sand ler no. 139 for the connectio n with
depi ct wom en, and the decoration of the Hours with the Miracles of the the Oxford Bohun Psalter-Hours. Th e
Virgin more than dou bles the effect. On the other hand, while six of H enry 's manuscript was described in James and
35 David scenes depict the king's wives Michal, Abigail, and Bath sheba, Millar, Bohun Manuscripts, pp. 51-9.
twice that number celebrate his battles (figure II). If we are correct abo ut

14 ANNE R U DL O F F STANTON
 Figure 1I. David scenes, Henry of
Bolingbroke Psalter (MS 38-1950) fo!' 99
(by permission of the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

30 - Henry was Isabelle's great-grandson,

and Mary was the great-granddaughter of
Elizabeth de Bohun, the sister of Edward II
and a member oflsabelle's court. Elizabeth's
descendants sponsored a large group of
devotional books decorated with Old
Testament imagery in the third quarter of the
fourteenth century, although the specific
destination of many of the books is muddled.
See Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts I, pp. 346, on the identity of their intended owners, this pair of manuscripts exhibits a
the difficulties of assigning several of these conscious fitting of narratives to their audiences: Henry was provided with
manuscripts to specific members of the scenes that emphasized the embattled nature of David's reign, while his wife
family. The name of Elizabeth's grandson
Humphrey de Bohun (d. 1373) is attached to
was pointed to the mothers of Genesis.I"
many of these, including London, British As with the Bohun-Bolingbroke manuscripts, the narrative choices in the
Library MS Egerton 3277 (Sandler no. 135) Tickhill and Isabelle Psalters make it difficult to draw comparisons between
and Oxford, Exeter College, MS 47
(Sandler no. 134); see James and Millar,
many specific female characters, but the types of representations can still
Bohun Manuscripts, pp. )-22. The Egerton be discussed. While many of the scenes in the Isabelle Psalter represent
manuscript displays a lengthy David births, or women nursing their children, women in the Tickhill Psalter tend
sequence in its initials, while the initials of the
to appear in sexual situations rather than maternal ones. Only one scene
Exeter College Psalter present a very long
biblical sequence that ends, at the last inJohn Tickhill's Psalter depicts a birth, that of Solomon: at the bottom of
canticle, with Moses at the River Jordan. fol. 73v, a crowned David is shown in bed with Bathsheba, both fully clothed,
The organizing principal of its historical
with Solomon in a cradle nearby (figure 12). Six other scenes that represent
scenes seems to have been toward complete
illustration of the biblical books, rather nude couples in bed are clearly meant to depict sexual intercourse, and
than stories edited for specific contexts. underscore the sin of lust that was David's downfall.

15
 Because of the different narrative foci of the two psalters, only Eve
and Bathsheba originally appeared in more than a few scenes in both
manuscripts. Much of Bathsheba's story in the Isabelle Psalter has been lost;
consequently the character of Eve provides the best comparison, partly in
terms of the way it shapes the first sinner, and the first mother. The dual

Figure 12. David and Bathsheba: Tickhill

Psalter (MS Spencer 26) fol. nv, detail
(by permission of the Spencer Collection,
New York Public Library; Astor, Lenox
and Tilden Foundations).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

Figure 13. Creation Scenes; the Antelope,

Isabelle Psalter, fols gV-IQ (by permission of
the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich).

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16 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

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Figure 14. Temptation and Expulsion;
the Centaur, Isabelle Psalter, fols IOV-I1
(by permission of the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
31 - On the dual nature of the body in
queenship, see for instance Parsons,
'Pregnant Queen'.
32 - All psalm quotations are from the
Douay-Rheims version of the Vulgate.
nature of woman is on display in the character of Eve, as her mistakes are
transformed into moral lessons by proximate texts and images; this dualism
was magnified for medieval queens, whose bodies were at once sources
of legitimate power because of their child-bearing abilities, and sources of
suspicion because of their potential for covert influence." Analysis of this
character also allows us to see how Isabelle was presented with women most
often viewed as anti-models, as well as the Old Testament mother-models
mentioned during her coronation ceremony.
The Adam and Eve story in the Isabelle Psalter includes nine scenes;
nine more take the story through the adult life of Cain. It begins just below
Psalm 6, where the creation of Adam and Eve is conflated into a single scene
that emphasizes the creation or birth of Eve (figure 13). Here, her nude body
is pulled out of Adam's side just below verse 5, which reads 'Turn to me, 0
Lord, and deliver my soul: 0 save me for mercy's sake',32 The reference to
the deliverance of the soul (anima) in the text directly above Eve underlines
the natal aspect of the scene and augments the resemblance of her nude body to
the typical representation of the soul in medieval art: her birth is compared
to spiritual rebirth. The body through which sin entered the world is thus
contrasted with the eternal soul, signified by its Latin, sacred, designation.
The next scene, placed directly to the right of the 'birth' of Eve, continues to
forecast the entry of sin into the world, as it shows the Logos forbidding the

17
 Tree of Knowledge to the new pair. The consequences of sin are then shown
in the bestiary image on the facing margin, beneath the French version of the
psalm. Two scenes show how the Antelope drinks from a river and tangles its
antlers in a tree, allowing a hunter to pierce its side with a very long lance.P 33 - McCulloch, Mediaeval Latin andFrench
Bestiaries, pp. 84-6. I thank the anonymous
This image of a beast trapped by its physical desires, so well symbolized reader of this article who pointed out the
by the Tree, adds a plangent note to the psalm above and emphasizes the relationship between the Old Testament and
entry of desire into the world as the result of Eve's sin. The French plea bestiary images on this opening.
for salvation above the image would be suitable for the lips of any sinner
entangled in physical desire, and because the Antelope's two horns also
were interpreted as the two Testaments, through which one could be freed
from sin, this opening encapsulates sin and salvation at the same time. The
importance of this group of images is heightened by the fact that Psalm 6 is
the first of the Penitential Psalms, so that a pious reader would have seen its
marginal glossing every day rather than once a week.
The rest of the sequence contains other surprising elements. The scene of the
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

Fall that begins Psalm 7 again underlines the nature of choice, as Eve yields to
an adamantly non-female serpent (figure IS). This is an ironic beginning to a
psalm that Augustine interpreted as a plea for deliverance from the devil.34 In
the Expulsion depicted in the margin of this page, the sword wielded by the
angel vividly illustrates the sword of judgment (gladius) designated in the text of
verse 13 directly above it. This image faces a bestiary episode of two Centaurs,
beneath the French version of that verse. The centaur is a hybrid beast often
conflated with the siren, which might explain the unique drawing here of a
female centaur grasping the beard of her male counterpart in a gesture that
may refer to the sexually loaded chin-chuck discussed by Michael Camille.P
Both creatures represented an unholy combination of human and animal
qualities and underlined the duplicity intrinsic to human nature. 36 The male
centaur, with his bestial hindquarters, recalls many of the sexually aggressive
creatures tabulated by Caviness in her studies ofthe Hours ofJeanne ofEvreux
and other Pucellian manuscripts.F Nevertheless here it is the female Centaur
who initiates the encounter, echoing Eve's initiation of the disobedient act that
would precipitate the Expulsion. In conjunction with the fearsome judgment
promised in the psalm above it, this image could be read as a clear lesson on the
culpability of woman in the introduction of sin into the world, and a warning
to Isabelle against sexual aggressiveness. A similar lesson would appear in the
Queen Mary Psalter where the curiosity of Noah's wife, and her susceptibility
to the words of the Devil, parallel Eve's failings (figure IS).
Yet the picture of Eve in the Isabelle Psalter is more complex, for her
maternity is specifically underscored. First, the representation of the birth of
Cain shows Eve in bed wearing a dress outfitted with openings for nursing,
while Adam swaddles the baby (figure 16). This scene is quite unusual for its
representation of nursing-accessible clothing, for while mothers - especially
Mary - are often represented nursing in medieval art, the details of the
bodice are never emphasized when nursing is not taking place. The psalm
this image accompanies is a song of thanksgiving, suitably captioning the
very first son's birth. 38 The next scene, in the initial of the Latin psalm ro,
celebrates the advent of Abel with a depiction of Eve nursing him as Cain
looks on. There are no scenes of the Virgo lactans in this psalter; given the well-
known typology of Eve and Mary, our Eva lactans could have acted as a
reminder of the heights, as well as the depths, to which woman could aspiref
34 - Enarrationes on Psalm ]:2 (PL 36:112).
3S - Camille, The Mediecal Art if Looe: Objects
and Subjects if Desire (New York, 1998).
36 - This suggestion is supported by the fact
that when the sirens are illustrated on fo!. 18,
one of them is bearded - a triton, properly
speaking. For the frequent conflation of the
siren and the centaur, see Hassig, Medieval
Bestiaries, pp. 106 ff. For a slightly different
interpretation of the scene in the Isabelle
Psalter, see Hassig, 'Marginal Bestiaries',
p.180.
37 - Caviness, 'Patron or Matron', and
'(En)gendering Marginalia in Books made for
Men and Women', Medieval Europe 1992: Art
and Symbolism, Pre-printed Papers vo!. 7
(York, [992); many thanks to Prof. Caviness
for sending me a copy of her paper and of
relevant chapters in her forthcoming book.
38 - Augustine, Enarrationes on Psalm 9. I,
also related this Psalm to birth - that of the
Son of God.
39 - Henry Kraus, 'Eve and Mary:
Conflicting Images of Medieval Women', in
TheLiving Theatre ifMedieval Art (Bloomington,
1967), ch. III, reprinted in Norma Broude and
Mary D. Garrard, Feminism andArt History:
Qstestioning the Litany (New York, 1982),
pp. 79-99, and Ernst Guldan, Eva undMaria:
eine Antitheses als Bildmotive (Graz, 1966).

18 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

 Figure 15. Temptation of Noah's wife,
Queen Mary Psalter (MS Royal zB.vii) fol. 6
(by permission of the British Library,
London).
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

Figure 16. Birth of Cain, Isabelle Psalter, fol.

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The sequence continues on fol. 14V with the murder of Abel in the initial to Figure 17. Cain and Abel; the Beaver,
Isabelle Psalter, fols 14v-15 (by permission of
Psalm 13, which in general bemoans the corruption of humanity (figure 17), the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
In the bottom margin God lifts a hand to curse Cain beneath verse 2: 'The
Lord hath looked down from heaven upon the children of men', Across
the page the beaver turns away from a tree - the Tree? - and bites off
his testicles to save himself from the hunters who wished to gather them,
symbolically removing sexual temptation from himself as well. This scene
finishes out the rest of the Psalm verse: 'to see if there be any that understand

Figure 18. Adam and Eve, Tickhill Psalter

(MS Spencer 26) fol, 5, detail (by permission
of the Spencer Collection, New York Public
Library; Astor, Lenox and Tilden
Foundations).

20 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

 40 - Hassig, Medieval Bestiaries, pp. 84 ff.
41 - Egbert The TickhiLL Psalter, Appendix
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012
42 - Henry Kelly, The Metamorphosis of
the Eden Serpent during the Middle Ages
and Renaissance', Viator, 2 (1971), pp. 301-27
and plates. The popular nature of the
woman-serpent can be seen in the sermon
guide compiled by an English preacher early
in the fourteenth century: 'According to
Bede, the serpent has the face of a maiden,
and this stands for those go-betweens that
have been chosen by the devil to deceive our
souls'; see the Fasciculus Marum: a Fourteenth-
Century Preacher's Handbook, ed. and trans.
Siegfried Wenzel (University Park, PA, 1989),
p.665·
43 - Recently several studies have addressed
different ideas about gender held by various
classes of medieval society; see for instance
Jacqueline Murray, Thinking about Gender:
The Diversity of Medieval Perspectives',
Power ofthe Weak: Studies onMedieval Women,
eds]. Carpenter and S.-B. MacLean
(Chicago, 1995), pp. 1-2U.
and seek God'.40 Again, sin and salvation are encapsulated in a rich broth of
text and image in which the text, the Word of the psalms, mediates salvation
for Isabelle.
As I have already noted, a different choice of images governed the
decoration of the Tickhill Psalter. Its Genesis scenes, most of which illustrate
the Adam and Eve story, footnote Peter Lombard's preface to the Psalms
and are accompanied with banderoles containing Latin captions drawn
I. from appropriate texts." It should be noted that these captions underline
a fundamental difference between the Tickhill marginal narratives and
those of the Isabelle Psalter. Isabelle's biblical narrative was a visualized,
romanticized one whose voice was imagined or supplied by the viewer,
while the Prior's captions set his David story within what was, to him, its
appropriate scriptural and historical background. The two-column format of
the Tickhill Psalter increases its resemblance to the format of a Bible, in which
its marginal images, and their captions, become a kind of academic gloss.
The Genesis sequence in the Tickhill Psalter begins on fo1. 4, with the
creation of Adam and the naming of the animals; on fo1. 4V Eve is pulled
from Adam's side and then the two are married. Consequently Eve takes her
typical secondary place in creation here, in contrast with her characterization in
the Isabelle Psalter. In the marriage scene of the Tickhill Psalter, Adam and
Eve are adroitly drawn beneath the words sponsus et sponsa in the Lombard's
text (see figure 18). After the pair are enjoined to abstain from the Tree of
Knowledge, they proceed to break their promise in response to the smooth
words of the serpent twined around the tree. This serpent is quite clearly
female, in contrast with the more snake-like serpent in the Isabelle Psalter,
and provides a more common view of female culpability in the FalL42 The
Adam and Eve sequence ends with their Expulsion from Paradise, omitting
the scenes of toil and childbirth, sacrifice and murder that continue the
narrative in the Isabelle Psalter. The Tickhill Genesis concludes at the foot
of the next folio with one scene of the Ark, and two that depict the averted
sacrifice ofIsaac. When the psalms begin on fols. 6v-7, they are accompanied
by the David sequence. Eve thus appears in her traditional role as Adam's
companion, the first sinner whose guilt is underscored by the female guise
of the serpent. The omission of scenes of Toil or of Cain and Abel
de-emphasizes Eve's role as the first mother and places more importance on
her introduction of sin into the world, a view suitable for and no doubt
expected by the clerical audience for this manuscript.
Eve and her daughters as represented in the Tickhill Psalter mirror the
stereotypical characteristics of woman as a disobedient, curious, lustful, but
necessary, companion to man. These characteristics might well have been
those expected of women by John Tickhill, the patron of this Psalter.f"
It is also critical to note that the Genesis scenes of this psalter only footnote
its preface, in which Peter Lombard discusses the significance of David
as a prophet of the coming of Christ, who had long been identified as the
Second Adam. Like the text she accompanies, Eve is prefatory to the presumed
devotional actions of her audience, while the Latin banderoles that accompany
the entire marginal sequence further separate the visual narrative from the
devotional psalms. In contrast, Eve's story in the Isabelle Psalter is integral to
the queen's perusal of her Latin psalms, for they punctuate the Latin texts
with an easily read visual sequence that, within its condemnation of Eve's
21
 choice, points the way toward redemption. Eve is the first of a long line of
Old Testament mothers, including those mentioned in Isabelle's coronation,
and the integral, yet uneasy, relationship between her sin and her maternity
mirrored the uneasy relationship between a queen's sexual influence over her
husband, and her role as dynastic vessel.t" 44 - John Carmi Parsons, 'The Pregnant
Queen as Counsellor and the Medieval
Nevertheless, one of the most remarkable of the Old Testament women
Construction of Motherhood', in Medieval
presented to Isabelle was not a good mother - and was certainly not Mothering, eds J. C. Parsons and B. Wheeler,
mentioned in the coronation ceremony - for she used her power to bring The New Middle Ages (New York, 1996),
about the downfall of her husband. The three-line initial to the last subdivision pp. 39-62, argues that in courtly rituals and
literature, the sexuality of a queen was
of Psalm II8, on fo1. 93v, shows Samson telling Delilah the secret of his dissociated from her maternity, hidden
strength: he touches his hair as she puts her arms around him (figure 19). The beneath the mechanics of generation as
next psalm begins with a six-line historiated initial that depicts a crowned understood at that time. In bearing a child
for her king, a queen was submissive, the
Delilah cutting Samson's hair as he sleeps, thus shearing him of his strength. passive vessel through which his rule was
The two watching figures are both female, so that Samson is the only man perpetuated. As an intercessor she was
in the image. This initial is all the more striking because it begins the Latin silent as well, only a conduit of influence
Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012

through which the king could be reached;

Psalm II9, the first of the 15 Gradual Psalms, so that the reader and Samson
nevertheless, it was her sexuality that made
both echo the words of the Psalmist: 'In my trouble I cried to the Lord, and her useful in this way.
he heard me'. In the margin below Samson is blinded beneath the words
'deliver my soul from a deceitful tongue and wicked lips', and one of the
figures points away from the scene, across the page toward the facing margin.
Since the bestiary sequence ended some 30 folios before this point, the facing
margin is empty, and the viewer's eye is led rather to the image in the
corresponding initial with its tiny painting of a crowned Isabelle kneeling in
prayer between the arms of England and France. We might envision the
queen herself at her prie-dieu, voicing the words of the French prayer toward
which she turns at the very moment of seeing this image. If Isabelle were
presumed to be a pious queen, as chroniclers record, she would have been
expected to say the Gradual Psalms - and see these images- daily.45 Thus 45 - James Tolhurst, Introduction to the English
Monastic Breviaries, Henry Bradshaw Society
the placement of these scenes of Delilah's treachery and Isabelle's piety made
80 (London, 1942), pp. 64-8
them more conspicuous than those glossing the psalms that were to be read
on a weekly schedule. The two Psalm II9 images would have been seen
in conjunction with the images of Eve's entry into the Biblical story that
accompany the first of the Penitential Psalms, another daily reading.
The prominent pairing of Delilah and Isabelle is unusual, to say the least.
Given the circumstances during which Isabelle most likely received her book,
we would expect to see a marriage scene or even an image of maternal travail
introducing this important prayer. A painting of Hannah praying for a son,
or the birth of Samuel, would seem more appropriate, and the sequence
easily could have been manipulated to make such a conjunction possible
since these scenes were depicted just two folios later in a small initial and a
marginal painting. Instead Delilah, who previously appears with her hair
decently covered, is represented with loose hair and a crown similar to that
worn by Isabelle. I have found no other examples of a crowned Delilah,
which suggests either that the illuminator made a simple mistake, or that a
quite specific comparison was intended. Whatever intention we might assign
to the crowning of Delilah, the fact remains that whenever Isabelle opened
her psalter to this prayer, she would have seen herself clearly paralleled to-
or contrasted with - a 'queen' emasculating a man. The Delilah image must
have been intended to hold some meaning for its young owner, who was
surely as skilled as any of her peers (or as well supported by her confessor) in

22 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

Downloaded by [University of Missouri Columbia] at 12:56 31 May 2012
46 - Susan 1. Smith, The Power o] Women:
A Topes in Medieval Art andLiterature
(Philadelphia, 1995); Madeline M. Kahr,
'Delilah', Art Bulletin, 54 (1972), pp. 282--<)9,
reprinted in Feminism andArt History,
pp. II 9-45.
47 - Guest, Bible Moralisee, 102, translates the
moralization of this scene on fol. 63 of
Vienna 2554: 'That his wife [Delilah] caused
Samson to sleep and cut his .VII. locks
signifies the flesh which causes the soul to
sleep through covetousness and gluttony and
seizes the .VII. virtues of the Holy Spirit'.
48 - For the power of the body sce in
particular two articles by John Carmi
Parsons: 'Family, Sex, and Power: the
Rhythms of Medieval Queenship', in
Medieval Olfeenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons
(New York, 1993), pp. 1-12; and 'Pregnant
Queen as Counsellor'.
Figure 19. Samson and Delilah; Isabelle
in prayer, Isabelle Psalter, fols 93v--<)4 (detail)
(by permission of the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, Munich).
reading the typological moralizations so frequently offered in the images that
surrounded her. But the nature of this meaning must remain ambiguous: was
this crowned, aggressive Delilah a warning to Isabelle, or a hint?
Delilah had long been viewed as a symbol of the power of women, whose
very femaleness gave her victory over the strongest man. 46 In the moralized
bibles of the thirteenth century, with which Isabelle was probably familiar,
Delilah's victory over Samson was pictured as a victory of the flesh over the
sou1. 47 When read in relation to the Eve narrative discussed above, glossed
and problematized by the bestiary scenes, the crowned Delilah of the Isabelle
Psalter can be seen as another reminder of the sin of female sexuality - and
she is not redeemed by motherhood. Delilah is an anti-type for the good
queen, who is exemplified by the image of Isabelle kneeling across the page
and emphasized by the pointing finger of Samson's tormenter in the margin.
This ideal queen, whose power resides in her body just as firmly as did
Delilah's, would be expected to use this power for the good, for the support
of her husband and his nobles rather than for a usurpation of his strength.t"
For Isabelle in 1308, perhaps fresh from the coronation ceremony with its
injunctions to follow in the footsteps of various Old Testament mothers and
queens, and to 'rejoice in the fruits of her womb', the decoration of this prayer
23
 might have been a particularly vivid reminder of the uses, and misuses, of her
body.t? Again, sin and salvation are laid out in one superbly nuanced suite 49 - Legg, English Coronation Documents,
pp. 109 and 266.
of texts and images, as the prayer of the queen protects her from the sin of
inordinate influence.
But by the fourteenth century the Delilah story was being interpreted with
more flexibility; by this point some authors reshaped their interpretations for
a female audience and even emphasized the culpability of Samson in his own
downfall.t" In such a reading, Delilah's feminine wiles are not solely to 50 - Smith, Power if Women, pp. 51-7-
blame, for it is Samson's own weakness that allows him to succumb to them.
The queen faces away from Delilah and toward the prayer she begins;
although this is the most common orientation of such 'portrait' figures in
historiated initials Isabelle's pose could be read as a rejection of Delilah's
strategy - or of Samson's weakness.
Such an image of weakness, a depiction of a man strong enough to
subdue a lion and yet susceptible to the lies of an intimate, would have
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had contemporary resonance in 1308. By the coronation in February the

weakness of King Edward, and his susceptibility to Piers Gaveston, was
already an issue of great concern for his baronage. Like Samson in Isabelle's
Psalter, Edward had fallen prey to the 'deceitful tongue and wicked lips' of the
Gascon knight. Perhaps the designer or patron of the manuscript intended
this conjunction of initials as a hint regarding the king's source of strength,
his favorite knight, and as a plea for the new queen to cut Gaveston's
influence with her own.
The contemporary application of biblical lessons would have been a
commonplace for Isabelle, but her Psalter contained even more overt allusions
to contemporary matters. Egbert identified 102 coats of arms that were
incorporated into the frames of the major historiated initials, and into most of
the initials that begin the ordinary French psalms (see figure 4). The location
of most of the heraldry within the French psalms underlines the division
between sacred and vernacular in this codex, for it translates the biblical
genealogy encoded in the Old Testament stories into local and contemporary
terms. Certainly the royal arms and those of the most important English
families were clustered at the major psalm incipits." For instance, the 51 - Egbert, Tickhill Psalter, p. 168. Egbert
also notes the similarity of the list to that of
heraldry in the initials to Psalm 1 (see figure 2) signifies St Edmund, England,
the Tickhill Psalter, where 28 shields appear
France, the Holy Roman Emperor, and Edward the Confessor, as well as mostly in the frames of the major initials; all
Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and probably Constantinople, which was connected but five of these are found in the more
to both the Plantagenet and the Capetian royal houses. A similar protocol extended group in the Munich manuscript.

seems to have guided the organization of a series of shields carved in

the stonework around the monastic choir of Westminster Abbey in the
mid-thirteenth century, where the arms of St Edward the Confessor,
England, the Holy Roman Empire, and France are displayed on the shields
closest to the crossing, while those of the great English families were closer to
the west entrance.v" The coronation ceremony of February 1308 took place 52 - Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the
below these heraldic signs, which may have provided yet another memory to Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation if
Power [200-1400 (London, 1995), pp. 76-86,
sharpen Isabelle's experience of her psalter. and 130.
In the case of Isabelle's psalter, the great heraldic weight placed in the
two Beatus initials might simply reflect the importance always granted to
this first psalm in psalter decoration. Nevertheless, in combination with the
generative imagery ofthe]esse Tree, with its queenly Virgin, and the unction
of David depicted in the French initial, this important locus of heraldry could

24 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON


53 - Parsons, 'Ritual and Symbol', p. 66.
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54 - For the Ordinances see Maddicott,
Thomas if Lancaster, pp. I IO If.
55 - Vita Edwardi Secundi, p. 39·
56 - Translated in Doherty, 'Isabelle',
p·3 26.
57 - Menache, 'Isabelle of France', and
Parsons, 'Intercessory Patronage', both
emphasize the queen's diplomatic activities
abroad and within her realm.
58 - Parsons, 'Intercessionary Patronage',
p. 155 and n. 27; Parsons notes that by the
birth of their last child in 1321, the number
of petitions to Isabelle recorded in the
calendared Chancery Rolls drops to almost
nothing from its previous intense rate,
suggesting a corresponding drop in her
influence with the king and a sharp change in
her relationship with her husband.
59 - John Carmi Parsons, '''Never was a
body buried in England with such solemnity
and honour": The Burials and Posthumous
Commemorations of English Queens to
1500', in Queens and Queenship in Medieval
Europe, ed. Anne]. Duggan (New York, 1997),
pp. 317-37; F. D. Blackley, 'Isabelle of
France, Queen of England 1308~1358, and
the late Medieval Cult of the Dead', Canadian
Journal if History, 15 (1980), pp. 23-46.
60 - Parsons, 'Burials of English Queens',
p. 331, citing Mary Carruthers, The Book if
Memory: A Study if Memory in Medieval Culture,
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature IO
(New York, 1990), p. 180.
also speak to the role of the young queen's very body in linking the signified
families during the coronation. Parsons has noted that 'The coronation order
related a queen's childbearing to that of women of the Davidic house: Sarah,
Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, ending with the birth of Christ from the womb
of the Virgin ~ a liturgical counterpoise to the Trees of Jesse that linked
the Queen of Heaven to males of the Davidic lineage'.53 In this reading the
crowned Virgin and the David scene, symbolically witnessed by the families
present in the surrounding heraldry, refer to the new roles Isabelle took
on during January and February of 1308. Like the Virgin, Isabelle would
become a mother, an intercessor, a queen. Yet the image of Delilah, located
in the initial beginning the Gradual Psalms to be read every day, pointed
toward both her husband's weakness and the spiritual, and political, dangers
inherent in her new roles.
Certainly Isabelle was soon quite aware of her husband's shortcomings,
and although the documents are equivocal she may have been an unofficial
ally to the barons who finally succeeded in capturing and executing Gaveston
on 19June 1312. By this time Edward already had agreed to place much of his
power in the hands of elected Ordainers.t" His weaknesses as a king were
clear, especially in comparison with his powerful forebears, and Isabelle's
ancestors. By 1312, when Isabelle bore their first child, Edward of Windsor,
it was clear to the anonymous author of the king's vita that the only
achievement of his reign, to date, was the production of 'a handsome son and
heir to the throne'P''
Despite the problems of Edward II, Isabelle was a model queen for 18 years,
'generous, prudent, beautiful, and virtuous', to quote one political song.56
The details of the events of 1325-1330, during which she was instrumental in
the deposition and murder of her husband, and ruled England in the name
of her son, do not have a direct bearing upon this discussion. In the context of
her long life, those years appear as an aberration for a queen who otherwise
fulfilled her public and private roles with perfect propriety. During her
husband's reign, she acted as intermediary and peacemaker between the king
and the magnates whose arms were depicted in her psalter, and between
England and France; at times she was as instrumental in her husband's
political salvation as Michal was in saving David's life.57 During the next
decade Isabelle bore her husband four living children, and most likely had
other unsuccessful pregnancies.>" When her son took power for himself in
1330 and executed her lover and co-ruler Roger Mortimer, she was forced
into a retirement that increased in comfort and freedom over the following
decades. By the time she died in 1358, the dowager Isabelle seems to have
been restored to the affections of her son. She also seems to have become
reconciled to the memory of her husband, or at least was concerned with
reclaiming their relationship from its dreadful ending; she was buried in
her wedding clothes in late November, in her favored church of the Grey
Friars in London. The alabaster effigy on her tomb, which she herself had
commissioned from Agnes de Ramesay of London, is reported to have
contained the heart of Edward II in its breast.P?
As Mary Carruthers noted, a medieval 'self' was 'constructed out of bits
and pieces of great authors of the past'; Parsons applies that to queens, for
whom 'remembrance of queens past could indeed shape that self,.60 I have
mentioned the biblical 'queens past' and other historical models held up for
25
 Isabelle at her coronation, but I also should note that these role models were
prevalent in didactic literature for women throughout the Middle Ages, from
Jerome to the Householder ofParis. 6 1 The incorporation of Sarah, Hannah, 61 - Examples of biblical role models are
cited by Susan G. Bell, 'Medieval Women
and the rest into Isabelle's 'self' likely would have begun long before her Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and
coronation, and continued long after. The potential vigor of the imagery in Ambassadors of Culture', Signs: Journal qf
her Psalter, however, was increased by its relevance to the new roles she Women in Culture and Society, 7 (1982),
pp. 742- 67.
undertook in 1308, and by the probability that the adolescent Isabelle was,
62 62 - Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the
like contemporary rz-year-olds, at a particularly impressionable stage. The
Middle Ages (New York, 1990), p. 30, notes
composition of Isabelle's 'self' was probably revisited whenever her life that while medieval writers devoted little
changed, as with the birth of her children, or the events of the 1320S, when attention to adolescent girls it is clear that the
the lesson of Delilah might have taken on more pertinence, or her evolution age of 12 marked the end of their childhood,
yet they were still viewed as being easily
into dowager queen after 1330. Perhaps the complex nature of Isabelle's influenced.
psalter, ifindeed she kept it for 50 years, allowed it to serve as a locus for both
her hopes and her memories at these key points in her life.
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The fact that the Isabelle Psalter presented biblical role models for the
consumption and edification of its young female audience is not unusual for
its period. What sets it apart is the bilingual organization of its non-narrative
texts and narrative images, and the way in which its organization parallels
the types of roles Isabelle was intended to assume. Parsons has suggested that
a medieval queen had two bodies: her physical, maternal self, engendered
by the sin of conception and rigors of birth that allowed her to be a vessel for
the king's dynastic needs, and her official, queenly self, created by the rituals
63 - Parsons, 'Pregnant Queen', especially
of unction and the coronation at the start of her reign. 63 While the queen's PP·5 2-4·
physical self is usually silenced in the documents, it was the foundation
on which her official position was based, for it was the basis of her ability
to influence the king and to bear the heir to the throne. The imagery and
organization of the Psalter seems to play with the apparent relationship
between these two selves. The physical, maternal self is more closely allied
here with the sacred, authoritative language, while the heraldry that could be
seen to signify her official, and non-physical, self punctuates the vernacular
- yet the queen's physical body is represented among the vernacular texts
and official heraldic images, carefully wrapped within one of the most
important prayers in her book (see figure I).
Like the two aspects of the queenly body, the sacred and the vernacular in
the Isabelle Psalter clearly present a complex picture when read together.
The power of femininity and maternity embodied in Sarah, Hannah, and
Bathsheba - as well as Eve and Delilah - prefigured Isabelle's own power
as queen and queen-mother. Furthermore, the imagery in the French psalms
speaks to the contemporary circumstances in which that power would be used,
by representing heraldically the great houses of England and the Continent.
Certainly such readings could have been beyond Isabelle if she received this
book at the age of 12. But if this book was indeed with Isabelle for the rest of
her life, then we can suggest that she became an attentive audience for the
sacred and vernacular lessons in her psalter.

Ackno",,"ledgIDent:s
This article developed from papers delivered at the 30th and 32nd International Congresses

26 ANNE RUDLOFF STANTON

 on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 1995 and 1997, and at the 4th International
Medieval Congress at Leeds in July 1997. I have benefited from comments made at these
conferences and later by Karen Gould, Joan A. Holladay, AlyceJordan, Lois L. Huneycutt,
Margot McIlwain Nishimura, John Carmi Parsons, Lynn Ransom, and Lucy Freeman
Sandler. I am indebted to the staff of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich for allowing
me to examine the now fragile manuscript in July 1995, and to the Research Board of the
University of Missouri for funding my travel to Munich and the purchase of photographs for
this study.
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