Jlúdov Psalter

"Jludov Psalter".
Facsimile edition of 2006.
Copy 64/995.
A and N. Editions.
In wooden case.
It has a notarial certificate.
It presents some faults in the box, and marks of use in general.
Measurements: 21 x 17 x 6 cm (book); 33 x 24 x 7,5 cm (case).

Facsimile edition made in 2006 by the defunct publishing house AyN, numbered and notarized. The facsimile, bound simulating the passage of time, is presented in a wooden box.

The Jludov Psalter is the historiographical name of an illuminated manuscript containing a psalter of the so-called "marginal" ones; its production has been dated to the middle of the 9th century in Constantinople. It is an exceptional example of Byzantine art, which at the time suffered the vicissitudes of iconoclasm, which explains why only three similar books have survived. It can be observed, in the state of many of its pages, the evidence of its continued use throughout the centuries. According to tradition, the illustrations must have been made clandestinely. Many of them contain a direct reference to the iconoclasts, whom they depict in a negative light. Many of the images are explained in writing by means of texts connected by small arrows. The style, polemical, is very unusual, proof of the furious passions unleashed by iconoclasm. It contains 169 folios. The outer margins of the pages are usually left blank to accommodate illustrations. The text and titles are written in uncial script, but much of it was rewritten in crude minuscule three centuries later. The literary content is the Psalms (in the Septuagint version of the Bible) and the responses to be sung during their recitation, following the liturgy of the imperial church of Constantinople (Hagia Sophia).

Nikodim Kondakov hypothesized that the psalter was made in the Studion monastery of Constantinople. Other scholars believe that the liturgical responses it contains were only used in Hagia Sophia, making it more likely a product of the imperial workshops in Constantinople, shortly after the iconodule restoration of 843. It was preserved on Mount Athos until 1847, when a Russian scholar brought it with him to Moscow. There it was acquired by Aleksei Khludov (transcribed in English as Aleksey Khludov), by whose name the manuscript is known today. From Khludov it went to the Nikolsky Monastery of Old Believers and from there to the State Museum of History (Moscow).