This manuscript was made to fit comfortably in the hand, although it contains all the Psalms, the Canticles, and the New Testament. Never very common, such compact manuscripts cluster in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, reflecting the expression of personal piety that flourished at that time. Whereas all manuscripts are labor-intensive projects— requiring the preparation of vellum pages, the hand writing of text, the painting of illustrations, and the binding of the completed project—this is an especially luxurious book with a text written extensively in gold.

The manuscript is extensively illustrated. It opens with an image of King David, author of the Psalms, and contains other illustrations of individual Psalms; then follow figures connected with poetic texts known as Canticles from the Old Testament; and finally portraits of Gospel and Letter writers of the New Testament. The Second Canticle of Moses is illustrated here, accompanying Deuteronomy 32: Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai from the hand of God. Moses’ sandals, which he was ordered to remove, are on the ground behind him and a personification of Mount Sinai is in the lower left corner. The bright, animated colors and Moses’ wind-blown drapery communicate some of the spiritual dynamism of this face-to-face encounter with God.

This manuscript can be dated to 1084 based on its Easter tables. These are a chronological list included in many medieval manuscripts to designate the day for Easter, the most important moveable feast day in the liturgical year. The Easter tables in this manuscript begin with the year 1084, providing the date when it was written, and continue on through 1101.

(D.O. MS 3)

G. Millet, "Quelques Representations Byzantines de la Salutation Angelique," Bulletin de Correspondence Héllenique 18 (1894), esp. 456-457, pl. 15.

S. P. Lampros, Catalogue of the Greek Manuscripts on Mount Athos (Cambridge, 1895), 98.

J. J. Tikkanen, Die Psalterillustration im Mittelalter. Bd. I. Die Psalterillustration in der Kunstgeschichte (Helsinki, 1895), 128.

C. R. Gregory, Textkritik des Neuen Testamentes (Leipzig, 1900-) vol. 3, 1154.

O. M. Dalton, Byzantine Art and Archaeology (Oxford, 1911), 470, fig. 277, 278.

H. Brockhaus, Die kunst in den Athos-klöstern, 2 ed. (Leipzig, 1924), 170f., 174f., 205f., fig. 14.

J. Ebersolt, La miniature byzantine (Paris, Brussells, 1926), 29, no. 2.

G. Millet and S. der Nersessian, "Le Psautier Armenien illustré," Revue des études arméniennes 10 (1929): 165-81, pl. 9.

V. Lasareff, "Studies in the Iconography of the Virgin," Art Bulletin 20 (1938): 26-55, esp. 37, fig. 6.

H. Buchthal, The Miniatures of the Paris Psalter, A Study in Middle Byzantine Painting, Warburg Institute Studies 2 (London, 1938), 23, 28f., 31, 38, 39f., fig. 53, 68, 76, 78.

F. Dölger, E. Weigand, and A. Deindl, Mönchsland Athos (Munich, 1943), 178, 180, fig. 98-101.

K. Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, a Study of the Origin and Method of Text Illustration, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 2 (Princeton, 1947), 111, 149, 150, 152, 162, 170, 185, fig. 140, 157, 164.

———, "The Psalter Vatopedi 761," The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 10 (1947): 21-51, esp. 30, 49.

C. Astruc, "Un psautier byzantin à frontispieces, le suppl. Gr. 610," Cahiers archéologiques 3 (1948), esp. 110-113, fig. 4.

K. Weitzmann, The Joshua Roll: a Work of the Macedonian Renaissance, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 3 (Princeton, 1948), 75f., 80, fig. 78, 80-81, 86.

———, "A Constantinopolitan Lectionary, Morgan 639," in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. D.E. Miner (Princeton, 1954), esp. 359, 360, fig. 311.

S. der Nersessian, "Two Images of the Virgin in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 69-86, esp. 77, fig. 4.

———, "A Psalter and New Testament Manuscript at Dumbarton Oaks," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 19 (1965): 153-83.

Handbook of the Byzantine Collection (Washington, D.C., 1967), 106, no. 358.

Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections: an Exhibition in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann,  ed. G. Vikan, exhibition catalogue, Art Museum, Princeton University, April 14-May 20, 1973, (Princeton, 1973), no. 20, also mentioned in introduction, ch. 1, ch. 3, and cat. nos. 21, 22, 23, 28.

A. Cutler, "The Dumbarton Oaks Psalter and New Testament. The Iconography of the Moscow Leaf," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 37 (1983): 35-46.

———, The Aristocratic Psalters in Byzantium, Bibliothèque des cahiers archéologiques 13, ed. A. Grabar (Paris, 1984), no. 51.

C. Mango, "The Byzantine Collection," Apollo 119 (1984): 21-29, fig. 16.

R. S. Nelson, "Discourse of Icons, Then and Now," Art History 12 (1989): 144-57, pl. 1-3,12.

N. Kavrus-Hoffmann, "Greek Manuscripts at Dumbarton Oaks: Codicological and Paleographic Description and Analysis," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996): 289-312, esp. 296-302, pl. 3-4.

B. Outtier, "Les Prosermeneiai du Codex Bezae," in Codex Bezae: studies from the Lunel colloquium, June 1994, New Testament Tools and Studies 22, ed. D.C. Parker, C.-B. Amphoux and A.D. Callahan (Leiden, New York, 1996), 74-78, esp. 78.

A. Cutler and J. M. Spieser, Byzance médiévale, 700-1204, L'Univers des formes 41 (Paris, 1996), 374, pl. 304.

Mount Athos Treasures in Russia: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries: from the Museums, Libraries and Archives of Moscow and the Moscow Region,  ed. B.L. Fonkich, G.V. Popov, L.M. Evseeva and L.I. Antonova, exhibition catalogue, Central Andrei Rublev Museum, May 1 -July 4, 2004 (Moscow, 2004), 141, no. 2.10.

W. J. T. Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago, 2005).

A. Littlewood, Byzantium: The Guardian of Hellenism (Montreal, 2004).

R. S. Nelson, "Byzantine Art vs. Western Medieval Art," in Byzance et le monde extérieur : contacts, relations, échanges : actes de trois séances du XXe Congrès international des études byzantines, Paris, 19-25 août 2001, Byzantina Sorbonensia 21, ed. P. Pagès, M. Balard, E. Malamut and J.M. Spieser (Paris, 2005), 255-70, esp. 262, fig. 1.

Dumbarton Oaks: The Collections, ed. G. Bühl (Washington, D.C., 2008), 156, pl. p. 157.

J. Lowden, The Jaharis Gospel Lectionary: The Story of a Byzantine Book (New York, 2009), 57, 63, 74, figs. 66, 71, and 78.

Princeton, The Art Museum, Princeton University, "Illuminated Greek Manuscripts from American Collections, an Exhibition in Honor of Kurt Weitzmann," Apr. 14-May 20, 1973.

Pantocrator Monastery, Mount Athos (Pantocrator No. 49).

Purchased from Roland Levy-Bosshard, Geneva, by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, DC, September 1962.