Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Saturday 10 February 2024

The psalter of King Harold II’s sister rediscovered?


Newsweek has an article about the Alkmaar -and other - fragments of a mid-eleventh century psalter with Old English glosses - that might be, might be the remains of the psalter last recorded in Bruges in 1561 which had been given to the city’s cathedral of St Donatus by Gunhild, the exiled sister of King Harold II, when she died in 1087. Cut up and reused to assist in book binding around 1600 the fragments lay hidden until they were noticed by a keen-eyed researcher.

The article, with photographs of the fragments, and narrating how they survived by chance, can be read at Refugee princess's lost Book of Psalms believed found after centuries 


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