[Page numbers of the printed text appear at the right in bold. ]

Janet T. Marquardt-Cherry

   Unlike Psalters, Tropers were not commonly furnished with images of King David. This was because the Tropers' idiosyncratic texts drew from widely varied sources and could claim no such illustrious author.1 One manuscript, however, Paris B.N. fonds latin MS.9448, from the monastery of Prüm in western Germany, was illustrated with a striking double-image of King David during the Ottonian period, ca. 990-1001 (p. 48).2 As part of the miniature originally accompanying the third mass of Christmas, folio 4 represents King David as rex in the upper register and as author of the psalms, i.e., within his liturgical venue as sacerdos, in the lower register.3 Comparable to the Werden Psalter frontispiece, which has a similar two-tier composition, the Prüm scene is justified in a Troper by specific references to King David in the Introit tropes.

   The identification of this scene has been disputed. On the first side of folio 4, the painting fills the lower three-quarters of the page. It is divided into two registers. The larger section at the top shows a king seated on a throne attended by one soldier, his shield-bearer. The king holds a small orb in his right hand, and with his left hand he balances a sword in its scabbard on his shoulder like a scepter. He appears under a small flat-roofed baldachin supported by one visible column in front of a draped curtain which is decorated with stars. This is set against a royal architectural backdrop of two towers, a domed building with an entrance cupola, and a city wall which supports his throne. The king is seated on a bolster upon the throne; at the same time he is centered over the middle section of the wall and is flanked by two tiny domed towers. At the king's feet rests a harp.

   In the lower register, a king sits writing on a dyptich surrounded by the walls and towers of a city. Behind him, to the left, stand a large gabled open archway and a domed building with a domed cupola and wide open doors. Again, the two tiny towers of the wall on either side of the king have small domes. Both kings wear Carolingian garb.

   In 1906, in the first article on the paintings in Paris MS. 9448, Stephen Beissel refuted suggestions which proposed that these figures were kings who had given Prüm gifts or David and Solomon as forebearers of the Messiah.4 He saw them instead as representations of the characters in the Pericope for the first Christmas mass. The first two lines read: In illo tempore: Exiit edictum a Caesare Augusto, ut describeretur universus orbis. Haec descriptio prima facta est a praeside Syriae Cyrino. [At that time a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled. This census was first made

   Twenty-one years later, in 1927, Philip Lauer, in his book on illustrated manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale, identified the figures on this folio in a short description of all the miniatures of Paris MS.9448.5 He returned to the earlier idea of Old Testament forerunners by proposing that King David is represented twice here, wearing the Carolingian fleur-de-lis crown and sitting on the wall of the city of Jerusalem. His only support for this idendfication is the line from the Communion verse of the second Christmas mass, which must have appeared to him as a sort of caption for the picture: Exulta filia Sion, lauda filia Jerusalem, ecce rex tuus venit sanctus et Salvalor mundi. [Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, sing praises, 0 daughter of Jerusalem, behold your holy king and Saviour of the world comes.] How this text explains King David's presence is unclear. Consequently, all subsequent identifications of this scene during the past eighty-five years have agreed with Beissel rather than Lauer.

   Part of the problem with the identification of these scenes lies with the correspondence of the appropriate text page to face it. By 1983 it was already recognized that the first fascicle of the manuscript had been rebound incorrectly in the seventeenth century. The correct order, (1,5,6,3,4,7,8,2,9), was recorded in Margaretha Rossholm Lagerjoef's paper on the manuscript published for the 1981 symposium on tropes held in Stockholm.6 However, she did not notice that in the Prüm Troper, with only one understandable exception, the illustrations always precede the texts of the feast they illustrate. Not realizing that the illustrated texts for the scene on folio 4r must therefore come from the third Christmas mass, Lagerloef continued to base her conclusion on Beissel's now demonstrably erroneous theory.

   Thanks to this new information we can make a much more direct correspondence of the paintings with the Introit trope lines which appered right on the page which originally faced the scenes. The third troping for the Introit (Deus pater filium suum) refers to David as a Prophet foretelling Christ's coming. It also speaks directly of Christ descending from David's house and sitting on his throne, in the lines: Qui sedit super thronum David et in aeternum imperabit. Ecce veniet deus et homo de domo David sedere in throno. [Who sits on the throne of David and rules for eternity. Behold god and man from the house of David comes to sit on the throne.] The key iconographic element here has been obscured by the worn condition of the paint on the folio but can still be made out if one looks carefully. David's harp does lie at the base of the throne in the upper register, identifying clearly just which king this is meant to represent. Unlike the Werden Psalter, where the context was clear, more detail was necessary in a Troper.7

   The other problem with Beissel's interpretation is that Cyrinus, as governor Of Syria, would not wear a royal crown. The lower figure must be a king. In fact, Lauer would have convinced more readers of his David identification if he had looked for supporting texts from the third Christmas

   Thus, unlike the decidedly New Testament orientation of Christmas cycles in Bibles and Gospel Books, after which most Troper scenes were modeled, this manuscript incorporates a christological Old Testament scene which supplemented the theological meanings of the feast for the Prüm community. Yet both the topography and the regalia can be identified as standard generic Carolingian forms. That David is seated in the city of Bethlehem is understood from the trope content as well as in relationship to the verso illustration which completes the Christmas imagery. This point win be discussed further on. The orb, scepter or sword, throne cushion, attending soldier, and baldachin follow contemporary Ottonian reuse of Carolingian imagery--as can be seen in a ninth-century ivory plaque now in Florence or a representation, also of King David, in the Utrecht Psalter.8

   Both figures wear Carolingian fleur-de-lis crowns, though not of the same model.9 The upper crown shows the artist's use of a model like the dedication page in the Vivian Bible, where Charles the Bald wears a crown with the arch topped by fleurs-de-lis going over the head.10 King David himself wears another version of this model on folio 215 verso of the same manuscript. Here, in a typical representation for the School of Tours, the back of the crown is visible in such an awkward way that someone copying it could think this crown also had an arch.11 In the Psalter of Charles the Bald, we can find a Carolingian example of the simpler crown depicted in the lower register of the Prüm painting. David also wears this form in the Bible of San Paolo fuori le Mure.12

   The scene of David composing his psalms can be seen in Carolingian art as well--for instance, in the late ninth-century Foulchard Psalter from St. Gall.13 It could also have been taken from the even more common representations of David's scribes, Asaph and Ethan, who transcribe his compositions for him 14

   Although one must turn the page in the manuscript to see the next illustrations, changing, as it were, from the Old Testament to the New, entering the world of redemption from the world of prophecy, the two folios were designed as a set and can be understood best if viewed together. In fact, this is the only time in the Troper that related images are not arranged to open verso/recto flat in the book, so the sense of a passage of time and setting is probably intentional with the "turning over of the new leaf."

   The reverse side of folio 4 contains a three-tiered scene (p. 49): the Journey to Bethlehem, the Nativity and two prophets. In the top frame, Mary sits sidesaddle on a donkey set slightly above the ground line. The reins are held by Joseph, who carries a shield and staff over which his mantel is draped. Mary and Joseph leave behind a city in the form of a basilical structure.

   In the Prüm Gospel Book from Tours, a very early version of the Journey to Bethlehem is visible in a tiny scene between lines of Matthew's text

   The artist may have looked at the similar iconography being used for the Flight into Egypt, the only difference being the inclusion of the Christchild in Mary's arms. Looking at German examples of the Flight into Egypt from the eleventh century, one from the Gospel Book of Henry III (fol. 19v) and a from the doors of Santa Maria im Kapitol, Cologne, and comparing them to common scenes of the Journey to Bethlehem from Regensburg manuscript, we can see that a similar source was being used at Prüm, Cologne, Echternach, and Regensburg for both scenes.16 The emphasis in the first register on Mary and Joseph leaving one city culminates in the elaborate architecture of another, Bethlehem, where they have arrived for the birth of Christ. It is packed with towers, some with cupolas, and the same basilica structure with doors opening outside the walls on the left. The Christchild lies on a raised altar set at an angle to the frontal orientation of the architecture. The ox and ass lean out of the buildings to look at the baby. Mary lies in the foreground in front of the child on a bed with coverings which hang over the towers of the city walls. Joseph is placed between the basilica and Mary. Four stars, painted in the Touronian manner, dot the sky.17

   The architecture is most appropriate in a comprehensive view of folio 4, since Bethlehem, the "City of David," refers to Christ's lineage with that same king who figures so prominently on the other side of the folio. According to Gertrud Schiller's reading of the Nativity scene on the ivory cover of the Lorsch Gospels, the round tower with a cupola may even refer specifically to King David's castle in Bethlehem.18 It is more likely that the octagonal building to which she refers is the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which actually was on the east end of the basilica as it appears in the ivory.19 In any case, the city is Bethlehem and the position of all three figures with the walls, as well as the two animals, is similar to the manner in which King David is depicted.

   The Nativity scene in this manuscript, in general, is typical of Carolingian and Ottonian types which have an elaborate architectural setting, and familiar Byzantine elements: the reclining Virgin, Joseph resting his head on his hand, the close proximity of the ox and ass emerging from windows in the architecture over Christ, and, most importantly, the arched openings in the altar which copied the actual site in Bethlehem where the pilgrims could look through to the cave of the Nativity below.20 As in the Journey, however, only the essential characters are shown, and the lack of shepherds in this or a neighboring scene, unusual for Christmas illustrations of the Ottonian period, serves to pinpoint the Holy Family's singular position within this city. At the same time, the fact that this manuscript did not contain the Christmas Pericope stressing the angel's announcement (Luke 2, 1-20) was clearly noted by the designer. A Sacramentary made at Fulda about 15-25 years earlier (Göttingen fol. 231) with a Nativity scene does show the Annunciation to the Shepherds, although the

   One might imagine that in the scriptorium at Prüm, which we can securely credit with having produced only one other extant manuscript (Manchester, Rylands MS. lat. 7), the designers were not on the cutting edge of Ottonian iconography. Therefore, their close adherence to Carolingian forms would have been part of a natural dependence upon traditional models.26 It is clear from Henry II's 1003 inventory of the treasury at Prüm that they owned at least one, if not more, Carolingian manuscript(s) from Tours.27 However, they were geographically quite close to Trier, which did have an early thriving center of Ottonian manuscript illumination.28 It is exactly these circumstances surrounding Prüm's acquisition of Carolingian treasures which leads me to believe that the Carolingian elements of the King David scene were done in an atmosphere which recognized that such references were by then deliberately traditional.

   For these monks circa the year 1000, Prüm's importance was based on its royal Carolingian connections of the past.29 Founded in 721 by a relative of Charles Martel, the Countess Bertrada of Mürlenbach, the abbey came into the possessions of the father of the Carolingian dynasty when Bertrada's granddaughter married Pepin the Short. He refounded the abbey in 752 and began a series of endowments which were formally compared to Solomon's building of the Old Testament Temple. The important privileges and immunities which Prüm gained under Pepin were maintained by Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. Abbot Marquardt of Prüm was Lothar I's legate to Rome in 844 and the foundation was strengthened with the relics he gathered on that trip as well as the many gifts which Lothar made. He is probably the one who gave the Touronian Gospel Book now in Berlin (MS. lat. theol., fol.733) which was listed in Henry II's inventory. In 855 Lothar retired from his imperial seat to take the monk's vows at Prüm shortly before his death.

   During the period of dynastic struggle in the tenth century, the abbots of Prüm repeatedly sided with the Frankish kings. Once Lotharingia was joined to the Ottonian Empire, the crown demanded increasingly heavy services from the abbots; this culminated in Henry II's harshly imposed administrative reorganization in 1004 along the lines of the Gorze reform.30 Yet the abbot and monks never seem to have totally capitulated, since already under Henry IV they again tried to assert the abbey's independence by championing the losing Gregorian cause during the investiture struggle of the 1070's.

   The position adopted by the monks through the years around 1000 seems to be one of consistently endeavoring to maintain the heritage of royal privilege obtained under the Caroling monarchs. They feared that the Ottonian monastic reforms would end in their losing their assets and privileges. This fear was heightened by the jealousy of other nearby monasteries in Trier, Fulda, and in Echternach, which were benefitting from imperial financial support and political privileges. By harking back to the well-known Carolingian image of ideal kingship in their representation of David, the Prüm community placed the manuscript into the very specific context of their close relationship with the strongest dynasty of the recent past as well as the newly popular culture of the artistic renaissance of the late tenth century.31

   That the manuscript was copied and illuminated for use at Prüm itself seems clear from the colophon which states that it was commissioned by a noble monk of that community and that it is organized as a record of the abbey's own form of annual liturgical performance.32 Since it was only finished shortly before the comprehensive inventory of 1003, it seems likely that the community was clearly aware that the monks were being watched, that their holdings would soon be reviewed, and that they were "planting" a sort of visual record of strength in their documentation of the abbey's liturgical practices. This page reflects their continuing emphasis on their superior Carolingian heritage while other portions of the Troper seem to attempt to compete at the Ottonian level by introducing contemporary imperial symbols of value such as SS. Mauritius and Boniface.33 Although the work reflects the painting atelier's inexperience, this single manuscript which we know to have been produced at Prüm prior to 1025 was no tentative copy of earlier standard liturgical books. It documents clear choices of interpretative texts in the addition of tropes to a full Gradual as well as newly composed sequences. Add to this the individually designed images which reinforce the interpretative aspect with valuable artwork that would be guaranteed notice in eminent inventories by imperial church authorities.

   Just as the entire pictorial program projects energy and independence, even extending to the way in which Christ is rendered, so too the artist's decision to portray King David in this unusual context was an energetic and innovative response to a contemporary political crisis.34