This Psalter, a liturgical book, contains handwritten biblical psalms on parchment (animal skin), which is illuminated with gold and decorative ornamentation. It is one of the few Psalters known to have been produced in the south of France. As Christianity is a book religion, books were among the monasteries’ most precious possessions. This Psalter is the oldest in the collection of the Museum Angewandte Kunst and is in excellent condition.

With its ornamentation and lavish cyclical imagery, it is magnificently decorated. Its compact format reflects the development in France at the time from the psautier, the biblical Book of Psalms used by monks for the canonical hourly prayers in the monastery, to the livre d’heures, the book of hours for laypeople, which was intended for private prayer.

This Psalter combines Romanesque stylistic elements with the emerging Gothic style of the time. The book illumination was created by at least two artists from the Avignon school and also shows Parisian influences. The text is written in Provençal in Gothic minuscule and was supplemented by summaries in Latin by an unknown hand in the sixteenth century.