Sing a New Song
The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life
The Morgan Library and Museum
225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York
Through January 4, 2026
Entering the galleries to see this splendid show devoted to the Bible’s longest and most popular book, visitors encounter the enlarged image of a curly headed, rosy-cheeked youth sitting on a hill in a wooded landscape. In his left hand the boy holds a flute, which he plays; in the other hand he is ringing a small bell. Propped against a nearby tree is a harp, decorated with the upturned face of an animal.
In addition to his dog, the young man is surrounded by sheep and goats, some of which seem enraptured by their shepherd’s playing, whose cheerful expression suggests that he is enjoying the music he makes as much as his four-legged listeners. The harp, while signifying his musical prowess and mastery of several instruments, carried a deeper meaning for medieval viewers, who would have immediately identified the youth as David, destined to become Israel’s greatest king. He was at once a royal patriarch and prophet, as well as a prolific composer of sacred songs: psalms.
Although traditionally ascribed to King David, the Hebrew Book of Psalms we know today is a varied collection of 150 sacred poems that were composed over more than 500 years by many different poets. Scholars understand that these poetic texts, known in Hebrew as Tehillim (“Praises”), were conceived in the context of the beliefs and religious life of the ancient Israelites. While they tell the story of the God who brought his people out of Egypt, made a covenant with them, and gave them his law, they also include expressions of lament and loss, praise and petitions, as well as confessions and exclamations of joy and thanksgiving, all universal themes that define what it means to be human.
Over five sections—“Translating the Psalms,” “Teaching the Psalms,” “Illuminating the Psalms,” “Performing the Psalms,” and “Using the Psalms”—the exhibition traces the influence of the Psalms on men and women in medieval Europe from the sixth to the 16th century. They were deeply ingrained in the intellectual culture of medieval Europe through translations into Latin and the vernacular. Children learned to read by using the Psalter, patrons commissioned versions in their native languages, and theologians, glossing the Psalms, wrote the most influential interpretations of the Middle Ages.
The Psalms informed liturgical language more than any other biblical text, and the Psalter came to serve effectively as the prayer book of the Church. Priests, monks, and nuns sometimes prayed all 150 Psalms weekly, and lay people throughout Europe acquired Psalters for their own devotions, often exquisitely illuminated, like many of those in this exhibition.
No other book in the Bible was as integral to medieval thought as the Psalms, as underscored in the section “Teaching the Psalms.” The book permeated all social strata, from childhood to the university, and the ancient biblical text inspired sermons and enlarged the moral messages of the period’s preeminent teachers. Some early Christian adherents emphasized a literal meaning to the Psalms, while others interpreted the book allegorically, tracing in them prophecies and prefigurations of Christ. Extensive quotations from the Psalms in the Gospels and epistles grounded this emphasis, which is reflected in important commentaries by Church Fathers like Origen, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Cassiodorus.
A centerpiece of the exhibit is the magnificent altarpiece, “Scenes from the Life of St. Augustine,” which celebrates the Psalter’s most famous ancient commentator. The work was executed around 1490 in Bruges, Belgium, by the appropriately named Master of Saint Augustine.
In five panels surrounding a dramatic yet solemn central scene of Augustine’s consecration as bishop in 396, key episodes from the scholar-saint’s life are depicted in meticulous detail: his ordination to the priesthood, preaching to his congregants (including his bishop and his mother, Monica), in deep discussion with his peers (perhaps about the Trinity), and on his deathbed, surrounded by followers of his rule. While the painting makes no overt reference to the Psalms, it was customary to chant psalms for the dying. The Psalter was the thread that ran through Augustine’s life, and he is reported to have spent his final hours meditating on the text.
Whether psalms were the tiniest devotional books that could be held in one hand, or the grand graduals made to be placed on an ambo for communal singing, the Morgan show includes some of the finest illuminated manuscripts from its collection, as well as those from England, France, Germany, Italy, and a few choice examples from American collections. All provide insight into how psalms were illustrated throughout Western Christendom and how these texts were valued and used by their original owners.
Among the outstanding examples is the Crusader Bible (a title referencing the bellicose nature of numerous images), one of the most comprehensive series of images of David’s life. Created in France, and almost certainly in Paris in the mid-13th century, the large-format paintings take their subjects from the two books of Samuel, which comprise the most complete picture of David’s life.
The energetic nature of the figures is striking in itself—the young David breaching the image’s frame as he leaps into Goliath’s space while swinging his slingshot to smite the giant; David dancing joyfully before the recovered Ark of the Covenant as it is enshrined in Jerusalem; and his illicit affair with Bathsheba, from his first sight of her bathing to her husband Uriah’s ruthlessly arranged death on the battlefield. The elegantly rendered figures attired in jewel-like colored garments, positioned against shining gold backgrounds, distinguish this Bible.
“Using the Psalms” discusses three aspects of such use by men and women, lay and religious. A little-known aspect of the Psalms is its apotropaic use, reciting psalms to ward off demons and other evils. In an age of deeply held belief in evil spirits and satanic forces, this use of psalms was a potent weapon; when David played his harp and sang his songs, the evil spirits fled from Saul.
An imposing 11th- to 13th-century reliquary, titled Triumphant Christ Trampling the Lion and the Dragon by the exhibit curators, directly quotes Psalm 90:13 (“Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet”). Like the sacred words of psalms, relics also had healing and protective powers; the inner frame of this object has numerous apertures for miracle-working fragments.
The final and arguably the most moving part of the exhibit is the prayer book of Thomas More (1478-1535). Imprisoned by Henry VIII in 1534 on a charge of treason (and executed the next year), More used the book with great devotion and discipline while struggling with his conscience. Like its owner, the prayer book is set apart from the surrounding objects and is a poignant coda to the exhibition, a quietly powerful artifact and a tangible link to one of the 16th century’s most subtle minds and political figures. Composed in English, More’s “Godly Meditation” is written in the margins of the Book of Hours section and attests to how intensely psalms (especially 26:11 and 72:24) molded his faith, even up to his condemnation and death.
As they were for Thomas More and countless others before and after his time, the Psalms have served as a source of consolation and intellectual inspiration, a spiritual refuge in difficult times. Through this exhibition, we can appreciate that there is no occasion that a psalm cannot match and no psalm that is inappropriate for an occasion. That is very useful indeed.
Pamela A. Lewis is a member of Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, in New York City. She writes on topics of faith.
