Litany with collects
Texts and Images
The pages containing the Litany (a series of invocations for mercy and deliverance addressed to the Three Persons of the Trinity, the Virgin Mary and a long list of saints) are framed within twin arches with pillars supported by beasts and hybrids, and carrying roofs and turrets. Religious feasts or busts of saints are depicted in the side borders beside their mention in the Litany. Side borders with busts accompany the collects (short prayers).
The presence of St Clare (canonised in 1255) in the Litany, but not in the Calendar, and the absence of St Hedwig (canonised in 1267) from both texts suggests that the Breslau Psalter was completed between 1255 and 1267. The inclusion of some twenty female saints in the Litany would have supported the devotions of the woman for whom the manuscript was made.
The prayer and image of the manuscript’s patron
This prayer uses female grammatical forms and is accompanied on the left by the image of the woman for whom it was composed. The text mentions famulum tuum Heinricum (‘your servant Henry’) and most probably refers to Henry III, Duke of Breslau (1248-1266). The woman who commissioned the Psalter may have been his mother, Anna Premyslid, or his wife, Helen of Saxony.