Beatus initial

Beatus vir, "Blessed is the man ..." in Latin, are the first words in the Vulgate Bible of both Psalm 1 and Psalm 112 (in the general modern numbering; it is Psalm 111 in the Greek Septuagint and the Vulgate). In each case, the words are used to refer to frequent and significant uses of these psalms in art, although the two psalms are prominent in different fields, art in the case of Psalm 1 and music in the case of Psalm 112.

Altogether the phrase occurs 14 times in the Vulgate text, eight times in the Book of Psalms, and four in the rest of the Old Testament, with neither of the New Testament uses from the Gospels.

Psalm 1 naturally begins the text of the Book of Psalms. In illuminated manuscript psalters this start was traditionally marked by a large Beatus initial for the "B" of "Beatus", and the two opening words are often much larger than the rest of the text. Between them these often take up a whole page. Beatus initials have been significant in the development of manuscript painting, as the location of several developments in the use of initials as the focus of painting. As the "initial par excellence it stimulated the ornamentalizing impulse of the medieval artist to ever-increasing heights of fantasy". The 10th-century Anglo-Saxon Ramsey Psalter initial illustrated here is the first known to use the "lion mask" on the bar of the "B".

In psalters of the Early and High Middle Ages there were often similarly large initials at the start of Psalm 51 (52, "Q" for "Quid gloriaris") and Psalm 102 (101, "D" for "Domine"), marking traditional groupings of the psalms. Other divisions of text produced different groupings, of eight or ten groups, but all had a group beginning at Psalm 1. Often these initials were the only major illumination in the manuscript, as in the Stowe Psalter. In bibles the first letter of each book was also enlarged and illuminated in grand manuscripts, producing more beatus initials.

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