Devotion and Emotion: Moralized Joy in the Parma Hebrew Psalter

Abstract

In the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, Parma Psalter, a luxury, small format North Italian Hebrew codex, the depiction accompanying Psalm 149 features a strikingly rare scene: a tightly consolidated Jewish choir led by a gesticulating choirmaster. While previous scholarship has often mined this miniature for its empirical musicological evidence, this study employs methodologies from the history of emotions to decode the formal and conceptual strategies shaping the illumination. The inquiry analyzes the focalized truncation of the figures and their expressive emotional economy, and uncovers the parabolic inclusion of a female singer. The text addresses how the artist negotiated the theological problem of representing religious exultation, adhering to a prevailing mode of severe facial mimesis to signal rigorous spiritual governance over the carnality of joyful emotions. The resulting equilibrium of opposing values yields a visual oxymoron: close mouthed, austere choristers vocalizing a jubilant, eschatological psalmody. The study demonstrates that, by anchoring this performance in Jewish exegesis and paraliturgical nuptial customs, the illuminator refined and moralized an otherwise suspect sensation of joy into a legitimate, disciplined instrument of elevated private and communal devotion.