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The essay is a plea for ending the hunt for the message inscribed into the final shaping of the Psalter. After the psalms had to suffer from exaggerated form-critical categorisation and other approaches, the Psalter is not in need of having its content labelled with inadequate generalising terms. The complexity of the psalms does not favour this approach. Instead, the psalms are waiting to be appreciated as textual individuals and each psalm as part of its special position in a manageable cluster of texts. In view of the Psalter as a whole the predominance of petition and praise, manifest in the title Tehillim, deserves closer theological attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates how two thirteenth-century T-O maps in the British Library Map Psalter interact with their textual setting. The maps occupy the two sides of a single folio. On the recto is a pictorial world map with 91 place names; on the verso, a list map indicates 75 provinces and 77 cities within Asia, Africa, and Europe. The maps occupy a unique place within the history of medieval cartography because they are the only mappaemundi extant within a Book of Psalms. The specific relationship between the maps and the texts of the psalms is, however, less studied. I propose that the maps allude to the content of the psalms and complement images in the historiated initials, cultivating exegesis, prayer, and contemplation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]