The Saint Florian Psalter is known as one of the most valuable and mysterious Medieval manuscripts in Polish collections. Now that an illustration of Yoda ‒ or is it Nosferatu? ‒ has been spotted on one of its pages, it may become even more fascinating to experts.

Written between the late 14th and early 15th centuries in Latin, Polish, and German, the manuscript of the Saint Florian Psalter consists of the Biblical Book of Psalms, and is one of the first historical testimonies of the Polish language.

The Psalter also happens to be one of the most mysterious manuscripts in Polish collections: we don't know where, when, and for whom it was written. We have no clue who the authors of the translations were. The early history of the manuscript from when it was created until it was bought by a German burgher in 1557, is also unknown.

Re-discovered in the 19th century in the St. Florian Monastery in Sankt Florian, Austria, the manuscript immediately became a sensation, causing controversy among scholars. Bought by Poland in 1931, the codex luckily survived the war. Evacuated along with other precious artworks via Romania, it eventually ended up in Canada, where it only returned from in 1956.

Today, many scholars believe that the manuscript was created at the Kraków's Wawel scriptorium and initially belonged to a female member of the House of Anjou, and could have been owned by Jadwiga of Poland. But the mysteries abound.

Yoda, Nosferatu, Gandalf...

A separate enigma surrounds the origins and meanings of the beautiful miniatures meticulously illuminated on the margins of the manuscript. While some consider them to be astrological symbols, and others see them as a kind of aide-memoire designed to facilitate the mnemonic retention of the text, for others the figures are strangely reminiscent of popular figures known from 20th-century pop culture like Master Yoda, Nosferatu, and Gandalf the Grey.

One such mysterious figure can be found on page 28, between images of a bluebird and a smiling lion. The strange figure was already described by Władysław Podlacha, an editor of the 1939 book edition of the manuscript, who called it ‘an en face bust of a bearded monk dressed in a pink hooded cloak and with donkey ears’.

Had the Polish scholar lived in the later part of the 20th century, he would have hardly been able to shake off the uncanny resemblance between the 'donkey-eared monk' and one of the Star Wars saga's heroes, that is, Master Yoda.

But the same figure combines also a compelling similarity to quite a different figure, that is, Nosferatu – Count Orlok, as impersonated by Max Schreck in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's famous 1922 vampire horror movie. Which after all may not be so surprising considering a rich Polish vampirical tradition.

The Dark Side of Yoda

So what does the Medieval manuscript figure have to do with a pop culture hero? That is, apart from the fact that they're both illuminated?

Interestingly, this is not the first instance of a supposed Yoda appearing in a Medieval manuscript. In 2015, a similar creature made its way around not just social media but also professional magazines. As Łukasz Kozak from the Polona Digital Library explains, a similar green-coloured figure with impressively protruding ears was painted in a 13th-century copy of the so-called Decretals of Gregory IX, which since 1340 has been kept in London.

Because the manuscript was kept in St. Bartholomew Church in Smithfield, it has traditionally been called ‘The Smithfield Decretals’, a name the proponents of the Medieval Yoda hypothesis soon transformed into ‘Sith-field Decretals’, explains Kozak.

However, no one since has attempted a more thorough analysis of the possible provenance and ontological status of this mysterious figure. According to Kozak, who is also the editor of a popular review of Medieval iconography, Discarding Images, the hints pointing to the possible answer are not to be found in the immediate textual surroundings – the legal deliberations of the Decretals – nor the psalms of the Saint Florian Psalter (Psalms 17 and 18 in Vulgate).

Kozak points to the figure of another similar (brown-skinned, bearded, and donkey-eared) creature found in the Decretals, and suggests that what we're dealing with here is a wholly independent visual story, not connected in any way with the Decretals' main topic. Namely, an illustration of the popular Medieval story of Theophilus of Adana, a penitent saint from the 6th century who according to the legend, made a deal with the Devil but eventually, with the help of the Virgin Mary, managed to descend to Hell and reclaim the contract and his soul. As Kozak explains, the bearded, donkey-eared creature from the margins of the Smithfields Decretals is likely Satan himself accepting Theophilus' declaration.

This, while only a hypothesis, could suggest that the Yoda/Nosferatu creature from Saint Florian Psalter may also be a representation of the Devil from the same Medieval legend, as many of the Christian iconographic schemes, associations, and legends likely were shared across the whole of Medieval Europe, from England to Poland.

But, as readers of Discarding Images surely know, the fun of spotting the strangest and most outrageous creatures on the pages of Medieval manuscripts should not be spoiled by too much academic pedantry. The Saint Florian Psalter, available now in digital form at the Polona Polish National Library (here), offers plenty of such finds, from Yoda and Nosferatu to Gandalf the Grey.

Author: Mikołaj Gliński, 20th April 2016, Source: blog.polona.pl.