Wolfenbüttel Psalter of Martin Luther Facsimile Edition

A book of the Psalms became, in Martin Luther’s hands, a workshop of interpretation. Preserved today in Wolfenbüttel as Cod. Guelf. 71.4 Theol. 4°, this volume is a Latin psalter printed in Wittenberg in 1513 and transformed by Luther’s own annotations into a document of exceptional intellectual and historical force. More than a devotional book, it stands at the threshold of the Reformation, recording the labor of a theologian reading, teaching, and testing Scripture line by line.

A Book at the Dawn of Reform

The psalter was prepared in connection with Luther’s first lectures on the Psalms at the University of Wittenberg, delivered between 1513 and 1515. Printed by Johann Rhau-Grunenberg, it was designed as a working text, with generous spacing and brief summaries that made commentary possible. In this sense, the volume belongs equally to the history of the book and to the history of ideas: it is a printed artifact deliberately opened to handwritten thought.

Gloss, Page, and Presence

Its most striking feature is the density of Luther’s interlinear and marginal glosses, which accompany all 150 Psalms. These annotations are not casual marks but sustained acts of exegesis, at times so extensive that they rival the printed text itself. The manuscript’s visual character thus emerges from tension and dialogue: fixed type on paper, and beside it the restless movement of a mind in formation. Later added portraits, including images associated with Lucas Cranach the Elder, also testify to the volume’s layered afterlife.

Meaning and Legacy

The Wolfenbüttel Psalter preserves the moment when reading became argument, and prayer became theology. As one of the major surviving autographs linked to Luther’s early teaching, it remains an indispensable monument to the textual culture of reform; since 2015, it has also been recognized as part of UNESCO’s Memory of the World heritage relating to the early Reformation.