International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anne-Catherine Baudoin
École normale supérieure, Département des sciences de l’Antiquité, Paris, France; 
[e-mail]
Joseph of Arimathea as the “Blessed Man who Walks Not in the Counsel 
of the Ungodly”: The Visual Exegesis of Psalm 1 in the Serbian Psalter
Joseph of Arimathia stands at the very beginning of the Serbian Psalter (Munich, BSB, 
Cod. slav. 4, 14
th
c.), facing the beginning of Psalm 1. He appears to be holding the shroud. The 
identification of the character and the cloth and his standing as an impersonation of the “Blessed 
Man” are made explicit by the Slavic inscription that runs on the right of the figure. Therefore, the 
illustration is providing the reader with a typological interpretation of the New Testament: Joseph is 
seen as a fulfillment of the Psalmic prophecy; he is the “blessed man who walks not in the counsel 
of the ungodly” (Ps 1 :1). 
Interpreting the Psalms by drawing New Testaments figures in the margin is common in 
Byzantine Psalters. However, the visual exegesis offered by the Serbian Psalter stands cleary apart 
from the illustrative tradition as well as from the most common patristic exegesis of Psalm 1: it is 
usually claimed that the Man is Christ himself or the – anonymous – believer made righteous by 
Christ, and that is how Psalters are usually illustrated. 
Therefore two questions can be raised: are there other iconographic witnesses of Joseph of 
Arimathea linked to the first verse of Psalm 1 in Byzantine Psalters? Are there any textual attestations 
to an exegesis of Joseph as the “Blessed Man”? This paper will address both questions by focusing on 
iconographic and literary sources. 
The first question has been partially answered by Ševčenko in the commentary to the Faksimile 
Ausgabe of the Serbian Psalter (Wiesbaden, 1978); this material will be the ground for a comparison 
of different psalters. Iconographical study of this theme will also include a reverse use of the link 
between the figure of Joseph and Psalm 1 – not only Joseph as an illustration for Ps 1:1 but also Ps 
1:1 as a biblical quote under a depiction of Joseph. 
No extant study has been devoted to the presence of Joseph of Arimathea in the exegesis of 
Psalm 1. To Ps.-Athanasius mentionned by Ševčenko should be added a reference by Tertullian 
(Spect. 3), both of them transmitted by or belonging to Latin literature. Among Greek texts the link 
between Joseph and Psalm 1 is displayed in apocryphal literature, mostly in the Narratio Iosephi. 
Hence the Serbian Psalter appears to have preserved a typological reading that was not kept in main 
stream Byzantine literature but was textually transmitted on the side.

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