Fig. 22 gives the bare design of one of the historiated initials in this lovely manuscript, the capital _B_ at the beginning of the Psalms. In the upper part is the scene of David watching Bathsheba bathing; and below is a kneeling figure of the king adoring Christ in Majesty. No reproduction can give any notion of the exquisitely delicate painting, or of the splendour of its burnished gold and colours. The historical scenes from the Old Testament have, after the usual fashion of the time, the Hebrew warriors and their enemies represented as mediaeval knights in armour. [Illustration: Fig. 22. A page from the _Psalter_ of Saint Louis, written about the year 1260, by a French scribe.] _Archaism of detail._ It should, however, be observed that in this and many other French and English miniatures of the time the ancient warriors are represented not in the armour of the actual date of the execution of the manuscript, but with the dress and arms of a couple of generations earlier. The monastic artists were not skilled archaeologists, but they wished to suggest that the scene they were painting was one that had happened long ago, and therefore they introduced what was probably the oldest armour they were acquainted with--that of their grandfathers' or great-grandfathers' time. This is an important point, as in many cases a wrong judgment has been formed as to the date of a manuscript from the mistaken supposition that contemporary dress and armour were represented in it. It is just the same with the thirteenth century art of England. Paintings executed for Henry III. in his Palace at Westminster had representations of knights in the armour of William the Conqueror's time or a little later. In later times, especially in the fifteenth century, this _naïve_ form of archaeology was given up, and the heroes of ancient and sacred history are represented exactly like kings and warriors of the artist's own time. _MS. Bibles._ The historiated Bibles of Paris in the thirteenth century were equal in beauty and very similar in style to those of the Anglo-Norman miniaturists, but they do not appear to have been produced in such immense quantities as they were in the more northern monasteries. In the fifteenth century the influence of the Church tended to check the study of the Bible on the part of the laity, and very few manuscripts of the Bible were then written. Their place was to some extent taken by the _Books of Hours_, enormous numbers of which were produced in France and the Netherlands, all through the fifteenth century; see page 141. _French illuminated Manuscripts of the XIVth and XVth centuries._ To this class belong a great many of the magnificent manuscripts of _the Apocalypse_ which have been described under the head of Anglo-Norman manuscripts. No hard and fast line can be drawn between the manuscript styles of Normandy and the northern provinces of France. _Archaism of style._