Book Of Hours Research Articles

Technical examination of the Emerson-White Book of Hours: observations on pigment preferences and media application in a Flemish manuscript

The Emerson-White Hours (MS Typ 443–443.1, Houghton Library, Harvard University) is a book of hours and missal produced in Valenciennes, Bruges, and Ghent in the late 1470s or early 1480s. There are seven full-page miniatures (many more have been removed), fourteen historiated borders, 28 historiated initials, and 24 calendar illustrations in tempera and gold. Text pages have shell gold trompe-l’oeil borders. The illuminators include Simon Marmion, the Master of the Houghton Miniatures (named for this manuscript), the Master of the Dresden Prayerbook, and one of the Ghent Associates. The goal of analysis was to determine if identification of palettes supported previous stylistic attributions. Focusing on the illuminations attributed to Simon Marmion and the Houghton Master, we demonstrate that technical analysis can support attribution by identifying differences in artists’ pigment preferences, pigment blending, and technique of paint application, particularly how the artists render shadows.

Lines from Chaucer’s Melibee in an English Book of Hours, c. 1425–50

Lines from Chaucer’s Melibee in an English Book of Hours, c. 1425–50

Colour identification, degradation processes and findings in a fifteenth-century Book of Hours: the case study of Cofre n.\xba 31 from Mafra National Palace

This paper presents the work done as part of a master dissertation on Conservation and Restoration at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Nova University of Lisbon. The “Cofre n.º 31” is a French fifteenth century Book of Hours from the Library of the National Palace of Mafra, Portugal. This prayer book, composed by illuminations and devotional texts, was in bad condition due mainly to the rebinding done between eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. According to the assessment of the state of conservation, the main damages observed in the text block and binding were: volume distortion, loose and deformed gatherings, distortion and cockling of folios, and damages in the illuminations. The pigments palette was identified by µ-EDXRF, FORS, µ-Raman and µ-FTIR, which is consistent with the materials used in the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, some particular application techniques such as mixtures and overlays were found, namely in the red colours and specifically in the metallic leaves. Some of these colours also show specific degradation: darkening of the mixture of minium and vermillion; silver tarnishing with strong migration into the parchment support, especially when associated with minium; detachment of azurite, lead white and its mixtures, such as flesh tones and light colours. The main deterioration processes associated to silver and pigments can be assigned to their reactions with humidity and air pollutants, to the grain size of the pigments and to mechanical factors related to the book binding and its use. The presence of different pigments application techniques in different groups of folios lead us to conclude for the existence of a pigments palette with variations, and finally, three different illuminators and two different techniques, confirming the proposals of art history studies.

Silver paints in medieval manuscripts: a first molecular survey into their degradation

The lack of comprehensive studies on silver paints in manuscripts is a handicap to new stabilization strategies and treatments. This work develops and tests a methodological approach for the study of the degradation of silver paints, at the molecular level, using as a case study a French Book of Hours dated from the 15th century from Mafra National Palace collection. In this paper, we show that the global equation commonly used by the cultural heritage community to describe the tarnishing of silver proves to be insufficient to understand the main factor causing its severe and extensive darkening in medieval illuminated manuscripts. This equation depicts the degradation of silver instantly with a sulphide containing species as H2S. Recent research has solidly proved that the first intermediate of silver oxidation is Ag2O. This theme will be presented in a forthcoming review. Within this framework, we selected four typologies of silver paints, all analysed by in situ techniques and four as microsamples; due to the very small size and fragility of the microsamples, new methods of sample preparation were developed and tested. The main research questions include: (1) understanding how silver-based colour are formed, disclosing its full stratigraphy; (2) define if the other compounds present, such as colour paints and the ground, may affect silver oxidation by stabilizing or accelerating it; (3) comprehend if it is possible to characterize the degradation products of silver paints with the methodology developed in this work, both in the bulk and at the interfaces between layers. Overall our results show that silver-based colours exhibit a complex stratigraphy that impacts its conservation condition. Further research at the molecular level is required on the correlation of the main components of the ground (binder and filler such as gypsum and calcium carbonate) and the paints that are applied as layers over or under the silver leaf. Our case studies have shown that both in situ analytical techniques and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis in the microsamples, provide relevant information on the silver colour stratigraphy. However, the information obtained studying cross-sections is more accurate. We consider that the study of the degradation mechanism of silver in medieval illuminated manuscripts will require the combination of both approaches; in situ methodologies support the relevance of the data acquired on the microsamples. Microsamples studies will make possible the acquisition of data that is fundamental to understand the darkening of silver paints and this, in turn, is essential to develop informed and sustainable conservation policies.

Printed Books of Hours from Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Texts, the Books, and the Survival of a Long-Lasting Genre. By Cristina Dondi

Printed Books of Hours from Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Texts, the Books, and the Survival of a Long-Lasting Genre. By Cristina Dondi

The Provocations of Orthodoxy: Lydgate and Late-Medieval Books of Hours in Literary Culture

Theologically conventional, books of hours nonetheless participate in cultures of formal and aesthetic experimentation that we would, under other circumstances, call literary. This article explores those provocations by examining the intersections of devotional and literary reading cultures visible in John Lydgate’s “Fifteen Joys of Our Lady,” a small poem that appears in a variety of manuscript contexts. One of these is a book of hours, British Library MS Egerton 3088. But the poem’s other manuscript contexts, ranging from a psalter (Oxford, Bodleian MS Lat. Liturgy. e 47) to an anthology of vernacular poetry (Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.21) reveal how malleable it is. Finally, another poem of Lydgate, “The Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Our Lady,” provides a vision not only of how devotional reading works, but also of devotional literary production itself.

Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts by Kathryn M. Rudy

Reviewed by: Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts by Kathryn M. Rudy A. R. Bennett Manuscript studies, Medieval Kathryn M. Rudy. Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized Their Manuscripts. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016. 416 pp. £34.95. ISBN: 978-1-78374-234-9. In this comprehensive study, Kathryn Rudy makes an important intervention into studies of late medieval manuscript culture. "Manuscript culture" as a large phenomenon is a difficult object of inquiry, not least because manuscripts themselves are not easily treated within the frame of a single discipline, be it literary or textual history, art history, or media history. More difficult still is an attempt to characterize a large corpus of these objects as a single phenomenon pointing to larger trends within the economy, ecology, and society of the late Middle Ages in northern Europe. What Rudy is attempting in this book is nothing short of a large-scale qualitative study of the largest arm of late medieval manuscript production: the dramatic rise in the creation and consumption of books of hours. Her study focuses on the Netherlands in the fifteenth century, but as a major production center for these objects whose style was very much in vogue across Northern Europe, the impact of Rudy's study extends as far as the Dutch and Flemish books themselves did. The difficulty of Rudy's intervention is that she is attempting to enact a complete shift in the current conversations and conclusions about books of hours in the fifteenth century with an exhaustive, nigh on catalogic exploration of a large quantity of manuscripts. This is not a case study. This is not an attempt to make an argument out of a localized context that, by its very localization, generates a handy sample of objects that can be used for [End Page 487] evidence. It is instead attempting to redefine a totality—a large, sprawling, century-(or-more-)long whole by examining quite literally hundreds of manuscripts that feature in her study in 286 images. Rudy is executing a comprehensive redefinition of late medieval Netherlandish book culture—and by extension those of other countries, like England, whose book cultures interacted or traded with it. Rudy simultaneously upends the disciplinary logic of literary studies—that books are about authors and readers—and art history—that books are about artists and patrons—in order to center the conversation around books as usable technologies, with users and interface adaptations and upgrades—we might even say "hacks." This is based upon her introduction of what she calls the "modular method," in which various pieces of books could be made and purchased in discrete units in a build-a-book fashion. The mere fact that manuscripts could be made in this way, and that they sometimes were, is not in itself a new discovery. Rather, Rudy pushes readers to absorb the magnitude of this element of devotional book production as more common than not, which understanding, if it does not entirely redefine how scholars are thinking about late medieval book culture, at the very least must open up another vein within that culture that shows distinct characteristics of production and use—which are often the same thing, we discover in Rudy's analysis. First, the modular method essentially notes that as literacy rates and demand for books of hours rose after 1390—a date that Rudy identifies as a marked turning point—book labor became increasingly divided and specialized even as it was de-skilled by the proto-assembly-line practices. Book pieces were sold in what Rudy calls "design units"—or modules of images, texts, or sets of either. These units could then be purchased piecemeal to include a vaguely standard set of texts (The Little Office of the Virgin, The Office of the Dead, the Seven Penitential Psalms, and a calendar) as well as a number of other options that provided opportunities for tailoring by adding particular prayers, indulgences, saints, or images. What is more, however, is that Rudy argues that this kind of tailoring was not simply enacted at first production, but that manuscripts remained vital and accretive, accumulating texts, images, and objects, sometimes for centuries. In Rudy's...

Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts by Kathryn M. Rudy

Reviewed by: Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts by Kathryn M. Rudy Christine Schott Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts By Kathryn M. Rudy. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2016. <https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product.php/477/piety-in-pieces--how-medieval-readers-customized-their-manuscripts?477> As the subtitle indicates, Piety in Pieces analyzes how and why readers altered their manuscripts in and around the fifteenth century. Kathryn Rudy draws on her extensive firsthand experience with manuscripts in the Netherlands, focusing on religious books (mainly books of hours) produced in that region after 1390, when book production methods shifted to accommodate the rapidly widening market. Open Book Publishers released Piety in Pieces in multiple formats: hard copy, eBook, and online (PDF and HTML). This review will focus on the effects of working with the book in these various formats. The overarching argument of Piety in Pieces is that, beginning in the late-fourteenth century and continuing through the fifteenth, manuscript production methods in the Netherlands developed from a holistic process into what Rudy calls the "modular" method, in which both lay and monastic ateliers produced texts in independent sections that could be arranged, added, or removed from the book at will. This method coincided with the rise of books of hours, in which only a few offices were standard while other elements, like the calendar (which would be adapted to reflect local saints), single-page miniatures, and especially indulgenced prayers, could be added and changed at practically any point in the manuscript's life. Because the interest in censorship has led other studies to focus on deletions from medieval books, Rudy takes up the less-studied subject of augmentations and additions, proceeding systematically through various kinds of alterations: those that did not require rebinding (like adding prayers into blank spaces), those that did require rebinding (like adding miniatures painted on individual leaves), and changes that were complex or unique in nature (like creating a composite book from sections either newly produced or previously bound elsewhere). The table of contents lists these kinds of interventions clearly, obviating the need for an exhaustive list here. Each type of augmentation is accompanied by a rich array examples and an analysis of the specific effects of the alteration: for instance, Heidelberg, UB, Cod. Pal. Germ. 148 intersperses [End Page 131] miniatures from a Biblia pauperum with the text of a psalter in order to integrate Old and New Testament theology (Part IV B, p. 233). In fact, Rudy's wealth of examples and her ability to posit the probable causes and motives underlying the changes made to the manuscripts constitute one of this book's particular contributions to the field of codicology and material studies. Rudy demonstrates the "close reading" techniques usually associated with the study of literature or art and applies them to the analysis of the details of decoration, mise-en-page, and concatenation in prayer books. These close readings in the body of Piety in Pieces culminate in a broader discussion in the final section, where Rudy posits that manuscripts like books of hours were seen as "expandable" entities, and that, contrary to our archivist instincts, writing in and altering them was seen as adding value rather than as defacement. The other particular advance made by this work is that it has been published in multiple formats, two of which (the PDF and the HTML) are available for free from the publisher's website. Each format has its advantages, both in general and in relation to the specific project of this book, and readers will want to decide on their chosen format based on their particular needs. ________ The hard copy book is, of course, the easiest to read for those who prefer looking at a page to looking at a screen. However, Piety in Pieces is a particularly image-rich work, and for scholars interested in studying these images, the hard copy is probably not the best format. The reason is twofold: first, the book contains many imbedded images, and these full-color photographs of manuscript pages are printed on regular mat rather than glossy paper, rendering the colors inaccurately. The images are also...

Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century by Myra D. Orth

Reviewed by: Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century by Myra D. Orth Susan Broomhall Orth, Myra D., Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century (A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 4), London, Harvey Miller, 2015; 2 vols; hardback; pp. 339 and 382; 55 colour, 321 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €250.00; ISBN 9781872501307. These volumes represent a lifetime’s contribution and dedication to the field of sixteenth-century manuscript illumination studies by their author. Myra D. Orth, who passed away in 2002, was a specialist in the French book arts whose doctoral research focused on the 1520 Hours Workshop, now known as the group around Antwerp-trained Noël Bellemare. At the time of her death, Orth had completed much of the catalogue and text, but in the subsequent years Joanna Fronska and Mary Rowse have supplied additional research, and Dierdre Jackson and Julie Hrischeva editorial support. Orth’s work displays her immense depth of knowledge for the period roughly contiguous with the reign of François I. Analysis of production in this period occupies the vast majority of the introduction, although the catalogue’s scope covers manuscript illumination up to 1570. The introduction does not discuss [End Page 231] developments that took place in these later periods after the 1540s, nor explain why 1570, rather than the end of Charles IX’s reign, forms the latter bookend. Orth argues that manuscript illumination warrants a significant place in the history of French art and seeks better collaboration between print and manuscript research. She emphasizes though that manuscripts were not simply pre-print works, with clear evidence that some authors actively preferred circulation by manuscript long after the arrival of print—a point now well acknowledged in the field of scribal studies. Moreover, the coming of the illustrated print book made luxury manuscripts the commissions of a courtly and ecclesiastical elite. As leaders of fashion, these clients demanded works that displayed arts at their height, and evidence of their engagement with authors demonstrates interests for new texts, and for interpretation of the new intellectual movements of the age through commissioned translations of classical and humanist texts. Sixteenth-century illuminations, therefore, combined native visual traditions with adoption of Italian art and literature, due to increased French interactions during the Italian Wars, as well as Flemish influences stemming from other figural art forms such as stained glass and tapestry. In the first volume, Orth also includes analysis of frames and borders, charting the artistic shift from tabernacle borders common in books of hours through to strap-work borders by the 1540s. She canvasses scholarly treatments of borders, of their interaction with the main image, their scope of artistic freedom and as an important intellectual apparatus to the text they accompanied. This is followed by a series of images discussed further in Volume 2’s catalogue entries: thirty-three full-page colour plates of key illuminations, and 270 monochrome images. Thirty-three black and white comparative illustrations are added, with the numbers of the catalogue entries to which they relate. A further section to Volume 1 includes short biographies, firstly of artists and scribes, then of authors and translators, and of patrons, dedicatees, and first owners of the manuscripts. Each is appended with available documentation and relevant literature. Finally, six full-page family trees are presented. Volume 2 is substantially concerned with the catalogue proper, including just four black and white illustrations. Here one hundred manuscripts are carefully presented, grouped by name of artists and in approximate chronological order. The examples represent both outstanding artistic merit and the nature of the subjects of interest at this era. As might be expected given Orth’s own expertise, a substantial number, twenty-one, concern the Bellemare group. The catalogue documents bindings, descriptions of miniatures with the text that they introduce, frames and borders, text decorations and any decorated initials, manuscripts’ collation, some samples of the text content, knowledge of a print publication, then descriptions of the script, page layout, and any irregularities or missing leaves. A further detailed commentary showcases Orth’s enormous knowledge, discussing the commission, author, date, and character of each text. She considers the sources of miniatures and offers stylistic comparisons, highlighting specific...

A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and St Mary's College by David T. Gura

Reviewed by: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and St Mary's College by David T. Gura John O. Ward Gura, David T., A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and St Mary's College, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2016; cloth; pp. xxxiv, 716; 8 colour plates; R.R.P. US $150.00; ISBN 9780268100605. 'This catalogue describes the 288 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts (69 codices and 219 fragments from 86 parent manuscripts) held by repositories in Notre Dame, Indiana' (p. 1). Those repositories are the University of Notre Dame Hesburgh Library (containing the majority of items), the University of Notre Dame Snite Museum of Art, and the Cushwa-Leighton Library at St Mary's College. 'Bound manuscripts, individual leaves, cuttings, and extracted binding fragments written in Western historical Latin scripts are included (and a single twelfth-century leaf in Greek). Charters and other documentary materials, letters, and fragments still in book bindings are excluded' (p. 1). The idea is to update the 1978 catalogue of James A. Corbett. The majority of manuscripts are liturgical (Books of Hours, Psalters, Missals, Graduals, Breviaries, Pontificals, Evangeliaries, Prayer-books, Antiphonaries, sermon collections, and Bibles), but there are also works by Peter Comestor, Cyprian, Boethius, Buridan, Pope Boniface VIII, Catherine of Siena, Isidore of Seville, Giles of Rome, Peter Lombard, and others. Two fragments are from the eleventh century, but the bulk of the items come from the fifteenth century. Italy and England provide the largest number of items; most are in Latin but a few are in Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, or Italian. There is a list of abbreviations and eight (colour) plates; a fifty-page introduction covering 'Formation of the Collection and Fonds in Use', 'Overview of the Collection', 'Utility of the Collection', 'Method of Citation', 'Format of Entries', 'Arrangement of Entries'. The catalogues of the various institutions themselves follow, and at the end we find Appendix 1 on 'Former and Permanent Hesburgh Library Shelfmarks', Appendix 2 on 'North American Manuscripts by State or Province', and Appendix 3 with 'Tables of Distribution of Watermarks'. [End Page 219] There is a bibliography, an 'Index of Manuscripts Cited', an 'Index of Incipits' and a 'General Index'. David T. Gura is the Curator of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts in the Hesburgh Library, and concurrent assistant professor in the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. In the opinion of the present reviewer, the Catalogue is comprehensive, professional, and utterly reliable. The remarks on the uses to which the collection can be put (pp. 41–42) will interest teachers and lecturers at tertiary academies. John O. Ward The University of Sydney Copyright © 2018 John O. Ward

Verses on the Trinity Ascribed to John Skelton

Among the works listed as ‘Doubtful’ in the standard account of the Skelton canon by Kinsman and Yonge, is a series of prayers, each of two stanzas, to each person of the Trinity.1 The information about these prayers that they give is both inaccurate and incomplete. They describe these prayers as in rhyme royal stanzas; they are in 8-line stanzas rhyming ababbcbc, 48 lines in all. They note the appearance of these prayers in British Library MS Add. 20059, fols 100v–101,2 where they occur without a title or internal headings or attribution, and their appearance in Richard Lant’s edition, Certain bokes compiled by mayster Skelton ([1545]; STC 22598), sig. Cvr–v. But they do not note that they are also in Pithy, pleasaunt and profitable works of maister Skelton (1568; STC 22608), sigs avii–viii, nor that they appear in a manuscript formerly in the possession of J. Meade Falkner, sold at Sotheby’s, 12–14 December 1932, lot 86. This is a paper manuscript of 129 leaves described there as a Book of Hours. This poem, titled ‘A praier to the Father and to the Sonne, and to the holy Ghost compiled & made by the poet Skelton’ is on fols 100v–102v. This manuscript was subsequently in the collection of Robert S Pirie. In his sale at Sotheby’s, New York, 2–4 December 2015, it was lot 661 (where it is described as a prayer book and dated ‘c. 1580’). It is now MS Taylor 23 in Princeton University Library.3

24 Hours in Contemporary Art: Reflections on an Exhibition About Time

Abstract Time and its representation have been historically fascinating, as Books of Hours, allegories, and artistic calendars testify. This attention to time has become increasingly more urgent recently, as studies confirm. The exhibition Dall’oggi al domani (From Today till Tomorrow), held in Rome in 2016, focused on the discrete single day, with its date and its 24- hour rhythm. The article addresses the main aspects of that exhibition, its historical background, the conceptual attraction for calendars’ grids, the interest of artists in the everyday, the processing of daily digital traces, time-lapse, and 24/7 formats. Artworks were displayed according to their affinity towards time rhythms, time words, dates, calendars, and diaries. Although the itinerary of the show was not chronological, some historical clusters emerged: for example, the importance of the pivotal year 1966 in time consideration.

Religious Practice and Experimental Book Production: Text and Image in an Alternative Layman’s “Book of Hours” in Print and Manuscript

The Devote ghetiden vanden leven ende passie Jhesu Christi (Devout Hours on the Life and Passion of Jesus Christ) provides an intriguing case study of text and image relationships in the transitional age between manuscript and print. The 1483 and 1484/5 editions of the Devote ghetiden were an innovative commercial endeavor by the prolific printer Gerard Leeu. These editions of a new vernacular religious text, flexible in use and primarily aimed at laymen, combined with no less than eighty-four full-page illustrations, offered the lay reader an unprecedented level of visual material for private devotion located in the same object as the text. Changes in both composition and page layout, which occurred when text and image were refashioned in a different medium, altered the reader’s meditative experience, reflecting not only the multiform character and individuation of religious practice on the eve of the Reformation but also the influence of printed books on late medieval textual and visual culture as a whole.

A Phillipe Pigouchet Book of Hours in Eighteenth-Century Antwerp

This article describes a copy of a Pigouchet book of hours for the use of Rome, dated 8 August 1497 (ISTC ih00387000). The copy includes a page-long note by the Antwerp-based monk and librarian Joannes Petrus Reyns (1722–1801), summarizing his attempts to discover something of the book’s history. This edition is notable for the various changes made to the title-page of six of the eight surviving copies: these changes are collated in this note.

Reconsidering the Provenance of the Henry VII and Margaret Tudor Book of Hours

On 8 August 1503, Henry VII’s eldest daughter Margaret Tudor married James IV, King of Scotland, in a symbolic union of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between England and Scotland. In celebration of this union and her new status as Queen of Scotland, Margaret received the gifts of two luxurious Books of Hours; one from her new husband and the other from her father. Whilst some research has been conducted into the iconography and origins of these personal prayer books, consideration of the provenance and ownership history of these Books of Hours can shed new light on the character, personal relationships, political relationships, and gift-giving practices performed by Margaret Tudor at the Scottish Renaissance court. Substantially more is known of the provenance of the Book of Hours commissioned by James IV (also known as the ‘Hours of James IV of Scotland’),1 and presented to Margaret as an opulent marriage gift in 1503. In folio 188 of the text, an inscription made in Margaret’s own hand helps us to trace later ownership of the text: ‘Madame I pray your grace / Remember on me when ye / loke upon this bok / Your lofing syster / Margaret’.2 From this inscription, we can infer that at some point following the death of her husband, James IV, in September 1513, Margaret passed the prayer book to her sister, Mary Tudor, who went on to marry the King of France. Historical accounts then note that by the late seventeenth century, the Book of Hours came into the possession of Pope Leopold I, and is now housed at the Austria National Library, Vienna.3

Exemplars: Medieval Manuscripts in Montreal and the McGill University Library Collection of Books of Hours

The Books of Hours held by the McGill University Library were mostly acquired as exemplars of medieval books for the Library Museum begun by the university librarian, Dr. Gerhard R. Lomer, in 1920. This study documents their acquisitions in the context of the acquisition of other materials for the Library Museum until 1947, when Lomer retired. It examines the context in which the Library Museum was created: the precedent set by the King’s Library at the British Museum, the Book Production Gallery of the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the John Rylands Library in Manchester. In particular, the parallel with the Museum at the Art Association of Montreal established by F. Cleveland Morgan is noted. It also discusses three earlier Montreal collections that included Books of Hours: the Montreal Caxton Exhibition of 1877 and the private collections of Gerald E. Hart and J. B. Learmont. Finally, this study proposes that the Library Museum should be seen as a history of the book museum, one that traces book culture across time and civilizations.&#x0D; Prof. Gerhard R. Lomer, conservateur de la Bibliothèque de l’Université McGill, a commencé à acquérir en 1920 la plupart des Livres d’heures conservés à la Bibliothèque comme exemples de livres médiévaux pour le Musée de la Bibliothèque. Ce travail rend compte de l’acquisition des livres d’heures dans le contexte de l’acquisition d’autres types de documents pour le Musée de la Bibliothèque, jusqu’à la retraite de Lomer en 1947. Par ailleurs, ce travail examine le contexte de la création du Musée comprenant : le précédent établi par la bibliothèque du Roi au Musée Britannique; la Galerie portant sur l’histoire du livre du Musée Victoria et Albert; ainsi que la bibliothèque John Rylands à Manchester. On note le parallèle proposé par F. Cleveland Morgan avec le Musée de l’Association d’art de Montréal. Ce travail présente aussi trois collections antérieures comprenant de Livres d’heures; l’Exposition Caxton de Montréal en 1877; et les collections privées de Gerald E. Hart et J.B. Learmont. Enfin, ce travail laisse entendre que l’on doit considérer le Musée de la Bibliothèque comme une histoire des musées du livre et qui retrace la culture du livre à travers différentes périodes et civilisations.

Reynold, Suzanne. A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library at Holkham Hall, vol. 1: Manuscripts from Italy to 1500, part 1: Shelfmarks 1–399. Manuscripta Publications in Manuscript Research. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. xxiv, 389 pp. Illus. €170.00 (ISBN 978-2-503-52900-4).

Reynold, Suzanne. <i>A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library at Holkham Hall, vol. 1: Manuscripts from Italy to 1500, part 1: Shelfmarks 1–399</i>. Manuscripta Publications in Manuscript Research. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. xxiv, 389 pp. Illus. €170.00 (ISBN 978-2-503-52900-4).

Reconsidering Spiritual Life Education during the Medieval Period through Jeanne d’Evreaux’s Book of Hours

Reconsidering Spiritual Life Education during the Medieval Period through Jeanne d’Evreaux’s Book of Hours

Contextualising the Interloper: Consistency and Inconsistency in Rylands Latin MS 164

Rylands Latin MS 164 is one of over forty manuscript books of hours in the John Rylands Library. It was made in France in the middle of the fifteenth century and its extensive, high quality illumination associates its production with the worshop of the so-called Bedford Master. However, it has not been the subject of any sustained published research and consequently the significance of variations in the mise-en-page of the books pages has not been scrutinised. This article focuses on the variations in two replacement pages, one within the calendar and one beginning the Penitential Psalms, and in the case of the page beginning the Penitential Psalms considers whether the replacement could have been made by Sir Gregory Osborne Page-Turner, the owner of Rylands Latin MS 164 in the early nineteenth century.

Music, Silence, and the Senses in a Late Fifteenth-Century Book of Hours

AbstractAlthough it is common in the musicological literature to compare decorated music books with books of hours, studies addressing the musical features of books of hours are rare. This article considers musical features in the decoration of a book of hours made by leading illuminators in Ferrara ca. 1469. Images appearing in books of hours are considered to have had an exemplary and meditative function in relation to devotional practice; therefore, this study asks what the reader was intended to learn from musical images, drawing conclusions about the alignment of the senses and the significance of music in fifteenth-century religious experience.