Parchment, i+146+i leaves c. 135 × 95 mm, foliated lightly in pencil on every 10th leaf, skipping a leaf after fol. 120 so that ‘130’ appears on fol. 131, ‘140’ on fol. 141, and ‘145’ on the last leaf; collation: 1[8] (fols. 1–8), 2[4+1] (fols. 9–13; fol. 13 is a single-leaf miniature); 3–6[8] (fols. 14–45), 7[4+1] (fols. 46–50), 8–10[8] (fols. 51–74); 11–15[8] (fols. 75–114), 16[6-1] (the last leaf is cancelled; fols. 115–119); 17–18[8] (fols. 120–135), 19[10-1] (one leaf is apparently cancelled without loss of text; fols. 136–144), 20[2] (fols. 145–146); catchwords throughout except at the ends of codicological units, by more than one scribe, indicative of successive rebindings; ruled in ink for 16 lines per page, the ruled space c. 80 × 50 mm; written by at least two scribes (with a clear change to paler ink and more angular script at the beginning of Quire 17) in two sizes of angular gothic semi-quadrata script, with rubrics written in dark red in Picard French or in paler red ink in Latin in a more regular and formal textura quadrata; illuminated with ONE FULL-PAGE MINIATURE (c. 80 × 50 mm), ONE SMALLER MINIATURE, TEN SEVEN-LINE HISTORIATED INITIALS EACH WITH A GOLD BACKGROUND AND ACCOMPANIED BY FOUR-SIDED BAR- AND IVY-LEAF BORDERS, the borders incorporating exotic birds, butterflies, a dog, rabbit, etc., one four-line puzzle initial in gold and blue with red and blue flourishing at the start of the litany, three-line initials alternately gold with blue flourishing or blue with red flourishing at the beginning of some major texts e.g. the Office of the Dead, similar two-line initials at the beginning of psalms, hymns, prayers, etc., and for the KL monograms in the calendar, similar one-line initials to verses, and line-fillers in gold and blue. With some wear and dirt, the illumination often smudged, but still attractive and in fair condition.
Bound between pasteboards covered with 17th(?)-century dark brown leather, the covers blind- and gilt-tooled (most of the gilding now lost) with a heraldic shield within or superimposed on the centre-piece, surrounded by a panel with fleurons at the corners, and fillets; vestiges of two clasps at the fore-edge; the flat spine with three 19th-century black leather title-pieces lettered in gilt capitals, ‘Officium / B. M. / Virginis’, ‘Manuscriptum’, and ‘Sæc. XIV’. Housed in a late 20th-century dark blue morocco velvet-lined box signed in gilt capitals ‘Made by Sangorski & Sutcliffe London England’, the spine lettered in gilt capitals ‘Hours | of the Virgin | French c.1350’.
Text
[Item 1 occupies Quires 1–2]
1. (fols. 1r–12v) Calendar. The saints do not point to a single town, but indicate the dioceses of Tournai, Cambrai, and adjacent areas: Aldegund, of Mauberge (20 Jan.), Autbert, bishop of Cambrai and Arras (7 Feb., 13 Dec.), Landericus, venerated at Mons and Tournai (17 April), Ursmar, venerated at Cambrai and Ghent (18 April), Landelin, venerated at Arras, Cambrai, and Tournai (15 June), Gaugeric, bishop and principal saint of Cambrai, also venerated at Arras and Tournai (12 Aug.), Humbert, venerated at Cambrai (6 Sept.), Benedicta, venerated at St-Quentin (8 Oct.), Amatus, bishop of Sens, whose relics were at Douai (19 Oct.), and Amandus, bishop of Maastricht, whose relics were at St-Amand (24 Oct.). The only non-universal saint written in red is Vincent, abbot of Soignies, who was venerated at Cambrai and Tournai (14 July). Most entries consist of just the name and type of saint, without ‘Sci’ or ‘Sce’, e.g. ‘Aldegundis virg.’, ‘Autberti epi. & conf.’.
[Item 2 occupies Quires 3–10]
2. (fols. 14r–74v) Hours of the Virgin, Use of Arras.
[Item 3 occupies Quires 11–16]
3. (fols. 75r–119v) Office of the Dead, Use of Tournai (the responsories correspond to Ottosen’s nos. 14-72-24, 32-57-51, 68-89-38), preceded by a rubric: ‘Chi apres sensievent vegilles pour les trespasses de chest siecle.’
[Items 4–6 occupy Quires 17–20]
4. (fols. 120r–130v) The Seven Penitential Psalms: ‘Ici apres sensievent lez .vij. psaulmes. En Latin.’
5. (fols. 131r–136v) Litany of saints: ‘Ici apres sensient la letanie’. Mark is spelled ‘Marche’; George is written twice, between Quintinus and Lambertus; Salvius (presumably the bishop of Amiens, as he is also in the calendar at 4 May) is third among the confessors, followed by Amandus and Amatus (cf. calendar); the last two virgins are Aldegund and Waldetrudis (abbesses of Maubeuge and Mons, respectively; only the first of whom appears in the calendar). The rarest saint is ‘Sancta Berta’, perhaps referring to Bertha of Marbais, first abbess of the Cistercian convent at Marquette, near Lille, and about 15 miles / 25km west-northwest of Tournai.
6. (fols. 137r–156v) The Fifteen Gradual Psalms: ‘Les xv psaumes’.
Illumination
One full-page miniature, on a diapered ground, within a narrow gold frame with gold ivyleaf sprigs at the corners, depicting: (fol. 13v) The Presentation in the Temple: Mary, accompanied by a handmaid, hands the infant Jesus across an altar to Simeon, attended by an acolyte.
One small miniature: (fol. 75r) Office of the Dead. Funeral Service, with three monks chanting over a bier on which stands a cross, surrounded by candles.
Ten historiated initials:
1. (fol. 14r) Matins. The Annunciation: Gabriel kneels before Mary, who crosses her arms in front of her chest, he holds a scroll inscribed ‘Ave gratia plena dominus te[cum]’, a lily in a pot in the foreground.
2. (fol. 35v) Lauds. The Visitation: Elizabeth, wearing a veil and with a scalloped halo, touches the pregnant belly of Mary, whose blond hair hangs free.
3. (fol. 45v) Prime. The Nativity: the Virgin lies on a rich canopied bed, suckling the infant, with Joseph at the foot of the bed.
4. (fol. 51r) Terce. The Adoration of the Magi: the eldest Magus kneels to present his gift, the middle one points (to the Star of Bethlehem, not shown).
5. (fol. 55r) Sext. The Massacre of the Innocents: Herod directing a man with a sword, who holds one infant upside-down by its leg, another dead on the ground.
6. (fol. 58v) None. The Annunciation to the Shepherds: one shepherd plays bagpipes for this sheep, another with a houlette raises his arms in surprise at the appearance of the angel.
7. (fol. 62r) Vespers. The Presentation in the Temple: a simpler version of the full-page miniature.
8. (fol. 69v) Compline. The Flight into Egypt: the Virgin suckles the infant while Joseph leads the donkey.
9. (fol. 120r) The Seven Penitential Psalms. The Last Judgment: Christ sitting on a rainbow, displaying his wounds, while souls emerge from the ground below.
10. (fol. 137r) The Fifteen Gradual Psalms. King David(?) offering up his soul at an altar.
The sequence of the Infancy scenes in the Hours of the Virgin is unique, because it places the Annunciation to the Shepherds after the Adoration of the Magi and the Massacre of the Innocents. The normal French sequence is: Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Shepherds, Magi, Presentation, Flight into Egypt, and Coronation of the Virgin, while the standard Flemish cycle is the same but has the Massacre and the Flight as the final two scenes. There are several variants of the Flemish cycle: one reverses the order of the final two; another transposes the Nativity and Shepherds; a third transposes the Magi and Presentation; and so on. The various permutations have been studied in detail by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe: ‘The Cyclical Illustrations of the Little Hours of the Virgin in Pre-Eyckian Manuscripts’, in Flanders in a European Perspective: Manuscript Illumination around 1400 in Flanders and Abroad, ed. by Maurits Smeyers and Bert Cardon (Peeters, 1995), pp. 285–96; and ‘Le cycle de l’Enfance des petites heures de la Vierge dans les livres d’heures des Pays-Bas méridionaux: un bilan intermédiaire’, in Manuscripten en miniaturen: studies aangeboden aan Anne S. Korteweg bij haar afscheid van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Walburg Pers, 2007), pp. 355–65.
Artist
Dominique Vanwijnsberghe kindly informs us that the illuminator is the artist known as ‘the Master of Morgan 947’ or ‘the Master of the Morgan Life of Saint Margaret’, named after a prayer book including a Life of Saint Margaret, which probably once formed part of a Book of Hours, thought to have been produced in northern France c. 1400 (New York, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.947). Vanwijnsberghe reproduces two of its miniatures with a brief commentary in his «Moult bons et notables»: L’enluminure tournaisienne à l’époque de Robert Campin (1380–1430) (Peeters, 2007), p. 213. He observes that the style is related to that of the illuminator Jean Semont of Tournai, the main focus of his book, and that the text of the French Vie de St Margaret in the Morgan volume is the same as that in the Prayerbook of Robert de Wavrin, illuminated by Semont. He also observes that the style is striking for its combination of traditional French iconographies with an innovative vigour more characteristic of manuscripts illuminated in the Southern Netherlands; Tournai was, after all, precisely on the border between the two regions. What makes Tournai so important as a centre of art in the decades around 1400 is that ‘it was during these crucial years that the Tournai painter Robert Campin revolutionised courtly painting and established, along with Jan van Eyck, the foundations of the northern Renaissance’ (op. cit., p. 413). Despite the liturgical and other connections with Tournai, the place of production of the manuscript remains open to further research. In Sandra Hindman and Gaia Grizzi, Manuscript Paintings and the Art of Collecting (Les Enluminures, 2025), no. 13 pp. 72–75, it is suggested that the Morgan Library volume described below was illuminated in the same workshop as three other Books of Hours: Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 822; Warsaw, Biblioteka Narodowa, MS Boz 29; and the Bute-Soissons Hours (sold at Sotheby’s, 13 June, 1983, lot 6, and subsequently dismembered). The first two are both of the Use of Thérouanne, in the far north-west of France while the Bute Hours are of the Use of Soissons, much further south, between Amiens and Reims. This does not clarify the place of production of our manuscript, and indeed it perhaps suggests that the artist as itinerant around various northern French cities.
Sister-volume
The present manuscript is not only by the same illuminator as the Morgan Library Prayerbook, but was originally part of the same volume. The evidence for this is overwhelming. The texts of the two parts are complementary; the hierarchy of decoration is the same (e.g. the historiated initials are seven lines high in each part); the borders are identical; the line-fillers are in gold and blue without red; the number of lines per page is the same; the script is very similar (but variable, because in both portions there are contributions by more than one scribe); the reported dimensions of the Morgan volume’s ruled/written space are 78 × 50 mm (in the the present MS it is c. 80 × 50 mm); the Morgan’s full-page miniatures are reported to be 80 × 52 mm (that in the present MS is c. 80 × 50 mm); the overall size of the Morgan volume’s leaves are reported to be 134 × 95 mm (the present MS is c. 135 × 95 mm). It is therefore inescapable that both parts originally formed a single volume, and that someone separated the primarily-French part from the primarily-Latin part, perhaps at the time when the present volume was bound in the 17th(?) century. If so, the two parts have been separated for more than three centuries.
The Morgan volume contains some very interesting and potentially unique vernacular texts, such as one beginning ‘Catons son fil ensengne et dist celle licons vient en despit …’, with an image depicting Cato Teaching his Son. Thanks to its liturgical contents, the discovery of the present volume allows, for the first time, a reassessment of the geographical and sociological environment in which the important Morgan volume was commissioned.
Provenance
1. Probably written and illuminated c. 1400 in northern France, perhaps for a patron living in the diocese of Arras or Tournai (to judge by the liturgical Uses). The original owner was doubtless a French speaker, and may have been a female Franciscan Tertiary, to judge by the image of a Franciscan friar praying to God, the Life of St Margaret, and the large amount of vernacular text, in the Morgan portion of the original manuscript.
2. Probably still in the same geographical area until at least the mid-17th century, as records of two earthquakes, 23 August 1504 and 4 April 1640, were added to the calendar, the first in Latin, the second in French: ‘En l’an xvc et iiij … a x heure et demy … fut tremblement de terre …’, and ‘Le 4e d’apuril 1640 a trois heurs et un quart du matin la terra trembla’. The earlier earthquake is recorded in more than twenty contemporary sources, many of which describe its duration as ‘the time of a Paternoster’ or ‘the time of an Ave Maria’: presumably many people started to fearfully recite these prayers when the earthquake began, and thus used them as a convenient unit of time-measurement! (see Pierre Alexandre, ‘Historical Seismicity of the Lower Rhine and Meuse Valleys from 600 to 1525: a New Critical Review’, Geologie en Mijnbouw, 73 (1994), pp. 431–38). The second is also a well-documented earthquake, whose epicentre was in the region of Aachen and Cologne, but which was felt as far north as Amsterdam, as far south as Reims, as far west as Lille, and as far east as Frankfurt.
3. Unidentified owner, 17th(?) century: responsible for the binding, and probably also for separating the Morgan portion from the present part. The heraldic arms are indistinct, but appear to include a row of three stars or quatrefoils in chief.
4. E. H. Roller, of Milwaukee, bookseller; sold in 1904 to:
5. The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Trappist, Kentucky (Seymour de Ricci and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada, I (New York, 1935), p. 732 no. 9). At least three other manuscripts from the library were later owned by Laurence Taylor Greer, who sold them to H. P. Kraus in 1964, and are now in New Haven at the Beinecke Library (MSS 354, 376, 377); this suggests that the Abbey disposed of its manuscripts, surplus to its mission, by the early 1960s.
6. Maggs Bros. Ltd. Purchased as a gift in the 1970s; thence by descent to previous owners.
