By her Son as sovereign lady,
Received there among the hierarchies,
And crowned her the queen of glory.
I have quoted these verses in full, rude though they are, because they form the keynote to the scheme of illustrations of all Horae and Primers. The Hours were intended as devotional comments on the subjects of these verses, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was thus the most natural thing in the world that each Hour should be accompanied by an illumination, or, failing that, a woodcut, to illustrate its special theme. Accustomed as we nowadays are to gain our information exclusively by reading letterpress, it is only by a visit to our nurseries that we can recall to ourselves how deeply the need of pictures was felt in the ages before the printing press made the art of reading a common acquirement. Of this need the Miracle Plays, with all their rudeness, all their unconscious profanity, were at once the living witness and the living fulfilment. In the great cycles, such as those of York, Wakefield, and Chester, which have come down to us, the history of the world in its sacred aspects is unrolled from the creation of the angels to the day of judgment; and the presentment of these plays probably brought the Bible stories nearer to the people than could have been possible in any other way. Certainly these plays left a deep mark upon current ideas of art, and helped to render impossible any attempt at antiquarian correctness. In the scene of the Adoration of the Shepherds in some of the finest books of Hours (P. Pigouchet: Paris, 1498, 1502, etc.), underneath the figures of the shepherds and their wives (by whom they are mostly represented as being accompanied) are written the names Gobin le gai, le beau Roger, Aloris, Alison, Mahault, Ysambre, by which they were known in the French plays on the Nativity, and the shepherds are French Shepherds of the fifteenth century. But however great their anachronisms, the tableaux in the Miracle Plays and the pictures in books of devotion were found abundantly helpful, and for more than a century and a half, first in manuscript and afterwards in print, the Horae or Primers, the prayer-books of the laity, hold the first place among illuminated books.
FROM A SARUM HORAE. PARIS: P. PIGOUCHET FOR S. VOSTRE, 1502
A few years ago Mr. Quaritch possessed a charming 'Book of Hours,' which at one time belonged to Elizabeth Poyntz, a relative of the Thomas Poyntz at whose book we were looking a little while back. To this manuscript Mr. Quaritch in his catalogue assigned the date 'about 1360,' which, if correct, gives it considerable antiquity among illuminated Horae. The end of the fourteenth century is the date at which these first become at all common, and it was during the fifteenth century that they obtained their greatest popularity, and that the greatest artists were employed in their production. Numerous and very beautiful examples of the manuscripts produced during this period form part of the permanent exhibition in the Grenville Library at the British Museum, and I hope that many of my readers will go to look at them there. All fine examples of manuscript Horae possess (i.) beautiful initial letters, (ii.) borders surrounding every page, formed of leaves, flowers, birds, grotesques, and the like, (iii.) a number of beautiful miniatures, filling the whole or the greater part of a page, and representing the scenes from the life of Christ and His Mother mentioned in the lines quoted above, with additional illustrations from the Passion, and from the lives of the saints. Beyond saying this, it is impossible to give any general description of these manuscript Hours, each one of which possesses its own delightful individuality. Two or three special examples, however, may be mentioned to show the estimation in which they were held and the care which was spent on their decoration. Thus the late Mr. Charles Elton possessed a charming little 'Book of Hours' which once belonged to Queen Jeanne II. of Naples (1370-1435). It measures only 2 5/8 × 1 7/8 inches, and contains one hundred and sixty leaves and twenty miniatures, nine of which occupy the whole of their page. The initial letters throughout are in gold and colours, and the borders are of the ivy-leaf pattern, the scrolls often terminating in grotesques. Mr. Quaritch, again, when this paper was written, had for disposal (for the sum of one thousand pounds) a Horae of slightly later date, a wedding present from the Regent, John, Duke of Bedford, to Lord Talbot on his second marriage in 1424, when he allied himself to Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of Richard, Earl of Warwick. The first leaf contains a miniature showing Talbot and his wife at prayer under the protection of their patron saints, and many other miniatures are scattered through the rest of the volume. In 1429 Talbot was captured at the battle of Patay and remained a prisoner in France till 1433. During this time he made many entries in the blank leaves of his Hours. Here is a snatch from one in verse:
Saynt George the gode knyght
Over your Fomen geve you myght,
And holy Saynt Katheryne