I Illuminated Book of Hours

Illuminated Book of Hours

The oldest book owned by the College is a late 15th-century Book of Hours written on 128 leaves of vellum.

Like most Books of Hours, it contains certain set prayers and devotional readings, including the Penitential Psalms and excerpts from the Gospels, plus the Hours of the Virgin, the Calendar of Church Festivals and the Office for the Dead. The manuscript was calligraphed and limned by monks working in the scriptorium of a northern French abbey, probably in the 1480s. Some of their work includes the use of gold leaf that brings sheen and dazzle to the page; the introduction of such light to manuscripts is known as ‘illumination’.

The photographs overleaf show the manuscript’s most ornate opening, facing illuminated leaves with reverential figures on the left, or verso side, and the Annunciation with the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin on the right, the recto side. We are invited to read the image from left to right, following the orientation of the petitioning figures towards the scene of Christ’s Incarnation. Two of the verso figures are instantly recognisable: St Christopher with the Christ-Child, and St Denis, patron saint of France, with his severed head under his arm. The man before them, kneeling in golden robes and with his hat, or bourrelet, laid respectfully on the ground, is the commissioning patron of the book. His identity has long lain hidden, but the coat of arms displayed in the ornamental border suggests that he was a member of the House of Nesle, a noble family from Picardy and hereditary Counts of Soissons. According to the late 17th-century historian, Claude Dormay, a châtelain of the Nesle family made generous donations to the Church in the 1480s to restore local ecclesiastical buildings damaged during the Hundred Years’ War. We may perhaps identify the bishop on the verso leaf as St Medardus, possibly the name-saint of the book’s owner. A cult venerating St Medardus centred on the Abbey of St Médard in Soissons, an establishment under Nesle patronage.

Reference to the College’s Book of Hours has recently come to light in an auction catalogue printed in Paris in 1866. There we read that the manuscript had been for many years in a private collection in Lyons. It was subsequently bought by a Manchester bibliophile, Thomas Hayes, and upon his death in 1878 sold by the London booksellers Henry Sotheran Ltd. It was later presented to the College in 1883 by the Sub-Librarian of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, Falconer Madan (1851–1935), a one-time pupil in C1. Madan was an expert on illuminated manuscripts, holding a lectureship in medieval palaeography at Brasenose College; later, in 1912, he was appointed principal Librarian of the Bodleian. Other illustrations in his spectacular gift to the College show the Ascension of Christ, and images of Saints Nicolas, Mary Magdalene, Catherine and Geneviève.