BOOK OF HOURS
SARUM USE MANUSCRIPT C. 1400
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Published by: Nashotah House Press 2777 Mission Road Nashotah, Wisconsin 53058 www.nashotah.edu
© 2018 Nashotah House Theological Seminary. All rights reserved.
This document is a digital facsimile of a manuscript belonging to Nashotah House Theological Seminary Nashotah, Wisconsin, in the United States. It is one of two manuscripts that have been digitized as part of a project funded by The Underwood Foundation. More details regarding the manuscript can be found by visiting the Nashotah House library Website: www.nashotah.edu/library/underwood
Preface
BOOK OF HOURS SARUM USE MANUSCRIPT C. 1400 This Book of Hours Sarum Use arrived at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in 1977 as a gift of the late Mr. Walter S. Underwood of Chicago, Illinois (1884-1976) and is the oldest volume in the Underwood Prayer Book Collection. Mr. Underwood was a liturgical book collector, Chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, and a senior partner in the Chicago law firm of McLease, Spray, Price & Underwood. Purchased in 1952 from Brentanoʼs Chicago bookstore, the manuscript has appeared in two exhibitions: “Turn the Pages Slowly: Rare Books and Manuscripts” (Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University, 2008) and “Hidden Treasures: Illuminated Manuscripts from Midwestern Collections” (the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, December 18, 2010-February 27, 2011). The Book of Hours Sarum Use contains 23 full-page miniatures and 23 historiated initials. Each full-page illumination is painted on the verso of a leaf with a blank recto. Of particular note is the pictorial prayer cycle to the five wounds of Christ. Both Netherlandish and English-style illustrations appear in the margins. The pages are unnumbered and the majority of text is in Latin, with additions in vernacular English.
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Books of hours, popular among devout Christian laity in the Middle Ages, contained prayers and psalms to be recited at the canonical hours of the day. Replete with decorative initials and handpainted illustrations, many of these illuminated manuscripts were produced in Europeʼs Low Countries and available by export to the faithful living in the British Isles.
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For a detailed examination, see: Summers, Mark, Fragments of the Passion in Late Medieval Devotion: Prayers to the Wounds of Christ in the Nashotah House Sarum Use Book of Hours, unpublished, 28 May 2011. Summers illustrates stylistic similarities between an image in the Nashotah House Sarum Book of Hours and those in manuscripts at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and Queenʼs College, Oxford.
Sarum Use, Use of Sarum, Sarum Rite, and Use of Salisbury, all refer to the same ordered offices, or program of daily prayers and devotions, established at Salisbury Cathedral in the eleventh century by St. Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, as a local variation of the Roman Rite. The Sarum Use became popular and its practice gradually spread throughout most of England, Wales and Scotland before fading in the sixteenth century. It had a significant influence on the form of Anglican Liturgy represented in the Book of Common Prayer.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Book of Hours Sarum Use was digitally photographed by Charles Walbridge at Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This digital version was compiled and edited by Jon and Robin Voils in order to enhance the reading experience and to faciltate scholarly research. A translation of the Latin text is planned. More details regarding the manuscript can be found by visiting the Nashotah House library Website: www.nashotah.edu/ library/underwood