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Recusant Survivor?
from Oremus April 2023
Some 11 full page miniatures survive, eight of the Passion of Christ which appear rather worn; but look closer and that wear is probably not simply rubbing but caressing, perhaps kissing in devotion and is a direct link for us to the opportunities for religious fervour for the layperson right through the centuries. It was valued then for its art, as it is now, and might have been the only book in its owner’s middle class home, possibly valued at the cost of reroofing the house, eyewatering today in Dulwich Village.
How did the book get to Dulwich College, a 17th century Protestant foundation by Edward Alleyn, Master of the Bears for King James I and actor manager colleague of Shakespeare? Probably our little prayer book was treasured long after the Reformation as a curious survival of a former age and for the appeal of its decoration and link with a lost past, through the vicissitudes of penal times under Edward VI, Marian revival and Elizabethan Via Media into uneasy Recusancy. Perhaps it was acquired from the centre of the English book trade based in London, from a Paternoster Row bookseller in and around St Paul’s Cathedral, and presented as a curio by a 17th century well-wisher or one of the four teaching Fellows of the College for safe keeping, to languish unread in their Fellows’ Library for the next two centuries. It was certainly there by 1729 for it is mentioned in the catalogue of that date as ‘manual precum perg.ms’ i.e., a manuscript manual of prayers on parchment. When the College relocated down the road in the 1850s refoundation, the Book of Hours accompanied the other four medieval manuscripts (including one from Durham Cathedral cloisters, suitably though ineffectively cursed against theft) to be eventually housed within the College Archives.
The College Book of Hours constituted for its owners a passport to Heaven and remains to this day a potent reminder not only of past devotion but a reminder of past times of turmoil and the enduring power of prayer over the centuries.
Robert Weaver taught Religion and Philosophy at Dulwich College before becoming Keeper of the Fellows’ Library there. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.
The Library welcomes visitors by appointment on Fridays in termtime: please contact weaverr@ dulwich.org.uk