Hours of the Virgin and Middle English devotional texts

Title

Hours of the Virgin and Middle English devotional texts

Shelfmark

St John's College MS 94

Associated place

Ludlow

Shrewsbury

Herefords

Newcastle upon Tyne

Place of origin

England (Newcastle)

Date

1420 x 1434

Language

Latin

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

Vellum (FSOS/FHHF).

Physical extent

Fols. iv + 154(numbered fols. 1–153, v, the last formerly used as a pastedown) + iii (numbered fols. vi–viii).

Hands

Written in gothic textura semiquadrata (universal anglicana g). Punctuation by low and medial point, double point , punctus elevatus , and punctus versus. See Watson, DMO, no. 873 (146–7) and plate 290 (fol. 16v, which separates fols. 1–9, 16 as the only precisely datable portion of the MS, 1420.

Decoration

At major textual divisions in booklets 2 and 3, at the head of ‘O intemerata’ and the litany of the Virgin (within text 12) and at the head of text 16, 3- to 5-line champes, some with painted floral centres, and full bar borders in blue and violet with floral clusters, twenty in all. Item 10 (fol. 101v) has a half-border with 3-line champe and arms (see Provenance) at the page foot. In booklets 5 and 6, 6-line champes with flower and leaf ornament and demivinets at chapter heads; on fol. 144va, the demivinet has not been completed, and the 13-line champe has neither gold nor internal painting. At subsidiary divisions and in booklet 1, 2- to 4-line champes with floral sprays. Calendar pages are headed by a champe, and all have demivinets in blue and violet with floral sprays. In the Office of the Dead, the musical settings are introduced by swag capitals in text ink with faces, some bird and animal forms, and plant designs in pink and green.

Minor decoration includes red rubrics, alternate 1-line lombards (gold leaf on violet flourishing and blue on red flourishing), alternating blue and gold leaf paraphs and line-fillers of the same. In the Middle English, some green-washed marginal pointing fingers.

There are thirty-seven surviving miniatures of an original set of forty-two. In items 1 and 3, each suffrage is allotted a quarter-page miniature, two to the page, side by side above the prayers. See Scott, 2:32on the wave of such introductory full-page sections in MSS s. xv in. A miniature to illustrate the Trinity has been cut out of fol. 1va, and a lost leaf following fol. 4 probably had four miniatures. The survivors are: the Virgin as queen of heaven, with sceptre and holding a scroll with the Aue; the Annunciation with Mary and a dove; Jesus marked from his crucifixion emerging from the tomb; Anne holding the infant Virgin with a horn-book; Mary with three red roses holding the infant Jesus; Michael armed above the dragon; Peter holding a church and key; John the Baptist, in a skin, holding lamb and cross; John the Evangelist holding his eagle; James holding a staff; James the Less, in a similar posture; Andrew with his cross; Bartholomew holding a book and a knife; George spearing the dragon; Denis with a crosier and his decollated head; Cosmas and Damian with poor people and dogs (Scott, 2:364 identifies but a single English analogue, in BL, MS Egerton 2572); Vincent with a ladder and T-square; Giles with a crosier and a wounded doe tugging at his skirt; Martin with a crosier being blessed by a hand coming out of a cloud; Nicholas with a crosier and three naked women in a tub; Antony blessed by a hand coming out of a cloud, in grey and black hermit garb holding a book, with a pig at his feet; Alexis as a pilgrim with staff and scrip, holding a book; Germaine with a crosier blessing a kneeling congregation; Leonard holding a link of chain and a crosier; Paul holding a sword and a book; Katherine holding a sword beside her wheel; Margaret holding a sword and letting a sheep suckle at her breast, an incision all along her front, other sheep at her feet; Barbara holding a wool-carding comb by her tower; Mary Magdalene with an ointment jar; Winifred, with a red line on her neck, holding a sword and a book; Zitha with a gold band round her hair, a gold-coloured book at her belt and holding a bag; Apollonia with pincers and a book; Agnes naked in a fire with a descending dove; Ignatius with a crosier, a pair of lions pawing at him; Agatha with exposed bloody breasts and holding a knife and a book. The two remaining miniatures each take up half a page. On fol. 16v, John Lacy, in his barred anchorhold, watches the crucifixion (defaced) with Mary and John, a partly defaced scroll from his mouth (see Provenance below), beneath the picture ‘Anno domini MCCCCxx.’. The only known English analogue for a portrait of the limner is the one probably John Siferwas in BL, MS Harley 7026 (Scott, 2:62).On fol. 56v, across the page-foot, the Last Judgement, with the dead arising to trumpeting angels, and a hell-mouth at the right foot; the image of God in the centre defaced.

See AT, no. 418 (42)and plate xxviii (fol. 5v); all major illuminations are reproduced on Bodleian Library film roll 201G.

Binding

A modern replacement. Sewn on five thongs. At the front, a marbled paper leaf; two modern paper flyleaves, and one medieval vellum leaf (probably a former pastedown, now pasted to a vellum stub); at the rear, two modern paper flyleaves, and another marbled paper leaf (vi–viii).

Provenance

Both copied and illuminated by John Lacy , Dominican recluse of Newcastle upon Tyne; cf. the signature in the lower border of fol. 17: ‘lacy scripsit et illuminat’. Other Lacy references in the MS include two entries in the calendar: under 8 March (fol. 11), obits for his parents, ‘Obierunt Iohannes lacy et tylote vxor eius pater fratris Iohannis lacy Anachorete’; and in the lower margin of fol. 15, an added obit, ‘Data patris bricij qui iacet inter fratres predicatores noui castri super tynam Anno domini MCCxxxxvj.’ In addition, the miniature on fol. 16v shows Lacy with a scroll from his mouth, ‘Criste lacy fratris anime (the rest erased)’ and below the date 1420; and cf. texts 10 and 21 above: associated with the first, in the lower margin of fol. 101v, the arms ‘or on a fess gules a fleur de lis or’, identified as the arms of Lacy, by Rotha Mary Clay, ‘Some Northern Anchorites’, Archaeologist Aeliana4th ser. 33 (1955), 202–17 at 210 n. 33. For other discussions, see Clay, ‘Further Studies on Medieval Recluses’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 3rd ser. 16 (1953), 74–86; Conrad Pepler, ‘John Lacy: A Dominican Contemplative’, The Life of the Spirit 5 (1951), 397–400;Doyle. Lacy is associated with Newcastle from at least 1408; see the deeds involving a person of this name in Arthur Maule Oliver (ed.), Early Deeds Relating to Newcastle upon Tyne, Surtees Society 137 (1924), 187–9 passim. Lacy also owned BodL, MS Rawlinson C.258 (a Wycliffite New Testament). There his inscription of ownership appears on fol. 86, and an erased inscription, partly legible under ultraviolet light, associates the book with the Newcastle Dominicans (fol. 1); see Ker, MLGB134, 284 . Another MS which he copied, now lost, contained ‘Grace dieu’, the 1413 prose translation of de Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage de l’âme ; it later belonged to Henry Savile of Banke; see Watson, Savile, no. 60 (30) ; see further below.

In addition to Lacy’s injunctions on the use of his book (item 10), the MS also includes his bequest, indicating the conclusion of his work (fol. 1): ‘Orate pro anima fratris Iohanis lacy anachorite de ordine fratrum predicatorum noui Castri super Tynam qui hoc [later?] primarium dedit domino Rogero StonysdaleCapellano ecclesie sancti Nicholai noui Castri super Tynamad totum tempus vite sue et post mortem predicti domini Rogeri volo ut tradatur alii presbitero dicte ecclesie secundum disposicionem dicti Rogeri ad terminum vite sue et sic de presbitero in presbiterum in eadem ecclesia remanendum dummodo durauerit ad orandum pro anima predicti Iohannis lacy Anachorite Anno domini Millesimo CCCC moxxxiiijto.’ (Ker, MLGB222). For further commentary on illuminated books as willed to ensure use, see Scott, 1:32 and 69 n. 18.

A list of contents, perhaps in the hand of Henry Savile of Banke(but the MS is not in his catalogue) (fol. ivv).

‘Ja Billingham ’ (s. xvii ex., fol. iv verso).