Book of Hours (fragment)

Sixteenth-century calf over boards, gilt tooled in Lyonnais style, in calf case by Gruel c.1887.

On fols ii and iii a fifteenth-century French hand records an account by Simon le Gloux of the capture of Hugues Henry in 1443, his death in 1444 and that of his wife Marguerite de Loyesme in 1482. Inside the front cover in a sixteen-century hand is: Remond. ex legato domini Ionnis Remondi. Lambert… ex legato domini nocolai lambert patris mei… maire et bailly. Notes on members of the Bégat family from 1537 to 1548 also appear in French on these folios.

In addition to these fifteenth and sixteenth-century owners (Simon Le Gloux and his wife, Marguerite de Loyesme; John Remond according to the inscribed names, seem to have included John Remond and later in the seventeenth century it belonged to the Lambert family. It must be noted, however, that since the binding is sixteenth-century the notes concerning owners could refer to one of the accompanying fragments. In 1862 the book was in the collection of J. Techener in Paris and in that of Leon Techener in 1887. It was sold at Sotheby’s in 1933 by an anonymous owner to Gabriel Wells of New York and subsequently purchased by William Robinson in 1934. In 1936 it was acquired through the Felton Bequest for the State Library of Victoria.[i]

J.P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series Latina, Paris, Vols XCIV, CLVIII, Paris, 1844-55.

J.J. Techener, Description raisonné d’une collection choisie d’anciens manuscrits, de documents historiques et de chartes, Paris, 1862, Vol. 1, pp. 227–32, No. 152.

P. Meyer ‘Rapport sue d’anciennes poesies religieuses en dialecte liégeois’, in Revue des Sociétés Savantes, 5^th series, Vol. 6 (1873), p. 238.

L. Techener, Catalogue de livres précieux provenant de la bibliothèque particulière de M. Leon Techener, Paris, 1887, Vol. 2. p. 4.

U. Chevalier, Repertorium Hymnologicum, 6 Vols, Leuven and Brussels, 1892-1920.

P. Meyer, ‘Le Psautier de Lambert le Bègue’, in Romania, Vol. 29, 1900, pp. 528–9.

C. Gilbert, Psautier-livre d’heures àl’usage de Liège XIII^e siècle, typescript, 1930–1934, p. 9.

V. Leroquais, Les Livres d’heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale, 2 vols, Paris, 1927, Supplément aux Livres d’heures manuscrits, Mâcon, 1943.

A. Wilmart OSB, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen äge latin, Paris, 1932.

H. Walther, Carmina Medii Aevi Posterioris Latina, Vol. I, Göttingen, 1959.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Un Psautier de Lambert le Bègue à Melbourne’ in Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol. 1, 1964, pp. 5-10.

K.V. Sinclair, ‘Anglo-Norman Studies: the last twenty years’ in Australian Journal of French Studies, Vol. 2, 1965, pp. 24-5.

 K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, pp. 358-63.

J. Oliver, The ‘Lambert-le-Bègue’ Psalters: A Study in thirteenth-century Mosan Illumination, Ph.D dissertation, Columbia University, 1976, pp. 125-40, 404-7.

M.M. Manion and V.F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts in Australia, London, 1984, pp. 170-3.

M.M. Manion, ‘Illuminating Words’, Art Bulletin of Victoria, Vol. 28, 1987, pp. 20-33.

J. Oliver, Gothic Manuscripts Illuminated in the Diocese of Liège c. 1250-1330, Corpus of Illuminated Manuscripts from the Low Countries, Vol. 2, M. Smeyers (ed.), Louvain, 1988, pp. 273-4.

B. Hubber, ‘“Of the Numerous Opportunities”: The Origins of the Collection of Medieval Manuscripts in the State Library of Victoria’, La Trobe Library Journal, Vols 51-52, 1993, p. 7.

J. Oliver, ‘Devotional Images and Pious Practices in a Psalter from Liège’, La Trobe Library Journal, Vols 51-52, 1993, pp. 24-31.

J. Oliver, ‘A Bundle of Myrrh’: Passion Meditation in French Vernacular Poems and Images in Some Liège Psalters’, in Jeffrey Hamburger and Anna Korteweg (eds), Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow. Studies in Painting and Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance, London and Turnhout, 2006, pp. 363-72.

J. Oliver, ‘Psalter-Hours’, in B. Stocks and N. Morgan (eds), The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, exh. cat. State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 2008, pp. 140-1, pl. 42, No. 42.

In a dissertation on the psalters of Lambert-le-Bègue, Judith Oliver identified thirty-seven psalter-hours produced in the diocese of Liège between c.1250 and the first decades of the fourteenth century. She convincingly placed the Melbourne manuscript in a group which was executed between 1260 and 1270, during which time the predominantly Germanic style of earlier examples was infused with new trends from gothic France and Flanders. Her paradigm for this group is Paris BnF MS. lat. 1077.

The results of Oliver’s thorough research and Sinclair’s earlier contributions to the study of some of the specific texts in these manuscripts established the artistic and devotional context of the Melbourne manuscript. Several of these books, but by no means all, seem to have been made for the Béguines, a semi-religious order of women who flourished in Liège at this period. It should be noted, however, that the Melbourne psalter-hours does not contain devotions associated with the Mass which appear in many of the manuals executed for Béguine patrons.

This group of manuscripts is of special interest on account of the local, regional nature of their textual contents and because of the distinctive features of their illustrative programs.

While the books vary in their selection of texts, they share for the most part the following distinguishing characteristics. In addition to the more or less standard elements of calendar, psalter and canticles, litany and Vigils of the Dead (for the use of Liège) they contain a detailed Easter table composed in honour of St Lambert, patron saint of the diocese, a selection of poems in Walloon French which precedes the psalter, and the so-called Aves or Latin psalter of the Virgin, a 150-stanza composition in honour of Mary. Perhaps one of the most interesting textual features which invites further research is the variety of Offices or Hours in honour of the Virgin: these represent a stage before the crystallization of the Little Office as the regular component of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Books of Hours, The Liège group might be fruitfully compared with other regional variations during this developmental period.[i]

The Hours in the Melbourne manuscript entitlcd Cursus beate Marie is a mixture of the breviary Office for the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin with what was to develop into the regular Little Office. The Hours of the Purification, Annunciation and Assumption are all abbreviated versions of the longer breviary Offices for these feasts, which commence with first vespers, a practice reserved in the breviary for important feasts.

This selection of Offices invites comparison with the text of the Aspremont psalter-Offices from Verdun (National Gallery of Victoria, MS. Felton 171/3), where five full Offices are abstracted from the breviary. They include those for the feasts in the Liège book together with the Office for Christmas. Such a comparison is all the more striking since these two books differ in so many other respects-iconographically. stylistically and in overall textual contents. Thus, they indicate the richness and variety of local devotional prayer-books of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and at the same time the importance of the breviary in the development of a manual for Lay or semi-religious patrons.

The iconography and program of the Liège psalter-hours have also a strong regional flavour, reflecting, as mentioned above, from c. 1260 on, the absorption of new Flemish and French influences into a basic Germanic tradition. In the calendar of the Melbourne book, as in B.N. MS. lat. 1077, the Labours for September and October are reversed. The full-page miniatures which precede the psalter are devoted to New Testament scenes and are linked to the psalter itself by the Beatus page illustration which completes the cycle. The historiated initials within the psalter section integrate themes from the life of Christ, such as the Massacre of the Innocents on fol. 53v with the more regular French program which relates to David or the first verse of the psalm. A specific characteristic of this group is the illustration of Psalm 2, in addition to the more regular ten Liturgical divisions.

In the Melbourne book the introduction of the canticles with a depiction of Christ and doubting Thomas continues this blend of Old Testament text and Christian overlay, so much a part of medieval devotional literature, but quite distinctively treated in this psalter-hours group. The psalter of the Virgin on the other hand draws on a contemporary medieval theme for its imagery showing the cleric Theophilus, from the popular ‘Miracles of Notre Dame’, kneeling before the Virgin.

Prophets, apostles and the saints specially honoured in the region, who in later Books of Hours will often be represented in individual miniatures accompanying specific memoriae or commemorations, here occupy the medallions of the full-page miniatures, once more intermingling Old and New Testament typology with local hagiography.

The illustration of the longest Office of the Virgin - after an introduction by an image of the Virgin and Child at matins - with a Passion cycle, reflects the long tradition of associating the canonical hours for prayer with Christ’s suffering and death, a relationship which will continue to develop in varying ways in later Books of Hours, side by side with an elaboration of the Infancy cycle and themes more specifically related to the Virgin.

Stylistically, if one compares the Melbourne manuscript with B.N. MS. lat. 1077 the increasing development towards a freer, more sinuous Gothic style is evident in the Melbourne work. The greater freedom of line in both the drawing of faces and the treatment of drapery, together with a warm palette, is particularly evident in the full-page miniatures while the use of roundels as a framing device for the individual scenes has filtered through from stained-glass compositions, and was already a feature of large thirteenth-century Parisian manuscripts such as those of the Bible Moralisée. Thus the Melbourne psalter-hours, as Oliver has argued, represents a later phase of the workshop which produced B.N. MS. lat. 1077 and should be dated well into the 1270s.

Digital imaging and research on this manuscript were supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australia:Researching and Relating Australia’s Manuscript Holdings to New Technologies and New Readers (2010-13). Substantial donations from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Catholic Church Insurance and the National Australia Bank are gratefully acknowledged. The Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, The Network for Early European Research, and Newman College, The University of Melbourne, have also generously contributed to the project.

Chief Investigators (CIs) of the ARC project were Professor emeritus Margaret Manion (The University of Melbourne), Professor Bernard Muir (The University of Melbourne), and Dr Toby Burrows (The University of Western Australia). Graduate research assistants were Alexandra Ellem, Dr Hugh Hudson, Dr Elaine Shaw and postgraduate scholar Elizabeth Melzer (The University of Melbourne). Shane Carmody was the representative of the Chief Industry Partner (The State Library of Victoria). The following curators, conservators, photographers and computer specialists at The State Library of Victoria also contributed their expertise: Katrina Ben, Des Cowley, Ian Cox, Adrian Flint, Ross Genat, Jean Holland, Shelley Jamieson, Afsana Khan, Coralie McInnes, Monika McIntyre, Helen McPherson, Peter Mappin and Sarah Mason. Other contributors, besides the ARC team, both in Australia and overseas, are acknowledged in relevant endnotes.

These detailed entries draw on the information in earlier catalogues and also update it. In particular, they are based on the following: K.V. Sinclair, Descriptive Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Western Manuscripts in Australia, Sydney, 1969, M. M. Manion and V. F. Vines, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in Australian Collections, London, 1984, and B. Stocks and N. Morgan, eds, The Medieval Imagination: Illuminated Manuscripts from Cambridge, Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008. Our debt to these pioneering publications and dependence on them are acknowledged here.

Margaret M.Manion on behalf of the ARC team, October, 2013.