 Reading a Book of HoursbyGillian Polack
It doesn’t take much to bring out the Medievalist in me. Today it took the opening of an envelope. Inside the envelope was Charity Scott-Stokes’ Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England. Recently I’ve been fascinated by Books of Hours. I don’t want to become an expert in them, but I want to understand them. How were they used? Why are some so splendid and some so simple? What were they, really? I first knew them as isolated pages. Some of the pages were illuminated with scenes from the seasons and some had calendars showing the red and black letters and the saints who were celebrated. This is the Book of Hours as presented by most museums. We can’t see the manuscript as a whole, so we’re shown key pages laid out in museum fashion, with a little note explaining a small amount of the context. Then there is the Book of Hours as seen by the world of fine art. This is what I was introduced to next. Facsimiles of the prettiest portions. Not the whole Book of Hours, for my book budget never ran to the top-of-the-line facsimile, but cheap reproductions that took the twelve pictures from the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berry and strung them together like a garland of cut flowers, with commentary as the linking thread. I learned to use the illuminations as historical evidence from this and I learned to love that evidence and those illuminations. I learned to distinguish between the different levels of art and to fit the writing into the story that is palaeography and to date texts. I suspect I’m not much good at dating, these days, but the sense that books themselves are evidence rests with me. Many years on, things are different. Firstly, they are different at a personal level. I wanted to see (for the novel I’m working on) how the Book of Hours worked from a user’s point of view—a knight or lady in the Middle Ages might have admired the pretty pictures, but it was the prayers and personal confession and calendar that he or she wanted. I started looking at that text and thinking about how a person would pick up a volume and use it. Exhibitions are different, too. Some of the major museums and libraries are working to make more than just a page or two visible at once. The British Library, for instance, has its Digitised Manuscripts pages and Books of Hours are part of these online, publicly accessible displays. The study of these books has continued regardless of the public presentation. It isn’t my area of specialisation, though, so I’ve kept a distant eye on the research, rather than following it closely. Just now, however, when my interest is piqued, it’s very apt that Scott-Stokes should write her book. As the public presentation of Books of Hours makes them more accessible, scholarship can help us understand what we’re seeing. This particular piece of scholarship is the place I should have started, years ago. It was my bad luck it wasn’t written then. It doesn’t talk about the glorious art in certain books, or focus on a single page. It discusses the precise thing I’m after: what Books of Hours were (collections of various prayers) and how women in England used them. It’s short and it’s very accessible. It lacks the pretty pictures, but that’s not the end of the world, since they’re available elsewhere. What I particularly like about this book is that it translates the prayers and talks about their contexts and how they related to the overall religiousness of the period. It’s not set out in the easiest way to follow, however, for those with no knowledge of what the church councils were and what they did, or what the specific components of prayers consisted of. Most of the information the reader new to the subject needs is there, but it usually takes a little digging or thinking through. It’s as if the author knows the subject so very well that she cannot conceive of a reader who has never encountered even the basics. Both the best aspect of it and the worst aspect are the translations of actual contents. Using Scott-Stokes book it’s easy to delve into some of the most common elements of Books of Hours and to see, “Ah, this daily prayer is what was in that spot.” Unfortunately, she is (as in other parts of the book) inconsistent in delivering contexts. The full background to each section is not explained, and the English translation stands alone and is not paired with the Latin it derives from. This book is accessible, therefore, but only really to those who already have some knowledge of Christianity in the Middle Ages. It is, perhaps, best used alongside other books. Fortunately, the bibliography at the back of the volume provides the main works to balance the gaps in Women’s Books of Hours in Medieval England. Regarded as a supplement to the works cited, in fact, Scott-Stokes' approach is very useful indeed. It may not stand effectively alone, but it works well in good company. Because of her approach, I would not recommend Charity Scott-Stokes’ Women’s Books of Hours as the first book on the subject. I’d recommend it, however, as something that’s worth reading and probably worth owning. For a reader who has a basic familiarity with the Christian religion and its Medieval manifestations, it’s full of insights into how texts were used by women and what they meant.
Books mentioned in this column:
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