Fencing Bear at Prayer

The foundation whose fellowship has funded ( in part ) my leave this past academic year has asked me to write a couple of pages about how the year has gone. What can I say? It's been quite a journey. I spent August in Europe, first two weeks in London working at the British Library l ooking at manuscripts of some of the earliest books of Hours as well as other early manuscript witnesses to the hours of the Virgin; then two weeks in Belgium looking at fifteenth-century devotional paintings in which people are depicted using books of Hours , visiting some of the towns where books of Hours were made and as many of the churches as possible in which people prayed their books of Hours. I spent September reading around in the scholarly literature on late medieval devotion ( Huizinga , Bossy, Oberman, Duffy, Ozment, Van Engen) and October reading about the history of books of Hours more specifically, particularly the literature on book production and on the devotional responses to th...

It's sunny today, so I guess that means the groundhog is going to see its shadow and give us six more weeks of winter.* Why is it that we so often take good things as harbingers of disaster? I know I do: something goes right--I get a few pages written, I find just the right sheets for our bed, I listen to a song in the car that makes me feel happy--and I immediately start looking for the catastrophe that is sure to follow. It's as if we feel we are tempting the universe by enjoying our lives. "Oh, don't get comfortable," we hear that little voice saying: "It can't last." But I think it's even more sinister than this. It's not just that bad times will follow good, but that we think good times invite the bad, like some reverse karma. "If I've been this lucky this far, it's sure to change. The balance must be restored." But what is this balance? Medieval Christians thought in terms of the Wheel of Fortune**: a king si...

What does it mean to own something, say, a beautiful book? Perhaps a book like this one. It's possible, you know. Maybe not this book exactly*--as far as I know, the university is not planning on auctioning off its collection--but one very like it. Hundreds almost exactly the same survive from the workshops of fifteenth-century Bruges. You might even be able to find one illuminated by the very same master ( Willem Vrelant ) or, if not the master, perhaps (like this one) one of his assistants. The library probably paid something along the lines of $3000 when it purchased this book back in the early 20th century.** Now you'd more likely be looking at something starting around 40,000 Euros , if you were lucky and nobody else bid. Would you want one? Myself, I don't know. It would be a terrible responsibility, after all. These books are hundreds and hundreds of years old, containing some of the most beautiful paintings produced in their time and exhibiting a level of c...

Overheard while sitting in Regenstein Library, following the attack of the Snailox ... click to enlarge What the dragons are saying: Praise the Lord from the heavens; Praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels; Praise him, all his powers.... Let them praise the name of the Lord. Because he spoke, and they were made. He commanded, and they were created. He established them in eternity, and for all ages.... Praise the Lord from the earth.... The answer to the last dragon's question is in the next line of the psalm: dragons are here, on earth!* *At least, according to the Vulgate. Modern translations turn them into sea-monsters or whales. I'm pretty sure this is why the dragons came to Chicago this evening, along with the hail, snow, ice and stormy winds, thus keeping me from fencing practice so that I could finish this post. See Psalm 148:7-8.** **And, yes, this is one of the reasons medieval Christians believed so firmly in dragons. They're in the Bible, after ...

The dreaded Snailox, pronounced "snay-lox" (with thanks to TE for the suggestion!) Habitat: the lower margin of University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center, MS 348 fol. 31, opening folio for the hour of Terce for the Little Office of the Virgin Mary. Diet: acanthus leaves , thistles, (possibly) butterflies. Strength: that of an ox. Speed: that of a snail. Powers: induce sloth and distraction in the minds of readers, forcing them to ruminate for hours over the same text. May also encourage web-browsing in search of images of, for example, acanthus leaves, leading to discoveries such as the site linked above on how to draw said leaves. Very dangerous, but easy to escape if you can manage to turn the page.

The Microsoft Excel chart that I've been compiling of different liturgical Uses of the Little Office of the Virgin Mary now has 1104 rows and 24 columns. The rows show different texts according to their location in the Office while the columns beginning with E show the occurrence of these texts in particular manuscripts and/or traditions from the eleventh through the early sixteenth century. Of the texts, 323 are antiphons; 34 are blessings; 169 are chapters; 80 are hymns; 43 are lessons; 147 are prayers or collects; 96 are psalms; 106 are responsories; and 91 are versicles.* Not all of these texts are unique items: often the same antiphon will appear in different places in the Office from Use to Use.** The numbers should nevertheless give a sense of the scale of variation with which we are dealing when talking about "the Little Office of the Virgin." There was no such thing, at least not in the sense of a single, identical service observed throughout medieval Europe...

Some fun facts about books of Hours from my reading this week: Books of Hours are the single most common type of illuminated manuscript to survive from the Middle Ages, as well as the single most common type of manuscript to contain biblical texts, primarily psalms and readings from the Old Testament and the Gospels. Although most people in the Middle Ages would not have read "the Bible", everyone who could read would have known the psalms and lessons contained in the books of Hours. Books of Hours are sometimes also called "primers" because they would have been the first book that one learned to read. Books of Hours for children typically begin with the ABCs. Although the Offices in books of Hours were originally designed for use by monks and nuns, most books of Hours were owned by lay people, particularly women. There was never an "official" version of the book of Hours. Although most books of Hours contain at a minimum the Hours of the Virgin and the ...

This is a meditation on books. I'm not sure it really has an argument. Unlike a book. I have spent my life surrounded by books. Students often remark on how many books I have in my office, although in truth I have no more than most of my colleagues. At home there are books on the floor, books in stacks by the bed, books shelved in front of and on top of other books. I have, literally, more books than I will ever be able to read, and yet I keep buying more books. Just yesterday I purchased even more books so as to have the materials to begin writing yet another book. I don't have to write another book; I could spend the rest of my career publishing articles and giving talks. But somehow this thought simply does not satisfy, and not only because it is unlikely that I would ever be promoted to full professor (at least in History) solely on the strength of articles. I want to write another book just as much as I want to read all the books I have collected. There is someth...

*With thanks to my son for formatting the nifty borders. Now he is making his evil sock monkey fly down from the loft in our hotel room. I just saw a slinky swing past.... I wonder what this says about the relationship between God, details, creativity and play?

It’s so amazing, it’s almost impossible fully to articulate. I have spent, yes, another week in the Manuscripts Reading Room at the British Library copying out texts, particularly Hours and Psalters of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (For those of you who are wondering what it is that historians do all day, for medievalists, at least, this is part of it.) Okay, so maybe that’s not so amazing, although I am fairly impressed at how well I can read the variety of scripts. After all, I do have a laptop which, thanks to the Apple Corporation, means that all the copying I am doing involves not quill pen and ink, but simply typing.* It is, I admit, slightly burdensome having constantly to go to the Formatting Palette whenever I want to change font size or color so as to reproduce as closely as I can in Microsoft Word the overall appearance of the texts.** But, then, of course, the scribes who made the books I am reading had not only to write everything—EVERYTHING—out by hand, but also make all...