Piety in Pieces How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts BY KATHRYN M. RUDY To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/477 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Piety in Pieces How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts Kathryn M. Rudy https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2016 Kathryn M. Rudy This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the author (but not in any way that suggests that she endorses you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Kathryn M. Rudy, Piety in Pieces: How Medieval Readers Customized their Manuscripts. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0094 In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit https:// www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742332#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active on 12/9/2016 unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://www.openbookpublishers.com/isbn/9781783742332#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. The University of St. Andrews Library Open Access Fund supported this Open Access publication. The Leverhulme Trust has generously contributed towards the research for this volume. ISBN Paperback: 978–1-78374–233–2 ISBN Hardback: 978–1-78374–234–9 ISBN Digital (PDF): 978–1-78374–235–6 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 978–1-78374–236–3 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 978–1-78374–237–0 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0094 Cover image: Opening from a book of hours at the incipit of the Hours of the Holy Spirit with original and added parchment and decoration. The Master of Gijsbrecht van Brederode painted the historiated initial around 1465. Around 1510 the Masters of the Dark Eyes supplied the full-page miniature depicting the Coronation of the Virgin on separate parchment. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, BPH 151, fol. 71v-72r. Published with permission from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands. All paper used by Open Book Publishers is SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative), PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) and Forest Stewardship Council(r)(FSC(r) certified. Printed in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia by Lightning Source for Open Book Publishers (Cambridge, UK) Invisible threads are the strongest ties. ― Friedrich Nietzsche I dedicate this book to my father, Dr Donald J. Rudy, who taught me how to paddle, fly, and achieve more topspin. Contents Notes to the reader xiii Abbreviations used in this book xvii Introduction: A new approach to codicology 1 Types of augmentations 7 Part I: The modular method 15 A. Modular and non-modular, compared 18 B. The hierarchy of decoration 25 C. Modules and blank space 29 D. Precursors of book modules 34 E. Implications of the modular method 41 F. Adopters of the modular method 44 G. Complicated stratigraphy 50 Part II: Changes that did not require rebinding 59 A. Correcting the text 59 B. Adding text to the blank folios and interstices 62 1. Noting who owned, commissioned, and paid for items 63 2. Adding family information 67 3. Adding legal documents 70 4. Adding a gloss 75 5. Adding calendrical data 77 6. Changing a text to reflect updated circumstances 81 7. Adding text to make a book appropriate as a 84 didactic tool 8. Adding prayers 88 C. Augmenting the existing decoration 99 D. Drawing or painting images directly onto bound 105 parchment E. Adding physical material superficially 109 1. Attaching parchment sheets to blank areas of the book 109 2. Adding other objects to blank parchment 114 Part III: Changes that required rebinding 119 Rebinding 120 A. Adding leaves bearing texts 126 B. Adding leaves bearing images 135 1. Images for the most common offices 136 2. Images for indulgences 139 3. Portraits and personalizing details 147 4. Images for adding value 151 5. Images for missals 153 6. Other single-leaf miniatures 159 7. Packages of images 167 8. Images removed from one manuscript and inserted 170 into another C. Adding quires 180 1. Adding a bifolium 181 2. Adding one or more full quires 197 Part IV: Complicated interventions and complete overhauls 223 Building a book out of disparate quires 223 A. An atelier in Bruges 224 B. Unica 233 C. The convent of St. Ursula 244 1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. Liturg. E.9* 244 2. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38 251 3. Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, Ms. C 517 k 270 D. The convent of St. Agnes in Delft 282 E. The Masters of the Dark Eyes 303 1. Alongside the Master of Gijsbrecht van Brederode 304 2. Leeds, Brotherton Ms. 7 with an added booklet 320 Part V: Patterns of desire 327 A. Desire to personalize the book 328 B. Desire to commemorate a changed family situation 329 C. Desire to store small precious objects 329 D. Desire for more embellishment 330 E. Recycling and refurbishing 330 F. Desire to make foreign-produced manuscripts locally 331 relevant G. Desire to incorporate new prayers 331 H. Fear of hell 332 I. Desire to reflect wealth 333 J. Changes, social and codicological 334 Bibliography 339 List of illustrations 355 Index 387 Notes to the reader This book grew out of an Arbeitsgespräch titled Manuscripts Changing Hands: Handschriften wechseln von Hand zu Hand, held at the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, from 20–22 June 2012. It was organized by Dr Volker Schier (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies) and Professor Dr Corine Schleif (Arizona State University), to whom I am grateful. The study, which at that time was titled “Pimp my Manuscript,” also benefitted from helpful comments by others present at this event. This study also developed thanks to Martin Kauffmann at the Bodleian Library, who invited me to Oxford to give a masterclass on this topic. This event invigorated me intellectually and socially at a time when my batteries were running low. The work was funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship; I thank the Trust heartily, as the fellowship allowed me to spend time in Cambridge and Oxford to conduct research and also to buy the relevant images. This work would not have been possible without their support. I also thank the School of Art History, University of St. Andrews, for supplementing the image budget for this study. The University of St. Andrews Library Open Access Fund supported Open Access publication. I thank Alessandra Tosi, Marc Mierowsky, and Bianca Gualandi at Open Book for the hundreds of small ways in which they enabled the production of this book. Years ago I held a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) that allowed me to study medieval manuscripts in libraries across the Low Countries nearly every day for three years. During these stimulating years, I gathered ideas and materials that have fed into every project xiv Piety in Pieces I have subsequently done, including this one. Thank you, NWO, for making it possible for me to collect material for a decade’s worth of ideas. My gratitude goes out to Erik Geleijns, Kate Greenspan, Peter Gumbert, Marlene Hennessy, Klaas van der Hoek, Erik Inglis, Erik Kwakkel, James Marrow, Johan Oosterman, Katharina Smeyers, and Mark Trowbridge who provided images or helped shape my thinking. I thank Lisa Regan and Jeffrey Hamburger for comments on drafts and Emily Savage for her perspicacious reading. I am also indebted to individuals from manuscript repositories around Europe, the UK and North America, who have granted me access to manuscript and provided me with invaluable information, especially Karin Zimmermann (Heidelberg), Ann Kelders (Brussels), Suzanne Paul (Cambridge), and Martin Kauffmann (Oxford). Finally, I thank the two anonymous peer reviewers who made valuable suggestions, all of which I have taken up. A note about the images: I have told the story in this book with words and pictures. Words are cheap. Pictures cost. Their price varies considerably from one institution to the next. As of this writing, high- resolution digital images from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague cost about €5, about as much as an artisanal latte. Those from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge cost £40 for the tiff, plus £35 for new photography, plus VAT. Thus, ten images from the Fitzwilliam cost more than my car. Financial considerations and not just intellectual ones have, by necessity, dictated my choice of examples. Institutions that do not allow hand-held photography make it difficult to me to develop ideas, because it often takes me weeks or months to make sense of a manuscript’s structure, and doing so usually involves building diagrams and models based on notes and photographs. Institutions that currently prohibit photography include Trinity College Dublin, the Fitzwilliam Museum, and Lambeth Palace Library. As a result of these policies, I find myself avoiding those libraries and throwing my intellectual efforts at materials held in libraries that do allow photography in the reading room. Institutions with policies that encourage and facilitate research are those that are well-represented in my study.