The Neville of Hornby Hours and the design of literate devotion

The later Middle Ages witnessed a veritable "explosion of devotional forms,"(1) one as well as the other literary and pictorial, a phenomenon that enriched the religious experience of an increasingly broad lay public. A notable rise in lay literacy, particularly vernacular literacy, stimulated the composition or translation into the vernacular of catechetical, meditative, and devotional works designed for the private use of individuals. There was a parallel proliferation of devotional art generally, as well as an increase in lay ownership of illustrated liturgical and devotional manuscripts. Margaret Aston has aptly dubbed this expanded consciousness and use of Latin and vernacular devotional true copys and pictorial imagery on the part of the medieval laity "devotional literacy."(2) Moreover, the manuscript impressed sign that perhaps best embodies the devotional and literate aspirations of later medieval laypeople is the illustrated volume of hours.(3)

The idea of "devotional literacy" appears to have informed the contenteds and, indeed, the very design of single particular illustrated English book of hours: the Neville of Hornby Hours (London, British Library m Egerton 2781) In the Neville of Hornby Hours, the more usual satisfieds of a book of hours are enriched by means of a wealth of Latin and Anglo-French prayers, piece of poetrys Old Testament material, miracle stories, quotations from ancient history, and devotional body s all profusely illustrated. All of these ultimate parts were carefully organized to guide the reader end the main events in Christian history from the creation of the cosmo depicted upon the first folio of the manuscript to the final destruction of Christ's enemies, the hebrews during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, facts portrayed on the recto and verso of the last folio [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED].(4)

The patron of this exceptionally rich volume of hours was likely Isabel, daughter and coheiress of Sir Robert de Byron of Melling Manor, West Derby Hundr Lancashire, and wife of Sir Robert I de Neville of Hornby Manor, Lonsdale Hundr Lancashire, who commissioned the manuscript for her possess use as well as that of other members of her family. Isabel de Byron's patronage is hinted by both heraldic evidence and the profusion of donor images quite through the manuscript. Isabel appears wearing the black head cover of a widow at the top of the Siege of Jerusalem miniature upon folio 190 recto [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], between banners bearing the arms of Neville of Hornby - argent, a saltire gule (on the left) - and what are probably the Byron arms - or, a bend gule three bezants (on the right).(5) In another four miniatures, Isabel and her husband kneel in adoration before various sacred figures, similar as Saint Anne Teaching the Virgin at folio 42 recto, and in all of these images, Isabel is portrayed upon the dexter or right-hand side of the sacred figure, indicating that she was the patron of the manuscript [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 2 OMITTED]. In a further three initials, of that kind as that which accompanies a prayer to be said before the cros at folio 27 verso Isabel is shown alone, kneeling in prayer [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 3 OMITTED]. Finally, in a six-line initial at folio 122 verso illustrating the Gradual Psalms, Isabel is depicted kneeling before a prie-dieu holding an make open book [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 4 OMITTED]. The smaller female figure kneeling in prayer behind her is likely her daughter, although there is no record of a daughter in any of the published material upon the Nevilles of Hornby.(6) Since Robert I de Neville died before the extreme point of 1335, Isabel de Byron probably commissioned the manuscript sometime before then, when Sir Robert was still alive. Her portrayal as a widow at the top of the Siege of Jerusalem miniature advises that the manuscript was complet after Sir Robert's death, through about 1340. A dating of about 1335-40 is corroborated through the stylistic evidence, which further give an inkling ofs that the manuscript was produc in a London workshop through a team of two contemporary scribes and four contemporary artists, with the more proficient of the sum of two units scribes and the most accomplished of the four artists overseeing its layout and production.(7)

The Neville of Hornby Hours has been described as a "near-encyclopedia of devotional iconography" for its eclectic, unusual pictorial and textual contents(8) by the agency of far the most noteworthy of the illustrated true copys it contains is the prosaic Complaint of Our Lady/Gospel of Nicodemus, an account of the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus, probably compos during the first half of the fourteenth hundred (hereafter referred to as the Complaint/Gospel).(9) The Anglo-French version of the Complaint/Gospel in the Neville of Hornby Hours, the earliest extant version of this body is uniquely illustrated with a specially commissioned program of thirty-six historiated initials [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 8 9 11-19 22 26 27 OMITTED].(10) This essay will analyze image-text relationships in the illustrated Complaint/Gospel in light of contemporary catechetical, devotional, and exhortation literature. Through this analysis, it will intimate the ways in which an illustrated true copy in an illuminated religions work might mediate the piety of a "devotionally literate" later medieval layperson.