“Ohio is one of the areas of the country richest in medieval manuscripts, with more than 2200 codices and 2400 leaves in at least thirty-three collections. In fact, once you leave the East Coast, Ohio has the largest number of medieval manuscripts per person and per square mile in the United States.” – Lisa Davis, “Manuscript Roadtrip Blog”
Left: Athens, Georgia. University of Georgia Special Collections. MS Hargrett Hours, f. 18v.
Right: Oberlin, Ohio. Oberlin College Library, Special Collections. MS Artz Hours, f. 28v.
Ohio isn’t known for much, but shockingly, it held insights in the form of the Oberlin Conservatory’s “Artz Hours.” Oberlin College is a private liberal arts school and music conservatory located in Oberlin, Ohio. My group, Team Sainte-Chapelle, first discovered this manuscript when comparing other manuscripts to the University of Georgia’s Book of Hours, the Hargrett Hours. On the hunt for information related to the mysterious and contradictory Hargrett Hours, our group focused on gathering background and investigating Sainte-Chapelle, a Gothic Cathedral in Paris right down the road from Notre Dame. King Louis IX initially built Sainte-Chapelle to house the Crown of Thorns and act as a pilgrimage site for the Catholics of Europe.
How does this possibly relate to Ohio?
As we were researching Sainte-Chapelle, our group went down a lot of different paths, many of them going nowhere. This was mostly due to the sheer amount of unanswerable questions that looking into medieval manuscripts brings. My task within the group was to compare various manuscripts to the Hargrett Hours (HH) to draw further connections and establish conventions within the calendar (the several pages at the front of a prayer book that show the days associated with certain feast days or saints) and the ordinatio (or the page layout). The Artz drew my attention with the number of Saints Days that match up with the HH, the similarities between the various pages both in page composition and layout, and the subject matter.
Well, what is the Artz Hours?
Starting off exceptionally basic, the Artz Hours is a parchment-based manuscript that was likely completed between the years 1420 and 1440. The binding on the manuscript is not original, having probably been replaced due to its age. Like most Books of Hours, the Artz Hours is of smaller size, being 17.2 cm length-wise and 12 cm across, making it roughly hand-sized. It is also written in a Gothic hand, most likely a Gothic rotunda, due to the distinctly curved pen strokes. There are 118 leaves of the calendar, gospels, suffrages, and other prayers, with the remaining leaves, 119-120, serving as a record of the family that owned this book. The book originally belonged to the de Maylle family and has a list of the births of the original owner’s children and grandchildren. On leaf 120v (v standing for verso, which means the backside of a page; the opposite would be recto, or r, which would be the front side of a page), there is one entry recording the death of Anne de Lavanne Dame de la Quiritaulde, in 1575. She was buried in their chapel in Veigne, a commune in central France, by Vicar Estienne Colynet, who wrote and signed the record in the book. This is notable because it gives our group and others who have looked into the manuscript insight into the family that owned this book of hours. The family that owned this book is likely similar to the family or person that might have owned the Hargrett Hours. This theory is vital in building our group’s broader profile and providing integral insight into who may have owned the book and how it relates to nearby church communities.
‘Tis a Gift to be Simple
Finally, the Artz Hours’ ordinatio and the page composition are simple. Its simplicity was originally the thing that drew me to this manuscript. Manuscripts that are preserved are often either deteriorating or in pristine condition, the latter usually intended for royal use. This is very true of “Use of Paris” or “Use of Sainte-Chapelle” manuscripts, which are a special kind of luxe, often belonging to higher-up noble houses. The lack of miniatures (illustrations) present demonstrates that Hargrett Hours was not one of these manuscripts; it was likely owned by lower nobility. Within the Artz Hours, there is not a high emphasis placed on decoration. All the pages are neatly done by a clearly experienced scribe (the person who hand-wrote the text in the manuscript), but there are not many illustrations, gilding, or borders within the manuscript.
Of the 120 leaves of the manuscripts, there are five 3 ⁄ 4 page miniatures in arches depicting the Annunciation, the Passion, the Pentecost, Christ in Majesty, and finally, Death, which all match up with the start of new sections in the manuscript. Other descriptions in the manuscript include illuminated capital letters on gold ground with floral in-filling. On all of these miniature pages as well, there are painted rinceaux (inked vine patterns) borders decorated with gold, known as gilding. Within the text itself, in order to show the divisions and movements of the prayers and gospels, there is a wide variety of alternating red and blue ink initials with pen flourishes. Similarly, there are alternating red and blue line fills (colored lines and arches) to note the end of sections, keep the columns in line, and keep the cohesion while also making sure every column has exactly 16 lines in every section. The Artz Hours uses rubrication (words written in red ink instead of the usual black) within its text to note responses as well as notable or important phrases.
Comparatively, there are a great deal of visual similarities between the Artz Hours and the HH, which is why our group decided to focus on them. The basic, and not in a bad way, nature that both of these manuscripts share is what sets them apart from other ultra-glamorous ones and gives them meaning to our group. This simple design is a very common issue that we ran into, and it is a good thing because it narrows the field significantly. The HH is a very simple manuscript without a lot of decoration, and its fancy sections, if they were present at any time, are long gone. By looking at the Artz, there is a potential to see what kind of manuscript the HH was at some point and get a clear picture of what a manuscript closer to it might have looked like, rather than comparing it to a very fancy royal manuscript. The best way to highlight their similarities and differences, as well as what they could mean, is to compare them one for one, starting with the calendar.
The calendar of the Hargrett Hours is very different, as it is an incomplete calendar, while the Artz calendar is a composite calendar and full of various Saint’s Feast days. This isn’t necessarily indicative of anything special for the Artz Hours, as when composite calendars aren’t uncommon, incomplete calendars, on the other hand, are a bit more interesting. When creating a calendar, many scribes add the names of various popular saints that are fitting for the region and popular at the time in order to fill all the available space, considering how expensive creating one of these books could be at times. So naturally, a noncomposite calendar is something to note. They share the same decoration level within the calendar, which is important to note; they are both inked in red and standard black ink rather than gold or blue ink. Both manuscripts keep things simple.
Where things get interesting is in the composition of the pages. They are both extremely similar, with the Artz Hours, at times looking almost one-for-one with the Hargrett Hours. They have the same use of line fills, with even the same lack of borders on all of the pages. There are certain pages that feature similar rinceaux borders, but the Artz Hours is generally more decorated, with the HH having much simpler pages and sometimes only having text present on the page. As previously mentioned, this is another reason that the two drew my group’s attention. A key difference between them is that the Artz Hours has miniatures, while The Hargrett Hours might have had miniatures at one point in time, but we have no evidence one way or the other whether that is true or not. In terms of lines per page, both of them have the same double digits. The Hargrett Hours has 17 lines per page in each of the singular columns that can be seen on the page. This number varies between various manuscripts. The size of the manuscripts is fairly important and can be extremely different. For our case, however, both are fairly similar in size, with the Hargrett Hours being larger and closer to the size of a standard journal rather than hand-sized. Both of them have the same sort of champ initial and pen-flourish initials, acting as divisions between the various prayers. This is a common feature of all books of Hours, but the Mes en Page, the order and structure of the page are very similar.
So what?
While the Artz Hours is very similar to the Hargrett Hours, many key differences exist. We know that our Hargrett Hours is missing several sections and has two separate scribes, making it difficult to identify the owner or confirm a connection to Sainte Chapelle. As for the Artz Hours, we know it was used in Sainte Chapelle and the basics of the family who owned it, thanks to the birth and death records in the back. Dates differ, and illuminations are present (or not), but what we can take away from the Artz Hours is that the Hargrett Hours isn’t a highly unique manuscript. While we were left with many unanswered questions, it is good to know that manuscripts like the Hargrett Hours exist. It also implies that the owners were potentially laypeople with little money. Now, we have the Artz Hours to compare to other manuscripts we may find later in our research. So, to end this post, we would like to thank Ohio sincerely. Thank you, Ohio, for having thousands of manuscripts, especially the Artz Hours. Field trip to Ohio, anyone?
-Lauren of Team Sainte-Chapelle, in collaboration with Isa, Kate, Jordan, Jilian, and Rebecca
Works Cited
Oberlin, Oberlin College Library, Artz Book of Hours
Paris, BNF, Latin MS 1023
Brussels, KBR, IV.47
Bari Archivio Della, Basilica Di San Nicola, Ms. 3 (OLIM 81) (SC2)
Davis, Lisa. “Manuscript Roadtrip: In Otto Ege’s Footsteps.” Manuscript Road Trip, 7 Oct. 2013, manuscriptroadtrip.wordpress.com/tag/oberlin-college/.