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Detailed record for Egerton 1151
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| Title |
Book of Hours, including Hours of the Holy Spirit and of the Passion |
| Origin |
England, S. or Central (Oxford or West Midlands?) |
| Date |
3rd quarter of the 13th century |
| Language |
Latin, some rubrics in French |
| Script |
Gothic, written below top line |
| Artists |
Attributed to William of Devon or his group. |
| Decoration |
12 large historiated initials, each usually accompanied by a partial or three-sided border in colours and gold with animals and hybrids at major divisions (ff. 7, 38, 47, 50, 57v, 88v, 90, 92, 93,v, 95v, 114, 118). Numerous small historiated initials or decorated initials in colours and gold, many with extensions into the border. 12 large 'KL' letters in gold on blue and red grounds (ff. 1-6v). Small initials in blue with red penwork decoration and pen-flourishing, or in gold with blue penwork decoration or pen-flourishing. Small initials in blue or gold. Line-fillers and diagonal line-extensions into the lower borders in red, blue, and gold. Ruling in green in the calendar (ff. 1-6v). |
| Dimensions in mm |
160 x 105 (90 x 60) |
| Official foliation |
ff. 159 ( + 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves and 2 parchment flyleaves at the beginning, and 3 unfoliated modern paper flyleaves at the end + 2 unfoliated leaves after f. 6) |
| Form |
Parchment codex |
| Binding |
BM/BL in-house. Red leather; gilt edges |
| Provenance |
Probably made for a woman, who is shown kneeling before Mary in two initials (ff. 7, 50).
References to Thomas Becket effaced (ff. 6v, 32v, 33).
The calendar includes many saints associated with the West Midlands: see Morgan 1988.
? Mistress Phyllis: early 16th-century inscription beginning 'Mysterys Felys owyth this boke . . .' (f. 159; cf. 159v).
Robert Colston of Nottingham: ownership inscriptions (ff. 159, 159v).
A circular heraldic bookplate ? has been removed from f. [6b] v.
Thomas Rodd the younger (b. 1796, d. 1849), London bookseller; purchased from him by the British Museum on 9 December 1848 using the Farnborough Fund (£3,000 bequeathed in 1838 by Charles Long, Baron Farnborough (b. 1761, d. 1838), a cousin of Francis Henry Egerton, 8th Earl of Bridgewater (b. 1756, d. 1829), founder of the collection. |
| Notes |
Some of the texts were recommended in contemporary treatises for the devotions of anchoresses, suggesting that it the manuscript may originally have been made for such a religious woman. |
| Select bibliography |
Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1848-1853 (London: British Museum, 1868), no. Eg. 1151.
Georg Graf Vitzthum, Die Pariser Miniaturmalerei: von der Zeit des hl. Ludwig bis zu Philipp von Valois und ihr Verhältnis zur Malerei in Nordwesteuropa (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer), 1907), p. 90.
[George Warner], Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series I, (London: British Museum, 1907), pl. 12.
Christopher Wordsworth and Henry Littlehales, The Old Service-Books of the English Church, 2nd edn (London: Methuen & Co., 1910), pp. 61, 251.
J. A. Herbert, Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Methuen and Co., 1911), p. 188.
Schools of Illumination: Reproductions from Manuscripts in the British Museum, 6 vols (London: British Museum, 1914-1930), II: English 12th and 13th Centuries(1915), pls. 12a, 12b.
[J. A. Herbert], British Museum: Reproductions from Illuminated Manuscripts, Series 1, 3rd edn (London: British Museum, 1923), pl. XII.
[J. A. Herbert], Illuminated Manuscripts and Bindings of Manuscripts Exhibited in The Grenville Library, Guide to the Exhibited Manuscripts, 3 (Oxford: British Museum, 1923), no. 22.
Eric. G. Millar, English Illuminated Manuscripts from the Xth to the XIIIth Century (Paris: Van Oest, 1926), p. 128.
A Guide to the Exhibition of Some Part of the Egerton Collection of Manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1929), no. 9.
Guide to an Exhibition of English Art (London: British Museum, 1934), no. 111.
Eric G. Millar, 'Fresh Materials for the Study of English Illumination', in Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, ed. by Dorothy Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954), pp. 286-94 (p. 289).
Peter Brieger, English Art 1216-1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1957), p. 158 n. 1.
Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (London: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 103-04.
Lilian M. C. Randall, Images in the Margins of Gothic Manuscripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966). p. 31.
Bruce Watson, 'The Place of the Cuerden Psalter in English Illumination', Gesta, 9 (1970), 34-41 (p. 37, figs 8, 9).
Philippe Verdier, Peter Brieger, Marie Farquhar, Art and the Courts: France and England from 1259 to 1328, The National Gallery of Canada, 27 April-2 July 1972 (Ottowa: National Galley of Canada, 1972), no. 25 [with additional bibliography].
Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, 2 vols, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London Harvey Miller, 1982-1988), II: 1250-1285, no. 161 [with additional bibliography].
The Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagent England 1200-1400, ed. by Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1987), no. 41 [exhibition catalogue].
Claire Donovan, 'The Mise-en-Page of Early Books of Hours in England' in Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, ed. by Linda L. Brownrigg, Proceedings of the Second Conference of The Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1988 (Los Altos Hills, California: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990), pp 147-61 (pp. 150-1, 157, 159, 181 n. 48, fig. 7).
Claire Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford (London: British Library, 1991), p. 204 no. 39.
John Higgitt, The Murthly Hours: Devotion, Literacy and Luxury in Paris, England and the Gaelic West (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 162 n. 53, 182-3, 188 n. 35, 258.
Nigel Morgan, ‘The Decorative Ornament of the Text and Page in Thirteenth-century England: Initials, Border Extensions and Line Fillers’, in Decoration and Illustration in Medieval English Manuscripts, English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700, 10 (London: British Library, 2002), pp. 1-33 (pp. 28-29, pl. 29).
C. M. Kauffmann, Biblical Imagery in Medieval England 700-1500 (London: Harvey Miller, 2003), p. 162.
Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and their Books of Hours, (London: British Library, 2003), p. 147 n. 105.
Paul Binski, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 281, pl. 232.
Nigel Morgan, ‘Patrons and their Devotions in the Historiated Initials and Full-Page Miniatures of 13th-Century English Psalters’, in The Illuminated Psalter: Studies in the Content, Purpose and Placement of its Images, ed. by F. O. Büttner, (Belgium: Brepols, 2004), pp. 309-22 (p. 317 n. 49).
Dorothy Kim, 'Ancrene Wisse and the Egerton Hours', in Medieval Anchorites in their Communities, ed. by Cate Gunn and Liz Herbert McAvoy (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017), 199-220. |
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f. 7
Virgin and Child |
f. 38
Prime |
f. 47
Musicians and dancers |
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f. 50
Vespers |
f. 57v
Compline |
f. 88v
Prime |
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f. 90
Terce |
f. 92
Vespers |
f. 93v
Compline |
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f. 95v
The Betrayal |
f. 118
Funeral |
f. 159
Ownership inscription |
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