4. Kissing: From Relics to Manuscripts
© 2023 Kathryn M. Rudy, CC BY-NC 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0337.04
In a twelfth-century Life of St Edmund, two tiny monks kneel in the margin to kiss the feet of the great saint (Fig. 29).1 Protruding into the stark white margin with their groveling positions starkly silhouetted, they grasp the saint’s ankles and kiss them with great deliberation and intensity, to demonstrate affection and show reverence. Their diminutive scale and powerless profile view contrast with the large saint and the immortal hands of angels that frame his fearful symmetry.2 The place where they kiss establishes a hierarchy between the osculator and osculatee. Their gesture shows respect and externalizes a hierarchy, also made apparent by the relative sizes of the actors. Not only does kissing create a theatrical display, it demonstrates their physical bond.
Fig. 29 Monks kneeling and grasping the feet of St Edmund and kissing them, in a Miscellany on the life of St Edmund. England, Bury St Edmunds, c. 1130. New York, The Morgan Library & Museum, Ms. M.736, fol. 22v
Late medieval people used osculation in several rituals adapted from the pre-Christian past. In Roman times there were three types of kiss: the osculum (kiss of friendship), the basium (kiss of love), and the suavium (passionate kiss). These kisses were the medieval inheritance, where multiple kisses with different meanings persisted, all of them used for engaging in ritual while externalizing an emotion.3 Yannick Carré has traced the medieval gesture of kissing, which finds outlets and nuanced functions in different political, religious, and amorous spheres. In particular, medieval people adapted the osculum for people, relics, rings, the hems of garments, and manuscripts. As Carré points out, the target of one’s kisses also inflects their meaning—the mouth, the hand, or the feet, the latter communicating the utmost in submission.4
Nobles were steeped in a culture of ritual that saw them plant not just a single kiss but a series of small kisses. When Louis the Pious (778–840), the future emperor and saint, met Pope Stephen IV (r. 816–817) near Reims, Stephen kissed Louis’s hands, plus both eyes, and they grasped hands, with fingers interlaced.5 Such actions were both intimate and public. In a courtly setting, kissing the king or lord became a ritual of displaying fealty while showing respect. One of the many illuminations of the Coronation Book of Charles V (r.1364–1380) shows part of the ceremony in which the king (central, larger, and visually heightened by his crown and scepter) receives the kiss on the mouth by a vassal. A scroll emanates from the vassal’s hand, as if he were uttering ritualized speech (Fig. 30).6 Even if the osculation gesture were performed in a stylized way, it still meant bringing the lips into intimate contact with a person, a ring, or an ankle, and publicly displaying an emotion, so that witnesses could interpret the gestures.7
Fig. 30 Osculation, in the Coronation Book of Charles V, Paris, 1365. London, British Library, Cotton Ms. Tiberius B VIII/2, fol. 64r.
In the late Middle Ages, the gesture of the kiss became embedded in the practice of Christianity, a religion that drew its authority from the written word. Books recorded and prescribed rituals and actions, and even purportedly held the Word of God. Rituals that took place in churches focused on the book, which stood as a material witness to the Word of God. One defining feature of Christianity is that its officials—bishops and priests assisted by deacons and subdeacons—regularly performed the liturgical celebration of Mass, a theatrical event with a script and instructions. According to Josef A. Jungmann, who wrote extensively and perceptively about the history of the liturgy, the various clerics who conducted Mass, even in the seventh century, kissed the altar when they approached it and kissed the Gospel manuscript when they picked it up. Priests regularly kissed other altar furnishings, including the corporal, the altar cloth, the chalice, the paten, and closed service books such as a missal (see below) at the altar, with a combination of emotion and theater.8 Doing so demonstrated respect for those objects. These clerics also kissed relics, including those of saints that populated (and to medieval believers, animated) every altar in Christendom. If relics on earth provided a conduit with the eternal saints, who were said to dwell in heaven, kissing a saint’s relics was tantamount to kissing the saint herself. The development I wish to underscore here is not the kissing of relics, or even of books, but rather the kissing of images, words, and decoration within books. The practice of kissing the image of Christ, for example, gained fervor in the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries. This act accompanied an increase in the size of Crucifixion images painted in missals, so that the gesture of kissing could be more visible and theatrical.
I. Kissing Missals
When late medieval priests and bishops kissed open missals while performing the Mass, specifically as part of the Canon of the Mass during the ritual of transubstantiation, those in attendance expected a miracle from every performance of this event: the transformation of the wafer into the body of Christ.9 From the eleventh century until the Protestant Reformation, the ritual surrounding transubstantiation became more oriented around the image of the suffering Christ, and concomitant with this shift, the gesture of kissing became more overt, possibly more emphatic, expected, and scripted. Anticipating this gesture, illuminators designed, and redesigned, the images to be kissed. How the images appeared—their size, placement, framing, and decoration—both responded to and shaped the gestures of the clergy using them.
Although gestures were ephemeral, kisses that touched down physically left a trace, at least in their cumulative form. The repeated nature of these osculations, as well as their introducing warm, moist air to the surface of the parchment, resulted in patterns of damage to the manuscripts. A brief history of service books will reveal how the imagery within them supported their functions.
II. A Brief History of the Missal
Priests performed two main kinds of services—Masses and Offices—for which specific kinds of manuscripts were developed. Priests prayed daily offices at the canonical hours (Matins, Lauds, Prime, and so on), as directed by a service book called the breviary. Additionally, they celebrated Mass on important days during the year, either those that were included in the temporal (covering feasts such as Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost), or the sanctoral (presenting the saints in the order that they would be celebrated during the year). Masses could also be performed daily. The Canon rite—the solemn ceremony of transubstantiation—took place within the Mass at an altar.
A sacramentary was a book that contained texts, prayers, and instructions for a priest to perform High Mass. This book was supplemented by several other role-specific books: the Gospels for the deacon, an epistolary for the sub-deacon, and the gradual for the choir. Around the twelfth century, texts from these books were brought together into a single volume, the missal, which contained all the texts a priest would need to conduct the Low Mass.10 As Low Masses became increasingly common in the later Middle Ages, the missal evolved, its production surpassing that of the sacramentary.11
Because the Canon rite occurred at every Mass and was the most important part of the ceremony, its relevant texts were usually arranged so that they fell midway in the missal; when the priest was performing this part of the service, the book would be opened with half the pages on the left and half on the right. If he elevated the book at this opening it would be perfectly balanced. In broad terms, the Canon celebration always involved the priest’s uttering particular words, but over time, the gestures and the props shifted. Ecclesiastical authorities developed a set of rituals that involved objects including the paten, chalice, altar, and ecclesiastical robes. Books mediated these rituals by providing instructions while at the same time serving as a prop; thus, both the contents inscribed on its pages and its recognizability as a book by the audience had ritualistic value. The theatrics around book-handling became increasingly lavish. In fact, liturgical books increasingly received highly ornamented bindings, so that they could signify their importance from a distance without even being opened.12
The liturgy itself changed over time—from the days of the early Church until the time of the Protestant Reformation—as well as changing regionally, with the papal city producing a Roman Rite, England celebrating according to a Sarum Rite, and the Dominicans developing their own distinctive service, to name but a few variants. Service books, which both drove and responded to changes, evolved accordingly.13 Moreover, different kinds of liturgical celebrations (monastic, presbyteral, episcopal, and papal) each used books slightly differently. Categorizing these regional, temporal, and confessional changes is beyond the scope of this study.14 Instead, the purpose of this chapter is to survey a selection of missals from the twelfth until the early sixteenth centuries to show major trends over this period in how the Canon imagery was presented and used. The other purpose of this chapter is to investigate the use-wear in these manuscripts to better understand how gestures of handling changed over time. By considering signs of wear in individual liturgical manuscripts, this chapter considers how priests physically interacted with books during religious ceremonies. More broadly, I argue that the way in which priests handled missals both reflects and shapes how medieval Europeans handled different kinds of manuscripts in other settings.
In the present context, one can note that a wave of changes occurred around the twelfth century, making the liturgy more theatrical as the Mass increasingly took on the role of holy drama. Jungmann sees evidence of these changes in the increasing number of churches using the hand gesture of the “sign of the cross,” blessing objects, and kissing them. He writes:
The Gothic principle of cumulation, the repetition of the same detail, the heaping up of ornament, had its effect on the kissing of the altar. Although up to the twelfth century, this was customary—in line with tradition—only when first approaching the altar and again when leaving, since the end of the thirteenth century it was performed every time the celebrant turned around at the altar. The kiss at High Mass when handing the celebrant an object and the kiss of greeting for the celebrant are also added at various places. The extension of the hands after the consecration became, after the thirteenth century, a vivid imitation of the outstretched arms of the Crucified. For a time, too, the ceremonial was built up further; the priest at the anamnesis, on recalling the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord, was supposed to mimic these movements with his hands. Bowing the head at the end of the Memento of the Dead, and striking the breast while saying “Nobis quoque” in a loud voice—these actions appear to have been introduced as a vivid presentation of our Lord’s death and the impression it made on the bystanders.15
Perhaps priests sought opportunities to enlarge gestural language because the ceremony took place while the priest faced the altar, obscuring much of the action with his body and uttering many of the words inaudibly.
The increased theatrics can be seen in at least two shifts in the missal. First, they took on more instructions in the form of rubrics, which codified various gestures.16 These prescriptions appeared, inter alia, in the Ordo (pl. Ordines), which is a text with the rule of ordinance for a religious ceremony. The second shift concerned the decoration at the central section of the missal, namely the part that contains the Canon of the Mass (which begins Te igitur clementissime pater) and the words of consecration. Unlike other texts in the missal, this was central to the Mass and performed every time, and as such, this is often the most worn part of the manuscript.17
This theatricality was made manifest in another change: from the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, the humanity of Christ—and with it the Eucharist—became increasingly emphasized, as Rachel Fulton has argued with painstaking erudition.18 This accompanied an increase in affective piety, with imagery that foregrounded Christ’s humanity and suffering. Believers sought tangible divinity in the form of the Eucharist. A structural response to this desire was the creation of the feast of Corpus Christi, established in 1264. Around this time, the priest began elevating the Eucharist to make the small disk more visible to the gathered congregation. Late medieval devotion fixated on the Eucharist, and members of the lay public were reported traveling from one church to the next on a Sunday to see not just one, but multiple elevations of the Eucharist. Until the Reformation there was an increasing emphasis on seeing the host, and on the visibility of the suffering savior. This emphasis had several manifestations, one of them being the increasing size of the image of the Crucified Christ in the missal, which might just be visible to onlookers. To gain some sense of how late medieval lay persons experienced the Mass, we should remember that the ceremony was conducted in Latin and (for the most part) sub-audibly, so that the main experience for those in attendance was visual, not auditory.19 As book design reveals, the target of the priest’s osculation morphed from the letter T (in Te igitur) to an image of the savior on the cross, from the inaudible Word to the ever-larger image. Likewise, the size of the priest’s gestures changed when using the missal, just as the size of the target changed from a single initial to a two-page spread. The growing size of the Canon plate—the full-page image or two-page-spread with the Crucifixion image—accompanied an increased theatricality.
In earlier service books, such as a missal for the Abbey of Saint-Desle de Lure made before 1073, the initial T was made to resemble a crucifix, and the priest would venerate this shape, with its double meaning of “crucifix” and “letter representing the Word of God” (Fig. 31). Over the twelfth century, illuminators experimented with the Te igitur, expanding its proportions and nuancing its features. First they defined the T as a crucifix, so that the form was both letter and object. Then they added Mary and John in the space below the cross’s arms, and then moved the Crucifixion from the confines of a letter to a miniature on its own, as with a French missal of the thirteenth century (Fig. 32).20 In other words, what had at first been a letter—a symbolic form representing an element of language—became an image. That the body of Jesus and his instrument of torture could be superimposed on the letter that initiated the Canon mirrored the idea that Christ was the Word made flesh.
Fig. 31 Te igitur folio from a missal for the use of the abbey of Saint-Desle de Lure, made before 1073. Besançon, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 72, fol. 13v. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
Fig. 32 Opening at the Canon from a missal, France, thirteenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms. 422, fols 125v-126r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
Next, the image of the Crucifixion was enlarged, with illuminators dedicating an entire folio to the subject. For example, a twelfth-century missal from the abbey of Notre-Dame in Belval (France) presents this arrangement (Fig. 33).21 While the manuscript would have been usable and complete without the Crucifixion miniature, those at the abbey desired such an image—apparently so that they could use it in a kissing ritual. This practice has abraded the paint and deposited stains, especially near the lower cross, the legs of Jesus, and the lower drapery of Mary and John. Some of the stains have been impressed onto the facing folio.
Fig. 33 Opening of a missal at the Canon, from the abbey of Notre-Dame in Belval, twelfth century. Charleville-Mézières, Bibliothèque municipale [Médiathèque Voyelles], Ms. 3, fols 44v-45r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
In her groundbreaking book Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (1991), Miri Rubin showed that standard rituals enacted at Masses across Christendom had the effect of destroying books. When Siegfried Wenzel reviewed Rubin’s book, he did not believe this to be the case. Listing the book’s “serious factual mistakes,” he included “interpreting the crosses found in handwritten and printed editions of the Canon of the Mass as marks ‘for the priest’s kiss’ (they are signals for the priest to make a manual sign of the cross).”22 Although the line-high crosses within the texts of liturgical manuscripts indicate that the priest is to make the sign of the cross manually, other crosses, gross and unseemly as it may be, did in fact signal a physical, oral osculation, and not merely a hand gesture. The manuscripts themselves bear evidence of the physical procedures they underwent. Rubin was, of course, right.
In the missal from Notre-Dame in Belval, and the missal now in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, traces of priests’ kisses appear in the form of smears, weakened parchment, and deposited facial grease, which all reveal the intimate interactions between book and user. Priests treated books as if they were, in fact, the body of Christ. Even the ink used to inscribe the text could become a metaphor for Christ’s blood.23
By the early fourteenth century, canon images increased in size again; it became de rigueur for missals to have a full illuminated opening, with Christ Crucified on one side, and God Enthroned on the other side. Such is the case with a missal made in Paris in 1317 or 1318, probably for the Use of Sainte-Chapelle, the royal chapel in Paris (LBL, Harley Ms. 2891; Fig. 34).24 Parallel with the development toward ever-larger images of Christ, and a concomitant emphasis on images rather than divine logos, an increasingly elaborate set of ritual actions accompanied the performance of the liturgy. Manuscripts acquired more and more instructions for gestures, in the form of rubrics. The rubrics in the Sainte-Chapelle missal provide a sense of how a late medieval priest might have performed the liturgy. The ordo missae and the Canon of the Mass together require a full 11 folios (141r–152v) near the middle of the book, because extensive rubrics draw this section out. They direct the priest to undertake various actions, including to wash his hands, to don various liturgical vestments, to light candles, to kiss the altar, to open the manuscript to the image of the crucifix, to regard it with devotion and then to kiss the feet of the Crucified Christ, to bless the gospel book, to elevate the chalice and the paten with the host, to return the chalice and the paten to the altar and to cover them with a corporal, to place the offering of the people in the middle of the altar, to bow his head and body and clasp his hands together, and then to wash his hands. These actions form a ritualized performance, with the altar and various objects including the missal as protagonists on the white-draped stage.
Fig. 34 Opening of a missal at the Canon, Paris in 1317 or 1318. London, British Library, Harley Ms. 2891, fols 145v-146r.
Besides kissing, other ritual actions of the Mass could likewise sully the book. While reciting the canon, the priest would incense the book as part of a purification procedure, and he would wash his hands ritualistically in preparation for handling the Host. The signs of wear in a missal made for Knights Hospitallers in Southern Germany in 1469 reveal this aspect of its early use (’s-Heerenberg, Huis Bergh Castle, inv. no. 281, Ms. 15). The first opening of the canon, with a full-page miniature of the Crucifixion, is relatively clean (Fig. 35), although the raking light reveals creases and buckling in the parchment, especially in the lower corner of the recto side, as a result of grasping the folio there and turning it many times (Fig. 36). The edges of the opening also have dirt deposited in several locations by both the right and left hands; this opening has even more pronounced creasing and buckling, suggesting that not only has the page been turned many times, but that moisture has also been introduced. An opening deeper in the canon is the filthiest (Fig. 37). One of the rubricated instructions reads “in ablucione digitorum”: this prayer is to be read while the priest washes his fingers. Dark marks in the margins of the opening, plus severely buckled parchment, indicate that he did not dry them effectively. The book itself became his hand towel.
Fig. 35 Crucifixion in a missal at the Canon. Southern Germany (Augsburg?), 1469. Ms. 15, Inv. nr. 281, fol. 70v. ’s-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 15. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.
Fig. 36 Opening of a missal within the Canon. Southern Germany (Augsburg?), 1469. Ms. 15, Inv. nr. 281, fols 70v-71r. ’s-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 15.
Fig. 37 Opening of a missal within the Canon. Southern Germany (Augsburg?), 1469. Ms. 15, Inv. nr. 281, fols 78v-79r. ’s-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 15. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.
Materially, treating the book as a suffering body to be kissed resulted in the degradation of the very object of veneration. Illuminators responded by painting a small cross at the bottom of the page, so that priests would kiss this instead, thereby leaving the main miniature unscathed.25 A pair of such osculatory targets appears in the Sainte-Chapelle missal (BL Harley 2891), below both the Crucifixion and Enthroned Christ images. Slight degradation suggests that both pages were kissed, especially the Crucifixion, where the feet of Christ and the osculatory target are darkened, plus the round boss in the frame halfway between the two. While this missal survives in good condition—suggesting it was used only for the most special ceremonies—many other missals reveal heavy physical use.
A missal made in Paris around 1315 contains heavily used osculatory targets (Paris, BnF, Ms. lat. 861; Fig. 38).26 Instead of a simple cross, the target is a miniature version of the Crucifixion above, complete with the figures of Mary and John, and has thereby been offered by the illuminator as a diminutive replica of the main image. An obedient priest who followed the illuminator’s graphic instructions has severely degraded the tiny image. He has also kissed Christ’s feet and shins, and the blue mantel of the Virgin in the large image, suggesting that the main illustration exerted an overwhelming pull on this priest’s attention.
Fig. 38 Opening of a missal at the Canon. Paris ca. 1315. Paris, Bibliothèque national de France, Ms. lat. 861, fol. 147v-148r.
Not all priests obeyed the graphic instruction of the osculatory target. An elaborate example appears in the missal written in 1482–1483 by the Brethren of the Common Life of St. Gregory in Nijmegen for the bakers’ guild in that city. The missal also contains a full-page miniature depicting Christ Crucified, this time painted in a style and palette typical of the German-Dutch border region, with bright sherbet-like colors and heavy gilding (Fig. 39).27 A motif in the lower gilt border specifically refers to the bakers’ guild: it shows a man putting a loaf into an oven with a long paddle. As if in response to the bread motif, the artist has created an elaborate osculatory target of gilded arabesques; kissing the shape would bring the priest’s mouth into contact with the baker and his bread, in both a blessing for the guild and symbolic contact with the body of Christ. But the Nijmegen priest avoided the target, perhaps because the gilded surface felt cold and metallic. He tried to restrain himself to kissing the ground below Christ’s feet, but eventually smeared Christ’s midriff and groin across the distant landscape. This example suggests that priests strongly desired to kiss the main image of Christ, rather than a diminutive substitute.
Fig. 39 Opening of a missal at the Canon, missal of the Nijmegen Bakers’ Guild, 1482–1483. Nijmegen, Museum Het Valkhof, Ms. CIA 2, fols 125v-126r.
At the end of the fifteenth century, at least one priest from Amiens gave his missal air kisses. He gripped his missal until he had dislodged paint from the lower corners of the pages (Fig. 40). To achieve this level of wear, he must have performed the Mass hundreds or thousands of times, handling these pages at least once for each Mass. Holding the parchment at the corner has weakened its fibers, and caused the gold, blue, and white paint to flake off. However, even with this much handling and attention, the images bear no signs of oral moisture or facial grease: despite all this physical attention, the priest avoided contact, possibly so as not to ruin the pictures.
Fig. 40 Opening of a missal at the Canon, for the use of Amiens, ca. 1490–1500. Amiens, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 163, fol. 155v-156r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
There seems to have been no single way for the priest to kiss an image. Rather, patterns of wear reveal considerable latitude in kissing targets, which suggests that priests exerted some emotional response in their choice of where on the page to kiss and with how much contact or restraint. The ritual itself demanded that priests carry out certain actions, but within that fixed ritual was the flexibility to express zeal and personal emotion. Places to kiss include the right hand of Christ, as in a thirteenth-century missal for the use of Arras (Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 888; Fig. 41).28 A priest has aimed for this spot again and again, thereby wearing a hole in the gold background and causing a pigment shift from fleshy tan to sickly gray in Christ’s right forearm. Christ’s midriff is also a popular target, seen in a thirteenth-century missal now in Paris (Bibliothèque Mazarine, Ms. 422; see Fig. 32). There, moisture from the priest’s mouth has been applied to Christ’s torso, groin, and thighs. This moisture has loosened some of the paint and caused it to adhere to the opposite page. Handling the book with dry hands has also abraded the bottom margin, inadvertently erasing the inscription below the miniature.
Fig. 41 Opening of a missal, with a Crucifixion, thirteenth century, use of Arras. Arras, Bibliothèque Municipale, Ms. 888, fol. 175v-176r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
An early fifteenth-century Parisian priest aimed repeatedly for the charged area between the depicted cleric and the feet of Christ Crucified (Fig. 42). Water-based saliva has liquefied the paint, and then abrasion has redistributed it. The effects of these repeated actions are more visible in a photograph shot with backlighting (Fig. 43). Against the cleric’s distinct, opaque lead-white robe, the re-liquefied brown paint of Christ’s cross and feet have been smeared over the top. On the facing folio the priest has duplicated the kissing gesture at the feet of God the Father: it is the presence of the second image in this context, rather than a long-standing tradition of kissing the feet of God, that has prompted the duplicate gesture. Photographs of the back of both leaves confirm that facial oils have seeped through the parchment, which indicates that the priest’s face did indeed come in contact with the parchment (Fig. 44 and Fig. 45). Whereas saliva is water-based and reconstitutes the tempera paint, facial oils are hydrophobic and do not reconstitute water-based paint; oils seep into the parchment, both darkening it and decreasing its opacity. (For this reason, fatty parchment often looks yellow-brown, but letters on the other side of the membrane are visible through the semi-transparent oily parchment.)
Fig. 42 Opening of a missal at the Canon, early fifteenth century, made for Paris. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 97, fols 136v–137r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
Fig. 43 Canon page shot with backlighting, made for Paris, early fifteenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 97, fols 136v. Photograph: author
Fig. 44 Back of the folio with the Crucifixion, made for Paris, early fifteenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 97, fol. 136r. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
Fig. 45 Back of the folio with God the Father, made for Paris, early fifteenth century. Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 97, fol. 137v. Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
In this context, I would like to revisit the missal presented to Jean Michel in Angers, discussed earlier (Angers, Archives départementales de Maine-et-Loire, J(001) 4138; see Figs 1 and 3). The fugitive detail of the front of the Crucifixion miniature indexes its thorough handling. The back of the Crucifixion miniature reveals that grease—which I am interpreting here as facial oils—only appears in one area of the page: at the center of the lower border. If this is correct, it follows that the priest, perhaps Jean Michel, only kissed the osculatory target painted at the lower border, and that his nose or forehead touched down repeatedly in the middle of the marginal decoration. This would imply that the damage to the rest of the image—especially the removal of surface detail from the face and body of Christ, and the faces of Mary and John—has been caused by a different action. I suggest that this action was wet-touching with a finger, which would transport moisture but not oil to the surface. In this model, the scenario would operate like this: having kissed the osculatory target, the priest apparently regarded the image, and then kissed his finger and carefully alighted on meaningful details, with Christ’s face and torso taking the brunt of his fawning attention. The wet-touching action would also explain why the blue sky and the Virgin’s blue mantle look pock-marked, as spots of paint in these areas have been liquefied, loosened, and lifted. These actions formed part of his habit and practice.
As with the fifteenth-century Parisian missal just discussed, this example from Angers also offered the priest a two-page spread, and the Angers priest, possibly Jean Michel, has likewise addressed the figure of God the Father with physical handling (see Fig. 1). A view of the back of this miniature reveals that the priest has once again kissed the lower margin and deposited his facial oils in the border decoration (Fig. 46). I suspect that the folio once had an osculatory target, which was excised when the corner was repaired, and the priest heeded the cross’s tacit instruction to plant a kiss on the page. He also touched the painted area with careful aim. Specifically, he touched the hem of God’s tawny garment, and he also let his wet finger touch down repeatedly on the four evangelists’ symbols in the corners of the frame. It is as if he were acknowledging the sacrality of each Gospel through his action.
Fig. 46 Opening of a missal within the Canon, Use of Angers, 1439? Angers, Archives départementales de Maine-et-Loire, J(001) 4138, fol. 196v (quarter) – 196r (quinquies). Cliché: IRHT-CNRS
That priests wet-touched figures in missals, presumably while they had the book open in front of them at the altar, is made plain in a Dutch example (Fig. 47). Bistre at the foot of the cross indicates grease from facial contact. Kissing with the lips, however, does not explain the paint losses on Mary’s and John’s robes. These round forms were more likely caused by a very wet finger, which, when pressed down, squashed the moisture to the edges of the contact zone. That moisture then liquefied and lifted the pigment from the parchment. It would appear, therefore, that in addition to the practice of kissing the osculatory target or the foot of the cross, priests were also in the habit of wet-touching the figurative imagery.
Fig. 47 Crucifixion (Delft, ca. 1460–1480) mounted in a missal (South Holland, ca. 1440–1450). The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. B 76 E 2, fol. 101v
Clearly, those who conducted Masses had a menu of different techniques for making physical contact with the painted and inscribed page. A missal now in Oxford (OBL, Canon Liturg. 344) shows heavy use and reveals stains of crispy brown dirt in the lower corners at the Canon (Fig. 48). This book had no figurative illuminations. In the absence of an image of the Crucifixion, the priest touched the T initial (of Te igitur) with a wet finger. His fingerprint is visible on the right frame of the T, where the moistened black ink has been redistributed into radiating whorls (Fig. 49). It appears he used the T as a proxy for the Cross, a practice evident in Canon pages in twelfth-century missals. Moreover, he has used the decoration around the page as a “body,” and so has smeared areas of the long, thin gold decoration, called a “baguette,” that separates the text columns. In other words, he has treated the text page as a kissable, touchable body, and has allowed the abstract designs to guide his finger. This priest selectively touched other initials and decoration, such as the six-line A at the beginning of the manuscript that marks the incipit for Advent, and the four-line initial P for the Nativity. Priests selectively kissing initials in this way did not form part of the script, as kissing the Canon page did. This instead provides an example of the kisser taking the codified behavior and applying it to a different situation.
Fig. 48 Te igitur page from a missal, fourteenth century, Use of Chartres. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Canon Liturg. 344, fol. 105r (cvi in the original foliation).
Fig. 49 Detail from previous image: fingerprint and wet-touched baguette. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon Liturg. 344, detail of 105r.
III. Transformations of the Book
A missal originally made in Augsburg in the twelfth century (OBL, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354) reveals another aspect of handling that was transmitted to future audiences: simply treating the book as a tool over several centuries could degrade it significantly.29 Like many other missals, this one has a full-page image of Christ Crucified, which has been heavily damaged by hands and lips (Fig. 50). The Crucifixion has been kissed consistently in the region of Christ’s midriff. In addition to the wear from facial contact, hand dirt, grease, sweat, and saliva from many priests have been layered on and ground into the parchment, causing the lower corner to become fully discolored. Priests have kissed the image of Christ, especially his head, torso, and knees, as well as the faces of Mary and John. Mary’s lower garment was painted with a type of bright green pigment that falls off easily. Many whiskers have challenged its adherence. This folio bears witness to another form of touch: at the outer margin are two rectangular patches of wear circumscribed by stitching holes, where leather tabs were once sewn in, so that the priest could find this page by feel. After repeated fingering loosened the first tab, someone replaced it in a different position rather than sewing it onto already compromised parchment. But the second one, too, has fallen off. When priests used this book in public, they demonstrated not only emotional intimacy by kissing the images, but also book-manipulating technology that fell within the grasp of those with a needle and thread to apply to their own books.
Fig. 50 Crucifixion in a missal at the Canon, twelfth century with later additions, Augsburg. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354 fol. 67r (which is fol. Lxfij in the original foliation).
The users of Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354 found other ways of handling the manuscript that involved touching and re-touching it: they used every blank space to inscribe more texts, even writing on the back of the Crucifixion page (Fig. 51). And then they proceeded to read this urgent text so often and handle it so vigorously that they rubbed the lower corner of the text right off. The standard professional photographs I commissioned in 2018 (reproduced in the two previous images) are competent, well-lighted, and flat. From these it is difficult to imagine how early users handled the book. I therefore ordered fresh photographs that would reveal these folios in their bookish contexts (Fig. 52 and Fig. 53).
Fig. 51 Back of the Canon page (which faces the Te igitur) in a missal, twelfth century with later additions, Augsburg. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354, fol. 67v
Fig. 52 Crucifixion in a missal at the Canon, twelfth century with later additions, Augsburg. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354 fol. 67r (which is fol. Lxfij in the original foliation). Photographed in its material context
Fig. 53 Back of the Canon page (which faces the Te igitur) in a missal, twelfth century with later additions, Augsburg. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354, fol. 67v. Photographed in its material context
The liturgy bore so many additions that the owners found it expedient to foliate their creation-in-progress in the fifteenth century. They even repurposed some of the folios to make more room for the ever-expanding liturgy. For example, fols Lvij–lxij (verso) form a quire that was destined to be a calendar, but only January dates remain, as well as “KL” at the top of every folio. Someone has scraped these down and repurposed them. One of the texts written over the calendric palimpsest on fol. Lviij (verso) is the office of Corpus Christi, added in a fourteenth– or fifteenth-century script; another, at fol. Lxij (recto) is the office of the Crown of Thorns (Fig. 54). In this way, the calendar was repurposed as a place to insert the new offices that had emerged since the book’s original production. This manuscript reveals how generations of priests added material to blank areas of the book.
Fig. 54 Added office of the crown of thorns in a twelfth-century missal, Augsburg. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Canon. Liturg. 354, fols 61v-62r.
Because a priest used the Canon at every Mass, this part of the book fell in tatters first. The differential usage of a missal demanded a particular approach to conservation, as is apparent in a missal written and illuminated in the first decade of the fifteenth century, possibly in Guelders (Fig. 55). It must have been partly ruined by the end of the century—partly because a priest would use the book unevenly during the course of a year. Because the margins of this page are largely unpainted, it is easy to see that they are somewhat discolored from wear. For example, fol. 7v, near the beginning, has the text to be read “for the first Sunday in Advent” (Dominica prima in adventu). Its illuminated initial at the top, as well as the painted and gilt decoration around the border, help the reader to find this passage for the first Sunday of the liturgical year. The priest would have turned to this folio once a year, and the book was probably in use for about a century, beginning shortly after 1400. In comparison, the Canon is significantly more beaten up from wear (Fig. 56). Its left-hand side has a full-page image of Christ Crucified, flanked by Mary and John, with an osculatory target at the bottom. The priest has not obeyed the target, but has kissed the foot of the cross, the feet of Jesus, the torso of Jesus, and the top of the cross. In other words, he has kissed all along the central vertical axis of the image. In so doing, he has had to hold the book open with his hands, which have left dirt and signs of abrasion at the bottom of the image, in the margin. This dirt and abrasion is mirrored on the right-hand side of the opening, the text page, beginning Te igitur, as the priest would have had to pick it up with both hands to kiss it, and the moisture he has deposited on the image has also loosened the ink and paint on the text page.
Fig. 55 Folio from a missal for the Use of Utrecht, with a historiated initial depicting David at prayer for the first Sunday of Advent in the Temporal, ca. 1400–1410 with added sections, Northern Netherlands. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 128 D 29, fol. 7v.
Fig. 56 Opening of a missal at the Canon, Use of Utrecht, ca. 1400–1410 with added sections, Northern Netherlands. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 128 D 29, fols 128v-129r.
Whereas the other sections of the manuscript contain penwork and painted decoration typical of Guelders around 1400–1410, the quire at the Canon in the very center of the book (fols 129–34) has been added or, more accurately, replaced. This quire has decoration typical of South Holland around 1490–1500. One can imagine the following scenario: a missal made in Guelders around 1400–1410 had a Canon that was used daily. By about 1490, severe wear rendered it no longer usable. The priest or churchwardens had the manuscript repaired in South Holland, which meant discarding the tattered Canon and replacing it with a new one. That new one, with decoration typical of South Holland, was heavily used for several decades until the book was put away or retired during the Reformation. In other words, the Canon would wear out many times faster than any other part of the book, but scribes collaborating with illuminators could easily replace the worn section with a substitution.
Substituting the canon was more straightforward than trying to clean it. Clergy took the cleanliness of the items on the altar seriously. Durandus even specifies the ceremony around washing textiles:
When the palls, that is, the corporals [corporalia], and the veils, that is, the ornaments of the altar, or the coverings hanging on the altar become dirty, the deacons along with the lower orders of ministers will wash them in the sacristy, and not outside of it. And for washing the veils that service the cult of the altar, they will use a new basin; the palls, that is, the corporals, will be washed in another basin; the veils of the doorways, that is, the curtains that hang in church on feast days and during Lent are washed in another basin. Hence it was decreed by the Council of Lérida, that there be proper vessels for no other use than washing the corporal and the altar coverings, in which nothing else ought to be washed. But according to the same Clement, if the palls, that is, the vestments of the altar, or the chair covered with sacred vestments in which the priest sits, or the candelabrum, or the veil, that is, altar cloth [pannus], or the curtains hanging over the altar are consumed by old age, they shall be burned, and their ashes shall be cast in the baptistery, or into the walls, or into the cracks of the pavement where no one will pass. And note that the ecclesiastical ornaments are blessed, as discussed under the heading On consecrations and unctions.30
Durandus does not discuss how to clean manuscripts, nor how to refurbish them if they become tattered, but clearly the items on the altar had to be clean and, when they became sullied, had to be ritually washed. It is intriguing to think about the ashes of ornate missals, or at least of their most worn folios, scattered inside the walls of medieval churches. The moral charge to keep altar goods clean sheds light on the Arenberg Gospels, whose margins have been carefully scraped of their crud (see Fig. 19).
IV. Printed Canon Pages
Since Canon pages in missals required more cleaning and even replacement, they can be considered to have separate careers from the books into which they were mounted. This idea that the Crucifixion miniature could be made separately and inserted into a missal took on new significance in the era of print. One missal, printed on paper, contains just one folio of parchment, the Crucifixion page (OBL, Auct. 6 Q 1.15; Fig. 57).31 Areas of the image that have been kissed are the left and right ends of the cross, the top of the cross, the bottom of Mary’s and John the Evangelist’s robes, and John’s halo. The wetness introduced to these parts has caused paint to transfer to the opposite page. The image itself was printed from a woodblock and has been hand-painted in a manner typical of German prints, with a streaky blue sky and extra red blood that did not form part of the matrix. Onto the printed page, which begins with a fancy printed T (for the Te igitur), someone has written a carat, with an addition in the margin: Primo osculetur altare (First kiss the altar). The written prompt signals ritual action, although the smears to the image also serve as prompts for further osculations. Other clues in this book signal the degree to which its use was predicated upon touch: the book has leather tabs pasted in, and these have been redone, meaning that the tabs were useful enough to be replaced when they wore out (or gave way). Their thick heartiness stands at odds with the flimsiness of the paper, and in many cases the paper has torn around the tabs from the stress. The friable paper contrasts with the much tougher parchment, which also has a different sound, surface quality, and temperature. It is no wonder that bookmakers printed this page alone on parchment. Only parchment would hold up to the rituals subjected onto the Word made Flesh.
Fig. 57 Opening of a missal at the Canon in a printed missal, Switzerland or Germany (Basel?), c.1487. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 6 Q 1.15, unf.
In the print era, when manuscripts were being cut up to be used as binding material, one binder saved a double-page Canon image and bound the folios as pages, rather than packing them into the binding. That book is Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (OBL, Auct. 7 Q 2.13). Although the black letters are printed, a craftsperson has gone through the text, stroking some of the letters in yellow, adding red rubrication symbols, and illuminating the initials. These aspects of the production still point to the hand-applied, pre-printed world. To face the first printed text page, the prologue of the text, he or she has placed the image of the blessing God, flanked by the symbols of ecclesia and synagoga and surrounded by the four Evangelists’ symbols (Fig. 58). Deeper in the manuscript, to preface Book Two (the Lives of the Saints after the Ascension of Christ), he or she has inserted the Crucifixion page (Fig. 59). Not surprisingly, the patterns of wear on these two colorful images reveal that they once faced each other. In their old situation, the priest regularly kissed the area of the cross below Christ’s feet, and the moisture has caused the blue paint from the facing page to adhere to the painted wood in blobs. The priest also regularly kissed the blessing right hand of the Father on the other page, and the dirt and oils from his face has darkened the hand, while his saliva caused a similar transfer of blue paint onto the opposite surface.
Fig. 58 Folio from a manuscript missal depicting God in Majesty (Paris, 1370–1380) bound into Eusebius Historia Ecclestica, printed by Nicholas Ketelaert and Gerardus Leempt of Nijmegen in 1473 with hand-flourished initials. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 7 Q 2.13.
Fig. 59 Folio from a manuscript missal depicting Christ Crucified (Paris, 1370–1380) bound into Eusebius Historia Ecclestica, printed by Nicholas Ketelaert and Gerardus Leempt of Nijmegen in 1473 with hand-flourished initials. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auct. 7 Q 2.13.
This holds true for the entire Canon (a text often written on two quires placed in the center of the manuscript), and for the “canon plate,” which was, with few exceptions, the only illumination in missals made in Northern Europe (those from Southern Europe often have a full program of illumination). Manuscript catalogues rarely provide descriptions of added material, and unless they have a high level of detail, they will not indicate “thirteenth-century missal with fifteenth-century canon,” for example.32 It became a common enough operation that some workshops must have specialized in replacing canons, and some illuminators apparently specialized in making Canon miniatures depicting the Crucifixion.33
1 For a discussion of this manuscript, see Cynthia Hahn, “Peregrinatio et Natio: The Illustrated Life of Edmund, King and Martyr,” Gesta 30, 2 (1991), pp. 119–39, and Rebecca Pinner, The Cult of St Edmund in Medieval East Anglia (Boydell Press, 2015).
2 For a groundbreaking essay about the powerlessness of sitters in profile portraits, see Patricia Simons, “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture,” History Workshop, 25 (Spring 1988), pp. 4–30.
3 Yannick Carré, Le Baiser sur la Bouche au Moyen Âge: Rites, Symboles, Mentalités, à Travers les Textes et les Images, XIe-XVe Siècles (Le Léopard d’Or, 1992); Willem Frijhoff, “The Kiss Sacred and Profane: Reflections on a Cross-Cultural Confrontation,” in A Cultural History of Gesture: From Antiquity to the Present Day, edited by Jan N. Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Polity, 1994), pp. 210–36, esp. p. 211; Kiril Petkov, The Kiss of Peace: Ritual, Self, and Society in the High and Late Medieval West, Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions, Vol. 17 (Brill, 2003); Frits Scholten, “Een Nederlandse Ivoren Pax uit de Late Middeleeuwen,” Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52.1 (2004), pp. 2–23, here p. 3.
4 Carré, Le Baiser sur la Bouche, p. 15, considers kissing to have four levels: a corporal level, an affective level, an intellectual level, and a spiritual level—each with its social aspect.
5 Carré, Le Baiser sur la Bouche, p. 13.
6 Percy Ernst Schramm, A History of the English Coronation (Clarendon Press, 1937); P. L. Ward, “The Coronation Ceremony in Mediaeval England,” Speculum, 14.2 (1939), pp. 160–78; H. G. Richardson, “The English Coronation Oath,” Speculum, 24.1 (1949), pp. 44–75.
7 David Ganz, “Touching Books, Touching Art: Tactile Dimensions of Sacred Books in the Medieval West,” Postscripts, 8.1–2 (2017), pp. 81–113, argues that certain manuscripts were activated through touch, and that decoration on the page structured that touching.
8 Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (2 vols), trans. Francis A. Brunner (Benziger, 1951), Rev. and abridged ed. Notre Dame: Christian Classics (Vol. 1), [2012], pp. 68–73.
9 A comprehensive study of service books across the European Middle Ages with all their geographical and chronological variants has yet to be written, but useful regional studies exist, including Agnès Babois-Auboyneau, l’Illustration des Sacramentaires et Missels de l’An 1000 aux Années 1150. I: Synthèse. II: Annexes et Catalogue. III: Illustrations (3 vols) (University of Poitiers, unpublished MA thesis, 1995). V. Leroquais, Les Sacramentaires et les Missels Manuscrits des Bibliothèques Publiques de France (Tiip. Macon, 1924), analyzed the service books in the BnF, which are overwhelmingly from France. For Italian manuscripts, see the Iter Liturgicum Italicum database (https://www.irht.cnrs.fr/fr/ressources/base-de-donnees/iter-liturgicum-italicum), together with Laura Albiero and Eleonora Celora, “La base des données Iter Liturgicum Italicum: Problématiques et perspectives,” in Laura Albiero and Eleonora Celora, eds. “Décrire le manuscrit liturgique: Méthodes, problématiques, perspectives,” Bibliologia 64 (Brepols, 2021), pp. 209–18. The other items in this volume include useful tools for studying liturgical manuscripts.
10 For an analysis of High vs Low Masses, see Josef A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, trans. Francis A. Brunner, 2 vols. (Benziger, 1951), Rev. and abridged ed. Christian Classics, [2012].
11 Useful introductions to these book types can be found in John Plummer, Liturgical Manuscripts for the Mass and the Divine Office (The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1964), pp. 9–10; and Robert G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Thames and Hudson, 1983), pp. 161–206.
12 Eyal Poleg, “The Bible as Talisman: Textus and Oath-Books,” in Approaching the Bible in Medieval England, Manchester Medieval Studies (Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 59–107; David Ganz, Buch-Gewänder: Prachteinbände im Mittelalter (Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2015).
13 Robert G. Calkins, Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press, 1986), makes this point in his concise overview of the shifts in liturgical manuscripts from the early to the late Middle Ages. Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Dacre Press, 1945), pp. 546–612, discusses the many regional differences in the performance of Mass in the West (although it was more uniform in Byzantium). Jungmann (Vol. I), pp. 104ff offers the fullest analysis of the transition of the books for Mass.
14 For further resources, see Éric Palazzo, “Performing the Liturgy,” in Early Medieval Christianities, c. 600-c. 1100, edited by Thomas F. X. Noble and Julia M. H. Smith (Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 472–88; and Éric Palazzo, “Art and Liturgy in the Middle Ages: Survey of Research (1980–2003) and Some Reflections on Method,” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (The State of Medieval Studies series), 105.1 (Jan. 2006), pp. 170–84.
15 Jungmann (Vol. 1), pp. 107–08.
16 In addition to Jungmann, see: Anne S. Korteweg, Liturgische Handschriften uit de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Rijksmuseum Meermanno-Westreenianum, 1983); Christine Schnusenberg, The Relationship Between the Church and the Theatre: Exemplified by Selected Writings of the Church Fathers and by Liturgical Texts Until Amalarius of Metz (775–852 A.D.) (University Press of America, 1988). Andrew S. Hughes, Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office a Guide to Their Organization and Terminology (University of Toronto Press, 1995) analyzes the text and is not concerned with images within manuscripts nor with gestures of officiants. Nicholas Orchard, The Leofric Missal, Vol. 113–14 (Boydell Press for the Henry Bradshaw Society, 2002); David Ganz, “Giving to God in the Mass: The Experience of the Offertory,” in The Languages of Gift in the Early Middle Ages, edited by Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 18–32.
17 See Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (D.R. Godine, 1986), pp. 206–09.
18 Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 60–63, 140–46, and passim convincingly argues that theologians had to rewrite Christian history after the year 1000, when Christ failed to return as promised. Liturgy and devotion shifted to accommodate this disappointment. After the First Crusade (1096–1099), when Christians conquered Jerusalem, devotion and liturgy shift again, becoming more emotional, fervent, and theatrical, with more metaphors around blood and suffering.
19 Edouard Dumoutet, Le Désir de voir l’hostie et les origines de la dévotion au Saint-Sacrement (Beauchesne, 1926); Charles Caspers, “The Western Church During the Late Middle Ages: Augenkommunion or Popular Mysticism?” In Bread of Heaven: Customs and Practices Surrounding Holy Communion, Essays in the History of Liturgy and Culture (Liturgia Condenda, Vol. 3), edited by Charles Caspers, Gerard Lukken, and Gerard Rouwhorst (Kok Pharos, 1995), pp. 83–98
20 For a description of Mazarine 422 and bibliographic notices, see http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/codex/6497.
21 For a bibliography of this manuscript, see http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/codex/1413.
22 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1991). Siegfried Wenzel, review of Miri Rubin Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, Notes and Queries (1992), 39 (2), pp. 212–13. Esther Meier, “Turning Toward God and Outward Actions: The Priest in the Te Igitur Initials of the Middle Ages,” in Iconography of Liturgical Textiles in the Middle Ages, edited by Evelin Wetter and Michael Bangert (Abegg-Stiftung, 2010), pp. 79–88, has further explored these gestures.
23 Marlene Villalobos Hennessy. “The Social Life of a Manuscript Metaphor: Christ’s Blood as Ink,” in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe), edited by Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse and Kathryn A. Smith, pp. 17–52, (Brepols, 2013), pp. 17–52.
24 For a full bibliography, see www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6620. The entire manuscript has been digitized: www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_2891_fs001r.
25 de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, p. 210 makes this point.
26 For a description and bibliography, see https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cc623294; see Leroquais, Missels et sacramentaires, II, pp. 248–49; François Avril, Manuscript Painting at the Court of France: The Fourteenth Century (1310–1380) (George Braziller, 1978), pp. 42–43.
27 The manuscript was recently in the collection of the Museum Commanderie van St Jan, but the collections were transferred to the Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen.
28 For a description and bibliography, see http://initiale.irht.cnrs.fr/codex/297?contenuMaterielId=1427.
29 Otto Pächt and J. J. G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford, edited by J. J. G. Alexander (Clarendon Press, 1966–1973), Vol. I, p. 102, XII; and Friedrich Simader, “Das so genannte ‘Reiner Musterbuch’—Notizen zum Forschungsstand,” in Zisterziensisches Schreiben im Mittelalter—Das Skriptorium der Reiner Mönche: Beiträge der Internationalen Tagung im Zisterzienserstift Rein, Mai 2003, edited by Anton Schwob and Karin Kranich-Hofbauer, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, Reihe A: Kongressberichte (Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 141–50, p. 148.
30 Durand, Book 1 (2007), p. 48.
31 The print is 164 x 246 mm. The entire missal could also be printed on parchment, to match the status of the material to the gravitas of the ritual, and to allow the missal to be more richly painted. For an example, see Ursula Rautenberg, “Medienkonkurrenz und Medienmischung: Zur Gleichzeitigkeit von Handschrift und Druck im ersten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts in Köln,” in Die Gleichzeitigkeit von Handschrift und Buchdruck, edited by Gerd Dicke and Klaus Grubmüller. Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien (Harrassowitz, 2003), pp. 167–202.
32 A systematic study of replaced canons in missals would be a welcome topic for a PhD thesis.
33 I make this point in Rudy, Piety in Pieces, pp. 154–55, https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0094, with a discussion of Canon pages produced by the Masters of Otto van Moerdrecht as replacements. See also Hanns Peter Neuheuser, “Die Kanonblätter aus der Schule des Moerdrecht-Meisters Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, 64 (2003), pp. 187–214, who emphasizes the ways in which the Moerdrecht Masters streamlined production rather than how they created replacement folios when old Canon pages wore out.