ende wie en spriect aenden vridach soe men ons heren doet luyt ende men *tenebre* singet, da van hevet eickelick minsche lxxxm jaer afflaetz. Ende soe ein minsche den aendachtelicker spriect in aenbechtingen bedroefenisse ende liden verdient da van genadelicken verloest te vonden. In deser kercken tot den cruce is alle dage xlviiij iaer afflaetz. Soe vele karenen ende dat derde deil vergevinge alre sonden.  Inder vasten inden advent ende inden anderen hochtijdelicken dagen is der aflaet tweevoldich. Aen desen dagen hier nae geschreven is allen wegen volcomen vergevinge alre sonden van pinen ende van scolt als in deme iubel iaere. Aen den wyssen vrijdach, aen des heiligen cruis dach der vindingen, aen des heiligen cruus dach der erhevingen, aenden neesten dach na sce Gregorius, dat is der xiide dach des mertz.  Aen den yedel dage nae sce Gregorius dach dat is nae sce Benedictus avont ende is der xx dach inden mertz.  Aender tweer heiligen dach als sce Cesarius ende sce Anastacius de in deser kercken lychandelicken liget. Sce Cesarius is aen alre heligen dach Ende sce Anastarius aenden derden dach voer sce Bartholomeus dache. Ende wie aen desen dage voerschreven voer den titel mit andacht spriect v pater noster ende v ave marien ende einen gelouwen hevet vergevinghe alre sonden van pinen ende van scholt. Desen aflaet hevet bestedicht pais Sixtus der vierde ende na hem paes Alexander der vjde. Ende aldus dorch dat gans [3r] iaer heft ein minsche alle dage daer van xijm iaer aflaetz doorlicker sonden ende twee mael alsoe vele dagelicker sonden. Aen die midwech ende vrijdach xxiiijm iaer aflaetz hebben gegeven de heilige vader de paesen. Desen aflaet mogen oech vercrigen de gelouwige zielen in deme vegevuer, alsmen v pr nr ende v Ave Maria ende einen gelouwe voer sij spriect. Ende off ein minsche soe cranck ware dat hij niet geknien ende[sic] conde, soe mach hij de pater noster sittende off liggende beden.  Ic dancke u gebenedide lieve here Ihesu Christe dattu din martilie begonstes crachtelick ende leetste anden cruus verduldelick ende hinges aenden cruus versmadelick ende sprakes droefflicken ende weendes bitterlicken ende woerdes te broken ganselicken ende gotes dijn bloet uut mildelicken ende storves om mijnen wil den bitteren doot.  Amen.

it to serve as "miniatures" and even painted borders around the prints to further embellish them and make the images seem more like fancy, bespoke miniatures. Additionally, the sisters must have added this textual bifolium, one that accommodates text that refers to the women's particular church and the relics it held and the indulgences available there on various days of the year. It mentions popes Sixtus IV (1471–84) and Alexander VI (1492–1503), thereby providing a *terminus post quem* for this added bifolium on 1492. While the sisters made this book for their own use, and therefore personalized it from the beginning, this indulgence was apparently added to the book after the indulgence was ratified.

Time and again, the texts that prayerbook owners desired to add were those containing indulgences. Such is also the case with Leiden, UB, BPL 3073, a book of hours in Dutch made in Utrecht or Delft in the 1420s. Its calendar has been lost, and the first folio reveals a highly worn incipit for the Hours of the Virgin, which suggests that the calendar had disappeared early in the book's career, as it wasn't there to protect the prayer text during the period of its heaviest use (fig. 163).62 It has therefore been modified several times before it received its current binding, which is an early sixteenth-century brown leather, blindstamped binding made in the Netherlands.

Texts in the original parts of the manuscript comprise various offices. Their incipits have plenty of decoration but offer no indulgences (fig. 164).63 Toward the end of the fifteenth century (or possibly when the manuscript was rebound for the final time), an owner added a bifolium to the end of the book (Leiden, UB, BPL 3073, fol. 191–193; fig. 165).64 This is written in a later script and represents an added prayer. According to these red words, the more the votary reads the prayer, the more sin it will eradicate. I contend that one of the reasons that owners inserted more physical material into their books (e.g., parchment bifolia) was to

62 Incipit of the Hours of the Virgin, with a historiated initial. Utrecht or Delft, ca. 1420s. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ms. BPL 3073, fol. 1r. https://socrates. leidenuniv.nl/ (then search for "BPL 3073")

63 Incipit from the original part of the manuscript, with decoration from Utrecht or Delft. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ms. BPL 3073, fol. 154v. https://socrates. leidenuniv.nl/ (then search for "BPL 3073")

64 Beginning of the added bifolium. Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ms. BPL 3073, fol. 191r. https://socrates.leidenuniv.nl/ (then search for "BPL 3073")

accommodate indulgenced texts and prayers that would secure their position in the afterlife.

Fig. 166 Parchment diptych with the measurements of Christ's length and side wound, inserted into a French book of hours. Paisley, Renfrew District Museum and Art Gallery, Ms. 1, fol. 13–14 forming a diptych. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

Another way they could sanctify their books was by inserting metric relics painted on parchment. The owner of a French book of hours has rebound the book to accommodate a parchment bifolium showing the wound in Christ's side, and the length of Christ's body (fig. 166).65 These abstract shapes are enveloped in explanatory texts, in the form of short stanzas of rhyming French doggerel. They indicate that however humble the painted forms, they are true measurements of the savior, meaning that they are secondary contact relics of Jesus. The object itself folds so that the images and texts are on the inside, while the outside is blank. It forms a self-protecting autonomous unit, which, when inserted into a book of hours, brings that book closer to the body of Christ.

65 For a description, see N. R. Ker et al., *Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries*, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–2002), vol. IV, pp. 1–2, where the author acknowledges that fols 13–14 form an added bifolium.

*a. Adding new openings to old*

Fig. 167 Monk praying for the release of souls from purgatory, full-page miniature made as part of a diptych and inserted into a book of hours. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 133 D 5, fol. 86v-87r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 168 Opening in a book of hours, showing the original parchment and script (on the right side of the gutter) and the replaced incipit folio with text recopied in a different script (on the left side of the gutter). The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 133 D 5, fol. 87v-88r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 169 The pricking along the outer edge of the bifolium only occurs on the added folios. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 133 D 5, detail of fol. 86–87. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

A medieval owner of HKB, Ms. 133 D 5, a book of hours made in South Holland, was so worried about purgatory that he commissioned a full-page miniature showing souls being released from it (fig. 167). The

cleric depicted in the image probably does not represent the medieval owner, for the figure lacks specifying details, and furthermore, clerics would be unlikely to use a book of hours, which was really in the purview of the laity. Instead, a late medieval patron could have ordered an image depicting a monk praying for his or her soul, for the image represents the fulfillment of another transaction: perhaps the owner was a layperson who had commissioned prayers from a local monastery. This owner did not simply add the miniatures, but made more complicated interventions: he or she added entire bifolia. That is, the opening folios were changed to make new, and presumably more lavish, incipits. Replacing two folios instead of one at each incipit was done in order to make the new fullpage miniatures match their respective facing folios. A book maker has therefore cut out the existing incipit pages and replaced them with entire bifolia. This technique has allowed the book maker to achieve entire openings decorated in a unified style.

Only when one turns the page does one confront the rupture in style (fig. 168). There one can see the original script on the right side, and on the left the new script, which has been inscribed on the added bifolium. In order to the replace the physical material, the scribe had to carefully calculate the words so that the texts would join up. The added bifolia are thicker than the other pages in the book; this causes the book to spring open at these pages, where the parchment is less supple. When he or she made these adjustments, the supple parchment of the original book was not available, and the new components had to be made with coarser material. These stiff bifolia also have disconcerting pricking

along the outer edge, which the original folios lack (fig. 169). By choosing to replace entire openings—entire two-page-spreads—the owner was quite clearly asserting that the decoration of his book mattered and that creating a visual unity across the entire opening was important enough for him to discard a perfectly good text page and remake it in a different style just to achieve this effect. The owner of this manuscript had the same desire as the owner of Beinecke 434 (discussed earlier): to add full-page images but maintain visual coherence across the entire opening. Whereas the miniaturist of Beinecke 434 preserved the existing parchment and simply painted over the old borders—which involved taking the book apart, and painting the new borders while the old quire was out of its binding, adding the full-page miniature, and rebinding the craftsperson responsible for the changes to HKB, Ms. 133 D 5 did not rework any existing parchment, but rather replaced components.

### 2. Adding one or more full quires

#### Fig. 170

Cistercian breviary, made in the thirteenth century, photographed from the bottom to isolate a quire added in 1491. Perth, St. John's Kirk, Ms. 3. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

#### Fig. 171

Opening in a Cistercian breviary, with original thirteenth-century parts script and parchment on the left side of the gutter, and an added fifteenth-century quire on the right side of the gutter. Perth, St. John's Kirk, Ms. 3. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 172 Folio in a Cistercian breviary showing two campaigns of medieval foliation. Perth, St. John's Kirk, Ms. 3, fol. 155r. Photo © Author, CC BY 4.0.

A thirteenth-century example will reveal why it was so difficult to force manuscripts created before the modular method to accommodate new texts. Ms. 3 in the Kirk in Perth (Scotland) is a Cistercian breviary made in the thirteenth century with additions made in 1491.66 Namely, fol. 52–58 forms an added quire (fig. 170). Clearly, this material was added in order to accommodate a new feast: that of Corpus Christi. 67 Its scribe has attempted to copy the earlier writing style but has not quite mastered it. His heavily ruled parchment also contrasts sharply with the much more subtle rulings of the thirteenth-century lines. These aesthetics aside, his structural problem was that the previous text did not finish neatly at the end of fol. 51v, and the reader would have to skip ahead, to fol. 59r, to read the last few lines of the text. This would have been impractical and inconvenient. Instead, the fifteenth-century scribe copied the last few lines of the previous text before starting the *Corpus Christi* (fig. 171). The fifteenth-century scribe easily fit the new text onto the new quire and then had some space left over on fol. 58v, on which he inscribed a sermon attributed to St. Ambrose. Where the thirteenth-century script resumes on fol. 59r, the scribe has then had to erase several lines of text, for he had already inscribed these at the beginning of the new quire. Thus, in order to accommodate the feast of *Corpus Christi* in approximately the correct place in the book, the scribe had to make adjustments at

66 Ibid., vol. IV, pp. 160–62. Ker describes the manuscript's stratigraphy, including some erasures, some discards, and the 41 leaves added in 1491.

67 Miri Rubin, *Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture* (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

both ends of the added quire, scraping and recopying text and finding a short text to serve as a quire filler. In the fifteenth century book makers obviated such problems by simply beginning new texts on fresh quires and then treating them as modular units. Incidentally, adding a quire disrupted the foliation from that point onward, and the fifteenth-century scribe added foliation in brown above the original foliation in red (fig. 172). Fifteenth-century scribes sidestepped this problem by simply not foliating the manuscript; very few fifteenth-century prayerbooks, books of hours, and breviaries are foliated. It's as if scribes were expecting future adjustments.

Calendars are never foliated, but that is not why I suspect that it was the calendar that gave book makers the idea to start making books out of packets, or pre-assembled parts. Rather, it's because calendars were made in separate operations. In most (semi-) liturgical books, the calendar is ruled separately from the rest of the book. It has a different number of lines per folio, and usually several columns. As the calendar had to be made in a separate operation, book makers in the Southern Netherlands may have begun specializing in making nothing but calendars. A book of hours made in Ghent or Bruges (HKB, Ms. 135 G 10), discussed above, was given to someone in the eastern Netherlands. It was at that time that someone probably removed the West Flemish calendar and replaced it with one for the diocese of Cologne. Below I give further examples of manuscripts that travelled far from where they were made. Their new owners found it easier to swap out the calendar than to rub out some saints and add others to make the calendar relevant for local feasts. Calendars could be exchanged because they were made on separate units.

The Gouda Missal (HKB, Ms. 135 H 45), presented several times above, also has an added quire, namely the canon (fol. 101–106). A fullpage image depicting the Crucifixion, discussed above, initiates the new quire (fig. 124). Not only did the owners replace the image, but they replaced the entire quire containing the canon of the mass. Like a calendar, a canon was ruled and written differently from the rest of the manuscript and made in a different campaign of work. Whereas a missal contains multiple texts a priest would use when performing various kinds of masses over the course of the year, the canon of the mass was the text that was read at every mass. Copyists arranged the

missal such that this text would fall at the very center of the book, so that the book would be open at its midpoint and balanced for this most important part of the ceremony. They also often copied this part of the book in larger script, so that the priest could read it easily from the distance of an arm's length away. Because the priest picked the book up and kissed the Crucifixion, which would also cause wear and tear to the binding, and then often sprinkled the altar with holy water, and flipped through these folios more quickly (because of the large letter size), this part of the book wore out most quickly.

Fig. 173 First folio of the Gouda Missal (from original part of the manuscript). The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 135 H 45, fol. 10r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

As a canon is essential to the manuscript's function as a service book, the missal must have originally had one. This presumed canon would have been decorated in the same style as the other original parts of the manuscript, with red and blue initials and penwork (fig. 173). Perhaps it wore out from use, so that the old one was removed and replaced by a clean new one in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. When the Fraterhuis at Gouda was commissioned to replace the canon, they did so with the latest technology: they printed an image inside the initial, directly on the parchment folio, with a woodblock. They were on the forefront of printing technologies in the Netherlands, and they applied their skills in a novel fashion here68 (fig. 174).69

Although some missals and service books were updated, it is in the realm of private prayerbooks and books of hours that owners often made considerable adjustments by adding entire quires. This adjustability was both a cause and an effect of the modular method of producing books. Not only was the possibility within reach, but there was considerable pressure to do so. The related production fact—that book components were increasingly being made remotely from the consumer—led owners to seek even more adjustments, as the remote producers had not perfectly anticipated their desires.

A book of hours made for use in the diocese of Utrecht ca. 1495 has a quire added to the front, before the calendar (HKB, Ms. 135 G 19). The added component accommodates a prayer to Christ, a prayer to Job, and a full-page image of a man kneeling in veneration before St. Jerome, who is in turn venerating a crucifix with the *Corpus Christi* in a landscape (fig. 175).70 While the added section before the calendar is generally in the same style as the rest of the book, with similar scribal hand and image style, it is clear for two reasons that this first quire was an afterthought. First, it is highly unusual for such prayers to precede

68 Kok, "Een Houtsnede in een Handschrift."

69 *Te igitur* page in the Gouda Missal, with a wood-cut image of the Trinity printed directly on the page. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 135 H 45, fol. 102r. http://manuscripts.kb.nl/show/images/135+H+45

70 The patron with St. Jerome, full-page miniature added to the added quire at the beginning of a book of hours. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 135 G 19, fol. 4v-5r. http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_135g19%3A004v \_005r

the calendar. Second, the image, placed as it is on the right side of the opening, breaks the normal page layout.

While it's clear that the image was designed for its position (as the flower border is thicker on the outside than the inside), this sheet breaks the hierarchy of decoration established throughout the rest of the manuscript, whereby full-page miniatures appear on the left side of the opening and accompany gilt initials on the opposite recto. Indeed, the original scribe, illuminator, or planner establishes the hierarchy of decoration, and then later additions either conform with or violate it. In this first quire, the text, the image, and their layout are therefore quite eccentric, and must have been highly motivated by the man in the picture, presumably the patron. He wanted more of himself in the book, including a full-page miniature depicting himself in a position of prayer, in perpetuity. He apparently felt himself aligned with St. Jerome, who pounded his own chest with a rock, and with Job on his dung heap. This first added quire is his testament to his long, possibly self-inflicted suffering.

Other prayerbooks with added quires similarly testify to their owners' feelings and desires. A book of hours, made originally in Delft around 1440 but then updated later in the fifteenth century, has a quire added to the end of the book, the other most common place to insert something (HKB, Ms. 74 G 35, fol. 161v-162r; fig. 176).71 The original parts of the manuscript were fitted with simple grisaille miniatures to mark the major text openings (fig. 177).72 These original openings are also marked by painted decorated with gold baguettes. However, the added quire, which includes fol. 162r, has a different kind of border decoration, and the accompanying image is not a grisaille, but rather a full-color image. This suggests the following order of operations: begin with a basic book of hours; add grisaille miniatures; later add indulgenced prayers with

71 Face of Christ, full-page miniature added to an added quire at the end of a book of hours. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 74 G 35, fol. 161v-162r. http:// manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_74g35%3A161v\_162r

72 So-called Masters of the Delft Grisailles, Angel, full-page miniature inserted before prayer to the personal angel. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 74 G 35, fol. 83v-84r. http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_74g35%3A083v\_0 84r

full-page miniatures from another source. Considering these additions in layers reveals several attempts at fulfilling desire.

The original part of 74 G 35, which represents a bare-bones book of hours, contains the Hours of the Virgin (fol. 15–53); the Hours of the Cross (fol. 54–59): Seven Penitential Psalms (fol. 60–79); and various Suffrages (fol. 80–104), and the Vigil for the Dead (105–141r). But the added quire (fol. 143–163) contains texts of a different nature:

	- 146r: indulgenced prayer to Virgin
	- 156: Prayer to be read during elevation, indulgenced
	- 157: Indulgenced prayer
	- 161: blank

What is clear from this list is that most of the prayers that the early owner added were those that carried indulgences. By adding three quires to the end of the book, the owner made space for these prayers, which transformed the manuscript from a book of hours to a vehicle for purgatorial remission. As I have shown through research involving densitometry (measuring the amount of dirt on the page, as a way to indirectly measure intensity of reading), the added sections in both HKB, Ms. 74 G 35, and in HKB, Ms. 135 G 19 were among the most heavily used parts of the book. This is not surprising, as it stands to reason that an owner who would go to the trouble and expense to add particular texts would strongly desire those texts and then spend a disproportionally high amount of time with them. Owners of prayerbooks added not only individual images and prayers, but also entire groups of indulgenced texts.

Fig. 178 Opening in a book of hours from Delft, written in Latin but with rubrics in Dutch. The owner has filled the quire with birth dates. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 60v-61r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 179 Opening in a book of hours from Delft, showing an added module with the Hours of the Cross, and a prayer to be read before an image of the Virgin inscribed as a quire filler. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 120v-121r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

The stratigraphy of a book of hours now in Berlin (Berlin, SPK, Germ. Oct. 89) clearly shows layers of hopes and fears barnacled onto a core manuscript.73 That core was a book of hours written around the 1460s in the Northern Netherlands. These were written in Latin, but had some rubrics in the vernacular, which is a sign that the first owner found the Latin words more efficacious, but needed the Dutch rubrics to guide him through the book (fig. 178). Around the original parts the decoration is typical of Delft. One can see from the opening at the Seven Penitential Psalms (fol. 61r) that the book had contained blank folios, which the later owners used as a place to record family data. Specifically, the Van der Marck family of Reckem (Belgium) began adding these notes in 1525, more than a half-century after the book was first produced.

Of interest to the present discussion are the quires added to the beginning and end of the book in separate campaigns of work, not necessarily by members of the Van der Marck family. Clearly the series of owners considered the manuscript an expandable item, which could accordion outwards to accommodate desired prayers. One of the added sections in Oct. 89 (fol. 121–130), made around 1500, contains the Hours of the Cross (fig. 179). Abandoning the Latin, the new owner has opted for a vernacular version of the text, and has chosen to purchase the quire from an atelier that specialized in painting "Dutch strewn borders," which were bright and inoffensive. The script is amateurish. One can easily imagine that a medieval person, with a rudimentary training as a scribe and very low overhead, would start a business making quires such as this one, either as stand-alone booklets, or for purchasers to add to their existing book of hours.

The quire added at the beginning of the manuscript—before the calendar—provides insight into the fears and habits of one of the original owners. This quire (fol. 1–7) has provided space for a variety of texts and marks, including pen trials, notes of ownership, lone letters, once essential but now illegible notes, and small metal objects, which have left their offsets in the pliable parchment (fig. 180).

73 Hans Wegener, *Beschreibendes Verzeichnis der Miniaturen und des Initialschmuckes in den Deutschen Handschriften bis 1500. V: Die Deutschen Handschriften bis 1500*, 5 vols, Beschreibende Verzeichnisse der Miniaturen-Handschriften der Preussischen Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Leipzig: Weber, 1928), pp. 153–55, figs. 142, 143; Hermann Degering, *Kurzes Verzeichnis der Germanischen Handschriften der Preussichen Staatsbibliothek. III: Die Handschriften in Oktavformat und Register zu Band I-III*, 3 vols. (Leipzig: K. W. Hiersemann, 1925), p. 39; Achten, *Das Christliche Gebetbuch im Mittelalter: Andachts- und Stundenbücher in Handschrift und Frühdruck*, 13, no. 65, pl. 15.

#### Fig. 180

First folio in an added section of a book of hours whose core was made in Delft, with offsets of small round metal objects. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 1r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

#### Fig. 181

Folio in an added section of a book of hours whose core was made in Delft, with a prayer to the Trinity, and needle holes from formerly affixed objects. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 2r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

#### Fig. 182

Folio in an added section of a book of hours whose core was made in Delft, with an indulgenced prayer to the arma Christi. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin— Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 3r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 183 Opening in an added section of a book of hours whose core was made in Delft, with the continuation of an indulgenced prayer to the arma Christi, revealing dirt and fingerprints from heavy handling. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 3v-4r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 184 Folio in an added section of a book of hours whose core was made in Delft, with an indulgenced prayer to the Virgin in Sole. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 5v-6r. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 185

Folio in a book of hours whose core was made in Delft: a full-page miniature depicting Christ carrying the cross, painted by a miniaturist in Delft. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin—Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Germ. Oct. 89, fol. 44v. Image © Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, CC BY 4.0.

Additionally, this added quire contains:

	- 5v: a prayer to the Virgin *in sole*, with an indulgence for 11,000 years

As one can see from this list, three of the added prayers carried large indulgences. Two further prayers, those to the Trinity and to one's personal angel, promised personal protection. Indulgenced prayers do not appear in the original core of the manuscript, and the book's owner around 1500, when this quire was added, apparently deemed this a shortcoming that had to be addressed. Even though the book was already teeming with images, including full-page miniatures to mark the canonical hours within the Hours of the Virgin, such as the Carrying of the Cross on fol. 44v (fig. 185), the owner considered it wanting. Adding a quire of indulgenced prayers to the beginning of the book helped to turn the book of hours into a vehicle for eternal transcendence. Moreover, as one can see from the dirt ground into the folios in this added section, the owner paid particular attention to the newly added prayers: they served an immediate need and were used heavily.

Fig. 186 Folio in the original part of the manuscript, copied and decorated in South Holland. Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, Ms. 334, fol. 65r. Image © Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, all rights reserved.

A book of hours introduced above, Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, Ms. 334, was originally made in South Holland, and the core manuscript has red and blue penwork typical of South Holland, possibly Delft. However, the final two quires of the manuscript, beginning on fol. 183, were added later and have been inscribed by a different hand at the end of the fifteenth century. While the core of the manuscript was made in South Holland in the third quarter of the fifteenth century (fig. 186), the added quires were made around 1500 in the Southern Netherlands with less ornate red pen decoration (fig. 187). Such geographical layering in this manuscript suggests that the first or second owner had either moved south or sold it to someone in the south.

Not only is the decoration different in the two added quires of Bruges, Stadsbibliotheek, Ms. 334, but so is the style of the script, the accent of the vernacular language, and the type of prayer. The original core of the manuscript contains the prayers one would expect to find in a book of hours, including the Penitential Psalms, and the Long Hours of the Cross. Instead of a normal long Hours of the Virgin, it has a highly abbreviated version, in which the incipit for each hour presents the events from the life of the Virgin as a rhyming couplet. This core also contains the "Hundred Articles of Henry Suso," a text strongly associated with female religious, and several prayers to be said before an image of the Virgin. The later owner added: a prayer to the Virgin of the Sun, with an indulgence of 71,000 years given by pope Sixtus IV (fol. 183r-190v); another hand added a prayer to "the sweet name of Jesus in the sun," which pope Sixtus IV indulgenced for 11,000 years (fol. 191r-191v); and another prayer to the Virgin of the Sun, this time an indulgence by Pope Sixtus for 11,000 years (fol. 191v). As Sixtus IV only became pope in 1476, these additions must postdate that year. Clearly what drove the new owner to add quires to the book was the strong desire to include the newest and most heavily indulgenced prayers available.

Time and again, the texts that owners added to existing books of hours were those that carried more indulgences. This holds true for a book of hours from Leiden in Middle Dutch (HKB, Ms. 76 G 13). The original parts of the manuscript, made around 1490, have been inscribed in the "spiky script" of Leiden, and they have blue acanthus border decoration that also typifies production from that city (fig. 188).74 The full-page miniatures have a linear, graphic quality in which much of the naked parchment is left exposed. They might even be characterized as drawings heightened with wash.

Its original makers conceived of HKB, Ms. 76 G 13 as a series of the simplest textual units marked by a splash of color at the major openings. That the version of the Vigil for the Dead has only three lessons, rather than the more rigorous nine, suggests that it was made for a lay person, that is, someone who is not praying for others' souls as a livelihood. It

74 Opening in a book of hours made in Leiden, with the incipit of the Vigil for the Dead (three-verse version), and a full-page miniature depicting the Mass for the Dead. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76 G 13, fol. 85v-86r. http://manuscripts. kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_76g13%3A085v\_086r

was perhaps this owner, or the manuscript's second owner not long thereafter, who added four quires and two full-page miniatures to the end of the manuscript after the Vigil for the Dead (HKB, Ms. 76 G 13, fol. 98–123). A date of ca. 1500 for these additions is reasonable. These have also been inscribed in a spikey hand, but not in the same hand as the original part of the manuscript. This suggests that the owner(s) lived in Leiden, purchased the manuscript there, and also had it updated there. These additions, as one might now expect, contain highly indulgenced prayers and begin with the Verses of St. Gregory, prefaced by a relevant full-page image of his vision (fig. 189).75 Popular at the very end of the fifteenth century and beginning of the sixteenth, the nine-verse version of the Verses of St. Gregory promised enormous indulgences. According to the rubric, the suppliant would receive 92,000 years plus 24,000 years plus 80,000 days' indulgence, as confirmed "by many popes" (HKB 76 G 13, fol. 99r). Another prayer in this added section promises 7,000 years' indulgence, confirmed by Pope Boniface, for anyone who reads a short prayer in front of a crucifix (HKB 76 G 13, fol. 100v). This section of added material also includes another prayer to the Cross, marked by another full-page miniature depicting Christ on the Cross (fig. 190).76

Anonymous painters, called the Masters of the Suffrages for convenience, supplied the two full-page miniatures embedded in this added section. These artists were probably active in Leiden around 1500.77 They seem to have specialized in making miniatures as upgrades for existing manuscripts, as is the case with the current example. Their bold, saturated colors contrast sharply with the watery tonalities of the painter who supplied the images in the original parts of the book. These painters often construct "strewn flower" borders and do so in a formulaic way,

75 Beginning of a group of quires added to a book of hours made in Leiden, with a full-page miniature depicting the Mass of St. Gregory (attributed to the Masters of the Suffrages) facing the Verses of St. Gregory. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76 G 13, fol. 98v-99r. http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_76 g13%3A098v\_099r

76 Opening near the end of a book of hours made in Leiden, from an added section, with a full-page miniature depicting the Christ crucified (attributed to the Masters of the Suffrages) facing a prayer to the cross. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 76 G 13, fol. 105v-106r. http://manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_ 76g13%3A105v\_106r

77 A good study of these artists has not yet been written. In the mean time, consult A. W. Byvanck and G. J. Hoogewerff, *Noord-Nederlandsche Miniaturen in Handschriften der 14*e *, 15*e  *en 16*e  *Eeuwen* ('s-Gravenhage: M. Nijhoff, 1922–1925), no. 113.

filling the bottom corner with a large red rose in both cases. They show the flowers on a yellow background, which was much cheaper to paint than the gold backgrounds of the Southern Netherlandish miniaturists they are ultimately imitating. Their bold colors and designs must have appealed to a certain kind of urban consumer who wanted to make his or her book more showy and also more useful for new devotional tastes. Like the Masters of the Dark Eyes, discussed later, they seem to have also worked with scribes to make word-image ensembles with which owners could upgrade existing manuscripts.

### Fig. 191

Beginning of an added section of an enhanced book of hours. Cambridge, University Library, Ms. Ee.1.14, fol. 103r. Image © Cambridge University Library, all rights reserved.

### Fig. 192

Folio in an enhanced book of hours, with a personalised prayer for "Nicholas," in which the name has been crossed out by a later user and replaced with the initial *R*. Cambridge, University Library, Ms. Ee.1.14, fol. 120r. Image © Cambridge University Library, all rights reserved.

An English book of hours introduced above also has entire quires with indulgences added to it, though these were modified over time to personalize the book (Cambridge, UL, Ms. Ee.1.14).78 The original core of the manuscript was made in London around 1405. Some time

78 Binski, Zutshi, and Panayotova, *Western Illuminated Manuscripts: A Catalogue of the Collection in Cambridge University Library*, no. 191, pp. 180–81.

later a man whose name was evidently Nicholas was not satisfied with his book of hours when it came into his possession, as around 1440 he added several quires, which comprise fol. 51–52 and fol. 103–139. These additions were probably made in or around Bury St. Edmunds, and their style differs from that in the original parts of the book. Old and new sections appear side-by-side at fol. 103r (fig. 191). The additions were executed with a different style of script and decoration (complete with green penwork), on parchment ruled in bright red ink, whereas the original parts of the book were ruled in subtle brown.

The later owner was apparently disturbed by the lack of certain texts, such as the *Commendacio animarium* that initiates this added section, and sought to correct this lack. Into this packet of quires, he also added (or commissioned from a scribe) an indulgenced prayer personalized for himself: his name, Nicholas, has been worked into the body of the prayer text (fig. 192). A later (third?) owner crossed out the name of Nicholas and inserted his own initial, R, in the margin. Both layers of additions—the full quires of physical material, and the insertion of the letter *R*—were made to personalize the book to the new owner(s), and to turn the book into a machine for the salvation of specific souls.

In general, additions to prayerbooks were made to adjust the function of the book. Here I analyze a manuscript that is predominately a picture book, to which someone added more texts in several campaigns of work, including quires of indulgenced texts. The manuscript is a tiny prayerbook containing 66 full-page paintings by the Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle (LBL, Add. 50005). The Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle, who is named for a manuscript now in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, was active in the second decade of the fifteenth century, when the core of this manuscript was written and painted.79 Add. 50005 is one of the most fully illuminated prayerbooks made in the Northern Netherlands before the Master of Catherine of Cleves. It contains imagery that is iconographically creative as well as highly expressive (fig. 193).80 However the original texts were a bit

79 James Marrow named the Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle after the artist in New York, Morgan Library and Museum, Ms. M. 866, for which see James H. Marrow, "Dutch Manuscript Illumination before the Master of Catherine of Cleves: The Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle," *Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek* 19 (1968), pp. 51–113.

80 Master of the Morgan Infancy Cycle, Christ as Man of Sorrows, with the instruments of the passion. London, British Library, Add. Ms. 50005, fol. 133v. http://www. bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add\_ms\_50005\_fs001r

sparse. This evidence, alongside the pictorial evidence, suggests that the book was used as a didactic booklet for a child, who would have chiefly used its pictures, which are each labeled at the bottom with inscriptions in red; the book also contains the simple texts taught to children: the *Pater Noster*, *Ave Maria*, and *Credo* (fig. 194).81 The presence of these texts, in the original hand of the core manuscript, suggests that the book original functioned as a teaching tool to someone learning to read.

Later in the fifteenth century its owner augmented it. He or she added (or commissioned the addition of) new texts. The scribe first filled the backs of the miniatures, as well as the remaining blank parchment at the end of the core of the manuscript, and also added two quires of extra parchment beyond that. This means that the texts at the end of the manuscript (fol. 159v-179v) have been added chiefly in order to accommodate suffrages and indulgenced texts. Specifically, the added texts supply the manuscript with suffrages to various saints: Erasmus, Barbara, Catherine, the Eleven Thousand Virgins, Agatha, Stephen, Laurence, Jeroen, and Francis. This list of saints, which the new owner went to some length to include, may help to reveal who used the book. He or she probably lived in the County of Holland, where St. Jeroen was venerated, and may have had a Franciscan confessor. It is possible, for example, that the later fifteenth-century owner belonged to a community of tertiaries in a Franciscan milieu, in which Erasmus, Barbara, Catherine, Ursula, or Agatha was the patron saint. Tellingly, this person also added the seven-verse version of the Verses of St. Gregory (with an indulgence of 40,028 years and 40 days; fig. 195);82 and a prayer to be said at the elevation of the Eucharist during mass, worth 2000 years' indulgence (LBL, Add. 50005, fol. 168r-169v and fol. 169v-171r, respectively). The late fifteenth-century owner, in other words, updated the manuscript with prayers to saints that must have held some personal interest, and with two heavily indulgenced prayers.

Here is one scenario that explains why the book looks the way it does: the manuscript was made for a child to aid in his mastery of reading and understanding the tenets of Christianity. When the child reached

81 Pater Noster, and beginning of the Ave Maria. London, British Library, Add. Ms. 50005, fol. 15v. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add\_ms\_50005\_fs001r

82 Verses of St. Gregory (added). London, British Library, Add. Ms. 50005, fol. 168r. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=add\_ms\_50005\_fs001r

a certain age, he (or his confessor) wanted to increase his exposure to other texts, and therefore had the manuscript augmented. After all, the manuscript had a great deal of blank space available, on the backs of all of the miniatures. A scribe was commissioned not only to fill in these spaces, but also to add more material to the book, in the form of several quires, all filled with prayers, especially indulgenced ones.

A similar scenario may have been in play with a prayerbook made in the Southern Netherlands in the mid-fifteenth century (Harley 3828). That manuscript was apparently made for a young girl in order to learn to read, as it begins with a full-page miniature depicting an all-female classroom, facing the inscription of the alphabet in capital and lowercase letters (fig. 196).83 The manuscript also contains other texts for a beginning learner, such as a rhyming prayer-poem, for which each stanza is dedicated to one of the *arma Christi*, pictured at the top of the folio (fig. 197).84 These are easy to read and memorize (written as they are in rhyming vernacular), and they have been copied with almost no abbreviations that could have tripped up the young learner. Several quires were later added to the manuscript, including some with long rubrics and indulgences. These were written by a different hand in a different style, with more abbreviations and not images. It is possible that these were added when the child had matured, had advanced as a reader, and had entered the age when she could sin, and was therefore in need of indulgences to wipe the slate clean.

Owners also added components to a book in order to specify a foreign-made product. This occurred in England, as I have detailed above, but also in Scotland, which in the fifteenth century produced few luxury manuscripts. Scots of means often chose to buy manuscripts not from England, but rather from the Netherlands and France, Scotland's trading partners. Trade routes across the English Channel conveyed not only bulky items, such as wool, but also luxury items. In the act of trading commodities, parties also traded ideas, and the exact nature

83 Girls learning to read, a full-page miniature facing the alphabet, in a prayerbook probably made for a child. London, British Library, Harley Ms. 3828, fol. 27v-28r. http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=4410

84 Rhyming prayer to Christ's robe and the dice of the arma Christi, with a miniature depicting these objects, in a prayerbook probably made for a child. London, British Library, Harley Ms. 3828, fol. 65v. http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/ illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=4410

of those routes—with all the tangible and intangible items that flowed along them—was governed by political and market forces, as well as geography. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the harbor around Bruges silted up, and it lost its edge as a trading city. Antwerp on the River Schelde overtook it, and also became the center of art production. While Antwerp was the center of the printing industry in the Southern Netherlands, it also produced manuscripts, as did nearby Malines. It was probably from one of these two cities that James Brown, dean of Aberdeen, commissioned a manuscript prayerbook (Edinburgh, NLS, Ms. 10270).85 From his home in Scotland, he might have used an agent to order the book, as he communicated some rather specific requests. The book contains a computational circle for calculating the date of Easter beginning in 1499, the probable date of production. It also contains a calendar with the obits of James Brown's parents, Elizabeth Lauder (11 June 1494) and Master Robert Brown (23 December 1460), an indulgenced prayer (the verses of St. Gregory) and a thaumaturgic prayer (extracts from St. John's Gospel); the Penitential psalms and litany, and the Office of the Dead. Everything in this book is about James Brown praying for the souls of his parents.

Fig. 198 Folio in the Prayer book of James Brown, with a full-page miniature depicting James Brown presented to the Virgin's altar. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Ms. 10270, fol. 17v. Image © National Library of Scotland, all rights reserved.

85 David McRoberts, "Dean Brown's Book of Hours," *The Innes Review* xix (1968), pp. 144–67.

Fig. 199 Folio in the Prayer book of James Brown, with text added to existing parchment near the end of the manuscript. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Ms. 10270, fol. 151r. Image © National Library of Scotland, all rights reserved.

Fig. 200 Folio in the Prayer book of James Brown, with text added to existing parchment near the end of the manuscript. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Ms. 10270, fol. 151v. Image © National Library of Scotland, all rights reserved.

Ms. 10270 contains four miniatures: James Brown presented by St. Augustine before an altar to Mary (fol. 17v; fig. 198); the Virgin and Child (fol. 50v); David in prayer, to preface the Penitential Psalms (fol. 90v); and the Raising of Lazarus to mark the beginning of the Vigil (fol. 111v). The portrait on fol. 17v shows the donor in prayer before a sculpted and polychromed image of the Virgin in a church, suggesting the patron's intense Marian devotion. Perhaps the illuminator was sketching the sitter from life when he depicted James Brown wearing an ermine wrap (fur on one side, silk on the other) terminating with little black tails on the floor, or perhaps he based this depiction on a verbal description. Either way, the painter was responding to the sitter's requests and particular aesthetic interests. Moreover, needle holes and fragments of textile indicate that the image was covered with green curtain. Lab tests would probably confirm that the curtain was made in silk. Did James Brown sew the curtains into his book? Or have them attached in Scotland? Or could one order a book, complete with silk curtains sewn in, directly from book makers in the Southern Netherlands?

The book was not entirely to his satisfaction, however, because upon receiving it, he had it augmented with local saints, including St. Andrew, and had a quire of prayers added to the end. The original Netherlandish book makers, although making the book to commission (as evidenced by the unusual combination of texts and the full-page miniature of the patron), had not used the right kind of Scottish calendar, but had copied a Netherlandish one instead. Among the saints in red, the calendar lists St. Macharius, a martyr whose relics were preserved in Ghent, but who would be utterly irrelevant to a dean from Aberdeen. The book's Scottish owner set out to adjust the manuscript to his needs by filling in the calendar and augmenting it with prayers and texts. Specifically, he filled in the empty parchment at the end of the Vigil (figs. 199 and 200). Someone has filled 151r with more prayer text in a very competent hand; another person, writing in a script that's nearly a Bourgogne, has made an addition on 151v. As these hands are distinctively not Scottish, either the patron found Netherlandish scribes who worked as scriveners in Scotland, or he had these additions made when he was abroad.

This blank parchment at the end of the Vigil did not however give him enough space, so he added a quire to the end of the book (fol. 152– 157), which is ruled separately with narrower margins for less waste.

The items he was desperate to include in the book, which are copied in beginning on fol. 152r, are mnemonic verses for remembering the books of the Bible; a poem on the death of Elizabeth Lauder of the Bass (his mother); and a table for finding the date of Easter. Although the Netherlandish scribe had provided him with a computational circle for calculating the date, this chart was handier and did not require him to do any math. Considering that he had an ecclesiastical position in Aberdeen, one can see why he would want to know at least the books of the Bible. And the verses on his mother's death extend the function of the rest of the manuscript, to do what he could for the salvation of his mother's soul.

*\* \* \**

While parchment has a lifespan that far exceeds the lifetime—and possibly the imagination—of its maker, bindings wear out with heavy use. Moveable parts, such as leather and cords forced to function as hinges, crack and break, especially if they have been glued, as glue makes things brittle. Rebinding afforded book owners the possibility of making changes to their books. They could add new parchment modules such as single leaves, bifolia, and entire quires, or they could refurbish the decoration, cast off unnecessary parts (such as calendars made for elsewhere), or absorb images—old heirlooms or new miniatures into their books. These adjustments were not seamless: quite literally this new physical material would be stitched, along with the original material, onto the cords that would be fixed into the book's new or reused covers. The seams were therefore on the inside of the book, deep within its gutter, and like the seams on well-hemmed trousers were largely out of sight.

Owners took the opportunity during rebinding to make changes to their books. The foregoing discussion has demonstrated that they sewed images in before major text openings, adding both color and devotional presence, while raising the value of their books. They added sheets with new prayers, especially those providing large indulgences that had come into circulation since the book was new. Owners often incorporated images of themselves, appended whole groups of images, or even harvested images stripped from another book. They could also

incorporate longer prayers and texts, including recently devised feasts and new fashionable prayers copied onto bifolia or full quires. Indeed, copying prayers on flat sheets with a hard desk underneath must have been easier than copying them into an already bound book, as anyone who has ever attempted to write in a tightly bound diary can attest. After 1390 leaves with images circulated for this purpose, and I suspect that scriveners also copied short prayer texts into booklets, which owners could likewise bind into their books next time they had them rebound.

Some of these activities led to greater standardization in the processes of making books of hours. Throughout the fifteenth century in Northern Europe the standard was to be that all major texts began on a fresh quire, so that they left open the possibility that an owner could add an image either immediately or at a later date. Concomitantly, images were made on single leaves so they could be slotted into the book with the image on the left side of the opening. These forces also led to the rapid production of single-leaf images by fairly unskilled artists. The resulting images, especially those by the Masters of the Pink Canopies, are colored in with unmodulated paint, within lines drawn by simple geometric shapes, or based on simple models. Division of labor, plus the chance to train each contributor only to meet the demands of his small contribution, led to skill loss. Although few sale records survive that might indicate book costs over time, once suspects that modularly-made manuscripts came more cheaply to the consumer and widened the consumer base down-market.

Strangely enough, some of these same ideas were used at the opposite end of the quality spectrum. The mastermind behind the production of Simon de Varie's book of hours, for example, was able to assemble a book from component parts in Paris, including full-page miniatures made by Jean Fouquet who worked in Tours, precisely because making components modularly meant that one could make them remotely.

Adding new images often threw off the hierarchy of decoration and therefore required some other forms of upgrading. Such was the case in Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Ms. 434. When the Masters of the Dark Eyes added full-page miniatures to an already complete book of hours, they added painted border decoration to match the images, thereby creating visually cohesive openings. One change begot another. The fact that the Masters of the Dark Eyes often created

full-page images with rather unusual subjects suggests that they made upgrades for specific books, rather than using standard images that they had in stock. This observation is consistent with the additions they made to Beinecke 434, as well as for the leaf they added to the Fagel Missal, which could only have been made for this large missal. Thus, these artists were the ones to go to for lavishly colored bespoke miniatures. The Masters of the Dark Eyes return in Part IV, as they also specialized in rearranging books' contents so that the new entities hardly resembled the original parts from which they were made.

# Part IV: Complicated interventions and complete overhauls

As the examples above demonstrate, people changed their books, adding physical material where necessary, in order to update older books to new situations. Scribes fitted texts into existing spaces. They wrote new texts on added quires. And owners were probably also able to buy quires of texts off the shelf to add. Of course, owners could also add images, largely in the form of single-leaf miniatures. Many of the manuscripts in the previous section had been introduced earlier in the current study, indicating that they had not one, but several different kinds of interventions.

Some books underwent complete overhauls and were changed structurally. Above I mentioned the Murthly Hours, which a late medieval owner had supplemented with a series of full-page miniatures, probably harvested from a psalter. Other ways of breaking up older books and redeploying their parts resulted in new book forms altogether. In this section, I consider bookish Frankensteins, pieces that have been stitched together into a new beast.

# Building a book out of disparate quires

When it first catalogued its collection, the Royal Library in Brussels assigned each "booklet" within a composite volume a separate signature. This is why, for example, Brussels, KB, 4459–70, a miscellany made at the Cistercian monastery of Villers in the early fourteenth

century, constitutes a manuscript within one set of covers but has a range of signatures. The cataloguer who assigned these signatures in the nineteenth century counted twelve distinct parts or modules within the binding and reflected that number in the new compound signature.1

Most libraries do not number composite volumes in this way, which means that scholars are much more likely to treat composites erroneously as single entities. Many prayerbooks, which at first glance seem to be homogenous volumes, in fact defy a single-stranded origin narrative. In this section I examine a few surprising examples. Of course the line between "a manuscript with some leaves or quires added later" and "a composite" is thin indeed. Regardless of what they are called, seeing them as stratified products can yield stories about layers of time and how medieval people treated, manipulated, and rescued the past.

## A. An atelier in Bruges

Bruges in the fifteenth century had an advanced book-making culture. Whereas in the Northern Netherlands, convents played a significant role in manuscript production (including the Delft convents that loom large in this study, as well as convents in Gouda, Haarlem, Amsterdam, and elsewhere), in the Southern Netherlands, the organized and efficient production of manuscripts seems to have been in lay hands. Or at least, a large number of the resulting manuscripts do not reveal allegiance to a particular patron saint, particular confessor or rule and have not been "branded" by a convent. Important in Bruges instead were the rhetoricians' guilds, which produced all kinds of texts, including plays and personalized rhyming prayers. These played a role in book culture of late-fourteenth and fifteenth-century Bruges and stemmed partly from fashion at court, which had favored rhyming texts in the vernacular, because reading such texts aloud formed an integral part

1 These parts could be termed *booklets*. See Robinson, "The 'Booklet:' A Self-Contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts," pp. 46–67. For the manuscript, see Jean Baptist Gessler, *Jezus' Lijden en Zijdewonde in Woord en Beeld Verheerlijkt: Een Folkloristische Bijdrage tot de Kennis van de Godsvrucht Onzer Voorouders* (Leuven: Sint-Alfonsusdrukkerij, 1939), esp. pp. 13–22.

of courtly entertainment. Moreover, the strong court culture resulted in plenty of money for experimentation in the arts.

I have shown above that centers of manuscript production in the Southern Netherlands were early adopters of the single-leaf miniature and also of the modular method. Not only could they make new manuscripts out of component parts, but they could overhaul existing manuscripts by applying the same techniques. In this section I analyze one example: BKB, Ms. 19588. 2

Upon first flipping through this manuscript, I thought it was homogenous, as if it were the product of a single organizing mind. But it is not. It begins with a calendar and has the look and feel of a book of hours, but it is rather a complicated object made in at least three campaigns of work, which I treat in turn.

#### Fig. 201

Folio in a composite manuscript, with the end of an apotropaic text and the beginning of a versified vernacular Marian prayer in Middle Dutch. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, fol. 68r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

2 For a description, see Maria Meertens, *De Godsvrucht in de Nederlanden. Naar Handschriften van Gebedenboeken der xv*e  *Eeuw*, 6 vols. ([n.p.]: Standaard Boekhandel, 1930–1934), vol. VI, no. 24.

Fig. 202 Annunciation painted by the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, with the beginning of the Hours of the Virgin in Latin, and a facing page in Middle Dutch in a different hand. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, fol. 29v-30r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

#### Fig. 203

Last Judgement painted by the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, prefacing the Penitential Psalms in Latin. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, fol. 84r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

Dating from 1410–15, the oldest part contains a calendar and some highly unconventional rhyming prayers and apotropaic texts primarily written in Dutch.3 Their scribe is identical with one of the scribes of the Gruuthuse manuscript, a book made in Bruges that contains early rhymed vernacular texts in Middle Dutch.4 In the early decades of the fifteenth century this city had a culture of advanced literacy stimulated by the court and chambers of rhetoricians, the rather high-falutin predecessors of poetry slam competitions. It appears, therefore, that this part of Ms. 19588, which contains dozens of rhyming prayers, was probably composed and copied in Bruges. Among these prayers, for example, one finds a versified vernacular prayer to Mary on fol. 68r, which was an avant-garde prayer, an attempt to rephrase an old sentiment in the mellifluous rhyming language of the Bruges literati (fig. 201). These oldest parts of the manuscript also contain talismanic texts, such as the prayer interspersed with crosses that ends on the same folio. These texts are written on quires of 16 lines per page, ruled in red, but with irregularly sized text blocks, as if the scribe were ruling the quires as he went. He used a rather thick parchment that has a velvety quality, which differs from the finer, thinner, more crumply parchment on which books of hours were usually copied. These qualities give the Dutch sections an experimental feel.

In the stratigraphy of this manuscript, the next layer comprises two modules of texts plus two loose images. These sections, which date from the 1440s, comprehend two of the texts that define a book of hours: the

3 Johan Oosterman, "Om de Grote Kracht der Woorden: Middelnederlandse Gebeden en Rubrieken in het Brugge van de Vroege Vijftiende Eeuw," in *Boeken voor de Eeuwigheid: Middelnederlands Geestelijk Proza*, ed. Th Mertens, *Nederlandse Literatuur en Cultuur in de Middeleeuwen* (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1993), pp. 230–44, 437–44, esp. p. 440, no. 28; Johan Oosterman, *De Gratie van het Gebed: Middelnederlandse Gebeden, Overlevering en Functie: met Bijzondere Aandacht voor Produktie en Receptie in Brugge (1380–1450)*, 2 vols, Nederlandse Literatuur en Cultuur in de Middeleeuwen 12 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1995), vol. II, no. 2, 10, 29, 45, 66, 74, 77, 80, 93, 102, 110, 126, 137, 143, 148, 154, 175, 176, 190, 194, 202, 208, 209, 219, 244, 264, 269, 272, 273, 277, 289, 294, 339, 341, 359, 374; and Werner Verbeke, "'O Soete Cruce...' Een Berijmd Gebed in Handschrift Brussel, K. B, 19588," in *Serta Devota in Memoriam Guillelmi Lourdaux II: Devotio Windesheimensis*, ed. Werner Verbeke, et al., *Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Series I / Studia xxi* (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995), pp. 297–313, have discussed some of the unique rhyming texts in this manuscript.

4 I owe this observation to Johan Oosterman. For the Gruuthuse manuscript (HKB, Ms. 79 K 10), see https://www.kb.nl/themas/middeleeuwen/het-gruuthusehandschrift

Hours of the Virgin (fig. 202) and the Seven Penitential Psalms (fig. 203). The parchment in these parts is fine, thin, and smooth, and the folios are ruled in brown for 18 lines per page. Thus, they are of a different campaign of work than the Dutch components. Whereas the Dutch parts are strange and unique, the Latin components are quite standard.

The scribe must have made these quires in collaboration with one or more artists called the "Masters of the Gold Scrolls" in modern literature, as the openings of the two modules each have columnwide miniatures painted by these masters. These artists worked in West Flanders and are known for recreating simple figurative and narrative miniatures with plain backgrounds enlivened by tendril-like geometric designs.5 Dozens of books with their illuminations survive, and it is clear that they were several artists working in a common style in loose relationships with scribes.6 This particular scribe-illuminator team in BKB, Ms. 19588 worked partly the old-fashioned way (with the illuminator painting directly on text pages for column-wide initials) and partly in the newer modular method (with full-page miniatures with blank backs prefacing texts produced in discreet packets). This suggests that while these masters made loose leaves for insertion into books of hours, they also worked with scribes to produce such pages. They were using some lessons gleaned from the Masters of the Pink Canopies (who preceded them by 50 years) but could also take specialty commissions as well. These artists were active in the post-Eyckian period in Bruges (and possibly in Ghent as well), from the 1440s. In total, Ms. 19588 contains four miniatures by these artists: two column-wide miniatures painted directly on the page (the Annunciation, the Last

5 Friedrich Winkler, *Die Flämische Buchmalerei des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts; Künstler und Werke von den Brüdern van Eyck bis zu Simon Bening* (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1925), pp. 25–27 coined the name, the "Master of the Gold Scrolls" to describe a style of painting executed from ca. 1415–1460, probably in Bruges. The large size of the oeuvre quickly made it clear that multiple hands, rather than a single master, were painting miniatures in a similar style. For further studies about this group of artists, see Cardon, "The Illustrations and the Gold Scrolls Workshop;" Dogaer, *Flemish Miniature Painting in the 15th and 16th Centuries*, pp. 27–31; Bernard Bousmanne, Thierry Delcourt, and Ilona Hans-Collas, *Miniatures Flamandes, 1404–1482* (Paris; Brussels: Bibliothèque nationale de France; Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 2011), pp. 140–42.

6 For an overview of workshop practices in the Southern Netherlands in this period, consult van Bergen, *De Meesters van Otto van Moerdrecht.*

Judgment) and two full-page miniatures (Crucifixion, Christ as Man of Sorrows). The manuscript also contains two full-page miniatures by these artists, which appear to be contemporary with these sections. Someone seems to have harvested these two modules—the Penitential Psalms and the Hours of the Cross—plus the two full-page miniatures from an existing book of hours. That person did not want the rest of the offices, but selected a range of peculiar and specific texts instead.

BKB, Ms. 19588 has been described as the product of collaboration between two scribes in the second decade of the fifteenth century.7 But such a description does not really capture what is going on: two scribes did not set out to make this particular book. Two scribes indeed wrote the body of the text, but their labor did not overlap in time. In its current state this volume is the product of assembly, with 25 or 30 years separating the creation of the two components. A Dutch-speaking scribe in Bruges copied a number of obscure prayers, many of them rhyming, on parchment that he ruled as he went. He made a highly experimental object, not a standard commission. A patron could not have ordered the particular compendium of texts, because he would not have known they existed. In a totally separate process, scribes and illuminators worked together to make a boilerplate book of hours in Latin around 1440. Perhaps it was used until it fell apart, and someone salvaged some of the pieces to integrate them into what is now Ms. 19588. A few quires of texts, and two full-page miniatures were spared, and were applied to some existing quires of oddball Dutch texts. The scribe working in Latin was contemporary with the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, who post-date Jan van Eyck, and therefore the Latin section could not have been made in the 1410s.

However, when the textual components were put together, a new layer of adjustments took place. I think that the components only came together around 1480, decades after the texts were copied and the miniatures painted. The new owner of these disparate materials restructured and enhanced the fragments at hand. In all likelihood the miniature depicting the Crucifixion had prefaced the Hours of the Cross for the first forty-or-so years of its life before the new owner rebound it near the beginning of the manuscript (fig. 204).

7 Oosterman, *De Gratie van het Gebed,* p. 12.

Fig. 204 Crucifixion painted by the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, facing confession in Middle Dutch, with floral border decoration painted over a vine decoration. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, fol. 13v-14r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

#### Fig. 205

Christ as Man of Sorrows painted by the Masters of the Gold Scrolls, full-page miniature with floral border decoration painted over a vine decoration, inserted so that it faces a Dutch text copied decades earlier. Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, fol. 143v-144r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

#### Fig. 206

Note of ownership from Yolente Doosterlinck, Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, Ms. 19588, inside back cover. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België, all rights reserved.

It now prefaces a confession, which the patron apparently wanted to emphasize, for she or he put it first, immediately after the calendar, and flagged it with a colorful miniature. Although the confession mentions Jesus

(as most Christian prayers do) and could therefore be deemed relevant for the Crucifixion miniature, accompanying a confessional formula with an image of this subject is highly unusual. Its importance is further made visible by signs of wear. An owner of the image, perhaps the owner responsible for inserting it here, was extremely attached to this miniature. One can see this because Christ's face and torso have been rubbed repeatedly. Since no other part of the miniature is damaged, it was therefore, in all likelihood, damaged from veneration rather than from general wear. Furthermore, Christ's torso seems to be overpainted, and someone has added extra blood to Christ's wounds in a shade of red that is not part of the original artist's palette. In addition to the Crucifixion image, the new owner has placed an image of Christ as Man of Sorrows in the book so that it "illuminates" a text from the other campaign of work (fig. 205). The resulting organization reveals the owner's desire to draw attention to this text.

The late fifteenth-century owner who commissioned these changes may have been Yolente Doosterlinck, who inscribed her name in a shaky hand on the inside back cover, which is the manuscript's final medieval rebinding. It was possibly she who, in ca. 1480, placed the two loose miniatures before texts she wanted to emphasize. On the red background behind the Crucifixion (BKB, 19588, 13v) the letters *WK* are repeated in blue, yellow, and white all over the back. This forms a variation to the Gold Scrolls Masters' normal approach to constructing backgrounds. A similar background with the same letters appears behind the Annunciation (fig. 202). The letters may refer to the original patron who ordered the image.8 With the letters literally in the background, Yolente Doosterlinck was not bothered to have her own initials added during what may have been her campaign to overpaint the body of Christ and give him more blood.

She (or the late medieval owner, if not Yolente Doosterlinck) did, however, have the borders overpainted. Not only did she give the Crucifixion a prime position in the manuscript, kiss the body, enhance it with painted blood, but she may have been the one who upgraded the hairspray decoration on the openings with the miniatures and turned them into thickly painted flowers, a decorative style that had become popular in Ghent, Bruges and beyond by the end of the fifteenth century. Around all of the pages with illumination, one can see the old "hairspray" borders peeking out from under the newer opaque designs that (mostly) cover them. Overpainting the borders in the new style updated the book in terms of taste, brought visual coherence to it, and made it more colorful and sumptuous. The new owner lavished attention upon the book, as the new painted borders have been worn hard and have been considerably rubbed, suggesting that the person who went to all the trouble to salvage these fragments, upgrade, repaint, and rebind them, also handled the resulting manuscript and used it hard.

It may have been Yolente Doosterlinck who brought the disparate elements together, had the margins of the miniatures and some of the text folios repainted, and made for herself a personalized book upclycled from parts more than a half century old. At least she was the person who inscribed her name on the inside back cover of the new binding, as if laying claim to the binding job and to all the contents contained therein (fig. 206).

This discussion has shown that fifteenth-century book owners had a variety of choices to make for their books: what texts to include, how

8 *Cf* Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, W.239, fol. 13v, a Crucifixion, which has letters *L* and *A* repeated among a wall of wounds on the painted backdrop; these same letters appear on fol. 59v. On this manuscript, see Farquhar, "Manuscript Production and Evidence for Localizing and Dating Fifteenth-Century Books of Hours: Walters Ms. 239," pp. 44–88.

many images, and what kinds of borders, to name a few. They could change their minds about these choices even when their books were complete. They were also keen to re-use older book parts, and to take old books apart and upcycle their contents. They seemed to do so selectively, however. Saving some components means omitting others. When they made a new book out of pre-existing parts, they did not simply take all the components from A and follow them with all the components from B, and bind it all together. Instead, they selected and arranged carefully. In other words, they treated the broken-up books as modules that they could arrange according to their interests and desires.

## B. Unica

Of course all manuscripts are unique, but some break severely with patterns and traditions. In this section I treat unica that are the results of complicated rearrangements and recombinations of physical material. A manuscript now in Heidelberg is the result of a *Biblia pauperum* that has been broken apart so that its folios could become full-page miniatures interleaved with a psalter and then stitched back together (Heidelberg, UB, Cod. Pal. Germ. 148).9 The backs of the folios of the *Biblia pauperum* were blank, and most of them remain blank in the new hybrid; however, fol. 61 has *Biblia pauperum* on the recto and psalter on the verso, which demonstrates that the psalter scribe had the broken-up leaves of the *Biblia pauperum* when he began to write. A clue about the manuscript's origin appears at the front of the manuscript: a calendar for the bishopric of Eichstätt (in Bavaria). All the components were made there around 1430–50, with the *Biblia pauperum* slightly preceding the psalter.

A *Biblia pauperum* presents a typology, that is, stories from the New Testament explained as fulfillments of Old Testament prophecy and

9 I thank Thomas Lentes for bringing this manuscript to my attention and for sharing his thoughts about it. See also: Werner, *Cimelia Heidelbergensia: 30 illuminierte Handschriften der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg*, cat. 13, pp. 48–50; Maurus Berve, *Die Armenbibel: Herkunft, Gestalt, Typologie; Dargestellt Anhand von Miniaturen aus der Handschrift Cpg 148 D. Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg*, Kult und Kunst (Beuron: Beuroner Kunstverlag, 1989); Siegfried Hofmann, *Der Ingolstädter Psalter: ein deutscher Psalter des Spätmittelalters aus der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg*, 1. Aufl. ed. (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2010); for an introductory study of the *Biblia pauperum*, based on a different manuscript, see Avril Henry, *Biblia Pauperum: A Facsimile and Edition* (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1987).

precedent. This book type originated in the thirteenth century in a southern German monastery. Imagery is central to its endeavor. Each page serves as a "stand alone" unit, in which a New Testament story is depicted at the very center of the page, flanked by Old Testament prefigurations. Fol. 16v, for example, presents the story of Mary bringing the Christ child to the temple (fig. 207).10 Four Old Testament prophets, who each wave a banderol bearing a textual reference to his respective prophecy, foresee this story. Further framing the image are two images depicting Old Testament events depicting mothers bringing their children to priests. Labels surround all of these images, so that each figure remains unambiguously named. These images and labels make the events clear, legible and didactic. Prose texts that nearly engulf the images form a further level of framing; they constitute explanations, showing how the Old Testament relates to the New Testament.

By taking this *Biblia pauperum* apart and integrating its leaves into a psalter, the binder was performing another act of exegesis. In effect, she or he was framing the psalter—the Old Testament text with the greatest currency as a devotional text—within a series of units that make the Old Testament relevant within the newer religion. Thus, the rebinding constituted an act of reframing and of interpretation. Bringing the two books together, the binder had to trim the *Biblia pauperum* down to the quick, as it had been copied onto larger folios than the psalter. Integrating the parts meant guillotining them, as the action of the knife forced them into a uniform page size. Imposing a new structure on the book asserted that the New Testament and the Old Testament were literally sewn together through prophecy. Not only did the book maker cut the *Speculum* apart and sew it into a new form, as full-page miniatures within a psalter, but an early user also sewed curtains to the tops of all of the *Speculum* folios. Although the curtains are no longer present, rows of needle holes at the tops of these folios attest to their former presence. Having to lift curtains in order to view the images must have given the owner an added layer of ritual, and allowed him or her to produce an act of revelation akin to the revelation depicted on the folios themselves: that the Old Testament is "revealed" in the New.

10 *Biblia pauperum* and psalter, interleaved. Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cod. Pal. germ. 148, fol. 16v-17r. http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg148

Fig. 208 Composite manuscript prayerbook made in France, fanned open to reveal signs of heavy use. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259). Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 209 An image module comprising two bifolia bound into a manuscript prayerbook compiled in France. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259). Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 210 Opening in a composite prayer book, with added prayers (left side), and a full-page miniature depicting the Mass of St. Gregory (right side). 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 40v-41r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 211 Opening in a composite prayer book, with two full-page miniatures, one depicting St. Francis receiving the stigmata, and one depicting the Nativity. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 41v-42r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 212 Inscriptions added by two hands, filling the otherwise blank parchment. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 42v-43r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Such acts of reframing took place in other contexts. A group of disparate quires was brought together by late medieval owner in France to create an unusual manuscript prayerbook ('s-Heerenberg, HB, Ms. 2, inv. no. 259).11 The manuscript is a composite containing pieces of a calendar, parts of at least two different books of hours (from the fifteenth century), a single leaf with a prayer text probably copied in the sixteenth century, and two bifolia with full-page miniatures. All of these elements were bound together around 1500. Fanned open, the resulting volume reveals its filthy pages, its margins that were trimmed for rebinding, and the edges of the sixteenth-century binding (fig. 208). The owner who gathered these elements and bound them together may have been identical with the one who filled the blank space with more prayers. This book provides an example of one that was heavily used and severely altered. Those two activities often go together.

11 Korteweg, *Catalogue of Medieval Manuscripts and Incunabula at Huis Bergh Castle in 's-Heerenberg*, cat. 49, pp. 98–100.

One unusual item that the owner has affixed is a module with images (fol. 40–43; fig. 209). I suspect that this packet circulated separately as a small picture book before it was integrated into the composite volume around 1500. Formed of two nested bifolia, its top and bottom surfaces were left blank so that it served as a natural cover to the booklet. (These spaces later provided writing surface for an enthusiastic owner.) These outer folios protected the contents, which consisted of images only and no words. Was this a book for the illiterate? Although that is unknowable, what is clear is that the booklet presented a non-textual, images-only form of piety.

The images painted on the internal surfaces present the idea of the Body of Christ in three different ways, each according to a different miraculous vision. The first image in the module is a Mass of St. Gregory in which the diminutive pope sees the body of Christ before him (fig. 210). This emphasizes the body at the center of the image, framed by an angel. With all the clothing and the bright blue background, Christ's naked body, spattered with blood, holds the center. Turning the page reveals a different manifestation of the body: Christ as a red-winged angel coming to impress his stigmata onto St. Francis. The third image shows the Nativity, the birth of the physical manifestation of Jesus on earth, according to the vision of St. Bridget of Sweden (fig. 211). This particular combination of images is unusual. Is it possible that the booklet was made for someone with a Franciscan confessor, who wanted to remember taking the Eucharist, celebrate a Corpus Christi feast, or otherwise commemorate an event centered on the body of Christ?

Several different people have added prayers to the blank space comprising the booklet's "covers." One wrote a Marian prayer in a fine late fifteenth-century hand on the back of the Nativity, choosing this location in order to be as close to Mary as possible (fig. 212). Another person, writing in a quick bookhand of the sixteenth century, added another prayer to the rest of this formerly blank opening. But this was not the first addition made to fol. 43r. A row of needle holes along the outer edge, and a circle of needle holes near the modern folio number "43" suggest that two objects were formerly stitched to this folio: a tall rectangular object, and a small round object. Did they date from a time when the picture booklet was still loose and unbound to a book of hours?

Fig. 213 Flyleaf and inner board of binding. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259). Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 214 Family kneeling before St. John the Baptist [?], 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 147r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 215 Single leaf with prayers added at the end of the calendar. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 12v-13r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 216 A single leaf with prayers, and the incipit of the Passion according to St. John. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 13v-14r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 217 The incipit of an illustrated Passion tract in Latin. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 166v-167r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

This volume—the entity now known as 's-Heerenberg, HB, Ms. 2 (inv. 259)—comprehends the picture booklet, as well as a number of other sections that were made in distinct campaigns of work:

The calendar (Item 2) has feasts in red including St. Sabiniani (March 2), St. Helena (April 4), the Translation of St. Lupus (May 10), the Translation of the Crown (August 11); these feasts are appropriate to Troyes and indicate that Item 2 was either made or used there. This section also contains a family portrait, likely the donors. Of course these observations about possible origins do not extend to the origins of the other parts.

Fig. 218 Opening in a composite prayer book, with a parchment painting depicting the Face of Christ pasted in, opposite the incipit of the Hours of the Virgin. 's-Heerenberg, The Netherlands, Collection Dr. J. H. van Heek, Huis Bergh Foundation, Ms. 2 (inv. 259), fol. 45v-46r. Image © The Huis Bergh Foundation, CC BY 4.0.

What follows is one scenario that accounts for the elements in this volume. Before 1500 someone in France acquired or inherited a number of well-worn and rather broken prayerbooks made earlier

in the fifteenth century. He or she took these apart, and made a selection of the quires they contained, choosing a calendar from this one, a group of quires from that one, and an entire Passion tract of recent vintage that formed a booklet on its own. This person also incorporated a thin booklet of just two bifolia, which contained three images to commemorate the Eucharist. Either this collector of objects, or an earlier owner, stuck an image of Christ's face on Veronica's towel into the book, where there was some blank parchment (fig. 218). The collector then assembled these modules, together with a single sheet of prayers, and brought them to a binder, who bundled them together and bound them in the binding that currently protects them. This blind-stamped brown leather binding was made around 1500. In this binding the modules continued to receive hard wear in the sixteenth century, and the owner, or series of owners, filled much of the blank parchment with short prayers. This was accomplished over time, as the owner(s) took the book to various scriveners who make these additions in various hands. The book was made in layers over the course of a century, with physical material from multiple campaigns of work, and additional texts written in even more campaigns of work. The book, as it has survived in its binding, is a serendipitous encounter between many hands and many desires over a century.

The two cases just analyzed have revealed unique products cobbled together out of disparate parts for a particular set of circumstances. The Bavarian experiment in illustrating a psalter with typology may have been a one-off, and the French book of hours resulted from someone's collecting a particular group of parts. Owners and binders responded to specific, received sets of physical material units as springboards for new and experimental books. In these examples, and in many examples discussed above, owners also responded to blank parchment by succumbing to the desire to fill it.

While these examples were one-offs, other refurbishings followed a more general taste. In the late fifteenth century certain ateliers tapped into people's desire to overhaul older books and specialized in just that. Each of these transformations was unique and based on the available material at hand. Many such ateliers may have existed, but here I want to concentrate on two monastic ateliers plus one that was probably secular and staffed by urban professionals. I will revisit in greater detail

Netherlandish workshops I briefly introduced above, to explore in more detail how they operated.

# C. The convent of St. Ursula

In the second half of the fifteenth century, convents in the Northern Netherlands not only made manuscripts but began specializing in updating older manuscripts in order to make them more relevant to their users. Convent sisters used sophisticated methods of adding modules to both new and used manuscripts, and could vary the degree of illumination according to an owner's budget. At least two convents (the Franciscan convent of St. Ursula and the Augustinian convent of St. Agnes, both in Delft) specialized in restructuring old manuscripts. I have identified three books of hours that the scriptorium of Franciscan tertiary sisters of St. Ursula augmented: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. Liturg. E.9\*; HKB, Ms. 132 G 38; and Uppsala, Universitetsbiblioteket, Ms. C 517 k, which I treat here in turn. Those from the Augustinian convent I treat later in this section. Whereas the Franciscan convent specialized in adding new, indulgenced prayers to plain prayerbooks, the Augustinian convent specialized in adding lavish decoration to them.

## 1. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. Liturg. E.9\*

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. Liturg. E.9\* (hereafter: Rawlinson) is a book of hours that originally came from North Holland, to judge by its particular brand of rather coarse penwork (fig. 219).12 Writing on thick parchment of low quality, the scribe copied the most basic offices from Geert Grote's translation: a calendar, Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Hours of the Cross, Hours of Eternal Wisdom, the Seven Penitential Psalms and Litany, and the Vigil for the Dead. The North Holland scribe wrote only a few extra prayers as quire filler after

12 Opening in a book of hours at the incipit of the Hours of the Holy Spirit, with penwork from North Holland. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 43r.

the Short Hours of the Cross (63r-68r). These quire fillers (fol. 68v-70v) comprise a prayer to the Wounds of Christ, to St. Francis, to Mary, to one's personal angel, and to St. Sebastian (fig. 220).13 There are no prayers before and after taking the sacrament, and no extra collects in the Vigil for the Dead for friends and family, and no indulgences to fill out this book. This was a basic, bare-bones construction.

Either the original owner ordered the book of hours in North Holland, or else this person bought the rather generic book of hours there already complete. Its original decoration has no personalizing features that would suggest a bespoke product. The crudeness of the decoration makes it difficult to date, but the third quarter of the fifteenth century is a reasonable guess. One of the manuscript's subsequent owners wrote his name on the flyleaf in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century: Pieter Willemsz of Goeree. He might have been the one who brought the manuscript to an atelier in Delft to have more prayers added to it.

Treating the manuscript structurally reveals its phased genesis and shows how the original parts of the manuscript interact with the added parts. Rawlinson and many other books of hours made after ca. 1450 were constructed using the modular method. As the collation diagram reveals, each major text has been copied onto a number of discrete quires. The scribe would begin each major text on a fresh quire, fill as many quires as needed to inscribe the entire text, and then often leave the rest of the quire blank. Often he or she would use a final quire of two, four, or six leaves rather than the usual eight if he perceived that the end of the text was near, so as to reduce wasted, uninscribed parchment. He would then begin the next text on its own fresh quire. Thus the individual texts were produced in units, which could then be assembled into books of hours with the texts in any order. This system also enabled a stationer or binder to add full-page miniatures to preface the major texts, as these could be inserted to the front of a module. One of the consequences of this method was that it often left some blank but ruled parchment at the end of each module.

13 Folio in a book of hours that falls at the end of a module, which was filled by the original scribe in North Holland for prayers to one's personal angel and to St. Sebastian. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 70r.

**Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. Liturg. E.9\***: structure and content Book of hours with modular structure and additions; Ms foliated 1–124

In Rawlinson, the later scribe from Delft has topped up Quire VIII with text, and then added Quires IX and X. These added texts are:

Verses of St. Gregory (nine-verse version)

Prayers to the sacrament (The folio containing the rubric that would have prefaced the prayers to the Sacrament has been cut out, probably because it was decorated)

Prayers to be read in front of the Virgin's image for 30 days

Prayer to the Virgin in the Sun, with an indulgence of 11,000 years

Prayer to St. Erasmus to prevent sudden death, with a post-script rubric promising an indulgence of 140 days

Prayers and privileges of St. Anne.14

One can see from this list that most of the prayers added to the manuscript provided indulgences, promised to prevent sudden death, or, in the case of the privileges of St. Anne, guaranteed riches. These privileges demanded that the reader look upon an image of St. Anne and perform "honor" by giving alms or lighting a candle, presumably in front of her image. It is no wonder that the manuscript's owner would have gone to great lengths to have his book taken out of its binding, have extra folios added to it, and have it rebound.

A close look at the structure of the added material reveals a great deal about the Delft scribe's method. Original parts of the manuscript (those written in North Holland) are inscribed in a *littera textualis*, ruled for a text block of 102x70mm. The North Holland scribe only ruled the block, and not the individual lines, but wrote 19 lines per folio using some other type of guide system. However the Delft scribe was not used to writing in an unlined text block. She took the manuscript out of its binding, then ruled the blank parchment at the bottom of fol. 51v and the recto and verso sides of fol. 52 (fig. 221).15 When doing this, she matched the size of the new text block as closely as possible to the

14 These unusual prayers are nearly identical to those inscribed in BKB, Ms. IV 312, fol. 97v-98v.

15 Opening in a book of hours with the last 6 lines of the Hours of the Holy Spirit written by scribe from North Holland, and the rest of fol. 51v and 52r ruled and written by scribe from Delft, to fill the quire. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 51v-52r.

existing one. She also matched the script size as closely as possible, although she wrote in a *textualis*, which was the "corporate" style of the convent of St. Ursula.

Some features of the added sections make it possible to connect this manuscript to a group of books of hours made for and/or by the Franciscan tertiary sisters of St. Ursula in Delft, a house that formed in 1454 or 1457, which produced many surviving manuscripts.16 Several different scriptoria in Delft, which can be associated with various convents in that city, wrote manuscripts and decorated them with distinctive red and blue penwork, which is also present in the added sections of Rawlinson, such as on fol. 53v (fig. 222).17 The convent sisters of St. Ursula probably listed Ursula as the first virgin in the litany in the books of hours they produced, and they also featured St. Ursula in red in the calendar. Many of the manuscripts in this group have ruling similar to that found in the added parts of Rawl. Liturg. e. 9\*. Manuscripts I have localized to the convent of St. Ursula have catchwords that are written in script the same size as the text itself, and placed just to the right of the vertical ruling in the lower margin. An example appears in a book of hours now in The Hague (HKB, Ms. 135 E 18, fol. 107v; fig. 223).18 Among manuscripts made in Delft, only those connected to the convent of St. Ursula (as determined by the calendar and decoration) contain these distinctive catchwords. A similar catchword appears on fol. 59v of Rawlinson, which connects the added parts of the manuscript to the St. Ursula group (fig. 224).19

It is also possible that this convent had a relationship with a particular binder. When the scribes from Delft—possibly sisters of St. Ursula—finished their augmentations and reassembled the quires of

16 Until a fuller study of manuscripts from this convent appears, consult: Kathryn Rudy, "De Productie van Manuscripten in het Sint-Ursulaklooster te Delft," *Delf: Cultuurhistorisch magazine voor Delft* 12, no. 2 (2010), pp. 24–27.

17 Folio in a book of hours inscribed by a Delft scribe, with typical red and blue penwork from Delft. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 53v.

18 Folio in a book of hours with Delft decoration and a catchword, which is a codicological feature associated with manuscripts from the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 135 E 18, fol. 107v. http:// manuscripts.kb.nl/zoom/BYVANCKB%3Amimi\_135e18%3A107v

19 Opening with a catchword in a book of hours whose core was made in North Holland before extensive additions were made in Delft. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 59v-60r.

this manuscript, they added a protective leaf to the end, which would become the back paste-down (it was lifted later when the spine was repaired). A scribe had obviously discarded the leaf after making an unrecoverable error (fig. 225).20 Only one side is inscribed, and the copyist binned the leaf before writing on the other side or adding the initials in red and blue. This workshop for manuscript updates, which, after all, recuperated every line and every centimeter of space on the written surface to convey prayers, simply did not waste parchment. Instead, someone in the atelier used this mistake page as binding material.

Salvaged from the garbage heap, the protective leaf is inscribed in a controlled *textualis* of the variety that the convent of St. Ursula produced and is close in style to the leaf from HKB, Ms. 135 E 18, the one with the distinctive catchword mentioned above. That the stub of the leaf wraps around to the front of the previous quire indicates that the leaf was integrated into the structure of the book at the time of rebinding. Perhaps the convent of St. Ursula had its own bindery. Perhaps they sold or gave their scraps to the bindery. Perhaps the scribes were not members of the house of St. Ursula at all, but belonged to a professional atelier in Delft that wrote and bound manuscripts then sold them to the convent of St. Ursula. This third option, however, is unlikely, since several of the manuscripts in this group have collects in the Vigil for the Dead "for those who give us alms," a statement that strongly suggests that the manuscripts originated in a monastic context.

Nevertheless, the scribe has used a male noun "arm sondaer" in a rubric added to Rawlinson, which suggests that the added prayers were commissioned by a man, or that the sisters were updating and older manuscript to be sold in the open market, and therefore used the generalized male pronouns. This is also consistent with the note of ownership inscribed at the beginning of the book, indicating that it belonged to Pieter Willemszn of Goeree. Perhaps he wanted a book of hours with the latest prayers, but rather than buying a new one from scratch, he chose a much less expensive option, namely, buying a used, homely, no-frills book of hours, then having it augmented and rebound.

20 The inside back cover and the last folio of a book of hours (formerly a paste-down), which may have been waste material from the St. Ursula scriptorium in Delft. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawlinson Liturgical e.9\*, fol. 124v and inside back cover.

### 2. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38

A book of hours originally made in South Holland (HKB, Ms. 132 G 38) contains two layers of additions. Likely made in Delft around 1480, it has an Utrecht calendar with feasts in red including St. Hippolytus (13 August, who was venerated in Delft) and St. Jeroen (17 August, venerated in parts of South Holland). Although the manuscript may have been produced in Delft, it was not originally made in the convent of St. Ursula, for the first confessor in the litany is St. Martin, and the first virgin is St. Agnes. Where exactly within South Holland it was created remains unclear. Following its completion, one layer of changes was executed by the same monastic scriptorium that updated the Rawlinson manuscript—that of St. Ursula in Delft. The other layer was added in Leiden. Both Leiden and Delft are in South Holland, so all three stages of production occurred in close proximity. These layers of additions, worked into the fiber of the original manuscript, attest to an owner's (or two owners') desires to make the book more colorful and to fill it with new prayers, including indulgenced texts. An atelier in Leiden added more decoration, as well as full-page miniatures, and subsequently the convent sisters added numerous prayer texts to the book and decorated some of them. Below I have included a chart providing an overview of these two campaigns of work. The changes wrought at the Ursula convent were similar to, but far more complicated than, the interventions in Rawlinson and require some explanation.

HKB, Ms. 132 G 38 originally contained the normal texts associated with a book of hours: a calendar, the Hours of the Virgin, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Short Hours of the Cross, the Verses of St. Gregory (five-verse version), and the Vigil for the Dead, along with a few suffrages and texts associated with St. Francis. Like Rawlinson, this manuscript was also constructed in modular units, but they are arranged somewhat differently here. (The Hours of the Virgin and the Seven Penitential Psalms, for example, comprise one unit, and the offices are organized in a different sequence.) This original part of the manuscript dates from about 1480 and was written somewhere in South Holland, possibly Delft. For the sake of abbreviation, I have called these sections "SH" (for South Holland) in the chart below. All of these original folios were written in a rather loose *hybrida* script and have quire notations in a small Gothic script on the recto side of the first four folios of each quire. Some simple penwork decoration appears on the original folios (although these were largely overpainted).

**Hague, KB 132 G 38 (Book of Hours from South Holland, with additions)**. Ms foliated I-XIII, 1–139

**Hague, KB 132 G 38 (Book of Hours from South Holland, with additions)**. Ms foliated I-XIII, 1–139, cont.

Even though this book of hours was originally copied with extra texts, suffrages and some indulgences, its early owner was not completely satisfied with it and commissioned a series of full-page miniatures for it. This was easy to do, since most new texts began on the first folio of a new quire: the manuscript was made according to the "modular method" described above. The five added full-page miniatures now comprise fol. 13v (Annunciation), fol. 52v (Last Judgment), fol. 74v (Crucifixion), fol. 83v (Mass of St. Gregory), and fol. 106v (Mass for the Dead). Adding full-page miniatures therefore involved taking the manuscript out of its binding and slipping the edges of the painted folios around the back of these quires. Artists working in Leiden (the so-called Masters of Hugo Jansz. Van Worden) produced the miniatures, and the particular kind of painted border decoration associated with them is known as "Leiden blue acanthus."21 The painters who provided these miniatures also supplied the incipit text folios with painted borders, so that the openings would form visually coherent ensembles.

Fig. 226 Opening in a book of hours at the incipit of the Verses of St. Gregory, with two campaigns of work: the script, penwork, and painted initials were executed in the original campaign of work, and the full-page miniature was added later, along with painted decoration around the text folio to make it match. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 83v-84r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

21 Added miniatures and border decoration like these are closely related to painting in Berlin, SBB-PK, Germ. qu. 18, a book of hours in which the miniatures are integral, rather than being tipped in.

Folio in a book of hours, on which a painter applied "Leiden blue acanthus" border decoration over the top of the existing penwork decoration. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 133v. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Folio in a book of hours, to which a scribe from the convent of St. Ursula in Delft added a prayer and Delft penwork to the blank parchment at the lower part of the folio. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 50r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

For example, the original manuscript, copied somewhere in South Holland, contained the Five Verses of St. Gregory (fig. 226). A rubric and incipit for this text appears on fol. 84r, in the loopy *hybrida* of the original South Holland scribe. A painted four-line initial, alternating red and blue one-line initials, and penwork decoration, were also included in the original production. When the owner had it upgraded with miniatures in Leiden, he or she ordered images for the major text openings and for this indulgenced text. The loose single-leaf miniature had painted border decoration characterized by thin blue acanthus, typical of Leiden in the second half of the fifteenth century. These would have clashed with the simple penwork flourishes on the text

pages. To give the opening a harmonious unity, the owner therefore added analogous blue border decoration painted onto the facing text page. (I have shown several examples above where adding miniatures meant also adding decoration to the facing page.)

The owner evidently asked the Leiden illuminator to add decoration throughout the book. On other folios, the illuminator painted over the top of existing penwork decoration (fig. 227). He or she did this to raise the hierarchy of decoration by an increment, as four-line initials under the new scheme should have painted borders, not penwork borders, which belong to a lower echelon. This painted decoration was apparently added in Leiden, probably by a professional artist who specialized in "Leiden blue acanthus" decoration.22

Next the owner then had yet another set of additions made, this time textual. Some of these involved adding more physical material, and some exploited areas of parchment left empty in the first phase of execution. These added texts can be easily distinguished from the original texts in the manuscript written elsewhere in South Holland. I believe that the same atelier that added prayers to Rawlinson inscribed these additions: the Franciscan convent of St. Ursula in Delft. In order that no blank parchment would remain, the scribes there delighted in filling up the ends of quires with short texts. A St. Ursula scribe did just this, for example, on fol. 50r (fig. 228), where she squeezed in a text of "Onser liever vrouwen lof" (*Regina celi*) to be read on Easter day. In order to add this, she first re-ruled the bottom of the folio in dark brown ink, with condensed lines so that she could fit in more text. She wrote in the neat *textualis* that was the house style of the Ursula convent and did not try to match the script of the existing book. She has also given the two-line initial a red and blue flourish in a style unmistakably from Delft and which typify production at the Ursula convent.

22 The artists who work in this style have been called the Masters of Hugo Jansz. van Woerden. Related examples of this style appear in approximately 30 other manuscripts. For an overview of the style, see Defoer et al., *The Golden Age of Dutch Manuscript Painting*, pp. 287, 297.

Fig. 229 Opening in a book of hours. The 3.5 lines on the left side of the gutter and all of the script and penwork on the right side are part of the original production (written somewhere in South Holland); an indulgenced prayer with a rubric mentioning Pope Sixtus IV, added as quire filler, was inscribed at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 136v-137r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 230 Opening in a book of hours. The 14.5 lines on the left side of the gutter are part of the original production (written somewhere in South Holland). The rubric on fol. 71v-72r, the prayer that follows, and the penwork decoration, were added at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 71v-72r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 231 Opening in a book of hours showing quire fillers added in two campaigns of work: 13 lines of red text on the left side of the gutter were inscribed in the first campaign of work, somehwere in South Holland; the final three lines on the left, and all of the text on the right side of the gutter (a prayer about the sheddings of Christ's blood), plus the blue and red penwork, were inscribed later at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 72v-73r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 232 Opening in a book of hours, with original parchment on the left, and the back of an added leaf on the right. The text comprises quire filler added at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft: the end of the sheddings of Christ's blood, followed by a saying of St. Augustine. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 73v-74r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Likewise, a scribe from the Ursula convent could not bear to leave nearly a folio's worth of empty lines on fol. 136v, which precedes some Marian prayers (fig. 229). Instead, she copied a short, indulgenced prayer into the space.  [HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 136v]

This scribe from St. Ursula's convent thereby updated the book of hours with a prayer that she carefully chose for this location: it relates to the Marian theme of this section of the book, is short enough to fit into the remaining space on the page, and it carries an enormous indulgence.

The scribe from the Ursula convent filled several more blank but ruled original folios with additional texts. Several folios had been left blank by the original scribe at the end of the Penitential Psalms and litany in Quire XI. These blank but ruled folios begin at the bottom of fol. 71v (fig. 230). The Ursula scribe filled these blank lines with several prayers, beginning with one to be read while looking the Face of Christ, This prayer is a corrupted version of the *Salve Sancta Facies,* whose prayer text has drifted into a fiery emotional outburst, which I transcribe here in full. Prefatory and postscript rubrics, each promising different results for the devotion, top and tail the prayer:

*rub:* Whoever looks upon that image of the Veronica with devotion will have 300 days' indulgence from the pope of Rome. Moreover, he will not die within 10 days from an unforeseen or sudden death. You should also read the following prayer with devotion. *inc:* I greet you, blessed face of our lord Jesus Christ. O, lord, I beg you from the depths of my heart that you look at me [literally: *throw your blessed eyes on me*], and protect me from the enemy from hell and from all evil people and from wild ferocious beasts, and from all the evils that may hinder me, body and soul. After this miserable life, give me the joy and rapture of everlasting life. Amen. *rub:* Item, any woman in labor who looks upon that image of the Veronica will be gladdened and comforted in her time of need. [HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 71v-72r]

That the image returns the viewer's gaze is implied by the prayer; by extension, the image would protect the votary by keeping an eye on her. The prayer both addresses Jesus directly in a dialogue, and acknowledges

his presence in the conversation through the image. Several promises about the technical benefits of looking at the image are made by the prefatory rubric, and the post-script rubric claims that looking at the image will help a woman in childbirth. The prayer text itself positions the reader to ask for several other benefits, mostly involving protection from hellhounds and the like. Both a spiritual benefit redeemable in Purgatory for a shortened sentence, as well as an earthly and analgesic benefit, are promised by the rubrics.

Plenty of space remained at the end of this quire for the St. Ursula scribes to fill (fig. 231). Some more opportunistic inclusions were invited by the blank folios, and one scribe has copied two short texts in red at the top of fol. 73v. A St. Ursula scribe has left a respectful distance and copied another indulgenced prayer, with this rubric:

*rub:* A person shall read this prayer every day three times with devotion in his heart. He shall know for certain that he will never again be damned. The more often a person reads this, the more benefit he shall earn from our lord, and especially during his final days. If he is not able to read this himself, he can just think it, or another person shall pray it for him, that another person will pray it for him in the case of mortal peril. Prayer: O, lord, you have unbound the chains of my sins with your holy sheddings of blood…[HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 72v-73v]23

Even this prayer did not fill all of the available space, and four lines remained at the end of fol. 73v (fig. 232). A very short text, a prayer attributed to St. Augustine, was used by the St. Ursula scribe to fill these lines, so that no blank lines remained. In short, the scribe used the open spaces from fol. 71v-73v opportunistically. One of the core values at the convent of St. Ursula must have been to leave no blank parchment. Such choices were not completely random; rather, the St. Ursula scribe selected by theme and by length, as she copied the prayer to the "blood sheddings of Christ" so that it would immediately precede the Crucifixion. The sisters must have also had a selection of short texts available on an exemplar that they could copy into small spaces of parchment.

23 HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 72v-73v: *rub:* Dit ghebet sel een mensche alle dage driewerven lesen mit ynnicheit sijns herten. Ende hi sel des seker we[73]sen dat hi nymmermeer verdoemt en sel worden. Ende hoe een mensch dit dicker leest, hoe hi meer loons sel van onsen heer verdienen ende sonderlinge in sinen lesten eynde, ende en vermach hi des niet self te lesen, soe sel hi dat dencken, of een ander mensche selt enen anderen bidden, dat hi dat lesen wil voor hem in des dootsnoot.

Fig. 233 Opening in a book of hours, with a blank area formerly filled with sewn-on badges. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 124v-125r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 234 Opening in a book of hours at the Verses of St. Gregory, with a diagram showing the arrangement of original and added parchment; the additions transform the prayer from a 5-verse version into a 9-verse version with a larger indulgence. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 84r-85v. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 235 Opening in a book of hours, with original and added parchment. Fol. 86r is part of the original manuscript (made in South Holland) and has a prayer to the sacrament. Fol. 85 was inscribed at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft and added later; fol. 85v contains the ninth and final Verse of St. Gregory, and a postscript rubric indicating that reading the previous prayer is worth 92,042 years' & 80 days' indulgence. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 85v-86r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 236 Opening in a book of hours, with original and added parchment. Fol. 86 is part of the original manuscript (made in South Holland). The first 9.5 lines, including the red letter *A* with its few strokes of whispy penwork, were inscribed by the original scribe and are typical of the original production. A scribe at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft filled the rest of fol. 86v with a prayer to the sacrament, added bold red and blue penwork decoration, and extended the existing penwork into the upper margin; she continued the prayer on added parchment (fol. 87), on which she inscribed another prayer to the sacrament. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 86v-87r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

The Sisters of St. Ursula left only one area of parchment blank: that on fol. 124v (fig. 233). Someone had stitched small round objects to the bottom of this folio. Needle holes are still visible in the parchment, arranged in circles, and the round, toothed offsets of these objects appears on fol. 125r, indicating that they were made of metal that bit into the soft parchment. Given that the sisters of St. Ursula held as one of their values the filling up of parchment, I conjecture that the owner had already sewn in the badges before she brought the manuscript to the convent for textual updates. By turning it into a repository for small, round badges, the owner had already amended her book in her own amateurish way; now she was commissioning professional updates to it. Rather than remove the badges, the sisters simply avoided writing on the same page, as the badges would have formed obstacles to the scribe.

Three kinds of interventions were made in HKB, Ms. 132 G 38 by the sisters at the Ursula convent. First, as I have shown, they added texts to the blank but ruled spaces in the manuscript, thereby making use of otherwise wasted rulings. Second, they added some single leaves of text, specifically fol. 85 and 87, in order to extend existing prayers. I want to look at more closely at the section of the manuscript that contains these folios, because they reveal this scribe's *modus operandi*. Third, they added several quires to the manuscript (quires XIV, XV, and XX). These were not simply added to the end of the manuscript, but were worked into logical places in the middle and at the end. In this way, these added quires resemble the one in Rawlinson. I treat these below.

How and why the single leaves were added? Physical evidence can help to answer this. The opening fol. 83v-84r (fig. 226) has an original text page with the *Adoro te in cruce pendentem* in Dutch, plus one of the added full-page miniatures showing the Mass of St. Gregory, designed to accompany this prayer. A simple rubric prefaces the prayer:

*rub:* Anyone who reads this on his knees in front of this figure and is free of mortal sin will earn 20,000 years' indulgence and 14 days' indulgence from Callistus. [HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 84r-84v]

Presenting the five-verse version of the prayer, the prayer text finishes at the bottom of fol. 84v. But the owner was not satisfied with this short version of the prayer. Like the owner of the Tongeren/Tienen manuscript (HKB, Ms. 75 G 2) discussed above, the owner wanted the longer, later version of the prayer with the more munificent indulgence. Owners sometimes added the text of the *Adoro te* as well as the image that would activate it, inscribed on a separate quire. They then inserted these new modules into books that were already complete (although in its owner's opinion, deficient). In this case, the scribe has added an extra leaf, fol. 85, in order to add four more verses to the prayer, thereby turning the five-verse *Adoro te* into the nine-verse version (fig. 234). Not only that, but the scribe has given the prayer a second rubric, this one at the end of the prayer, which promises even more indulgences:

*rub:* Anyone who speaks nine *Pater Nosters* and nine ave Marias with contrition in his heart before the *arma Christi*, will earn 92,024 years and 80 days' indulgence. Really. [HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 85v; fig. 235]24

By adding a leaf, the scribe was able to turn a prayer worth 20,000 years' indulgence into one worth more than 92,000 years. Although careful inspection reveals that fol. 85 is written in a different hand than fol. 84, the scribe has gone to some effort to work this added text seamlessly into the pre-existing book. For example, she has ruled the additional pages for 19 lines to match the original text pages, and she has used the same sized text block. However, the penwork applied to the added sections reveals its Delft origins and contrasts with the nondescript South Holland penwork in the original sections.

Fol. 87 also comprises a singleton added to the manuscript. A diagram overlaying fol. 86v-87r shows how the scribe added the material but also integrated the new text and decoration with the old (fig. 236). Continuing writing right where the previous text ended, she used the existing space, and added even more physical material, to make room for prayers to the sacrament, which fill fol. 87r/v.

24 HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 84r-85v, 5 Verses of Saint Gregory (in original hand from South Holland), augmented with 4 more verses (in hand from Delft), *rub:* Soe wie op sinen knien dit gebet leest buten doit sonden, die verdient xxm jaer ende xiiii dage oflaets voir dese figuer van Calixtus. *inc:* O, heer Jhesu Christe, ic aenbede di inden cruce…. [85v] *rub:* So wie mit berou des herten spreect voort wapen ons heren ix *Pater nosteren* ende ix *Ave Marien*, die verdient xciim jaer xxiiii jaer ende lxxx dagen oflaets. Waerachtich.

### Fig. 237

Folio in a book of hours from a section added at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. Gaps in the penwork border decoration are for small painted figures, which have not been filled in. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 94r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 238 Opening in a book of hours from an added section, at the division between two added quires, revealing the large catchword typical of production at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 101v-102r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Fig. 239 Opening in a book of hours from an added section, with one prayer to St. Ursula and one to her 11,000 virginal companions; fol. 104r is decorated with penwork typical of Delft on three sides of the text block. The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 103v-104r. Image © Koninklijke Bibliotheek—the National Library of The Netherlands, CC BY 4.0.

Furthermore, the atelier at St. Ursula's in Delft added entire quires of parchment to expand the text-writing area. These are quires XIV, XV and XX and they are written in the neat corporate *textualis* that I associate with the convent of St. Ursula in Delft. The red and blue "block" penwork that has been associated with Delft manuscript production appears on the opening folio of quire XIV (fol. 94r); I believe this was executed at the convent of St. Ursula in Delft (fig. 237). There is a gap in the decoration, however, which has surely been left open for a figure, probably one bearing a blue scroll.25 However, this has not been filled in. I suspect that the convent of St. Ursula did not have a painter who could add figures, but that the sisters only copied texts and added penwork decoration. In this case the sheet was never sent to the painter to be completed.

Another codicological feature reveals quires XIV and XV as products of the St. Ursula convent. Just as in Rawlinson and in most of the

25 Kathryn M. Rudy, "Margins and Memory: The Functions of Border Imagery from a Delft Manuscript," in *Manuscript Studies in the Low Countries. Proceedings of the 'Groninger Codicologendagen' in Friesland 2002* (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 2008), pp. 216–38.

manuscript production from the convent of St. Ursula, the scribe used a large catchword where she produced entire quires (in this case, on HKB, Ms. 132 G 38, fol. 101v; fig. 238). None of the original leaves of HKB, Ms. 132 G 38 has catchwords.

Texts in the added quires further point to the convent of St. Ursula as the place where this manuscript was augmented. Quires XIV and XV, both added, contain a prayer to the Virgin (94r-101r); a prayer to St. Erasmus (101r-102v); a prayer to St. Christopher as well as his "privileges" (102v-103v); and prayers to Sts Ursula, the Eleven Thousand Virgins, Katherine, and Barbara (104r-105v). Because the St. Ursula was the patron of the convent where I believe the work was carried out, the choice of these added female saints is significant. The other, older convent of female Franciscans in Delft was dedicated to St. Barbara, a convent of which St. Ursula may have formed a satellite, though one with a larger footprint and presumably a scriptorium. Moreover, within this section of prayers to saints, the prayer to St. Ursula receives extra decoration, with penwork on three sides of the page (fig. 239). This emphasis on St. Ursula strengthens my hypothesis that these manuscript updates in HKB, Ms. 132 G 38 and Rawl. Liturg. e. 9\* were made in the convent of St. Ursula in Delft.