Medieval manuscripts illustrations3/11/2023 ![]() I then consider how material was often inadvertently added to manuscripts through handling. I first consider how images were abraded through devotional kissing and rubbing that was directed at a particular image, or even a particular area of an image, or occasionally directed at a text. These examples reveal how medieval people interacted with their books and reveal something of their habits and expectations, and ultimately, an aspect of medieval readers’ emotional lives. Taking as my premise the idea that missals reveal habits of wear and use, in this article I bring together other manuscripts-especially prayer books-that have been rubbed and handled. ![]() The priest in Haarlem who used this missal kissed the osculation plaque some of the time, but his lips also crept upward, onto the frame of the miniature, onto the ground below the cross, up the shaft of the cross, occasionally kissing the feet of Christ. ![]() This plaque is designed to bear the wear and tear of the priest’s repeated kisses, for illuminators realized that priests would damage their paintings if they could not deflect the lips elsewhere ( fig. In the Missal of the Haarlem Linen Weavers’ Guild, made in Utrecht in the first decade of the fifteenth century, the illuminators provided an osculation plaque at the bottom of the full-page miniature depicting the Crucifixion. A priest would repeatedly kiss the canon page of his missal, depositing secretions from his lips, nose, and forehead onto the page. One of the most obvious ways in which a category of manuscripts-missals-carries signs of use is the damage often found in the opening of the canon of the mass. Īlthough it is often difficult to study the habits, private rituals, and emotional states of people who lived in the medieval past, medieval manuscripts carry signs of use and wear on their very surfaces that provide records of some of these elusive phenomena. 184 C 2 (Photo: Byvanck archive artwork in the public domain). 1400-10, tempera and gold on vellum, 349 x 270 (265 x 179) mm, 2 columns, 32 lines, littera textualis, Latin. Missal of the Haarlem Linen Weavers Guild, North Holland (Haarlem?), ca. 149v), showing damage where the priest repeatedly kissed it.
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