Summerfield B491: Devotion, Secularity, and Readership

Summerfield B491: Devotion, Secularity, and Readership

Pigouchet´s Book of Hours was a medieval best-seller that gave lay viewers increased exposure to motifs that played a practical and devotional function within their personal prayer books. Indeed, the proliferation, distribution, and acquisition of Book of Hours during the late Middle Ages responded to the nobility’s and wealthy individuals’ interests in achieving a closer spiritual connection to the Virgin Mary, the focus of the devotional core of the Book of Hours. As a consequence of this secular expansion, Book of Hours were adapted to serve public and commercial ends, and the results were hybrid products of religious and secular imagery. For example, Latin-captioned celebrations of the virtues of the Old Testament heroine Susannah appear on the same page as secular imagery such as dragons, fantastic animals, and ambiguously-shaped individuals.

Summerfield B491

Spencer Research Library Special Collections, University of Kansas

c. 1502

Book of Hours

Spencer Research Library Special Collections, Summerfield B491, fol. h_viiir

Ink on paper, 16th c. printed Book of Hours