Mmmonk School 2025 - Special edition on Books of Hours!

Thursday 11 December - Art historical analysis

(4–6 PM CET, online)

Moderated by Elena Lichmanova (British Library)

- Lieve De Kesel (Ghent University): An Introduction to the Art Historical Analysis of Books of Hours

There is very little documentation on the lives and identities of the many illuminators in Flanders in the fifteenth and sixteenth century, although their work includes some of the finest illuminated manuscripts ever made. Some were also panel painters. Artists travelled; they were influenced by each other’s work and by ideas imported from elsewhere; and their own styles evolved and changed throughout their careers. We must learn to discover and record tiny details and characteristics which allow us to recognise the hands of individual illuminators and to distinguish these from the work of others in their professional circles.

- Jessica Savage (Princeton University): An Introduction to Researching Books of Hours at The Index of Medieval Art

The Index of Medieval Art is a historic research center home to archival print files and an online database for the study of medieval iconography. While the Index covers a diverse range of visual traditions, objects, and architecture from the medieval world, illuminated Books of Hours are a major pillar of the collection, rich in iconography for art historical analysis. This webinar will explore the specialized data of Books of Hours, including the iconography of the calendar and major liturgical divisions; typical prayers and inscriptions; and names of illuminators, scribes, and patrons. Participants will learn helpful search methods to discover more about Books of Hours in the Index database.

Thursday 18 December - Analysis of liturgical use

(4–6 PM CET, online)

Moderated by Diane Reilly (Indiana University Bloomington)

- Dominique Stutzmann (IRHT Paris): An Introduction to the Analysis of Liturgical Use in Books of Hours

The core of books of hours derives from the votive liturgy of the clergy and, as such, exhibits distinct “uses” or liturgical destinations, which often differ from the place of production. With examples, including from Bruges, this presentation will introduce some dedicated practical tools to determine the proper liturgical use of the main sections: the repertories of F. Madan, V. Leroquais, E. Drigsdahl and the HORAE database for the Hours of the Virgin, and the one of K. Ottosen for the Office of the Dead. Calendars merit special attention: devotional rather than strictly liturgical, they can still be analyzed, esp. with Calendoscope and CoKlDB. With a primary pedagogical aim, this presentation will provide methods applicable to any book of hours, and allowing to also assess the reality of “unidentified” or “hybrid” uses that resist classification, and thus contribute to a deeper understanding of the complex relationships between devotional practice and liturgical tradition.

- Gregory T. Clark (Sewanee, University of the South): An Introduction to Beyond Use and other useful tools

Beyond Use (https://beyonduse.sewanee.edu/) is a digital database that records the entirety of three texts — the litanies that follow the Seven Penitential Psalms and two prayers known from their incipits as the Obsecro te and O intemerata — in some 1200 French and southern Netherlandish manuscript Books of Hours of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. While those three texts have no set use, that is, no established textual readings demonstrably peculiar to a diocese, collegiate church, or monastic house, I will seek to demonstrate how the three texts' variant readings can help localize Books of Hours that might otherwise defy certain localization.

Lieve De Kesel, PhD University of Ghent. Specialty: Flemish illuminated manuscripts (12th-16th century). Collaborator on, and author for, several exhibitions, including Van Eyck. An Optical Revolution (2020) and Haute Lecture by Colard Mansion (2018). Author for European Illuminated Manuscripts in the Calouste Gulbenkian Collection (2020) and other scholarly contributions published in France, Germany, and England. Her monograph The Book of Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic (2014) was published in English, German and Spanish.

Jessica Savage is an art historian, archivist, and specialist in medieval iconography at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the iconographic cycles, layout, and customization of devotional manuscripts, especially those produced in northern Europe during the late Middle Ages, and text/image relationships. She has presented her work in several national and international conferences, and has published with the Oxford University Press, Harvey Miller Publishers, Brill Publishers, and forthcoming with the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Press. She holds graduate degrees in art history and library science from the University of Glasgow and Rutgers University.

Dominique Stutzmann is Research Director at the Institute for Research and History of Texts (IRHT – CNRS, Paris) and Honorary Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin. He studied at the École Nationale des Chartes in 2002 and completed his Ph.D. in History in 2009 at the Sorbonne, and was granted the habilitation in 2021.

His research focuses the writing practices of religious communities, mainly in France, from the 12th to the 15th centuries and on applying artificial intelligence to advance our understanding of the medieval written culture. Using AI, his team was able to provide a full text search engine to the registers of the Trésor des Chartes (http://himanis.huma-num.fr/) and to more than 1100 books of hours (https://demo.arkindex.org/browse/cd38d0a4-bfd6-4bef-a44f-1d4da09226fd).

Gregory T. Clark is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. His scholarly work focuses on manuscript illumination in France and the southern Netherlands in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. His books include Made in Flanders: The Master of the Ghent Privileges (2000), The Spitz Master: A Parisian Book of Hours (2003), and Art in a Time of War: The Master of Morgan 453 (2016). He has also published commentaries on the Isabel la Católica Hours (Madrid, Real Biblioteca, s.n.; 1999) and Da Costa Hours (New York, ML&M, MS M.399; 2010).