Book of Hours
'Ghistelles' Hours
F-u3fx
General Information
Original Condition
Current Condition
Book Decoration and Musical Notation
A three-sided border composed of coloured bars terminating at either end in a drollery and a human face (or mask), both embellished with highly burnished gold. Although the drollery has previously been identified as a lion, its form bears little resemblance to a conventional leonine figure.
In the right margin, a standing male figure raises both hands with palms facing outward, a gesture suggestive of aversion or rejection. Rather than dancing, as proposed in some earlier descriptions, the figure appears to be recoiling from something unpleasant or threatening.
There is one major illuminated two-line initial on a blue and pink ground ornamented with white tracery. Four one-line initials alternating blue flourished in red and burnished gold flourished in grey. Line fillers in red, blue, and gold.
Content
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Content Item
- Text Language Latin
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Content Description
The closing verse of Psalm 64:14 on the recto, followed by antiphons, and the opening verses of the Canticle of Ezechias (Isaiah 38:10-12) on the verso, part of lauds in the Office of the Dead.
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Remarks
MS 446.1 Houghton Library, Harvard University (https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-rgw4) contains Psalm 64:8–10 on the recto and Psalm 64:11–14 on the verso. The Reed leaf follows immediately after it, beginning with the closing words of Psalm 64:14 before continuing with the subsequent text. This establishes that the two leaves were consecutive in the original manuscript.
History
This leaf belongs to a Flemish Books of Hours, produced in Flanders in the early fourteenth century. Christopher de Hamel identified the manuscript's original owner as Jean III de Ghistelles (c. 1255–1315), Lord of Gistel and Ingelmunster, on the basis of the heraldic banners depicted in its decoration (Margaret M. Manion. Vera F. Vines and Christopher de Hamel, Medieval Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections, Thames and Hudson, 1989, 91) This attribution has subsequently been questioned by Peter Kidd (Medieval Manuscripts Provenance, November 2017).
Rosi Schilling identified the manuscript as the "imperfect 13th c. French Horae" recorded by Sir Sydney Cockerell in his diary as having been purchased from Maggs on 20 August 1912 (Christopher de Hamel, 'Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts from the Library of Sir Sydney Cockerell', British Library Journal, XIII, 1987, 203). The manuscript was broken up and dispersed in the 1940s by the bookseller Heinrich Eisemann. This leaf, together with a second leaf from the same manuscript, was purchased by Maggs at Sotheby's, 19 December 1955 (lot 28). It was acquired from Maggs, 28 February 1956, for the Alfred and Isabel Reed Collection at the Dunedin Public Library through the bequest of Alfred H. Reed (1875–1975).
A reconstruction (https://fragmentarium.ms/overview/F-uard) has been initiated with the aim of reuniting further leaves and to document the manuscript's surviving fragments in a single digital environment.