'GARNISHED WITH GLORYOUS TYTLES': INDULGENCES IN PRINTED BOOKS OF HOURS IN ENGLAND

Cambridge Bibliographical Society

'GARNISHED WITH GLORYOUS TYTLES': INDULGENCES IN PRINTED BOOKS OF HOURS INENGLANDAuthor(s): FLORA LEWISSource: Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Vol. 10, No. 5 (1995), pp. 577-590Published by: Cambridge Bibliographical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41154845 .

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'GARNISHED WITH GLORYOUS TYTLES':

INDULGENCES IN PRINTED BOOKS OF HOURS IN

ENGLAND*

FLORA LEWIS

In 1534 William Marshall published the first vernacular book of hours to be printed in England. At least two previous English versions had been printed abroad and imported clandestinely,1 but Marshall's book was printed openly, proudly announced on the title-page as Cum priui- legio Regali, together with a cut of the royal arms. It is a polemical as much as a devotional work, drawing a large part of its contents from Luther's 1522 Betbüchlein, including the preface.2 In this Marshall, following Luther, complained bitterly about books of private prayer, anathematising them as the worst among the 'innumerable pestilent infections of bokes & learnynges/ with the which christen people haue bene pytyously seduced and deceyueď. He also pinpointed a large part of their appeal:

These bokes (though they abounded in euery place with infynyte errours/ and taught praiers, made with wycked folish- nes/ both to god and also to his sayntes) yet by cause thei were

* I am very grateful for the award of the 1994-5 Munby Fellowship, which enabled me to undertake the research on which this article is based. I abo owe thanks to the rare books and manuscripts staff of the University Library, particularly Jayne Ringrose. 1. STC 15986; E. Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis, or, Sarum and York Primers (London, 1901) no. 115. This bibliography of books of hours includes the incipits of the prayers, and the edition in which they first appear. For Marshall's primer see abo С Butterworth, The English Primers (Í529-Í545) (Philadelphia, 1953) 47-69. 2. Butterworth, English Primers, 279-285.

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garnished with gloryous tytles and with redde letters promys- yng moch grace and pardon (though it were but vanité) haue sore deceiued the vnlearned multytude/ Luther's original text was an attack on the editions of the German

Hortulus Animae, and similar German books, but although Marshall was reusing his words, this was in order to attack English books of hours. Indeed, in his revised edition, the following year, Marshall greatly expanded this preface to include his own attack on individual prayers found in the English books.3 He concentrates his criticism on protective promises and revelation, rather than on indulgences themselves.4 But Marshall's was not the only attack on this aspect of the book of hours. In a session of the Convocation of Canterbury in December 1534, an abbot from Northampton exhibited 'quendam librum "a Prymer" vulgo dictum* with rubricated headings to the prayers, which as Butterworth points out, was clearly an indulgenced book of hours.5 The rubrics were denounced, and it was agreed that people should not believe in their contents, or place any hope in them ('ne crederent contentis in dictis rubricis, aut aliquam spem ponerent in ijsdem).' These attacks were to signal the beginning of the end for such books, and the development of a new tradition of reformed editions, both Protestant and Catholic. Marshall's later, expanded preface has been characterised by Eamon Duffy as 'a systematic attack on some of the most treasured items in the traditional books ... as comprehensive an onslaught on the time-honoured forms of Catholic piety as had yet appeared in England'.6 In this article I wish to concentrate not on Mar- shall and his book, but on the focus of his attack: the books of hours full of prayers 'garnished with gloryous tytles and with redde letters'. I shall be discussing very few individual editions; instead I wish to examine

3. STC 15988; Hoskins no. 117. 4. This could be reversed: the owner of a copy of the 1511 indulgenced edition

(CUL SSS. 15. 20) has scored out virtually every heading which refers to indulgences, and erased the granting popes so strongly that there are frequent holes in the page, but

the purely revelatory texts remain untouched. 5. Butterworth, English Fnmers, /υ. Me suggests tne aoooc was jonn i^as^ci, υι шс

Augustinián abbey of St James, Northampton. 6. Ε. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: tradtttonal religion in hngland Ί*υυ-Ίϊου ^iNew Haven and London, 1992) 382.

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the part played by promises and indulgence in printed book of hours for the English market as a whole. How traditional was this aspect of the book of hours, and how widespread?

Although printed books of hours are numerous and varied, it is possible to distinguish a pattern of development. Most books assigned to the earliest decades of printing are undated and fragmentary, but it is clear that the core assemblage of texts in printed Sarum hours became standardised at least by 1490. New material was constantly added, and although not all new texts were adopted into general circulation, there was a general process of accretion. This is an aspect of the printed book which is very different from the pattern found in manuscript hours. In the introduction to his invaluable catalogue of manuscript books of hours in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Leroquais divided the various texts into primary, secondary and accessory elements, according to the frequency with which they occurred.7 In manuscript hours very few prayers were a standard part of the book; the primary contents are the long texts (such as the hours themselves, penitential psalms and vigils of the dead) although a great variety of prayers were in circulation as accessory elements, mainly in English manuscripts. The imported Flemish books of hours were more standardised but contained a very limited selection of prayers.8 In the printed hours many more prayers become a primary, stable part of the book: a characteristic which would prove very important for the dissemination of indulgenced prayers.

If, however, we look at the early printed book of hours in England, the promises and indulgences about which Marshall was to complain are strikingly absent. Wynkyn de Worde's 1494 edition, which Hoskins chose as his base text in his bibliography of printed hours, contains only two indulgences (both in English), and the lack of rubrication means their impact in the book is minimal.9 The image of the Man of Sorrows which accompanies the Seven Prayers of St Gregory,

7. V. Leroquais, Les Livres d'heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale (3 vols., Paris, 1927) i. xiv. 8. For 15th-century manuscript books ot hours in England see Nicholas Rogers, 'Books of Hours Produced in the Low Countries for the English Market in the Fifteenth Century* (M. Litt thesis, Cambridge, 1982), and Flora Lewis, 'Devotional images in English manuscripts, с 1350-1470' (London Ph.D. thesis, 1989). 9. Hoskins no. 7; incipits printed 107-18.

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comes with a promise of 32,000 years' indulgence. This is of course one of the few indulgenced images to survive also in separately circu- lating woodcuts.10 Avete omnes fidèles, a prayer for the dead to be said in a churchyard, carries forty days of pardon and thirteen lents for each person buried.11 This prayer was not usual in English manuscript hours, but it was quite well-known in France, where it is one of the most frequently indulgenced prayers (often granting as many days as there are bodies buried), and also circulated in woodcuts.12 De Worde brought out a new edition in 1502 with thirty-nine additional prayers, only one of which is indulgenced: the hymn Aue vulnus lateris, with a Latin

heading promising 4,000 days granted by Innocent II.13 A prayer to the saints does promise that whoever recites it frequently and devoutly will obtain whatever he seeks 'debite et iuste'.14 However, the main focus is on biblical prayers for particular occasions: the largest group are sixteen prayers taken from the old testament and apocrypha, with long English headings explaining the circumstances in which they were

composed and the situations for which they are appropriate. As well as these long headings, all rubricated, the rest of the prayers now have rubricated titles, (mainly achieved by copying the heading from the table of contents at the end): thus the 'Fifteen Oes' are now headed

'Sequuntur oraciones sancte Birgitte: dicte xv o' Two further prayers have the authority of revelation. Deus propicius esto michi peccatori, was said to have been revealed to a monk of Binham in 1485, and another for protection against thunder and lighting is said in the table of contents to have been shown by an angel to St Edward.

10. See H. Bradshaw, On the Earliest English Engravings of the Indulgence Known as the Image of Pity' in Collected Papers (Cambridge, 1889) 84-100. 11. This is part of the supplementary section of prayers previously published by Caxton in 1491, STC 20195. 12. W. L. Schreiber, Manuel de l'amateur de la gravure sur bois et sur metal au x* stale (8 vols., Berlin, 1891-1911) no. 1836. 13. STC 15898 (Hoskins no. 25). The hymn is occasionally found in late-medieval

manuscripts, particularly in prayer rolls. The rare indulgence is found in an English book of prayers, BL Add. 22720, f.29v, and in the Hours of Isobel, Duchess of Brittany

(BN lat. 1369, p. 410). 14. Omnipotens et misericors deus qui sanctorum tuorum Dyomssn' see Hoskins, Horae, 120. The selection of saints is related to that of the 14 holy helpers, but is larger. A

similar promise heads a verse prayer by Lydgate to the holy helpers; see Duffy,

Stripping, 178.

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De Worde's next edition, in 1503, added four more prayers, including a prayer composed by Augustine, a slightly different version of Avete omnes fidèles with a related Latin heading, and the prayer of the seven last words, Domine Jesu Christe qui septem verba.15 The Latin heading promises that those who say this kneeling every day will not die without confession, nor will any enemy visible or invisible be able to harm them, and they will see the virgin Mary coming to their aid before death. This prayer with its promise was also an important secondary element of the Anglo-Flemish manuscript hours, where it was one of the few texts to carry a protective heading. In 1506 an edition printed by Wolfgang Hopyl for the London grocer and merchant of the staple at Calais, William Bretton, added two prayers, both with Latin indulgences,16 and in these successive editions we can see a

growing interest in rubrics and English headings, and to a lesser extent in indulgences, promises of protection and named authors. Neverthe- less, the role of indulgence and protection in these books of hours is still

very small. The turning-points were in 1510 and 1511, when two influential

new editions appeared, both printed by Thielman Kerver, the first

again for William Bretton and the second for Frans Birckman.17 Nor-

mally, when the Paris printers introduced new texts, they looked to elements that were already standard in the editions produced for the home market. Their main contribution to English books of hours was to make them more like French books in layout, ornament and choice of texts and imagery, and they rarely made use of rubrics. But unusu-

ally, these two editions added a large number of short prayers which were not familiar from French books of hours. The 1510 edition added nineteen new prayers, and the 1511 reprinted these and added another nineteen. This later edition also incorporated de Worde's long section of biblical prayers with their headings. Together these added thirty- eight new prayers. Twenty-seven of these new prayers have English

15. See Hoskins no. 26, printed 122-23. 16. STC 15903 (Hoskins no. 31). Those reciting Precor te amantissime were promised as many days indulgence as Christ had wounds, granted by Gregory III at the petition of the queen of England, and Ave sanctissima Maria when recited before an image of Maria in Sole, carried 1 1 ,000 years from Sixtus IV. Both of these indulgenced prayers formed a part of the German Hortulus Animae and Antidotarius Animae. 17. STC 15910 (Hoskins no. 37) and STC 15912 (Hoskins no. 39).

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headings, of which eighteen have the authority of revelation or promise indulgences. They also added new headings to texts which were already a part of the printed book of hours, for example to the 'Fifteen Oes' and the prayer O bone Jesu, and to the verses of St Bernard.18 It is these editions and their numerous followers that are Marshall's books 'garnished with gloryous tytles'. Prayers which promise indulgence and protection, whose power is authenticated by famous popes, revealed to saints, vouched for by the virgin, written down in holy places, indeed have a long ancestry. But the two related aspects of these indulgenced editions which I wish to emphasise here are the greatly increased dissemination of the promises and indulgences and the way they are in-

stantly recognizable: they occupy a large proportion of the book, are in

English, and are emphasised by rubrication. Marshall was attacking a

very visible target, but one which had only become prominent from 1510.

A number of these new headings and prayers can be paralleled in some earlier English manuscripts. However, this does not mean that

they were commonly part of the book of hours in the fifteenth century. What has happened is that indulgenced prayers which were occasion-

ally found in manuscripts (primarily in personally commissioned books) have now suddenly become standard parts of the printed hours, and from 1511 to 1535 appear in edition after edition. An example is the

prayer of the passion Dirupisti domine vincula mea, which carries an

indulgence for those looking at the 'armes of our Lord' (the instruments of the passion) of six thousand years from St Peter and thirty other

popes, together with three thousand years for venial sins and three thousand for deadly sins granted by John XXII for the recital of the

prayers. A closely related Latin indulgence is found in a prayer book

compiled by the Carmelite Thomas Scrope, who was a well-known

figure in fifteenth-century Norwich, at times anchorite, preacher, and

auxiliary bishop of Norwich.19 In his manuscript the indulgence is associated with an earlier prayer to the instruments of the passion, Cruci corone spinee, but the indulgence is normally found with Dirupisti, which in manuscripts is always an uncommon accessory prayer, mostly

18. Hoskins, 124-28, prints the headings to new prayers, but omits the new headings to prayers already in the book of hours. 19. BL MS Harley 211, toi. 135.

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found in English books with other unusual texts. Cruci corone spinee has a similar circumscribed distribution in manuscripts, but unlike Dirupisti it never became a part of the printed hours?0

The 1510 edition added an elaborate promise of deliverance from purgatory to the 'Fifteen Oes' one of the texts already in the book of hours. Breeze has shown how the devotion of honouring the number of Christ's wounds by reciting fifteen paternosters every day for a year can be traced as far back as the late-thirteenth century in the piety of Saint Gertrude of Helfta and Mechtild of Hackeborn.21 The source of the devotion was said to lie in a revelation made to a pious woman, often a recluse, later identified with St Bridget of Sweden. A number of English manuscripts from around 1400 include a long account of the devotion and its benefits, and in several of these the prayers to be said are not the fifteen paternosters, but a set of prayers, the 'Fifteen Oes'.22 These prayers were immediately adopted as an important secondary text in books of hours, and were very popular throughout the fifteenth century. Their swift dissemination was undoubtedly aided by their link with the devotion to the wounds and the associated promises.23 Never- theless, in the Anglo-Flemish hours (which is where most fifteenth- century readers would have encountered them) their title is simply 'The Fifteen Oes', as in the pre-1510 editions.24 The long account of the revelation is found in occasional personal manuscripts throughout

20. Although an edition of the Speculum Spiritualium also printed for William Bretton in 1510 (STC 23030.7) included the hymn in a short section of prayers, illustrated with the same cut of the standing Man of Sorrows with arma Christi associated with the Seven Prayers of St Gregory in the 1510 Kerver / Bretton hours. 21. A. Breeze, 'The Number of Christ's Wounds', Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 32 (1985) 84-89. 22. See N. Rogers, 'About the 15 Oes, the Bridgettines and Syon Abbey', St Ansgar's Bulletin, 80 (1984) 29-30. For the prayers themselves see A. Wilmart, 'Le Grand poème Bonaventurien sur les sept paroles du Christ en croix', Revue Bénédictine 47 (1935) 235-78; Helen C. White, The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison, 1951) 216-29, and Duffy, Stripping, 249-56. 23. For the importance of indulgences in the early dissemination of devotions see F. Lewis, 'Rewarding devotion: the role of indulgences', in The Church and the Arts, D. Wood ed., (Studies in Church History, 1992) 179-94. 24. Aberdeen University Library MS 25, a Flemish hours made for a Yorkshire patron с 1420, includes the rubric and illustrates the prayers with an initial of St Bridget, but this is a personally commissioned manuscript with many rare texts (see Rogers, '15 "ОУ" 30). It is not characteristic of the Anglo-Flemish hours as a whole.

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the century but it is far less frequent. So here we have a well-estab- lished and widespread text, which is occasionally indulgenced in manuscript (again normally in personally made or commissioned Eng- lish books). With the advent of printing it remained an important part of the book of hours, but only with the 1510 edition was the promise of deliverance introduced, becoming immediately fused with the text in a way quite uncharacteristic of the more fluid transmission of prayers in manuscript.

Scrope's book (which also contains the long account of the revela-

tion) is a personal devotional compilation, which contains many indul-

genced and protective texts. While such manuscripts (particularly those with clerical owners) are clearly important, nevertheless this should not be over-estimated. These are uncommon books, made by those who wanted more than the average book of hours supplied, and such

manuscripts will always be outnumbered by the vast number of shop- bought books of hours. They remind us that, as Duffy points out, we can make no easy divisions between lay and clerical, élite and popular; but this does not mean that that there were no divisions. Protective and

indulgenced material in English manuscripts is always a minority presence.

While some of the 1510/11 promises and indulgences do occur in

English manuscripts (though with a very different pattern of dissemin-

ation), many of these headed prayers are not a part of the English tradition. Neither were they part of French printed hours. However, we can find many parallels in the Hortulus Animae, and also especially in the Antidotarius Animae (first printed by Johann Grüninger of Strasbourg in

1489). This was compiled by Nicholas Weidenbusch (known as Nicholas Salicetus), the Cistercian abbot of Baumgarten in the diocese of Strasbourg,25 and as well as his own meditations on the ills of the

soul, the book contained many prayers with Latin headings which are

very close to the English versions in the 1510/11 hours. These were

certainly not the only sources, but they do suggest where to locate the tradition to which these books full of promises and indulgences belong.

Although Kerver and Bretton introduced these indulgenced edi-

25. L. Pfleger, 'Nicolaus Salicetus, ein gelehrter elsässischer Cistercienserabt des 15.

Jahrhunderts', Studien und Mitteilungen aus dem Benediktiner- und dem Cisterdens-Orden,

22 (1901) 588-99. I have used Grüninger's 1493 edition (CUL Inc. 6. Α. 2. 12).

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tions, their involvement with them was brief. Bretton was only peri- pherally associated with publishing (generally as supplier of capital in partnership with the Flemish and French stationers Pelgrim and Jacobi, with Hopyl acting as printer), and these are his only two books of hours.26 Kerver was one of the most important Parisian libraires in the lucrative market in books of hours, yet he too seems to have been only briefly involved in printing Sarum hours, though otherwise he had a strong international presence. Apart from his two 1510-11 editions he had previously printed only one Sarum hours: a very fully decorated little book with marginal illustrations, in 1497, for Jean Richard of Rouen.27 There is nothing post-1511, though after his death in 1522 his widow, who carried on the business, printed for the English market until the international trade dried up.

In contrast, Birckman published these indulgenced editions of Sarum hours from 1511 to 1527 (he died in 1529) and during that time he dominated the import trade. But while Kerver was also one of the most important figures in the production of books of hours for use in France itself, Frans Birckman had virtually no involvement in this aspect of publishing, though he had close links with Paris and used Paris- ian printers. He was based at Cologne with branches in Antwerp and London, and apart from his liturgical publishing he published devotional works and classical authors; he was involved in the publication of Erasmus* works and he also dealt in New Testaments in English.28 Most of Birckman's Sarum hours were printed for him in Paris, but he also used the Antwerp printer, Christoffel van Ruremund, who in turn also printed Sarum hours of the same indulgenced type both on his own account and for a London agent, Peter Kaetz. Like Birckman, van Ruremund was also involved in the export of New Testaments in English, and died in prison in England in 1531. As always this was a family business, and Ruremund's brother and widow also specialised in the English market, producing both Protestant works and the tradi-

26. For Bretton see E. G. Duff, The Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders of Westminster and London from Í476 to Í535 (Cambridge, 1906) 194-96, and Wayne H. Phelps, 'Some Sixteenth-Century Stationers' Wills', Studies in Bibliomvhv 32 И 979) 49-50. 27. STC 15885; Hoskins no. 15. 28. A. Rouzet, Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires, et éditeurs des XVe et XVIe stales dans les limites géographiques de la belgique actuelle (Collection du Centre National de l'Archéologie et de l'Histoire du Livre III, Nieuwkoop, 1975) 19-20.

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tíonal liturgical books which helped to pay the bills.29 More important than Ruremund as a publisher of these indulgenced editions was the wealthy Parisian libraire François Regnault, who took over the market share from Birckman. He had links with Birckman: he shared the ex- penses of an indulgenced Sarum hours in 1519 with Birckman, and at his death he took legal action against Birckman's children for payment for books he had supplied.30 He produced other liturgical books for England but really began exporting Sarum hours in 1526. Regnault published books of hours for use in France as well (though not on the same scale as Kerver); the family firm specialised in liturgical books for Champagne, Lorraine, Normandy and particularly the Rouen market, and via Rouen for England, Spain, and Antwerp31

So from the 1510s onwards, we find Birckman and later Regnault producing these new heavily indulgenced editions; but these were not the only books of hours on offer. De Worde, for example, does not produce them. He was not uninfluenced by these editions and did add more indulgences to his own copies, though still very few. For example, he incorporated three of the new prayers: Ave rosa, Ave Maria ancilla, and Ave maria alta stirps, together with their headings. He also substituted a new Latin heading to the 'Seven prayers of St Gregory', and added a new Latin indulgence to the 'Fifteen Oes' However, this is much more discreet than the Kerver / Birckman version, stating only that saying the prayers for a year worships all the wounds of Christ, and that they have many merits. When he included the prayer Dirupisti domine vincula mea, which had been introduced in the 1511 Birckman edition, he headed it merely Ά deuout prayer to our Saviour', omitting the long indulgence rubric. Where the 1510/11 edition had added

protective and indulgenced headings to prayers already in the hours, for

example the verses of St Bernard, the prayer of St Bernardino, and the

prayers to the Veronica, de Worde continued to print them unadorned. Another important type was developed during the 1520s, mainly

29. For printing in Antwerp see also Frederick C. Avis, 'England's Use of Antwerp Printers, 1500-1540', Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, 1973, 234-40, and Andrew G.Johnston and

Jean-François Gilmont in La Reforme et le livre, ed. J-F. Gilmont (Paris, 1990) 190-216; for the Ruremund family see also Rouzet, Dictionnaire, 193-5. 30. Rouzet, Dictionnaire, 19. 31. Annie Parent, Les Métiers du livre à Paris au xvie siècle (Í535-Í560) (Histoire et

civilisation du livre 6, Geneva, 1974) 146, 166.

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by François Regnault and Thielman Kerver's widow, Yolande Bon- homme, who directed the Kerver publishing house from 1522-57, specialising in liturgical books.32 These books of hours were based on the de Worde textual tradition rather than the indulgenced editions, but acquired a new vernacular and pictorial emphasis by incorporating a new series of picture cycles in the calendar, hours of the cross, penitential psalms and vigils of the dead, with rhyming English captions. Unlike the indulgenced editions, there is a very clear link between these and the French hours: all these innovations are originally found in French books. Though Regnault introduces these series to Sarum books they are found previously in French books for local use.33 Thiel- man Kerver produced a similar edition in 1520, and his widow specialised in this type of book of hours both for France and for England; her first English edition, for Birckman, is a small unindulgenced edition (Birckman's last Sarum hours, and his only experiment with this type)34 but the rest of her output consists of small books with the picture cycles and their English verse captions. They form quite as distinctive a group as the large indulgenced editions, and it is not coincidental that when a number of other new texts are introduced into English at this point, they are introduced into this group of hours rather than the indulgenced versions, to join and expand their vernacular emphasis3.5

Clearly, in bringing out these two strands I am simplifying the posi- tion. These are trends, not laws. What works against a total split into two different lines is the constant desire for novelty in editions, mainly achieved by adding a couple of new prayers and manipulating the level of illustration. But is this in any case simply a matter of two textual traditions perceived in hindsight, or would the purchaser of a book of

32. For Yolande Bonhomme see the important article by Beatrice Hibbard Beech, 'Yolande Bonhomme: a Renaissance Printer', Medieval Prosopography 5 (1985) 79-100. 33. For their earlier history see Ruth Mortimer, Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts. Part I: French Sixteenth

Century Books (2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1964) ii. 364-5, 386-7, 390-1. 34. STC 15956, Hoskins no. 82. 35. M. C. Erler, The Maner to lyve well and the coming of English in François Regnaulťs Primers of the 1520s and 1530s', The Library 6:6 (1984) 229-43. The texts involved: Jean Quentin 's Manner to Live Well, a moralised poem on the days of the week / am Sonday honourable, the little poem God be in my head are again translations from French texts, found in French books of hours.

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hours have known what she was buying? Were they perceived as being different? One clear difference was their cost: although there are standard and de luxe venions of the indulgenced editions, they are larger, more elaborately decorated books than the picture-cycle editions. In printing what was above all an illustrated book, de Worde's lack of resources meant that he was working very much at the cheap end of the market; so cost would have played an important role in determining whether a purchaser ended up with an indulgenced edition or not. Nonetheless it is indeed clear from the title-pages and colophons of these books that they were seen as having different selling points. Title-pages and colophons were very important advertisements in the competitive world of selling books of hours.36 Some of their claims are not related to choice of content: Bretton's 1506 and 1510 editions were printed emaculatissime and accuratissime, while Birckman's 1511 edition was diligentissime accuratissimeque. New texts, to be sure, were always worth advertising: 'new' and 'added' are constant phrases in the colophons, even when the novelties are minimal or non-existent. With larger texts the extras were sometimes specified: when de Worde followed the Parisian printers and included the gospel sequences, the narrative of the passion and the hours of the name of Jesus in 1503, he enumerated them all in the colophon, which was repeated word for word in Julyan Notary's similar edition.37 Similarly Pynson's 1514 edition advertised the prayers to be said before and after holy communion, added at the end.38 It was not just a matter of texts: the Vostre editions'

selling point was their illustrated borders, and the edition of с 1512 was announced as having mortis accidentia (the dance of death) newly added; while in that of с 1520 the figures of the miracles of the virgin, of the

apocalypse, and Tobias and Judith, were advertised as well39 But two elements of the title-pages and colophon are particularly

important. Kerver's 1510 edition, the first to include the indulgences, was described on the title-page as 'cum multis orationibus pulcherrimis

36. See A. S. G. Edwards and С. М. Meale, The marketing of printed books in late medieval England', The Library 6:15 (1993) 95-124. 37. Printed Hoskins nos. 26 and 28. 38. STC 15917; Hoskins no. 44 39. STC 15913; Hoskins no. 40, and STC 15926; Hoskins no. 56. Similar advertisements for the subjects of the borders are found in colophons of books for the French market.

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et indulgentiis iam ultimo recenter insertis', and the claim 'cum multis orationibus pulcherrimis et indulgentiis' is found in virtually all the twenty-six surviving title-pages and colophons of books of hours that follow the 1510/11 Kerver and Birckman editions and none of the others.40 It was also simple for a prospective purchaser to distinguish the picture-cycle editions printed by Yolande Bonhomme and Reg- nault. The title-page of Regnaulťs 1527 edition states: 'This prymer of Salysbury use is set out a long wíf/iout ony serchyng / with many prayers / and goodly pyctures in the kalewder / in the matyns of our lady / in the houres of the crosse / in the .vii. psalmes / and in the dyryge'.41 The colophon advertised that the hours came 'cum orationibus beate Brigitte: ас multis aliis orationibus', but made no mention of indulgences. Regnault produced an experimental 'mixed' edition in 1532 which meshes the two types together: it resembles most closely the picture-cycle editions, but is based on the indulgenced text. To pro- mote it he combined the two advertisements, taking the English title- page, but using the earlier colophon advertising the indulgences.42 This English title-page is in fact an adaptation of the French version used by Kerver's widow to sell the same type of picture-cycle book in France, itself based on a Latin version used by Thielman Kerver.43 However, none of the more than four hundred colophons of books of hours for French use printed by Lacombe mention indulgences?4

This has been only a preliminary discussion of a vast and complex body of material. Books of hours, and other books of private devotion form an extraordinarily useful body of evidence for the study of late-

40. There are very few exceptions. For example, STC 15953, produced by Nicolas Prévost for Birckman in 1527, is an elaborately decorated indulgenced book with an unusually worded colophon which advertises the 'plurimis biblie historiis decorate' rather than the indulgences (printed Hoskins no. 79). Conversely, the colophon of Pynson's 1522 edition states 'cum multis pulcherrimis orationibus et indulgentiis', but follows the de Worde text (STC 15933, Hoskins no. 61). 41. STC 15955, Hoskins no. 81. 42. STC 15980, Hoskins no. 105. 43. See for example, the Hours of Rome use, 24 November, 1520. The title-page is printed by Paul Lacombe, Livres d heures imprimés au ocv* et au xvie siècle conservés dans les bibliothèques publiques de Paris (Paris,1907), no. 298. 44. Lacombe, loc. at. Birckman, of course, did not print books of hours for French use, and Regnault seems to keep to the picture-cycle type for his French books: e.g. Lacombe, nos. 352, 399, 406.

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medieval religion,45 but if they are to be used to the full it is necessary to develop a sense of the entire spread of data, and to study not just the texts themselves, but also their reception. Some elements of the book of hours are very long-lived and widespread, while other texts and images have a very brief and limited circulation. It is necessary also to distinguish between material which may be widely known in the sense that examples survive from different centuries and different circles-but which is still rare - and material which is commonly found. At the least, the discussion of texts and images as a source for understanding piety must take into consideration the frequency of the material and its patterns of transmission.

It is only by looking at the publishing history of the book of hours as a whole, and recognizing the process of change within it, that we can determine whether Marshall was attacking a time-honoured catholic tradition, or rather an aspect of devotional manuscripts which indeed had a long history, but which only came to the fore in the twenty-five years before his attack, and where the very visibility of the promises and indulgences (and the existence of an alternative) united to provide a focus for dissent and conflict.

Trans. Cambridge Bibliographical Society, X, 1995

45. See for example the study of the French material in manuscript and print by V.

Reinberg, 'Popular Prayers in Late Medieval and Reformation France' (PhD thesis, Princeton, 1985).

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'GARNISHED WITH GLORYOUS TYTLES': INDULGENCES IN PRINTED BOOKS OF HOURS IN ENGLAND

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