Time Sanctified: the book of hours in medieval art and life (review)

Reviews 185 home. This present volume is an edition of 106 acts redacted during his time at Chios and preserved in the Archivio di Stato di Genova, Notai filza No. 542. Bdard is an extremelyfinescholar and has edited the acts in extenso so that they become of use to historians of all persuasions, including legd historians. The old practice of abbreviating and cdendaring appears, thankfully,tobe dead, the acts encompass the normal range of notarial work: loans, guarantees, insurances, procurations, exchanges, quittances, acknowledgements of debt and payment, receipts of dowries, wills, purchases and sales, ship leases, gifts, appointment of agents, arbitrations, and records of law suits. The world of Chios under the Mahona was a fascinatingly cosmopolitan one. W e meet Greeks and Jews, Catdan pirates, Circassian and Tartar slaves. The commercid connections of die island extend to Crete, Pera, Egypt, 'Romania', Turkey, Cyprus, and Rhodes, as weU as to the West. A considerable portion of the documents concern domestic matters and a large number of women make their appearance. John H. Pryor Department of History University of Sydney Wieck, R. S. ed., Time Sanctified: the book of hours in medieval art and life., N.Y., Braziller, 1988; pp. 230; 40 plates; 131 figures; R.R.P. ? This catalogue is a suburb art production and a lasting monument to an exhibition mounted in the internationally renowned Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore in 1988. In his Foreword, Robert P. Bergman pays tribute to the initiative and accomplishment of Roger S. Wieck, the Assistant Curator of Manuscripts: Tt was he who recognised the potential of the museum's holdings for explicating the Book of Hours, who organized the exhibition that provided the public with an esthetically and educationally superior experience, who conceived the character of the book and who wrote most of it' The principd section from Wiek's pen, an Introduction concerned with the evolution of the Horae and Chapters IV-XII on their art representations, is a delight to read. A touch of whimscy is achieved by the reference to Alice in Wonderland (p. 27) and to the little girl in the nursery rhyme whose work, when good, was very good, but when it was bad it was horrid (p. 30). Wieck carefully eschews, however, the chatty commercial approach that marks many m o d e m publications intended to popularise medieval manuscripts and their contents. The account of the miniatures in the Books of Hours parallels the order in which they occur, namely, as illustrative material for calendars, gospel lessons, hours of the Virgin, hours of the cross, and of the Holy Spirit, the Obsecro te and 0 intemerata, the pentiential psalms and litany, accessory texts and suffrages and, lastly, the office of the dead. Wicck's commentary is iconographically sound. O n occasion the reader may feel uneasy when told that a miniature 186 Reviews represents (p. 112) a 'retable' painted with a Crucifixion; surely a 'reredos' is meant. A theologian might take issue with the statement (pp. 118-19) that the intense devotion of St. Francis 'to Christ and his Passion was sanctioned by God in 1224 when Francis received the stigmata, the imprint of the Saviour's wounds . . . ' The authority for God's sanction is unannotated. Further, tradition has it that the saint received the bodily wounds, not their imprint It is an overstatement to imply that 'all the important events of the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary' (p. 11) are recdlcd by thefifty-fourpictures of Wdters 288 by the master of the Munich Golden Legend. In his paper 'Social History and the Book of Hours' Poos examines aspects of the Horae that relate to concerns of the sociologist: depictions of people and select social activities such as prayer in private and life on the manor among the toilers. The claim is made (p. 37) that the vision of rustic life in the Books of Hours was 'idealized, idyllic and unrealistic' The vividness and original treatment of death scenes by many illustrators may also reflect society's concern or preoccupation with the theme as a reminder of the real world. The art historian will find little that is new in these ideas. The part...