Liturgy, Books and Franciscan Identity in Medieval Umbria by Anna Welch (review)

At its heart Anna Welch’s volume is the study of a Franciscan missal produced in Umbria in the late thirteenth century. She writes that she began with the assumption that in the course of her project she would identify distinctive liturgical characteristics that in turn would reflect distinctive Franciscan identities. She found something quite different and produced a volume that those of us who work on illuminated manuscripts need to consider as we ask how illuminators worked with their clients including religious orders. Indeed she concludes, “I have argued that liturgy was not the primary means of establishing (or attempting to establish) a common identity within the order” (p. 216). Moreover, her effort to connect liturgy to community identity ends with a convincing revision of the theory that the Latin liturgy evolved in a linear manner across the thirteenth century, in what she calls “the implementation of a uniform liturgy” (p.13). This concept, developed in the middle of the twentieth century by Stephen J. P. van Dijk, O.F.M., and Joan Hazelden Walker, remains fundamental to the study of Italian liturgical manuscripts.

The missal at the center of her project is the Codex Sancti Paschalis, a late thirteenth-century missal that belongs to the Order of Friars Minor at St. Paschal’s College in Box Hill, now on permanent loan to the Rare Books Collection of the State Library of Victoria at Melbourne. She describes it as one of five missals that in turn belong to a larger group of manuscripts decorated by the Perugian ateliers of the Maestro di Deruta-Salerno and Venturella di Pietro. Among a number of virtues Welch’s volume successfully argues several points: that art historians, anthropologists, liturgists, and historians must work together; that art historians should be circumspect in attributing the styles of painters to religious orders whose works they may have decorated; that a call for a unified liturgy does not indicate that one existed earlier, but, more logically, that it had not; and that the call for the reform of a text does not mark the moment of its introduction.

She observes that at times scholars engage in circular argumentation; liturgists often date manuscripts by their ornamental style, while art historians often depend on liturgical history for dates. She observes that art historians have tended to overgeneralize when speaking of the relationship between the order and the manuscript illuminators, given that many of the painters appear to have been lay professionals rather than members of religious orders. Indeed Welch convincingly questions the theories of scholars who have attempted to identify what might be called a Franciscan style of ornament, characterized by a small figure style. Yet while she stresses the choices made by individual painters and scribes, I would argue that she doesn’t push individual agency far enough. Decisions about the form of a manuscript might also fall to clients or patrons, whether the heads of communities, or the lay commissioners of manuscripts, willing and able to pay for luxury manuscripts. Ultimately Welch reminds us that beyond this individuals and individual communities had multiple, intersecting, “layered” (p. 46) identities.

There are just a few things I wish Welch had done differently. To begin, the discussion of issues in the early chapters is dense and at times difficult to follow. And it would be helpful if she had explained what a missal is at the start of her discussion. This is especially important since the missal is a relatively late liturgical format. Finally, I regret that she did not consider musical notation at least in passing and what that might tell us about the process of producing liturgical books.