Books of hours: English prayers

The Parisian publishers had great success, and as we've already seen they published translations in Latin, Spanish and Dutch.

The books were also published in English. The Royal Danish Library displays a copy published by Antoine Vérard in 1505 (see external link). The printer has had great problems, not just with the spelling, but also with the "foreign" letters W and K, which seems to have been in limited supply. Therefore he has been forced to be creative and has replaced the W with two V's, while the K has been replaced by a combination of a lowercase l and a rotunda-r (lꝛ).

The picture to the left is a book of hours by Nicolas Higman and François Regnault in Latin from 1519. The picture to the right is an English version for the use of Sarum / Salisbury.

As the text to the right shows, the English books as well as the French had a habit of conflating the circumcision of Jesus ("Crystes cyrcuncision") with the presentation in the temple.

When it comes to dances of death, the record goes to the books of prayers published by John and Richard Daye: »A Booke of Christian Prayers, Collected Out of the Ancient Writers«.

The dance of death starts together with the psalms of David, and as the pictures to the left and right show, there's nothing like a few skeletons above and on both sides to spiffy up the old psalms.

The story in short is that John Daye (ca. 1522 - 1584) published Queen Elizabeth's book of prayers in 1559, and later on his son Richard (1552 - before 1607) used the same material for several editions.

The picture on the left shows the structure: In the margin are the two dancers. In this case lord and knight, who each receive a summons from Death: »Come lordings all: daunce at my call« and »Goe hence sir knight: tis almost night«. Below the body text is a horizontal image of a corpse / skeleton lying on a coffin, and a little verse about the same two dancers: »We Lords and Knights of late : now lie in low estate«.

In the example on the right it is esquire (»Esquire the braue: it bootes not to craue«) and gentleman (»Lustie, or sad; Thou must be had«). The skeleton in the horizontal image says: »Behold the Squire as in a glas: (i.e. a mirror) for as thou art, so he was«.

At a glance the figures are reminiscent of those of Thielman Kerver but there are more of them, while the Catholic figures such as pope, cardinal, patriarch and sundry monks are missing.

There are quite a few women, but most of them are just the wife of this or that man. In Simon Vostre's dance it is an open question whether e.g. la bourgoise, la marchande or la bergere had their own independent titles, or simply "borrowed" their husbands', but no doubt is possbile in the English books, where the same three women are called citizen's wife, merchant's wife and shepherd's wife.

The series is presented here twice: First, a modern facsimile from 1853 with slightly modernized language. The woodcuts are by Mary Byfield (1795-1871), who together with her older brother, John, created the very famous copies of Holbein's Dance of Death, that was published by Francis Douce. These copies of Richard Daye's prayer-book are considered to be her masterpiece.(1)

The other is an original edition from 1590. I have typed out the text over each image. Click any person to jump into the dance.

The next chapter is about different dance of death cycle, which I for lack of a better name call "Las Horas".

The previous subject was Marcus Reinhart.

John and Richard Daye's dancers

External links

Pickering's 1853 edition of Queen Elizabeth's Prayer Book of 1569 (p. 17) was perhaps Mary Byfield's masterpiece, and every page contains her work; she cut over a hundred blocks for it, mostly based on the designs of Holbein, Dürer, Tory and others. The cuts harmonize perfectly with the type (which is Caslon) and this small volume (of which some copies were printed on vellum) is a triumph of printing as well as of illustration and typography.

(Ruari McLean, Victorian book design and colour printing, 1972, page 12)

Marginal thinking: 10. English prayers

John and Richard Daye's dancers

External links