{"id":717,"date":"2015-09-24T15:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T15:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/?p=717"},"modified":"2015-09-24T15:00:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T15:00:17","slug":"death-and-the-maiden-in-a-medieval-book-at-the-watkinson-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/2015\/09\/24\/death-and-the-maiden-in-a-medieval-book-at-the-watkinson-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Death and the Maiden in a Medieval Book at the Watkinson Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Dr. Scott Gwara<\/a>, professor of English at the University of South Carolina]<\/p>\n

\"Fig<\/a>Datable to about 1470, manuscript 7 in the Watkinson Library is a \u201cBook of Hours,\u201d a prayer-book widely used by the laity in Europe from about 1300 to 1550. These manuscripts were often illustrated with lavish paintings called \u201cminiatures\u201d or \u201cilluminations.\u201d Nearly all Books of Hours include an \u201cOffice of the Dead,\u201d which is recited for deceased loved ones. Because the Office of the Dead has readings from the Book of Job, it also served as a personal reflection on mortality. A miniature in MS 7 reveals this emphasis in the extravagant depiction of a lady speared by Death in the presence of her knight [fig. 1]. Featured in some of the manuscript\u2019s other miniatures, the lady doubtless depicts the book\u2019s original owner. A zombie-like Death aims his dart at her abdomen. Will her demise result from appendicitis? Food poisoning? Or, since she walks in a private garden with her lover, perhaps childbirth?<\/p>\n

While popular in the Renaissance, scenes of \u201cDeath and the Maiden\u201d are exceptionally rare in Books of Hours. This distinctiveness enabled me to identify the manuscript as one of very few medieval books in antebellum America.<\/p>\n

\"Fig<\/a>The Watkinson manuscript came from the collection of Joseph J. Cooke<\/strong>, a mercantile and real estate tycoon. When Cooke died in 1883, he left $5,000 to each of ten libraries in New England to buy his books at auction. Trinity College bought six manuscripts, including this lovely Book of Hours [Other Cooke manuscripts can be found at Yale, Brown, and the Providence Athenaeum].<\/p>\n

Cooke\u2019s manuscript came from the collection of William Menzies, whose library was auctioned in in New York in 1876. A copy of the auction catalogue at Harvard records Cooke\u2019s name as the buyer and the price he paid: $80. The catalogue quotes a certain \u201cRev. W. Bacon Stevens\u201d: \u201cit contains thirteen miniatures of grouped figures, one of which represents a lady, with a gaily attired knight, while Death in the form of a skeleton steals up from behind, and transfixes her with his dart.\u201d This statement yields a clue to an even earlier owner.<\/p>\n

Originally from Maine, William Bacon Stevens practiced medicine in Savannah from about 1838. There he met Alexander Augustus Smets<\/strong> (1769-1862), one of the wealthiest men in Georgia \u2026 and a voracious bibliophile. [Alexander Augustus Smets, from an engraving published in De Bow\u2019s Review<\/em> (1852): \u201c[His library] has a reputation wide as the country, and scarcely a scholar or distinguished personage visits Savannah without seeking it out and feasting upon its contents.\u201d] \"Fig<\/a>Smets\u2019 library of 5,000 books included twelve \u201cancient manuscripts,\u201d one of them \u201cDeath and the Maiden.\u201d In 1841 Stevens contributed an essay called, \u201cThe Library of Alexander A. Smets, Esq., Savannah\u201d to the Magnolia, a Savannah monthly. He praised Smets\u2019 library as \u201crich in ancient manuscripts,\u201d writing the text cited above in the Menzies catalogue (\u201cit contains thirteen miniatures of grouped figures,\u201d etc.).<\/p>\n

As far as I can determine, Smets was only the third person in America to collect medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Some of his medieval books survive at the New York Public Library, Indiana University, and Yale. One belongs to the Earl of Crawford in Scotland. Even more significantly, as Stevens\u2019 article got re-published in newspapers, journals, and magazines, Smets\u2019 manuscripts became the best known antebellum collection in North America, praised in Leipzig, Boston, New York, New Orleans, and London. Some of these reports express surprise that European patrimony had fallen into the hands of an American.<\/p>\n

\"Fig<\/a>Smets\u2019 manuscripts were auctioned in New York in 1868. Menzies probably bought \u201cDeath and the Maiden\u201d at the sale. At that time the manuscript would have had Smets\u2019 teensy autograph, \u201cA. A. Smets Savannah\u201d plus a date of acquisition. But the manuscript was re-bound, and the new binding explains why this Book of Hours has never before been associated with Smets. At the time, it was common even for the original bindings of medieval manuscripts to be replaced. Luckily, this manuscript did not have an original binding, and the new one by William Matthews is a bona fide treasure. Matthews was the leading binder in New York, and the first American genius of \u201cbibliopegy\u201d\u2014the art of bookbinding.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s always satisfying to uncover the provenance of medieval manuscripts, and it doesn\u2019t get any better than this. Watkinson MS 7 not only represents the best of antebellum collecting in America but also conveys the afterlife of medieval books in second-, third-, and fourth-generation ownership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Dr. Scott Gwara, professor of English at the University of South Carolina] Datable to about 1470, manuscript 7 in the Watkinson Library is a \u201cBook of Hours,\u201d a prayer-book widely used by the laity in Europe from about 1300 to 1550. These manuscripts were often illustrated with lavish paintings called \u201cminiatures\u201d or \u201cilluminations.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20,18,19,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}