• 1  See for example, K. M. Rudy, «An Illustrated Mid-Fifteenth-Century Primer for a Flemish Girl: Brit (...)
• 2  A notice for Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson Liturgical E.40 appears in Falconer Madan, A S (...)

1Medieval children’s literature, which had long been enigmatic, has become an increasingly well-defined category of medieval literature. Recent articles have identified individual manuscripts, as well as particular texts, which were designed to be used by children in the Middle Ages1. Children’s manuscripts are not always easy to identify, but they often contain a few basic elements: an alphabet with a kiss-cross, the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo. This article treats a manuscript probably made in Paris, which includes these texts (Oxford, Bodleian, MS Rawlinson Liturgical E 40)2. It also contains other texts whose function as children’s learning tools remains more tentative, including a vernacular French text known as the Cisiojanus, a series of rhyming mnemonic devices which will be considered at length below. In addition to this unusual text, there is an aura of uncertainty about the manuscript concerning its date, its exact function, and its original readership, which this article will also tackle.

• 3  Oxford, Bodleian, MS Rawlinson Liturgical E 40. Prayer book in Latin and French. 171 vellum + ii + (...)

2Oxford, Bodleian, MS Rawlinson Liturgical E 40 is a prayer book written in Latin and French on parchment3. The most noteworthy element of its codicological makeup is its unusually large script and concomitantly wide ruling (fig. 1). Specifically, the text block is 118 x 85 mm, with only 10 lines per folio, meaning that the line height is just under 12 mm, which is very large indeed. The ample-sized letters are written very clearly, in a high-quality and somewhat florid textualis, with few abbreviations. The text block only fills a fraction of the vellum surface (200 x 145 mm), surrounded by very large margins, suggesting a rather lavish production for which the expenses for vellum were not spared. It is possible that the wide ruling and large letters bear on the function of the book as a teaching tool.

• 4  See note 2.

3The manuscript has been mentioned on at least three occasions, revealing much confusion about its date. In hiscatalogue of western manuscripts, Falconer Madan lists the manuscript as a XVI^th-century production, citing the reference to «Clemens papa VII^us,» which the cataloguer interprets as Pope Clement VII (1523-34)4.

• 5  B. L. Wolpe, «Florilegium Alphabeticum: Alphabets in Medieval Manuscripts», Calligraphy and Paleog (...)

4Berthold Wolpe, in his 1960s article on alphabets in medieval manuscripts, interprets this line as a reference to the antipope Clement, who reigned from Avignon from 1378-945. Mentions of other popes are consistent with a late XIV^th-century dating. One rubric indicates that Pope John XXII (1316-1334) offered 300 days’ indulgence for reciting the «O intemerata» [rub.: Johannes pp. xxii^us concessit omnibus sequentem orationem dicentibus ccc dies indulgentie. Or[ati]o. Inc.: O intemerata..., fol. 127^r/v]. This prayer was apparently especially important to the owner, whose coat of arms appears at the bottom of 127^v. Moreover, an indulgence credited to Pope Boniface probably refers to Boniface VIII (1294-1303) [rub.: Bonifacius pp. concessit omnibus hanc orationem devote dicentibus xx^ti [sic] dies indulgentie. Inc.: Adoro te domine ihesu criste qui es dulcissime panis angelorum..., fol. 134^v].

• 6  Wolpe prints erroneously ‘d’Ogremont’ instead of ‘d’Orgemont’.
• 7  Wolpe, «Florilegium Alphabeticum» (as in n. 5), p. 70.

6Berthold Wolpe identified the arms as those of Orgemont quartered with Ste Maure with overall Amboise6. As Wolpe points out, Guillaume d’Orgemont, the third son of Pierre d’Orgemont, was married to a daughter of Pierre de Ste Maure and Marguerite d’Amboise, whose name was also Marguerite. The prominence of the Amboise heraldry suggests, according to Wolpe, that the wife owned the manuscript7. He suggests that Marguerite de Ste Maure received the book upon her marriage to Guillaume d’Orgemont in 1386.

• 8  A similar suggestion has been made regarding the texts for London, British Library Harley MS 3828, (...)

12Part C, which continues the very large script, may have been made as an amendment to Part B, to be used when the child became a few years older, perhaps 7-10 years of age. An important textual difference between Parts B and C, is that Part B contains all of the texts associated with teaching children to read, as outlined above. None of these texts is prefaced by a rubric indicating that it was indulgenced. Part C, on the other hand, contains 14 texts, 11 of which are indulgenced. Part C even begins with a text about varieties of sinning. It seems to be a feature of late medieval young children’s literature that it does not contain indulgenced texts, but that such texts might be added when the child grew a bit older8. This part of the manuscript might have been added after the child reached the age when he/she could sin, sometimes defined as seven.

• 9  A. Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin, Paris, 1971 (1932), p. 493-495
• 10  See A. Wilmart, as in n. 9, p. 474-504, esp.  p. 488-490.

14There are also two different versions of the O Intemerata. One of these (127^r-134^v), carries an indulgence of 300 days given by Pope John XXII (fig. 4). This is the more unusual and less known version of O Intemerata, and it originated in the XIV^th century9. It is addressed only to the Virgin, rather to the Virgin and the apostle John together, as is the original version from the XII^th century. This earlier version, which is copied into the Rawlinson manuscript on fol. 142^r-146^r, is not normally indulgenced (fig. 5)10. The patrons must have had a particular affection for the O Intemerata, for the incipits of both versions have coats of arms painted into the margin (on fol. 127^v, and 142^r).

• 11  New York, Columbia University, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Plimpton MS 287. Manuscript on ve (...)

18In support of the hypothesis that this manuscript (or at least parts of it) were made for a child, we can point to another manuscript made for a child in a style that is at once highly luxurious and fantastically retardataire. That manuscript, now kept in the Special Collections Library of Columbia University in New York City, forms part of the collection given by Plimpton, who assembled a large number of objects used as pedagogical materials in the early modern period before giving his collection to Columbia (fig. 6)11. What is so unusual about this manuscript is that it is written entirely in silver and gold ink. Even the expunctuation – where the scribe needed to «erase» the words «adveniat regnum» on fol. 1^r which he had inscribed twice accidentally – was done with tiny gold dots. Moreover, the gold and silver script was inscribed onto vellum that had been dyed purple, like the great Codex Aureus and other lavish early medieval manuscript productions. The text, however, is for a child, and it features the Alphabet with a «kiss cross», the Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Credo. The manuscript, in other words, was a gift to a child, possibly meant to enforce the idea that reading is something great, that both the act of reading and the books they imply are worthy of silver and gold. This child’s book, in other words, was made in a lavish retardataire style. While the Plimpton manuscript and the Rawlinson manuscript are quite different productions, they both demonstrate that parents gave their children ‘instant heirlooms’, manuscripts that may have been new but looked old and carried with them the gravity of family history.

• 12  See R. Stuip, «Unité de l’enluminure, unité du manuscrit? À propos d’un manuscrit contenant une co (...)

19Manuscript 73 J 55 of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague provides us with another example of a book that was assembled to suit the needs of a growing child. The manuscript (195 x 150 mm) was produced in three stages during the second half of the XV^th century, probably in Eastern France. The different parts are in two, maybe three, different hands; the text block in the second part is smaller than that of the first and third part and the quality of the vellum of the first part is not the same as that of the rest of the book. However the 12 miniatures throughout the codex stem from the same workshop, and are probably all by the same, unknown, miniaturist12. The first part (fol. 1-26) contains the Disticha Catonis, the Latin text together with the French translation by Jean le Fèvre. The Cato text was widely used as a sort of primer for children, and this copy is indeed in larger letters and on thicker vellum than that used in the other parts of the book. It forms a booklet on its own, introduced by a miniature on the first page. The second part of the manuscript (fol. 27-50, written in another hand with smaller script in a smaller text block on different vellum, with a unique way of putting the catchwords) provides two chapters of La Somme le Roi of Laurent du Bois. The bulk of the book however is made up by the third part (fol. 51-142, with a larger text block, possibly by the same hand as the second part, partially different type of ruling), which contains Les heures de contemplacion sur la Passion de Nostre Seigneur by Christine de Pizan, a very short abstract of a Sermon of Albert the Great, Les Vigiles des Morts by Pierre de Nesson, and as last text Un enseignement moult piteux by Jean de Remin. The different texts are introduced by a miniature; the text of Christine de Pizan is the only one to include miniatures within the text itself.

• 13  P. Lacombe, Livres d’Heures imprimés au XV^e et au XVI^e siècle conservés dans les bibliothèques pub (...)
• 14  E.-H. Langlois, Essai sur la calligraphie des manuscrits du moyen-âge et sur les ornements des pre (...)

22The calendar in this manuscript presents the particular feature that at the end of every month there is a stanza of four short lines in French, rhyming two by two (aabb), in which the most important saints or religious feasts of the month are mentioned or alluded to (fig. 7). At the same time the number of syllables for each stanza reflects the number of days for that particular month, so for instance the number of syllables for January is 31. The syllable units are written separately, which facilitates the counting of the days. When the text reads ‘En.jan.vier. que.les.roys.ve.nus.sont’, we know that ‘ROYS’ is the sixth syllable, hence January 6, the day the three Magi or Kings adored the newborn Jesus. In his great study on Les Livres d’Heures manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1927) the abbot V. Leroquais cites (Vol. I, p. xvii) some lines of this type of rhyme he had found in four of the over 300 handwritten Books of Hours he had studied, and adds: «Rares aussi ces quatrains sur les mois qui foisonnent dans les livres d’Heures imprimés». Paul Lacombe, in his 1907 study on early printed Books of Hours, had mentioned their presence in quite a number of the editions he had seen, and explained how the mnemonic functioned13. Long before him Eustache-Hyacinthe Langlois had talked about these «mauvaises rimes françaises, fort bizarres, n’offrant aucun sens raisonnable», but he perfectly understood their use. He even gave the full text for the stanzas of the twelve months he had encountered in his old books14.

• 15  In the Verfasserlexikon ² I, col. 1285-1289 (by Arne Holtorf) and in the extensive article by H. A (...)

23This poetical device for remembering special days and counting the days of the month, known as Cisio Janus (from Circumcisio, Januarius), was developed in the XII^th century in Latin calendars written in Germany. It was used in Germany, Scandinavia and the Low Countries in Latin and, later on, in vernacular variants15. The later developments show, particularly in the vernacular variants, sometimes a less-than-respectful tone, and introduce saints in funny situations, as is the case in our text where we see several saints drinking too much.

• 16  R. M. Kully, «Cisiojanus: comment savoir le calendrier par cœur», jeux de mémoire, Presses de l’Un (...)
• 17  Kully, p. 150.
• 18  Kully, p. 154.

25In an article published in 1985, Rolf Max Kully focuses on this ‘genre bâtard’, rediscovered in the 1970’s16. He mainly discusses the Latin tradition from the XII^th to the XVII^th centuries and adds: «Malheureusement, nous n’avons pas le temps de traiter de la tradition vernaculaire qui commence par des versions sérieuses au 13^e siècle et trouve sa décadence dans des parodies au 16^e siècle.»17 Kully traces the genre back to the late XII^th century, and places its origins in central or western Germany. According to him the Cisiojanus was part of elementary education in Latin, but was used as well by adults, hence the necessity to translate it into the vernacular. «On a donc écrit toute une série de poèmes en allemand ainsi qu’en néerlandais, tandis que des versions anglaises, françaises, danoises, suédoises, tchèques et polonaises restent sporadiques.»18 Since then more versions in other vernaculars have been unearthed. It remains notable, however, that manuscript versions from the more western reaches of Europe (French, English) seem to be rare. For this reason we print here the full text of this French Cisiojanus, together with some explanatory remarks.

• 19  B. Wolpe, «Florilegium Alphabeticum» (as in n. 5).

26The version contained in Rawlinson Liturgical E 40 would have been of particular interest as it would have predated the first known examples of vernacular variants in French, if the manuscript could be dated about 1386 as Wolpe would have it19, but the calendar – along with its rhymes – seems to date from the end of the XV^th century, as we will see.

• 20  Mercure de France, Aoust, 1746, p. 77.

27The Cisiojanus in Rawlinson Liturgical E 40 is almost identical to the one in Hore ad usum Romanum, printed by Pigouchet pour Simon Vostre, Paris, 25 Febr. 1497, as published in 2002 by Erik Drigsdahl on the website CHD (www.chd.dk). Drigsdahl claims that this version is «Found in a large number of Hore printed in Paris from 1490». The text is again almost identical to the one published in 1862 by Jos. Maria Wagner from Vienna, in the journal Serapeum (23, 297-299), based on a Parisian Book of Hours from the early XVI^th century, «imprimees a Paris par Guillaume anabat […] pour Gillet hardouin libraire demourant au bout du pont au change en lanseigne de la Rose. Et pour germain hardouin […]». No doubt it is to books like this that points a discussion in the Mercure de France of 1746, in the June and August issues. The authors of letters adressed to the Editors discuss the text of an (incomplete) rhyme in French, that has been found in a Missal and, by a second author, in an ancient Book of Hours. Finally the Editors publish the text for «[l]es douze mois de l’année, qui nous ont été envoyés par M. Fauquette, Expert Ecrivain, pensionné de M.M. les Magistrats de la Ville de Lille; il nous écrit qu’il les a tirés d’un livre de velin sans aucune date, intitulé: Heures à l’usage de Rome tout au long, sans rien requerir, avec les figures de l’Apocalypse & plusieurs autres histoires.»20 Then follows the text of the Cisiojanus, which is the same as the one in the Rawlinson manuscript.

• 21  Erik Drigsdahl is preparing an article on this particular calendar. His study should appear in Scr (...)
• 22  A. Korteweg, «The Book of Hours of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in The Hague and its later a (...)
• 23  Published on http://0-gallica-bnf-fr.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk/ark:/12148.

28We have come across several other handwritten copies: 1/ a leaf of a calendar, November-December, offered for sale (early 2009) by a antiquarian in Amsterdam and now in a private collection, London. The entries in the calendar are in Latin, they are of a common type; about half of the days are left blank. The text of the Cisiojanus is in French, and appears to be written in another hand; syllables are separated by punctuation. The text is the same as that in Rawlinson. 2/ Much has been published about «one of the finest manuscripts owned by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague», i.e the Book of Hours of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy (Ms. 76 F 2). The calendar at the beginning of this important book has been studied, but as far as we know the Cisiojanus in French and the Regimen sanitatis per circulum anni in Latin that have been added in different hands in the lower margin of the same leaves have not received a lot of attention. Calendar, Cisiojanus and Regimen are in three different hands, and seem to have been written in three stages. The calendar is in French, each day lists a saint, but the collection of saints mentioned seems to be of an unusual type21. In a recent article about the Duke’s Book of Hours Anne Korteweg states: «We can now also be certain that the book passed into other hands around 1500 and that the new owner of the book adapted it to suit his own needs, while trying to maintain the character of the original manuscript as far as possible. Such an ‘antiquarian’ attitude towards an older object was not uncommon at the time.»22 The Cisiojanus is exactly the one we have seen already several times, handwritten or printed. 3-6/ Four manuscripts of the Fonds Latin in the BnF give a Cisiojanus in French: lat. 1375, lat. 13268, lat. 14829, and lat. 18021. 7/ Harvard, Houghton Library, MS. Lat. 251, a Book of Hours in Latin kindly signaled by a colleague, presents on fol. 1-12^v a calendar and a Cisiojanus in French; the manuscript is dated 1495-1500. 8/ Finally another colleague drew our attention to a version of the Cisiojanus contained in the 1496 edition of the Compost et kalendrier des bergers, printed for Guiot Marchant in Paris23, which has in some instances a very different text, and gives some more saints than the other French texts we know of. It should be added, however, that in this case the text is given as a rhyme of 24 lines in its own right, with an introduction as how to use it. It is not, as is the case for the examples of the other version we have seen, added in stanzas of four lines to each individual month of the calendar.

• 24  See n. 4.
• 25  See n. 5.

30As we have seen above, there are conflicting views on the date of the manuscript: Madan24 in the Catalogue of the Bodleian ascribes it to the XVI^th century after 1523, Wolpe25 would make it a manuscript of the end of the XIV^th.

• 26  One could add that Virgo templum trinitatis… , linked to Clemens VII in the manuscript, is at time (...)
• 27  We are grateful to Peter Gumbert for his suggestions about the dating.

31Madan’s dating seems questionable. His interpretation of Clement VII as the XVI^th-century pope is most certainly not correct, as most of France considered the Avignon «anti-pope» Clement VII (1378-94) to be the legitimate pope26. The dates of papacy of the other Clement VII (1523-34) should be considered a terminus ante quem rather than as a terminus post quem. A further argument against the late dating has to do with its quality: the manuscript was produced by at least two scribes, and probably by three. The quality of the script is extremely high, and it is unlikely that three scribes of such skill could have been found in the third decade of the XVI^th century, when most book production had turned to the printing press27. Moreover, the content does not point to the XVI^th century: Clement VII is rarely mentioned in rubrics as a pope who indulgenced a prayer, and when he is, he is usually listed in a long list of popes who have granted, doubled, or modified an indulgence. For example, in Brussels, Royal Library, ms. 12079, we find the XVI^th-century Clement VII in a list of popes who have given indulgences for reciting the Adoro te in cruce pendentem (fol. 108^v-111^r). That list includes Gregorius, Innocentius IV, Nicolas V, Calixtus IV, Clemens VII, Sixtus IV, Innocentius VIII, Julius II. In the section of the Rawlinson manuscript that gives a number of indulgenced prayers, none of the late XV^th- and early XVI^th-century popes who were especially generous with indulgences – such as Sixtus IV (1471-84), or Julius II (1503-13) – is mentioned. If the manuscript were a very late production, these indulgence-friendly popes would certainly have been credited in the rubrics. Finally, the values of the indulgences in the Rawlinson manuscript are generally measured in days, rather than in years: because of aggressive indulgence inflation in the years just before the Reformation, most indulgences that postdate 1500 are measured in years, or in thousands of years. The Rawlinson manuscript, quaintly, still gives them in days, a feature we would expect from a XIV^th- or early XV^th-century manuscript. (The only exception – an indulgence of 2000 years, given by pope Boniface VI [r. 896], for Domine Ihesu Christe qui hanc sacratissimam carnem on fol. 141^r – seems to be the norm already in the second half of the XIV^th century.)

• 28  Pächt and Alexander (as above, n. 2).

32That having been said, the XIV^th-century dating is untenable. Although Wolpe’s solution to the dating and localization of the manuscript is elegant, it cannot, unfortunately, be true. O. Pächt and J.J.G. Alexander, cataloguing the collections at the Bodleian Library shortly after Wolpe’s article was published, followed Wolpe’s dating of the manuscript; they also agree that the calendar points to Paris and that the arms are those of Guillaume d’Orgemont and Marguerite de Ste Maure, who married in or around 138628. The problem with a XIV^th-century dating is the presence of St. Bernardinus in the litany among the confessors (fol. 77^r). This must be Bernardinus of Siena, who died in 1444 and was canonized 1450. This part of the manuscript therefore must postdate 1450. The fact that Bernardinus is not mentioned in the calendar underscores the different provenance of the various parts of the manuscript, or at least suggests that Parts A, B, and C were copied from separate models.

• 29  S. Ringbom, Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-Up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional P (...)

33We can also note that the feast day for the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin is given in the calendar in red. In 1476, Sixtus IV ratified the Office for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, extending an indulgence to anyone who attended Mass on the feast day, 8 December. For those who celebrated this Office, he promised an indulgence. These benefits were published in bulls of 1476 and 147729. However, the presence of the feast day for the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin appears in many French calendars that predate Sixtus IV’s papacy; therefore, the fact that this feast day is in red should not necessarily be taken as a terminus post quem.