3 - The Devotional Life of the Laity in the Late Middle Ages

Summary

AWINDOW in the parish church at Waterperry (Oxfordshire), reproduced ibelow, shows us Walter Curson and his sons at prayer. Between Walter and his eldest son, Richard, a book lies open, as a prompt to their devotions. Like many households, the Cursons probably owned a Book of Hours, a volume often beautifully illustrated and richly decorated. Books of Hours (known also as primers) were a collection of psalms and prayers for daily recitation, derived ultimately from the ‘canonical hours’ or Divine Office, the daily cycle of prayers said at regular intervals during the day and night by priests and in monasteries. Whether the Curson family could follow the Latin text or whether the picture is symbolic rather than historically accurate we cannot know; maybe in reality they focused on the pictures while their chaplain said the prayers. Obviously the production of such volumes involved conspicuous expense, and their value as gifts and bequests was partly as luxury material objects. Nonetheless we have every reason to believe that the office played a significant part in the devotional life of the laity in the late Middle Ages. Cicely, duchess of York (1415–90), had a daily routine clearly modelled on the monastic life, rising early so that her chaplain could say the morning office with her, attending daily Mass, hearing devotional books read while she ate and saying (or hearing said) evensong and the evening office. Such a lifestyle was the privilege of the rich and leisured, but lowlier women aspired to it, as we know from the life of Margery Kempe (discussed elsewhere in the volume) who, as daughter of a Mayor of Lynn and wife of a burgess, was obliged to combine her devotional life with domestic responsibilities such as brewing and tending to the needs of her husband, not to mention childbearing. Books of Hours became more widely available after the advent of printing, by which time the needs of an increasingly literate laity were being met also by less costly paper manuscripts of vernacular prayers. A Book of Hours was one of the first books printed by Caxton (in 1475/6) and more than 760 editions in Latin, English and in both languages (but mostly in Latin) were produced for use in England before 1560.