Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Imitatio Mariae: Mary, Medieval Readers and Conceiving the Word
- 2 Performing the Psalms: The Annunciation in the Anchorhold
- 3 Reading the Prophecies: Meditation and Female Literacy in Lives of Christ Texts
- 4 Writing the Book: The Annunciations of Visionary Women
- 5 Imagining the Book: Of Three Workings in Man's Soul and Books of Hours
- 6 Inhabiting the Annunciation: The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Pynson Ballad
- Coda: Mary and Her Book at the Reformation
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Inhabiting the Annunciation: The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Pynson Ballad
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 August 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Imitatio Mariae: Mary, Medieval Readers and Conceiving the Word
- 2 Performing the Psalms: The Annunciation in the Anchorhold
- 3 Reading the Prophecies: Meditation and Female Literacy in Lives of Christ Texts
- 4 Writing the Book: The Annunciations of Visionary Women
- 5 Imagining the Book: Of Three Workings in Man's Soul and Books of Hours
- 6 Inhabiting the Annunciation: The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Pynson Ballad
- Coda: Mary and Her Book at the Reformation
- Acknowledgements
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Virgin's book at the Annunciation endured as a symbol not only of the divine Logos made flesh in a woman's womb, but also as a symbol of how each Christian could access God through the Word. The previous chapters have surveyed the many ways in which Mary's reading modelled devotional and contemplative practices for centuries across medieval England. We can see its pervasive influence in Mary's presence as an interpretive, intellectual authority whose power is not cancelled out by her motherhood but rather enabled by it. As we saw with the Books of Hours illuminations in the previous chapter, nearly every single medieval artistic representation of the scene clearly features a book. The largest medieval physical representation of the Annunciation space is survived by perhaps one of the smallest reading Annunciate images from pre-Reformation England: a fifteenth-century copper alloy pilgrim badge from the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham (Figure 14), an artefact now at the Museum of London. No bigger round than the top two joints of a finger, the badge depicts Gabriel kneeling on one side with a scripted phylactory extending from his hand, the lily in the centre and Mary on the opposite side behind an open book on a desk or prie-dieu. This tiny Annunciation scene, while entirely typical and resembling any Books of Hours illumination or altar painting, would remind the badge's owner of something very special: their visit to the life-size reproduction of the Annunciation space, a shrine built in the small village of Walsingham in Norfolk. For their visit, the pilgrim would have entered first into the larger, later protective stone chapel, and then into the smaller, earlier wooden building around which it was built: the Holy House, claimed to perfectly represent the original Holy Land structure within which Gabriel found Mary and the Incarnation occurred. This edifice is depicted in another late fourteenth-century pilgrim badge with stylized architectural elements and a still tinier Annunciation on the upper floor (Figure 15), also preserved at the Museum of London.
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- Information
- The Virgin Mary's Book at the AnnunciationReading, Interpretation, and Devotion in Medieval England, pp. 225 - 250Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2020