Prayer Books--the First Affordable Art for the 13th-Century Middle Class

Until the late Middle Ages, art in Europe was something that belonged to the rich and powerful. Royalty, high-ranking church officials and estate owners were the only ones who could afford to commission the spectacular paintings and reliefs now associated with that time.

But sometime about the 13th Century, middle-class people in great numbers started to bring what is now considered high art into their homes. Only they didn’t call them works of art; they were prayer books.

“It was the first affordable art,” said Jennifer Haley, curator of the “Illuminated Devotional Manuscripts” exhibition that opened last week at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu. The exhibit of 20 prayer books handmade for home or monastery use will continue through the end of the year.

The books are spectacularly decorated with vividly colored designs and graphic illustrations of biblical or moral tales.

“The books were made and bought for religious purposes,” Haley said, “but they broadened people’s lives in a lot of ways. You could even say that they were sort of status symbols.”

The earliest book in the exhibition is a 12th-Century monk’s text, called a breviary, from the Benedictine monastery in Monte Cassino, Italy. The calligraphy in the book, done by a scribe named Sigenulfus, is an artistic accomplishment in itself. But the chief artistic attraction of this volume that was a precursor to home prayer books is its fancifully decorated letters of the alphabet.

As displayed at the museum, the book is opened to a frenzied, fanciful depiction of the letter C adorned with hordes of real and imagined animals and masses of interlaced vines. It is what a future generation would call psychedelic.

“It is kind of wild,” said Thomas Kren, curator of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. “Unfortunately, we have no idea who the artist was. Most of the art in the books was not signed.”

The breviary, like most of the books in the exhibit, was part of a manuscript collection begun in the late 1950s by a German couple, Peter and Irene Ludwig. Their collection, which was bought by the Getty Museum in 1983, was assembled with the aid of a famed New York rare-bookseller, H.P. Kraus.

In his autobiography, Kraus wrote that finding the breviary was one of the crowning achievements of his career. He first saw it in 1962, when it was offered to him by a secretive Swiss book dealer, and he would have bought it on the spot had he not feared that the spectacular book had been recently stolen from its monastery home.

Kraus traveled to the monastery in Monte Cassino to make inquiries. There, a kindly librarian told him what he prayed he would hear. The book, Kraus was told, had been missing from the monastery collection for more than a century.

“A pity, I said, but the tears welling up in my eyes were for joy,” Kraus wrote in his book. “Had it been missing that long, it was no longer the monastery’s property under law and nothing stood in the way of its sale. I could buy it without fear.”

Kraus, who died in 1988, bought the breviary for $30,000, a fraction of its real value. Kren declined to put an exact value on the book’s worth today, but said that at auction it would be likely to fetch a seven-figure price.

The earliest books in the exhibition that were made for home use are Psalters from the 13th Century. The illustrations in these books of Psalms were often in the form of a series of panels used to tell stories from the life of Christ or other biblical sagas.

“I don’t love the idea of comparing them to comic books, but they do tell stories in somewhat the same way,” Kren said.

The books for the home market that really caught on, the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, were known as Books of Hours. They served as guides to daily worship at prescribed times of day. “We found records that showed these books were very popular,” said Haley, who worked as an intern earlier this year at the Getty Museum. She is now back in Princeton, N.J., where she is writing her doctoral thesis on 15th-Century manuscripts.

“They were especially popular with women who sought to emulate princesses and duchesses who were known to own several prayer books,” she said.

These Books of Hours were prohibitively expensive if done by known artists of the time. One example in the exhibition is a spectacular book illuminated by Flemish artist Simon Benning in about 1530. It was commissioned by Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg (who went down in religious history as the church figure Martin Luther rebelled against).

Lower-priced Books of Hours, of which there are several in the exhibition, were still a bit on the expensive side for the average, middle-class citizen, but they were within grasp. “A book like this was a special purchase,” Haley said. “It was the kind of thing, like a car, that you would not just go out and buy. It was a major investment, and you’d think about it a long time before buying.”

Although the books were used for religious devotions, their owners probably flirted at least a bit with the sin of pride. “They were not only objects of use, they were also something people liked to show off,” Haley said. “It was kind of like people with high-priced books thinking of themselves as Cadillac owners.”

Johann Gutenberg and his printing press made hand-lettered and illustrated prayer books obsolete. Printed books were, of course, vastly less expensive and could be distributed far more widely. But they did lose their individuality.

“By the late 16th Century,” said Kren, gesturing toward the books in the exhibition, “this art form was finished.”

The “Illuminated Devotional Manuscripts” exhibit will continue through Dec. 30 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu. Admission to the museum is free, but advance parking reservations are required. For information, call (213) 459-7611.