The Miracle of Print

By SONIA ELLIS

In a small Parisian shop, amid a clutter of presses and parchment, a team of printers works feverishly each day to meet the demand for the era's bestseller. The year is 1514. The bestseller? A compact, illustrated prayer book known as a Book of Hours.

About 480 years later, one of these volumes follows a propitious path into the hands of two scholars - Professor Edith Kirsch and Donna Drucker '99 - with a shared ardor for art history.

Kirsch, a professor of art history, studies Italian Renaissance art. Her specialty is "illuminated" (i.e., decorated) manuscripts, like the Book of Hours. Two years ago, as Kirsch taught a course on illuminated manuscripts, student Donna Drucker caught her eye. Drucker, a history and political science major, seemed to exhibit a particularly thoughtful and passionate interest in the material. So when Kirsch learned that a colleague at Colorado College actually owned a 16th-century Book of Hours, she thought immediately of her student. Drucker agreed that preparing a scholarly catalog of the book would make an absorbing final paper for her studies.

One of the first shared discoveries was just how little had been done by professional scholars in the field of early printed Books of Hours. That was surprising, given the proliferation of Books of Hours through the Middle Ages and Renaissance. "We know, given their good survival rate, that Books of Hours must have had the combined popularity of Danielle Steel and Stephen King," says Kirsch. Books of Hours were necessary companions to Middle Age culture, a lay person's listing of prayers that were to be recited at specific hours of each day. "But they also brought comfort and beauty into the lives of their owners," Kirsch adds since each book was originally handwritten by scribes and meticulously decorated by "illuminators." With the end of the 15th century came the advent of printing. While the books were still illustrated by hand, the printing of text made the volumes much cheaper to produce and thus available to a much wider public.

Traditionally, scholars have focused on the handwritten versions of the 1300s and 1400s. The printed version has not been considered an important art form in its own right. That fact, says Kirsch, "has left lots of room for original thought. Donna thinks of these books from the point of view of art, history and religion. From those perspectives the book is telling her about the country and society of its time. Donna is looking at this book through the prism of her own interests."

Drucker's careful and comprehensive inspection of this Book of Hours seems to follow the 16th-century printer's dictum: tout au long sans riens requerir (translated roughly as "from beginning to end without leaving anything out"). At the beginning - on the first page -was where Drucker first found some clues about the book's origins. The Latin text named Gilles Hardouyn as the printer and even provided the address of his shop: in front of the Church of St. Denis in Chains. Studying an early map of Paris, Drucker found a similar name, SíDenis de la Chartre, on the Œle de la CitÈ (incidentally, just a stone's throw from the Notre Dame cathedral). The name was not an exact match, but close enough to start Drucker speculating. Could "Chartre" be another word for chains? Drucker discovered that "Chartre" is, in fact, Old French terminology for chains. Making that connection - finding the shop's home - is an example of the "superb intuition" that Drucker has shown throughout her research, says Kirsch.

Their work together has led Kirsch and Drucker to some other revelations about the book and its maker. This edition of the Book of Hours, they found, measures 143 millimeters by 78 millimeters; it's about twice as high as it is wide, and roughly the dimensions of today's typical paperback book. That's no coincidence. This so-called "agenda" format was a printing innovation by Gilles Hardouyn. He pioneered the concept of a portable Book of Hours that could be carried in a pocket. Another Hardouyn contrivance: in order to make this printed Book of Hours look like a handwritten manuscript, he printed the text on parchment and then added the red lines that scribes used to guide their handwriting.

Of course, one of the most compelling questions about the prayer book was this: between 1514 and now, who might have been its owner? Drucker was given one clue. On each illustrated page in the book she found a small oval stamp, which depicted a shield and the name C. F. Auguste de Crouy-Chanel. A library database search helped Drucker track down his identity - amazingly, in a book written about Crouy-Chanel in 1862. He was a colorful and unscrupulous character who claimed to be an heir to the Hungarian throne. This collection of data is just one example, Kirsch comments, of Drucker's skill as an "indefatigable bibliographer."

Under Kirsch's mentorship, Drucker was given two unusual opportunities to exercise her research skills. With the help of a venture grant, as well as support from Colorado College's art and history departments, Drucker spent a week during the summer of 1997 at Princeton University's Rare Books Library, studying their collection of printed Books of Hours. As an offshoot of that trip, Drucker immersed herself for a day at the Morgan Library in New York City, examining their compilation of Books of Hours by printer Hardouyn.

Reflecting on her relationship with Drucker for the past two years, Kirsch thinks that Chaucer best captures the spirit of their collaboration. In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer writes of the desire of his scholar-clerk to "gladly lerne and gladly teche." In this case, student and teacher have done both.

Colleague Bruce Coriell, the college chaplain who owns this Book of Hours, agrees. "There is a reverence in how they both handle the book that is wonderful to see," he says. "Their shared passion has been a privilege to watch. This is truly Colorado College at its best."

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