Sunday, 12 December 2021

The Macclesfield Alphabet Book

 

Local map of Shirburn Castle area, near Watlington, Oxford.

I am in the process of downsizing; that includes disposing of furniture, ornaments, books, files, crockery, linen, clothes. Theoretically, this is a most useful discipline; practically, it is Very Hard Work. Mostly I can dispose without pain but with books, it is really challenging! Before I came to Brugge, I had given away all my husband’s professional books and mine too; all too elderly for modern professional use. I also managed to shed quite a number of others no longer deemed necessary to my well-being and entertainment! I remember thinking around 35/40% of the volumes in my house must have gone. But now, my daughter who lives in Bury St Edmunds where I intend to live, has visited my apartment-to-be several times and measured up. Her judgement, obviously based on fact and measurement, unlike mine based on possessiveness, is that three of my bookcases Must GO. Hence my present wrestling over which book goes where?

Shirburn Castle, seat of the 
Earls of Macclesfield.

During this current effort I have come across so many books I had shamefully forgotten I had and have spent far too long flicking through forgotten pages; dipping into unremembered volumes. A splendid volume entitled The Macclesfield Alphabet Book has me currently enthralled. Until very recently, this wonderful book, that is the original, was unknown to the mediaeval manuscript world and only emerged to share its glory in the early 2000s from the vast library of the Earl of Macclesfield in Shirburn Castle near Watlington in the Chilterns in Oxfordshire. In fact, the Castle had three great libraries chiefly assembled by Thomas Parker [1667-1732] Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Macclesfield, supplemented by the second Earl [1697-1764] and his family, all voracious collectors and polymaths’ as described by Christopher de Hamel in his Introduction in my copy. Apparently there was little further family interest in these treasures and the libraries remained in situ for more than two hundred years.

Thomas Park, first Earl
of Macclesfield
.
By the early twentieth century it had become obvious that life in Shirburn Castle still without many modern amenities, was untenable and the family began to sell off books from 2004 onwards, to partially finance a move to a nearby new house. This series of sales at Sothebys also revealed a hitherto unknown fourteenth century East Anglian Macclesfield Psalter sold in June 2004 to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Subsequently the British Library acquired the Liber de Hyda, cartulary of Hyde Abbey in Winchester and the Macclesfield Alphabet Book in 2009. One must read the book i.e. my book introduced by Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett, for all the lovingly detailed descriptions of the different folios contained therein, but basically, the Macclesfield Alphabet Book is a calligraphic alphabet book. Its possible purpose is discussed in the Introduction; for use by a scribe or illuminator; a showcase for a prospective client; used in a studio as an exemplar for apprentices; a record of pictorial information for wealthy patrons?

Sample page from the Alphabet Book
Principally, the work, comprises simplified images from natural history, mainly trees, animals and flowers, arranged in alphabetical order without text. The manuscript is composed of 46 leaves of parchment divided into sections which would originally have been separate, circulating perhaps as loosely folded separate booklets. The letters, both capital and lower case, are illuminated often by grotesque or whimsical images of members of all levels of society including kings. Many are of peasants or ugly people, spitting, grimacing, sticking out their tongues or showing their teeth [a particularly heinous social offence in the Middle Ages.] Animals in the illustrations are strange birds, dragons and monsters which might possibly have aided memory in the illiterate viewer. Patricia Lovett identifies the work of several hands in the book’s composition with some examples accomplished by a very able scribe but there are contributions by less able artists, possibly a left-handed scribe at one point; a working artist in a hurry; elsewhere, another level of skill is apparent, “a tour de force” in fact. Patricia Lovett’s introductory essay provides an amazingly detailed commentary on the levels of skill of the different artistic hands involved in this production.
Christopher de Hamel.

De Hamel concludes that the style of artistry is extremely competent but not of the highest order and the Alphabet Book is likely to have been made away from the professional workshops of London, almost certainly in Suffolk. At the end of the first alphabet, appears the phrase, ‘ Amen q’ [fryer] Baldry. The word ‘fryer’ has been scratched out undoubtedly at the Reformation when friars and monks were abolished in England. The initials R.B. drawn on a shield in an illustration may indicate the friar as Roger Baldry who was a Franciscan monk, subsequent prior [1503-1518] at the Cluniac Priory of Saint Mary at Thetford in Norfolk. The name Baldry comes from East Anglia and was especially common in the area around Ipswich. In the fifteenth century the greatest concentration of the name Baldry was at Creeting, eight miles north of Ipswich, Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.


Sample pages.



Mediaeval Franciscan friars.








 eight miles north of Ipswich. Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.

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