Text and image in the Salisbury Breviary (Paris, BN ms lat 17294) : the decorative cycle and its Paris precursors
Abstract
The main aim of this thesis is to examine the Salisbury Breviary from the point of view of "the picture
in service of text and patron". The breviary is defined as a text. and the Salisbury Breviary identified as
an exceptionally richly decorated example of the genre, made in Paris during the second quarter of the
fifteenth century, but written for the use of Sarum, and intended for the personal use of the Duke of
Bedford, then regent in France for the infant king of England, Henry VI. In terms of the elements
contributing to the hierarchy of decoration of its sanctoral, communal and temporal (the psalter is
missing), the Salisbury Breviary is shown to be the culminating example of a well-established tradition in
Paris for the decoration and illumination of breviaries, represented by such major precursors as the
Breviary of Charles V. the Chateauroux and Orgemont Breviaries, and the Breviary of Jean sans Peur.
By contrast, the decorative forms used in the Salisbury Breviary are shown to reflect experiments
conducted by the Bedford, Boucicaut and Rohan workshops in luxury books of hours rather than
breviaries, in order pictorially to enhance their function as manuscripts for lay devotional use. The use of
such devices in the Salisbury Breviary, which resulted in a unique series of visual glosses to the, text of
the divine office, is explained with particular reference to the cross-cultural nature of the commission.