What does it look like?

This is a small manuscript of 26 pages, handwritten on vellum. It would have taken three skins to make it. It is decorated with coloured ink and gold leaf, and the first page contains a painting of St Margaret staring at a dragon with a snake’s tail. It was rebound, (given new covers), in the nineteenth century, by an owner, who lived in Paris. It contains his bookplate, a special label marking his ownership, along with two other bookplates, and various other marks made by previous owners.

Who, what and where?

This manuscript was originally part of a larger book – perhaps a ‘Book of Hours,’ which instructed wealthy European Christians on which prayers to say at particular times of the day, for each day of the year. For that reason, it is written not in Greek or Latin, but in a vernacular language: French. It was probably commissioned for an aristocratic young woman. St Margaret is the patron saint of pregnancy and childbirth – many women in the Late Middle Ages carried manuscript accounts of St Margaret around with them throughout their pregnancy. It would have been made in a manuscript workshop, operating as a business, probably in a small city in Holland.

Why is it significant to the study of religion?

According to Christian tradition, Margaret was born in about the year 289 CE in Antioch, which is now part of Turkey. Although her father was a pagan priest, she embraced Christianity at a young age. When the Roman Governor of the province asked Margaret to marry him, she turned him down, refusing to renounce her faith. In return, he had her tortured, during which various miracles occurred. One of these involved Margaret being swallowed by the Devil, who took the shape of a dragon. Lucky for Margaret, she was holding a cross – this so disturbed the dragon that she emerged intact from the dragon’s innards, (in some accounts he explodes, in others he throws up). The governor then tried to burn and drown her, but to no avail. Eventually, she was beheaded.

The manuscript tells this story, but its use and ownership tells us much about how religion was viewed throughout its history. It was bought to be read, everyday, by a family where faith controlled every part of their lives. Later, the book was evidently no longer considered so sacred – an owner in the eighteenth century wrote in it – but it was a very important object, in which religious practice was recorded, since the owner wrote the names of his children as they were baptised. Following the French revolution, it was literally torn apart, and the various different parts sold to collectors in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century, it was brought to England, and formed part of a collection of religious books owned by an amateur historian called Sidney Smith. The manuscript was bought for the College by the Librarian, Henry John Chaytor, in the 1920s, for £15. Today, in St Catharine’s, it’s important as a teaching tool to show students how saints were viewed in the Middle Ages.