Pages of Prayer: The Ecosystem of Vernacular Prayer Books in the Late Medieval Low Countries, c. 1380-1550

Project Information

PRAYER

Grant agreement ID: 101041517

DOI

10.3030/101041517

EC signature date 10 March 2022

Start date 1 March 2023

End date 28 February 2029

Funded under

• European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 704,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 704,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT LEIDEN
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PRAYER (Pages of Prayer: The Ecosystem of Vernacular Prayer Books in the Late Medieval Low Countries, c. 1380-1550)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2025-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Contrary to widespread historical assumptions, religious devotion in Medieval Latin Christianity manifested through a variety of linguistic traditions beyond Latin. In fact, in the Low Countries prayer books in the Dutch vernacular were by far the most commonly read type of book in the late medieval period (late 14th until the first half of the 16th century). The mainstay of this vast corpus of handwritten and printed books is the Book of Hours in the translation attributed to Geert Grote, the founder one of the period’s most powerful religious reform movements, the Devotio Moderna or Modern Devotion. Libraries and archives across the world still hold approximately 850 manuscripts and copies of no less than 40 printed editions. Nowhere else outside the Netherlands do so many manuscript and printed editions of this type of prayer book survive in the vernacular, making these books a unique source for the study of religiosity before the Reformation.

While these books are fundamental for our understanding of religious practice, and of textual and visual literacy between 1380 and 1550 – a period that saw dramatic changes in the religious landscape and in book production – the sheer volume of material and its diversity has prevented researchers from fully grasping the nature and impact of this vibrant phenomenon. This project sets out to conduct the first large-scale investigation of this unique corpus by introducing a new approach that studies all aspects of vernacular prayer books in their mutual interdependence. The project aims to chart the entire ‘ecosystem’ of Dutch-language prayer books that supported their popularity for an extended period. The ecosystem included, but is not limited to, manuscripts, printed books, texts, images, producers, owners, patrons, places, devotions, and the relations between all of these aspects.

To study the books within the ecosystem the project combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to reach meaningful interpretations of the data. The nature of the material requires this research to be tackled within a multidisciplinary project that brings together philologists, art historians, book historians and digital humanities specialists. The project will yield an integrative understanding of the role of prayer books in the late medieval Low Countries on the threshold of the medieval and early modern era.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The aim of WP1 (1 March – 1 December 2023) was to design a customized data model to describe manuscripts and early printed books containing one of the Hours translated by Geert Grote (c. 1383–84). The model needed to capture all various material forms—manuscripts, printed books, hybrids—as well as all features of theses books, including decoration, textual content, ownership, and broader socio-religious contexts. A major challenge was integrating both manuscript and print features and representing the layered production typical of late medieval books.

The conceptual model was developed collaboratively by the project team using LucidChart. It was refined following feedback from an international advisory board and presented at several academic venues, including a major digital humanities conference in 2024. The final model was implemented in the Heurist database platform, which required further technical adjustments. In parallel, a foundational article introducing the PRAYER data model and its broader scholarly relevance was written.This article, published in the peer reviewed journal Quaerendo (https://scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/handle/1887/4209655) and the implemented database represent the core results of WP1.

WP2 (1 Dec 2023 – 28 Feb 2025) focuses on data acquisition. The team began by preparing structured documentation of all Hours and standard components of Grote’s Book of Hours, based on a 1940 scholarly edition. These working files identify all textual parts and serve to track recurring variants, representing a significant improvement on the original edition. They will be published as an appendix to the database.

Existing datasets were imported at the start of WP2. Although technically challenging and often below the required quality for in-depth analysis, this import yielded basic descriptions that could be enriched manually. Due to the limited availability of high-quality data, acquisition required more manual work than anticipated. Nevertheless, significant progress has been made: the database now includes 450 manuscripts (approx. 200 complete or in progress), all 45 printed editions up to 1550 have been identified, and around 150 extant copies localized. Data collection used digitized sources and involved research trips to local, private, and major international collections such as those in London, Paris, The Hague, Cambridge, and Brussels.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The data model underlying the project's database, integrating manuscript and print and all features of these books – from texts and decorations to producers and owners – in their mutual interdependence, advances the field of research into prayer books significantly beyond the state-of-the-art, as do the data the team has and is still collecting. The integrative approach the team strives to apply to prayer books has meant that the team has produced much more detailed descriptions of these books than ever achieved before. A case in point is the fact that our database now contains over 1000 individual texts, already showing the textual variety and richness of these books that has not been tapped into before. This large variety was somewhat anticipated, but to see it confirmed – and still base only a relatively small part of the corpus – is certainly beyond expectations. The enormous variety has also led to specific challenges in identifying texts.

Handwritten prayer in a printed prayer book from 1484 (Delft)