MARY AND THE
ART OF PRAYER
The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and
Thought
Rachel
Fulton Brown
Forthcoming,
Columbia University Press, 2017
Would you like to learn to pray like a
medieval Christian? This book is intended
as a kind of handbook showing the way medieval Christians prayed to Mary, the
Virgin Mother of God.
Its
subject-matter is the complex of psalms, chants, and other prayers known as the
Hours of the Virgin with which Christians in medieval Europe served Mary, the
Mother of the One whom they recognized as the Lord
worshipped in the psalms of the Old Testament.
Its
purpose is to provide a history of this service, while at the same time
suggesting what it would have been like for medieval Christians to imagine Mary
in this way.
It
is intended to be useful to students of history, devotion, prayer, theology,
liturgy, and exegesis who are interested in not only the structures of medieval
religious thought but also its experience as an exercise of affect, intellect,
and imagination.
Its
author writes as an historian and believing Christian, but she is not a
theologian, although she would argue that in writing about the history of
devotion to Mary it is impossible not to make certain theological claims, as
even the claim that the Scriptures "say very little about Mary" with
which most modern histories of devotion to Mary typically begin is itself
grounded in particular confessional convictions.
The
book's manner or method of treating its subject is expected to be somewhat
challenging, crossing as it does the boundaries that modern scholars typically
place between observation and experience, between the Primary World of provable
"facts" and the Secondary World of imagination or "fa‘rie." Accordingly, following an introduction to the
history of the devotion of saying the Hours or "Little Office" of the
Virgin in chapter 1, it then invites its readers in subsequent chapters to
imagine themselves as medieval Christians saying this Office, including its
invitatory (chapter 2), its antiphons and psalms (chapter 3), its lessons
(chapter 4), and prayers (chapter 5).
It
is the author's hope that this exercise will prove intellectually stimulating
as well as enjoyable, even if, as with all real adventures, it may feel
dangerous at times.
Image: Mary of Burgundy sees herself and
Mary in her Book of Hours (Vienna, …sterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1857, fols.
14v-15r)
CONTENTS
List
of plates 000
List
of figure and tables 000
Acknowledgements 000
Notes
to the Reader 000
Approach to the Work 000
Invitatory 000
How
to Read this Book 000
The
Virgin Clothed with the Sun 000
Chapter
1 The Hours of the Virgin 000
A Little History of the Office 000
"Seven times a day I have praised you"
(Psalm 118:164) 000
Chapter
2 "Ave, Maria" 000
Saluting Mary: Ave 000
Saying the Ave 000
Learning the Ave 000
Naming Mary: Maria 000
Container of the Uncontainable 000
Full of Grace
000
Aves in the Psalms
000
"And the virgin's name was Mary" (Luke
1:27) 000
Chapter
3 Antiphon and Psalm 000
Mary in the Temple 000
The Lord
and the Lady of the Temple 000
Miriam, the Mother of the Son of the Most High 000
Mary, the Theotokos, the Living Temple of God 000
Mary in the Psalms 000
The Night Office or Matins 000
First nocturn, on Sunday,
Monday, and Thursday 000
Second nocturn, on Tuesday
and Friday 000
Third nocturn, on Wednesday and
Saturday 000
The Seven Hours of the Day 000
Lauds, sung at sunrise 000
Prime, sung at the first hour of the day 000
Terce, Sext, and None, sung at
the third, sixth, and ninth hours
000
Vespers, sung at sunset 000
Compline, sung at bedtime 000
Chapter
4 Lesson and Response 000
Lectio prima. Ars grammatica. Richard of St.-Laurent and the Names of Mary in
Scripture 000
Lectio ii. Ars rhetorica. Conrad of Saxony on What the Angel Said to Mary 000
Lectio iii. Ars dialectica. Pseudo-Albert's Questions About What Mary Knew 000
Chapter
5 Prayer 000
How to serve Mary 000
Reasons to serve Mary 000
Mary as intercessor 000
The
miracle of Theophilus 000
Mary
as bride 000
Beautiful
from head to toe 000
Mary as temple
000
The
Lord enters into his Creation 000
Compline:
Sor Mar’a de Jesśs de çgreda (d. 1665) and the
Mystical City of God 000
Appendix:
Handlist of Manuscripts and Printed Editions of
Richard of St.-Laurent's De laudibus beatae Mariae virginis libri XII 000
Abbreviations 000
Bibliography 000
Hours of the Virgin: Printed Editions 000
Primary Sources
000
Scholarship
000
Index
of Scriptural Citations 000
General
Index 000