By the middle of the thirteenth century the physicality of figure sculpture, discussed above in terms of symbolism, was used for affective purposes more than for instructional narratives. Christ’s suffering body on the cross or his wounded body resurrected from the tomb became more frequently represented in church art than the nativity, infancy and miracle images of a century earlier. This change was undoubtedly part of a revolution in the means of religious teaching and of the spread of ideas that took place in the early thirteenth century with the foundation of the mendicant friars. Principally guided by the order of friars preachers, or the Blackfriars, founded by St Dominic, and the Franciscans or Greyfriars, founded by St Francis, the movement towards preaching in the community, outside the fabric of the established church, began. This new peripatetic preaching force, skilled at telling stories and ready to move among the people, rapidly prospered, benefiting from royal and aristocratic patronage. It was an urban movement and gradually communities founded new large, aisleless churches in towns such as Boston, Hull, Norwich, Oxford and London that became the repositories of many rich tombs, all destroyed at the Dissolution. By their example and their modes of preaching and worship, the friars inspired the trend towards the increasing assumption among lay people of personal responsibility for good conduct in their religious life. Among the consequences for art was a steady rise in the use of personal devotional aids, such as small paintings or images of saints and chapel reliquaries.
Papal injunctions, such as that for the regular confession of sins and performance of due penance which had been made by Innocent III in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, also had a direct effect on works of art. Closely in its wake came guidance manuals recording the sins and their consequences, such as William of Waddington’s ‘Manuel de Pechez’ of the mid-thirteenth century and Robert of Bourne’s ‘Handlyng Synne’ of 1308. Greater urgency was given to the questions of the fate of the soul after death by the papal confirmation of the existence of Purgatory in 1274.37 The need for each member of the faithful to account personally for living a virtuous Christian life had a steady impact on a whole variety of visual exemplars provided to guide behaviour, warn against excesses and demonstrate virtuousness. Apocalyptic and Last Judgement imagery became more frequent. More than twenty lavishly illustrated apocalypse manuscripts were produced in England during the third quarter of the thirteenth century. It has also been suggested that this sudden explosion of interest in these books reflects an obsession with the coming of Antichrist, possibly stimulated by the fear of Mongol invasion following their reaching eastern Europe in the early 1240s.38 Almost all the apocalypse manuscripts have text in French, suggesting secular patrons. Such expensive products are also often courtly works. The most extensively illustrated, the Trinity Apocalypse (Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.16.2), with seventy-one full-page miniatures and eleven pages with scenes from the Life of St John, is also one of the earliest (c.1255-60). Its patron is not known for certain, but it is believed likely to have been made for Eleanor of Provence, queen of Henry III, and influenced by the Franciscans. The Lambeth Apocalypse (Lambeth Palace Library MS 209) was made c.1260-7 for Eleanor de Quincey, countess of Winchester (d. 1274), who appears in the heraldic costume of her first husband Roger de Quincey (who died in 1264) in one miniature, kneeling in homage before the Virgin and Child. It is one of a group of five which are related stylistically and were probably written and illuminated in London. Her book is unique among the group as it contains many devotional images strongly emphasizing a penitential theme (plate 24.4).
The Douce Apocalypse (Oxford, Bodleian Library Douce 180) was made c.1270 for Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, possibly also under Franciscan influence, and is one of four of these books associated with court artists working in London at another centre than that which made the Lambeth group.39 Stylistically closely related to painting in the palace of Westminster and a little earlier than the Westminster Retable, it has been described as providing idiosyncratic variants of French painting styles.
For personal prayer and devotions, illustrated Psalters were the books of choice until the end of the twelfth century. Several of the more famous examples, such as the Shaftesbury Psalter (London, BL Nero CIV) and the Psalter of Christina of Markyate (Albani Psalter, Hildesheim, St Godehard), are known to have been made for wealthy religious women. Devotional manuscripts in secular ownership were often more than aids to prayer, and acquired a kind of ceremonial status. The Grey-Fitzpayne Hours (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS 242, c.1300) is such an example, given on the occasion of marriage as a precious asset and family heirloom. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the Psalter was largely supplanted by the Book of Hours as an aid to private devotions. This marks a mass shift of emphasis in religious practice as prayers and offices dedicated to the Virgin form the core of the Book of Hours. Most of those in daily use were quite humbly produced and small enough to be held in the hand, but great patrons, such as Mary and Eleanor de Bohun, had several fine and lavishly illustrated examples each.40
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