Dear Colleagues,
In Erasmus' _De praepratione ad mortem_ (1534) he complains of people who
pray "a subitanea et improuisa morte libera nos, Domine." The annotation
both in the Amsterdam edition and the Toronto edition of Erasmus' works
refer the reader to the litany of the saints in the _Rituale romanum_.
This is misleading, however, since this _Rituale_ first appeared at the
beginning of the seventeenth century.
My question is: Where would this petition have appeared at the end of
the fifteenth century/beginning of the sixteenth century?
I don't doubt that it was part of the litany of the saints. My guess is
that it would be part of this litany as conatined in a Book of Hours.
Erasmus was critical of the practice of reciting offices from the Book of
Hours. If my guess is correct, how do I prove it? Out here in Vancouver
we don't have Books of Hours. The modern books that deal with the Books
of Hours tend to emphasize the illuminations and devote little or no
space to the texts that they contained. I was able to consult a book
displaying photographs of many pages from the Grandes Heures of the Duc
de Berry. Fortunately, I was able to see reproductions of the pages that
contained the litany of the saints. Unfortunately, the litany did not
include the petition quoted by Erasmus. Am I right in assuming that
there was no one stable version of the litany?
I would be grateful for any advice and help,
Hilmar Pabel.
PS I checked the two books edited by Roger Wieck: _Time Sanctified_
(1988) and _Painted Prayers_ (1997). Although they do contain texts from
the Books of Hours, they don't provide the text of the litany of the saints.
--
Hilmar M. Pabel
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC
V5A 1S6
Canada
phone: (604) 291-5816
fax: (604) 291-5837
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.sfu.ca/~pabel/
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