Tom,
Your passing but tantalizing mention of the
'pictures you have at home' might perchance refer to the facsimile edition (200
copies, I understand) of the Vatican manuscript Rossianus 3, with the 9
pre-Angelico illustrations of St. Dominic's gestures of prayer? (I am told that
the tradition is close to Florence/Bologna, not south France, as some have
thought; Crockett would know). For those of us who are not so lucky, there is www.op.org/domcentral/places/stjude/txtincli.GIF
for the nine miniatures on web. Leonard Boyle wrote an essay on "The ways of
prayer of St. Dominic" in AFP 64 (1994) 5-17. He cites Schmitt and Trexler on
prayer gestures, and also says, 'Whoever the artist was, he belongs to a
tradition of "gestures of prayer" that has its best-known exponent in the
Parisian theologian Peter the Chanter (d. 1197) in his treatise De
poenitentia.'
