illuminated

One of the strangest memorials of the Great War and one of the best known works by the nuns of Maredret, celebrated revivalists of the medieval art of manuscript illumination. The pastoral letter of Cardinal Mercier archbishop of Malines/Mechelen was addressed to the clergy and faithful of his diocese in the early months of the Great War, when Belgium was facing the terrible consequences of a German occupation, to encourage courage, fortitude and patriotic duty. Its text was taken by the two most talented nuns of the abbey of Maredret (near Namur), Agnès Desclée and Marie-Madeleine Kerger, and transcribed and illuminated under the most terrifying circumstances. The sheets were at one point hidden in a double-bottomed pig trough to evade discovery during the German occupation. The illumination records in medieval idiom key episodes of Belgium’s trials between 1914 and 191 — including the devastation of Aarschot, Dinant and Tamines, the execution of civilians, the burning of the halls and library of the University of Louvain as well as relief received from the United States. The medieval figures and scenes have subtle (even humorous) modernisations - notably the addition of modern Belgian, British and American flags, while the monstrous Krupp guns are rendered as canons. In each plate, the scenes are explained with brief captions on the tissue guards.

The manuscript was reproduced after the war and issued in this 1921 edition, the prefatory text in either French or English (this copy in French) and sent to supporters around the world, notably in the United States. This copy is one of the 750 numbered copies on Hollande (after 500 on Japon).

J.P. Morgan in New York was to become one of the nuns’ most effective patrons in the years following the war, notably purchasing their Messe pour les Époux made in 1915 in 1921. He had been introduced to the abbey by the head of the British Museum, Frederic George Kenyon via Belle da Costa Greene. The original manuscript of the pastoral letter remains at Maredret (classified a national ‘trésor’ in 2015), while the British Library holds a manuscript copy of a single page (Add MS 40082). The work of the Maredret nuns and the genesis of this book is described by Dominique Vanwijnsberghe, ‘Un Art très monastique. L’atelier des bénédictines de Maredret de 1893 à 1940] in Thomas Coomans and Jan de Maeyer (eds.) Renaissance de l'enluminure médiévale. Manuscrits et enluminures belges du XIXe siècle et leur contexte européen. Leuven University Press, Leuven 2007, pp. 295-309.