January: the 'Golf' Book of Hours

The month of January from the "Golf" Book of Hours,  Simon Bening, Bruges c. 1540

© the British Library 

This beautiful Calendar page comes from a luxury Book of Hours, containing prayers and psalms for private worship, with each month showing the traditional European labours of the month.  January usually shows someone warming themselves by the hearth, or vigorously chopping wood, as many country dwellers will be doing even nowadays.  This illumination has several other popular images included, such as the windmill, the pigeonloft and farm animals, all in deep snow.  The 1500s saw Europe's "little Ice Age" taking hold -- in England the Thames froze in December and January (1536/37) so that King Henry VIII could travel on the ice by sleigh between London and Greenwich.

The Renaissance style borders in this Book of Hours show seasonal sports and pastimes, hence its name as the "Golf Book", and January shows boys happily sledging.  This is, of course, a particularly idealised view of ordinary villagers' life in January, with the blue-robed mother and child a reminder of the Nativity.  Prosperous, well-wrapped villagers and townsfolk are leaving a church which would not have looked out of place in the miniaturist's home town of Bruges, which can look particularly beautiful in winter when its canals are frozen and the trees are bare.

Capricorn: the goat with a tail

This month sees Capricorn the goat usher in the winter, although unlike this image from a medieval manuscript, the true sign is a sea-goat, with coiled serpent-like hindquarters.  As a goat, it is linked in classical myth with the god Pan (who leapt into a river and grew a fishtail, to escape the giant Typhon), and with the forest satyrs, or is shown drawing Bacchus' chariot, and is a symbol of lust to be overcome in christian art.

Capricornus, from a medieval calendar book

Capricorn appears with serpent tail in Henry VIII's great clock at Hampton Court Palace ( seen just above Sagittarius with his arrow). With its many dials, the clock shows the phases of the moon and the times of high tide at London Bridge - essential knowledge for river transport to and from the Palace.

Hampton Court Palace astronomical clock, by Nicholas Oursian, 1540

The zodiacal Capricorn image with coiling tail was also chosen by the Florentine ruler, Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as his impresa, or personal device, together with his motto, "Fidem fati virtute sequemer" : I shall pursue with valour the promise of Destiny.  He believed the influence of the stars had brought him victory against Siena under the sign of Capricorn.

Cosimo's capricorn impresa in the Laurentian Library, Florence 

Designed by Michelangelo, the library was opened by Cosimo in 1571.  The stained glass windows, after drawings by Vasari, were added later.  Here the Capricorn figures act as supporters to the central Medici coat of arms.

A Tudor writing box

Writing-box from the court of Henry VIII, wood, covered with painted and gilded leather, c. 1525
Figures represented are Mars and Venus, head of Christ and St. George, and Paris and Helen of Troy in roundels (after designs by Hans Burgkmair).

©  Victoria & Albert Museum

Byland Abbey

"27 April.   R. and I drive over to Rievaulx, where they are to video the titles of Irwin's TV history series,  Heroes or Villains?, in the sequence which opens the second act of the play.  En route we stop and have our sandwiches at Byland, where we are the only visitors this cold and cloudy morning.  As an abbey it's always more peaceful because less dramatically situated than either Rievaulx or Fountains, on a flat and boggy plain backed by woods and often quite hard to find.  A notable feature is an alleyway of reading carrels backing the cloister, together with many surviving stretches of medieval tiled floor, but much the most numinous object is a green earthenware inkwell found in the chapterhouse during excavations and now in the abbey museum;  it was presumably used, possibly for the last time, to sign the deed of surrender handing the abbey over to Henry VIII's commissioners."

Untold Stories  (Diaries 1996-2004)  Alan Bennett