19 - The Wounded Missal

Summary

This chapter examines ‘the Stainton Missal’, a small folio in 8s, which survives in York Minster Library. It was printed in Paris in 1516 for use in York. The provenance covers a narrow geographical field, spanning the Reformation in emblematic form. In the exactly 500 years of its life, to this day, it has never moved outside of a small triangle in North Yorkshire, between York itself and the edges of the Dales and the Moors. However, the sensational aspect of the book is concealed by these details. At the opening of the Te igitur at the beginning of the Canon, the eye is confronted, we might say assaulted, by a vigorous slash, diagonally across the image of the Cross. Below, through the next dozens of leaves, is another, deeper gouge, in the opposite direction to the slashed crucifix, forming a reverse cross. The book is an astonishing example of iconoclasm. In this chapter, this macabre object is opened out to the fate more broadly of the fate of ritual books. How does the destruction of books relate to their consecration or preservation, and how does this relate to the history of memory before and after the Reformation?