St Julien the Hospitaller from the Coëtivy Hours

Dunois Master, attributed to

Folio with three-quarter page miniature from a book of hours attributed to the Dunois Master, written in Latin and French in a bastarda script, made in Paris and dated 1443–1445. It was commissioned by Prigent de Coëtivy (1399?–1450) on the occasion of his marriage to Marie de Rais (1429–1457). The folio was removed from the bound volume between 1933 and 1960. Beneath rubrics in blue, a prayer to St Julian the Confessor opens with the illuminated initial ‘G’ (Gaude felix anima que a tantis periculis) painted with white, red, blue and gold ivy-leaf ornament. It is one of an unusually large series of forty-seven suffrages, or short prayers to saints, arranged hierarchically. The section opens with a number of prefatory prayers, followed by the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors and Virgins. The miniature is painted in demi-grisaille with pigments and gold and depicts St Julian the Hospitaller. According to a 13th century French Life of St Julien (Vie de Saint Julien) and the Golden Legend, an Oedipal-like prophecy that Julian would kill his parents caused him to run away as a young boy. Fate caught up to him, and after years of searching his parents found his home. Julien’s wife gave his parents their bed in which to rest. When Julian returned from a hunt and discovered a couple in his bed, mistaking them for his wife and a lover, he murdered them sight unseen. To atone for his parricide, he and his wife established a hospice for pilgrims and a ferry service near a dangerous river-crossing. In the painting, Julian and his wife row a leper across the river, later revealed to be an angelic messenger in disguise. The leper holds the clappers of a beggar, while Julian’s wife holds a lantern. The river is here calm enough for ducks and a swan to swim in its waters. In the lower margin, a man walks toward their hostel.