Breviary of Marie de Saint-Pol
Summer and autumn offices of Franciscan use, with rubrics in French

University Library, MS Dd.5.5, f. 388r
Paris, 1330–1340
Vellum, 197 x 135 mm (130 x 85 mm), 424 ff.

Marie de Saint-Pol was born around 1303 to Gui de Châtillon, Count of Saint-Pol and Grand Boutellier of France, and Marie de Bretagne, the daughter of Jean II, Duke of Brittany, and Beatrice, the daughter of King Henry III of England. In 1321, Marie married Aymer de Valence, tenant-in-chief of the French king and Earl of Pembroke. Marie never remarried after his death in 1324 and continued to use her maiden name. She founded the house of Franciscan nuns at Denny, to the north of Cambridge, off the road to Ely (1342), and the Hall of Valence (1347), which later became Pembroke College. An anonymous writer dedicated to her a copy of the Miroir de l’âme and she also owned a manuscript of the Conqueste de la terre d’oultre mer, which later appears in the inventories of the library of Charles V and Charles VI of France.

MS Dd.5.5, the second of a two-volume breviary, is one of the most popular items in the Cambridge collections. It was manufactured in Paris and illustrated by Mahiet, a miniaturist who was trained in the workshop of Jean Pucelle. Mahaut, one of Marie’s sisters, also owned a Franciscan breviary from this workshop (now in Cividale, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, CXL). Pucelle is known to have received commissions from several young women from aristocratic families and to have produced manuscripts that indulged in the depiction of playful subjects. Currently about 20 manuscripts illustrated by Mahiet have been identified.

Marie was particularly close to the Franciscan order. St Francis and St Clare are both portrayed in the breviary, and in the original statutes of Pembroke College scholars were required to be kind to Franciscan friars and to give aid to the nuns of Denny, where Marie was buried when she died in 1377. Upon her death, she bequeathed her breviary and her book of hours to Emma de Beauchamp, abbess of the Franciscan nuns at Bruisyard in Suffolk. The Beauchamps were earls of Warwick, wealthy patrons like Marie; and Emma’s mention in the will is sign of a tight friendship between the two women. After Marie’s death, we lose track of the breviary until 1753, when it was first listed in a University Library catalogue.