The Golf Book

Donna Serena da Riva

During the fifteenth century the Illumination business saw a boom in production of Books of Hours for the lay market. Commissioned by private families, these books were collections of prayers divided into eight sections that contained prayers to be recited or read beginning with matins in the morning and ending with compline at night. In addition to prayers these manuscripts frequently contained calendars depicting the activities associated with each month.

These Books of Hours were cherished by the families that commissioned them, and passed down through the generations. Because of this care, more Books of Hours have survived to modern times than any other type of manuscript. Members of the SCA should pay particular attention to Books of Hours because of their original audience, the laity. These manuscripts overflow with depictions of people of the time going about their everyday business; both in the miniatures and in the marginalia. The calendar portions of the text are especially useful for this type of subject and it is the calendar of one particular Book of Hours I wish to address today. A Book of Hours known as The Golf Book.

If you have not yet explored the online offerings of the British Library, I encourage you to do so with no delay. Specifically you should go to http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/digitisation2.html to play with the “Turning the Pages” feature. This program allows you to browse multiple digitized manuscripts in their book form. It is there that you will find The Golf Book also known as British Library Add MS 24098. Produced by the Flemish artist Simon Bening in Bruges in the early 1540’s, only portions of the book have survived over the ages; but those that have survived contain depictions of sport and games that are of great interest to any historical enthusiast.

It would be impossible to reproduce the images from the manuscript here in this article, so I have decided to paint word pictures for the gentle reader. Some of the activities depicted are fairly obvious in their intent, while others are more obscure. I do not claim to be an expert in late Medieval sport, and possibly someone more knowledgeable could readily discern the particular games being enjoyed. I hope to read the article from this hypothetical individual in the near future. My intent of this article is to entertain and possibly inspire others into more in-depth examination of period Illuminated manuscripts.

January: In the bottom margin of the left hand page you will find four men pulling a fifth man on what looks like a wooden sled. The man on the sled is holding a ring aloft in one hand. In the opposing margin an additional four men pull a man on another sled, this man has no ring. The pulling is accomplished by a long rope affixed to the front of each sled. Included in the right hand illustration is a man holding aloft a sounding horn, either preparing for or recovering from a good stiff blow.

February: Depicted across the bottom of both pages are several children with sticks and hoops of varying sizes, doing what children have done with hoops and sticks for centuries. And as has most likely also occurred for centuries one set of boys is fighting over a hoop. There is another set of larger boys holding a large hoop with a smaller boy running through the hoop. And in what has most likely been an activity of small boys since the dawn of time: in the corner there are two boys attempting to pee in the exact same location.

March: This month has defied my every effort of deciphering. Here we find four men holding boards about the size of a large open book. From the center of the visible side of each board there is a piece of wood attached with a hinge. There is a fifth man at the head of the line with a stick that has another piece of wood about the size and shape of the Ten Commandments attached along the top of its length.

April: For this month we appear to have a sort of “catching” game. One man stands in the center of several other figures with a spoon like stick and what looks like a cane leaning up against him. One of the gathered crowd is a man holding a bowl or basket above his head in anticipation of catching something. Four other men are standing about with the hems of their tunics gathered in their hands with the same anticipation of catching something.

May: At the far left of the Margin, going up into the side marginalia is a pole embedded into the ground. This pole is approximately three times the height of the men in the illustration, and at the top of the pole something small and stiff is skewered. There are five men with bows and one with a cross bow. One of the men stands at the base of the pole with his bow and arrow pointed up at the skewered object. All of the depicted arrows are blunted instead of pointed.

June: The primary miniature for this month is one of a formal joust. Beneath the joust in the margins you can find four boys with either hobby horses or sticks held firmly between their legs as they mimic the adults in mock jousting. Instead of the dangerous lances they have pinwheels attached to the ends of long sticks held tightly under their arms. And is always the case, there is one boy who has no mount, but only a pinwheel.

July: In this simple depiction we see six children attempting to catch butterflies with their hats. The butterflies are drawn approximately the size of their heads – but that is most likely to make it easier for the illuminator to paint than proof of giant child eating butterflies in the fifteenth century.

August: Yet another depiction that defies my imagination. We find six men with large sticks, three seated and three standing, around a tall forked stick with a large goose or duck suspended from the fork of the stick by its head. I cannot even guess what is going on here.

September: It is amazing how some games have stood the test of time. In this illustration there are four boys playing marbles, one boy on stilts, and three boys standing around a black mark on the floor and looking at it while holding something in their hands. On the opposing page is the namesake of the Book. Four men are playing an early version of golf, and as usual it involves one man who appears to be putting and the other three are discussing his approach.

October: Our first scene of what is obviously gambling. Two men are rolling knuckle bones and three other men are crouched around a set of five knucklebones that have been stood up on their ends in a line. One man has a bag into which he appears to be placing three additional bones that have just been thrown. Of the other two men one is watching animatedly the other is sulking in the back.

November: Lawn Bowling! Five men are shown here bowling on a lawn. There appears to be several animated discussions regarding the placement of the balls in process. One man is preparing to throw a ball and there are three others balls in play. One of these balls of is in the distance with a man standing beside it, both hands in the air in the universal gesture for I don’t know.

December: This final sport brings us full circle to the one depicted in January with two figures on sleds. Each rider has three figures pulling them with ropes. The figures on the sleds are back to back and have extended their hands that are towards each other and clasped them together. One of the seated figures is holding onto the tail end of the rope attached to his sled. The other seated figure is holding on to one of his teammates with his free hand. It is obvious that there is a tug-of-war in the offing. At the bottom of the opposing page there are two children playing on a frozen pond. One child is sitting in a high backed sled shaped seat with runners and has two poles skiing style. The second child is pushing.

At times in our research we become interested in things that are so simple, so much a part of daily medieval life, that no one gave a thought to writing it down. It is unlikely that anyone will unearth written directions for how to play with hoops, but in the margins of Illuminated Manuscripts we can often find the evidence that we need.