The Sherborne Missal gives a bird's-eye view of worship in 15th-century England. The beautifully illustrated and written manuscript was done for the Benedictine Abbey of Sherborne on the east coast of England, in Dorset. It gives the saints days, special intentions such as for the sick, and the words of the mass for each day.Birds decorate the pages. But there are only three places where it hits you in the face why a particular bird is shown on a particular page. The goldfinch, as a medieval Italian symbol for the crucified Christ, is shown with Epiphany, the robin with Sherborne Abbot Robert Brunyng, and the skylark soaring upwards into the skies with the Ascension.
According to MEDIEVAL BIRDS IN THE SHERBORNE MISSAL, the artist must have owned or gotten easy hold of models or sketches. One known pattern book, from possibly around 1400, mainly showed initial letters, with only four leaves of bird studies. But Giovannino De' Grassi's late 14th-century sketchbook, now in the Biblioteca Civica in Bergamo, helped to spread the northern Italian style of drawing nature as it really was, without fantastic add-ons.
Private collectors in France kept the Missal safe from 16th-century Reformation England, until calmer days at the end of the 18th century. Then the Missal ended up in the library of the dukes of Northumberland, at Alnwick Castle. In 1983 the 10th duke loaned the manuscript to the British Museum. With the death of the 11th duke the Sherborne Missal became, in 1998, additional ms 74326, as a permanent part of the British Library collection.
It now is among the exhibits in the library galleries. But only two pages can be seen at any one time, and usually not of the birds. So Janet Backhouse's book is particularly valuable, as the first complete full-color publication under one roof of all the birds.
The author has written many books on medieval manuscripts. But readers might particularly like THE LINDISFARNE GOSPELS and MEDIEVAL RURAL LIFE IN THE LUTTRELL PSALTER, for their similar themes on nature in the English Middle Ages.