Duchess, Queen, Witch – Joan of Navarre and Rylands Latin MS 22

Joan of Navarre (c1368 –1437) is one of those interesting medieval women, thriving in the most sustained period of dynastic conflict in European history, the hundred year’s war. In her lifetime, Joan was Duchess of Brittany, Queen of England, and even imprisoned for witchcraft by her stepson Henry V, who rather satisfyingly, she outlived.

As the daughter of Joan of Valois, Queen of Navarre and Charles II of Navarre, her maternal grandfather was John II (Jean le Bon) of France. Joan was first married in 1386 to John IV, Duke of Brittany, with whom she had several children. After the Duke’s death in 1399, Joan was appointed regent of Brittany as her eldest son was too young to rule. In that short regency she managed to resolve her former husband’s thirty-year political feud with the Constable of Clisson and organise the spectacular coronation of her son John V at Rennes in 1401.¹

Joan surrendered her powers in Brittany to marry Henry IV of England in 1403. There is consensus that this marriage was borne out of genuine affection for each other rather than politics, and Henry even bestowed on Joan an extraordinary annual figure of 10,000 marks to support herself.² Our wonderful Psalter, Latin MS 22, which belonged to Joan, is a clear example of her luxurious circumstances.

For three years Joan was kept in this state of house arrest at various locations, and, excitingly, another of our Rylands manuscripts provides proof of the way in which she was living for part of that period. Rylands Latin MS 238 ‘An Account Book of the Household of Joan of Navarre’ covers her imprisonment in Leeds Castle, Kent, from the 17^th of March 1420 to the 7^th of March 1421. Given the privileges detailed in the document, it was clear Joan was enjoying a rather comfortable lifestyle in ‘captivity’, which included having nineteen grooms (for her stables) and seven pages (attendants).⁴ On this evidence of continued grand living, it seems unlikely that these charges of witchcraft were ever serious allegations by Henry V at all. However, undoubtedly the confiscated dowry contributed somewhat to the costly and sustained campaigns that Henry V was waging in France.  Eventually, Henry came to regret the whole situation and after becoming ill in 1422, just six weeks before he died aged 35, Joan was released.

The importance of the book

Until the popularisation of the book of hours or horae in the later medieval period, Psalters were typically the devotional works owned by wealthy lay persons. Although not as small or portable as the horae, they are still intensely personal objects that would have cost significant sums to produce and, like books of hours, were often customised to the owner’s particular preferences in terms of illustration, illumination and layout. As Eamon Duffy notes, the cost of producing these manuscripts and the visible customisation was part of their point, drawing attention to both an individual’s wealth and in some cases family alliances, displaying a kind of ‘devotional elitism’.⁵ An investment that was both financial and spiritual.

But why particularly would a book have been important to a woman like Joan of Navarre? The book turns up time and time again in medieval illuminations, sometimes within a donor portrait, and very often in depictions of the ultimate version of womanhood, the Virgin Mary. Mary is frequently shown reading her own horae, particularly in Annunciation miniatures. For women, books were an important symbol of piety, and practically, books and clothing were equally important as valuable goods that could be easily passed down the family line, (especially to other women) in way that property and land could not. Like the Virgin, noble women were, in turn, role-models to other medieval women. As Eleanor Janega suggests, these high-ranking women were set apart by their education and the commissioning (patronage) reading and displaying of books, constituted a necessary part of their role in society.⁶

Latin MS 22 – A closer look

It wasn’t always understood that our beautiful 13^th-century Psalter was once owned by Joan of Navarre. This manuscript, like so many in the John Rylands Library, came from the extraordinary collection of the Earls of Crawford, Alexander William Crawford Lindsay, 25^th Earl of Crawford, 8^th Earl of Balcarres (also Lord Lindsay between 1825 and 1869) and his son, James Ludovic Lindsay, 26^th Earl of Crawford and 9^th Earl of Balcarres. In fact, we learn from  A Descriptive Catalogue of the Latin Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library at Manchester,⁷ that Lord Lindsay had thought the signature on fol. 2v to be that of the Joan who married Alexander II of Scotland, and has even erroneously pencilled a note to this effect on a front fly-leaf. With Lord Crawford’s permission, the manuscript was taken to Paris in October 1895 by his librarian Mr. Edmond so that M.L. Delisle, a renowned scholar and then librarian at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, could examine it. Delisle identified the signature as that of Joan of Navarre in December 1895, writing,

‘La signature ‘ROYNE J AHANNE’ est incontestablement celie de Jeanne de Navarre’

And here it is:

Like most medieval manuscripts, Latin MS 22 has not remained completely intact or indeed unscathed by cultural and political forces. The manuscript begins as is usual in Psalters and horae with a Calendar, although it is incomplete; missing two leaves that would cover the months of January, February, September and October. The remaining leaves feature charming miniatures depicting the labours of the months and the signs of the zodiac. There are also signs of erasures on certain devotional days in the Calendar, most likely a result of post-Reformation religious censorship.

Following the Calendar is an incomplete but stunningly illuminated Prefatory Cycle consisting of five full-page miniatures, each containing ten medallions illustrating scenes from the Life of Christ. These intricate images gleaming with burnished gold would not only have demonstrated the wealth of the owner, but also symbolised the divinity of the images themselves – images intended for serious and pious meditation. The gold working equally here to represent the light of Christ and the eternal nature of God. Sadly, it has been estimated that that the cycle was likely much more extensive originally, potentially spanning more than thirty-two leaves and encompassing up to 320 scenes.⁸

After the Calendar and the Prefatory Cycle comes the Psalter which, although partially incomplete as some small sections of text are missing, contains the Vulgate version of all 150 Psalms, embellished with historiated initials. The manuscript concludes with eleven Canticles, an Athanasian Creed, and ends with the Litany of Saints.

Which is where the story becomes interesting.

It was understood that numerous leaves were missing from the text, and in reality these are hardly ever recovered and reconciled with the original work. However, in July 2024, my wonderful colleague Ourania Karapasia (Digital Metadata Specialist) was working on a digital record for Latin MS 22, when, incredibly, she came across one of the missing leaves being offered at an auction. Astonished, and acting with some speed, the library successfully acquired the leaf, which now completes Psalm 118[119], specifically verses 71–89. This leaf is now our Latin MS 22a and can be found as folio 132A in Latin MS 22 on Manchester Digital Collections. Psalm 118 as it is in the Latin Vulgate, is in fact the longest Psalm and one of several alphabetic acrostic poems in the Bible. Its verses are divided into twenty-two stanzas, each beginning with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Within the Eastern Orthodox Church there is a tradition that King David used this Psalm to teach his young son Solomon the alphabet, not simply for writing but as an alphabet of spiritual life.⁹ The fact that this important Psalm is now available to study in its completeness is certainly a joyful thing.

When and why the leaf had been removed is impossible to tell; it was certainly separated from the manuscript before its purchase by Lord Crawford in 1869. During much of the 20^th century, the leaf had passed through the hands of various private collectors, and recently it was part of the Böhlen Collection, owned by Dr. Ernst Böhlen, who consigned it to Sotheby’s in 2024.

Whatever the reasons, we can happily say that Ourania’s outstandingly detailed record is now fully live in the Manchester Digital collections, with the additional leaf digitally reunited with its former home.

---

All images unless otherwise stated are copyright of the University of Manchester and can be used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike Licence.

---

Bibliography:

• https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/learning/medievalwomen/theme3/propertyownership.aspx

Royal People: Queen Joan of Navarre’s Confinement as a Witch

---

1. DNB, Joan of Navarre https://doi-org.manchester.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14824 ↩︎
2. DNB, Joan of Navarre https://doi-org.manchester.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/14824 ↩︎
3. Myers, A R, The Captivity of a Royal Witch, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1941-10, Vol.26 (1), p. 264 ↩︎
4. Myers, A R, The Captivity of a Royal Witch, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 1941-10, Vol.26 (1), p. 267 ↩︎
5. Duffy, Eamon, Marking the hours: English people and their prayers 1240-1570, c2006. p.19 ↩︎
6. Janega, Eleanor, The once and future sex: going medieval on women’s roles in society, 2023; First edition. p.189 ↩︎
7. James, Montague Rhodes, and Frank Taylor. A Descriptive Catalogue of the Latin Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library, comprising a reprint of M.R. Jame’s 1921 Catalogue, with Introduction and Additional Notes by F. Taylor. Kraus Reprint, 1980, pages 64-71 ↩︎
8. Zaluska, Yolande. Le Psautier Manchester, John Rylands University Library, ms. lat. 22 et les Évangiles dans la Bible moralisée. In: Iconographica. Mélanges offerts à Piotr Skubiszewski. Poitiers: Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale, 1999, pages 231-250 ↩︎
9. https://lychnos.org/psalm-118-119-greek/ ↩︎