Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts

Book of Hours
England, probably Oxford, ca. 1325-1330
MS M.700 fol. 41v

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Innocents: Massacre -- Herod the Great, crowned, sits on bench with legs crossed, raising right hand toward two soldiers in mail, one holding two severed heads, and the other with sword transfixing infant grasped by kneeling mother.
Scene against gold background within initial D with ornament of foliage; spandrels decorated with diapered ornament.
Margins decorated with rectilinear foliate extensions and sprigs of foliage.
In upper margin, hybrid man wearing hood and hybrid bird.
In right margin, hybrid man, wearing fanciful pointed hat, holding club, and heraldic escutcheon of Tuchet (ermine, a chevron gules).
In lower margin, hybrid bird and hybrid animal flanking heraldic escutcheon of du Bois (argent, two bars and a canton gules).
In left margin, heraldic escutcheon of LeZouche (gules, six besants or).