I’ve seen those Books of Hours in museums and they are indeed gorgeously illustrated, almost as elaborately as a full Bible or Service Book. Obviously very precious objects to have on one’s person wherever one went. The thing is you had to be literate. An icon also was “written,” but in a visual, symbolic language that the viewer “read” with the right brain? Just a thought.

What a moving experience, Ruth. I can just see the scene…As for your surprise as a Protestant (see also my reply to David Holm), do you think there is something in the fact that the Protesant Reformation and the churches that evolved from it, in stripping the feminine, not to mention the maternal, from liturgy and prayer etc left many souls bereft? Humanity’s earliest religious expressions included awe of the female principle, if I can put it that way; in my view, the question should be why would we submerge it completely within the male/masculine/phallic principle? Just asking…