Immersive play Perception and use of small devotionalia in the late Middle Ages* - Amsterdam University Press Journals Online
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Immersive play
Perception and use of small devotionalia in the late Middle Ages*
Frits Scholten
In a vision (‘shewing’), the English mystic Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-c. 1416) saw
God’s creation as a tiny hazelnut cradled in her hand:
Also in this He showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, in the palm of my hand, it
seemed, and it was as round as a ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and I
thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’1
Her experience that the whole of creation was as small as a nut in her hand is para-
doxical, since Julian was both an observer of ‘all that is made’ and a part of it herself. A
contradictory spatial experience thus occurs in a visionary space and time called the
aevum, which connects human time with divine eternity or timelessness.2
This article focuses on experiences comparable to Julian’s, induced by the use and
perception of late medieval works of art made for private devotion, particularly so-
called prayer nuts and related boxwood micro-sculptures from the Low Countries.
Through their minute scale and aesthetic illusion, these portable devotionalia pull the
beholder close, potentially causing him or her to sink into a state of immersion, day-
dreaming or other form of meditative absorption, in which the sense of real time is
lost. Although the use of these delicate objects is guided by devotion, they constantly
challenge the user by their virtuoso carvings with numerous minuscule figures and
a wealth of details, thus creating a form of search and discovery that lends their use a
playful and sometimes even amusing character.
Scale
Julian’s view of creation is caused by a reversal of scale and its effect is related to what
is known as kataskopos and in the sixteenth century as Turmblick (‘tower-view’), a
panoramic and expansive bird’s-eye perspective that generates distance with respect
to its surrounding area (or even to earth in its entirety), which thereby becomes so
small that it easily fits into a person’s field of vision.3 This panoramic perspective has its
*
This article expands on a lecture given at the conference Cities of Readers on 8 and 9 November 2018 in Muse-
um krona in Uden and on my contribution ‘Scale, prayer and play’ in F. Scholten (ed.), Small Wonders. Late-Gothic
boxwood micro-carvings from the Low Countries, Amsterdam 2016, 171-210. Translated from the Dutch by Katy Kist &
Jennifer Kilian, Amsterdam. With thanks to Anne Breidel and Bart Ramakers for their valuable comments.
Warrack 1901, 10.
Laugerud 2016, 58.
Busch 1997, 76; Keller & Goetze 1870, 244: […] nach dem wir auff den thurn/ beyde gelassen wurn/ auff dem wir bey-
de sahen/ die landschafft ferr und nahen […] (‘...after we were both left on the tower, whence we both saw the land-
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Fig. 1 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Prayer nut (exterior),
Northern Netherlands (Delft?),
c. 1500-1530, boxwood, diam.
64 mm, on gilt silver chain and
ring,Toronto, Art Gallery of To-
ronto,Thomson Collection, inv.
no. agoid29458 (photo: ago,
Craig Boyko & Ian Lefebvre).
origins in a description of a dream from Antiquity: Scipio’s all-encompassing cosmic
view of the Milky Way in Macrobius’ The Dream of Scipio.4 Visions, dreams, thought
experiments but also works of art, such as miniatures in prayer books and other small
representations to stimulate and support devotion, offered medieval people moments
in which transformations of scale could deepen their insight and broaden their minds.
Kataskopy (looking down from a height) was therefore considered a paradigm for the
relationship between vastness and wisdom.5
Julian’s comparison of creation with a hazelnut is not entirely accidental, because
nuts were often used as a natural yardstick for something particularly small. Relat-
ed to this is the expression ‘in a nutshell’, even though it has only been document-
ed since the late 16th century.6 The origin lies in a handwritten Iliad from Antiquity,
mentioned by Cicero and Pliny, which fitted in a nutshell.7 On a religious-symbolic
level, comparisons between nuts and Christ were often made – without much dis-
tinction between hazelnuts, walnuts and chestnuts. For example, in a medieval poem
on his nativity, Christ was compared to a nut, while Richard of Saint Laurent com-
pared Christ’s body and flesh to a chestnut in its husk beset with thorns.8 The asso-
ciation with nuts and other fruits is also found in late medieval devotional paintings
(Andachtsbilder), devotionalia, and in the meditation literature and ‘godsvruchtige’ (lit-
erally ‘fruit of the lord’, godly) songs of the time, wherein tasting, consuming and en-
joying fruit, and fruits and flowers were used as emblems for the spiritual love for the
scape far off and close by’); also Prosperetti 2009, 41, 42, 142.
For Abbot Suger’s experience as illustrative of the connection between katascopy and meditation, materiality
and spirituality, see Panofsky & Panofsky-Soergel 1946, 63-65 (De rebus in Administratione sua Gestis, XXXIII). Car-
ruthers 2014, 39, 40; Scholten 2016, 174-178.
Prosperetti 2009, 93.
The expression ‘in a nutshell’ is first found in a printed text of 1570; however, the nutshell as a reference for
something small had already been in use for some time by then, cf. Guiffrey 1894-1896, vol. 1, 153, no. 548 (Item,
deux petites pièces, du gros d’une noix, de mine). See the lemmas ‘noot’, ‘neut’ and ‘nootscale’ in the Woordenboek der
Nederlandsche Taal.
Plinius [Pliny] 2004, Book VII: 85.
Levi D’Ancona 1977, 245-248, and 93-95; Neilson 2014, 227.
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Fig. 2 Adam Dircksz and work-
shop, Triptych with The Crucifix-
ion, with two kneeling donors (Au-
gustijn Florisz van Teylingen and
Judoca Jansdr van Egmond van de
Nijenburg), their patron saints Au-
gustine of Hippo and Barbara of
Nicomedia, and other biblical scenes,
Northern Netherlands (Delft?),
1503-1533, boxwood, 195 x 132
mm, Paris, Musée du Louvre,
inv.no. oa 5612 (photo: ago,
Craig Boyko & Ian Lefebvre).
unio with Christ.9 The following passage in a song from the popular compilation Een
Deuoot en Profitelyck Boecxken (1539) is illustrative of such consumptive metaphorical
use of fruit, such as nuts:
Segt haer
Si moet de herde note
Der bitter doot ierst craken
Eer si die kraal der soeticheyt
Van mijnre godheyt mach smaken10
The nut contains a sweet core, which is revealed as soon as the shell is cracked. This
relates to the use of natural nuts and kernels as beads for prayer cords, or of imitation
balls that have been halved, hollowed out and fitted with intricate religious depic-
Falkenburg 1994;Van Engen 2008, 283 (‘fruition of quietude’, [fruitiue quiescere] referring to Thomas à Kem-
pis, Imitatio christi II.3, II.1. For late medieval private devotionalia in general, see Kammel 2000; Randolph 2014, 205-
237; Bagnoli 2016; Perkinson 2017.
Transl. ‘Tell her/She must first crack the hard nut/Of bitter death/Before she can taste the sweet bead/Of my
godhead’, see Falkenburg 1994, 129 (esp. n. 300).
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Fig. 3 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Prayer nut with scenes
from the life of St Adrian of Nico-
media, and of Mary Magdalen,
Northern Netherlands (Delft?),
1519-1530, boxwood, 65 mm
diam., Riggisberg (Switzer-
land), Abegg-Stiftung, inv. no.
7.15.67 (photo: Abegg-Stiftung,
Christoph von Viràg).
tions.11 The best-known examples of them are the so-called prayer nuts – incidentally
the name does not stem from the Middle Ages12 – which had been produced in Hol-
land since the early 16th century. Most of these prayer nuts (and related devotionalia)
come from a single atelier, very likely located in Delft.13 They are walnut sized spheres
turned from boxwood and usually decorated on the exterior with pierced Gothic
tracery (fig. 1).14 An exceptional specimen in a contemporary silver case with closely
engraved decoration on the exterior – personifications of the four elements, with a
nude woman standing for lust, and wild animals in dense verdure15 as symbols of un-
tamed nature – is a variant of the hazelnut from Julian’s vision: a cosmos that fits in
the palm of the hand (fig. 5).16
Seibt et al. 1975, no. B10; Kammel 2000, nos. 109, 110, 123; Däberitz 2016, no. 7; Landolt & Ackermann 1991,
no. 60; Sangl & Heid 2007, 49.
Scholten 2016a, 15-20.
Scholten 2016a, 32-35; Reesing 2016, 276-284.
For prayer nuts and similar boxwood micro-carvings, see Scholten (ed.) 2016 and Wetter & Scholten 2017,
with earlier literature.
It is a literal representation of the concept of silva (woods, forest, foliage) that was used in the Middle Ages to
designate wild nature and raw matter, see Binski 2019, 197-198.
Scholten 2011a.
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Fig. 4 Master Arnt, Jan van
Halderen and Ludwig Jupan,
Passion Altarpiece (detail with the
Crucifixion), Kalkar and Zwolle,
1488-1498. Oak, h. 419 cm (to-
tal). Kalkar, Church of St Nico-
las (photo: author).
There are countless indications that prayer nuts and all kinds of other devotiona-
lia and devotional literature from the fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth century
were not exclusively intended for the clergy but reached a lay audience or were even
made especially for this market. Recent research on the earliest provenance of objects
from this group revealed that most of the documented owners were from the circles
of the Burgundian-Habsburg court, the nobility in the Low Countries, wealthy citi-
zens and members of the urban regent class.17 Only one piece is known to have been
first owned or used by a clergyman.18 Illustrative of this situation is Augustijn Florisz
van Teylingen (c. 1475-1533), a fast-moving social climber from Alkmaar who worked
his way up from clerk to become one of the wealthiest men in North-Holland.Van
Teylingen and his wife were immortalised around 1525 in a miniature format in a
boxwood altar produced in the same atelier as most prayer nuts (fig. 2).19 Other devo-
tionalia from this group were made for members of the urban elite of Dordrecht and
Delft.20 In a certain sense Julian of Norwich also embodies the fact that the bound-
Reesing 2016.
Scholten 2011b.
Reesing 2016, 261-269; Reesing 2017.
Reesing 2016, 272-280.
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Fig. 5 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Prayer nut (exterior
with parcel-gilt silver casing en-
graved with personifications of the
four Aristotelian elements, and an-
imals amidst foliage and flowers),
Northern Netherlands (Delft?),
c. 1500-1530, boxwood and sil-
ver, diam. 48 mm, Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, inv. no. bk-2010-
16-1; purchased with the sup-
port of the Ebus Fonds/Rijks-
museum Fonds, 2010 (photo:
Rijksmuseum).
aries between clergy and lay communities were far less rigid than is often thought.21
Strictly speaking, she was neither a laywoman nor a clergywoman, but an anchoress
affiliated with one of the churches in Norwich. She did not formally belong to an ec-
clesiastical organisation or a monastic order. And although Julian resided in a city, she
lived there in seclusion.
Immersion
Like prayer books, small portable altars (fig. 2) and scores of other devotionalia, prayer
nuts can be opened disclosing minute, meticulously carved religious scenes in both
halves that can encourage or assist users in their meditation (fig. 3). The scenes are
accompanied and introduced by short Latin inscriptions taken from the Bible, litur-
gy, prayers and hymns.22 The opening (and closing) is a symbolic and performative
act common to all boxwood devotionalia. In the late Middle Ages this act was associ-
ated with the revelation and internalisation of divine mysteries of salvation or with
the body of Christ and Mary.23 In addition, what was enclosed sparked curiositas and
prompted playful activities – the literal discovery, unlocking – which, as we will see,
ultimately led to reflection and meditation.24 The barely comprehensible, and cer-
tainly not instantly decipherable, micro-narratives teeming with details in the opened
See Van Engen 2008, for a more nuanced view on the demarcation of lay devotion and that of the clergy in
the 15th century.
Scholten 2016a, 39-43. Cf. Binski (2019, 19, 21, 31, 33), who associates the richly sculpted portals of Gothic ca-
thedrals with the rhetorical notion of occasio, a context or a process that prepares the person for or puts him in the
proper frame of mind for what is inside.
Jacobs 2012, 4-6. Rimmele 2009; Ramakers 2015, 158; Krischel 2014; Rimmele 2014.
Rimmele 2010, 238-240, 261.
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prayer nuts could induce something akin to a vision, comparable to the experience
of Julian of Norwich. As in her vision, the proportions of scale between the viewer
and the minuscule representation in his or her hand are reversed. The miniature ob-
ject thus makes man the omnipotent kernel of his cosmos, of this anthropocentric
universe.25
However, there is more to it than that: the micro-scale of the representations in a
prayer nut (but also, for example, of a miniature in a breviary) can lead to a form of
immersion, that is the process of being fully gripped and drawn in by an object, action,
game or fantasy, as in a dream where scale and time no longer play a role, lending the
devotional item a performative character.26 With respect to larger sculpted altarpieces
from the same period filled with more extensive narrative representations, such expe-
riences have recently also been described as an ‘aesthetic immersion’ into the depict-
ed narratives (fig. 4).27 Once the eye becomes ‘entangled’ in the complex scenes, the
devout viewer will momentarily ‘forget’ that the depicted representations are not part
of his own time and space and transcend their phenomenological qualities, despite
the fact that the border between the beholder’s sphere and that of the depicted scene
cannot physically be crossed.28 Thanks to the power of aesthetic illusion, the hic et nunc
experience is nullified and the divine presence in the altar mobilised.29 This effect will
be most pronounced in altarpieces where the traditional division into separate com-
partments has been abandoned and the carved tableau is one complex sequence of
scenes – a visual puzzle, in which anchors must be sought in order to grasp the rep-
resentations and their order. However, even with such sculpted ensembles there will
never be the same intensity of perception and immersion as with the miniature rep-
resentations of private devotionalia.This is, of course, partly due to the greater distance
and the atmosphere of the public environment30 – for the faithful, altarpieces were
usually relatively far away, behind the altar – but especially the difference in scale.The
smaller the representation, the more intense the immersion or, to quote Susan Stew-
art, the ‘experience of interiority’.31 A sense of ‘temporal closure’ makes way for ‘spa-
tial closure’.32 In other words, it is the (minuscule) space and no longer the feeling
Stewart 1993, 56; Lévi-Strauss 2008, 585; Autsch, Öhlschläger & Süwolto 2014.
Bachelard 1994, 156-162; Stewart 1993, 54-56 (‘the daydream of the microscope: the daydream of life inside
life’). Mellmann 2013, 72; Nell 1988. For a similar effect of immersion in the cinema, see Griffith 2008; she defines
immersion as ‘the sensation of entering a space that immediately identifies itself as somehow separate from the
world and that eschews conventional modes of spectatorship in favour of a more bodily participation in experi-
ence’ (p. 2). Also, Fischer-Lichte 2012, 125-129.
Sadler 2018, 9, 88-94.
Fischer-Lichte 2012, 101-107. For the delicate balance between closeness and distance in these devotional
works, see Strohmaier 2018.
Sadler 2018, 90. For the blending of past and present, see Spiegel 2002, 247-272.
On the concept of ‘atmosphere’ as a fleeting form of spatiality, see Böhme (1995, 31-34), who speaks of the
‘ecstasy of things’, as the special way in which an object manifests itself to the observer. In meditation, this ‘atmos-
phere’ is essential, and the circumstances that determine the atmosphere will therefore contribute greatly to the
spatial experience. On attention and the conditions for evoking attention, see Csórdas 1993; Frank 1998; Seitter
2002.
Stewart 1993, 69.
Stewart 1993, 48. Gombrich (1979, 9) pointed out the connection between the ‘ease of construction’ of a work
of art and ‘ease of perception’: a simple constructed object is simply perceived, a complexly made object, such as a
micro-carving, requires greater visual effort.
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Fig. 6 Volupté, emblem XXXV
from Guillaume de la Perrière’s
Le theatre des bons engins, Paris
(at Denis Janot) 1540, woodcut
(photo public domain).
of time that dictates the experience.33 The twelfth-century observation by Peter of
Celle, the bishop of Chartres, that the human spirit has more capacity for expansion
in a small room than outdoors is also interesting in this context: ‘the smaller the place,
the larger the spirit, because if the body is restricted, the spirit can take free flight’.34
Psychological experiments with scale models have demonstrated that there is in-
deed a direct relationship between the scale of the space experienced on the one hand
and the perception of time on the other hand. The conclusion is that ‘the experience
of temporal duration is compressed relative to the clock in the same proportion as
scale-model environments being observed are compressed relative to the full-sized
environment’.35 In other words, thirty minutes of actual (measured) time is experi-
enced as five minutes, when during that time the person concentrates on a space with
a scale of 1:6. Applied to prayer nuts and other miniature devotionalia, which through
their ‘aesthetic-illusory’ character appeal more strongly to the viewer than a clinical
laboratory situation, this implies that the user can easily sink into a state of immer-
sion, daydreaming (dorveille), or a form of meditation in which real time is more or less
compressed to the scale of the micro-carving: after an hour of meditation the user will
have the salutary feeling of having experienced only a fraction of that time.36
Bucher 1976, 82 (‘Thus the reliquary may suddenly switch scale and grow into a much larger building’).
Binski 2019, 33, referring to Feiss 1987, 139.
DeLong 1981; DeLong et al. 1994.
See Kramer,Weger & Sharma (2013, 846) for the salutary effect of losing awareness of time: ‘Meditation led to
a relative overestimation of durations. Within the internal clock framework, a change in attentional resources can
produce longer perceived durations.’ Fischer-Lichte 2012, 105-107.
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Fig. 7 Diptych sundial and com-
pass (closed), Southern Nether-
lands, c. 1500, ivory, 91 x 73 mm,
Private collection (photo: G.
Verhoeven).
Although brain research in this area is still far from conclusive, recent neurological
study has shown that immersion, hyper-concentration and daydreaming are associat-
ed with a network in the brain that becomes active when a person is at rest and seem-
ingly doing nothing, the so-called Default Mode Network (dmn).37 This is the region
of the brain that is also activated when people fantasise, muse, daydream or when cre-
ativity is engaged.38 The functioning of this brain network increases in old age. A ten-
tative conclusion could be that meditation with the aid of small devotionalia stimulates
creativity and fantasy especially in older people. It becomes easier for devout prayers
as they age to conjure up mental images of what they read, reflect on or discover in
prayer books, devotional literature, miniatures, prayer nuts and comparable small in-
struments for meditation, and to form chains of associations of thoughts.39
The small size of the devotionalia discussed here also implies that many, especially
older users, like plenty of readers of books for that matter, needed optical aids such as
spectacles or magnifying glasses to be able to discern and understand the profusion of
details. In the fourteenth century, spectacles were a novelty and rarely depicted in art.
However, in the following centuries, in addition to prayer books or prayer cords, they
Mellanby 2018, 131, 132.
Mellanby 2018, 132.
Camille 2000; Hamburger 2000; Hamburger & Bouché 2006; Denery 2005; Laugerud 2007; Vance 2008;
Falkenburg 2016, 106-144.
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Fig. 8 Diptych sundial and com-
pass (open), Southern Nether-
lands, c. 1500, ivory, 91 x 73 mm,
Private collection (photo: G.
Verhoeven).
became a regular accessory of people reading or praying.40 It can hardly be a coinci-
dence that some prayer beads prominently feature figures wearing eyeglasses.41 This
spectacled viewing undoubtedly also contributed to the intensity of perception42 and,
for some erudite users could even have had added symbolic value. In his treatise De
beryllo (1458), Cusanus had already interpreted the ground ‘reading stone’ or beryl –
the etymological root of the Dutch word ‘bril’ and the German word ‘Brille’ – as an
imaginary instrument with which the ‘spiritual eye’ can see clearly and even enjoy a
near-cosmic view reminiscent of the vision of Julian of Norwich:
For the early use of lenses and spectacles, see Rosen 1956; Enoch 1998; Kriss & Kriss 1998, 907-908; Mann
1992, 17-57. Hahnloser 1972.
Scholten (ed.) 2016, 179 (fig. 81) and no. 27.
Bachelard 1994, 158 (‘To use a magnifying glass is to pay attention, but isn’t paying attention already having a
magnifying glass? Attention by itself is an enlarging glass’).
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Beryl stones are bright, white and clear. To them are given both concave and convex forms. And
someone who looks out through them apprehends that which previously was invisible. If an in-
tellectual beryl that had both a maximum and a minimum form were fitted to our intellectual
eyes, then through the immediateness of this beryl the indivisible Beginning of all things would
be attained.43
From this point of view, the physical need to use an optical aid to ‘read’ a prayer nut
can take on a symbolic dimension, which, by making visible all kinds of otherwise in-
visible details, brings the divine mystery closer, as it were.
Searching and playing
Even when the conditions thus far described are present, successful immersion in the
representation requires the user to utterly surrender to the ‘aesthetic illusion’ of his
devotional instrument.To enter the illusory world of a prayer nut, for example, means
to participate in a ‘game of make-believe’, as Kendall Walton described this process.44
It is a form of psychological participation in a role-play in which the prayer nut is a
prop, like a doll for a young child, namely a temporary substitute for reality – in this
example for an actual baby – that itself becomes ‘real’ during this game of make-be-
lieve.45 Once absorbed in that game – in our case meditating on, for example, the Pas-
sion – an engagement ensues that is not necessarily limited to the mind, but can also
express itself physically.46 There are several indications that devotionalia, such as prayer
nuts, invite the user to such a ‘game of make-believe’, sometimes directly through in-
scriptions, but more often through their narratives or specific motifs.
The above-mentioned prayer nut conceived as a micro-cosmos in a silver case
decorated with the four elements also has a small text band on its exterior invoking
the user to embark on a quest: ‘soket * vaer */ghi * vilt * hier * vindet/* in *
d arde/* in * vuer*/* in * vater/inden * lucht’ (fig. 5).47 The inscription alludes
to the biblical aphorism ‘Seek and ye shall find’,48 but while in the Bible this text al-
ways relates to God, wisdom or faith, on the prayer nut a connection is made with
untamed nature and the elements.49 The inscription and the engraved representation
were probably inspired by the seventh and eighth chapters in the Old Testament Book
of Proverbs, where the personification of Wisdom offers the reader a parable about the
wiles of a harlot (Proverbs 7) and calls upon those who love Wisdom to search for her
everywhere (Proverbs 8:17 [‘I love them that love me; and those that seek me early
Hopkins 1998, 792-793 (De beryllo, 3).
Walton 1990; Walton 2013, 119-125.
Walton 2013, 122-123.
Walton 2013, 123-124.
Transl. ‘Seek where ye will, ye find it here, in the earth, in fire, in water, in the air’, Scholten 2011a.
Proverbs 8:17, Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 7:7 and 21:22, Mark 11:24, Luke 11:9.
The Four Elements are also extensively treated in Chapter VIII ‘Vanden vier elementen aerde, water, lucht,
vuer’ in Dirc van Delf ’s Tafel van den kersten ghelove, see Daniëls 1937.They can also be connected, according to ear-
ly 16th-century theory, to the system of the Four Temperaments: Air = Sanguine; Fire = Choleric; Earth = Mel-
ancholic =; Winter = Phlegmatic, see Baxandall 1980, 155.
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Fig. 9 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Prayer Nut with Scenes
from the Life of St James the
Greater, Northern Netherlands
(Delft?), c. 1500-1530. Box-
wood, h. 58 mm. Cleveland,
The Cleveland Museum of Art,
J.H.Wade Fund, inv. no. 1961.87
(photo: ago, Craig Boyko & Ian
Lefebvre).
shall find me’]). The inscription on the exterior of another prayer nut also plays with
the idea of searching and discovering: ‘invention infantem pannis involvtvm’ (‘And
ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes’, Luke 2:12).50 In both cases, the
user is spurred to explore the prayer nut. Once opened, the latter prayer nut reveals
the Nativity, after the vision of St Bridget of Sweden, and the Adoration of the Magi.
In the other, silver-cased prayer nut, the user encounters a series of interwoven mi-
cro-images relating to visions, divine manifestations or epiphanies: again, the Adora-
tion of the Magi and St Bridget’s vision of the Nativity, as well as the vision of Em-
peror Augustus, and the heavenly appearances to Moses and Gideon. The prayer nut
users – urged on the object’s exterior to go in search (of God/Wisdom) – are thus
witness to a number of physical manifestations of Christ in the nut’s interior. They
could identify with the three Magi who visited the Christ Child and thus saw the
first manifestation of God’s son on earth (‘Epiphany’), imagine themselves as an al-
ter-Bridget envisioning the sight of Jesus’ birth, or empathise with the Old Testament
Moses, Gideon and Emperor Augustus. Such exemplary themes suggest that the user
was encouraged to arrive at the same kind of insight and wisdom, of ‘epiphanic ex-
perience’ and ‘enlightened seeing’.
The text and iconography of the silver case find a parallel in an emblem entitled
Volupté (Lust) from Le theatre des bons engins by Guillaume de La Perrière (Paris, 1540)
(fig. 6).51 It features a man in the heart of a maze designed as a sphere or circle and
surrounded by the four elements: a symbol of man in the centre of a world dominat-
ed by lust. The accompanying text argues that it is just as difficult for man to escape
from sensual pleasure as it is to break out of this moral labyrinth.The negative conno-
Scholten (ed.) 2016, no. 2.
De La Perrière 1540, emblem xxxv (‘Volupté’). For such ‘moral mazes’, see Doobs 1990, 145-191; also Sebald
2002, 173-175.The first Dutch edition, titled Tpalays der gheleerder ingienen oft der constiger gheesten. Inhoudende hondert
morale figuren, was published in Antwerp (at Widow Jacob van Liesveldt) in 1554.
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Fig. 10 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Decade rosary: Pater-
noster nut and ten Ave beads with
Apostles; Cross, and finger ring
with the coat of arms of Floris van
Egmond (c. 1470-1539), Count of
Buren and Leerdam and Lord of
IJsselstein, and his wife Margaretha
van Glymes (1481-1551), North-
ern Netherlands (Delft?), 1500-
1539, boxwood, l. 470 mm, Par-
is, Musée du Louvre, inv. no. oa
5610 (photo: ago, Craig Boyko
& Ian Lefebvre).
tation of the world as a maze of lust and sin has a positive message in the prayer nut
because of its connection with the religious representations on the inside, for they
can also be experienced as a ‘maze for the eye’ because of their micro-scale and abun-
dance of details. The aim is to seek God and wisdom through prayer and meditation
and thereby eschew the chaos of the wilderness and its temptations.This message was
also (or even exclusively) aimed at wealthy burghers. In his De imitatio Christi,Thomas
à Kempis already pointed out several consumptive compulsions of the inhabitants of
Netherlandish cities that would stand in the way of their spiritual life: the desire for
material goods and wealth, the pursuit of status and social standing, or the weakness
for fleeting gratification.52 The parallel with another non-devotional object from the
same time is noteworthy: a Flemish pocket compass-cum-sundial in the form of an
ivory diptych adorned on the exterior with a Madonna and Christ Child, represent-
ed as the hodegetria (literally: ‘she who points the way’).53 Like a diptych for personal
Thomas à Kempis, De imitatio Christi, I.1 (Admonitiones ad spiritualem vitam utiles), see Van Engen 2008, 266.
A separate plaque of a related ivory compass and sundial (‘diptych sundial’) from the same workshop (New
York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 1987:340) is fittingly provided with a scene of children playing blind
man’s bluff.
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Fig. 11 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Prayer nut with The
Nativity and The Adoration of
the Magi. Northern Nether-
lands (Delft?), c. 1500-1530, box-
wood, diam. 35 mm, The Neth-
erlands, private collection (pho-
to: Rijksmuseum).
devotion, to which it is formally closely related, it can be opened, revealing a compass
rose with the cardinal directions and a circle with the hours of the day (figs. 7, 8). It is
a pocket-size object in the form of a schematic world in miniature, which helps trav-
ellers orient themselves in the maze of the great world, as devotionalia – a ‘moral com-
pass’ – do on their pilgrimage through life.54
This searching (and finding) lends the meditation a performative and playful char-
acter, a game aspect that is also manifest in other devotionalia and the course of which
is uncertain. For example, the traceries and floral openwork patterns on the exterior
of the boxwood baubles arouse the viewer’s curiosity as to what lies beneath this dec-
orative web – a relic, a revelation perhaps? The complexity of these designs is reminis-
cent of a puzzle, a memory game, a riddle canon or a ‘jeu’.55 It is a whimsical aesthet-
ic that could denote a higher divine system of organisation, elicit wonderment and
prompt reflection through its combination of near mathematical order and surprising
turns.56 In the case of a few larger prayer nuts that are not purely spherical, but con-
structed as a regular polyhedron of linked small and large medallions, the user is stim-
ulated to play a different seek and find game: the smaller medallions consist of tracery,
the larger ones contain small reliefs and are alternately recessed and raised. One of
them can be folded up and serves as a hinged clasp, but it takes some looking to find
it (fig. 9). In a light-hearted manner, the user discovers the meaning and interrelation-
ship of the small images. In the case of one prayer nut, the recessed medallions contain
Falkenburg 1985, esp. 102-147 (on the pilgrimage of life).
Perec 1978 (préambule); Westgeest 1986; Kavaler 2012, 90, 91.
Bredekamp 2000, 42; Kavaler 2012, 51, 52, 68, 80, 100; Carruthers 2014, 192.
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Fig. 12 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Devotional Monstrance
(closed), Northern Netherlands
(Delft?), c. 1500-1530, boxwood,
h. 222 mm. London,The British
Museum, Waddesdon Bequest,
inv.no. wb.233 (photo: 6, Craig
Boyko & Ian Lefebvre).
Old Testament typologies of the New Testament reliefs in the disks lying on them,
while two prophets with blank banderoles mark the medallion that serves as a clasp.57
By folding up the latter scene and opening the prayer nut, their prophecy comes to
life, as it were, in the micro-carving inside the object. In terms of shape and size, these
larger prayer nuts recall dice from the same period, thereby reinforcing the association
with a game.58 The beads and prayer nuts on some paternosters or rosaries of the lux-
urious Bildrosenkranz type, such as the one made for Floris van Egmond (c. 1470-1539),
are also dice-like.59 Each bead has four medallions containing a prophet, an apostle
and two biblical scenes, and between which there are banderoles with the Apostles’
Creed and other biblical texts, respectively (fig. 10). In order to read the narratives and
texts, the person praying must rotate the beads between their fingers, a playful series
of actions in which movement (turning, opening), looking (image), memorising, re-
citing (text and image) and internalising transpire in a constant fluid motion.60
Wetter 2011, 15-26.
Scholten (ed.) 2016, 198, 199, figs. 99, 100.
Scholten (ed.) 2016, no. 36; Jäger 2010, 201, 202.
Jäger 2010, 206.
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Fig. 13 Adam Dircksz and
workshop, Devotional Monstrance
(upper section open), Northern
Netherlands (Delft?), c. 1500-
1530, boxwood, h. 222 mm.
London, The British Muse-
um, Waddesdon Bequest, inv.
no. WB.233 (photo: ago, Craig
Boyko & Ian Lefebvre).
Other prayer nuts have a minuscule movable ring (fig. 11), a virtuoso joke by the
maker that introduces a ‘living’ element in the ‘dead’ micro-scene. It seduces the user
into making it move, creating a subtle connection between his real, moving world and
that of the make-believe game in the miniature scene; it is a visual pun to which the
user can symbolically hook his mnemonic catenae of thought associations, memorisa-
tions and contemplations.61 The culmination of this playful exploration and medita-
tion is the unique small boxwood ‘devotional monstrance’ made for Emperor Charles
V. It is assembled from separate elements that can be opened or even taken apart (fig.
12). Each part of the monstrance has richly decorative and figurative carvings that can
give rise to specific reflections, but also invite a kind of playful quest in miniature for-
mat ushering the user through the Passion of Christ.62
That devotional ‘queeste’ begins at the top, with a floral bud-shaped crowning el-
ement that can be set in motion with a hidden brass screw and a gear mechanism.
The bud opens up like a Gothic lily with four petals and from which, as a matter of
course, a tiny figure of Mary with Jesus on her arm rises up (fig. 13). Thanks to this
cunning device, which may have been inspired by contemporary spectacles with au-
For playful chain-making, see Carruthers 1998, 146, 147, 150, 163-167.
Thornton 2015, 186-195. For ‘devotional monstance’ see Scholten 2016a, 47, 48.
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tomatons,63 Christ comes forth into the world and with his incarnation the story of
salvation unfolds in the rest of the object, beginning around and in the base, and end-
ing with the Crucifixion and Resurrection in the spherical central section. It is note-
worthy that the scenes are not presented in (chrono-)logical order. Therefore, using
the object correctly requires a rather complex set of actions, which lead the viewer,
while meditating on the Passion of Christ, step by step to the denouement at the heart
of the object. Because the sequence is not immediately evident, the user is expected
to always think about his next step: which scene is presented now and where is it lo-
cated? In this the user is helped by the texts on and around the scenes, which serve
as aides-memoires for identification and for the corresponding reflections.64 This re-
calls the practice in Devotio Moderna circles of reflecting during daily meditation on
the Passion of Christ scene by scene as ‘reformatio memoriae’ to purify the heart.65
Although Passion devotion is the guiding principle in the use of the object, the user
is challenged time and again by the scenes’ minute scale and their concealment. It is
precisely this incentive to search and discover that lends the object’s use its playful
character, as with all kinds of other devotionalia, both religious and profane ‘toys’.66
Sub specie ludi
Such connections between devotion and play may seem surprising, but in the medie-
val world they were directly aligned because they unified the pleasant with the useful
and served as a distraction from the more serious and ordered aspects of the work.67
Ludus offered the space to think, memorise, meditate, teach and compose freely, and
was certainly not considered to be exclusively empty or sinful.68 In Proverbs (8:30-31),
Wisdom is represented as a child playing (‘ludens’ in the Vulgate) before God during
Creation.Thomas Aquinas, in a commentary on Boethius, acknowledged the positive
relationship between play and wisdom, considering theological study and contem-
plation as a form of play, an escape from the worries and distractions of everyday life,
and concluded with a reference to the same passage from Proverbs.69 In his De ludo
globi (1460) Cusanus described the path to knowledge as a game with a rolling ball.70
Franke 1997. At the 1514 wedding celebration in Paris for the English princess Mary Rose Tudor and the
French King Louis xii, the couple’s emblems of a rose and a lily opened mechanically, see Wickham 1974, 169,
170 and fig. 44.
For the making and ‘reading’ of a medieval work of art as a journey or quest, see Carruthers 2010. Cf. Areford
2010, 85, 86, fig. 33 for an instruction manuscript with ‘flip-up’ illustrations to memorise.
Van Engen 2008, 278, 279, referring to Van Zutphen 2001, 151-227.
Cf.Volk 2008, 276, fig. 5, 6 (‘geschnizltes Spiel’); Himmelheber 1972, no. 16 (17th-century chess piece).
Carruthers 2014, 141-142, 172; Klapisch-Zuber 1998. Also compare ’rocking the child’ at Christmastide, a
devotional exercise for both adults and children with a moving cradle and a figure of the baby Jesus. In the fif-
teenth-century printed devotional treatise entitled Vander gheesteliker kintscheyt ihesu,‘playing’ is literally mentioned:
…hoe men het kindekijn ihesus sal zwachtelen, in sijn crebbeken legghen, baden ende wasschen, er mee spelen, wieghen ende
wackelen, besuysen ende besinghen (‘…how one should swaddle the infant Jesus, lay him in his crib, bathe and wash
him, play with him, rock him, lull him to sleep, and sing to him’), see Ippel 2014, 337.
Van Egmond & Mostert 2001; Arcangeli 2003; Sonntag 2013; Carruthers 2014, 76-78.
Carruthers 2014, 21, 77, 78.
Carruthers 2014, 17-27; Bredekamp 2007, 112; Findlen 1990, 292-331; http://www.cusanus-portal.de.
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Fig. 14 Quinten Metsys, St.
Anne triptych (detail with child
reading and playing with a prayer
book and parchment pictures), Leu-
ven, 1509, oil on panel, 222 x
219 cm, Brussels, Museum voor
Schone Kunsten (photo: au-
thor).
Play that can promote the well-being and virtue of the player, called eutrapelia,71 may
also underlie the scene of the three children playing in the centre of Geertgen tot Sint
Jans’ Holy Kinship.72 The same might apply to a charming scene in Quinten Metsys’
St Anne Triptych from 1509. In the left foreground a child (Christ?) plays with an illu-
minated prayer book and individual religious pictures. Apart from the fact that he en-
tertains himself with adult affairs, which is amusing in itself, he tries in vain to read a
text that he holds upside down (fig. 14).73
In connection with playing with devotionalia and losing oneself in a personal world
of meditation and inward reflection, to which the use of ‘spiritual toys’ can lead, Johan
Arcangeli 2003; Decker 2016. The aristotelic idea of eutrapelia has a modern counterpart in the concept ‘flow’
that in play can induce well-being, for example, see Sherry 2004;Voiskounsky, Mitina & Avetisova 2004.
Decker 2016. For children’s games in the Middle Ages, see Drost 1914; Willemsen 1998; Willemsen 2008; Wil-
lemsen 2009.
Rudy 2015, 241-242.
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Huizinga’s idea of play, as formulated in his Homo ludens, is still useful, even though
his study has been criticised and corrected in parts.74 Huizinga defined play as a ‘free
act’ that is outside of everyday life, not serious in nature and operating within its own
boundaries of space and time.75 The player steps out of his ‘normal’ world into that
of play, a ‘sanctified territory’ that he called the ‘magic circle’, where different laws
apply than in the ‘real’ world and a limited, temporary perfection exists.76 Huizinga’s
magical playground is also often linked to sacred acts, rituals, religion and mystery.77
While his concept of the magic circle is nowadays used less strictly and with more
fluid boundaries, it has not lost its raison d’etre.78 Indeed, in a certain sense, Huizin-
ga’s magic circle is closely related to Walton’s play of make-believe and both describe
a mental and physical state of immersion that is caused by play.
Recently, it has been convincingly argued that there is a biological link between
immersion, play and aesthetic illusion.79 Crucial for this is the evolutionary develop-
ment in humans of a cognitive capacity for meta-representation – a second form of
imagining something in addition to reality, as in a game. Only when awareness that
an imaginary or illusory situation derived from reality takes place alongside that real-
ity is raised can space be created for play and complete immersion in that other real-
ity.80 New research has shown that in modern gaming, such as video games, the play-
ers’ experiences often have a strongly mythical, spiritual or even religious dimension,
even in the case of declared atheistic participants in the online game world.81 Just
like the ‘devotional game’ to which the boxwood prayer nuts, paternosters and other
small items with their miniature narratives invite us, they are characterised by forms
of make-believe, role-play, identification with characters from other mythical worlds
such as avatars and by a temporary, yet often highly intense experience of immersion
and incorporation into that other space. It is an interactivity that extends beyond the
object and ends in a multi-sensorial experience of heavenly bliss.82
Address of the author:
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam
Postbus 1070, dn Amsterdam
f.scholten@rijksmuseum.nl
Huizinga 2008, 35-55. Also 1961; Ehrmann 1968; Calleja 2015.
Huizinga 2008, 35-37; Goldschmidt 2014, 121-150.
Huizinga 2008, 37, 38.
Huizinga 2008, 42, 43, 45-55.
Aupers 2015.
Mellmann 2013, 72-75.
In this respect it is not without significance that the word ‘illusion’ is rooted in the Latin ‘ludus.’
Aupers 2015, 84, 85, 88-91. Frissen 2015.
Frissen 2015, 22, 23 (‘metaphorical spaces’); Aupers 2015; Calleja 2015, 220-222 (‘incorporation’ versus ‘im-
mersion’).
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Summary
Deze bijdrage onderzoekt het gebruik van een groep laatgotische devotionalia uit de
Noordelijke Nederlanden, in buxushout gesneden microsculpturen. Het merendeel
van deze privédevotiekunst betreft zogenaamde gebedsnoten – bolletjes ter grootte
van een pingpongbal – die in twee helften kunnen worden geopend. Elke zijde bev-
at een uiterst minuscule religieuze voorstelling, waaromheen verklarende of intro-
ducerende Latijnse inscripties zijn aangebracht, die de gelovige aanzetten tot medi-
tatie. Sommige gebedsnoten nodigen de gebruiker expliciet uit tot deelname aan een
speelse, meditatieve speurtocht in hun binnenzijde, andere impliciet door middel van
ingebouwde spel- en puzzelachtige elementen.
Door hun minieme schaal en grote detailrijkdom bewerkstelligen deze onvoorstel-
baar kleine taferelen dat de gebruiker zich gemakkelijk kan verliezen in de ontrafe-
ling van deze visuele puzzel en, al mediterend, in een staat van mentale verzinking
(‘immersion’) kan belanden waarbij het gevoel voor tijd verloren raakt. Psychologis-
che experimenten hebben inderdaad het verband aangetoond tussen schaal en ervar-
ing van tijd: de tijdsbeleving blijkt te worden gecomprimeerd ten opzichte van ‘real
time’ met een ratio die gelijk is aan verhouding van de schaal tot de werkelijke ruimte.
Als een persoon zich concentreert op een voorstelling in een ruimte met schaal 1:6,
worden dertig minuten werkelijke tijd ervaren als slechts vijf minuten.
Het volledig opgaan in de esthetische illusie van het devotietafereel in de
gebedsnoot vraagt van de gebruiker deelname aan een ‘game of make-believe’, zoals
Kendall Walton dit proces beschreef. Het is een vorm van psychologische overgave in
een rollenspel waarbij de gebedsnoot rekwisiet is. Tijdens dit spel van ‘make-believe’
wordt het religieuze tafereel even ‘werkelijkheid’, net zoals een pop dat kan zijn voor
een spelend kind.
Het hier gesuggereerde verband tussen devotie en spel lijkt verrassend, maar in de
Middeleeuwen waren beide nauw verbonden. Ludus creëerde een vrije ruimte met
eigen regels – een tovercirkel, aldus Huizinga in zijn Homo ludens – om ongedwon-
gen te mediteren, memoriseren, reflecteren. Huizinga’s spelconcept en Walton’s ‘game
of make-believe’ liggen dichtbij elkaar: beide beschrijven een mentale en fysieke staat
van verzinking die wordt veroorzaakt door zich over te geven aan het spel. Recen-
telijk werd bovendien overtuigend betoogd dat er ook een biologisch verband bestaat
tussen spel, mentale verzinking en esthetische illusie. In het gebruik van de hier bes-
chreven devotionalia komt dit drietal elementen effectief samen.
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