(1) Quotes from The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy:

“Market forces dominated, a fact which permits some degree of confidence in using the resulting compilations as indicators of lay opinion. Lay people wanted prayer-books which, in addition to the core materials of Little Office and ‘Dirige’, enabled them to say their morning prayers, helped them venerate the Sacrament at Mass, or prepared them for its reception at Easter time. They wanted prayers which helped them cultivate that intense relationship of affectionate, penitential intimacy with Christ and his Mother which was the devotional lingua franca of the late Middle Ages, and they wanted prayers which focused on their day-to-day hopes and fears. They wanted books which would provide them with illustrations, indulgences, and other spiritual benefits. And increasingly in the years before the break with Rome, they wanted more vernacular material.”

“All fifteen of the ‘Oes’ [Fifteen Oes of St Bridget] are conceived as pleas for mercy to a merciful Saviour whose understanding of the human condition is guaranteed by the fact that he took flesh and suffered for us, and whose suffering forms and enduring bond of endearment and tenderness between him and suffering humanity. Jesus in these prayers, as in the affective tradition in general, is loving, tender, brotherly.”

(2) Coventry Ring (British Museum)