![]() ![]() Simple manuscripts without much personalization were probably available off the shelf from booksellers in larger towns, while lavish versions with texts and pictures selected for a particular owner were commissioned (often at great expense) from the very best artists of the day. The texts differ slightly from country to country, region to region, and even town to town, and their liturgical content is referred to as "use" (use of Rome, use of Paris, use of Rouen, etc.). The Book of Hours was infinitely variable. Suffrages, or prayers to special saints, were a common way of tailoring each book to its owner-someone might wish to include a prayer to Saint Margaret for a safe childbirth, or to Saint Apollonia for the happy resolution of dental problems, or to Saint Christopher for protection in one’s travels, and so forth. Prefacing each Book of Hours is a calendar listing the important feast days throughout the year, often enlivened by pictures of the signs of the zodiac and the Labors of the Months, activities that characterize a particular time of year. In a similar vein, the Office of the Dead was prayed to reduce the time spent by one's friends and relatives in the fires of purgatory. Typically illustrated with an image of King David, the Penitential Psalms were recited to help one resist temptation to commit any of the Seven Deadly Sins (and thereby avoid the torments of hell). The afterlife loomed large in Books of Hours. Other sets of daily readings include the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit. Recited in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Hours of the Virgin is often illustrated with the Christmas story, made up of scenes from the early life of Christ. Handling a Book of Hours today puts us in touch with the medieval past in a way that almost no other artifact can.Ĭentral to most Books of Hours is an assortment of different texts and illustrations to which a buyer might request modifications or additions. The Book of Hours was, simply put, a religious mainstay of family life-and, in many cases, an intimate witness to that life. It is quite telling that, more often than not, Books of Hours were kept not in stately libraries or even upright on bookshelves, but wrapped up in velvet or precious textile and stored in boxes like jewelry, to be taken out on special occasions, shown to family and friends, carried about in the pocket to church or on pilgrimage. If a family owned one book, it was most likely to be a Book of Hours, treated as a cherished object. It is not uncommon to find a Book of Hours that stayed in the same family through many generations, passing often through the female line, from mother to daughter. They were often given as wedding gifts they held family records of births, deaths, and marriages they were used to teach children to read. Sporadically from the thirteenth century and frequently by the fifteenth century, laypeople at home-kings and queens, princes and princesses, doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, even tradesmen-began to use the Book of Hours to imitate monastic life as “armchair monks.” These treasured volumes were touched, kissed, cradled, admired, read from, scribbled in. Throughout medieval Europe, hooded monks and nuns chanted prayers at these hours, making their devotions at dawn in chapel, between meals, before retiring to bed in the dormitory, and even while in town, with country bells tolling the changing hours. Whatever the name, a Book of Hours consists of a set of prayers to be recited at home eight times (hence “hours”) a day: matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, compline, and vespers. Often called the Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, it might also be designated as a prayerbook, or even (erroneously) a missal. Every Book of Hours is truly unique.Ī Book of Hours may travel under many names. Unlike the Bible, which remains more or less standard today as codified in the thirteenth century, or a great literary work by Dante, Chaucer, or Shakespeare, Books of Hours are remarkably varied not only in their pictorial content but also in their text. However, few people, except specialist librarians, scholars, book dealers, and some collectors can define precisely what comprises a Book of Hours. ![]() ![]() Nearly everyone familiar with the world of rare books has heard of the Book of Hours, the so-called bestseller of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. ![]()
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