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Book of Hours
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, with the start of Matins in the Little Office, the beginning of the texts after the calendar in the usual arrangement.]]
, c. 1440, with Catherine kneeling before the Virgin and Child, surrounded by her family heraldry. Opposite is the start of Matins in the Little Office, illustrated by the Annunciation to Joachim, as the start of a long cycle of the Life of the Virgin.]]
The book of hours is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript.
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, with the start of Matins in the Little Office, the beginning of the texts after the calendar in the usual arrangement.]]
, c. 1440, with Catherine kneeling before the Virgin and Child, surrounded by her family heraldry. Opposite is the start of Matins in the Little Office, illustrated by the Annunciation to Joachim, as the start of a long cycle of the Life of the Virgin.]]
The book of hours is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but all contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, along with appropriate illustrations, for Catholic Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is in fact minimal in most examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of sections, but in books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with several full-page miniatures.
Books of hours were usually written in Latin (the Latin name for them is horae), although there are some examples entirely or partially written in vernacular European languages. The English term primer is usually now reserved for those books written in English. Several hundred thousand books of hours have survived to the present day, in libraries and private collections throughout the world.
The typical medieval manuscript called a book of hours is an abbreviated form of the breviary which contained the Divine Office recited in monasteries. The books of hours were composed for the lay people who wished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life. Reciting the hours typically centered upon the recitation or singing of a number of psalms, accompanied by set prayers. A typical book of hours contained:
- A Calendar of Church feasts
- An excerpt from each of the four gospels
- The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- The fifteen Psalms of Degrees
- The seven Penitential Psalms
- A Litany of Saints
- An Office for the Dead
- Various other prayers
Most books of hours began with these basic contents, and expanded them with a variety of prayers and devotions. The Marian prayers Obsecro te ("I beseech thee") and O Intemerata ("O undefiled one") were frequently added, as were devotions for use at Mass, and meditations on the Passion of Christ.
History
The Book of Hours has its origin in the Psalter, which monks and nuns were required to recite. By the 12th century this had developed into the breviary, with weekly cycles of psalms, prayer-texts, hymns, antiphons, and readings which changed with the liturgical season. The breviary was used by all clergy, but was a large work and was too complicated for general usage, and too expensive for most priests in the Middle Ages. Eventually a selection of texts was produced in much shorter volumes and came to be called a book of hours. The popularity of the book of hours increased after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and continued to grow among the laity until the Protestant Reformation.
Many books of hours were made for women. Prayer books were frequently given as a wedding present from a husband to his bride, and also by parents to each of their children, and sometimes even for sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. Frequently, books of hours were passed down through the family, most noticeably from mother to daughter, which can be seen written into many wills.
Although the most heavily illuminated books of hours were enormously expensive, and restricted to the very rich, a small book with little or no illumination was affordable much more widely, and increasingly so over the periopd. In fact the earliest known example may have been written for an unknown laywoman living in a small village owned by a monastery near Oxford in about 1240. It is smaller than a modern paperback but heavily illuminated on major initials, with a few full-page miniatures. By the fifteenth century, there are also examples of servants owning their own Books of Hours. Most noticeably, in a court case from 1500, a pauper woman is accused of stealing a domestic servant's prayerbook.
Sometimes the books included prayers specifically composed for their owners or adapted to their tastes or sex, including adding their personal names in prayers. Some of the surviving ones include portraits of their owners, and often their coats of arms. These, together with the choice of saints commemorated in the calendar usually included, are the main clues for the identity of the first owner, in the absence of a provenance or inscriptions.
By the 15th century, various stationer's shops mass-produced books of hours in the Netherlands and France. By the end of the 15th century, the advance of printing made the books more affordable and much of the emerging middle-class could afford to buy one of the printed, unbound books of hours for their own use.
Decorations
, early 16th century.]]
As many books of hours are richly illuminated, they form an important record of life in the 15th and 16th centuries as well as the iconography of medieval Christianity. Some of them were also decorated with jewelled covers, portraits, heraldic emblems, numerous illustrations, textual illuminations and marginal decorations. Many were bound as girdle books for easy carrying, though few of these or other medieval bindings have survived. Luxury books, like the Talbot Hours of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, may include a portrait of the owner, and in this case his wife, kneeling in adoration of the Virgin and Child as a form of donor portrait. In expensive books, miniature cycles showed the Life of the Virgin or the Passion of Christ in eight scenes decorating the eight Hours of the Virgin, and less often the Labours of the Months, decorating the calendar. Though relatively rare, the secular scenes of calendar cycles now represent many of the best known miniatures from books of hours, and played an important role in the early history of landscape painting.
By the period when the book of hours was most popular, decorated borders round the edges of at least important pages were common in heavily illuminated books, and many of the most spectacular examples are found in books of hours. At the beginning of the 15th century these were still usually based on foliage designs, and painted on a plain background, but by the second half of the century coloured or patterned backgrounds with images of all sorts of objects, and inset "bas de page" scenes, were used in luxury books.
Books of hours were sometimes modified for new owners, even among royalty. After defeating Richard III, Henry VII gave Richard's book of hours to his mother, who modified it to include her name. Heraldry was often altered by new owners. Many surviving books have numerous handwritten annotations, personal additions and marginal notes but some new owners also commissioned new craftsmen to include more illustrations or scripts. Sir Thomas Lewkenor of Trotton hired an illustrator to add details to what is now known as the Lewkenor Hours. Flyleaves of many surviving books include notes of household accounting or records of births and deaths, in the manner of later family bibles. Some owners had also collected autographs of notable visitors to their house. Books of hours were often the only book in a house, and were commonly used to teach children to read, sometimes having a page with the alphabet to assist this.
Towards the end of the 15th century, printers produced books of hours with woodcut illustrations. Stationers could mass-produce manuscript books on vellum with only plain artwork and later "personalize" them with equally mass-produced sets of illustrations from local printers.
The luxury book of Hours
The book of hours gradually overtook the psalter as the most common vehicle for lavish illumination; the psalter had itself earlier replaced the Bible, and before that the Gospel book in this role. This partly reflected the increasing dominance of illumination both commissioned and executed by laymen rather than monastic clergy. From the late 14th century a number of bibliophile royal figures began to collect luxury illuminated manuscripts for their decorations, a fashion that spread across Europe from the Valois courts of France and the Burgundy, as well as Prague under Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and later Wenceslaus. A generation later, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy was the most important collector of manuscripts, with several of his circle also collecting.. It was during this period that the Flemish cities overtook Paris as the leading force in illumination, a position they retained until the terminal decline of the illuminated manuscript in the early 16th century.
At the beginning of this period the book of hours was the typical text chosen to illuminate, and any serious collection would certainly have included at least one example - the most famous collector of all, the French prince John, Duke of Berry (1340-1416) has left several, including the most celebrated of all, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. This was begun around 1410 by the Limbourg brothers, although left incomplete by them and decoration continued over several decades by other artists and owners. The same was true of the Turin-Milan Hours, which also passed through Berry's ownership.
By the mid-15th century a much wider group of nobility and rich businesspeople were able to commission highly decorated, often small, books of hours, and Flemish workshops distributed these across Europe. With the arrival of printing the market contracted sharply, and by 1500 the finest quality books were once again being produced only for royal or very grand collectors such as Cardinal Wolsey. The last major illuminated book of hours was the Farnese Hours completed for the Roman Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1546 by Giulio Clovio, who was also the last major manuscript illuminator.
See :Category:Illuminated books of Hours
Gallery
File:Offiziolo - L'eterno e gli eremiti.jpg|The Visconti Hours
File:Fuchs.margin.jpg|Calendar page from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves for June 1-15.
Image:Pucelle.jpg|Book of Hours of Jeanne d'Evreux: Arrest of Jesus and Annunciation
Image:Varie2.jpg|Book of hours of Simon de Varie, portrait of the owner and his wife
Image:BLRoyal2BXVFol031vArrestChrist.jpg|Book of Hours, British Library, the Arrest of Christ
Image:BLRoyal2BXVFol054vLifeChrist.jpg|Scenes from the Life of Christ and Life of the Virgin in the same book
Image:Folio 199v - A Funeral Service.jpg|Les Très Riches Heures
du duc de Berry
A Funeral Service
Image:Tower of Babel (Bedford Master).jpg|Bedford Hours; building the Tower of Babel
Image:Deposition chevalier.jpg|Book of Hours of
Étienne Chevalier:
Deposition by
Jean Fouquet
Image:Clovio magi.jpg|Farnese Hours:
Adoration of the Magi
and Solomon Adored
by the Queen of Sheba
See also
Further reading
- Calkins, Robert G. Illuminated Books of the Middle Ages. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1983.
- Otto Pächt, Book Illumination in the Middle Ages (trans fr German), 1986, Harvey Miller Publishers, London, ISBN 0199210608
Individual works:
- The Hours of Mary of Burgundy (facsimile edition, Harvey Miller, 1995) ISBN 1-872501-87-7
- Gregory T. Clark The Spitz Master: A Parisian Book of Hours. Los Angeles: Getty, 2003.
- Meiss, Millard, and Edith W. Kirsch. The Visconti Hours. New York: George Braziller, 1972.
- Meiss, Millard, and Elizabeth H. Beatson. The Belles Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry. New York: George Braziller, 1974.
- Meiss, Millard, and Marcel Thomas. The Rohan Master: A Book of Hours. Trans. Katharine W. Carson. New York: George Braziller, 1973.
- Jean Porcher. The Rohan Book of Hours: With an Introduction and Notes by Jean Porcher. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959.
External links
- General information:
- , Robert G. Calkins, Cornell University
- with a varied selection of examples.
- Full turn the pages online individual manuscripts:
- Turn the pages of the Sforza Hours at the British Library (May require software loading, and time).
- From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress.
- at Houghton Library, Harvard University.
- The texts:
- - An excellent guide containing tables describing all the various uses; also with original Latin texts and high-resolution photographs of many books.
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