In this section we can find two prayers: Obsecro te, with the owner of the book kneeling in an illustration nearby, and O intemerata, usually not illustrated. Typical of French Books of Hours, the Prayers to the Virgin were usually introduced by representation of a Pietà or a Virgin and Child. Occasionally you may find Saint John on the Isle of Patmos, where he had a vision of the Apocalypse and wrote the Book of Revelation. The way they were portrayed is quite standard: Usually sitting at their desk, writing the Gospels, with their attribute (the angel, the bull, the eagle, the lion) next to them. Usually beginning with and illumination of one of the four evangelist, the Sequences from the Gospels is a part often present in a Book of Hours and is made of extracts from each of the Evangelists. It’s easy to find illuminated pages of labors of the month or local activities, along with zodiac signs. The rest of the saints or festivals are in normal black. It is a oftenly decorated part of the manuscript. Important days, such as Christmas or feast days of the Apostles are usually written in red (“Red letter days” comes from here) or gold. With a list of the saint’s days for each month, the Calendar is always at the beginning of the Book of Hours. We are going to go through the most common ones.ĭetail from the Vanderbilt Hours, f. There is quite some variety concerning which devotional texts were to be included in a Book of Hours, although some sections were common to all of them. The Books of Hours are not all alike, and that’s part of the beauty of these manuscripts. The Book of Hours had the aim of making them able to do just that. In the middle ages it slightly modified its meaning and started to indicate the more or less exact space of time dedicated to praying or doing business. Ordinary people had the desire to follow the example of monastic orders, which had a routine of rituals and prayers to be observed every day. It comes from the Greek word ὅρα, later hora in Latin, which indicated “a limited space of time”, or, more specifically, the 3 seasons the ancient Greeks divided the year in. To understand the reasons why the Books of Hours are called this way, we have to analyze the word: “hour”. In this page, we are going to give some basic information to learn more about these beautiful illuminated manuscripts, and discover some amazing miniatures in the process. By the thirteenth century it became the most used prayerbook in western Europe. No other typology of manuscript has survived in such great numbers as the Book of Hours. The Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry
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