The Book of Hours

The Book of Hours is a liturgical volume comprising Biblical selections, largely Psalms, prayers and hymns suitable for the seven seasons of the day called canonical, which are lauds, matins, prime, tert, sext, nones, vespers and compline; the horae canonicae.

The pages in one ancient manuscript (lately purchased for $125), are 360, written throughout on the best of cream-tinted vellum. There are three full-page paintings, and fourteen half-page arabesques (floreated, with birds among the flowers,--grotesques abound, figures half human half animal, and sometimes half vegetable). The floral ornamentation is of many colors, which are as vivid as if laid on, and the vellum is as fresh as if just turned out from a mediaeval monastic tannery. The writing, sixteen lines on a page, might be mistaken for print. Almost every page shows initials of burnished gold. Some pages are resplendent with such an ornamented capital in every line. This valuable manuscript is of French origin. The calendar, rubrics, and not a little of the text are written in French.

The date of the manuscript at first appeared beyond discovery. But it cannot be later than the fourteenth century, the era in which a dot over the letter i was first introduced. In this whole Book of Hours, not one such dot has been discovered. On the other hand, there is internal evidence that the work cannot be earlier than 1386. The longest prayer, filling many pages, is ascribed to St. Pierre, of Luxemberg. According to Moreri, this worthy was born in 1369, but being a boy of wonderful precocity, he was made a bishop at the age of 15, and a cardinal soon after, but died in 1386. In the first mourning for his untimely death, and only then, could his poetry--which deserves no better name than doggerel--find a place in a volume which enshrines the Te Deum, Veni, Creator Spiritus, etc.

In this Book of Hours, we have then a volume artistic and devotional, that has lasted for five hundred years. Anne of Brittany, one of the most charming female characters of French history, whose gentle piety and purity stand out in bold relief against the dark vices of her age, valued her Book of Hours above all her possessions. It is sacredly preserved in one of the great libraries of Paris, and is probably one of the most sumptuous and elegant specimens extant of the illuminated works of the sixteenth century.