1475 Illuminated Manuscript Book of Hours Medieval Breviary 8 LEAVES on Vellum

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

1475 Illuminated Manuscript Book of Hours Medieval Breviary 8 LEAVES on Vellum:
$1500.00

1475 Illuminated Manuscript Bookof Hours Medieval Breviary 8 LEAVES on Vellum

With Very Beautiful Hand PaintedInitials / See Photos

8 exquisite vellum leaves from –

Mainauthor: Catholic Church breviary

Manuscript Origin: Frenchscriptorium, 1475.

Language: Latin

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

Wear:wear as seen in photos

Binding:tight and secure leather binding

Pages:8 leaves

Manuscript Origin:French scriptorium, 1475.

Size: ~6.5in X 4.75in (16.5cm x 12cm)

FREE SHIPPING WORLDWIDE

Shipping:

Very Fast. Very Safe. Free Shipping Worldwide.

Satisfaction Guarantee:

Customer satisfaction is our first priority. Notify uswithin 7 days of receiving your item and we will offer a full refund guaranteewithout reservation.

$1500

Thebook of hours is a Christian devotional book popular in the Middle Ages. It isthe most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like everymanuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, butmost contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often withappropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration isminimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at thestart of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may beextremely lavish, with full-page miniatures.

Booksof hours were usually written in Latin (the Latin name for them is horae),although there are many entirely or partially written in vernacular Europeanlanguages, especially Dutch. The English term primer is usually now reservedfor those books written in English. Tens of thousands of books of hours havesurvived to the present day, in libraries and private collections throughoutthe world.

Thetypical book of hours is an abbreviated form of the breviary which containedthe Divine Office recited in monasteries. It was developed for lay people whowished to incorporate elements of monasticism into their devotional life.Reciting the hours typically centered upon the reading of a number of psalmsand other prayers. A typical book of hours contains:

A Calendar of Church feasts

An excerpt from each of the four gospels

The Little Office of the Blessed VirginMary

The fifteen Psalms of Degrees

The seven Penitential Psalms

A Litany of Saints

An Office for the Dead

The Hours of the Cross[2]

Various other prayers

Most15th-century books of hours have these basic contents. The Marian prayersObsecro te (\"I beseech thee\") and O Intemerata (\"O undefiledone\") were frequently added, as were devotions for use at Mass, andmeditations on the Passion of Christ, among other optional texts.

Contents

1 History

2 Decorations

3 The luxury book of hours

4 Gallery

5 Selected examples

5.1 In Europe

5.2 In the United States

6 See also

7 Notes

8 References

9 Further reading

10 External links

History

Eventhis level of decoration was more rich than that of most books, though lessthan the lavish amounts of illumination in luxury books, which are those mostoften seen reproduced.

Thebook of hours has its ultimate origin in the Psalter, which monks and nuns wererequired to recite. By the 12th century this had developed into the breviary,with weekly cycles of psalms, prayers, hymns, antiphons, and readings whichchanged with the liturgical season.[3] Eventually a selection of texts wasproduced in much shorter volumes and came to be called a book of hours.[4]

Manybooks of hours were made for women. There is some evidence that they weresometimes given as a wedding present from a husband to his bride.[5] Frequentlythey were passed down through the family, as recorded in wills.[5]

Althoughthe most heavily illuminated books of hours were enormously expensive, a smallbook with little or no illumination was affordable much more widely, andincreasingly so during the 15th century. The earliest surviving English examplewas apparently written for a laywoman living in or near Oxford in about 1240.It is smaller than a modern paperback but heavily illuminated with majorinitials, but no full-page miniatures. By the 15th century, there are alsoexamples of servants owning their own Books of Hours. In a court case from1500, a pauper woman is accused of stealing a domestic servant\'s prayerbook.[6]

Veryrarely the books included prayers specifically composed for their owners, butmore often the texts are adapted to their tastes or sex, including theinclusion of their names in prayers. Some include images depicting theirowners, and some their coats of arms. These, together with the choice of saintscommemorated in the calendar and suffrages, are the main clues for the identityof the first owner.

Bythe 15th century, various stationer\'s shops mass-produced books of hours in theNetherlands and France. By the end of the 15th century, the advance of printingmade books more affordable and much of the emerging middle-class could affordto buy a printed book of hours.

Decorations

Afull-page miniature of May, from a calendar cycle by Simon Bening, early 16thcentury.

Asmany books of hours are richly illuminated, they form an important record oflife in the 15th and 16th centuries as well as the iconography of medievalChristianity. Some of them were also decorated with jewelled covers, portraits,and heraldic emblems. Some were bound as girdle books for easy carrying, thoughfew of these or other medieval bindings have survived. Luxury books, like theTalbot Hours of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, may include a portrait ofthe owner, and in this case his wife, kneeling in adoration of the Virgin andChild as a form of donor portrait. In expensive books, miniature cycles showedthe Life of the Virgin or the Passion of Christ in eight scenes decorating theeight Hours of the Virgin, and the Labours of the Months and signs of thezodiac decorating the calendar. Secular scenes of calendar cycles include manyof the best known images from books of hours, and played an important role inthe early history of landscape painting.

Fromthe 14th century decorated borders round the edges of at least important pageswere common in heavily illuminated books, including books of hours. At thebeginning of the 15th century these were still usually based on foliagedesigns, and painted on a plain background, but by the second half of thecentury coloured or patterned backgrounds with images of all sorts of objects,were used in luxury books.

Second-handbooks of hours were often modified for new owners, even among royalty. Afterdefeating Richard III, Henry VII gave Richard\'s book of hours to his mother,who modified it to include her name. Heraldry was usually erased orover-painted by new owners. Many have handwritten annotations, personaladditions and marginal notes but some new owners also commissioned newcraftsmen to include more illustrations or texts. Sir Thomas Lewkenor ofTrotton hired an illustrator to add details to what is now known as theLewkenor Hours. Flyleaves of some surviving books include notes of householdaccounting or records of births and deaths, in the manner of later familybibles. Some owners had also collected autographs of notable visitors to theirhouse. Books of hours were often the only book in a house, and were commonlyused to teach children to read, sometimes having a page with the alphabet toassist this.

Towardsthe end of the 15th century, printers produced books of hours with woodcutillustrations. Stationers could mass-produce manuscript books on vellum withonly plain artwork and later \"personalize\" the volumes.

Theluxury book of hours

Thelavish illusionistic borders of this Flemish book of hours from the late 1470sare typical of luxury books of this period, which were now often decorated onevery page. The butterfly wing cutting into the text area is an example ofplaying with visual conventions, typical of the period.

(Amongthe plants are the Veronica, Vinca, Viola tricolor, Bellis perennis, andChelidonium majus. The butterfly is Aglais urticae. The Latin text is adevotion to Saint Christopher).

Inthe 14th century the book of hours overtook the psalter as the most commonvehicle for lavish illumination. This partly reflected the increasing dominanceof illumination both commissioned and executed by laymen rather than monasticclergy. From the late 14th century a number of bibliophile royal figures beganto collect luxury illuminated manuscripts for their decorations, a fashion thatspread across Europe from the Valois courts of France and the Burgundy, as wellas Prague under Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor and later Wenceslaus. Ageneration later, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy was the most importantcollector of manuscripts, with several of his circle also collecting.[7] It wasduring this period that the Flemish cities overtook Paris as the leading forcein illumination, a position they retained until the terminal decline of theilluminated manuscript in the early 16th century.

Themost famous collector of all, the French prince John, Duke of Berry (1340–1416)owned several books of hours, some of which survive, including the mostcelebrated of all, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. This was begunaround 1410 by the Limbourg brothers, although left incomplete by them anddecoration continued over several decades by other artists and owners. The samewas true of the Turin-Milan Hours, which also passed through Berry\'s ownership.

Bythe mid-15th century a much wider group of nobility and rich businesspeoplewere able to commission highly decorated, often small, books of hours. With thearrival of printing the market contracted sharply, and by 1500 the finestquality books were once again being produced only for royal or very grandcollectors. One of the last major illuminated book of hours was the FarneseHours completed for the Roman Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1546 by GiulioClovio, who was also the last major manuscript illuminator.