Medieval Manuscript

CODEX-RELIQUIEN Original Latin Breviary manuscript on fine parchment from a Book of Hours Netherlands-Flanders, around 1350 Dutch Scriptorium - Masterpiece Monastic manuscript, scriptor, medieval Office Red and Blue minuscules and Lombards 1 leaf = 2 pages from a Book of Hours Leaf size: 15 cm x 11.8 cm Finest parchment The Book of Hours, also Horarium, French Livre d’heures, was a prayer- and devotion-book for the Divine Office, built in structure very similar to the Breviary of the Roman Catholic Church. Book of Hours were initially intended for laypeople, later also for clergy. They emerged in the 13th century and displaced the Psalter from its dominant role as a prayer book. In the Late Middle Ages they were the private devotion book par excellence in circles of the wealthy, literate nobility and urban nobility. The genre reached its widespread and artistic blossoming in the 13th and 14th centuries in France and Flanders — evidenced by the still well-known designation Livre d’heures. Later they came via the Netherlands also into the German-speaking regions. Books of Hours were usually richly elaborated with illuminations. Individual copies belong to the most magnificent illuminated manuscripts ever produced. The most famous and artistically valuable are likely the Book of Hours of the Duke of Berry (1340–1416). Core pieces of the Books of Hours were a Marian Office and the Office of the Dead. The term “Book of Hours” is derived from the specific hours at which prayers were said throughout the day. Originally beginning around midnight with Matins, which over the years was combined for practical reasons with Lauds at three o’clock in the morning, the times were prayed in a tri-hourly rhythm from six in the morning: Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. In Books of Hours one also finds Cisiojanus mnemonic verses that helped date movable feasts of the Church year. I guarantee you the age and originality.

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