Book of Hours, Use of Angers (c. 1490)
(The numbering of Psalms follows the King James Authorised Version throughout.)
Click here to view the complete manuscript.
Before the advent of printing, books were written by hand. Such books took months, even years to complete. The most popular book was the Book of Hours, a collection of prayers marking the canonical hours of the day. Here I give a detailed description of a French Book of Hours, written in Latin. Books of Hours vary from region to region. This one is use of Angers (i.e., intended for use in and around Angers). and was probably written in or around Rouen, in or about they year 1490. It has 138 leaves and contains two miniature paintings.
Here is an enlarged detail of one of the two paintings, depicting the biblical scene called the Annunciation, in which the archangel announces to Mary that she will be the mother of Christ:
Printed books of hours were beginning to be produced at about the time that this book was composed, but this is a manuscript book. These books were not made of paper; each page is made from a type of scraped calfskin, called vellum, and is much stronger and longer-lasting than ordinary paper.
The script is a variety of Gothic, known as Textus Quadratus, or square-foot Gothic. Below are two examples of the fine Gothic handwriting, both with beautifully illuminated capital letters and, in one case, a decorated border:
As these pictures show, each page was produced with painstaking care and detail. But what was the purpose of these beautifully crafted books? They were used as guides to prayer. The large letter ‘D’ in the right-hand picture above is the first letter of ‘Deus’ (i.e., ‘God’), and the picture to its left shows prayers addressed to the saints. Saint Ambrose and Saint Gregory are among the saints included in this section.
These Books of Hours were tremendously popular. Merchants, traders, wealthy professionals and members of the nobility – almost everyone who could afford one possessed one. As Professor Edith Kirsch, of Colorado College, puts it: ‘We know, given their good survival rate, that Books of Hours must have had the combined popularity of Danielle Steel and Stephen King’. However, the process of making these books was expensive, and beyond the reach of many people. To meet the popular demand for books like this, around the time that this book was produced, printed books of hours were starting to appear. One of the great printers of books of hours was Gilles Hardouyn.
The Calendar
A Book of Hours begins with a Calendar. The calendar was a guide to the use of the book. It was referred to, rather than read. In this case, the calendar pages are fairly simple and practical, as can be seen from the picture below, which has the second half of November on the left and the first half of December on the right. The Latin numbers at the left of the page are called “Golden Numbers”, which were used to calculate the date of Easter and other festivals whose date was determined by the moon. The repeated series of letters (from “a” to “g”) represents the seven days of the week (which of course would change from year to year). Each month begins with the illuminated letters “KL” (“Kalends”) , and states how many days there were in the month. (The illuminated “KL” for January has been cut out of this Book of Hours.) December, for example, begins with “December habet dies xxxi” (“December has 31 days”).
Days are recorded according to the festivals celebrating the saints. Less important celebrations are marked in black, and the more important festivals are marked in red. This is the origin of the expression “red-letter day,” meaning a very important fixture or event.
Depending on exactly which saints are listed in the calendar, it is possible to determine the area in which a Book of Hours was intended to be used and (sometimes) the area in which it was written. In this case, the calendar shows that this Book of Hours was used in the region of Angers, in France.
Matins
The main content of any Book of Hours is to mark the eight canonical hours of the day, the Hours of the Virgin. The first canonical hour, at about 2 a.m., is Matins, sometimes called Vigil. In this particular Book of Hours, it begins with a painting of the Annunciation, as shown in the picture above. Like the rest of the Hours, it starts with a versicle (in this case, “Domine labia mea aperies” – “Lord, thou shalt open my lips”), followed by a response (“Et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam” – “And my mouth shall sing thy praise”). These words are the standard beginning to the Hour of the Virgin in all Books of Hours.
These details from the border to this page show a curious dwarf-like figure and a game bird, with a curious face. Such figures were common in Books of Hours, but their precise meaning is, in many cases, still a mystery.
Lauds
The next canonical hour is Lauds, which took place at dawn. The opening words, like those of all the following hours except for Compline (the last one) are “Deus, in adiutorium meum intende…” (O God, come to my assistance), followed by the response, “Domine, ad adiuvandum me festina” (O Lord, make haste to help me).
Prime
Lauds marked the end of the night, while Prime marks the beginning of day, so these two would have taken place more or less one after the other.
Terce
Terce was around 9:00 a.m.
Sext
Sext, oddly enough, is the fifth of the canonical hours, at around midday.
None
None was in the middle of the afternoon.
Vespers
Evening prayers.
Compline
The last of the canonical hours, before going to bed. This opens with the words “Converte nos, Deus salutaris noster…” (Turn us, O God our saviour).
The canonical hours form the main part of any Book of Hours. Each section contains hymns, Psalms, lessons from Scripture, prayers and so on that were considered appropriate to the time of day.
One day, if I have time, I might identify the particular Psalms, prayers, etc., contained in this particular Book of Hours. For now, though, let’s move on.
Supplementary content
After the Hours of the Virgin a Book of Hours will usually contain the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit (though sometimes these are incorporated into the Hours of the Virgin). These are much shorter than the Hours of the Virgin, and consist essentially of additional prayers, which could be used as a variant to the prayers given in the Hours of the Virgin. In this Book of Hours the Hours of the Virgin begin on leaf 16r and continue to leaf 55v (the numbering of the leaves was a much later addition, probably done in the 18th century, when the book was rebound).
Compline, the last of the canonical hours, ends with the “Nunc dimitis”. Additional prayers begin on 55v and continue to the end of 56v. There is then, sad to relate, a missing page:
The fact that a page is missing here can be seen in two ways. The first is that there is a break in the continuity of the text; leaf 57 (on the right) starts in the middle of the first of the seven Penitential Psalms. This was the next major part of a typical Book of Hours. The previous page gives variant prayers for Compline, which should immediately precede the Penitential Psalms. The second sign that a page is missing is that the previous page has stains of what was clearly a highly illuminated page.
An illuminated page, with a painted border, is what one would expect here, at the beginning of an important section. Thus, regrettably, this Book of Hours contains only six and a half of the seven Penitential Psalms (though the text itself is repeated in the Office of the Dead), and lacks the illuminated opening to this section of the book.
The Penitential Psalms (which include the famous “De Profundis” – “Unto the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord”) express the regret of the sinner and the cry for forgiveness, but were also believed to reduce the amount of time the dead would have to spend in Purgatory before they could go into Heaven.
After the Penitential Psalms comes the Litany, preceded by the Kyrie Eleison: (“Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy”).
The Litany
The Litany of Saints is a long invocation to the saints, asking them to “pray for us” (“Ora pro nobis”). It covers some seven pages.
Following the Litany of Saints comes the Litany of Petitions, things specially prayed for. First come the “Ab” (“from”) petitions (such as “Ab omnii malo” – [“protect us] from all evil”), then the “Per” (through) petitions (“Per baptismum tuum” – “Through your baptism [deliver us]”, etc.), and finally the “Ut” (“that”) petitions (“Ut pacem nobis dones” – “That you may give us peace”, etc.).
“Ab” petitions
“Per” petitions
“Ut” petitions
The Litany ends with the Agnus Dei and another Kyrie Eleison:
The Office of the Dead
Following the Litany comes the Office of the Dead. This, too, is a very important part of a Book of Hours. It consists of prayers specially designed to relieve the suffering of souls in Purgatory, and to hasten their journey to Heaven. This is the subject of the second of the two paintings in this Book of Hours:
So far, this Book of Hours has contained all that one would expect. There is nothing particularly unusual about it. From now on, though, it gets more and more anomalous.
The Office of the Dead starts conventionally enough, with the antiphon “Placebo Domino”, followed by the opening words of Psalm 116 (see the left-hand side of the image above).
Then comes the painting (on the left, above. Clearly, the painting is damaged and, for a long time, I had difficulty working out what exactly it was supposed to depict.
Then I saw this, from an earlier (c. 1440) use of Angers Book of Hours, and my puzzling was over. Both paintings depict the Procession to the Graveyard. The cityscape, the grouping of the people, the cross being held aloft by the figure on the extreme left, the position of the coffin, the colour of the funeral pall, the positioning of a coat of arms on the funeral pall – there could be little doubt, not only that this was a depiction of the same scene, but that the picture in my Book of Hours had been influenced by the earlier picture, or by another like it. In fact, the Procession to the Graveyard was a typical illustration accompanying the Office of the Dead.
Looking very closely at the posts in the background of the painting, I found that the curious white markings about three quarters of the way up had black holes in them where eye-sockets would be on a skull. Illustrations of the Office of the Dead not infrequently included representations of skulls. Partly, this may have been a reference to the twelfth Station of the Cross (i.e., the story of Christ’s Crucifixion), which takes place at Golgotha, “the place of the skull”.
The verso of this painting is the only blank page in the entire book. It has been written on in French, but it is so faded I can’t make out most of what it says. The words “St. Nicodesme” remain legible and, since he is the patron saint of undertakers and pallbearers, it seems likely that the French text is related in some way to the painting:
Psalm 116 continues on the facing page, and the next few pages continue with the Vespers of the Office of the Dead with no significant anomalies, up to the Oration:
A hiatus in the text
Before reaching the end of the Oratio, the final part of the Vespers of the Office of the Dead, the text breaks off after “Fidelium Deus omnium” (God of all the faithful) and the rest of the Office of the Dead is dismissed with a brief “et cetera” (line 3 of the right-hand page).
The scribe then announces, in red letters, “Inicium sancti evangelii in secundum volumen” (“the start of the holy evangelist” [i.e. the Gospel According to St. John] “in the second volume” [i.e., the New Testament]; see picture, left). The Gospel Lesson of John (“In principio erat verbum” – “In the beginning was the Word”), which follows, conventionally comes at the beginning of a Book of Hours.
That’s pretty unusual, but, turning over the page, we find something even odder:
After John 1:14 (“Et verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis. Et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a patre plenum gratiae et veritatis.” – “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”), the scribe adds a collect, beginning, “Protector in te sperantium” (“The protector of those that trust in you”), and then, on the right-hand page, there is a complete break in continuity.
The script is still a Textus Quadratus Gothic hand, but it is a different hand from the preceding script. Capitals are written in a simpler style, with no gold or other illumination.
This script runs from leaves 79 to 120, and looks at first sight like a completely extraneous additon to the main text. In fact, however, the content of these leaves is closely related to the rest of the text. They contain the Matins and Lauds of the Office of the Dead, precisely the sections which were omitted from the main text. The “Dirige” and “Verba Mea…” at the head of the page on the right (above) are the opening antiphon and Psalm of the Matins of the Office of the Dead.
Lauds, the third and final part of the Office of the Dead, begins at the bottom of the recto of leaf 105 (above), with the antiphon “Exultabunt” and is followed by the Psalm “Miserere mei Deus…” (below).
Lauds of the Office of the Dead ends on leaf 119r, and is followed, in a simpler hand, by a “Prayer to Jesus Christ”:
The prayer ends on the verso of leaf 120 and, on leaf 121, the script changes back to the square foot Gothic of the earlier part of this Book of Hours. The text is part of “Obsecro te” (I beseech you), a prayer to the Virgin Mary and begins in mid-sentence:
The last few pages of the text consist of prayers, including one in French:
Finally, two other hands have added a couple of prayers:
Thoughts
Most surviving Books of Hours have had a bumpy ride. Over time, pages get damaged or lost, manuscript additions get made to the original text. All that is to be expected. But the break in the original text and the insertion of a quite different Office of the Dead in this Book of Hours is particularly anomalous.
Were these “mystery pages” taken from another source and matched to this book at a later stage? It’s possible – indeed likely – but they are written on exactly the same kind of vellum and marked out for seventeen lines of text in exactly the same way as the rest of the book. Seventeen is not unusual, but many Books of Hours had a different number of lines, and different line spacing. Furthermore, the script is in substantially the same variant of Textus Quadratus (which had many variants). The capitals are different, of course, but otherwise the two scripts are very similar.
Are the pages of the Office for Dead older then the rest of the text or more recent? I really couldn’t say. There may be calligraphic experts out there who could answer that question, but it’s beyond my ken.
It’s curious that the first (main) scribe curtailed the Office of the Dead (fo. 77v, pictured above( shortly before these pages. I’m tempted to see a connection between the two. Perhaps the individual commissioning the book realised they already had the Office of the Dead separately, or ran out of cash and went for a cheaper transcription. Perhaps the original scribe died and another took over.
I can see many possible scenarios, but none of them really explains the gaps in the original text and the insertion of the differently-formatted Office of the Dead. In all likelihood, the mystery will remain a mystery.
Click here to view the complete manuscript.