Book of Hours

BOOK OF HOURS. - From the ecclesiastical Latin "Horae" (the seven parts into which the divine office is divided) it is a devotional book for the use of the faithful, characterized by the presence of the Little Office of the Virgin and the Office of the Dead, which constitute its essential part. Composed in part of liturgical texts coming from the Breviary, so that it could be called the layman's Breviary, the B. of H. (in French Livres d'Heures, English Prymers, Spanish L. de Horas, German Stundenbuch) is part of the extraliturgical euchology that nourished the piety of the faithful in the last centuries of the Middle Ages and the first of the modern era.

I. ORIGIN AND CONTENT

The Book of Hours must not be confused either with the Libelli precum or the Preces devotae, whose prototypes go back to the Carolingian era (cf. the edition by A. Wilmart, Precum libelli quattuor aevi Karolini, Rome 1940; id., Manuel de prières de st Jean Gualbert, in Rev. bénéd., 48 [1936], pp. 259-92, an 11th-century copy of a 9th-century prototype), nor with the Psalter, which was practically the most common prayer book down to the end of the 13th century. From Corbie and the great Carolingian Benedictine abbeys (reform of St. Benedict of Aniane) originated the custom, later made almost universal by the influence of Cluny, of adding to the choral office a certain number of supplementary prayers, such as the seven penitential psalms, the litanies of the saints, the Office of the Dead, the Little Office of the Virgin, and suffrages in honor of God and the saints. It is precisely these supplementary prayers that would become the essential elements of the Book of Hours, which in the manuscript tradition, down to the first printed editions of the end of the 15th century, present themselves with a rich range of nuances in their secondary constituent elements. Only with printing did the various types of Book of Hours, according to the place of their origin, assume a better-defined physiognomy. Originally the Book of Hours (end of the 12th and 13th century) began as a supplement inserted at the end of the Psalter (rarely in the Missal, very rarely in the Breviary), from which it detached itself toward the end of the 13th century, thus giving rise, with the addition of some new elements, to the true Book of Hours, which the copyists of the 15th century multiplied in extraordinary fashion (toward the end of the Hundred Years' War it was fashionable to own a Book of Hours) and which the miniaturists and publishers of the 16th century transformed into the finest masterpieces of art, of an unsurpassable gaiety and vividness of color. The Psalter-Book of Hours constitutes the point of transition from the Psalter properly so called to the Book of Hours. Note that the expressions Great or Little Hours (grandes or petites Heures) refer only to the format.

The essential elements of the Book of Hours are: 1) The calendar, often enriched by the copyist's fancy; 2) the fragments of the four Gospels (Jn. 1, 1-14; Lk. 1, 26-38; Mt. 2, 1-12; Mk. 16, 14-20); 3) the prayers to the Virgin Obsecro te and O Intemerata, found in almost all manuscripts, but in different redactions; 4) the Little Office of the Virgin (Cursus or Horae Virginis Mariae, whence the name of the book), which is its essential part. The structure of this Office, of which the first notices date to the end of the 10th century, varies according to dioceses, abbeys or religious Orders, which is why it must always be studied with particular attention in order to know the place of origin of the Book of Hours that contains it; 5) the Hours of the Cross (Parvus ordo de Cruce and Ordo Magnus de Cruce); 6) the Hours of the Holy Spirit (Parvae horae de Sancto Spiritu); 7) the seven penitential psalms (Pss. 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129, 142); 8) the Office of the Dead, of which the first testimonies date to the 9th century. The structure of this Office too varies from diocese to diocese, and so it must be taken into consideration in order to establish the place of origin of the Book of Hours, as has been said for the Office of the Virgin; 9) the suffrages (antiphons, versicles and prayers in honor of God and the saints which in the divine office are recited at Lauds and Vespers; few in the 11th century, they are extraordinarily numerous in the 13th); 10) the litanies of the saints (the presence of local saints can serve to establish the origin of the book). The secondary or accessory elements, whose presence is not constant, are: 1) the Passio according to St. John (18, 1-19, 42); 2) the joys of the Virgin, the seven requests to Our Lord; 3) the 15 gradual psalms (Pss. 119-33); 4) the Psalter of St. Jerome, that is, more than a hundred versicles taken from psalms 5-142; 5) other prayers in Latin or in the vernacular, some of a touching ingenuousness, but sometimes of a superstitious character; 6) texts that are downright profane, etc. Often, despite the beauty of the borders and miniatures, the spelling of the texts is very defective; not even the very famous Hours of the Duke of Berry are exempt from this flaw. Note finally that the preparation of the Book of Hours was left to the free choice of the patron or the copyist, given its essentially private character.

A. Pietro Frutaz

II. ART

The miniatures, many of them full-page, generally fill all the leaves of the Book of Hours with ornaments, and besides the religious ones, notable are those relating to the months of the calendar, with compositions of an allegorical-naturalistic kind in which the artist

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could logically exercise his imagination with greater freedom, and the portraits of the persons for whom the book was illuminated. Books of Hours, in fact, turn out almost always to have been prepared for nobles and for rulers, and deservedly famous are those by French and Flemish artists; but those of Italian artists too (especially Lombard ones) are to be counted among the best productions of this kind.

Of the Italian ones, mention is made here of the Horae for Bianca Visconti (Munich, Staatsbibliothek, cod. 23.215), illuminated between 1350 and 1378 by Giovanni di Benedetto da Como; of the kindred ones — perhaps the work of the same workshop — the others in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris (ms. lat. 757), illuminated ca. 1380; the Horae of Gian Galeazzo and Fil. Maria Visconti (Florence, Biblioteca Landau-Finaly), with miniatures by Giovannino and Salomone de' Grassi and artists of the first half of the 15th century; and the Horae for Bona Sforza (ca. 1484-94; British Museum Addt. 34.294), with beautiful miniatures, the work, perhaps, of Antonio da Monza. From the Florentine workshop of Francesco di Antonio del Chierico, on the other hand, came the Horae for Lorenzo the Magnificent (ca. 1490; Florence, Biblioteca Laurenziana, Ashb. 1874), while from Ferrara of the early 16th century are the Horae for Alfonso I d'Este, in a private collection in Paris.

Of those of the French and Flemish school, famous are the Heures de Jean Pucelle (second half of the 14th century; Paris, M. de Rothschild collection); the Très riches Heures of Chantilly, a work of the early 15th century due in large part to the de Limbourg brothers (Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms. lat. 1284): of the thirty-nine large miniatures, two medium and twenty-four small ones by these famous Flemish miniaturists, admirable above all are those of the Calendar, with representations of courtly and rural life, full of poetry and with naturalistic details that are the fruit of that direct observation of things which would characterize the art of the 15th century; the Grandes and the Petites Heures de Jean de Berry and the Très Belles Heures de Bruxelles, the work of Jacquemart de Hesdin, who appears in 1384 in the service of the famous bibliophile Jean de Berry; the Horae of Turin (Turin, Biblioteca nazionale; Prince Trivulzio and M. De Rothschild), with miniatures that were once regarded as early works of Jean Van Eyck and that reveal pictorial achievements already wholly of the 15th century; the Grandes Heures de Rohan (1st half of the 15th century; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. lat. 9471); the Horae d'Etienne Chevalier (Chantilly, Musée Condé and elsewhere), illuminated ca. 1455 by Jean Fouquet; the Horae of Adelaide of Savoy, Duchess of Burgundy (first half of the 15th century; Chantilly, Musée Condé, ms. lat. 1362); a Book of Hours dated 1460 and decorated for Mary van Vronensteen (or Voornesteyn), of the school of Utrecht. Toward the end of the 15th century, in the wake of Fouquet's art, Jean Bourdichon illuminated the Horae for Frederick of Aragon and Ferdinand I, kings of Naples (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. lat. 10.532), the very beautiful Horae for Anne of Brittany (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, ms. lat. 9474), rich in 49 full-page miniatures, plus the 12 of the calendar, besides a marvellous flowering of decorations. From the middle of the 16th century, mention is made of the Livre d'Heures dit de Jeannè la Folle (or also L. d'H. Hennesy), with miniatures of the Flemish school, one of the jewels of the Bibliothèque de Bourgogne in Brussels; and in the same Library, attributable to the same hand, the Livre d'Heures d'un Tournaisien.

A fine example of English miniature painting is that offered by the Horae for John Lancaster, brother of Henry V (ca. 1414-35; London, British Museum).

With the 16th century the production of manuscript and illuminated Horae comes to an end, and printed ones, ornamented with woodcuts, take their place. — See pl. LXXXVI.

Gilberto Ronci