Book Of Hours Research Articles

Ivan Fyodorov’s Psalter with Book of Hours as a Miscellany: Composition and Sources

Purpose. The article studies the features of composition and structure of Ivan Fyodorov’s edition the Psalter with Book of Hours, which is considered as a particular version of the Augmented Psalter miscellany.Results. Authors analyze main components of the edition from the point of view of their correspondence to the manuscript and early printed tradition of the Augmented Psalter of the 15th – 16th centuries and search for their possible sources. The article reveals peculiarities of composition of the texts in the Horologion part and suggests that the miscellany was specially adapted to the needs of parish churches, in which there was no need or possibility to celebrate the daily divine worship prescribed by the Jerusalem Typicon. The article identifies possible sources of the foreword part to the Psalter and concludes that Ivan Fyodorov was guided by the contemporary manuscript tradition of Augmented Psalter, but the selection and composition of the texts are original and do not yet find exact correlations in manuscripts and early printed miscellanies. The article analyses the features of composition of the superscriptions to psalms and their sources that were the commentaries of pseudo-Athanasius of Alexandria and superscriptions probably based on the glosses reflecting the exegesis of Theodoret of Cyrus.Conclusion. The authors conclude that the edition of Psalter with the Book of Hours stands out among its contemporary manuscript and early printed analogues by its original compositions of the foreword part and particular edition of the superscriptions to psalms.

The Black Hours: Material and Conservation Study, Part 1

ABSTRACT The Book of Hours of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, V. Duke of Milan (Vienna, Austrian National Library, Codex 1856), the so-called Black Hours, is a Flemish illuminated manuscript with silver and gold ink on black coloured parchment from the third quarter of the fifteenth century. The severe deterioration of the parchment by the black colourant resulted in brittleness and numerous losses. This paper describes the history of the manuscript and previous interventions. The condition of the various materials was assessed and put in context with the other six black manuscripts that have been preserved worldwide. The fibre morphology, the hydrothermal stability and the investigation of the fibre structure in the Scanning electron microscope confirmed the degradation of the parchment fibres. The black colourant was identified as iron gall ink by X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) and Raman spectroscopy. The elemental composition of silver and gold was analysed with XRF. Based on these results, a model conservation treatment and a new preservation solution were developed.

The Illuminated Garden—The Visitation in the Book of Hours of Juana Enriquez (BPR, II/2104)

This article examines the unique depiction of the Visitation in the Book of Hours of Juana Enriquez, housed in the Biblioteca del Palacio Real de Madrid and also known as the Book of Hours of Isabella the Catholic. While the Visitation is a common theme in other Books of Hours, this manuscript’s rendition stands out for its inclusion of visual elements not found in other works by the same illuminator. Through a detailed iconographic analysis, the article emphasizes the significance of the Visitation scene, exploring its visual components and their implications for understanding the spiritual and cultural context of the era. The study aims to highlight the Visitation miniature as a prime example of imagery crafted to serve the inner devotion of its first owner, Juana Enriquez. Ultimately, this research offers a deeper appreciation of the Book of Hours of Juana Enriquez as a product of its time, designed for meditation and contemplation.

Dafna Nissim. Review of "The Book of Hours and the Body: Somaesthetics, Posthumanism, and the Uncanny" by Sherry C. M. Lindquist.

Dafna Nissim. Review of "The Book of Hours and the Body: Somaesthetics, Posthumanism, and the Uncanny" by Sherry C. M. Lindquist.

The Heritage of Ivan Fedorov in the Research Projects of Siberian Archeographers

The history of studying Ivan Fyodorov heritage in Siberia is connected with the expedition finds of Novosibirsk archeographers – researchers of the SPSTL RAS and Novosibirsk State University (NSU). An important component of this work was the cameral one in the archives of Siberia and the Far East, which has led to the identification of book monuments of the XVI cent., representing copies of publications of Russian first printers, and their detailed study. The purpose of the article is to present significant discoveries of Novosibirsk archaeographers related to the initial stage of Russian book printing, to summarize the results of the conference «The Legacy of Ivan Fedorov in the Siberian land». Research results are: the significant publications of Novosibirsk archeographers are based on work with copies of Cyrillic editions of the initial period of printing stored in the SPSTL RAS. The discovery in 2023 of the fifth exemplar of the Psalter with the Book of Hours of 1570 is understood as a natural result of the archaeographic work of the researchers of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the SPSTL RAS. The review of the reports of the conference «The Legacy of Ivan Fedorov in the Siberian Land», organized by the SPSTL RAS together with with the Novosibirsk Orthodox Theological Seminary in connection with the discovery of a n ew copy of the Russian first printer.

Fragmented Hours: The Biography of a Printed Devotional Book by Thielman Kerver

As the most richly illustrated and widely-owned texts of the late medieval and early modern eras, books of hours are essential to the study of art, religion, and the history of the book. Fragmented and altered books, while perhaps less coveted, are of particular value for what they may reveal of book owners and the changing meanings and uses of devotional texts and images over more than five centuries. This paper explores the compelling biography of a book of hours in the University of Florida Library that has undergone such extensive alteration prior to its acquisition in 1989 that cataloguers could not identify the printer and edition, leaving the book’s many dislocations, redactions, and annotations unexplored. Engaging with scholarship on the social history of books of hours, I identify the fragmented book as possibly the sole surviving copy of an edition produced by Thielman Kerver in Paris around 1510 and reconstruct its missing contents through comparison with relevant editions. Next, I examine the book’s complex web of redactions, erasures, and annotations in the context of sixteenth-century religious reform before turning to the book’s dislocations and the spoliation of images in the context of nineteenth and twentieth-century collecting trends.

Between Scriptura et Pictura: Meditation on the Domus Dei and the Devotion of the Holy House of Mary

This article examines the representation and significance of the Holy House of Mary as a metaphor for the domus Dei in the initial letters of a 13th-century Book of Hours (Brailes Hours BL MS Add. 49999) using hermeneutics, visual studies, and anthropology of art methodologies. The manuscript delves into the theological implications of the doctrine of the Incarnation and the virginal divine motherhood of Mary depicted in these images. Additionally, it explores the connection between these representations and the devotion to the Holy House of Nazareth and its replica in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Walsingham, recognized as a sacred pilgrimage site. To conduct this analysis, the article considers the figures of the Holy House depicted on pilgrim badges and religious jewels. Specifically, it focuses on the Hylle jewel, whose effectiveness, attributed to its form and materiality, symbolized the aurea palatium Dei.

Bishop Sofron Mudryi: the importance of the Book of Hours in the life of a priest and the Church

Once again, we are listening to the voice of Bishop Sophron Mudryi in order to learn something useful that can provide answers to the pressing issues of our time and the challenges of priestly ministry. At the beginning of our report, it is necessary to clarify the main thoughts and theses on the topic of the Book of Hours that we find in the literary heritage of the bishop. Then we will conduct a certain verification, a critique of what has been said on the basis of what other authoritative church theologians say. In the final third part of the report, we will offer some comments and synthesis. Having thus outlined the content and objectives of our report, we will now proceed to its coverage.

Влияние образа России на развитие философско-религиозных взглядов Райнера Марии Рильке (по материалам сборника «Часослов»)

One of the most important works of Rainer Maria Rilke, reflecting the formation and development of the poet’s philosophical and poetic views at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, is the cycle of poems “Book of Hours” (1899–1903), created under the influence of the image of Russia that the author developed during his travels around the country. The aim of this work is to analyse Rilke’s “Book of Hours” in the context of the influence of this image on the dynamics of the poet’s philosophical and religious views in a certain period of his work. The hermeneutical approach was chosen as the main research method, within the framework of which the texts of R.M. Rilke’s works were interpreted taking into account the socio-historical conditions existing at the time of their writing. Systematisation and generalization of the obtained data made it possible to evaluate the author’s expe-rience of Russia as a deep religious experience, expressed in a rethinking of Rilke’s attitude towards God, and to identify the contradictions of his philosophical and religious views. On the one hand, the concept of God, which occupies a central place in Rilke’s “Book of Hours”, represents an artistic refraction of the key ideas of the biblical tradition; on the other hand, God, according to the poet, manifests himself as a human creation, or more precisely, as a work of art: in the process of self-knowledge it must be discovered as the hidden “treasure” of one’s own soul. Consequently, this is not so much God the creator as a kind of internal resource, “God in man”, the idea of creation, which man must allow to arise within himself. The image of Russia as a country seeking God sets the vector for a “revaluation of values” modulated by the “Russian experience”, bringing Rilke closer to the point of view according to which spiritual journey requires a reorientation from orthodox ways of thinking and faith to an understanding of God as a path, as a “kingdom of God” that matures in the soul of an inner per-son.

Nuove miniature del Maestro del Libro d’Ore di Modena e altri frammenti tardogotici lombardi a Torino

Abstract Seven unpublished illuminated fragments from the Museo Civico d’Arte Antica in Turin are examined and placed in the context of Lombard Late Gothic book illumination. An antiphonary with Proper and Commons of Saints decorated by the Master of the Modena Book of Hours is partially reconstructed. A miniature depicting the Imago Pietatis is traced back to one of that master’s masterpieces, the Parma Book of Hours. The well-known miniature with Saint John the Baptist is all that survives of a lost Book of Hours closely related to Michelino da Besozzo’s models, while an initial with Saint Augustine is traced back to a lost antiphonary made in Pavia, perhaps to be ascribed to the Master of Laura Bossi around 1485.

Medieval Manuscripts at Loyola University Chicago

Abstract: This article provides a summary overview of the collection of pre-1600 western European manuscripts in Loyola University Chicago Archives & Special Collections. The collection presently comprises four manuscript codices, at least thirty-eight fragments, and four documents. The codices are a thirteenth-century book of hours from German-speaking lands; a fifteenth-century Dutch prayer book; a preacher's compilation written probably in southern Germany in the 1440s; and two fifteenth-century Italian humanist booklets, bound together since the nineteenth century, transmitting Donatus's commentary on the Eunuchus (incomplete) and an anthology of theological excerpts, respectively. The fragments consist of thirteen leaves from books dismembered by modern booksellers (most are from fifteenth-century books of hours) and a larger number of binding fragments, all but two of which remain in situ. These represent the remains of ten manuscript books: four Latin liturgical books, two texts of Roman civil law, one large-format thirteenth-century Italian Bible, one thirteenth-century copy of Ptolemy's Almagest in the translation of Gerard of Cremona, one late fourteenth-century copy of the Ockhamist Tractatus de principiis theologiae , and one fifteenth-century Dutch book of hours in the translation of Geert Grote. Many of these materials have remained unidentified until now.

Medieval Devotion in a Midwest Collection: Establishing Production and Provenance

Abstract: Without provenance or place of production, isolated manuscripts and orphaned leaves dot library and museum collections around the world. The College of Wooster houses an exquisite and complete book of hours of Sarum use about which almost nothing is known. Using formal analysis and the most limited of documentary sources, this essay proposes London, ca. 1430–1450, as the place of production for this little illuminated codex. Firmly linking this horae to known and researched prayer books such as the British Library's Burney MS 334, Harley MS 210, and especially the Harley MS 2887—also known as the Hours of the Earls of Ormond—this article provides an inlet to existing historiography on the codex's milieu of production. Moreover, this analysis supports the probability that this book survived the notorious fire in Sir Robert Cotton's library at Ashburnham House, with telltale signs of water and smoke damage apparent on the parchment pages. A previously overlooked and unresearched horae , the Wooster Hours now has a provenance and historiography.

Characterization of Pigments and Materials of the Original Body and Additions of the Book of Hours 50,1,1 from the Brazilian National Library

The Brazilian National Library has in its collection a luxurious book of hours from the Royal Library of Portugal. For a long time, it was believed to have been made by the Italian painter Spinello Spinelli for King Fernando I (1345-1383) in 1378. This is due to the information in its colophon and the presence of a coat of arms of the Portuguese crown on the opening folio. According to recent studies, this is an example of a rare group of Flemish books of hours from ca. 1460 to English use – raising questions about the codex origin, dating, recipient, and route. To collaborate in this investigation, a material characterization study was proposed using non-invasive analyses, such as optical microscopy (OM), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and fiber optics reflectance spectroscopy (FORS). The following pigments and materials were identified: lead white, minium, vermilion, lead-tin yellow, azurite, malachite, brazilwood lake, iron gall inks of different compositions and metals in foil or powder, namely gold and silver; moreover, the identification of lapis lazuli, Armenian bole and a different red organic lake in the colophon was decisive in corroborating the thesis of art historians, confirming the production period of the original body of the manuscript to the 15th century and that the colophon and coat of arms are later additions. Additionally, it was revealed that the coat of arms was superimposed on a previous shield.

Fandom and the Cult of the Saints as Alternate Religious Networks: Fanzines and Books of Hours

Many interpretations of fandom communities as religious focus on fandom in relation to the “world religions” and the institutional authority they carry. By way of contrast, the author aims to interpret fandom based on religious practice, primarily the Christian Cult of the Saints as a practice of religious devotion. The perspective of religious practice emphasizes that the communities that form as fandom often exist in tension with more traditional religious networks, similar to saint cults. To demonstrate this parallelism, the author explores community formation around saints and fantasy characters as serious play expressed in books of hours and fanzines.

Dustin A. Ashley, Portus na hEireann: A Book of Hours According to the Columbanian Tradition

Dustin A. Ashley, <i>Portus na hEireann: A Book of Hours According to the Columbanian Tradition</i>

Astronomical Clocks and the Evolution of Ancient Cosmology in Gothic Architecture

This paper offers a review of the location and imagery of astronomical clocks. The zodiacs are highlighted as religious symbols taken from antiquity and transferred into the Middle Ages. The clocks contain imagery similar to other religious spaces such as cathedrals and Books of Hours, which imbues them with meaning while linking them to sacred spaces. The ancient lares created a sacred space outside temples. A comparison of them to the astronomical clocks suggests that the clocks also create a sacred space based on location and iconography. This paper will argue that astronomical clocks extended the religious sphere through their placement in public spaces.

Commemorating the Virgin Mary at Barking Abbey: Cambridge, University Library, Dd.12.56

AbstractThis article examines the unusual commemorative Office of the Virgin from Barking Abbey in a fifteenth-century book of hours, Cambridge, University Library, Dd.12.56 (hereafter Dd.12.56). As already evident in the Barking Ordinal, the nuns of this Abbey venerated Mary, one of their patron saints, with a weekly full three-nocturn, twelve-lesson Matins service. Dd.12.56, however, has only recently been linked to Barking Abbey and drawing on new material in this manuscript in correlation with others from the Abbey, I argue that the Barking nuns compiled a unique series of readings and responsories to honour Mary. The progression through the three nocturns of Matins articulates a Marian theology that intersects with the nuns’ self-understanding and I demonstrate that they carefully crafted the lesser hours to highlight specific times of day and to complement Marian hymns sung at Barking. The accepted belief that books of hours were for personal devotion obscures the possibility that such books reflect communal liturgical practices, potentially serving multiple purposes within a monastic setting. Although Dd.12.56 dates from the fifteenth century, it may testify to a much older liturgical practice, which originated in the twelfth century when the three-nocturn format was still prevalent in Benedictine use and before it was largely replaced by a two-nocturn format in the thirteenth century. Benedictine tradition offered individual monastic houses the opportunity to craft this service. Dd.12.56 stands as a new and important testimony to the rich and imaginative ways in which the Barking community created, collated and curated materials that they steeped in their minds and hearts.

L’Iconographie du ‘Lancelot-Graal’. Par Irène Fabry-Tehranchi et Catherine Nicolas

Although the iconographic cycles which illustrated medieval books are of great importance for a holistic understanding of the texts they were designed to illustrate, they are often neglected by scholars. Obstacles to accessing the original manuscripts preserving these cycles, in conjunction with the difficulty of conceptualizing a given cycle of illustrations as a unitary entity (especially in long works in which illustrations may be widely scattered, or in works where the relation of text to image is unclear), have fed the need in medieval studies for examinations such as that presented by the present volume. Here, two eminent Arthurian scholars, Irène Fabry-Tehranchi and Catherine Nicolas, provide a detailed commentary of a complete iconographic cycle illustrating the Lancelot-Graal (or Vulgate) cycle of Old French prose romances. This cycle comprises five units or books, all dating from the thirteenth century: the Estoire del Saint Graal, Merlin and the Suite Vulgate, the prose Lancelot, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort le Roi Artu. This cycle was extremely popular, being preserved for us today in over 180 manuscripts from the thirteenth century to the fifteenth, as well as in numerous early printed editions. In order to produce this study, the authors have examined a wide range of extant manuscripts; the results of their survey are presented in a concise and informative Introduction, which in addition contextualizes the Lancelot-Graal and provides summaries of its constituent parts. The authors focus in particular on six manuscripts created between the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, all of which contain the full cycle of texts and are richly illustrated. They note that it is difficult to speak of a definitive, fixed iconographic cycle for the Lancelot-Graal, for exemplars are characterized by a high degree of variety; much higher than image cycles designed to accompany contemporary but more conventional texts, such as books of hours. For this reason, rather than struggling to justify the selection of any one manuscript on the grounds of the superior representative quality of its illustrative cycle, the authors have chosen to reproduce the complete cycle as found in Paris, BnF, MS fr. 344, as representing the most suitable entry point for studying the iconographic tradition associated with this text as a whole. The reproductions in black and white of the 348 illustrations in MS fr. 344 are arranged in order of books and chapters, and are accompanied by detailed commentary, as well as by brief descriptions of the corresponding illustrations in the other manuscripts. Brief descriptions of illustrations from these other manuscripts are similarly included for chapters left unillustrated in MS fr. 344. This excellent research tool is supplemented by a comprehensive bibliography and a synoptic table that allows researchers to compare at a glance the iconographic programmes of all six manuscripts. Following a detailed index, this volume is crowned by an appendix of full-colour reproductions of the iconographic cycle from MS fr. 344, helpfully cross-referenced with the commentary. Arthurian studies will long be indebted to this thorough guide to the iconographic tradition of the Vulgate cycle.

The only surviving Medieval codex of Galician-Portuguese secular poetry: tracing history through luxury pink colors

The Ajuda Songbook is an exceptional illuminated manuscript being the only surviving codex of Galician-Portuguese secular poetry; it was produced in the end of the thirteenth century, beginning of the fourteenth century. The diversity of colors accentuated by the presence of lapis lazuli blue and brazilwood pink, demonstrates the desire to produce a sumptuous manuscript. Pink is, in this context, a luxury color and its identification attests to one of the earliest known occurrences of brazilwood in artworks. Scientific analysis showed, for the light pinks, a different formulation from that found in fifteenth-century books of hours and from all historical reconstructions of these colors prepared to date. This knowledge was used to further expand a database previously built in our laboratory and applied to the characterization of pink shades in the Ajuda Songbook. Thirteen brazilwood recipes were selected from seven Medieval treatises and reference materials were prepared based on such historical information. Three types of colors were achieved, defined as translucent rose, rose, and red. The translucent rose was obtained from recipes where egg white is used for extraction, and no other additives are present; rose from recipes with calcium carbonate; and red from a wider range of recipes, in which these ingredients are not mentioned. These colors were then prepared as paints, and analytical results were thus compared with data from the light pinks seen in the Ajuda Songbook’s architectural backgrounds. We were able to reproduce the pink very well using infrared spectroscopy, identifying its main ingredients: calcium carbonate as filler; lead white as the pigment that produces light pink; and the binder as a polysaccharide with a fingerprint similar to mesquite gum. For the chromophore color, the application of chemometrics approaches to molecular fluorescence spectra highlighted a high degree of similarity with the paint reconstructions.

Joseph and Lucy Smith's Tunbridge Farm: An Archaeology and Landscape Study

joseph and lucy smith's tunbridge farm by Mark L. Staker and Donald L. Enders is a chapter in a Latter-day Saint Book of Hours (a meditative guide to be read throughout the day filled with prayers meant to focus on guidance from God). Staker and Enders's volume uses archaeology and landscape to ponder a moment in God's intervention in the course of human life. The authors are ordinary, honest archaeologists digging at a founding and farming site in the lives of Joseph Smith Sr. and Lucy Mack Smith. The Smiths were the parents of ten children, including Joseph Smith Jr., who founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This early hour of a new church and its material culture—the landscape, flowing water, hills, groves, cherry trees and apple trees—is a Genesis and this brief, well-written meditation allows readers to walk, touch, and witness the material culture of that important hour in the church's beginnings.There is a fair amount of archaeology done on sites of early Mormonism by Latter-day Saint archaeologists. It is all good archaeology, following standard methods, resulting in good reporting, and sometimes allowing for more authentic reconstructions like the Nauvoo Temple. Further, the archaeology of the early Mormonism that led to the Utah church is well-established and integrated into LDS Church projects. But there is not much archaeology within Mormonism that is considered foundational either to Mormonism or to historical archaeology. And the archaeology of early socialist communities or plural marriage communities is missing. Could all these archaeologies be considered different from conventional historical archaeology done for secular purposes? To be sure the excavation and reporting are equally responsible. Could we say that archaeology on Latter-day Saint sites is good to think with for spiritual purposes? Like reading a book of hours, or walking the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. Suppose they are meditations instead of being only good site reports. Suppose we read Latter-day Saint archaeology as a way of understanding how the material culture and its context of a very hard farming village existence and the quest to experience the spirit of God during Second Great Awakening are a way into seeing, understanding, and even—for an LDS Church member—living again the early context of the founding moments of Mormonism. If this might be the effect of mainline Latter-day Saint archaeology, then it does not matter whether the church publishes the archaeology or the Society for Historical Archaeology presents it. What matters is how we see a Book of Hours. They are chapters to be read during the day to let you into another part of daily life so that you can get through a day the way you are supposed to. They are perfectly reasonable prayer books drawn out of an empirical context. It is an archaeology of relics that works because the relics are real. This is what material culture is supposed to do, after all. It is what a bone from St. Peter in St. Peter's Basilica, from his tomb below the church, is also supposed to do. It tells us that another world—one that was important and is now gone—did happen.The key chapter, the best chapter, the reason for the book, is chapter 8: “Lucy's Meadow, Her Grove, and Her First Vision.” This is an understanding of the farm's landscape in Joseph and Lucy Smith's quest to be led by God and in her and secondarily, his, experiences in lively Methodism, rational Universalism, and evangelical Presbyterianism. This is one of the best tellings of the world of religious awakenings in Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that I have ever read. It is a chapter not about religious confusion but about how Federal Period America (c. 1776–1820) tried to sort out how to be religious while also dealing with a lack of serious government, a quirky economy, high infant mortality, large families, and the question of how to find a way through it all. The rationality of Hosea Ballou's Universalism, an early form of American socialism, and Methodism with its deep emotional acting out through spirit possession, were all attempts at navigating this situation. Where was God to be found? And how? It's all here in this chapter, led by Lucy Smith's path, a woman with her man following her lead. Actually walking the landscape where it all happened with this chapter in your hands is a meditative journey that focuses the mind on those founders and their events. So, as happens all too often in American religious history, the quest is led by a woman, while the history and victory are taken by a man. But, and even so, this Book of Hours is devoted to a woman.