Browse Items (21 total)

The calendar appears at the very beginning of a Book of Hours, preceding all prayers and other devotional texts. A calendar helps track feast days, or daily celebrations of saints, confessors, and important patrons or relics. Every calendar contains…

Purchased by KU in 1955 and previously owned by Baron Charles Despines (1777–1852) of the Académie Florimontane of Savoie, MS A6 is a unique example of a late-medieval Book of Hours. Small in size (110mm x 85mm), this handwritten, hand-painted,…

The seven illuminated pages in MS A6 are small, yet they contain a great amount of detail and are delicately painted. The marginalia and large initial details have analogies with the contemporary Vosper Hours in their margins filled with acanthus…

MS A6 nestles easily in the reader's hands, making it a very intimate object that would give a single reader at a time a view of the text and images. Its petite stature made it easily portable, furthering the opportunity for the manuscript’s owner…

Filled with Psalms, prayers to the Virgin, Hours of the Passion, invocations of the saints and the clergy, and memorial services for the dead, the texts contained in Books of Hours put Christian worship into the hands of the laity. As a means of…

The Master of the Troyes Missal incorporated both archaic and contemporary iconographic details into his artwork. His choice of animated roundels may be inspired by one of his predecessors, the Bedford Master. The illustrations beginning Matins and…

This sumptuous manuscript includes the traditional contents of Books of Hours: the Calendar of Saints, excerpts from the four Gospels, the Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Penitential Psalms, the Hours of the Cross, the Hours of the Holy Spirit, and…

This elaborately decorated Book of Hours ("The Vosper Hours") is a late fifteenth-century manuscript from Langres, France. While many Books of Hours contained materials such as owners' names and hand-written texts and annotations, this manuscript has…

This elaborately decorated Book of Hours ("The Vosper Hours") is a late 15th-century manuscript from Langres, France. While many Books of Hours contained materials such as owners' names and hand-written texts and annotations, this manuscript has no…

Marginal borders were a central feature of Books of Hours and they offered some of the greatest opportunities for artistic invention and innovation. Borders could serve as entertainment, but they could also carry liturgical messages and devotional…