Book of Hours were prayer books designed for the laity, but modeled on the Divine Office, a cycle of daily devotions, prayers and readings, performed by members of religious orders and the clergy. Its central text is the Hours of the Virgin. There are eight hours (times for prayer ): Matins, Lauds. Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. During the Middle Ages, the leaves making up a Book of Hours were written by hand on expensive parchment and beautifully illuminated with jewel-like pigments and gold leaf. These illuminated manuscripts combined the collaborative efforts of an array of highly skilled craftspeople; requiring the joint labors of the parchmenter, professional scribes to write the text in Gothic script, artists to illuminate the pages with decorations, and masterful binders to complete the process.

A very pretty leaf from a Book of Hours, likely Parisian, written on a fine sheet of buttery, white vellum in black ink. The leaf is decorated with one large initial, nine small initials, and several line fillers illuminated in red, blue, white and burnished gold leaf. The recto features a decorative panel painted with gold, red, blue and green leaves and fruits on hairline stems. This leaf includes parts of Psalms 120 and 121, which translate in part as:

I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of the Lord.
Our feet were standing in thy courts, O Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, which is built as a city, which is compact together.
For thither did the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord: the testimony of Israel, to praise the name of the Lord.
Because their seats have sat in judgment, seats upon the house of David.

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Condition: A

Light marginal soiling.