Book of Hours, Use of Paris, Pericopes from the gospels, Calendar in French, Obsecro te, O intemerata, Hours of the Virgin, Penitential Psalms, Litany, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Fifteen Joys, Seven Requests, Suffrages — 1408; France, Paris

Title

Book of Hours, Use of Paris, Pericopes from the gospels, Calendar in French, Obsecro te, O intemerata, Hours of the Virgin, Penitential Psalms, Litany, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Fifteen Joys, Seven Requests, Suffrages — 1408; France, Paris

Shelfmark

MS. Douce 144

Date

1408

Language

Latin

Middle French (ca. 1400-1600)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

i + 2 + 140+ 2 leaves.

Hands

Textualis quadrata.

Decoration

(fol. 1r) St John the Evangelist (Bedford Master) (fol. 2v) St Luke (Mazarine Master) (fol. 5v) St Mark (Bedford Master)

(fols. 6r-18v, Calendar) Labours of the Months and Signs of the Zodiac, attributed by Pächt and Alexander to the Master of Étienne Loypeau (the Luçon Master)

(fol. 19r, Obsecro te) The Virgin weaving (Mazarine Master) (fol. 23r, O intemerata) Virgin and Child in a garden (Christ reaching into a basket of cherries) (Mazarine Master); angels and birds in the border (fol. 28r, Hours of the Virgin, Matins) Annunciation (Limbourg-influenced artist); musician angels and prophets in the border (fol. 52r, Hours of the Virgin, Lauds) Visitation (Bedford Master, repainted); angels, birds and flowers in the border (fol. 63r, Hours of the Virgin, Prime) Nativity (Bedford Master); angels and shepherds (?) in the border (fol. 68v, Hours of the Virgin, Terce) Annuciation to the shepherds (Bedford Master); shepherds and shepherdesses in the border (fol. 72v, Hours of the Virgin, Sext) Adoration of the Magi (Bedford Master); prophets and the journey of the Magi in the border (fol. 76v, Hours of the Virgin, Nones) Presentation in the Temple (Bedford Master), putti and birds in the border (fol. 80v, Hours of the Virgin, Vespers) Flight into Egypt (Bedford Master); massacre of the innocents in the border [Miniature for compline missing after fol. 86] [Miniature missing before fol. 93, Penitential Psalms] (fol. 111v, Hours of the Cross), Crucifixion (Bedford Master), Invention of the Cross with St Helena in the border [Miniature for the Hours of the Holy Spirit missing before fol. 118] (fol. 123r, Fifteen Joys), Virgo lactans (Limbourg-influenced artist) (fol. 128v, Seven Requests), Last Judgement (Bedford Master) (fols. 129r-140v, Suffrages), St Michael, St Peter, St Paul, St Andrew, St John Evangelist, St Stephen, St Denis, St Nicholas, St Martin, St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Katherine (all attributed to the Mazarine Master)

Added drawings (c. 1410-1420 (?)) in the lower margins of fols. 105r, 108v-109r and 110r. The drawings have been variously attributed and dated (see Gregory Clark in The Limbourg Brothers: Nijmegen Masters at the French Court 1400-1416 (2005), pp. 215-221), most influentially by Millard Meiss to the 'Master of St Jerome', a follower of the Limbourgs named after the portrait of Jerome in his study in BnF MS. fr. 166, fol. A ('French and Italian Variations on an early Fifteenth-Century Theme: St. Jerome and his Study', Gazette des beaux-arts Ser. 6, Bd. 62 [ = Essais en l'honneur de Jean Porcher, ed. Otto Pächt] (1963) pp. 147-170). Recently it has been suggested that the Jerome Master was in fact one or more of the Limbourg brothers (Herman, Paul, and Jean): see the essays in Maelwael van Lymborgh Studies I, ed. A. Stufkens and C. Verhoeven (2018), pp. 38-111. There are comparable compositions by the Limbourgs in the Belles Heures (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1)), fols. 73v and 74v, and the Tres Riches Heures (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS. 65), fols. 71v-72r. (fol. 105r) the institution of the great litany by Gregory the Great, and the end of the plague (as described in the Golden Legend). (fols. 108v-109v) procession of clerics with a reliquary (fol. 110r) procession of flagellants

Borders: historiated borders with acanthus or ivy-and-acanthus decoration for the major miniatures (see above), discussed in detail by Hofmann, and notable as the first dated appearance of acanthus in Parisian border decoration. Three-sided bar borders with ivy-leaf decoration and drolleries for the suffrage minatures; every other page with a one-sided bar border with ivy-leaf decoration and drolleries. The ivy-leaf borders and drolleries were attributed by Allen Farber to the "A Master" ('Considering a marginal master: the work of an early fifteenth-century Parisian manuscript decorator', Gesta32 (1993) 21-39),

Initials of 3, 2 and l lines at major, lesser and verse divisions respectively.

Binding

Green leather with gold tooling, France, 18th century. On the spine 'L'office de la Vierge Année 1407'; Bodleian paper label '86'.

In a contemporary case, brown morocco, gilt. On the spine 'Office de la Vierge'.

Acquisition

Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1834

Provenance

Date: see colophon, fol. 27r. A dispersed Book of Hours formerly in the collection of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (MS. W. 103) has an almost identical colophon and also contains the unusual Breton saint St Corentin in the litany, alongside St Tugdual: on that manuscript see recently Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection III: French Miniatures (London, 2021), cat. 92.

Inès Villela-Petit (in Maelwael van Vymborgh Studies I, pp. 65-6), suggests that this may be the Book of Hours (described as 'très richement enluminées, esquelles a 36 histoires'), for which Francois de Nerly, the treasurer of Louis of Guyenne, paid 350 marks to Haincelin de Haguenau, the Bedford Master, in 1409; the evidence is inconclusive and in an earlier publication Villela-Petit had suggested that the manuscript documented in 1409 might be the Bedford Hours (British Library Add. MS 18850) (Inès Villela-Petit, 'Les Très Riches Heures de Jean de Berry et les Heures de Bedford. Floraison d’études sur deux œuvres majeures de l’enluminure du xve siècle', Perspective, 1 (2008), 145-150)

Francis Douce, 1757–1834, source of acquisition not known. "There are no annotations by Douce in the manuscript and it may therefore have been one of his last purchases" ( Douce Legacy )

Title

The Hours of the Virgin according to the use of Paris

Shelfmark

MS. Douce 144

Summary

Preceded by a French calendar (fol. 6), Capitula from the Gospels (fols. 1 - 5, misplaced, and 18) and prayers. Followed by:

(fol. 93) the Penitential psalms with litany

(fol. 111v) 'Les heures de la Croix'

(fol. 118) the Hours of the Holy Spirit

(fol. 123) 'Les quinze ioyes nostre Dame'

(fol. 128v: a fragment, one page only) 'Les vij requestes des v plaies nostre Seigneur'

(fol. 129) 'Memoires' or suffrages

There are many fine large and small miniatures in both French and Netherlandish styles, French borders with grotesques, etc.: on four pages (fols. 105, 108v, 109, 110) are three elaborate sketches of religious processions: fols. 108v and 109 have been reproduced for the Palæographical Society (2nd s., no. 153): see also Waagen's Treasures of Art, (1854), iii. 75. Leaves are wanting, causing imperfection in the text, after fols. 3, 92, 117, 128. On fol. 27 is 'Factum et completum est anno. mo. cccco. vijo. quo ceciderunt pontes pa. [Parisius].'.

Date

written in 1407 in France

Language

Latin

Physical facet

On parchment, illuminated, binding: green leather with gold tooling, 18th cent. French work

Physical extent

142 Leaves