Heures a l’usage de Paris -French Incunable Edition of Book of Hours

Books of Hours, or prayer books, used during private devotions by sovereigns and aristocrats, date back to the Middle Ages when they were distributed in manuscript form. After the invention of printing, in late 15th – early 16th centuries, Books of Hours were among the most frequently printed works – by 1530 over 900 editions had been published. This edition of 9 April 1499, published in French and Latin, is one of the rarest. In the world, apart from the Ossolineum edition, there is only one copy kept in London in the British Library.
The first part of the prayer book consists of a calendar in French. The calendar is followed by prayers about the Passion of Christ attributed to Gregory the Great. This part is followed by excerpts from the Gospels of St John, St Matthew and St Mark. Next follows the proper part of the prayer book, that is the so-called Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and penitential psalms, then the Litany of the Saints and prayers to be recited in various circumstances in honour of various saints. The prayer book was printed on parchment and later decorated by hand with gilt coloured initials. It is characterised by a very rich biblical iconography: the text is framed by woodcut illustrations, sometimes constituting whole cycles. Full-page woodcuts precede and illustrate the texts of the Hours, prayers in the Little Office and the gospels, etc. The woodcuts were most probably created based on illustrations made in the Parisian painting workshop of Anne of Brittany’s Hour Master.
In the second half of the 16th century the Ossolineum copy was probably owned by Geoffroy Noël, whose name is embossed on the book binding dating from that period. In the eighteenth century the book was already in Poland and belonged to Bishop Jan Paweł Woronicz who donated it to the library through the hands of Henryk Lubomirski – the curator of the Ossolineum, ca. 1824–1829.
Binding: brown leather, gilt embossing in French style, so-called à centre et coins decoration – France, second half of the 16th century; after conservation.