Transcending Time: The Medieval Book of Hours

Before accurate and affordable devices for keeping track of time became widely available, the regular recitation of prayers, often guided by the ringing of church bells, structured the day. 

In addition to prescribing the time of day for particular prayers, many books of hours begin with a 12-month calendar that includes images showing typical activities for each month.

Here, on a calendar page for April, a young couple in the lower margin exchange spring flowers . . .

. . . while zodiac signs (the bull, a symbol for Taurus) appear on the right. 

Calendars in books of hours listed the days for celebrating each saint, sometimes color coded in blue, red, and gold to indicate relative importance. 

In this particularly elaborate example, red ink indicates elevated status while gold-leaf letters distinguish the most significant saints’ days.

Books of hours were among the most sought-after illuminated books of any kind in the later Middle Ages. Their contents were varied and flexible in the devotional texts they included and also in the quality, quantity, and subjects of their images. 

As a result, these books could be highly personalized for the members of the literate upper classes who commissioned them, and they offer a window into the artistic, cultural, and religious priorities of their patrons and owners.

The material trappings of the chamber in which Anne gives birth to the Virgin Mary are dazzling.

The luxurious appointments—an embroidered bed canopy . . .

. . . sinuous gold andirons supporting the wood in the fire, and a carved stone fireplace—might have been encountered in a wealthy household in 16th-century France. 

Books of hours ordered time for their readers, segmenting their experience over the course of hours, days, months, years, and even lifetimes.

The central devotional text was the Hours of the Virgin, a set of prayers in eight sections recited at regular intervals during the day (called the canonical hours), modeled after the practice at Christian monasteries. 

In this page, the winged angel Gabriel, dressed in a brilliant orange garment, arrives in the presence of the Virgin to tell her that she will bear the Christ child.

This image of the Annunciation marks the beginning of prayers recited before dawn, known as the canonical hour of Matins, the first of the eight sections of the Hours of the Virgin. 

Episodes from the Virgin’s life, especially the infancy of Christ, illustrate these prayers and reflect Mary’s central status in the medieval Church.

Books of hours fostered reflection on the passage of time as experienced through familial celebrations as well as mourning.

Often given as wedding gifts, they were treasured possessions handed down from generation to generation to serve as receptacles of genealogical memory. 

They sought to connect readers’ experience of their own mortality with the larger scale of time conveyed through biblical texts and images.

An image of a shrouded body being laid to rest in a freshly dug grave appears at the beginning of the prayers known as the Office of the Dead, to be said for the souls of the deceased.

Three clerical figures read from a book, and a group of black-clad mourners, their faces turned down and hoods drawn over their heads, stand in the background.

Imagery like this typically accompanied the Office of the Dead in books of hours, perhaps to reassure readers that Mass would be observed and last rites administered after their own deaths.

The most extensively illustrated books of hours, produced for the nobility, reflected not only these new devotional interests but also a cultural identity firmly tied to material wealth and the cultivation of sophisticated taste. 

The illuminations in books of hours provide insight into these dual concerns—private time for prayer and public display of worldly status. The same book could fulfill both purposes.

A noblewoman in an elaborate headdress kneels, hands clasped in prayer, before the Virgin Mary and the Christ child.

Women, especially those of high social status and means, often commissioned books of hours.  

The identity of this manuscript’s original owner is not known, but she is likely the woman portrayed here, who would have paid for her likeness to be included in this finely illuminated book, at the same time turning to it as a guide for personal prayer.