Book of Hours, Use of Sarum, in Latin [England, mid-15th century]

95×65mm, vellum, vi+115+v leaves, paginated i-xi, 1-240 (including flyleaves), lacking quires at the beginning and end, and a few leaves elsewhere, 14 lines, 60×35mm, 2-line ILLUMINATED INITIALS WITH FOLIATE SPRAYS THROUGHOUT, small flourished initials and line-fillers, part of the margin of pp.69-70 excised, some dirt and wear, bound in 1936 by Maltby, Oxford, in tan pigskin over wooden boards

PROVENANCE

(1) 16th-century inscription (p.115). (2) ‘Edmunde Walker’, 17th(?) century (p.167). (3) ‘W. Middelton  / 1833.’ with heraldic shield (p.xi). (4) Stamped ‘G Manley Jun’ (p.v). (5) Ampleforth Abbey, with their bookplate, and MS number ‘192’ blind-stamped at the base of the spine; described by Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, II, 1977, p.36.

TEXT

Hours of the Virgin, beginning imperfectly (p.1); the Commemoration of All Saints ‘secundum Sarum ecclesie usum’ (p.40), but differing significantly from the printed text; feasts of the Virgin (p.76); Penitential (p.85) and Gradual (p.112) Psalms, and ferial litanies (p.138), the name of Thomas Becket erased (p.161); Office of the Dead (p.179).

This is a substantial portion of a high quality English Book of Hours which originally, to judge by offsets on blank pages, had full-page miniatures. Unlike the vast majority of Books of Hours, made for laymen and women, it was perhaps made for a monk, as suggested by the unusual liturgical contents, and by the substitution of the word ‘monachorum’ for ‘clericorum’ (p.43) in the hymn ‘Ihesu salvator seculi’.