Monastic Book of Hours and prayerbook, in Latin with occasional rubrics in French, decorated manuscript on vellum; bound with a section of a printed work: Sensuyuent les Vespres, [France, fifteenth century]

Monastic Book of Hours and prayerbook, in Latin with occasional rubrics in French, decorated manuscript on vellum, [France (probably north-east, most likely region of Champagne or Marne), fifteenth century] bound with a section of a printed work: Sensuyuent les Vespres, [late sixteenth century], together 2 works in 1 vol.,100 × 73 mm., 155 leaves, difficult to collate without damaging binding, but wanting a few single leaves throughout and with an apparent scribal error omitting the text of Compline from the main Hours (the main hand ends Vespers on the last but one leaf of the thirteenth quire with the rubric: “Ad completorium”, but without the corresponding text for compline, and includes an unfulfilled catchword in the same place: the main scribe appears to have mistakenly ended his text of the main Hours here, intending the last leaf of the quire to be a cancelled blank at the end of a major text section, and then a subsequent attempt was made to correct an error that followed this, leading to a near-contemporary removal of the first leaf of the fourteenth quire which should have had the opening of the Penitential Psalms, with the missing text of this subsequent text then added by a near-contemporary hand to the last and originally blank leaf of the thirteenth quire), collation: i-ii6, iii8, iv6, v5 (last leaf trimmed away to a stub), vi6, vii4 (probably wanting 2 leaves), viii-ix6, x3 (last trimmed away), xi-xii6, xiii3 (last a singleton), xiv5 (wants first leaf), xv-xvi8, xvii4, xviii-xxi8, xxii-xxiii6, xxiv5 (first leaf wanting), xxv6 (initial 2 leaves singletons, but no apparent text loss from this quire), xxvi4, text in single column of 14 lines of two sizes of a good late gothic bookhand, penwork cadels to lowermost lines (and occasionally to uppermost lines at corners), additional text sections in similar contemporary or near-contemporary hands, red rubrics, capitals infilled in yellow, one page of music on a 4-line red stave, one- and 2-line initials in red or blue, some 2- to 4-line initials in red or blue with contrasting penwork, larger initials in gold on pink and blue grounds, a red cross with blue dots in its compartments placed in blank space at the end of Sext and before rubric for Nones, all apart from two large initials with grounds partly repainted, another with gold parts repainted in silver, one crude decorative panel added to originally blank space in same later style, some small repairs, a few spots and stains, else good condition; bound in nineteenth-century brown leather over pasteboards, each board with a single gilt fillet, spine in five compartments, each gilt tooled with foliage panels and a title in gilt on black leather panel (probably: “Heures / de N. Dame m[s?]”), blue silk doublures, scuffing and tears to extremities of spine, binding becoming loose in places, overall sound.

*** Provenance:

1. Written and decorated for monastic use, in France in the fifteenth century. The inclusion of SS. Gibrian (an Irish saint worshipped in Reims and the Marne region) on 8 May in the Calendar as well as in the Litany; Arnulph of Metz on 18 July in the Calendar; Theobold of Provins on 30 June; and Becharius of Hautvillers (later abbot of Reims) on 16 October, points towards north-eastern France, and probably to the region of Champagne or Marne.

2. “R. Blanchard”: his eighteenth-century ex libris at foot of fol. 1r.

3. Reportedly once owned by the “Duchess d’Epenay” (i.e. Épernay in the Marne region): inscription of next owner.

4. Augusta M. Copeman: her nineteenth- or early twentieth-century inscription on front pastedown, with a note there recording its gift from “her loving father”, and the details in the previous note.

5. R. Hart (?): his scrawled ex libris on front pastedown.

Text:

This charmingly rustic volume comprises: a Calendar (fol. 1r); Hours for monastic use (fol. 7r), up to the rubric: “Ad completorium”, but with the corresponding text for compline apparently omitted by accident by the main scribe (see above for discussion); the Seven Penitential Psalms (fol. 71v), followed by a Litany of saints; the Office of the Dead (fol. 93r); the “Commendacio animarum” (fol. 128v), followed by prayers; the Hours of the Cross (fol. 140r) and of the Holy Spirit (fol. 146r), followed by prayers.