Book of Hours (Horae)

ff.1-2 opening of St John's Gospel with miniature: St John on Patmos, border: grotesques, man playing drum, two men dancing (f.1). f.2v prayer; ff.3-14v calendar; ff.15-21 Gospel sequences from SS. Luke, Matthew and Mark, and the Passion sequence; ff.21v-22 prayers; ff.22v-28v blank; ff.29-97v Hours of the Virgin with miniatures for matins: Annunciation, border: men on cock's back, saddled donkey, man ploughing, man with basket (f.29), lauds: Visitation (f.41v), prime (leaf missing after f.52v), tierce: Annunciation to the Shepherds (f.58v), sext: Adoration of the Magi (f.63v), none: Presentation in the Temple (f.68v), vespers: Flight into Egypt (f.73), compline: Coronation of the Virgin (f.80v); ff.98-101 Hours of the Cross with miniature for matins, missing (after f.97v); f.101v blank; ff.102-106v Hours of the Holy Ghost with miniature: Pentecost, border: man with club, two wrestlers, angels (f.102); f107-107v blank; ff.108-121 penitential psalms with miniature: David at prayer, border: confronting cocks, man with scorpio sign, man threshing (f.108); ff.121-127 litany and prayers; f.127v blank; ff.128-166 Office of the Dead with miniatures (i) for first vespers, opening antiphon: Burial scene, border: trumpeting angel, seated mourners, man with corpse, burial service (f.128), (ii) for first vespers, opening psalm: St Michael fighting a devil over corpses (f.128v); ff.166v-167v Joys of the Virgin; ff.167v-170 Stabat Mater; ff.170v-178v blank.

Source of title - Supplied title

Quantity: 1 volume(s).

Physical Description: Vellum, 181 leaves (18 blank, total includes both pastedowns and front flyleaf), bound; 184 x 133mm. Single column, 14 lines, ruled in red ink, written space 95 x 63mm, written in dark-brown ink in a gothic liturgical hand, rubrics in red, calendar partly in red and blue; capitals touched in yellow.

Finding Aids: Manion, M.M. Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in New Zealand collections, no.136; Taylor, D.M. The oldest manuscripts in New Zealand, no.26..

Provenance: Executed in Eastern France between 1425 and 1475, possibly in either Dijon or Besancon c.1460 (see Manion).Both the Hours of the Virgin and the Office of the Dead are of unrecorded uses. The calendar has a flavour of Paris or the north-east, singling out in blue SS. Genevieve (3 January), Remigius (1 October) and Denis (9 October), and St Lupus of Sens in red (1 September). There are offsets from pilgrim badges on the verso of the front flyleaf; 16th-century devotional phrases inside the lower cover and the signature 'Claude grillie' on the verso of the final contemporary endleaf (f.178v); the name Du Brueil De Rudeillats' is written in a 17th-century hand at the head of the front flyleaf. The ms has the armorial bookplate of Sir John Cust, Baronet; his son was ennobled as Baron Brownlow in 1776 and his grandson as Earl Brownlow in 1815. This Book of Hours was lot 750 in Lord Brownlow's sale, Sotheby's 18 April 1929, and sold to Ellis. Bought by Albert Clemas and sold by him to the British and Foreign Bible Society of New Zealand in 1933.