Editing Book of hours (section)

==History==
[[File:Archive-ugent-be-336BC5FA-15CD-11E9-954B-23312282636C DS-209 (cropped).jpg|left|thumb|Example of a more affordable and thus more common book of hours: Excerpt from a "simple" [[Middle Dutch]] book of hours. Made in the 2nd half of the fifteenth century in [[Duchy of Brabant|Brabant.]]<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Middelnederlands getijdenboek |trans-title=Middle Netherlands Book of hours (lit. 'Tides book')|url=https://lib.ugent.be/viewer/archive.ugent.be:336BC5FA-15CD-11E9-954B-23312282636C#?c=&m=&s=&cv=10&xywh=-324,-1,4756,2656|access-date=2020-08-27|website=lib.ugent.be}}</ref>]]
[[File:BLRoyal2BXVFol066vMinPatron.jpg|thumb|220px|left|Even this level of decoration is richer than those of most books, though less than the lavish amounts of illumination in luxury books, which are the ones most often seen reproduced.]]
The book of hours has its ultimate origin in the [[Psalter]], which monks and nuns were required to recite. By the 12th century this had developed into the [[breviary]], with weekly cycles of psalms, prayers, [[hymn]]s, antiphons, and readings which changed with the liturgical season.<ref name=Duffy2006>{{cite magazine |author-first=Eamon |author-last=Duffy |title=A Very Personal Possession: Eamon Duffy Tells How a Careful Study of Surviving Books of Hours Can Tell Us Much About the Spiritual and Temporal Life of Their Owners and Much More Besides |magazine=History Today |volume=56 |issue=11 |date=Nov 2006 |pages=12(7)}}</ref> Eventually a selection of texts was produced in much shorter volumes and came to be called a book of hours.<ref name=Harthan1977>{{cite book |first=John |last=Harthan |title=The Book of Hours: With a Historical Survey and Commentary by John Harthan |location=New York |publisher=Crowell |date=1977}}</ref> During the latter part of the thirteenth century the Book of Hours became popular as a personal prayer book for men and women who led secular lives. It consisted of a selection of prayers, psalms, hymns and lessons based on the liturgy of the clergy. Each book was unique in its content though all included the Hours of the Virgin Mary, devotions to be made during the eight [[canonical hours]] of the day, the reasoning behind the name 'Book of Hours'.<ref name=Hirst2003>{{cite book |first=Warwick |last=Hirst |chapter=The Fine Art of Illumination |title=Heritage Collection, Nelson Meers Foundation, 2003 |publisher=State Library of New South Wales |location=Sydney |date=2003 |access-date=17 Feb 2022 |pages=8–9 |url=https://www2.sl.nsw.gov.au/archive/events/exhibitions/2007/heritage/docs/heritageguide2003.pdf}}</ref>
[[File:Getijdenboek Van Reynegom (16e eeuw), KBS-FRB.jpg|thumb|van Reynegom Book of Hours, {{circa|15th century}}, collection [[Royal Library of Belgium]] & [[King Baudouin Foundation]]]]

Many books of hours were made for women. There is some evidence that they were sometimes given as a wedding present from a husband to his bride.<ref name=Harthan1977/> Frequently they were passed down through the family, as recorded in wills.<ref name=Harthan1977/> Until about the 15th century paper was rare and most books of hours consisted of [[parchment]] sheets made from animal skins.

Although the most heavily illuminated books of hours were enormously expensive, a small book with little or no illumination was affordable much more widely,<ref name=":0" /> and increasingly so during the 15th century. The [[William de Brailes|earliest surviving English example]] was apparently written for a laywoman living in or near [[Oxford]] in about 1240. It is smaller than a modern paperback but heavily illuminated with major initials, but no full-page miniatures. By the 15th century, there are also examples of servants owning their own Books of Hours. In a court case from 1500, a pauper woman is accused of stealing a domestic servant's prayerbook.{{cn|date=February 2022}}

Very rarely the books included prayers specifically composed for their owners, but more often the texts are adapted to their tastes or gender, including the inclusion of their names in prayers. Some include images depicting their owners, and some their [[coats of arms]]. These, together with the choice of saints commemorated in the calendar and suffrages, are the main clues for the identity of the first owner.  [[Eamon Duffy]] explains how these books reflected the person who commissioned them. He claims that the "personal character of these books was often signaled by the inclusion of prayers specially composed or adapted for their owners." Furthermore, he states that "as many as half the surviving manuscript Books of Hours have annotations, marginalia or additions of some sort. Such additions might amount to no more than the insertion of some regional or personal patron saint in the standardized calendar, but they often include devotional material added by the owner. Owners could write in specific dates important to them, notes on the months where things happened that they wished to remember, and even the images found within these books would be personalized to the owners—such as localized saints and local festivities.<ref name=Duffy2006/> 

By at least the 15th century, the Netherlands and Paris workshops were producing books of hours for stock or distribution, rather than waiting for individual commissions. These were sometimes with spaces left for the addition of personalized elements such as local feasts or heraldry.

[[File:Schwarzes Stundenbuch edit.jpg|320px|thumb|[[Black Hours, Morgan MS 493]], ''Pentecost'', Folios 18v/19r, c. 1475–80. [[Morgan Library & Museum]], New York]]

The style and layout for traditional books of hours became increasingly standardized around the middle of the thirteenth century.  The new style can be seen in the books produced by the Oxford illuminator [[William de Brailes]] who ran a commercial workshop (he was in [[minor orders]]). His books included various aspects of the Church's [[breviary]] and other liturgical aspects for use by the laity. "He incorporated a perpetual calendar, Gospels, prayers to the Virgin Mary, the Stations of the Cross, prayers to the Holy Spirit, Penitential psalms, litanies, prayers for the dead, and suffrages to the Saints. The book's goal was to help his devout patroness to structure her daily spiritual life in accordance with the eight canonical hours, Matins to Compline, observed by all devout members of the Church. The text, augmented by rubrication, gilding, miniatures, and beautiful illuminations, sought to inspire meditation on the mysteries of faith, the sacrifice made by Christ for man, and the horrors of hell, and to especially highlight devotion to the Virgin Mary whose popularity was at a zenith during the 13th century."<ref name=Webb&Albers>{{cite journal |last1=Webb |first1=M. |last2=Albers |first2=M. J. |title=The Design Elements of Medieval Books of Hours |journal=Journal of Technical Writing and Communication |date=2001 |volume=31 |issue=4 |pages=353–361 [354] |doi=10.2190/1BLL-2DA9-D52X-TU4J|s2cid=108454672 }}</ref> This arrangement was maintained over the years as many aristocrats commissioned the production of their own books.

By the end of the 15th century, the advent of [[printing]] made books more affordable and much of the emerging middle-class could afford to buy a printed book of hours, and new manuscripts were only commissioned by the very wealthy.  The ''[[Kitab salat al-sawai]]'' (1514), widely considered the first book in Arabic printed using [[moveable type]], is a book of hours intended for Arabic-speaking Christians and presumably commissioned by [[Pope Julius II]].<ref name="Krek">{{cite journal | doi = 10.1086/372742 | last= Krek | first = M. | date = 1979 | title = The Enigma of the First Arabic Book Printed from Movable Type | journal = Journal of Near Eastern Studies | volume = 38 | issue = 3| pages = 203–212 | s2cid= 162374182 }}</ref>