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BOOK OF HOURS for use in Rome. (France, c.1555) A liturgy in Latin made c. 1555 for King Henry II of France.

The pages of this Book of Hours appropriately resemble Fleurs-de-Lis, a symbol for French royalty. It was made for King Henry II of France contained prayers and other short texts, which were read at set times during the day. Not only does the very shape of the pages testify to the object’s royal patron, so too does the high quality of the decoration. The manuscript measures only 182×80 mm and has 129 leaves.

‘Written by hand, medieval manuscripts are very different from printed books, which started to appear after Gutenberg’s mid-fifteenth-century invention of moving type. One difference in particular is important for our understanding of manuscripts. While printed books were produced in batches of a thousand or more, handwritten copies were made one at the time. In fact, medieval books, especially those made commercially, came to be after a detailed conversation between scribe and reader, a talk that covered all aspects of the manuscript’s production. This is the only way the scribe could ensure the expensive product he was about to make was in sync with what the reader wanted. Consequently, while printed books were shaped generically and according to the printer’s perception of what the (anonymous) “market” preferred, the medieval scribe designed a book according to the explicit instructions of its user. ’—Erik Kwakkel on medievalbooks.nl (2014)

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