Book of Hours were prayer books designed for the laity, but modeled on the Divine Office, a cycle of daily devotions, prayers and readings, performed by members of religious orders and the clergy. Its central text is the Hours of the Virgin. There are eight hours (times for prayer ): Matins, Lauds. Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline. During the Middle Ages, the leaves making up a Book of Hours were written by hand on expensive parchment and beautifully illuminated with jewel-like pigments and gold leaf. These illuminated manuscripts combined the collaborative efforts of an array of highly skilled craftspeople; requiring the joint labors of the parchmenter, professional scribes to write the text in Gothic script, artists to illuminate the pages with decorations, and masterful binders to complete the process.

Superb vellum leaf from a Book of Hours with the text in a bold gothic book hand with eight illuminated initials and four line fillers in red, blue and burnished gold ink. The text includes part of Psalm 7 and beginning with the capital "N" on recto translates as:

Unless you will be converted, he will brandish his sword. He has extended his bow and made it ready.
And with it, he has prepared instruments of death. He has produced his arrows for those on fire.
Behold him who has given birth to injustice: he has conceived sorrow and has begotten iniquity.
He has opened a pit and enlarged it. And he has fallen into the hole that he made.
His sorrow will be turned upon his own head, and his iniquity will descend upon his highest point.
I will confess to the Lord according to his justice, and I will sing a psalm to the name of the Lord Most High.

References:

Condition: A

Marginal soiling.