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 French Book of Hours. The text is in a bold gothic book hand with one large initial and numerous small initials and line fillers illuminated in red, blue and burnished gold leaf. Both sides include a fine floral and vine frame painted in a multitude of colors and gold leaf. The text includes Psalm 80, and beginning with the large initial "E" on recto translates as:

Exult before God our helper. Sing joyfully to the God of Jacob.
Take up a psalm, and bring forth the timbrel: a pleasing Psalter with stringed instruments.
Sound the trumpet at the new moon, on the noteworthy day of your solemnity,
for it is a precept in Israel and a judgment for the God of Jacob.
He set it as a testimony with Joseph, when he went out of the land of Egypt. He heard a tongue that he did not know.
He turned the burdens away from his back. His hands had been a slave to baskets.
You called upon me in tribulation, and I freed you. I heard you within the hidden tempest. I tested you with waters of contradiction.
My people, listen and I will call you to testify. If, O Israel, you will pay heed to me,
then there will be no new god among you, nor will you adore a foreign god.
For I am the Lord your God, who led you out of the land of Egypt. Widen your mouth, and I will fill it.

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Condition: B+

Minor soiling with a bit of the ink smeared on recto at bottom, and some small abrasions on verso.