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. The text is in a bold gothic book hand with numerous illuminated initials in red, blue, and burnished gold leaf. The text includes part of Psalm 62, and beginning with the blue initial "Q" on recto, translates in part as:

For your mercy is better than life itself. It is you my lips will praise.
So will I bless you in my life, and I will lift up my hands in your name.
Let my soul be filled, as if with marrow and fatness; and my mouth will give praise with exultant lips.
When I have remembered you on my bed in the morning, I will meditate on you.
For you have been my helper. And I will exult under the cover of your wings.

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Condition: B

Moderate toning and soiling with some fading of the text.