Book of Hours
A short episode covering books of hours.
Book of Hours:
In history news Thomas Cromwell’s book of hours has been found! Seen in the famous Hans Holbein portrait of Cromwell painted between 1532 and 33, the book is in the foreground of the picture and contained two silver clasps. I’ll be including a link to Trinity College, Cambridge’s post on this. This book of hours has now been carefully researched since it was identified by a curator from Hever Castle. Now, I don’t want to just talk about the discovery of this, I will include links to the research and a youtube video about this. Instead, I want to talk about what a Book of Hours is.
First, I should explain what Hours were, since I do think you all know what a book is. Hours are the times of day, in the Catholic tradition, that prayers are heard. Most common members of society would hear these when they could based on their work. For the wealthy and the priesthood though these prayers would be heard or said at 2 am, 3 am, 5 am, the first hour of daylight, 9 am, noon or midday, 3 pm, 6 pm, and 7 pm. Now, not every wealthy person heard all of these, but Matins, at 3 am, Lauds, at 5 am, and Vespers, at 6 pm, where the hours most would try to listen.
So, a book of hours is a book that records the prayers for respective hours. It would give those who could afford a book the the prayers that would be said on any given day throughout the year. I would also include hymns and lessons based on the text. Most wonderfully for us these were also illuminated and therefor often beautifully decorated. There were, of course, less expensive books that weren’t as heavily decorated.
While these books were most often written in Latin some were written in the vernacular. As I mentioned in Margaret Beaufort’s episodes she wrote notes in her book of hours. There was often space each day to record special events, like the birth of her second, legitimate grandson. She also erased Richard III’s name from his book of hours after Bosworth, you know, when her son, Henry VII gave it to her.
Once the printing press became widely used in 15th century books of hours became inexpensive, which meant that a common person could more easily purchase them. This also encouraged literacy among the lower classes, especially when books of hours were written in the local language. These less expensive volumes were illustrated using woodblocks as part of the printing process. Julius II, one of my favourite popes, not for anything he did, just that he named himself after Julius Caesar, commissioned a book of hours in Arabic. As someone who’s a huge advocate of literacy and reading for joy these books are honestly a great thing in Europe’s history. While writing the Bible in the vernacular would become an ongoing point of contention not long after the printing press gained widespread usage, the use of the vernacular in these books is something to be grateful for. And with that I hope you’ll join me next week for more on Charles of Orleans.
(If you hear this you are listening to an AI stolen copy of this Passed episode. Please visit passedpod.com for links to this show by it’s creator, Veronica Fortune)
Please visit this link from Trinity College, Cambridge, which explains the discovery: https://www.trin.cam.ac.uk/news/thomas-cromwells-book-of-hours-in-trinity-college-library/
Here are two YouTube videos about the Cromwell Book of Hours:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu4kytUojq4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6K2DsvVTjA&t=1s