What are Books of Hours?
As a starter for research on Books of Hours, this page includes a detailed definition of Books of Hours (See text below) as well as an indication of our holdings in our Special Collections. For resources on research on Books of Hours, please go to our next page,"Books of Hours - Resources for Research."
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Book of Hours - Definition: See pp. 47-48 in: "Illumination," Beal, Peter. A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450 to 2000, Oxford University Press, 2011:
Excerpt: "Horæ (Latin for ‘hours’), more commonly known as ‘books of hours’, or sometimes ‘primers’ (Latin: primaria), are a type of devotional volume in Roman Catholic use. Although they were based on texts that were in ecclesiastical use by the tenth century and in popular use by the late twelfth century, and originally formed parts of psalters, horæ fourished in manuscript form especially from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. They incorporate a shorter version of the devotions performed at the eight canonical hours (Matins and Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline), specifically the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin (the Hours of the Blessed Virgin or Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis). Horæ are attractively produced prayer books, which could also include a calendar, almanac, hymns, psalms, and meditations. (…)
A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology by ISBN: 0199576122Publication Date: Oxford : Oxford University Press; 2011-This is the first Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology ever to be published. Dealing with the subject of documentation - which affects everyone's lives ( every-day letters, notes, and shopping lists to far-reaching legal instruments, if not autograph literary masterpieces) - Peter Beal defines, in a lively and accessible style, some 1,500 terms relating to manuscripts and their production and use in Britain from 1450 to the present day. The entries, which range in length from one line to nearly a hundred lines each, cover terms defining types of manuscript, their physical features and materials, writing implements, writing surfaces, scribes and other writing agents, scripts, postal markings, and seals, as well as subjects relating to literature, bibliography, archives, paleography, the editing and printing of manuscripts, dating, conservation, and such fields as cartography, commerce, heraldry, law, and military and naval matters. The book includes 96 illustrations showing many of the features described.
The Book of Hours, the Best Seller of the Middle Ages - USC Libraries YouTube Channel
Gregory T. Clark (Sewanee: The University of the South). The Book of Hours, the Best Seller of the Middle Ages: Two Southern Netherlandish Manuscript Exemplars at the University of Southern California (February 5, 2020):
"Our program on the Prehistory of the Book, in collaboration with Special Collections in Doheny Memorial Library was launched with a visit from Professor Gregory Clarke, who spent two days talking with our community about Books of Hours as a genre, and specifically about the two Books of Hours in USC's holdings." Center for the Premodern World.
The Medieval Calendar: Books at USC
The Medieval Calendar Year by Call Number: Grand Depository: CE57 .H46 1999ISBN: 0271019034Publication Date: University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, c1999The Medieval Calendar Year celebrates the pictorial convention known as "The Labors of the Months" and the ways it was used in the Middle Ages. (...) The "Labors" cycle was most popular during the High Middle Ages (ca. 1200-1500). The traditional cycle depicts the year as a round of seasonal activities on the land. Each month has its allotted task, and each of these represents one stage in the never-ending process of providing food for society. The small scenes that made up the cycle were well-known and used widely throughout Europe. They were chosen to decorate both public and private spaces: churches and houses, town fountains, baptismal fonts, as well as books of devotion intended both for priests and for the laity. The cycle was sculpted in stone, carved in wood, painted on glass and on manuscript pages. Examples from such media are described, but most of the illustrations have been taken from manuscripts, primarily Books of Hours. (...)
The Medieval Calendar by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: CE57 .W49 2017ISBN: 9781785511073Publication Date: New York: The Morgan Library & Museum, in association with Scala Arts Publishers, Inc., 2017“The intricacies of the medieval calendar are examined in this sumptuously illustrated volume, featuring many of the finest examples from The Morgan Library's unparalleled collection. The lucid and concise text explains the complexities of Vigils, octaves, Egyptian Days, Golden Numbers, Dominical Letters, movable feasts and the key role played by the saints days, including the colours in which they are written as well as their rankings and gradings. A thirteenth-century Breviary made for a French queen to use in the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris is fully reproduced, transcribed and analysed to reveal its true meaning. The author shares his step-by-step method to localise a medieval calendar and discover its use. Readers will thus learn how to assess a calendar's roster of liturgical feasts as a key to revealing the place where it was destined to be used.”
Essays on Medieval Computational Astronomy by Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 9004281754Publication Date: Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015“During the Middle Ages and early modern times tables were a most successful and economical way to present mathematical procedures and astronomical models and to facilitate computations. Before the sixteenth century astronomical models introduced by Ptolemy in Antiquity were rarely challenged, and innovation consisted in elaborating new methods for calculating planetary positions and other celestial phenomena. Essays on Medieval Computational Astronomy includes twelve articles that focus on astronomical tables, offering many examples where the meaning and purpose of such tables has been determined by careful analysis. In evaluating the work of medieval scholars we are mindful of the importance of applying criteria consistent with their own time, which may be different from those appropriate for other periods.”
Calendars and Years, Astronomy and time in the ancient and medieval world by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: CE21 C35 2011ISBN: 9781842179871Publication Date: Oxford/Oakville, CT: Oxbow Books, c2011“Understanding the calendars used by ancient and medieval cultures is essential to the writing of history. Equally important, however, is understanding the basis upon which our current knowledge of these calendars rests. This second volume of Calendars and Years explores the calendars of ancient and medieval China, India, the ancient Jewish world, the medieval Islamic world, and the Maya. Particular attention is given to the preserved evidence on which our understanding of these calendars lie, the modern historiography of their study, and the role of calendars in ancient and medieval society. Topics covered include the origin of the Chinese sexagenary cycle, evidence for the 364-day year in the ancient Jewish world, and the history of attempts to establish a correlation between Mayan dates and the Julian and Gregorian calendars.”
Calendars and Years Astronomy and Time in the Ancient Near East by Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 1782974954Publication Date: Havertown: Oxbow Books, 2007(...) “The seven papers in this volume provide an answer to the question what do we know about the operation of calendars in the ancient world, and just as importantly how do we know it? Topics covered include the ancient and modern history of the Egyptian 365-day calendar, astronomical and administrative calendars in ancient Mesopotamia, and the development of astronomical calendars in ancient Greece. This book will be of interest to ancient historians, historians of science, astronomers who use early astronomical records, and anyone with an interest in calendars and their development.” (...)
Head of All Years: astronomy and calendars at Qumran in their ancient context by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: CE35 .B395 2008ISBN: 9789004170889Publication Date: Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2008Rather than being an isolated, primitive body of knowledge the Jewish calendar tradition of 364 days constituted an integral part of the astronomical science of the ancient world. This tradition attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Pseudepigrapha stands out as a coherent, novel synthesis, representing the Jewish authors apocalyptic worldview. The calendar is studied here both from within analyzing its textual manifestations and from without via a comparison with ancient Mesopotamian astronomy. This analysis reveals that the calendrical realm constituted a significant case of inter-cultural borrowing, pertinent to similar such cases in ancient literature. Special attention is given to the Book of Astronomy (1 Enoch 72-82) and a variety of calendrical and liturgical texts from Qumran.
Scandalous Error: calendar reform and calendrical astronomy in medieval Europe by Call Number: Available OnlineISBN: 0198799551Publication Date: Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2018The Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, which provided the basis for the civil and Western ecclesiastical calendars still in use today, has often been seen as a triumph of early modern scientific culture or an expression of papal ambition in the wake of the Counter-Reformation. Much less attention has been paid to reform's intellectual roots in the European Middle Ages, when the reckoning of time by means of calendrical cycles was a topic of central importance to learned culture, as impressively documented by the survival of relevant texts and tables in thousands of manuscripts copied before 1500. For centuries prior to the Gregorian reform, astronomers, mathematicians, theologians, and even Church councils had been debating the necessity of improving or emending the existing ecclesiastical calendar, which throughout the Middle Ages kept losing touch with the astronomical phenomena at an alarming pace. Scandalous Error is the first comprehensive study of the medieval literature devoted to the calendar problem and its cultural and scientific contexts. It examines how the importance of ordering liturgical time by means of a calendar that comprised both solar and lunar components posed a technical-astronomical problem to medieval society and details the often sophisticated ways in which computists and churchmen reacted to this challenge. By drawing attention to the numerous connecting paths that existed between calendars and mathematical astronomy between the Fall of Rome and the end of the fifteenth century, the volume offers substantial new insights on the place of exact science in medieval culture.
Medii Aevi Kalendarium or, Dates, charters, and customs of the Middle Ages (...) by Call Number: Grand Depository: CB353 .H34 1978ISBN: 0404154182Publication Date: New York: AMS Press, 1978(...) : with kalendars from the tenth to the fifteenth century, and an alphabetical digest of obsolete names of days, forming a glossary of the dates of the Middle Ages, with tables and other aids for ascertaining dates.
Cycles of Time and Scientific Learning in Medieval Europe by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: QB23 .S74 1995ISBN: 0860784711Publication Date: https://uosc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01USC_INST/mbk0s6/alma9910161579997037The calendar worked out by Bede remains essentially the one we still use today, yet the mathematical and scientific studies of the early medieval schools have been largely neglected in most discussions of the cultural and intellectual history of Latin Europe. These articles by Wesley Stevens are based on an unrivalled knowledge of the manuscript sources and provide a very different perspective, demonstrating the real vitality of this science in the early medieval West. Working from the original texts and diagrams, he identifies and explains mathematical reckonings and astronomical cycles by early Greek, Roman and Christian scholars. Through made for religious purposes, those early studies created a demand for standard arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, and this remained of often intense interest through into the 9th century, in the schools of Fulda and Reichenau. One paper here further sets out to correct much mis-information on the ideas of Isidore, Boniface and other church fathers; a second, revised especially for this volume, looks in detail at Bede's scientific achievements, his theories of latitudes and tides, as well as his cosmology and computus.
Time in the Medieval World by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: CB353 .T56 2001ISBN: 1903153085Publication Date: Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001“By exploring some of the more important senses of time which were in circulation in the medieval world, scholars from a wide range of disciplines trace competing definitions and modes of temporality in the middle ages, explaining their influence upon life and culture. The issues explored include anachronism as a feature in earlier senses of time, perceptions of death and of the Last Judgement, time in literary narratives and in music, constructions of time as used in the professions, and original work on the particular systems and technologies which were used for the keeping of time, such as clocks and calendars.” (...)
Le Temps, Sa Mesure et Sa Perception Au Moyen Age by Call Number: Grand Depository: BD638 .T46 1992ISBN: 2868780695Publication Date: Caen, France: Paradigme, 1992
Tempo Ed Essere Nell'Autunno Del Medioeve: il De tempore di Nicola di Strasburgo e il dibattito sulla natura ed il senso del tempo agli inizi del XIV secolo by Call Number: Grand Depository: BD638 .S92 1990ISBN: 9060322983Publication Date: Amsterdam: B.R. Grüner; 1989In Italian, preface in German.
Zeitrechnung des deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit by Call Number: Doheny Memorial Library: CE61.G3 G76 1997ISBN: 3511045606Publication Date: Aalen: Scientia-Verlag: 1997Originally published: Hannover : Hahn'sche Buchhandlung, 1891-1898.
v. 1. Glossar und Tafeln -- v. 2. Abteilung 1. Kalender der Diözesen Deutschlands, der Schweiz und Skandinaviens. Abteilung 2. Ordenskalender, Heiligenverzeichnis, Nachträge zum Glossar. This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. (…) This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. (…)
Zeitrechnung des Deutschen Mittelalters und der Neuzeit von Dr. H. Grotefend. HTML Version by H. Ruth.
Book of Hours
Book of Hours, Bruge, USC Libraries Call # Z105.5 1460 .C378
This image was taken by Melissa Miller. For the full digital surrogate, go to USC Digital Library Link: https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll58/id/49243
Book of Hours, Netherlands, USC Libraries Call # Z105.5 1450 .C378
This image was taken by Melissa Miller. For the full digital surrogate, go to USC Digital Library Link: https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p15799coll58/id/48884
The Medieval Calendar: Video
The Medieval Calendar (4.29 mins). Created by the Getty Museum, Aug. 22.2012. “The medieval calendar served as a map of the Church year. While following the method of the Roman calendar in determining dates, it also listed saints' days and other religious feasts and recorded the phases of the moon. Many calendars also featured related illustrations of saints, feasts, monthly labors, leisure activities, and signs of the zodiac. ”
The Medieval Calendar: Internet Resources - (A Selection)
British Library: Medieval Calendars. Article written by Kathleen Doyle. Calendars are particularly common features of Psalters, or books including the biblical book of Psalms. They help to provide these books with a more liturgical or devotional function, because they mark some of the major Christian feast days, such as Christmas and Epiphany, as well as saints’ days. Typically they were not copied on their own; instead, they were bound together with other texts, such as liturgical books, histories and annals, scientific works, and theological treatises.
Calendars and Labors of the Month, at wyrtig.com. Medieval calendars often employed mnemonic images called "labors of the months," with each "labor" presenting an activity common to that month. Seasons and their months were understood as a succession of cyclical farming activities, punctuated by holy days -- holidays -- during which no one worked. The portrayal of these monthly labors give us a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people. What is shown for each month varies according to the class of the calendar's intended audience, as well as by the region and climate where the calendar was produced. Calendars from more southern regions would place labors in earlier months than the calendars of more northern regions.
Medievalist.net: Medieval Manuscripts: The Calendar of the Books of Hours of Charles of Angouleme. "The book of hours is undoubtedly a most invaluable aid to understanding how men and women viewed time in both the long term and the short term in the Middle Ages. It not only contains the main prayers to be said by the faithful, organised according to the liturgical structure of each day’s monastic offices, but was also intended to be used throughout the year, so it is not surprising that the book of hours begins with a perpetual, twelve-month calendar, a sort of synopsis not unlike those found at the beginning of modern-day diaries. The main liturgical feast days celebrated in all Christendom and the feast days of local saints are indicated in each month – thereby providing clues to the name of the town, or at least the diocese, in which the manuscript’s patron lived."
The Medieval Calendar Year, by Bridget Ann Henisch.The Medieval Calendar Year celebrates the pictorial convention known as "The Labors of the Months" and the ways it was used in the Middle Ages. Richly illustrated and elegantly presented, it provides valuable insights into prevailing social attitudes and values. The "Labors" cycle was most popular during the High Middle Ages (ca. 1200–1500). The traditional cycle depicts the year as a round of seasonal activities on the land. Each month has its allotted task, and each of these represents one stage in the never-ending process of providing food for society.
The Primer or Office of the Blessed Virgin Marie, in Latin and English. Printed at Antwerp by Arnold Conings M. D. XCIX [1599]. Includes a month by month calendar “according to the reformed Kalender from the yere of our Lord 1600 to the year 1625.”
The Calendoscope, (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) by D. MUZERELLE. The basic documentation currently consists in 515 calendars (either manuscript or printed in the early 16th century), which provide 4,500 distinct "celebrations" (i.e. mention of a certain saint on a particular day) witnessed by over 160,000 entries. The Calendoscope is intended to help specialists in the analysis and the identification of liturgical calendars of the Middle Ages. For each day of the year, it instantly provides a list of the saints registered on that day in the various calendars that make up the reference corpus. For each saint appearing in the reference corpus, it instantly provides a list of the calendars in which it appears on a given date, and allows the full content of these to be examined.
On-line Calendar of Saints Days. A hypertext guide to the feast days of Christian saints. It is based on several different dictionaries of saints (but primarily on the 1960 edition of Hermann Grotefend's Taschenbuch der Zeitrechnung). Unlike many of those other dictionaries, however, this one is organized by date, rather than by the name of the saint. When you look up a day, you will find the names of the saints celebrated on that day, together with the names of some of the places in which the feast is (or was) especially important.