Fifteenth century: Book of hours

Printing press

The invention of the printing press during the first half of the fifteenth century is generally regarded as one of the most profound events in human history because of its enormous social consequences. The first printed books, which are called incunabula, were published in editions of a few hundred copies and reached a larger audience than manuscripts did.

Incunabula and manuscripts

The first incunabula looked very much like manuscripts. Books of hours -- prayer books for lay people (who, considering the luxurious appearance of the books, must have been from the nobility and the very wealthy middle-class) -- were printed in large numbers at the end of the fifteenth century, mostly on parchment. But the illustrations they contained could not compete with the magnificent miniatures produced by hand, so that many people even then still preferred hand-written copies. The book of hours pictured here was also written by hand.

Provenance

Books of hours, like breviaries, missals, psalters and other books for the clergy, always contained a calendar listing the saints' days. Since all dioceses, cities and monasteries venerated their own specific saints, these calendars have proven to be helpful aids in identifying a manuscript's provenance. St Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, is listed in red on 3 January, thus pointing in the direction of the French capital.

Golden Number

Since the calendar had to serve for many years (the so-called perpetual calendar) and not just one, the immoveable feast days such as Christmas and Epiphany are indicated but not the moveable feasts such as Easter, Ascension Day and Pentecost. In order to determine the date of Easter, the Golden Number for that particular year was needed, and this was placed with the day letters for the names of the saints.

Miniatures

The calendar miniatures in books of hours usually reflect the activities that people were involved in during the various seasons. This book of hours features men and women, poor and rich, peasant and nobleman together. Activities on the land such as sowing, pruning, mowing and threshing alternate with a strolling nobleman and an amorous noblewoman. Even the traditional pressing of grapes and slaughtering of pigs are not absent. The illustration for the month of July is quite striking. Here we see no mowing of grass, as was customary during the haymaking season, but a shepherd carrying a sheep. He is not about to shear the sheep, as is often pictured in the month of June. Nor is there a reference to the shepherds' calendar, which appeared for the first time at the end of the fifteenth century. This is Christ, the Good Shepherd, bringing a sheep back to the fold. The sheep here symbolizes a penitent sinner being put back on the right path.