Books of hours are Christian prayer books, which were used to pray the canonical hours. The use of a book of hours was especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result, they are the most common
Opening from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440, with Catherine kneeling before the Virgin and Child, surrounded by her family heraldry. Opposite is the start of Matins in the Little Office, illustrated by the Annunciation to Joachim, as the start of a long cycle of the Life of the Virgin.
An early 15th-century French book of hours (MS13, Society of Antiquaries of London) open to an illustration of the 'Adoration of the Magi'. Bequeathed to the Society in 1769 by the Revd Charles Lyttleton, Bishop of Carlisle and President of the Society (1765-8).
Example of a more affordable and thus more common book of hours: Excerpt from a "simple" Middle Dutch book of hours. Made in the 2nd half of the fifteenth century in Brabant.
Even this level of decoration is richer than those of most books, though less than the lavish amounts of illumination in luxury books, which are the ones most often seen reproduced.
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of h
Book of hours
…Heaven prayer books, the Agpeya of Coptic Christianity or The Brotherhood Prayer Book of Lutheranism. The book of hours has its ultimate origin in the Psalter, which monks and nuns were required to recite. By the 12th century this had developed into the breviary, with weekly cycles of psalms, prayers, hymns…
Carolingian Psalter (facsimile)
Folio 15b of the Utrecht Psalter illustrates Psalm 27
The Mudil Psalter, the oldest complete psalter in the Coptic language, Coptic Museum, Egypt, Coptic Cairo
Initials from the beginning of psalms in the St. Albans Psalter.