A Very Beautiful 16th Century Book of Hours

I recently discovered this very beautiful Book of Hours by the Flemish artist Simon Bening (1483 ca. - 1561), who specialized in the production of richly illuminated manuscripts, and made several such prayer books for wealthy patrons such the Emperor Charles V and the Infante of Portugal. This particular example is known as the Flower Book of Hours, since nearly every page without a large illustration has four different flowers on it, as in the fourth image here. (On many pages, one or more of the flowers is replaced by a bird, insect, or some other animal; an especially good example of this is given below.) It was made around 1520-25, for an unknown patron; by this time, Bening had moved from his native place (either Ghent or Antwerp) to Bruges, where he was an important figure in the bookmakers’ guild. He is regarded as the last major exponent of the tradition that produced this kind of work in the Netherlands, which were taken over in the 16th century by the worst and most destructive form of Calvinism; the Beeldenstorm, a famous and particular vicious outbreak of iconoclasm, took place about 5 years after his death.

The book begins with a calendar, and as is very often the case in Books of Hours, each page is accompanied by the sign of the zodiac that begins within that month, and some form of agricultural activity: for the current month, July, the sign of Leo, with the reaping of crops in the background, and a waterfowl hunt in the foreground. In many places in the manuscript, where a line has no text, it is filled with a decorative bar, also very typical of higher quality Books of Hours.

The illustration which introduces a prayer to the face of Our Lord, with Christ as the Pantocrator, two unlabeled prophets in the left margin, and the carrying of the Cross at the bottom.

Each new section of the book begins with the first part of the text arranged like this, with a large single block capital and a border with a colored background full of flowers, birds, and insects. There are just a few pages with some of the more whimsical kind of marginalia often employed in the books, such as the monkey leading a bear on a leash seen below in the margin of the picture of the Visitation.

Most of the pages look like this.

Books of Hours usually include one Gospel reading of a major feast from each of the four Evangelists, who appear in the accompanying images. Here we see St John, and the Gospel of the Mass of Christmas day, John 1, 1-14.

The Gospel of the Annunciation, St Luke 1, 26-38.

The Gospel of the Epiphany, St Matthew 2, 1-12.

The Gospel of the Ascension, Mark 16, 14-20.

These are usually followed by the complete Passion of St John, chapters 18 and 19, here accompanied by an image of the Agony in the Garden.

Most books of Hours of the 15th and 16th century also include two brief devotional Offices, one of the Cross and another of the Holy Spirit. Each Hour of these consists only of a short hymn, an antiphon, a versicle and response, and a prayer. The Hours of the Cross are of course accompanied by an image of the Crucifixion...

and those of the Holy Spirit by one of Pentecost.

This specific manuscript is unusual in also including the full set of proper texts for the votive Mass of the Virgin Mary, which in those days was celebrated every day in all major churches (and many minor ones) in a special chapel dedicated to Her. In this image of the Mass, we can see the priest, deacon and subdeacon, the cantors, and even the musicians in the organ loft.

The heart of any book of Hours is, of course, the Little Office of the Virgin Mary, and in the better quality ones, each individual Hour is preceded by an image of an episode from Her life. Before Matins, we have the Annunciation; the vessel in the lower right hand corner is copied very broadly from a picture by the painter Hans Memling (1430 ca. - 1494), whose influence on Bening and his workshop is evident in quite a number of these images.

Before, Lauds, the Visitation, with the aforementioned monkey and bear in the margin.

Before Prime, the Nativity. This image shows Bening’s awareness of some of the interesting things happening at the time in Italy, where artists (inspired by the works of Raphael) were getting over their traditional reluctance to do night scenes. Here the angels provide the light source for the scene, a technique which Raphael had employed to extraordinary dramatic effect in his depiction of St Peter in prison.

The beginning of the text of Prime has this especially clever and well-executed example of illusionistic painting, which makes it look like two dragon-flies have landed on the page.

Before Terce, the appearance of the angels to the shepherds in the field. Both of the shepherds are posed in a manner very similar to the central figure of a famous statue which had been discovered in Rome in 1506, the Laocoon, which exercised a tremendous influence on artists of the time; mostly notably, it is the model for the figure of Christ in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. (Of course, Bening and his students would have known about these things from drawings in circulation among artists; very few of them, if any, would have been to Rome personally to see these things.)

Before Sext, the Magi present their gifts.

Before None, the Presentation in the Temple.

Before Vespers, the Flight into Egypt.

Before Compline, the lamentation over the dead Christ before His burial.

This image of the Virgin and Child in heaven, and in the group below, the prophet Isaiah in the middle of some of the ancestors of Christ, introduces the Advent variants to the Little Office. (This is not a common motif in books of Hours, because many versions of the Little Office had no variants for Advent, or almost none. This particular book, however, follows the Use of Rome, a trend which was already growing well before the Council of Trent.)

A wide variety of motifs is found to accompany the Seven Penitential Psalms in books of Hours. Psalm 50, the fourth of the seven psalms (which has always had a prominent place in the liturgy of all Christian rites), was composed, according to its title, after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband, so here we see him praying for forgiveness to God, who raises His arm in a distinctly threatening way. Some of Simon Bening’s contemporaries took advantage of this tradition to depict a lot more of Bathsheba than is appropriate for a prayer book, but he himself gives only a very small image of her as she washes her feet, set way in the background.

In the margin of the first Penitential Psalm is depicted Samson as he kills the lion, and the hive of bees that make a honeycomb in its mouth. (Judges 14, 5-9) Samson is not a shepherd, but a group of sheep are seen above the hive, and a dog runs behind him. This seems to have been added as a reference to David’s words about himself when he proposes to Saul that he go out to fight Goliath: “Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, or a bear, and took a ram out of the midst of the flock, and I pursued after them, and struck them, and delivered it out of their mouth: and they rose up against me, and I caught them by the throat, and I strangled and killed them. For I thy servant have killed both a lion and a bear.” (1 Samuel 17, 34-36.)

The Office of the Dead is introduced by an image of Our Lord raising Lazarus from the dead.

In the margin of the first psalm of Vespers of the Dead, we see a funerary procession going from a church to a grave yard. The priest is, of course, wearing a black cope, and the body is being carried by men wearing the dark habit of one of the innumerable confraternity that existed to take care of such duties.

The rest of the images within the book are small ones like this of St Athanasius, which introduces the Creed traditionally (but erroneously) ascribed to him.

Most books of Hours also include two lengthy prayers to the Virgin Mary; this picture introduces the first of them, the Obsecro te...

and this the second, O intemerata.

A prayer to be said before an image of Christ.

A series of prayers attributed to St Gregory the Great.

At the end of a book of Hours, one generally finds the suffrages, a long series of commemorations of the Saints like those said in the Divine Office, which consist of an antiphon, a versicle and response, and a prayer. In some manuscripts, these are extremely elaborate, with a large and finely detailed image accompanying each one, but here they are relatively small and simple. Just a selection: a prayer to one’s Guardian Angel.

St Michael

and three Saints from this month: the Apostle James

St Christopher

and St Anne.

The clasps alone would have been worth a fortune.