Rohan Hours
Grandes Heures de Rohan
Now BNF ms. Latin 9471, the Rohan Hours is the supreme surviving example of affective Passion piety in the Book of Hours tradition, renowned for its monumental full-page miniatures depicting the sufferings of Christ and the grief of the Virgin with an emotional intensity unmatched in contemporaneous Parisian illumination. Its patron is contested: the most probable first recipient was Yolande of Aragon, Duchess of Anjou, though a minority of scholars argue for Charles, the Dauphin of France (her nephew); a further theory places the initial commission with the House of Rohan itself. The manuscript passed through Anjou hands and later to the House of Rohan before entering the Royal Library in 1784. Alongside the standard Horae structure — Hours of the Virgin, Office of the Dead, Penitential Psalms — it includes Old Testament scenes captioned in Old French in the margins.