Book Altar of Philip the Good
Livre-autel de Philippe le Bon
Pater noster qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum.
Our renderingOur Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.
What it is
A singular object in the history of Burgundian devotion, this manuscript combines a portable painted diptych — showing the Trinity and the Coronation of the Virgin — with Latin and French prayers that Philip the Good used for daily quiet meditation until his death in 1467. Philip personalised it over decades by attaching 22 pilgrim badges whose lead offsets survive pressed into the pages, making it a layered record of his actual pilgrimage piety. Around 1500 it was enlarged with 39 additional miniatures by the Master of the Prayer Books of c. 1500, probably for a later Burgundian owner. The image-and-prayer format embodies the Devotio Moderna ideal that seeing and praying should be simultaneous acts.
Why it still matters
Philip's practice of pairing a sacred image directly with a written prayer is an immediately reproducible model for lectio divina today; a printed icon or devotional image alongside a short collect reproduces the same contemplative structure.
Kept alongside
The Imitation of Christ
De Imitatione Christi
Written by Thomas à Kempis in the Netherlands in the circle of the Brethren of the Common Life — the same Devotio Moderna movement that directly shaped Margaret of York's documented devotional practice and the piety of Isabella of Portugal at the Burgundian court — the Imitation became the most copied vernacular religious text in 15th-century Europe, circulating in thousands of manuscripts and hundreds of early printed editions. Its four books move from the vanity of worldly learning through conformity to Christ, inward consolation, and finally the sacrament of the Eucharist, forming a complete program of interior conversion. No specific ducal inventory copy has been identified linking this text to Valois-Burgundy by name, but its presence in court circles of this era and region is established through movement history rather than document. It remains the second most widely read Christian book after the Bible.
Prayer Book of Charles the Bold
Livre de prières de Charles le Téméraire
Court payment records of January and July 1469 document payments to scribe Nicolas Spierinc and illuminator Lieven van Lathem respectively for what is now J. Paul Getty Museum Ms. 37 — Charles the Bold's personal pocket prayer book. The small volume grew across two illumination campaigns to contain 47 miniatures and decorated borders on every page, the second campaign (c. 1480–1490) added by a French illuminator after Charles's death in 1477. Its contents are Christocentric and Marian: penitential collects, prayers before and after Communion, litanies, and suffrages to patron saints, reflecting the Burgundian court's ideal of intense private piety fused with luxury craftsmanship. As an intimate personal companion carried by a ruling duke, it represents the highest expression of late-medieval lay devotion.
Benois seront les misericordieux
The companion volume to the Dyalogue, this anthology compiled by Nicolas Finet for Margaret of York draws on biblical texts and early Christian writers to guide the 'active life' of public charity through the framework of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. Margaret's copy (Royal Library of Belgium, MS 9296) includes miniatures depicting her personally performing each act of mercy, framing the text as both instruction and devotional mirror. Before her death in 1503 she bequeathed it to her step-granddaughter Margaret of Austria, giving it a second generation of noble female readership. The Carthusian provenance of the Latin sources Finet drew on reflects the Devotio Moderna current that ran through much of Burgundian court piety in the later fifteenth century.