Choir Books of San Marco (Antiphonaries and Graduals commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici)
Libri corali di San Marco
Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
Our renderingSprinkle me, O Lord, with hyssop and I shall be cleansed: wash me, and I shall become whiter than snow.
What it is
Between 1446 and 1454 Cosimo de' Medici directly commissioned a set of illuminated choir books — antiphonaries and graduals — for the church of San Marco, executed by Zanobi Strozzi and Filippo di Matteo Torelli under Fra Angelico's review of the miniatures. These massive volumes contain the sung Offices and Mass propers for the entire liturgical year and formed the sonic and textual backbone of the chapel Cosimo endowed and habitually worshipped in. Archival documents at San Marco record the commission, making this one of the most firmly attested Medici liturgical patronage acts. The books sustained daily communal prayer for the Dominican friars over generations.
Why it still matters
The Office and Mass chants they contain are essentially those of the Roman Rite today; any edition of the Liturgia Horarum or a modern antiphonary gives full access to the same texts for daily prayer.
Kept alongside
Psalter (for the Education of Giovanni de' Medici)
The documented use of the Latin Psalter as the basis of young Giovanni de' Medici's religious instruction by his mother Clarice Orsini is one of the most precisely attested Medici devotional education episodes. When Poliziano attempted to teach the Medici boys using Homer and classical authors, Clarice expelled him from the villa at Cafaggiolo (c. 1479) and substituted the Latin Psalter, insisting on traditional Catholic instruction. Giovanni later became Pope Leo X, giving the episode retrospective significance; it is documented through Poliziano's own letters and subsequent Renaissance scholarship. The underlying text — the Psalter itself — was the universal prayer book of medieval and Renaissance Christendom and carries the highest possible devotional relevance independent of this particular episode.
Book of Hours of Lorenzo de' Medici (MS Ashburnham 1874)
Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis
A tiny parchment codex (10 x 15 cm) signed and dated 1485 by Florentine scribe Antonio Sinibaldi and illuminated by Francesco Rosselli with nine full-page miniatures and a lavish treasure binding set with lapis lazuli and rose quartzes. The 1492 post-mortem inventory of Lorenzo de' Medici lists it among the 'libriccini delli offitii di donna' — small women's office books — confirming it was a Medici household devotional object intended for female use. It was given to Lorenzo's daughter Luisa (1477–1488), who died aged eleven before her intended marriage, so the book never served its probable purpose as a bridal devotional. Its intimate scale, precious materials, and Marian Hours content mark it as an object of private, daily prayer shaped to the rhythm of the canonical hours.
Laudi of Savonarola (including 'Gesù, sommo conforto')
Savonarola composed devotional hymns (laude) at San Marco — the Dominican convent founded and patronized by Cosimo de' Medici in Florence — that were sung by Florentine confraternities under his reform movement. The best-known, 'Gesù sommo conforto,' was preserved in Serafino Razzi's Laudi spirituali (Venice, 1563) and later translated into English by Jane Francesca Wilde as 'Jesus, Refuge of the Weary.' Razzi himself entered San Marco as a novice in 1549, making his anthology a direct institutional transmission of the Savonarolan and Medicean lauda traditions from the same house. These laude circulated alongside Lorenzo de' Medici's laude in the Razzi collection, and their reach extended well beyond Florence through Savonarola's pan-Italian preaching reputation.