Da Costa Hours
Horas da Costa
A verified public-domain excerpt for this text is still being set. The folio is catalogued and linked below; an original Sub Rosa rendering will follow.
What it is
Illuminated in Ghent c. 1515 by Simon Bening — the last great master of the Flemish manuscript tradition — the Da Costa Hours is among the most celebrated Books of Hours to survive. Heraldic evidence confirms original commission for a member of the Portuguese Sá family; traditional provenance records a gift from Pope Leo X to King Manuel I of Portugal in 1514 and subsequent presentation to his chamberlain Álvaro da Costa, though this narrative is reported by facsimile publishers and is not independently confirmed by the Morgan Library's catalog. The manuscript's 75 full-page miniatures include a revolutionary full-page calendar cycle depicting the labors of the months. It contains the Hours of the Virgin and the Office of the Dead for the Roman rite. Now at the Morgan Library (MS M.399).
Why it still matters
The full-page agricultural calendar miniatures make this Hours an exceptional resource for lectio-style meditation on creation, sacred time, and the rhythm of the liturgical year; the Office of the Dead remains a complete and moving form of prayer for the faithful departed.
Kept alongside
Book of Hours said to be of King Dom Manuel I
Livro de Horas de D. Manuel I
A Portuguese illuminated Book of Hours held at the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (MNAA), Lisbon, long attributed to King Manuel I (r. 1495–1521) on the basis of heraldic and iconographic evidence. Scholars believe the scenes illustrating the Service for the Dead were completed under his son João III (r. 1521–1557), suggesting the manuscript spans the transition between two Manueline reigns. A related manuscript in the MNAA — the Book of Hours of D. Fernando or D. Catarina — was illuminated by Gerard Horenbout's workshop, linking Portuguese royal Books of Hours to the wider Habsburg-Savoyard network of court piety that stretched across northern Europe and the Iberian peninsula. The manuscript situates Manueline imperial confidence within the traditional rhythm of Marian and liturgical devotion.
Vila Viçosa Ceremonial da Capella del Rey (Royal Chapel Ceremonial)
Ceremonial da Capella del Rey
A royal chapel ceremonial compiled during the reign of Dom João III (r. 1521–1557), now held in the Museu-Biblioteca da Casa de Bragança at Vila Viçosa. The manuscript provides detailed documentation of the ritual, ceremony, and musico-liturgical practices of the royal chapel across c. 1547–1554, including Holy Week and Easter ceremonies, with interpolated plainchant in black void notation on four-line staves. A closely related copy was made for the Infanta Maria of Portugal on her 1565 marriage to Alessandro Farnese and survives at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli, confirming this document's role as a living guide to court chapel devotion. The ceremonial has been studied by musicologist Owen Rees and the Nova University Lisbon research group.
Marian Devotional Office and Royal Proclamation of the Immaculate Conception
Proclamação e voto de D. João IV à Imaculada Conceição / Officium Parvum Immaculatae Conceptionis
On 25 March 1646, King João IV placed the crown of Portugal at the feet of a statue of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception at the Ducal Chapel of Vila Viçosa, solemnly proclaiming her Patroness and Defender of Portugal and binding all future Braganza monarchs by oath never to wear the crown again — a vow observed throughout the dynasty. This act institutionalized the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception as the signature Braganza court devotion. João IV had already crowned the statue and declared Mary Queen of Portugal in 1641, and he wrote extensively in theological defense of the Marian doctrine. His private library, later destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, was documented as one of the largest in contemporary Europe.