Hours of Catherine of Cleves
Getijdenboek van Catharina van Kleef
Miserere mei Deus secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.
Our renderingHave mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy.
What it is
The greatest surviving Dutch illuminated manuscript, commissioned by Catherine of Cleves (1417–1476) after her 1430 marriage to Arnold of Egmond, Duke of Guelders, and completed c. 1440 in Utrecht (Morgan Library MS M.917/945). Its 157 miniatures by the anonymous Master of Catherine of Cleves are among the most inventive in all medieval art, combining intimate domestic imagery with terrifying scenes of hell and martyrdom to produce a devotional object of unusual spiritual intensity. The manuscript contains a full Book of Hours structure plus an unusually rich array of devotions, suffrages, and Office of the Dead sequences, all documented as Catherine's personal prayer book by her heraldic arms and contemporary ownership records. It is among the most studied of all Books of Hours and the subject of a landmark Morgan Library exhibition.
Why it still matters
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves pioneered what scholars call 'intimate devotion' — the sense that one's personal sins and God's personal love are both vividly real — a mode of prayer as powerful today as in the fifteenth century; a Christian can pray through its Penitential Psalms and Office of the Dead as a structured daily office.
Kept alongside
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis)
Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a short daily cycle of eight canonical hours in honor of the Virgin, was the most common private prayer book of lay noble households across medieval Europe. For the Arpad and Anjou dynasties in Hungary, Marian devotion was a defining feature of royal piety: approximately 30 percent of all known monastic dedications by Arpad kings were to Mary, and the Anjou royal house bore the Marian lily (fleur-de-lis) as its heraldic emblem. No specific royal Hungarian Marian prayer book survives with a named owner, and the attribution rests on the universality of the text at European royal courts combined with the documented primacy of Marian devotion in Hungarian dynastic identity. The Office remains liturgically intact and is still prayed by Secular Franciscans and lay Catholics worldwide.
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.
English Primer (The Prymer)
Prymer or Lay Folks' Prayer Book
The English Primer ('Prymer') was the standard lay devotional book in England from the 14th to 16th centuries, used by children and adults alike to learn both literacy and prayer. Beginning as a first reading book combining the alphabet, Pater Noster, Ave Maria, and Creed, it grew to include the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Fifteen Gradual Psalms, the Litany of the Saints, and the Office of the Dead. Chaucer's reference in the Prioress's Tale (c. 1386) to a seven-year-old boy learning his 'primer' confirms its role in children's formation, and Eleanor of Castile purchased 'seven primers' in Cambridge in 1289 for royal household use. The royal culmination was Henry VIII's King's Primer (1545), principally compiled by Archbishop Cranmer and prescribed by royal proclamation as the only permitted primer in England.