Hours of Louis XII
Heures de Louis XII
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
Produced by Jean Bourdichon — the same illuminator who created the Grande Heures of Anne of Brittany — for King Louis XII of France (r. 1498–1515), as confirmed by a dedicatory miniature showing the king at prayer. The manuscript contains the standard offices of a book of hours: calendar with zodiac labors of the months, Gospel sequences, Hours of the Virgin, a Passion narrative, Penitential Psalms, and Office of the Dead. Broken up in England around 1700, its dispersed leaves and gatherings are now distributed across the Getty Museum, British Library, Louvre, and other collections, giving it a higher modern profile than its original single-commission status would otherwise warrant. Bourdichon's refined Tours style places it among the finest examples of late Valois royal illumination.
Why it still matters
The Hours of the Virgin and the seven Penitential Psalms it contains are among the most enduring texts of Christian personal prayer, fully usable today for morning devotion and the liturgical seasons of Advent and Lent.
Kept alongside
Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Commissioned c. 1412 by Jean de France, Duc de Berry — son of King John II and brother of Charles V — this is the supreme surviving example of Valois private devotion in manuscript form. It contains the canonical hours structured around the Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Ghost, Penitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, and additional offices and masses, all framed by the famous calendar illuminations depicting the labours of the months. The duke used it for daily private prayer in his châteaux, and it was left unfinished at his death in 1416, completed only in 1485–1489 by Jean Colombe for Charles I of Savoy. Its unmatched luxury simultaneously signals sincere personal piety and the Valois use of devotional objects as instruments of dynastic prestige.
Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry
Belles Heures du Duc de Berry
The only book of hours entirely completed by the Limbourg Brothers, made for Jean de Berry — uncle of King Charles VI and the pivotal Valois prince-patron — between 1405 and 1408/9, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cloisters Collection). It contains the Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Penitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, and seven unprecedented pictorial saint-cycles (Catherine, Jerome, Anthony Abbot, the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and the Passion), plus the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin. Its 172 illuminations served the duke as a personal devotional companion in chapel and chamber; at his death it passed to Yolande of Aragon, mother of Charles VII. It is the most devotionally coherent and structurally complete of the Berry books of hours.
Hours of Charlotte of Savoy
Heures de Charlotte de Savoie (Horae ad usum Parisiensem)
This Parisian-use book of hours (Morgan Library MS M.1004) bears the added arms of King Louis XI of France and Charlotte of Savoy, his queen consort, confirming Valois royal ownership; Charlotte (d. 1483) was also the documented owner of Gerson's Montagne de Contemplation. The manuscript contains a full Paris-use devotional cycle: calendar, Gospel sequences, Obsecro te, O intemerata, Hours of the Virgin, Psalter of Jerome, Penitential Psalms, litany, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Dead, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, Seven Requests of Our Lord, and masses for major feasts. As a single royal commission subsequently kept within the immediate royal family, it never entered the commercial book trade. Its textual richness — combining the standard offices with the rarer Fifteen Joys and Seven Requests — makes it one of the more devotionally complete manuscripts in the Valois corpus.