Medici-Rothschild Hours (Book of Hours of Maddalena de' Medici)
Libro di ore di Maddalena de' Medici — Medici-Rothschild Hours
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
A Book of Hours commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici as a trousseau gift for his daughter Maddalena on her marriage in 1487 to Franceschetto Cybo, illegitimate son of Pope Innocent VIII — a match that sealed a critical Medici-papal alliance. Listed in Lorenzo's personal inventory, it now resides at Waddesdon Manor (Rothschild Collection, UK). Its miniatures and calendar pages intersperse Medici emblems with the Cybo peacock; contents include the Hours of the Virgin, a Votive Mass to the Virgin, the Office of the Dead, seven Penitential Psalms, the Athanasian Creed, Hours of the Passion and Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, a Prayer of St Anselm, fifteen Gradual Psalms, and concluding prayers.
Why it still matters
The complete contents — Marian Hours, Office of the Dead, Penitential Psalms, Gradual Psalms, and Hours of the Holy Spirit — constitute a rich daily and weekly prayer cycle that any Christian today can still follow using a modern Latin or vernacular edition of the Roman Breviary.
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.