Prayer Book of Lorenzo de' Medici (Lorenzo il Magnifico's Prayer Book)
Gebetbuch des Lorenzo de' Medici / Libro di preghiere di Lorenzo de' Medici
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
An exquisite parchment prayer book (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, Clm 23639) commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici around 1485 and given as a trousseau gift to his eldest daughter Lucrezia on her marriage to Jacopo Salviati in 1488. Written by the celebrated Florentine scribe Antonio Sinibaldi and illuminated by Francesco Rosselli with ten full-page miniatures — including the Annunciation and Virgin and Child — and twelve calendar illuminations. Listed in Lorenzo's personal inventory, this book forms part of the group of devotional manuscripts the Magnifico commissioned for his daughters. It entered the Wittelsbach ducal collection by 1598 and passed to the Court Library in Munich by 1785.
Why it still matters
The devotional structure — Marian Hours, Penitential Psalms, and Passion meditations — is a complete formation framework that modern readers can follow using any edition of the Little Office of the Virgin, which preserves this exact content.
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.