Prayer Book of Queen Bona Sforza (Hours of Queen Bona)
Modlitewnik Królowej Bony / Officium Beatae Mariae Virginis
Horae in laudem beatissimae Virginis Mariae secundum usum Romanum.
Our renderingHours in praise of the most blessed Virgin Mary according to Roman use.
What it is
This richly illuminated Book of Hours (271 parchment folios, 143 × 114 mm) was commissioned by Sigismund I the Old as a personal gift for his Italian-born consort Bona Sforza, queen of Poland. The manuscript includes a liturgical calendar, Gospel fragments, the Passion according to St John, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, votive masses, the seven Penitential Psalms, litanies, the Office for the Dead, and intercessory prayers. Fifteen full-page miniatures were executed by Stanisław Samostrzelnik and signed S.C.f. (Stanislaus Claratumbensis fecit), while the border decoration incorporates the arms of Poland and the Visconti-Sforza dynasty throughout. Bona carried the volume to Italy after Sigismund's death in 1548; it was acquired by Francis Douce and bequeathed to the Bodleian Library in 1834 (MS Douce 40), where it remains one of the finest examples of Polish Renaissance illumination.
Why it still matters
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the heart of this manuscript is still prayed daily by lay Catholics worldwide, making this codex both a devotional model and a historical anchor for that practice. A modern reader can follow the same sequence of Hours — Matins through Compline — using any current edition of the Little Office, replicating precisely how Queen Bona structured her prayer day.
Kept alongside
Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Officium Parvum BMV) — court Hours usage
Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae Virginis
The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a daily cycle of eight canonical Hours — Matins through Compline — composed of Psalms, Marian hymns, antiphons, and responsories drawn from the Latin liturgical tradition. It forms the devotional core of both the Prayer Book of Sigismund I (1524, British Library Add. MS 15281) and the Hours of Bona Sforza (1527, Bodleian MS Douce 40), both illuminated by Stanisław Samostrzelnik and structured around the royal couple's daily chapel observance at Wawel. The opening versicle — Deus in adiutorium meum intende — anchors every Hour and has structured Christian prayer across monastic, royal, and lay communities since the early Middle Ages. Still recited today by tens of thousands of lay Catholics and religious, it is among the most continuously prayed liturgical texts in the Western Christian tradition.
Omni die dic Mariae (Daily, Daily Sing to Mary) — Hymn found with St Casimir
Omni die dic Mariae
Omni die dic Mariae is a Latin Marian hymn of 48 stanzas drawn from Bernard of Cluny's De Contemptu Mundi (c. 1140), which became inseparably identified with the Jagiellonian prince Casimir (1458–1484) when a personal copy was reportedly found in his coffin during the translation of his relics in 1604. Contemporary hagiographers describe Casimir as spending nights in prayer before locked church doors, refusing marriage in honour of his vow of virginity, and devoting his interior life entirely to Mary and the Eucharist — the hymn's spirit perfectly reflects that formation. Casimir was canonized in 1521 and his feast (March 4) elevated to a feast of Poland-Lithuania; from the early 17th century the hymn circulated explicitly as 'the prayer of St Casimir,' embedding it in Jagiellonian dynastic piety. The 1604 coffin discovery is treated by some historians as a pious tradition rather than a verified archaeological find, but the cult association is firmly documented from that date onward.
Bogurodzica (Mother of God Hymn)
Bogurodzica
Bogurodzica ('Mother of God') is the oldest surviving religious hymn in the Polish language, a Marian intercession addressed first to the Virgin — asking her to 'win for us from her Son' a life of dignity — and then to Christ through John the Baptist's intercession, seeking paradise after death. Historian Jan Długosz called it the 'carmen patrium' (hymn of the fatherland), and it functioned as a royal battle hymn sung by Polish and Lithuanian knights before the Battle of Grunwald (1410) and reportedly before the Battle of Varna (1444), while under the Jagiellon dynasty it accompanied the coronation ceremonies of the first Jagiellonian kings. The earliest surviving musical notation (c. 1407) is held in the Jagiellonian Library, Kraków; the first printed appearance was in Bishop Jan Łaski's Statutes of 1506. Its use spanned from royal court to the battlefield to parish — an exceptionally broad reach for a medieval vernacular text.