Psalter and Book of Hours of Alfonso the Magnanimous and Cardinal Joan de Casanova
Laudate Dominum de caelis: laudate eum in excelsis.
Our renderingPraise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights.
What it is
A sumptuous Psalter-Hours created in Valencia for Alfonso V the Magnanimous between 1436 and 1443, illuminated by Lleonard Crespí in the International Gothic style and sent to the king at Naples after its completion. The manuscript was commissioned by one of Alfonso's confessors, Cardinal Joan de Casanova, serving simultaneously as a dynastic propaganda instrument and a genuine personal devotional book — the king used it to project his royal authority and piety. It is one of the most important illuminated books produced at the Valencian court and is now preserved at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli as one of the few Aragonese manuscripts remaining in Naples after the dispersion of the royal library.
Why it still matters
The Psalter tradition remains alive in Christian devotion through the Liturgy of the Hours; praying the 150 Psalms as Alfonso did in this volume connects modern believers to an unbroken tradition of royal and clerical prayer.
Kept alongside
Psalter and Prayerbook of Ferdinand I of Aragon, King of Naples (Morgan Library, MS M.541)
An abbreviated Psalter and prayerbook (Psalterium Sancti Hieronymi) made in Naples for Ferdinand I of Aragon, King of Naples (Ferrante, r. 1458–1494), with the king's arms and emblems (including his device probanda — 'to be proved' — and the mountain of diamonds in ermine) prominently displayed on two border illuminations. Scribed and illuminated by the Neapolitan court illuminator Gioacchino di Giovanni, this is a personal devotional text clearly intended for the king's private prayer rather than chapel performance. The Psalter of St Jerome is a shortened, contemplative version of the Psalms favoured for lay devotion, and its presence in the royal collection demonstrates the Aragonese court's cultivation of private scriptural prayer.
Book of Hours of Alfonso of Aragon (Alfonso of Aragon Hours, V&A)
A richly decorated Book of Hours for the Use of Rome produced in Naples around 1470, bearing the arms of Alfonso of Aragon (either Alfonso II of Naples or a member of the Aragonese dynasty), now at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The binding — purple velvet with silver-gilt bosses inlaid with enamelled Aragonese arms and four velvet clasps — is original and attests to the manuscript's royal ownership and high ceremonial status. Thirteen large Neapolitan-style miniatures with white interlace borders, putti, parrots, and floral scrolls, plus twenty-one historiated initials, frame the traditional Hours of the Virgin and Office of the Dead in the Neapolitan court illumination style of the period.
Thomas à Kempis: De Imitatione Christi (The Imitation of Christ)
Perhaps the most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, the Imitation of Christ counsels interior piety, Eucharistic devotion, and detachment from worldly ambition — values promoted at both the Wittelsbach Counter-Reformation court and in Erasmian Lutheran circles in Saxony. The Jesuits recommended it throughout their German mission work, making it a standard text in the Bavarian court milieu under Albert V and William V; Luther himself was formed in the Devotio Moderna tradition from which it springs. No single Wettin or Wittelsbach ownership record has been located, and the dual-house listing reflects the near-universal presence of the text in every German Catholic and Erasmian Protestant court of the period rather than documented patronage.