Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun
Psalterium et Horae de usu Sarum (Egerton MS 3277)
Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me, neque in ira tua corripias me.
Our renderingLord, rebuke me not in your anger, nor chasten me in your wrath. (Opening of Psalm 6, the first Penitential Psalm, as it appears in this Hours.)
What it is
A sumptuously illuminated psalter and book of hours produced at Pleshey Castle, Essex, for the Bohun family by Augustinian friars retained as a court scriptorium. Its contents — a Sarum calendar, the 150 Psalms, the Hours of the Virgin, the seven Penitential Psalms, and the Office of the Dead — place it firmly within the Bohun house tradition of Passion-centered devotion. After the death of Humphrey, seventh earl (d. 1373), his daughters Eleanor and Mary de Bohun inherited the Bohun library; Mary married Henry of Bolingbroke (later Henry IV) and this manuscript passed into the Lancastrian royal line. Over 300 pictorial subjects guide meditative prayer through the manuscript, and one of the earliest English depictions of the Man of Sorrows appears in its margins.
Why it still matters
The seven Penitential Psalms that anchor this manuscript's devotional structure (Pss 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) remain the backbone of Christian repentance prayer; a modern believer can pray them as a weekly cycle of confession and renewal.
Kept alongside
Bohun Psalter and Hours of Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester
Psalterium et Horae Alienorae de Bohun (NLS Adv. MS 18.6.5)
This psalter-hours, now at the National Library of Scotland (Adv. MS 18.6.5), was made for Eleanor de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, wife of Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III. Its ownership is confirmed by the name 'Alienora' written into several prayers and references to her father Humphrey, Earl of Hereford. The contents move from a liturgical calendar through the Hours of the Virgin for Advent and the full liturgical year, then a Confession attributed to St John Chrysostom in the distinctly feminine form, and the complete Hours of the Cross meditating on a Passion scene at each canonical hour from Lauds onward. The manuscript probably passed to Eleanor's daughter Joan after Eleanor's death in 1399, and subsequently to her sister Anne, Countess of Stafford.
Psalter and Hours of Mary de Bohun
Psalterium et Horae Mariae de Bohun (Copenhagen, Royal Library, Thott 547 4°)
This psalter-hours (Copenhagen, Royal Library, Thott 547 4°) was commissioned by Joan de Bohun to mark her daughter Mary's marriage to Henry of Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, around 1380. The manuscript served simultaneously as a prayer book, a dynastic commemoration of the Bohun-Lancaster union, and a formation guide: its images of Old Testament matriarchs — Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel — provided explicit models of female piety and agency through motherhood for a young royal bride. Mary used this book before her early death in 1394; as wife of the man who would depose Richard II and found the Lancastrian dynasty, her devotional formation through this manuscript carried indirect historical weight far beyond the private chapel.
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.