Psalter and Hours of Mary de Bohun
Psalterium et Horae Mariae de Bohun (Copenhagen, Royal Library, Thott 547 4°)
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
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.
Why it still matters
The manuscript's pairing of psalmody with Old Testament narrative images of matriarchs models a devotional approach — reading Scripture alongside structured intercession — that remains directly applicable for any Christian seeking a grounded daily prayer life.
Kept alongside
Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun
Psalterium et Horae de usu Sarum (Egerton MS 3277)
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.
Bedford Hours
Bedford Hours (Heures de Bedford)
Produced for the wedding of John, Duke of Bedford (regent of France) and Anne of Burgundy in 1423, the Bedford Hours (British Library Add MS 18850) is among the most lavishly illuminated Parisian Books of Hours in existence. It was presented as a Christmas gift by the Duchess to her eight-year-old nephew King Henry VI of England on Christmas Eve 1430 in Rouen, and an inscription on f. 256r — written by John Somerset, physician and tutor to Henry VI — records the gift at Bedford's request. Its bilingual Latin and French design, combined with Somerset's inscription specifying its pedagogical purpose, makes it one of the most explicitly documented instances of a royal Book of Hours functioning simultaneously as a devotional text and an instrument of Christian formation for a royal child. The standard Horae apparatus — Hours of the Virgin, Penitential Psalms, Litanies, Office of the Dead — is accompanied by French-language prayers and an exceptionally rich pictorial calendar of saints.
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.