Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry
Domine labia mea aperies, et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam.
Our renderingO Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.
What it is
Commissioned c. 1412 by Jean de France, Duc de Berry — son of King John II and brother of Charles V — this is the supreme surviving example of Valois private devotion in manuscript form. It contains the canonical hours structured around the Hours of the Virgin, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Ghost, Penitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, and additional offices and masses, all framed by the famous calendar illuminations depicting the labours of the months. The duke used it for daily private prayer in his châteaux, and it was left unfinished at his death in 1416, completed only in 1485–1489 by Jean Colombe for Charles I of Savoy. Its unmatched luxury simultaneously signals sincere personal piety and the Valois use of devotional objects as instruments of dynastic prestige.
Why it still matters
The prayers and hours follow the standard Latin office still in use; modern Christians can pray the Hours of the Virgin using any Latin or vernacular Book of Hours, and the calendar's meditations on seasonal labour offer a contemplative grounding of daily prayer in the rhythms of creation.
Kept alongside
Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry
Belles Heures du Duc de Berry
The only book of hours entirely completed by the Limbourg Brothers, made for Jean de Berry — uncle of King Charles VI and the pivotal Valois prince-patron — between 1405 and 1408/9, now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cloisters Collection). It contains the Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Penitential Psalms, Office of the Dead, and seven unprecedented pictorial saint-cycles (Catherine, Jerome, Anthony Abbot, the Baptist, Peter, Paul, and the Passion), plus the Fifteen Joys of the Virgin. Its 172 illuminations served the duke as a personal devotional companion in chapel and chamber; at his death it passed to Yolande of Aragon, mother of Charles VII. It is the most devotionally coherent and structurally complete of the Berry books of hours.
Hours of Charlotte of Savoy
Heures de Charlotte de Savoie (Horae ad usum Parisiensem)
This Parisian-use book of hours (Morgan Library MS M.1004) bears the added arms of King Louis XI of France and Charlotte of Savoy, his queen consort, confirming Valois royal ownership; Charlotte (d. 1483) was also the documented owner of Gerson's Montagne de Contemplation. The manuscript contains a full Paris-use devotional cycle: calendar, Gospel sequences, Obsecro te, O intemerata, Hours of the Virgin, Psalter of Jerome, Penitential Psalms, litany, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Office of the Dead, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, Seven Requests of Our Lord, and masses for major feasts. As a single royal commission subsequently kept within the immediate royal family, it never entered the commercial book trade. Its textual richness — combining the standard offices with the rarer Fifteen Joys and Seven Requests — makes it one of the more devotionally complete manuscripts in the Valois corpus.
Rohan Hours (Grandes Heures de Rohan)
Grandes Heures de Rohan (Horae ad usum Parisiensem)
Probably commissioned by Yolande of Aragon, Duchess of Anjou, for a male Valois recipient — most likely the future Charles VII (leading scholarly theory, c. 1422) or alternatively her son René of Anjou (c. 1435) — this is the supreme monument of the Rohan Master's workshop (BnF Latin 9471). Its contents span a calendar, Gospel fragments, Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Penitential Psalms, Hours of the Cross, Hours of the Holy Spirit, Fifteen Joys of the Virgin, Office of the Dead, and suffrages. The full-page miniatures, including the iconic dying man's dialogue with God at the Last Judgement, are among the most emotionally raw images in the history of Christian devotional art. Commissioning attribution rests on scholarly consensus rather than documentary proof, and the dating remains disputed.