The Book of Hours

The Book of Hours is a Christian devotional book popular in the Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every Book of Hours, it contains a collection of texts, prayers and psalms, along with appropriate illustrations, to form the core of the popular devotional practice of praying the canonical hours.

The canonical hours, or Divine Office, consist of eight prayer services:

• Matins (during the night, at midnight with some variation)
• Lauds (dawn)
• Prime (early morning)
• Terce (third hour, 9 a.m.)
• Sext (sixth hour, noon)
• None (ninth hour, 3 p.m.)
• Vespers (evening)
• Compline (night prayer before retiring)

Books of Hours were usually written in Latin, although many were produced in vernacular European languages (Dutch, English, French, etc.). The English term primer is usually now reserved for those Books of Hours written in English. Tens of thousands of Books of Hours have survived to the present day, in libraries and private collections throughout the world.