Music 75: Medieval and Renaissance. Feb. 7, 2002: Books of Hours

Some images of interest
• Seven Sacraments by Roger van der Weyden, about 1448.
  
  • The full painting by van der Weyden, a large 3-panel work that moves from Baptism on the left to the Eucharist in the middle to death and Extreme Unction on the right. The painting was commissioned to hang behind the altar in a side chapel of a church in central France.
  • Couple attending Mass with books [of hours?]
  • Mass in side chapel; confession in foreground. Note man kneeling in chapel at right (in profile) holding a book [of hours?].
  • Children returning from Confirmation, boy with book
  • Woman reading book [of hours] in a bedroom on which is a dead person. She would be reading the penitential psalms or prayers for the dead, a regular part of the Book of Hours. Woman and bed.
  • Man reading from tablet on column in church, presumably vernacular prayers (Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed, Ten Commandments.
• 16th-century street peddler in Paris with cheap "beaulx abc belles heures" or beautiful abc[s] and beautiful books of hours. Obviously these are not the beautiful vellum books we saw in the Bancroft Library, but more like the abbreviated primers that became so popular in the vernacular to both teach reading and the psalms and liturgical prayers and songs.