This section is dedicated predominantly to books of hours. These are so named for their being organized around the liturgical hours of the day. While these books have their origin in other, larger breviaries used in churches and monasteries, books of hours are smaller, more personal objects used to facilitate private devotion. Seemingly used predominantly by aristocratic or, later, middle-class women, these books provided the prayers and Psalm and Gospel readings needed to be read and recited throughout the day in order to alleviate the burden of one’s own sin. Each liturgical hour had its own required readings, with special readings and prayers for holidays and saint’s feast days. While many of these prayers and readings were pre-selected according to the liturgical calendar, many were added by the patron. From books of hours, we can see what a patron may have believed was most important to their personal salvation.
Books of Hours Reconsidered, ed. Sandra Hindman, James H. Marrow (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2013)
Duffy, Eamon. Marking the Hours: English People and their Prayers, 1240-1570 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006)
Hahn, Cynthia. “Visio dei: Changes in Medieval Visuality,” Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance : Seeing as Others Saw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) 169-196
Hamburger, Jeffrey. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998)
Meiss, Millard, Kathleen Morand, Edith W. Kirsch. French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry, 2nd ed. (London: Phaidon, 1969)
-------French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Boucicaut Master (London: Phaidon, 1968)
-------French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Late Fourteenth Century and the Patronage of the Duke (London: Phaidon, 1967)
Wieck, Roger S. Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller in association with the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1997)
------Time Sanctified: the Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life (New York: George Braziller in association with the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1988)