Praying To and For the Dead : Single leaf from Flemish Book of Hours, ca. 1475

Text for the Office of the Dead [Vigilie mortuorum] with sections rubricated for the antiphon and psalms. 

Flanders, ca. 1475 (165 x 120 mm). Latin. Single leaf. 19 lines of Gothic script (littera textura formata) with well formed hairline descenders of the 2-shaped r; hook-shaped tittle; quadrata feet on minims. 1 seven-line illuminated initial; 1 one-line illuminated initial; 15 one-line initials. Double border; interior 3/4 border of alternating blue and pink bars with white decorations and gilt inlay; exterior border with 3/4 in dense acanthus leaves, with circlet in bottom border; gutter-edge border ivy leaves and pen flourishes. Simple pen flourish decoration as border on verso. Bleedthrough of border on verso. Ruled in pink. 31 written in modern pencil on recto.

This elaborate leaf from a 15^th century Flemish Book of Hours contains the opening of a group of prayers to those in Purgatory, the Office of the Dead. These readings would have been both devotional— to show the piousness of the reader— as well as intercessory— a personal guide to praying for the souls of those departed from the reader.

Text:

Placebo domino (Ps. 114)

Dilexi quoniam (Ps. 114)

Heu mihi (Ps. 119)

Levavi oculos meos (Ps. 121)

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