[Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis]

Four gatherings of 12 (Calendar), 8, 8 and 8. Leaves missing after the first two gatherings (Calendar; Gospel Sequences and Obsecro te) and the last two gatherings (Penitential psalms; Penitential psalms and litany). The six front and the seventeen rear flyleaves are paper (from two different stocks). Before and after the text-block of 36 leaves there are blank vellum singletons.

Decoration: 1 large miniature (King David) in a tall arched compartment above a 3-line initial and 4 lines of text, within a full border including 8 medallion miniatures. Calendar illustrations: two miniatures at the foot of the page beginning each month (in a double compartment measuring 62 x 40 mm.), one with the occupation of the month, the other with the appropriate sign of the Zodiac. Broad borders throughout the manuscript in the outer margins of every page, including the four evangelists, saints, angels, grotesques and other figures among designs of little coloured flowers and leaves and burnished gold ivy leaves at the ends of black hairline stems. 1 historiated 3-line initial showing the Virgin Mary. 1-, 2- and 3-line initials and line-fillers in colours with white tracery on burnished gold grounds throughout.

Written in textualis.

Principal contents: ff. 1r-12v Calendar; ff. 13r-18r Gospel Sequences; ff. 18r-20v Obsecro te (ends imperfectly); ff. 21r-36v Penitential psalms and litany (ends imperfectly). The Hours of the Virgin, the O intemerata prayer and the Office of the dead are missing.

From the library of Lord Brotherton. He had purchased the manuscript from the London bookseller Chas. J. Sawyer in the 1920s.

See for a fuller description: N. R. Ker, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, vol. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) p. 24. See also: J. A. Symington, The Brotherton Collection: a Catalogue of Ancient Manuscripts and Early Printed Books Collected by Edward Allen Baron Brotherton of Wakefield (Leeds, 1931), pp. 14-15.