[Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis]

• Original object type: Artefact

Description

Decoration: 16 large (5-8-line) initials in blue and pink with white tracery, infilled with flowers, on gold grounds, and within full borders, of gold and vine bars decorated with acanthus leaves and flowers. 2-3-line initials in blue with red penwork throughout. Versal initials in red and blue alternately.

Written in textualis rotunda.

Written by a scribe called William Watyr (ff. 150v, 156v).

Principal contents: ff. 1r-6v Calendar; ff. 7r-42v Hours of the Virgin; ff. 45r-51v Penitential Psalms; ff. 52r-53v the Gradual Psalms; ff. 53v-60v Litany and prayers; ff. 61r-70r Psalms of the Passion; ff. 71r-101v Office of the dead; (f. 102 blank); ff. 103r-113r Commendation of Souls; ff. 114r-126r Psalter of St Jerome; ff. 127r-136v Hours of the Passion; ff. 137r-138r Fifteen Oes of St Gregory; ff. 138r-140r Prayer of Bede on the Words on the Cross; ff. 140r-156v Prayers and suffrages.

From Sotheby's sale of Western Manuscripts and Miniatures, 19 June 1990 (lot 111).

See for a fuller description: O. Pickering, "Brotherton Collection MS 18 and its Riddling Middle English Verses", in The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya, ed. by Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill (Cambridge and Tokyo, 2004), pp. 223-32.

• Date range: [ca. 1404-1425]
• Date: 1414
• Collection: Medieval Manuscripts
• Physical Identifier: BC MS 18