Beschreibung:

Use of Rome, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on parchment [French Flanders (perhaps Liege or Mauberge), c. 1460] 83 leaves (including a blank leaf at end; plus one modern paper and one early parchment endleaf at front and two of each at back, the early ones recovered from legal documents of perhaps sixteenth century), complete, i6, ii8 (with a bifolium cut away with stubs after iii and v, but no text loss, perhaps due to a planning error by original scribe), iii-viii8, ix8, xi6, xii7 (last probably a cancelled blank), single column, 18 lines in a professional late Gothic bookhand, capitals formed of unconnected penstrokes joined by yellow wash, red rubrics, gold and blue line fillers in Litany, one-line initials in gold or blue with contrasting penwork, 2-line linitials in gold on pink and blue grounds heightened with white penwork, these with sprays of coloured and gold foliage in the margins, fourteen large initials in pink or blue with fine penwork enclosing scrolling foliage on gold infill, all on coloured grounds and within thin gold and coloured frames, these frames extending around the text on three sides, full border of acanthus leaves and other foliage enclosing a peacock on the first such page, fols.18v, 34v and 51v once with miniatures from another Book of Hours pasted to them (note offset of other side of leaf and small miniature on fol.51v), these now removed, numerous marks on last endleaves from attachment of pilgrim badges there, small areas of rubbing and discolouration, leaves slightly cockled, some small wormholes, slight water damage to inner edge affecting Calendar leaves, edges trimmed with loss to edges of a few decorated borders, else in good condition and on thick parchment with wide and clean margins, nineteenth-century French note inside front board explaining the sixteenth-century additions at end (see below), 180mm. by 125mm., nineteenth-century parchment binding over pasteboards (front now bowed), stamped at top of front pastedown in purple ink “A. Clavaux” (presumably the binder), spotting to paper endleaves Provenance: Written and illuminated for a patron in French Flanders perhaps Liege or Mauberge: the decoration suggests the influence of Bruges and Flanders, and the Calendar includes SS. Hubert of Liege (December), and Lambert of Liege, his predecessor (17 September), to whom the Cathedral in the town is dedicated; Amalberga of Mauberge appears in the Litany. In the hands of members of the de Blois family by the mid-sixteenth century, and perhaps originally commissioned for one of them: the ex libris of a “L de Blois” on the last leaf, with other inscriptions dated 1549 and 1550 suggesting that this is Loys de Blois, who married Helene Tatin and had two children named Laurens and Margaritte, he was most probably a member of the family of the seigneurs de Jumigny, who also included the Flemish mystical writer, Louis de Blois (1506-66, also known as Blosius) who was born at the château of Donstienne, near Liège, was educated at the court of the Netherlands with the future emperor Charles V, his lifelong friend, and became the abbot of Liessies Abbey in Hainaut. Text: The volume comprises: a Calendar (fol.1r); the Hours of the Cross (fol.7r); the Hours of the Holy Spirit (fol.10r); the Mass of the Virgin (fol.13r); the Hours of the Virgin (fol.21r), with Lauds (fol.29r), Prime (fol.37r), Terce (fol.40r), Sext (fol.43r), Nones (fol.45r), Vespers (fol.48r) and Compline (fol.52r); the Seven Penitential Psalms (fol.55r) followed by a Litany; the Office of the Dead (fol.67r); the Obsecro te and O intemerata (fol.78r).