Powis Hours
Catholic Church
Category
Manuscripts and documents
Date
c. 1480 - c. 1490
Materials
ink, paint and gold leaf on vellum in leather binding
Place of origin
Bruges
Order this imageCollection
Powis Castle and Garden, Powys
NT 1181034
Caption
A Book of Hours is essentially a collection of Christian prayers for recitation at different times or 'hours' of the day. It was a prayer book produced for lay people and intended for reading in the home enabling the user to pray at the same times as those following a monastic life. Lady Eleanor used her Book of Hours to remind her of important anniversaries writing these dates against the Feast Days of the Catholic Calendar at the front of her book. She includes the birthdays of herself, her husband William, and her children.
Summary
15th century Book of Hours belonging to Lady Eleanor Percy (see 1180904), Lady Powis (1582/3-1650), daughter of the 8th Earl of Northumberland and wife of William, first Lord Powis (1574-1656). Illuminated manuscript on vellum. The Book of Hours was produced by a commercial publishing house in the Low Countries (Netherlands) but intended for the English market. Its arrangement, 'Use of Sarum', and the choice of subjects from the Passion rather than the Infancy Cycle to introduce the various hours is common in Books of Hours intended for the English market. The Book is complete, apart from the four text leaves, one at the end of the devotions to Christ, one in the penitental psalms, one in the vigils of the dead and one in the psalter to St. Jerome. In the course of Victorian rebinding, the devotions of the saints which follow the calender have become slightly disordered, the prayers for St. George having been separated from their accompanying miniature.
Bibliographic description
[153] leaves ; 190 x 143mm; written space of text block, 116-118 x 80mm. Wanting four text leaves:1) at the end of the devotions to Christ; 2) in the penitental psalms; 3) in the vigils of the dead; 4) in the psalter to St. Jerome. The devotions of the saints which follow the calendar are bound out of order. Provenance: annotated on on f.1v in a 17th-century hand: 'This Booke belonged to ye Earles of Northumberland and was brought from Petworth by ye Lady Elianor', i.e. Lady Eleanor Percy, Lady Powis (1582/3-1650), daughter of the 8th Earl of Northumberland and wife of William, first Lord Powis (1574-1656). There are a number of pen trials and ownership inscriptions added in the 17th century, mostly by Katherine Herbert, Eleanor’s daughter, and Eleanor’s grandson Thomas Abington to whom she gave the book.Sold by the Herbert family to the Treasury and gifted to the NT in 1991. Binding: 19th-century rebinding. Black leather with raised bands, triple line tooling inside turn-ins and gold capital title on spine ‘Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis’, 19th cent. Modern paper pastedowns and endpapers. Gilded fore-edges.
Provenance
Accepted by HM Treasury on 21st March, 1963 in lieu of tax, placed on long term loan to the National Trust, then gifted to National Trust on 26th March 1991.
Makers and roles
Catholic Church, publisher