Book of Hours

Books of hours are Christian prayer books used to pray the canonical hours, especially popular in the Middle Ages, and as a result the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Most books of hours share a similar collection of texts, prayers, and psalms, though decoration ranges from a few ornamented capital letters to full-page miniatures in copies made for wealthy patrons. A typical book of hours contains a calendar of church feasts, extracts from the four Gospels, readings for major feasts, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, penitential psalms, a litany of saints, and the Hours of the Cross, along with devotions such as the Marian prayers Obsecro te and O Intemerata. The form developed as an abbreviated version of the breviary for lay people who wished to bring elements of monastic devotion into their own religious life, and its descendants continue in use today in prayer books such as the Catholic Key of Heaven, the Coptic Agpeya, and the Lutheran Brotherhood Prayer Book.