![]() Copy: The Hague, National Library of the Netherlands, 150 F 8, Google Books: At first the rubricator dutifully fulfilled his task, but along the way we can literally see him thinking: ‘how can I get this chore over with as soon as possible?’ The further one leafs, the bigger the S’s get, and the rubircator even invents a multiple-S’s-in-one technique (ill. In one of the copies the boredom that set in during this kind of work seeps from the pages with the Litany of the Saints, where each line needed a small initial ‘S’. The Books of Hours printed in Hasselt were also finished by hand through the addition of simple initials and rubrication. They needed to be completed by hand: decorated initials were added, in this case locally in Delft, which gave the impression of a handwritten book (ill. These printed books, similar to – and in imitation of – manuscript production, were only half finished when they came off the press. These books are not illustrated, and especially the Delft editions imitate manuscripts. The production of Dutch Books of Hours started in Delft in 1480, and was soon followed by editions executed by printers in Brussels and Hasselt in the 1480s. Copy: Düsseldorf : Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, cat. So what happened to the Dutch Book of Hours (and its popularity) after the introduction of the printing press in the Low Countries in 1473? And how does Leeu’s edition from 1491 fit into this transition from manuscript to print? ![]() Earlier translations did exist, but the popularity of Grote’s translation – based on the numbers of surviving manuscripts (more than 800) – reached a lonely peak. At the end of the fourteenth century, the Book of Hours was translated into Dutch by Geert Grote, the initiator of the religious reform movement that would have a large impact on religious and devotional life in the late medieval Low Countries – the Devotio Moderna (or: Modern Devotion). Changes did not only occur in the materiality of the Book of Hours. Especially in the course of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, the Book of Hours came within the reach of a growing group of readers. While often associated with richly decorated and illuminated manuscripts made for the delicate hands of kings and queens, most Books of Hours, however, were executed as relatively simple (paper) manuscripts. The book gave many readers the possibility to participate in the prayer practices and the cyclic rhythm of monastic prayer throughout the day. The Book of Hours was without a doubt one of the bestsellers of the Middle Ages.
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