Volume 54, Number 2 · February 15, 2007
The One and Only Book
By Christopher de Hamel
Marking the Hours: English People and Their Prayers, 1240–1570
by Eamon Duffy
Yale University Press, 201 pp., $35.00
It is difficult to know whether a medieval 'Book of Hours' is really a book at all in the modern sense. It looks like a book and it contains texts and usually pictures, and most surviving copies are now kept on shelves in modern libraries. In the Middle Ages, however, it had the principal purpose of focusing the mind on devotion rather than conveying a single text or narrative. A Book of Hours was likely to have been the only volume in the possession of its owners, and it might well have been acquired by inheritance rather than by purchase. Much of its text was in Latin, a language that many people did not fully understand. It would probably have been kept wrapped up in textile, and it might sometimes have served part of its purpose without even being opened.
Review, 3684 words
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