MS. Douce 144
Summary Catalogue no.: 21718
Contents
John; Luke (ends imperfect fol. 3v, 'cognata tua et ipsa conce||', due to loss of a leaf); Matthew (begins imperfect fol. 4r "|| Ubi est qui natus est"); Mark (text continues from fol. 5v "undecim discipuli [apparuit]" to fol. 18r due to misbinding of the calendar).
Full; in alternating red and blue, with major feasts in gold.
Masculine forms.
The event is known to have taken place at the end of Jan. 1408 (1407 old style).
A paper rectangle with a modern (18th century (?)) transcription and translation of the colophon is fastened to fol. 27r.
Fol. 27v blank.
Matins, fol. 28r; Lauds, fol. 52r (rubric, fol. 51v); Prime, fol. 63r (rubric, fol. 62v); Terce, fol. 68v (rubric, fol. 68r); Sext, fol. 72v (rubric, fol. 72r); Nones, fol. 76v (rubric, fol. 76r); Vespers, fol. 80v (no rubric); Compline, fol. 87r (miniature lost before fol. 87).
Fol. 92v blank.
Begins imperfectly "|| meum lacrimis meis" due to loss of a leaf before fol. 93.
In the lower margin of fol. 104v is an addition (late 15th century (?)), 'Presta domine quesumus ut anime famulorum famularumque tuarum q' [breaks off].
St Corentine of Quimper among the confessors; for full details see the Beyond Use database.
Ends imperfect in compline "crucem et mortem tuam inter iu||" due to loss of a leaf after fol. 117.
Begins imperfect "||um intende" due to loss of a leaf as above.
Ends imperfect due to the loss of one or more quires after fol. 128, perhaps also including the Office of the Dead.
St Michael, [St John the Baptist missing,] St Peter, St Paul, St Andrew, St John the Evangelist, St Stephen (rubric in blue), [St Lawrence missing,] [one leaf missing,] St Denys, St Nicholas, St Martin, St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Katherine
Physical Description
Collation
Layout
Ruled in red ink for 1 col., 14 lines, written space 105 × 70 mm.
Hand(s)
Textualis quadrata.
Decoration
"Important miniatures and drawings. Important borders and initials." (Pächt and Alexander i. 641, pl. XLIX-XL). Pächt and Alexander identified "at least five hands", attributing the full page miniatures to the Boucicaut and Bedford Masters, the drawings "probably" to one of the Limbourg brothers, and the marginal droleries to a minor illuminator. The attribution to the Boucicaut master is now given to the Mazarine Master. The Annunciation miniature (fol. 28r) is attributed to an anonymous artist influenced by the Limbourgs (Hofmann, p. 100); the attributions below follow Hofmann unless otherwise stated.
- (fol. 1r) St John the Evangelist (Bedford Master)
- (fol. 2v) St Luke (Mazarine Master)
- (fol. 5v) St Mark (Bedford Master)
- (fols. 6r-18v, Calendar) Labours of the Months and Signs of the Zodiac, attributed by Pächt and Alexander to the Master of Étienne Loypeau (the Luçon Master)
- (fol. 19r, Obsecro te) The Virgin weaving (Mazarine Master)
- (fol. 23r, O intemerata) Virgin and Child in a garden (Christ reaching into a basket of cherries) (Mazarine Master); angels and birds in the border
- (fol. 28r, Hours of the Virgin, Matins) Annunciation (Limbourg-influenced artist); musician angels and prophets in the border
- (fol. 52r, Hours of the Virgin, Lauds) Visitation (Bedford Master, repainted); angels, birds and flowers in the border
- (fol. 63r, Hours of the Virgin, Prime) Nativity (Bedford Master); angels and shepherds (?) in the border
- (fol. 68v, Hours of the Virgin, Terce) Annuciation to the shepherds (Bedford Master); shepherds and shepherdesses in the border
- (fol. 72v, Hours of the Virgin, Sext) Adoration of the Magi (Bedford Master); prophets and the journey of the Magi in the border
- (fol. 76v, Hours of the Virgin, Nones) Presentation in the Temple (Bedford Master), putti and birds in the border
- (fol. 80v, Hours of the Virgin, Vespers) Flight into Egypt (Bedford Master); massacre of the innocents in the border
- [Miniature for compline missing after fol. 86]
- [Miniature missing before fol. 93, Penitential Psalms]
- (fol. 111v, Hours of the Cross), Crucifixion (Bedford Master), Invention of the Cross with St Helena in the border
- [Miniature for the Hours of the Holy Spirit missing before fol. 118]
- (fol. 123r, Fifteen Joys), Virgo lactans (Limbourg-influenced artist)
- (fol. 128v, Seven Requests), Last Judgement (Bedford Master)
- (fols. 129r-140v, Suffrages), St Michael, St Peter, St Paul, St Andrew, St John Evangelist, St Stephen, St Denis, St Nicholas, St Martin, St Anthony, St Mary Magdalene, St Katherine (all attributed to the Mazarine Master)
Added drawings (c. 1410-1420 (?)) in the lower margins of fols. 105r, 108v-109r and 110r. The drawings have been variously attributed and dated (see Gregory Clark in The Limbourg Brothers: Nijmegen Masters at the French Court 1400-1416 (2005), pp. 215-221), most influentially by Millard Meiss to the 'Master of St Jerome', a follower of the Limbourgs named after the portrait of Jerome in his study in BnF MS. fr. 166, fol. A ('French and Italian Variations on an early Fifteenth-Century Theme: St. Jerome and his Study', Gazette des beaux-arts Ser. 6, Bd. 62 [ = Essais en l'honneur de Jean Porcher, ed. Otto Pächt] (1963) pp. 147-170). Recently it has been suggested that the Jerome Master was in fact one or more of the Limbourg brothers (Herman, Paul, and Jean): see the essays in Maelwael van Lymborgh Studies I, ed. A. Stufkens and C. Verhoeven (2018), pp. 38-111. There are comparable compositions by the Limbourgs in the Belles Heures (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, 1954 (54.1.1)), fols. 73v and 74v, and the Tres Riches Heures (Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS. 65), fols. 71v-72r.
- (fol. 105r) the institution of the great litany by Gregory the Great, and the end of the plague (as described in the Golden Legend).
- (fols. 108v-109v) procession of clerics with a reliquary
- (fol. 110r) procession of flagellants
Borders: historiated borders with acanthus or ivy-and-acanthus decoration for the major miniatures (see above), discussed in detail by Hofmann, and notable as the first dated appearance of acanthus in Parisian border decoration. Three-sided bar borders with ivy-leaf decoration and drolleries for the suffrage minatures; every other page with a one-sided bar border with ivy-leaf decoration and drolleries. The ivy-leaf borders and drolleries were attributed by Allen Farber to the "A Master" ('Considering a marginal master: the work of an early fifteenth-century Parisian manuscript decorator', Gesta 32 (1993) 21-39),
Initials of 3, 2 and l lines at major, lesser and verse divisions respectively.
fol. 104v.
Binding
Green leather with gold tooling, France, 18th century. On the spine 'L'office de la Vierge Année 1407'; Bodleian paper label '86'.
In a contemporary case, brown morocco, gilt. On the spine 'Office de la Vierge'.
History
Provenance and Acquisition
Date: see colophon, fol. 27r. A dispersed Book of Hours formerly in the collection of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (MS. W. 103) has an almost identical colophon and also contains the unusual Breton saint St Corentin in the litany, alongside St Tugdual: on that manuscript see recently Peter Kidd, The McCarthy Collection III: French Miniatures (London, 2021), cat. 92.
Inès Villela-Petit (in Maelwael van Vymborgh Studies I, pp. 65-6), suggests that this may be the Book of Hours (described as 'très richement enluminées, esquelles a 36 histoires'), for which Francois de Nerly, the treasurer of Louis of Guyenne, paid 350 marks to Haincelin de Haguenau, the Bedford Master, in 1409; the evidence is inconclusive and in an earlier publication Villela-Petit had suggested that the manuscript documented in 1409 might be the Bedford Hours (British Library Add. MS 18850) (Inès Villela-Petit, 'Les Très Riches Heures de Jean de Berry et les Heures de Bedford. Floraison d’études sur deux œuvres majeures de l’enluminure du xve siècle', Perspective, 1 (2008), 145-150)
Francis Douce, 1757–1834, source of acquisition not known. "There are no annotations by Douce in the manuscript and it may therefore have been one of his last purchases" (Douce Legacy)
Bequeathed to the Bodleian in 1834
Record Sources
Availability
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Digital Images
Digital Bodleian (201 images from 35mm slides)
Microfilm
Microfilm available in the open shelf collections in the Weston Library (R. Films 101)
Bibliography
Online resources:
Principal studies and descriptions:
Abbreviations
View list of abbreviations and editorial conventions.
Last Substantive Revision
2025-10: Description revised.
Data
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