The feasts listed in medieval Calendars are mostly commemoration of the day the saints were martyred (their “birthdays” into heaven). Other feasts commemorate important events in the lives of Christ and the Virgin. But no Calendars include the events of Christ's Passion (Resurrection, Ascension, or the Descent of the Holy Spirit): these were movable feasts whose dates depend upon that of Easter, the celebration of which changed from year to year. In a way, Calendars in Books of Hours are perpetual calendars since they can be used from one year to the next.

The majority of feasts are written in black (or dark brown) ink, whereas the more important feasts appear in red (hence, our term “red-letter day,” meaning a major event) or, sometimes, blue. Sometimes in deluxe manuscripts the most important feasts are written with gold leaf.

Along with the major feasts celebrated by the medieval Catholic Church as a whole, Calendars also include feasts of a more local interest. These are the ones that help determine the Calendar's “use,” the place where the manuscript was intended to be used. In addition to geographic uses, some Books of Hours were made for particular religious orders, such as Franciscan or Dominican.

The use of a Calendar can be helpful in determining where the Book of Hours was actually made. Paris and Dutch books of Hours were made locally, since the existence of productive workshops avoided the importation of manuscripts manufactured elsewhere. But many Horae with English or Spanish Calendars were manufactured in Flanders or France. The situation continued with printed Horae but their colophons or title pages often give, in addition to the manuscript's use, the name and city of the printer.

Letters (running from A through G) and Roman numbers (from I to XIX) appear to the left of the list of saints’ days: the Dominical Letters help finding Sundays and all the other days of the week throughout the year (each year this Sunday Letter changed, moving backward); the Golden Numbers indicate the appearances of new moons and full moons throughout the year (the latter by counting ahead fourteen days). This esoteric information was extremely important to the medieval Christian, since it helped determine the date of Easter, the Church's most important feast, in any given year.

Finally, many Calendars, especially those from the thirteenth to the mid-fifteenth century, include the ancient Roman calendrical system. Each month had but three fixed points: Kalends (always the first day of the month and from which we derive our term “calendar”), Ides (the middle of the month, either the thirteenth or fifteenth), and Nones (the ninth day before the Ides, counting inclusively; it fell on the fifth or seventh of the month). All the days in between were counted backward from these three fixed points.

Medieval time was Roman time. It followed the reformed but still imperfect system instituted by Julius Caesar (100-44 B.C.). Pope Gregory XIII (papacy, 1572-85) reformed the Julian calendar and, adding ten days (October 4 in 1582 was followed by October 15) and other fine tunings instituted in 1583 the Gregorian calendar we use today.

These excerpts from the New Testament touch on the major events from the life of the Savior, except for the Story of the Passion. These readings are actually the Gospel Lessons that were read on four of the Church's major feasts: Christmas Day on December 25 (John); the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 (Luke); Epiphany on January 6 (Matthew); and the Feast of the Ascension, a movable feast whose date depended upon that of Easter (Mark). Each Book of Hours thus contained, in a way, the essence of the Church's liturgical year, encapsulated in these four readings. Although not always found in Horae of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by the fifteenth century these Lessons had become a regular feature.

Christ's Passion was the one important part of the Savior's life not covered by the four Gospel Lessons. Owners of Books of Hours often included the story of the Passion in the form of an extra reading taken from John (18:1-19:42), the one apostle who remained at the foot of the cross, along with Mary, during the entire Crucifixion. Even though John's Passion was an optional text in manuscript Horae, it became standard in printed Books of Hours, where it is almost always found immediately after the traditional four Lessons.

These Gospel Lessons operated on many levels for the owners of the books that contained them. As extracts from the Bible, they offered one of the very few ways that late medieval Christians could actually possess the New Testament word of God (households did not own Bibles). As texts by the evangelists, the Lessons contained these authors' direct accounts of the life of Christ. As Gospel readings taken from the Missal, they formed a microcosm of the liturgical year. Appearing at the front of the Book of Hours, they form its foundation, the legitimizing structure upon which the rest of the prayers that follow are built. They helped, too, transform for its possessor the Book of Hours from a collection of texts into a sacred object.

Descriptions of Books of Hours frequently include the “use” (use of Rome, use of Paris, etc.). Calendars help determine where Books of Hours are used, but technically speaking the use of the Hours of the Virgin is determined by changes in the antiphons and capitula (responsive prayers and little chapters) found at the end of Prime and None. It is astonishing how many different uses have been identified and some from towns quite near one another (Caen and Rouen, for example), suggesting that liturgical use was highly local. The reasons behind these variations are still insufficiently understood. With a few skills, anyone can identify the “use” of the Hours of the Virgin, thanks to online resources that have become available.

The Hours of the Virgin can be traced back to at least the ninth century; tradition holds that they were developed by Benedict of Aniane (c. 750-821). At first, the Hours of the Virgin began to be added to the Divine Office, the daily round of prayers the medieval Church required of its ordained: priests, monks, and nuns. By the mid-eleventh century, they were an established practice. The Hours would be chanted, in choir, from Antiphonaries. By the late twelfth century, the Hours were also found in Psalters, the prayer books containing the Psalms used, in this era of emerging literacy, by both the ordained and the laity. By the mid-thirteenth century, these hybrid Psalter-Hours lost their Psalter sections and, retaining their Calendars and Offices of the Dead, became the core of the prayer book known as the Book of Hours.

Part of the attraction of the Hours of the Virgin for the laity is their simplicity. Although some Psalms for Matins change depending on the day of the week, and some Horae include some minor textual variations for Advent and Christmastide, the same basic Hours of the Virgin were prayed day in, day out. This constancy was clearly a comfort. Repeated on a daily basis from childhood to old age, the Hours of the Virgin became a familiar, steadfast friend. Variety could be achieved by adding, mixing, or substituting the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit, or, indeed, any of the multiple prayers contained within a typical Book of Hours.

By the mid-sixteenth century, we reach the end of the Hours of the Virgin's popularity with the laity: the manuscripts cease to be commissioned and the printed editions peter out. There is no edition of the Hours of the Virgin in print. The text that constituted the core of the medieval bestseller can be devilishly hard to find today (Latin-English editions, printed as late as the 1960s, can sometimes be had from secondhand bookshops). There is a Hypertext available on the Internet.

Sometimes, however, there occurs in Books of Hours what are called mixed Hours. In these cases, the individual Hours are integrated within the Hours of the Virgin. Some Horae also mix in the Hours of the Holy Spirit.

Each Hour consists of two pairs of versicles and responses, a “Gloria Patri” followed by an antiphon (A.), a short hymn followed by a versicle and a response, and a prayer, oratio (Or.); there are no Psalms.

The structure and contents of each of the remaining Hours (Prime through Compline) is the same except for the hymn, which is, in each Hour, a different stanza from a devotional poem whose verses form meditations on sequential moments of Christ's Passion.

Each of the separate Hours touches upon a different theme relating to the attributes of the Holy Spirit or the role he played or will play in the history of mankind's redemption. Matins of the Holy Spirit, as seen in the hymn, discusses the Incarnation; Prime, Redemption through Christ's Passion; Terce, Pentecost; Sext, the Apostles' proselytization; None, the qualities of the Holy Spirit; Vespers, the Holy Spirit as Protector; and Compline, the Last Judgment. The Hours conclude with a stanza that invokes the Holy Spirit's aid in achieving eternal salvation in heaven.

Sometimes the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit are full Offices. As Offices, they are much longer (equal in length to the Hours of the Virgin) and their structure parallels that of the Hours of the Virgin. These longer Offices appear in manuscript Books of Hours much less frequently than the shorter Hours, and in printed Horae they hardly appear at all.

Changes in person in the Latin sometimes allow us to know whether a man or a woman used the book; if the use is in the masculine (the norm), it does not necessarily mean that the text was written for a man, but if the use is in the feminine it is likely the standard model was adjusted for a female patron or reader.

These particular seven Psalms have a long history associated with atonement. It is thought that by the third century, and probably much earlier, they had formed a part of Jewish liturgy. In the Christian tradition, they were certainly known by the sixth century, when the Roman author and monk Cassiodorus referred to them as a sevenfold means of obtaining forgiveness. Since the number of these Psalms was the same as the Deadly Sins, the two became linked, and the Penitential Psalms were recited to ask for forgiveness for the dead. The Psalms were thought especially efficacious in reducing the time the departed had to spend in purgatory. But it is also clear that the Psalms were recited to benefit the living, as a means of avoiding these sins in the first place. This was important because the Seven Deadly Sins--pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, and sloth--had the ability to land one in hell for all time. This is why they were called Deadly or Mortal.

The Penitential Psalms usually follow the Hours of the Cross and the Hours of the Holy Spirit, beginning with Psalm 6, “Domine, ne in furore tuo arguas me...” (O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger). They are followed immediately by the Litany, a hypnotic enumeration of saints whom one asked to pray for us. The list begins with Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy; Christ, have mercy; Lord, have mercy); God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity are then invoked. Following these preliminary petitions is the Litany proper. It is a list of saints with each invocation followed by Ora [orate in the plural] pro nobis (Pray for us). The Virgin heads the list, followed by archangels, angels, other celestial spirits, and John the Baptist (our future intercessor at the Last Judgment). Next are the apostles, male martyrs, confessors (male non-martyr saints), female virgin martyrs, and, finally, widows. These ranked categories reflect the hierarchy not only of heaven but also of medieval society.

After these enumerations comes a recitation of the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and a repetition of the shortened Kyrie (both extracts from the Mass). The Litany concludes with various prayers for the dead, of which the characteristic Fidelium Deus is always present.

To understand the function of this service we should recall its old name, Office for the Dead. It was the cause of considerable anguish for medieval men and women to think of the potentially long periods of time their relatives would spend in the painful fires of purgatory. Along with the funding of funerary Masses, praying the Office was considered the most efficacious means of reducing this fiery price of obtaining paradise. These aids were essential, because only the living could help the dead.

The Office of the Dead consists of the three Hours of Vespers, Matins, and Lauds. Vespers was ideally prayed in church over the coffin on the evening before the funeral Mass. It was either recited or chanted by monks hired specially for that purpose by the deceased's family or confraternity. Matins and Lauds were then prayed, again by monks paid for this service, on the morning of the funeral itself. Funerals, however, were not the only time the Office was prayed. The tradition that required the ordained to recite the Office on a daily basis also encouraged the laity to pray it at home as often as possible. Whatever the setting, the purpose was always the same: to get one's dearly departed out of purgatory and into heaven as soon as possible.

The Office is not to be confused with the text of the funeral Mass or that of the rite of burial. Quite different from the Office, these are to be found in two service books used by the priest, respectively, the Missal and the Ritual. Like other Offices, this one is composed mostly of Psalms, and these offer comfort to the dead.

The more remarkable component of the Office of the Dead, however, is a moving series of readings from the Old Testament Book of Job that make up the nine lessons for Matins. The trials endured by Job become an allegory for one's time on earth--or in purgatory. Thus the “I” of the readings ceases to be Job, ceases even to be the person reading the Office and, instead, becomes the voice of the dead man himself, crying for help.

Pity and mercy are continually asked for throughout the lessons, but through a veil of near despair. The first lesson (Job 7:16-21) begins: “Spare me, O Lord, for my days are nothing.” The second lesson (Job 10:1-7) asks, “Tell me why thou judgest me so? Doth it seem good to thee that thou shouldest calumniate me, and oppress me, the work thy own hands?” The third lesson (Job 10:8-12) repeats this existential question, “Thy hands have made me and fashioned me wholly round about. And dost thou thus cast me down headlong on a sudden?” In the fourth lesson (Job 13:22-28), the forlorn voice demands, “Make me know my crimes and offences”; in the fifth (Job 14:1-6), it bemoans, “Man, born of woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. Who cometh forth like a flower, and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow...”; and in the sixth (Job 14:13-16), asks, “Who will grant me this, that thou mayest protect me in hell, and hide me till thy wrath pass, and appoint me a time when thou wilt remember me?” In desperation, the voice of the seventh lesson (Job 17:1-3, 11-15) laments, “I have said to rottenness: thou art my father; to worms, my mother and my sister.” It is not until the end of the eighth lesson (Job 19:20-27) that a note of hope is sounded, “For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed again with my skin: and in my flesh I shall see my God.” But this glimmer is short-lived, and the last lesson (Job 10:18-22) asks the final question, ”Why didst thou bring me forth out of the womb?... I should have been as if I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave.” Like the tolling of a funeral bell, the Office of the Dead ends:

Eternal rest grant them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine on them.
V. From the gates of hell,
R. Deliver their souls, O Lord.
V. May they rest in peace,
R. Amen.

The typical Book of Hours contained a dozen or so Suffrages (or Memorials, from the Latin memoriae). The Suffrages typically appear at the end of the volume, but some Horae include them after Lauds of the Hours of the Virgin, in imitation of monastic practice. Their order is a reflection of celestial hierarchy (itself a mirror of medieval society). God or the three Persons of the Trinity always begin the Suffrages, followed by the Virgin, the archangel Michael, and John the Baptist (the last two prominently positioned because of their importance as judge and intercessor, respectively, at the Last Judgment). The apostles appear next, followed by male martyrs and confessors (non martyr saints), female saints and virgin martyrs.

Each Suffrage is composed of four elements: three ejaculations (antiphon, versicle, response) followed by a longer prayer (oratio). The first three elements constitute a string of praises. As for the prayer, its first half recounts an episode from the saint's life or touches on some important aspect of the saint's holiness; the second half of the prayer is always a petition for aid from God through the saint's intercession.

One of the most frequently encountered accessory prayers is the “Joys of the Virgin” (fifteen is the usual number, although five, seven, and nine also appear); they celebrate the happy moments in Mary's life from the Annunciation to her Assumption into Heaven. Extra Hours (that is, in addition to those of the Virgin, Cross, and Holy Spirit) also appear: the Hours of St. Catherine, the Hours of John the Baptist, and the Weekday Hours (Sunday Hours of the Trinity; Monday, of the Dead; Tuesday, of the Holy Spirit; Wednesday, of All Saints; Thursday, of the Blessed Sacrament; Friday, of the Cross; and Saturday, of the Virgin). These ancillary Hours are short, structured like those of the Cross and of the Holy Spirit.

Since Books of Hours were used in church as well as at home, many contained Masses, the actual prayers and texts that were recited by the priest at the altar or sung by the choir. These Masses usually contain those texts that changed from feast to feast (Introit, Collect, Epistle, Gradual, Sequence, Gospel, Offertory, Communion, and Postcommunion), but they often include some of the unchanging parts of the service as well.

Another popular accessory text is the “Stabat Mater.” Its emotional intensity, rhythm, and rhymes make this prayer one of the most moving and memorable of the Middle Ages. Written probably in Franciscan circles in the thirteenth century, it spread quickly and by the late fifteenth century had been incorporated into the Church's official liturgy of both the Mass and the Divine Office. It has been set to music many times, most famously by Palestrina, Pergolesi, Verdi, Dvorák, and Poulenc.

Another accessory text, the ”Salve sancta facies” (Hail Holy Face), is a prayer to the holy face of Christ that was especially popular in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Flemish Horae. It was frequently accompanied by generous indulgences.