CREATOR UNKNOWN

Moscow, 1889. MS 049

A Horae, more commonly known as a Book of Hours, contains the Daily Hours and Offices used for private devotion. The Hours and Offices are cycles of daily devotions, the prayers of the canonical hours. Horae compact the ecclesiastical Hours and Offices to suit the private devotee. In addition to the Hours and Offices, it frequently contains a liturgical calendar, a litany of the saints, suffrages, the Office of the Dead, the Penitential and Gradual Psalms as well as individualized prayers.

The Russian Christian Orthodoxy follows Eastern Orthodoxy, the sect of Orthodox Christianity developed in Greece, led by the Patriarch of Moscow. However, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the patriarch was abolished and instead the religion became integrated with the state, known as the Holy Synod. It would not return to the patriarch until 1917. Printed by the printing office of the Holy Synod and published by the order of Czar Alexander III in 1889, this Horae is written in the Church-Slavic language, the oldest Slavic language. It features printed headpieces containing the orthodox cross at the beginning of each sections and foot pieces at each end. The manuscript was bought at the Paris Exposition in 1889 by Joseph Bowles Learmont, a prominent merchant from Montreal, and then sold to Edward Burgess around 1917.

Bibliography

Slavic Horae (Daily Hours and Offices). Moscow, 1889. University of Oregon Special Collections & University Archives, MS 049. https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/3uoa1r/CP71269067950001451

Bowker, John. “Russian Orthodox Church.” In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford University Press, 2003. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780192800947.001.0001/acref-9780192800947-e-6175.

Brown, Michelle P. Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum in association with the British Library, 1994.

Livingstone, E. A. “Holy Synod.” In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by E. A. Livingstone. Oxford University Press, 2014. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199659623.001.0001/acref-9780199659623-e-2785.