Beschrijving

Between 1480 and 1540, approximately forty Dutch-language editions appeared in print that can be classified as Books of Hours. Similar to the manuscript tradition of the so-called ‘Geert Grote’s Book of Hours’, the contents of the printed Books of Hours can vary considerably. The well-known printer Gerard Leeu did not venture into this market for vernacular Book of Hours until late in his career. Although he only published one edition, the Duytsche ghetiden completed on 16 August 1491 in his Antwerp workshop, this edition seems to have been very influential. It shaped the future printings of Books of Hours significantly – both in Antwerp and in the Northern Netherlands as well as in France – not only in terms of appearance, but above all in content.

This contribution discusses Leeu’s only Book of Hours in Middle Dutch, and places the edition in the context of his other work and of previously printed Dutch-language Books of Hours. It offers a first exploration of the influence of the Duytsche ghetiden until around 1500. Thielman Kerver’s Paris edition published in that year, for example, appears to contain the same cycle of texts as Leeu’s edition of just under a decade earlier, with two minor exceptions.

The Duytsche ghetiden are a clearly distinguishable ‘species’ within the corpus of printed Dutch-language Books of Hours, and thus within the cultural ‘ecosystem’ surrounding prayer books. This ecosystem should be seen as a dynamic whole resulting from a wide range of interactions between the book itself, the images that were distributed alongside the texts, the devotions associated with the texts, the producers, buyers and readers. Within this ecosystem, the Duytsche ghetiden also established relations with other types of prayer books and cycles of texts. Further research will hopefully be able to provide a clearer view of the formative power of Leeu’s Middle Dutch Book of Hours – in print, but undoubtedly also in handwritten books of hours, and thus on the spirituality and religious life of countless readers.