UB acquires unique Book of Hours from Selwerd monastery

The University of Groningen Library has recently added a unique manuscript to its collection: a Book of Hours written around 1480 at Selwerd Abbey. It is a relic from a period when Groningen and its surroundings stood at the cultural forefront of the Low Countries. Two abbots played a key role in this flourishing intellectual climate. Hendrik van Rees, abbot of Aduard Abbey, was a patron of the humanist avant-garde whose ideals would come to be embodied by Rudolph Agricola. Agricola’s father, Hendrik Vries, served as abbot of Selwerd, which is the very monastery where this manuscript was written. Its painted decoration was most likely produced in a workshop in the city of Groningen.

The digital version of this book is available in RUG Digital Collections. The original version can be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room.

Rich decorations

The manuscript contains the usual Hours in the Dutch translation made by Geert Grote of Deventer, which was extremely popular at the time. Over the centuries, three standard elements of every Book of Hours have been lost from this manuscript: the Calendar, the Hours of the Virgin Mary and the Litany of the Saints. It likely once contained miniatures as well, though these are no longer present.

What has survived, however, is striking: three historiated initials (large decorated letters containing painted scenes) along with twenty-two illuminated initials and richly painted marginal decorations in gold, lilac, blue, and other colours typical of manuscripts produced in monasteries across the region, especially Selwerd and Thesinge.