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.

Cultural forefront

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 manuscript contains the usual Hours in the Dutch translation made by Geert Grote of Deventer, which was extremely popular at the time.

Decorations

Over the centuries, three standard elements of every book of hours have been lost from this manuscript: the calendar, the Hours of the Virgin 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.

Available

The manuscript can already be consulted in person at the UB and will soon be made fully accessible online.

If you are curious about the history and significance of books of hours in the medieval Low Countries, you can listen to a podcast featuring Anna Dlabačová and Lieke Smits from Leiden University.