ROUSE MS 66
BOOK OF HOURS. FRANCE (BESANÇON), S. XV 2/2

A Book of Hours (use of Besançon), written and illuminated in Besançon (Jura) in the second half of the fifteenth century. The full-page miniatures have been excised. The manuscript is of particular interest for the preservation of its medieval binding and the stamps employed. The binding, presumably the original, is of blind-stamped leather over wooden boards, with an outer border of large rosettes and small flowers within rules in a diamond pattern, and a central panel framed in vine stamps and columns of alternating dragon and pelican stamps; small stars on the spine. The date “m iiii lxxii” (1472) is entered on fol. 1 in a contemporary hand. Medieval bindings, another means by which manuscripts can be dated and localized, are only beginning to receive attention with regard to their construction and decoration. For the most part they remain undescribed.

R.H. & M.A. Rouse MS 66