Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history.

On this episode we are talking about books of hours.

Now if you're just listening, that's not the pronoun hours, that is H-O-U-R-S.

And last week we were in medieval art with tapestries.

This week we are in medieval art again with these books of hours. Let's take a step back and just

talk about some of the commonalities of medieval art. First, medieval art was all

about storytelling. Whether it was paintings or it was stained glass or it was tapestries or illuminated

manuscripts, all of this art was about conveying a narrative telling a tale. In fact, even much of the literary works of the Middle Ages,

the epic, the tale, the narrative that is spun.

So medieval art is about storytelling and we get this because this is a largely

illiterate culture so relying on pictures and images to get the story. Secondly we need to understand the Middle Ages as a shift from pagan to Christian cultures.

Christian culture dominated not only the Middle Ages, and all of the Middle middle ages it also dominated art. The overwhelming

focus is on Christian culture. Thirdly in the word I see used a lot by art

historians is the word luminosity. Jules, gold leaf, very costly materials were

used in much of the production of medieval art.

The idea was this is a presentation of the sacred.

Luminosity of the artwork was to show glory and the glory this art was trying to depict.

And finally, art was incorporated into church

and spiritual life.

We see this especially in our topic, these books of ours. Now, these

were mostly for wealthy and noble individuals. They were prayer books. They were highly ornate, highly decorated.

They came from a monastic liturgical tradition of eight hours, eight distinct times of prayers. This was prominent goes all the way back to

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