Obsecro te

When trying to identify the location in which a book of hours is created, Professor Staudinger informed me that there are several ways to go about doing so. One method is presented here in this folio, in the form of the Obsecro te prayer. This is one of the two prayers to the Virgin that can aid in identifying the location in which a book of hours was created. The other prayer is O intemerata. Both prayers were standard prayers to the Virgin found in all 15th century medieval books of hours. Depending on where a book is from, the version of these prayers varied. 

In my research, I have compared the Du Bourg Book of Hours Obsecro te prayer to another version of the prayer and found several differences. However, it should be noted that the scribes who wrote the text in the book could have made mistakes in copying the prayer as it is quite long. Furthermore, the person who transcribed the prayer could have made errors in either reading the Latin text or in copying it down.

Text sources:

Michael Balderrama. Alumn. Book of Hours Transcription. Wheaton Collge, 2007. 

medievalist.net/hourstxt/prayers.htm, accessed April 16, 2014. 

John Plumber. The Last Flowering, French Painting in Manuscripts, 1420-1530. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Joel Relihan, Professor of classics at Wheaton College. Aided in deciphering and translating the Latin text in the Du Bourg Book of Hours. April 2014.

Evelyn Staudinger, Professor of art history at Wheaton College. Discussed how best to determine the location in which the book was created. March and April 2014.

Image source: 

http://mdid.wheatoncollege.edu/result.aspx, accessed March 16.