This second edition has significant additions to the original version.
The Book of Hours of Louis De Roucy was a magnificent manuscript, illuminated by a pupil of the so-called Master of the Troyes Missal. It fell victim to an act of biblioclasm in Germany in 2009.
Through the WayBack Recovery Method, Professor Carla Rossi has recovered the manuscript’s iconographic cycle and over a hundred text leaves, thus reconstructing the manuscript and providing a virtual facsimile edition.
By offering for the first time the diplomatic transcription of texts from a Book of Hours for the use of Châlons sur Marne she has made available to scholars a useful resource for future verification of Champenois liturgical customs. The original digital reconstruction has been enriched with new leaves and miniatures.
 
The Author analyses the coat of arms which is reproduced at least six times in the manuscript in more detail, once again confirming on the basis of new evidence that it belonged to Jean VII, Count de Roucy-Pierrepont and Sire de Montmirail, in accordance with the wishes of his mother Jeanne. In 1438 Jeanne signed a document in which she undertook to leave all her possessions to her son, on condition that the latter used her father’s (Jean VI, Count de Braine and de Roucy-Pierrepont, died at Azincourt in 1415) heraldic coat of arms.
Jean VII, in turn, without any legitimate heirs, left his title as well as his heraldic coat of arms to Louis (1465-1536), his illegitimate son from the relationship with Isabelle de Montchâlons. The teenage male patron depicted on folio 191v, kneeling before the Virgin in a full-page miniature to the 'O intemerata' prayer, is likely Louis himself. The obsessive presence of the De Roucy coat of arms in the manuscript may be explained as a de facto legitimisation of the young aristocrat.
 
DOI: 10.55456/boh2
 
The Author: Carla Rossi runs the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition. She has a double venia legendi (in Romance Philology with special focus on Italian and French literatures of the Middle Ages), and is Titularprofessorin at the University of Zurich.
Publication available from Monday 13 February 2023
Offered in free consultation from 1 May to 1 September 23. All IP addresses accessing the page are logged. This measure is necessary because the publication has been the subject of a violent smear campaign, following our denunciation of the clandestine market in medieval manuscripts dismembered for profit. https://www.receptioacademic.press/boh2