Fifty-two discoveries from the BiblioPhilly project, No. 45/52
Book of Hours for the Use of Noyon, Newark (DE), University of Delaware, Morris Library, MSS 95, item 31, unnumbered flyleaf i recto and fol. 83r (beginning of the Office of the Dead with miniature of the Raising of Lazarus)
A relatively recent arrival in the Philadelphia region, this late-fifteenth-century Book of Hours of the Use of Noyon contains an interesting series of provenance inscriptions that provide palpable insight into the manuscript’s multi-generational heirloom status in early modern France. As we shall see, one early owner’s poetic inscription, in particular, sheds light on a seemingly perennial human preoccupation: balancing health and financial well-being.