Books of hours are Christian prayer books used to pray the canonical hours throughout the day and were especially popular in the Middle Ages as a means of personal devotion. As a result they are the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms. Illumination or decoration can often be minimal, restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures, as is the case in this example. Of particular interest are the panel borders in the Office of the Dead illustrating the Seven Deadly Sins (captioned in French), and the Dance of Death, popular as an independent text and as border decoration derived from the murals in the Cimitière des Innocents.
