Physical Description
Description and Contents
Parchment, i modern parchment flyleaf + 275 fols. + i modern parchment flyleaf, 250 x 180 mm (163 x 105 mm), 24 long lines, ruled in brown ink (original campaign) or red ink (some 15th-century additions), offsets of some 25 devotional badges once attached to margins on fols. 226r-228r, 236v-252r, 262v-263v, leaves excised between fols. 69-70, 78-79, 105-106, 152-153, 243-244, 250-251, 252-253, 265-266. The main text is written in iron-gall ink and the rubrics in vermilion red. The Calendar text is written in gold and four colours: iron-gall ink, blue (likely ultramarine), orange-red (probably vermilion) and an organic dark red.
Philip the Bold praying at an altar with the Crown of Thorns and two reliquaries (suffrage to the Crown of Thorns)
This miniature was painted by the Master of the Grandes Heures. The Crown of Thorns was one of the most precious relics acquired in the 13th century from Constantinople and the Holy Land by King Louis IX who built the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris to house them.