Office of the Dead (Use of Rome)
In most books of hours, the Office of the Dead is instrumental in determining a number of factors about the book's origins. The Office of the Dead is prayed as a service to the dead by the living, meant to reduce the time spent by one's friends and family in purgatory. This was an extremely important service, one that users of books of hours took very seriously. While the core of the Office is a series of readings from the Book of Job detailing his struggles, it can just as easily be interpreted as a loved one asking for help and release from purgatory.
The Office of the Dead contains the hours of Vespers, Matins, and Lauds. These were often prayed for a funeral mass: Vespers the evening before the service, and Matins and Lauds on the morning of the service. These prayers were recited by monks hired to pray for the deceased. The Office was most often used to pray in solitude or with one's family for the deliverance of a loved one.
Often, the Office of the Dead will begin with a picture of the manuscript's owner, standing or kneeling near the Virgin Mary. This is one of the standard points of personalization found in books of hours, largely because the Office of the Dead was so vital to prayer. Often the prayers and responses in this Office are personalized as well, containing the name of the manuscript's owner.
The Lewis & Clark manuscript contains neither the owner's name nor their portrait. However, it stiil offers one important clue to the book's manufacture: its use.
The use of a book of hours refers to the particular pattern of psalms and responses that book follows, which vary between countries and even cities. The Office of the Dead and the Hours of the Virgin are the two sections where use can be determined; however, this does not necessarily mean that the use of these two sections is the same.
As Korteweg remarks in her essay, "Books of Hours from the Northern Netherlands Reconsidered", the Office of the Dead is key in determining the use of a manuscript. The location where the text diverges depending on the use is the nine responsories following the nine readings from the Book of Job. The responses in this book of hours match the responses found in books which are themselves Use of Rome.[1] Because of this, we can determine with reasonable certainty that the Lewis & Clark manuscript is indeed Use of Rome.
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1.Kortewerg, “Books of Hours from the Northern Netherlands Reconsidered”, 241-43