A Burgundian manuscript

kept at Maredsous Abbey

The Breviary of St Adrian of Geraardsbergen, nowadays kept at Maredsous Abbey, dates from 1450, when the County of Flanders was ruled by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Breviary is a key work for the knowledge of Flemish miniature painting of the mid-fifteenth century.

A Burgundian manuscript

kept at Maredsous Abbey

The Breviary of St Adrian of Geraardsbergen, nowadays kept at Maredsous Abbey, dates from 1450, when the County of Flanders was ruled by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Breviary is a key work for the knowledge of Flemish miniature painting of the mid-fifteenth century.

A Burgundian manuscript

kept at Maredsous Abbey

The Breviary of St Adrian of Geraardsbergen, nowadays kept at Maredsous Abbey, dates from 1450, when the County of Flanders was ruled by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Breviary is a key work for the knowledge of Flemish miniature painting of the mid-fifteenth century.

A Burgundian manuscript

kept at Maredsous Abbey

The Breviary of St Adrian of Geraardsbergen, nowadays kept at Maredsous Abbey, dates from 1450, when the County of Flanders was ruled by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. The Breviary is a key work for the knowledge of Flemish miniature painting of the mid-fifteenth century.

The Breviary of Geraardsbergen

The Breviary of Geraardsbergen consists of four splendid volumes containing in total more than one thousand seven hundred pages that were worked on over the course of two years by a copyist, decorators and several painters. This manuscript on vellum, precious testimony to the spirituality of the monks at Geraardsbergen, is more than five hundred years old and has been preserved in remarkably good condition.

A 15th-century Masterpiece

The Saint Adrian's Abbey enjoyed an extensive library. Among other books, the Breviary was preserved here. During the French Revolution the abbeys were abolished; precious manuscripts like the Breviary got scattered. Books were placed on the market in the early nineteenth century and by that means found their way into collections worldwide.

Digital edition

The Geraardbergen Breviary was digitised in full. Discover and browse through the four volumes of this extraordinary manuscript via the 'read more' button.

Research & Conservation

Between 2018-2021 a research and conservation project was carried out by the KU Leuven and Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA). The four volumes of the Breviary underwent a thorough research and conservation treatment and were digitised in full.

Stories
De Predio

The four volumes of the Geraardsbergen Breviary were copied out entirely by hand by a scribe or copyist, a craftsman whose specialism was writing. He would employ what was known as textura: dignified, extremely neat and legible, Gothic lettering which was ideally suited to a liturgical work.

Illuminators

A manuscript the size of the Geraardsbergen Breviary was seldom illuminated by just one person. The book contains hundreds of letters that had to be decorated, dozens of margins and a large number of historiated scenes, which is to say miniature paintings with figures. These different tasks were often delegated to specialist professionals: decorators for the initials (large decorated letters) and the border decoration, and miniaturists for the historiated illustrations.

Miniatures

Using a breviary requires a great deal of experience. It is a complex book designed to organise the hours of prayer (divine office) by introducing daily variants. And in order to navigate the compact text, the user would need a number of visual markers.