Adult Education Lecture Series

Oct. 4 at 10 a.m., Roger S. Wieck, Medieval Bestseller:  The Book of Hours
During the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance — from 1250 to 1550 — more Books of Hours were written (and printed) than any other text.  They were more popular than the Bible.  Mr. Wieck explores this popularity, which lasted three hundred years, by discussing the genre’s traditional texts and customary (sometimes unusual) illustrations.  Used mainly by laymen and –women, Books of Hours ranged in quality from those handwritten by their owners and unilluminated, to copies written in gold and silver, adorned with scores of hand-painted miniatures, and used by the royals.

Roger S. Wieck is the Melvin R. Seiden Curator and Department Heads of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts at the Morgan Library & Museum. Mr. Wieck, a noted authority on Book of Hours, has curated two major exhibitions and written widely on the topic including The Hours of Henry VIII (Barcelona: Moleiro, 2016); a monograph on the Briçonnet Hours, to which he contributed two chapters, appears this fall.