Rennes Hours of Jean de Montauban Facsimile Edition

The Rennes Hours of Jean de Montauban is a Christian prayer book named for its original owner, whose coat of arms is included in three places. Soon after its creation in Brittany in the 1430s, Jean gave the manuscript to his sister Isabeau upon the occasion of her marriage in 1436. With 110 miniatures (thirty-seven of which are full-page) and full floral borders throughout, this book of hours is iconographically original indeed, including a fascinating cycle of the apocryphal life of Adam and Eve.

Insights from the Commentary

A Journey Framed by Origins and Exile

Within the Rennes Hours of Jean de Montauban, the Journey of Montauban unfolds not merely as a narrative episode but as a meditation on movement, loss, and moral inheritance. The manuscript’s imagery draws upon the Apocryphal Life of Adam and Eve, a text rarely integrated so fully into a Book of Hours, to articulate a theology of wandering that resonates with late medieval aristocratic identity. Adam and Eve’s postlapsarian journey—marked by penitence, endurance, and hope—mirrors the moral itinerary expected of the devout lay patron.

Apocrypha and Personal Devotion

The inclusion of apocryphal material signals a deliberate expansion of devotional horizons. Here, salvation history is not confined to canonical milestones but enriched through narratives of emotional depth and human frailty. The Life of Adam and Eve provides an origin story of suffering that deepens the penitential logic of the Hours of the Passion and the Office of the Dead, binding private prayer to cosmic beginnings.

Patronage and Moral Geography

For Jean de Montauban, the journey motif carries an unmistakable personal charge. Movement through space becomes a metaphor for ethical progress, aligning noble lineage with humility before God. The manuscript thus constructs a moral geography, where biblical exile and aristocratic self-fashioning converge.

A Book for the Inner Pilgrim

In this Book of Hours, devotion is imagined as a journey without spectacle—quiet, inward, and sustained. The pages invite the reader to walk alongside the first parents of humanity, transforming prayer into a shared passage through memory, penitence, and hope.