The book is printed in red and black. I have seen a copy on paper at M. Potier's bookshop. There is an imperfect copy at the Bibliothèque Mazarine, and a perfect one at Sainte-Geneviève.
About the same time there was published a small duodecimo volume of four signatures, in French, with the same borders. It begins thus: 'Here follows the method of receiving the blessed sacrament devoutly.' It is like the book last-described except that it is printed in only one colour, and that it is a little longer and wider.[383] To lengthen the borders, sections have been added to them. It is most peculiar that a duodecimo volume should be larger than an octavo, but the fact is unquestionable: formats were already beginning to increase in size. Near the end of the book is a little treatise with this heading: 'Here follows a devout meditation as to the manner in which thou shouldst ordain and arrange the whole day,' etc. And after that: 'The life of Madame Sainte-Marguerite, with prayer to be said for women pregnant and in travail.'
This book is in the Bibliothèque Mazarine, in the same collection as the last. It contains four small engravings, of which only one seems to me to belong to Tory: it is the Christ on the Cross, which appears in the quarto Hours of 1542, now to be described.
1542
I. Hours, according to the Roman use, quarto, in Latin, published by Olivier Mallard in 1542. This rare volume, of which I know only one copy, belonging to M. Aerts, of Metz,[384] who himself kindly brought it to me at Paris, is a reproduction of the Hours printed by Tory in 1531; the type, however, is smaller. It consists of nineteen signatures of two quarto sheets encartées, signatures A to T. The title-page reads: HORAE IN LAUDEM BEATISS. VIRGINIS MARIÆ AD USUM ROMANUM. OFFICIUM TRIPLEX.—Parrhisiis, apud Oliverium Mallard, impressorem Regium. The rest is as in the edition of 1531. On the last page: 'Parrhisiis, ex officina Oliverii Mallard, Regii impressoris, Ad insigna Vasis Effracti. Anno salu. M. D. XLII. Mense Augusti.' Then come the two lines:—
'Effracti, lector, subeas insignia vasis,
gregios flores ut tibi habere queis.'
The table of Easter-Days, on the verso of the title-page, goes from 1542 to 1571; then comes the calendar, in which the order of the edition of 1531 has been followed in the arrangement of the borders, although the type, being smaller, would have permitted the more regular arrangement of the edition of 1524-25.
The book is printed in two colours, except signatures B, C, and D, which are in black only—a most unusual state of things. The engravings are the same as those of the edition of 1531, but the floriated letters are different. The Passion, which begins on folio B 3 verso, is enriched by the small Christ on the Cross which we find in the Hours of 1529, but without the four additional subjects (bees, etc.), which there accompany it.[385] It is probable that some accident happened to the plate, and that only the Christ was saved. We find also in this volume, at the foot of the border, the crowned C of Queen Claude of France, who had then been dead about fifteen years.
The Lorraine cross, which had disappeared from several of the larger engravings as early as the edition of 1531, appears on almost none of them in that of 1542. For example, it has been expunged from the Birth of Jesus and the Circumcision. The only ones which retain it are the Visitation, the Crucifixion, and the Descent of the Holy Ghost. It remains on the borders also.