Just arrived from an antiquarian bookstore in Germany: a 1939 edition (with binding a bit loose at the front and back) of the Officium parvum Beatæ Mariæ Virginis et Officium Defunctorum, cum Psalmis Gradualibus et Pœnitentialibus ac Litaniis Sanctorum e Breviario Romano excerpta - Latin only, printed at Ratisbon. It gives all these services in full, and, for Our Lady's Hours, prints them all out for the three 'seasons' - during the year, at Advent, and after Christmas. As an added bonus, it contains the special Office for All Souls Day.
This slim little volume (16 by 10 by 1 cm) I've acquired to have the Little Office and so forth in a neat hardback pocketbook - I currently keep the 1997 Carmel Books edition (paperback, slightly thicker and less tall) in my jacket pocket, but thought I should upgrade it. What would be nice would be a Vademecum Christianum, with Little Office, divers prayers, New Testament and Imitation of Christ all-in-one, but they're rare as hens' teeth, and very expensive.
I'll look at getting this otherwise very useful volume rebound... since I paid, ummm, oh dear, AU$85.13 for it, I think I ought treat it very carefully! But for to-night I'll use it to read Vespers.
Now, to acquire a real Book of Hours - that would really cost serious money...
4 comments:
Wowee, Josh. Sounds like a bargain, and a lovely one at that! :D
Josh, there is a wonderful book binder in the south - we use him regularly to bind in half leather, use lovely marbelled end papers with gold stamping. his prices are good and he is unfailingly helpful. Until we found him we were sending books back to South Australia to be repaired/bound etc. - an expensive exercise but we feel that the work done here is superior. J.
To-day, having some business in town, I went to one of our Northern bookbinders, and in the end came to arrange having the volume rebound in black leather (it was in black cloth). I assume $65 was a reasonable price for this.
For the benefit of Mark and other non-Tasmanian readers: there is quite some parochialism in this little State - Hobart, the capital, and the rest of Southern Tasmania (which has only 49% of the population, BTW) stands apart from Launceston (once seat of a Lieutenant-Governor) and the North; again, the North-West Coast has its own identity, but with keen rivalry between the neighbouring centres of Burnie and Devonport - and so on, down to the merest village. (My Dad grew up in a small town south of Devonport; he tells me the poorer end of the place was openly called "Dogtown" by the rest of the townsfolk.) Here in the North, we drink Boags beer and read The Examiner; in the South, they drink Cascade and read The Mercury - and so on. A pity the proposed suffragan diocese of Launceston was never erected...
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