Richard III's Prayer Book Goes Online

The prayer book shows a softer, devoted side of Richard. Medieval laypeople kept personal books of hours with devotions that they were supposed to perform at certain times of day. Richard's "Book of Hours" was not originally made for him, according to a scholarly text by Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs accompanying the Leicester digitization. There were, however, additions likely added at the king's request, as well as one notation that Richard III probably made himself.

The first addition was a prayer called the Collect of St. Ninian, a missionary who converted England's Southern Picts to Christianity. Richard apparently had a special devotion to this saint, as he declared St. Ninian's feast day to be a principal one for his college at Middleham, Sutton and Visser-Fuchs wrote.

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