Gospels and Short Prayers
Gospel Selections
Traditionally, books of hours transition from the Calendar into the more text-heavy body of the manuscript with a selection of readings from the New Testament, each containing a gospel reading from one of the apostles, often with that apostle's picture alongside it. These gospels are often what might be seen as the greatest hits of the apostles, sections that were traditionally prayed on important feast days like Christmas or the beginning of Advent.
Though the Lewis & Clark manuscript does contain individual miniatures of the apostles (ff. 4v, 5r, 6r), this section also opens with a full-page miniature of Saint John of Patmos, the writer of Revelations who was traditionally considered to be the same figure as Saint John the Apostle (an assumption which is widely criticized in modern theology). As there is no other image of John, it seems clear that the manuscript's illumniator, and perhaps its commissioner, subscribed to the traditional theory.
Prayers to the Virgin: Obsecro Te and O Intemerata
Gendered language is something which surfaces in several sections of the Book of Hours, most notably in standard prayers to the Virgin. The Obsecro te, meaning "I beseech you", is a Latin prayer to the Virgin Mary written as a first-person address in either a masculine or feminine form. It is often placed alongside the O Intemerata ("O Immaculate one"), which is a slightly more common prayer with a similar intent. When the Obsecro te is feminine, it is a sign that the book was commissioned by a woman. However, when it is masculine, it does not necessarily mean that it was commissioned by a man. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the address in the Lewis & Clark book of hours is in the masculine form. The phrase famulo tuo (second declension of the masculine noun famulus) could have been used to refer to either gender and, while masculine, is not distinctly so. The feminine form, famule tue, can be found in manuscripts commissioned by women (such as the De Bois Hours)*. The masculine form of the Obsecro te is the default form of the prayer, used for manuscripts with multiple owners and even in some female-owned manuscripts, while the feminine form is an altered form used specifically for women. For this reason, it can be difficult to determine whether a manuscript with the masculine form of the prayer belonged to a man or a woman, as is the case with the Lewis & Clark manuscript.
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, Books of Hours were often used for educational purposes by an entire family, hence why a manuscript commissioned by a woman might in fact be regarded as more of a family record and possess the "standard" masculine form in some prayers. This might also be because women anticipated needing to pass down the book to a son or leave it to a husband and designed the address of the manuscript accordingly. In the case of this Book of Hours, it is likely that the prayer was unchanged due to a lack of funding and a desire to keep the Book in the family for use by as many people as possible. No other prayers in the Book are personalized or include names, and none of the images include figures who are not from the Biblical scenes they portray. In order to facilitate the passing-down of the Book and its continuing relevance through many generations, its original owner may have opted to forgo these individual touches in order to both save money and remove the need for changes to be made down the line.