[Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c. 1440, Morgan Library & Museum, source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Annunciation, Boucicaut Master, c. 1410, Paris, source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Annunciation, Boucicaut Master, Heures de Guise, c. 1410, Musée Condé, source: Wikimedia Commons]
[Calendar page, July, Beaufort Hours, 15th century, British Library, source: Wikimedia Commons]
- Calendar
- Readings from the Gospels
- Hours of the Virgin
- The seven Penitential Psalms
- The Office for the Dead
Other texts were also frequently included, but varied a bit more according to what the person commissioning the book wanted.
[Page 31, Yakov Kraykov, "Chasoslov," 1566, source: Wikimedia Commons]
The Book of Hours is the most common type of medieval text to survive today. They rose in popularity from the 13th century onwards. With the advent of printing in Europe, books of hours were eventually mass-produced, allowing many people, women especially, personal access to their religion.
*There's even one manuscript that was made husband and wife who may have done so because they couldn’t afford to buy one.
De Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1994.
Bell, Susan Groag. "Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture." In Women & Power in the Middle Ages, edited by Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski, 149-187. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988.
Jewell, Helen M. Women in Late Medieval and Reformation Europe 1200-1550. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Books of Hours, Les Enluminures - Medieval Books of Hours
Books of Hours - University of Texas at Austin
Picturing Prayer, Books of Hours in Houghton Library - Harvard University
Book of Hours - Wikipedia
Seriously, just go google books of hours or dig through Wikimedia Commons. There are so many beautiful examples out there and so many people who may well have said these things better than me.