In the Middle Ages, the few people who could read often wanted their own prayer books for private prayer. They were likely to own a special kind of prayer book called a Book of Hours. As well as prayers, these books often included calendars interspersed with saints' days and other feast days. The calendar pages are not unlike diaries today.
If you were a rich person you would commission an artist to decorate your Book of Hours, and the artist would paint scenes appropriate to the month to illustrate the calendar pages.
About The Golf Book
The pictures in this topic are taken from the calendar pages of a Flemish Book of Hours, written and illuminated (or illustrated) in the first quarter of the 16th century.
This book is nicknamed 'The Golf Book' because this picture from the book shows a game like the modern game of golf.
Images like these are valuable to the historian. They provide a great deal of information about what people did on a day-to-day basis. Although the pictures in 'The Golf Book' are from Flanders (in modern day Belgium) life in Britain in the 16th century was not very different and the pictures show the same sort of activities. These pictures are particularly useful as they provide information about work and leisure, and about people from all sections of society.
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