The Dying Adam Dispatching Seth to Paradise
Purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows and with special assistance of Mrs. Frederick B. Adams, Sr., Mrs. Robert Charles, Mr. Laurens M. Hamilton, The Heineman Foundation, Mrs. Donald F. Hyde, Mrs. Jacob M. Kaplan, Mrs. John Kean, Mr. Paul Mellon, Mr. and Mrs. Charles F. Morgan, Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald, Mr. and Mrs. August H. Schilling, Mrs. Herbert N. Straus, Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, Mrs. Alan Valentine, Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Whitridge, and Miss Julia P. Wightman, 1970; purchased on the Belle da Costa Greene Fund with the assistance of the Fellows, 1963
The rare Friday Hours of the Compassion of God plus the Mass of the Holy Cross are illustrated with a series of nine images, all of which are exhibited here. (Two introductory large miniatures for the Hours and the Mass are missing.) The iconography of the medieval legend of the True Cross offers an imaginative link—physical and metaphysical—between Adam and Christ and between terrestrial and celestial Paradise. The cycle begins with a remorseful Adam, on his deathbed, sending his third son, Seth, to the Garden of Eden to fetch a branch of the Tree of Mercy.
Hours and Masses for the Seven Days of the Week
The most unusual texts in Catherine's manuscript are the series of Hours and Masses for every day of the week. Medieval Christian tradition associated certain figures or themes with different days. Thus Sunday, the day of the Resurrection, was the Lord's Day; Thursday was connected with the Eucharist since that sacrament was instituted on Holy Thursday; and Monday was the day of the dead, since their torments were suspended on Sunday but recommenced the following day. In Catherine's prayer book, the themes for the Hours and Masses of the seven days of the week are:
| Sunday | the Trinity |
| Monday | the Dead |
| Tuesday | the Holy Spirit |
| Wednesday | All Saints |
| Thursday | the Blessed Sacrament |
| Friday | the Compassion of God |
| Saturday | the Virgin. |
Image courtesy of Faksimile Verlag Luzern