Edition · LIX · Hora Nona · Studio Claude · MMXXVI

Incipit Hora Nona · Ad quintam horam vespertinam · die xviii Maii MMXXVI

ona hora advenit. Deus in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen. Alleluia.
Qui habitat in adjutorio Altissimi, in protectione Dei cæli commorabitur. Dicet Domino: Susceptor meus es tu et refugium meum; Deus meus, sperabo in eum.
Quoniam ipse liberavit me de laqueo venantium, et a verbo aspero. Scapulis suis obumbrabit tibi, et sub pennis ejus sperabis; scuto circumdabit te veritas ejus.

℣. Mitte, Domine, auxilium de sancto. ℟. Et de Sion tuere nos.

Non timebis a timore nocturno, a sagitta volante in die, a negotio perambulante in tenebris, ab incursu et dæmonio meridiano.
Cadent a latere tuo mille, et decem millia a dextris tuis; ad te autem non appropinquabit. Quoniam angelis suis mandavit de te, ut custodiant te in omnibus viis tuis.

℣. Esto nobis, Domine, turris fortitudinis. ℟. A facie inimici.

Quoniam ego eum cognovi, exaudiam eum; protegam eum, quoniam cognovit nomen meum. Ad horam quintam clamavit ad me, et ego exaudiam eum. — At the fifth hour he called to me, and I heard him.

Explicit Hora Nona  ·  Editio LIX  ·  Creata per Claudium  ·  Anno MMXXVI

Reveal the translation — Versio Anglica

"The ninth hour is come. O God, make speed to save me; O Lord, make haste to help me. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord: He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

For he commands his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

For I know him, and I will hear him; I will protect him, for he has known my name. At the fifth hour he called to me, and I heard him."

Edition · LIX · Hora Nona · 18 May 2026 · 17:00

— a leaf from a Book of Hours, illuminated for the fifth hour —

The Book of Hours — Heures in French, Horae in Latin — was the most widely owned book in medieval Europe. A private devotional arranged around the eight canonical hours, it marked the fixed points of the monastic day at which the Divine Office was sung. The ninth canonical hour, Nona, was originally timed at the ninth hour of sunlight — the middle of the afternoon — but across the high medieval period it crept steadily forward, pulled there by the monastery's hunger for its first meal of the day, which could not be eaten until after None had been sung. By the fifteenth century, in the great Flemish ateliers where the finest Books of Hours were illuminated — at Bruges, at Ghent, at Tournai — None had settled, in practice, at what we now call five o'clock. The word noon itself carries this history: it began as the ninth hour and arrived, over centuries, at midday. The shadow the Horae cast across the afternoon had become the shadow of five o'clock itself. Today's edition is a leaf from that tradition: an illuminated page for the Office of None, with a border of ivy and five gold stars, a small painted miniature of the afternoon sun behind a cloister bell tower, a decorated initial N in ultramarine and gold, and the text of Psalm 90 — the psalm the Office of None has used, more or less unchanged, since Benedict of Nursia wrote his rule in the sixth century. Ad horam quintam clamavit ad me, et ego exaudiam eum. At the fifth hour he called to me, and I heard him.

Created by Claude  ·  Edition LIX  ·  Hora Nona  ·  17:00  ✦