The Bible and the Liturgy for churchmen have been spoken of as the chief objects of reproduction among the scribes for many centuries. It was not till the twelfth century that their labours required to be augmented for the service of laymen. Men (and women) who could afford the expense, or whose position demanded that they should have prayerbooks for their own use, whether they could read ill or well or not at all, were furnished with Latin Psalters, to which were added, at the end, the Athanasian {56}Creed, a Litany of Saints, some general prayers, and the office for the Dead. They were extracts from the Breviary for the use of persons who only prayed occasionally. The growth of something like education, and a religious desire to share to a somewhat greater extent the communion with Heaven which was monopolised by monks and priests, caused a further extension of calligraphic labour towards the beginning of the fourteenth century. The Psalter with its scanty additions was no longer sufficient for pious laymen. A larger selection of prayers and lessons from the Breviary was concocted; the offices of the Virgin, of the Cross, of the Holy Ghost, and of some special saints were united to form the Book of Hours. It was nothing like the severe and frequent task of orisons with which the monks performed their duties at the canonical Hours of the day and night, but it was sufficient for the most zealous laymen and laywomen; and it became the private Prayerbook of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries. During that period it was produced in countless thousands of manuscripts in England, France, Flanders, Italy, and to a less extent in Germany and Spain. In England it was called Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis, or Book of Hours, or Primer; in France always Horæ, or Livre d'Heures; in Italy it was Officium B.V.M., and in Flanders and Holland Ghetijden. The Gebetbuch of Germany belongs chiefly to the fifteenth century, and was nearly always in German, while in France, Flanders, and England, prayers in the vernacular only crept in gradually here and there. (In Italy the book always continued to be written in Latin only.) In the English Hours or Primer the vernacular portions became at last so important that it was found advisable to issue many of the printed Primers in the sixteenth century in bilingual form, Latin and English; and it was undoubtedly this tendency both in England and in Germany which produced the Reformation. It was not so much the desire for a Reformation of the Church--even Boccaccio, himself a churchman, {57}and many others of his kind had wished for _that_--as an invincible demand for a vernacular liturgy, which widened through opposition into an eagerness to sweep away everything that opposed it. Hence the break with Rome, which still imperiously demanded the uniformity that could only be maintained by the use of a single language throughout Europe. The few exceptions to the rule which ecclesiastical