The Processional book as a bearer of hymns will be treated in the following chapter. It remains here, to mention the Books of Hours or medieval Primers which also contained their quota of hymns. The _Horae_ may be defined as a series of devotions, at first additional to the Seven Hours of the daily office but in the twelfth century elaborated in a separate book. Specifically the additions consisted of the penitential psalms, the Office of the Dead, the Cursus of All Saints, that of the Holy Cross, and that of the Blessed Virgin. Even before its separation from the Canonical Hours, the Cursus of the Blessed Virgin had assumed an importance which gave to the new collection its characteristic title of _Horae_ or _Hours of the Blessed Virgin Mary_. In the fourteenth century the single volume came to be known in England as _Primarius Liber_ or _Primarium_ from which the more familiar name Prymer or Primer is derived.[13] Its popularity may be judged by the fact that 265 printed editions were later known in England and 1582 on the continent.[14] Hymns are interspersed throughout the _Horae_. In the York Hours there are eighteen hymns and sequences of varied periods of which thirteen are centered in devotion to the Virgin.[15] In other words, the hymns which were chosen for these books of popular devotion are representative of later medieval favorites in hymnody, indicating to what extent the older hymns were known and loved and to what extent later poems had been accepted by lay folk as well as clergy. The _Horae_ are primarily valuable as a source for the later Marian hymns upon the themes of the Joys and of the Sorrows of the Virgin. The appearance of the beloved _Stabat mater dolorosa_, without doubt the finest expression of the poetry of sorrow, bears witness to the discriminative process by which the _Horae_ were compiled. It seems remarkable that the liturgists of the later period, in which the Latin hymn was beginning to show signs of deterioration, were able to skirt as successfully as they did, the limits of trashy sentimentality and worse poetry which were passing current under the name of hymnody. To those who are interested in the relations between literature and the fine arts an examination of the Virgin hymns, as of the _Dies irae_, will yield similar interrelations. The hymns which were written from the twelfth century onwards upon the Virgin theme may be closely correlated with the sculptured forms which portray the Mother apart from the Son in her Sorrows and more particularly in her Joys, laden with her distinctive honors and regnant as the Queen of Heaven. V. Influences affecting Hymnody