France: The Self-Circumcision of Abraham, from the "Book of Hours of Luis de Laval" ,...

Initiated around 1470-1475, the illumination of the "Book of Hours of Luis de Laval" was taken up again and continued between 1485 and 1489. Luis de Laval, Lord of Chatillon, bequeathed the book to Anne de France, Duchess of Bourbon. Later on, it became part of the royal collections immediately after the assets of the Constable of Bourbon were confiscated. Circumcision was enjoined upon the biblical patriarch Abraham, his descendants and their slaves as 'a token of the covenant' concluded with him by God for all generations, as an 'everlasting covenant'. Sahih al-Bukhari and ibn Muslim quote from the Prophet Muhammad that the Prophet Abraham performed his own circumcision at the age of eighty.