According to the inventories of his library made at the time of his death, Philip the Bold used this book of hours on a daily basis in his oratory, or private chapel. The manuscript is a complex compilation of texts and decoration added in three distinct phases over seventy-three years. The oldest and original section for which Philip paid the Parisian scribe Jean l'Avenant dates to between 1376 and 1378. The manuscript was unbound around 1390 to add prayers. At Philip the Bold's death, the manuscript, along with the duke's entire library, passed to his heir, John the Fearless. Wear on many of the manuscript's miniatures as well as imprints of religious medals, which were sometimes sewn into books of hours, suggest that the Grandes Heures received intense devotional use from its original and later owners.

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