Private Prayer Books from Female Convents of Lower Saxony: Instrument and Interaction

私人祈祷书是超然沟通和互动的工具。“物质性”、“媒介性”和“表演性”，被理解为研究视角，将被用作解开这个被忽视的秘密的钥匙，但丰富的来源，以德国北部一些中世纪晚期修道院和修道院的材料遗迹为例。大约在15世纪中叶，l<s:1>内堡和不伦瑞克（下萨克森州）的女修道院进行了彻底的改革，导致修女的精神生活发生了变化。新的精神生活体现在手写的、经常有彩绘的祈祷书中。这些书是为个人的，礼仪之外的祈祷和冥想服务的。它们不仅是修女们自己拥有和使用的，而且也是修女们自己制作的。虽然他们做的是私人奉献，但他们不像礼仪书那样，受到严格的礼仪规则的约束。正是相对自由的官方规则，允许深入了解实际的，日常的祈祷实践。相当数量的这样的祈祷书是现存的，其中约四十至五十是要详细研究。制作这种祈祷书的两种方式之间的区别——制作一本全新的书，以及从现有手稿中选择更简单的页面进行添加——使我们能够第一次了解手稿文化、艺术和改革后修道院的祈祷生活。尤其是在莱<s:1>内堡附近的麦丁根修道院，许多书都是新创作的，用新设计的插图装饰得很华丽。在不伦瑞克地区的修道院，制作新的祈祷书要简单得多，在那里，已经存在的单个叶子或祈祷书被装订在一起（很少有新的装饰），形成一个新的项目。后一种方法，即制作复合手稿，例如在斯特堡和海宁根，其优点是允许通过重新使用现有的和可能经常使用的部分，在新的背景下延续某些传统，包括记忆。这两种形式的手稿生产都可以理解为赋予改革一种实实在在的形式的方式。通过仔细检查祈祷书，以发现使用和磨损的痕迹，特别是频繁触摸的痕迹，后来的插入，边缘注释和其他对基本完成的祈祷书的补充，可以更深入地了解这些书的实际使用情况。图像和文字的使用痕迹和布局可以告诉我们很多关于最喜欢的祈祷或特定图像在修女的虔诚实践中的作用。该研究项目旨在提高我们对图像、视觉、媒体、祈祷和书籍在一个尚未探索的领域的历史的认识。

Private prayer books serve as instruments for transcendent communication and interaction. "Materiality", "mediality", and "performativity", understood as research perspectives, will be used as keys to unlock the secrets of this neglected, yet rich body of sources, exemplified by the material remains of a selected number of late medieval convents and monasteries in northern Germany. Around the middle of the fifteenth century, the female convents of Lüneburg and Brunswick (Lower Saxony) underwent thorough reforms that lead to changes in the nuns’ spiritual life. The new spiritual life has materialized in handwritten and often illuminated prayer books. These books were meant to serve individual, extra-liturgical prayer and meditation. They were not only owned and used, but also produced by the nuns themselves. Serving as they did private devotions, they were not regulated by strict liturgical rules, as would be the case of liturgical books. It is precisely the relative freedom from official rules that permit insight into the actual, everyday practice of prayer. A sizeable number of such prayer books is extant, and about forty to fifty of them are to be studied in detail. The very distinction between two ways of producing such prayer books – the making of a completely new book, and the more simple addition of selected pages from existing manuscripts –, permits a first insight into manuscript culture, art, and devotional life of the reformed convents. It was especially in the convent of Medingen near Lüneburg that many books were newly created, lavishly adorned with newly devised illustrations. Much simpler was the production of new prayer books in the convents of the Brunswick region where already existing individual leaves or quires were bound together (and rarely furnished with new illuminations) to form a new item. This latter procedure, i.e. the production of composite manuscripts, e.g. in Steterburg and Heiningen, had the advantage of permitting, through the re-use of existing and perhaps often-used parts, the continuation of certain traditions, including memoria, in a new context. Both forms of manuscript production can be understood as ways of giving the reform a literally tangible form. More insight on the actual use of these books is promised by the close inspection of prayer books to detect traces of use, of wear and tear, especially traces of frequent touch, later insertions, marginal notes and other additions to an essentially finished prayer book. Traces of use and the layout of images and texts can tell us much about favourite prayers or the role specific images had in the nuns’ devotional practice. The research project is designed to enhance our knowledge of the histories of images, visuality, media, devotions, and books in an as yet unexplored area.