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

私人祈祷书是超然交流和互动的工具。“物质性”、“中介性”和“表演性”，被理解为研究视角，将被用作解开这一被忽视但丰富的来源的秘密的钥匙，德国北部一些选定的中世纪晚期修道院和修道院的材料遗迹就是例证。大约在15世纪中叶，L和布伦瑞克(下萨克森州)的女修道院经历了彻底的改革，导致修女的精神生活发生了变化。新的灵性生活已经在手写的、经常有照明的祈祷书中具体化。这些书的目的是服务于个人的、礼拜外的祈祷和冥想。它们不仅由尼姑拥有和使用，而且还由修女自己制作。就像他们做私人奉献一样，他们不像礼仪书籍那样受到严格的礼仪规则的约束。正是这种相对不受官方规则约束的状态，让人们得以深入了解日常的实际祈祷活动。这样的祈祷书有相当数量的存在，其中大约有40到50本需要详细研究。制作这种祈祷书的两种方式之间的差异--制作一本全新的书，以及从现有手稿中更简单地添加精选页面--允许首先洞察手稿文化、艺术和改革后修道院的虔诚生活。尤其是在L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。简单得多的是在布伦瑞克地区的修道院制作新的祈祷书，在那里，已经存在的单独的树叶或羽毛笔被捆绑在一起(很少有新的装饰品)，形成一个新的物品。后一种程序，即制作复合手稿，例如在斯特堡和海宁根，其优点是，通过重新使用现有的和可能经常使用的部分，允许在新的背景下继续某些传统，包括记忆。这两种形式的手稿生产都可以被理解为赋予改革一种字面上有形的形式。通过对祈祷书的仔细检查，可以更深入地了解这些书籍的实际使用情况，以发现使用的痕迹、磨损的痕迹，特别是经常触摸的痕迹、后来的插页、页边空白笔记和基本完成的祈祷书的其他补充内容。使用的痕迹以及图像和文本的布局可以告诉我们很多关于最喜欢的祈祷词或特定图像在修女的虔诚实践中所起的作用。该研究项目旨在增强我们对图像、视觉、媒体、虔诚和书籍历史的了解，这是一个尚未探索的领域。

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.