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

私人祈祷书是超凡沟通和互动的工具。 “物质性”、“媒介性”和“表现性”被理解为研究视角，将被用作解开这一被忽视但丰富的资源秘密的钥匙，德国北部一些选定的中世纪晚期修道院和修道院的物质遗迹就是例证。大约在十五世纪中叶，吕讷堡和不伦瑞克（下萨克森州）的女修道院经历了彻底的改革，导致修女们的精神生活发生了变化。新的精神生活已经在手写的、经常带有插图的祈祷书中具体化。这些书旨在为个人、礼拜外的祈祷和冥想服务。它们不仅被拥有和使用，而且是由尼姑们自己制作的。由于他们进行私人祈祷，因此它们不受严格的礼仪规则的约束，就像礼仪书籍的情况一样。正是由于相对不受官方规则的约束，才能够深入了解实际的日常祈祷实践。现存此类祈祷书的数量相当多，大约有四十到五十本有待详细研究。制作此类祈祷书的两种方式之间的区别——制作一本全新的书，以及从现有手稿中更简单地添加选定的页面——使人们能够对手稿文化、艺术和改革修道院的虔诚生活有了初步的了解。尤其是在吕讷堡附近的梅丁根修道院，许多书籍都是新创作的，并配有大量新设计的插图。在不伦瑞克地区的修道院中制作新的祈祷书要简单得多，在那里将现有的单页或祈祷书装订在一起（很少配备新的插图）以形成新的物品。后一个程序，即复合手稿的制作，例如位于斯泰特堡和海宁根的项目的优点是，通过重复使用现有的、可能经常使用的部分，可以在新的背景下延续某些传统，包括记忆。这两种形式的手稿制作都可以被理解为赋予改革真正有形形式的方式。通过仔细检查祈祷书以发现使用痕迹、磨损痕迹，特别是频繁触摸、后来插入、页边注释和基本完成的祈祷书的其他添加的痕迹，可以更深入地了解这些书籍的实际使用。使用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或特定图像在修女的灵修实践中所扮演的角色的信息。 该研究项目旨在增强我们对尚未探索的领域中的图像、视觉、媒体、奉献和书籍的历史的了解。

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.