THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

One of the earliest foundations to flourish in the wake of the tumultuous Investiture Controversy was the Benedictine monastery of Helmarshausen in Saxony. Its abbots acquired important relics from Trier, providing the impetus for new building campaigns as well as promoting manuscript production. This Gospel book is an early witness to the monastery’s cultural vitality. Its inventive evangelist portraits combine new styles of painting from the Rhine-Meuse region with local Saxon traditions. The portrait of Luke is rendered in strong outlines, with drapery characterized by nested V-folds and modeling achieved through heavy bands of shading. In contrast to these innovations, the simulated textile designs of the facing page refer directly to the abstract tradition of painting cultivated at nearby Corvey in the tenth century.

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Although monasteries produced the majority of manuscripts in the twelfth century, the task of illuminating these works did not always fall to monks. For prestigious commissions, monasteries could seek out professional painters, who traveled widely in search of work. This Gospel book was illuminated by two artists. The first was a monk of Hamersleben; the second, whose work is shown here, was a professional painter with a strikingly different style. The figure of the evangelist Matthew has been endowed with a thoughtful expression and dramatic drapery. He appears to occupy three-dimensional space, an effect heightened by contrasts between the varied surfaces. In these respects, the illuminator demonstrates firsthand knowledge of contemporary artistic developments across the continent. The pastiche book box (above), in which the manuscript was stored, combines thirteenth-century elements with nineteenth-century additions, such as the large plaque of Christ at center.

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THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

In the twelfth century, monks at the Benedictine monastery of St. Michael advocated for the canonization of their founder, Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (d. 1022). These efforts coincided with a flurry of artistic activity, including the production of spectacularly illuminated manuscripts—among them, this missal. By depicting the story of salvation, the prefatory cycle shapes viewers’ understanding of the manuscript’s contents. The radially organized Creation miniature, at left, focuses on the plight of Adam and Eve, who are encircled by representations of the six days of Creation. Their expulsion from paradise and the story of Cain and Abel, below, indicate the sinful state of humankind. The facing miniature, in contrast, represents the promise of salvation. At center, a personification of divine wisdom holds up Christ amid Old Testament figures who prophesize his incarnation.

THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

This leaf once formed part of a magnificent Gospel book, written and illuminated at Helmarshausen, but perhaps made for the monks at Corvey. Originally positioned at the beginning of Matthew’s Gospel, the leaf features a depiction of Christ embedded within the very first word, Liber (book). Through its inscription (verus in utroque deus extat homoque; “truly he exists as both man and god”), Christ’s scroll emphasizes the dual nature of his incarnation, while the very placement of the figure, inhabiting the sacred text, visualizes the link between Christ and the word of God.

THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

The scriptorium at Helmarshausen regularly exported both manuscripts and artists to nearby Paderborn and Corvey, and even to centers as far as Scandinavia. In the second half of the twelfth century, however, this pattern of patronage changed as local nobility began to commission works directly from the monastic scriptorium. An early example of this trend, this diminutive psalter was likely made for a local Guelph princess—perhaps Gertrud (ca. 1152–1197), the daughter of the duke of Saxony and a future queen of Denmark. Dressed in red brocade lined with ermine, she raises her hands in prayer. The object of her devotion, depicted on a now-lost facing page, was likely the Virgin Mary.

THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

In 1215, fire consumed the monastery at Weingarten. Major relics were lost, and the abbey church had to be rebuilt. In this context of renewal, Abbot Berthold engaged a professional painter—known as the Berthold Master—who illuminated a new set of liturgical books, chief among them this magnificent Mass book. The miniature for the feast day of St. Oswald, at left, depicts the saintly king of Northumbria seated next to Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne. According to legend, Oswald gave so charitably to the poor that the bishop blessed the king’s generous hand. The hand never aged, becoming a wonder-working relic after his death. Emphasizing the miraculous qualities of Oswald’s relics, this full-page miniature promotes the cult of one of Weingarten’s patron saints. The manuscript preserves its original curtains and treasure binding.

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THE MONASTIC SCRIPTORIUM

After a burst of activity, the Berthold Master vanished from Weingarten without a trace. Just a few years later, a second professional artist took his place and painted miniatures for an important commission from a high-ranking member of the abbey: this Mass book for the sacristan Henry (Hainricus) to use in a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which he was responsible for maintaining. Placed unusually at the core of the manuscript just before the Eucharistic prayer, the Coronation of the Virgin, at right, attests to Henry’s devotion to Mary. The surrounding symbols of the four evangelists and four rivers of paradise underscore her central role in the universal Church. The manuscript preserves its original treasure binding, silk curtains, and remarkable thirteen-strand bookmark.

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RITE AND RITUAL

This monumental leaf from a choir book testifies to the ambition of the monks who commissioned it. With such commissions, newer mendicant orders like the Augustinians sought to place themselves on par with older foundations like the Benedictines. The illuminator responsible for this leaf worked in a manner derived from the latest fashion at the French court. Arranged from bottom to top like a stained-glass window, four scenes fill the initial I. They depict Augustine teaching; the dream of his mother, Monica; his baptism; and, finally, Bishop Augustine instructing monks. The scroll “spoken” by the monk in the lower margin reads, “Pray for us, blessed Father Augustine.”

RITE AND RITUAL

In its profuse use of gold, whether in the burnished backgrounds or the display scripts, this collection of homilies emulates the lavish aesthetic of imperial manuscripts of the early Middle Ages, despite its adoption of Gothic conventions. The homilary—a collection of sermons—was made for and in part by a community of Cistercian nuns. A reform order, the Cistercians traditionally eschewed such luxury, but not here. In its monumentality, the grand initial of the Resurrection rivals that of the full-page miniature on the facing page, which depicts two of Christ’s appearances to the apostles after his Resurrection: Christ as a pilgrim on the road to Emmaus and the Doubting Thomas.

RITE AND RITUAL

This large leaf, one of several surviving from a dismembered picture book of the Apocalypse, depicts John the Evangelist as the author of the book of Revelation, surrounded by seven angels representing the seven churches. The tabernacles and pinnacles around the angels evoke the façade of a Gothic cathedral, just as the blue-and-red palette suggests a stainedglass window. While it depicts the kingdom of heaven, the full-page miniature also represents the towering ambition of the high medieval Church. Didactic picture books of this kind had represented a popular genre in German monasticism since the twelfth century.

RITE AND RITUAL

Set against a gold background, a priest elevates a Eucharistic host within an initial C marking the beginning of the Feast of Corpus Christi. Behind him stand a deacon and a subdeacon holding a paten (plate). As this Mass celebrates the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic offering, the most prominent detail is the monstrance (receptacle) at the corner of the altar, displaying a consecrated host. Unusually for a Mass book, the bottom margin is filled with animal scenes humorously depicting a world upside down. This missal was painted by Master Bertram, a well-documented artist in Hamburg whose workshop also produced panel paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts.

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RITE AND RITUAL

This deluxe liturgical set, likely commissioned by an abbot of St. Trudpert, was created by a lay goldsmith from Freiburg named Master John (Johannes), who ran an active workshop in the thirteenth century. The chalice, paten, and straw (to prevent spilling) were essential vessels used by a priest for the consecration of the Eucharist, the moment in Mass when the offering of bread and wine was ritually transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The rich visual program is typological: Old Testament prophecies at the base of the chalice are paired with New Testament scenes around its node (middle part). The use of typology continues on the paten, where Abel and Melchisedech serve as prefigurations of Christ as both sacrifice and celebrant.

RITE AND RITUAL

This tabernacle was commissioned by Sister Margaret (Greda) Pfrumbon, whose family made several gifts to the Cistercian convent of Lichtenthal in the Rhineland, where she was a nun. Margaret appears alongside St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the famous monastic reformer and a fellow Cistercian. Like the three magi, Margaret offers her gift to the Virgin and Child. With its translucent enamel over an engraved ground, the tabernacle emulates stained-glass windows. The baldachins placed over angels on each corner of the tabernacle resemble those at Reims Cathedral, the coronation site of French kings. The lions serving as feet for the object link the tabernacle to the Temple of Solomon, the archetypal site of the Holy of Holies.

MONASTIC LEARNING AND REFORM

The Mirror of Virgins, a book instructing clerics in the spiritual care of nuns, exemplifies the changing status of visual imagery within monastic reform movements. The “mirror” of the title defines the text as a place where readers can examine the “face of their hearts.” A dialogue between a monk (Peregrinus) and a nun (Theodora), the work contains a dozen narrative, allegorical, and diagrammatic images that serve as instruments of pastoral care. The Trees of Vices and Virtues dominate one opening to the near exclusion of text. The text directs “novices and the untutored” toward these “two little trees,” so that “anyone studying to improve himself can clearly see what things will result from them.”

MONASTIC LEARNING AND REFORM

Monastic learning included texts on the natural world. A characteristic example from the important Benedictine monastery at Göttweig, this compilation of animal lore is based on ancient and early medieval sources. Beginning with the lion and ending with the phoenix, the text describes some thirty different animals, both real and imaginary. At upper left is the hydrus, legendary enemy of the crocodile; directly below are sirens, birdlike beasts that prey on sailors. At upper right is the onocentaur, a half-man, half-donkey hybrid; below that are sex-changing hyenas, related to sodomy; and the creature at lower right is a braying onager, symbol of the devil. Added later, rhyming couplets in the margins offer typological and moral interpretations of the animals, of a type also featured in the encyclopedic Concordance of Charity.

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MONASTIC LEARNING AND REFORM

This delicate drawing exemplifies the educational program of medieval monasticism. Personified liberal arts (branches of learning) descend from a magisterial figure of Philosophy. She is depicted as the queen of heaven, crowned and holding a scepter, flanked by personifications of the sun and moon and surrounded by stars and clouds, as if a celestial vision. Reminiscent of Pentecost imagery, seven streams flow from her breast, nourishing each of the liberal arts. The double-sided drawing marries principle to practice; whereas the arts are personified as women, on the reverse, their practitioners are presented as famous men.

HISTORIES OF SALVATION

The Mirror of Human Salvation was composed in northern Italy but enjoyed its widest dissemination north of the Alps. Juxtaposing scenes from the New Testament with Old Testament prefigurations, the images offer a lesson in the shape of sacred history and the nature of memory and meditation. In the first image, Mary mourns under the cross, surrounded by events on which she, as a model for the viewer, reflects. Her pose is echoed in the three prefigurations that follow: Anna is perturbed by the absence of her son, as was Mary when she could not find Jesus. The woman from the parable of the lost coin likewise stands for Mary’s loss of her son. Finally, Saul forces his daughter Michal to marry Phalti when David goes into hiding.

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HISTORIES OF SALVATION

Pointing out the links between the Old and New Testaments constituted a staple of Christian commentary on the Bible. Despite its name (a misnomer), the Paupers’ Bible circulated primarily in Benedictine and Augustinian monasteries in Austria and Bavaria. Configurations varied, but in this unfinished copy, each page features four Old Testament prophets surrounding a New Testament subject, with a pair of Old Testament scenes below. At left, for example, the Crowning with Thorns is paired with the Shaming of Noah and the Mocking of Elijah. At right, Christ Carrying the Cross is related to Abraham and Isaac as well as Elijah’s Encounter with the Widow of Zarephath. Added much later, the inscriptions represent an attempt to finish the manuscript.

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HISTORIES OF SALVATION

This compendium systematically links prefigurations from the Old Testament and the natural world to their Christian realizations in the New Testament. At top, for example, the principal scene is Christ telling Nicodemus that light has come into the world. Directly below are two scriptural prefigurations: Moses and the Israelites led by a pillar of fire, and God’s covenant with Abraham. There follow two examples from natural history: a chameleon, and a burning house in a hailstorm. Just as the lizard takes on the color of its surroundings, so an observer can adopt exemplary behavior. Just as hail and lightning cannot harm a blazing house, so the Last Judgment cannot harm one ablaze with the Holy Spirit. This opulent copy was made for Leonhard Dietersdorfer, a cleric and imperial notary from Salzburg.

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ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

Established in 1112 by a local count, Udalschalk von Stille, and his brother-in-law, Reginbert, the monastery at Seitenstetten actively commemorated its founding dynasty for well over a century. When Abbot Henry (r. 1247–50) commissioned a deluxe Gospel book for the monastery, his aristocratic patrons were featured prominently in its decorative program, as was Henry himself. In the dedication miniature shown here, Henry (Heinricus) and a noblewoman offer their book to an enthroned Virgin and Child. Henry is identified as a priest, suggesting that this commission may slightly predate his rule as abbot. The woman is identified as Cunigunde (Chunegundis), who is attested in contemporary sources as the widow of Otaker von Stille and thus a member of the dynasty.

ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

In 1254, the monastery at Seitenstetten burned to the ground. Circumstances were so dire that the archbishop of Salzburg intervened, granting indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins, for anyone offering financial support to the monks. As the well-connected son of the duke of Silesia, Archbishop Ladislaus (ca. 1237–1270) came to Salzburg via Padua, where he had studied at the renowned university. He likely played a role in the commissioning of this missal, coinciding with the rededication of the monastery. Of the manuscript’s three local artists, the one responsible for this diptych of the Virgin and Child with a facing Crucifixion demonstrates firsthand knowledge of contemporary Paduan painting, which must have been facilitated by the archbishop’s connections. The donor at the foot of the Virgin is likely the abbot of Seitenstetten.

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ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

Arranged in a double-tiered format, this leaf from a deluxe psalter depicts the Flagellation of Christ and the Crucifixion set against a solid gold background. The unusual frame heightens the drama of the narrative. Grammatical clues in the manuscript’s Latin prayers indicate that it was created for a woman, perhaps as a gift for the wedding of Helen, the daughter of Duke Otto of Brunswick, to Hermann II of Thuringia. This book marks the emergence of a new style of painting known as Zackenstil (Zigzag style), derived in part from Byzantine and Venetian art, and characterized by thick, jagged folds of drapery that defy gravity. This new style spread quickly throughout the empire, becoming a standard mode of figural representation across all artistic media.

ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

Würzburg was the site of an active workshop of professional illuminators around the middle of the thirteenth century. Working for monasteries and nobility, Christians and Jews, these lay painters were familiar with slightly earlier, aristocratic works like the “Arenberg Psalter.” Although the intended recipient of this deluxe book of Psalms remains unknown, it counts among the earliest and most lavish products of the workshop. Featuring the opening words of Psalm 1 spread across two pages, the double frontispiece begins with a large letter B at left, in which Christ sits enthroned above a seated King David, who is flanked by musicians. Unusually, the facing page presents the remaining letters in a golden grid, enhancing the sacred text.

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ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

This prayer book, which conceivably belonged to St. Hedwig, features a vast prefatory cycle of approximately 160 Old and New Testament scenes, framed by inscriptions in German. These narrative scenes are depicted in unusually elaborate detail. The story of Susannah and the Elders, for example, begins at upper left with the heroine physically accosted by two older men, then falsely accused of adultery before a judge. Below, a young Daniel intercedes on her behalf, interrogating the elders. Finally, as punishment for their false witness, the men are stoned to death. The story of Daniel continues on the facing page. This elaborate tale of virtue in the face of corruption may have had special appeal to the book’s first, female owner.

ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

In 1203, Duke Henry I of Silesia (d. 1238), from the Piast dynasty, and his wife, Hedwig of Andechs (d. 1243), founded the Cistercian convent of Trebnitz (Trzebnica). Hedwig would retire there as a widow. For centuries thereafter, all the convent’s abbesses were princesses of the Piast dynasty. This manuscript reproduces the dossier in support of Hedwig’s canonization, which occurred in 1267. Depicting episodes from her life and tracing her family history, its drawings provide emblematic images of aristocratic piety and of female piety in particular. At left is the family of Hedwig’s father, Berthold IV of Andechs, and, below, the union of Hedwig and Henry I, who, following the birth of their children, had a chaste marriage. The first scene on the facing page depicts Hedwig praying while her husband sleeps. The scene below depicts the couple with their children.

ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

Written around 1215–16, The Italian Guest is the sole surviving poem by Thomasin von Zerclaere, a canon at the court of the German-speaking patriarch of Aquileia in Friuli (northern Italy). The work seeks to educate noblemen in the rules and norms of courtly love, chivalry, ethics, rulership, and good manners. The illustrations constitute a critical part of the work’s didactic program and enhanced its appeal to lay readers. At left, personifications of vices rob a nobleman of his clothing. At right, Justice, Nobility, and Courtliness join hands in a circle; a second miniature shows the winners and loser of backgammon, a critique of gambling. This copy was commissioned by Kuno von Falkenstein (1320–1388), archbishop elector of the imperial city of Trier.

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ARISTOCRATIC PATRONAGE

The 243 illustrations in this copy of Henry of Munich’s World Chronicle entertained and edified aristocratic readers. As part of the work’s expansive paraphrase of Jewish scripture in German verse, one miniature shows King David battling the Philistines; the other shows David playing his harp and followed by trumpeters, leading the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. When the oxen hauling the ark stumbled, Uzzah, the son of Abinadab, sought to steady it with his hand, in violation of the law, and was immediately struck down, as seen at the center. The oblong formats spanning both text columns lend the images narrative thrust. While depicting distant historical events, the lively miniatures would have evoked contemporary military customs and courtly pageantry for the manuscript’s readers.

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