Prayer book for Duke Albrecht V.

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The prayer book for Duke Albrecht V (also known as Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus 2722 ) is a manuscript created in the mid-1430s (but before the end of 1437) in Vienna or Klosterneuburg , which was used as a prayer book for the private devotion of Duke Albrecht V von Austria (from 1438 as German King Albrecht II) was determined.

The front cover of Codex 2722
Depiction of the Holy Mass with Duke Albrecht V, who is praying to the left of the priest. The coats of arms of Old Austria and New Austria are depicted in the tendril border below .

description

The manuscript is a preciously illuminated prayer book that is one of the most important treasures from the Habsburg book holdings and is now in the holdings of the Austrian National Library . The richly illustrated work is the earliest preserved of its kind for an Austrian ruler and the first German prince prayer book in Austria.

History of manuscript

The use of the five-eagle coat of arms and the shield give an indication of the time of origin, which must have been before Albrecht was elected King of Hungary on December 18, 1437. After Albrecht's death in 1439, the manuscript was probably first in the possession of his son Ladislaus Postumus . After his death in 1457 it went to the heir of Emperor Friedrich III. over. There are only two ownership notices from more recent times: a name entry of Madlena von Herberstorff dated 1583 and the signature Theol in 1752 . 961 of the court library in Vienna; Michael Denis included the work in the catalog of the court library in 1795. The ownership structure is no longer exactly traceable; from the possession of the Protestant aristocrats from their palace in Allerheiligen near Wildon , it came to the Graz palace library and probably came to the Vienna court library under the reign of Maria Theresa . In the course of the Napoleonic Wars , the work was brought to the Bibliothèque Imperiale in Paris in 1809 and was not returned until 1815.

Authorship

The illumination of the prayer book comes from one of the leading Viennese artists of the late Gothic period, who used it to create his main work. The author, also known as the Albrechtsminiator , who remained anonymous a. also another prayer book for Duke Albrecht V and commissioned works for Klosterneuburg Abbey and Emperor Friedrich III. Because of these important commissions for the court, the Albrechtsminiator is considered to be the head of the court miniatures workshop, which also proved his high artistic status.

The fleuronné was created by a florator who also lived in Vienna between the 1420s and 1430s and who remained anonymous.

Furnishing

The front cover and the spine are made of green-silver silk brocade fabric that covers the wooden cover, which is covered with brown leather. There are five rosette-shaped silver fittings and two locking plates on the front and back . Of the clasps, only the upper one was preserved. The cut was originally colored red and decorated with scattered blue-green-yellow flower rosettes.

Handwriting belongs also a - rare preserved - bookmark ribbon of pale green silk and Lahn silver .

The content consists of 221 written and two blank sheets of parchment with a size of approx. 20.5–21 × 14.5–15 cm. The leaf layers consist mostly of quaterniones , the miniatures are laid out as single leaves. It is written in Bavarian written language on a writing surface of about 14-15.5 × 10-10.5 cm, which usually comprises 27, sometimes 28 lines.

The external appearance of the codex is determined by the very carefully executed Gothic book script, by a masterful calligraphic lettering and by 17 full-page high-quality miniatures. The predominant colors gold or blue can be found in the rubrications , the single-line sentence majuskel as well as in the numerous fleuronné initials and in the Lombards , which are adorned with blue or red fleuronné. There are a total of 24 opaque color initials for larger text sections, 16 of which show content-related half-figures.

Prayer texts

The texts are all written in Bavarian Middle High German , making the work one of the few early contemporary documents for a vernacular religiousness .

The content consists of a mixture of prayers common in the late Middle Ages for the divine service according to the missal and the breviary and for private devotion. This part of non-liturgical prayers and reflections takes up the largest part and deals with Roman Catholic beliefs such as the Eucharist , Passion of Christ , Mary and the saints , penance and redemption .

The texts are translations from Latin, mainly by Anselm von Canterbury and Johannes von Neumarkt , but also by Bernhard von Clairvaux , Petrus Damiani , Hildebert von Lavardin , Eckbert von Schönau and Johannes Milicius .

Incipit : Creator Du schepher aller dinge Got father omnipotent Des anegang chainen anuang nimps ...
Explicit : ... through whom the future is destroying the world through the fewr Amen.

gallery

literature

  • Hermann Menhardt: Directory of the Old German literary manuscripts of the Austrian National Library. Volume 1. (Publications of the Institute for German Language and Literature 13). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1960, pp 218 - 219 .
  • Dominik Nimmervoll: The prayer book for Albrecht V (Codex Vindobonensis 2722). A contribution to the research of the Middle Bavarian language and the religious and spiritual world of the 15th century in Austria. Dissertation at the University of Vienna, Vienna 1973.
  • Veronika Pirker-Aurenhammer: The prayer book for Duke Albrecht V. Academic printing u. Verlagsanstalt, Graz 2002, ISBN 3-201-01783-3 , (Codices illuminati I, Series A, 2).

Web links

Commons : Prayer book for Duke Albrecht V.  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Second Albrecht Prayer Book, 1438/39, Cod. 1080 of the Melk Abbey Library
  2. ↑ Contribution to the prayer book of Kaiser Friedrich III. , 1447/48, Cod. 1767 of the ÖNB and the Legenda Aurea , 1446/47, in which he always has the jewelry at the beginning of the text with the characters of Frederick III. (Name, coat of arms and motto AEIOU ) designed.