The prayer book of Ursula Begerin (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 801) is among the most extensively illustrated prayer books of the entire Middle Ages. First conceived for a laywoman of Strasbourg ca. 1380–1410 as a picture book with a cycle of at least 136 fullpage tinted drawings on biblical subjects covering the entire span of salvation history, to which is added an extensive appendix of saints, it was remade as a prayer book ca. 1480 for a nun of the city through the addition of more than 156 specially composed German prayers. Together, the images and the texts composed to accompany them constitute one of the most complex and comprehensive Christological cycles from the Middle Ages. In this, the first comprehensive study of the manuscript, the art historian Jeffrey F. Hamburger (Harvard University) and the historian of medieval literature, Nigel Palmer (University of Oxford), present the first full study of this remarkable monument of late medieval art, literature, and piety. In addition to a wide-ranging discussion of the development of illustrated prayer books and picture cycles in the Middle Age, Jeffrey Hamburger’s contribution provides a detailed discussion of each of the drawings, all of which are reproduced in colour in volume two. To Nigel Palmer’s survey of the history of medieval Latin and German prayer and meditation literature, which permits the manuscript to be contextualized in great detail, is added in volume two a critical edition of the German text of the prayers. A technical report on the restoration of the manuscript is supplied by the Bern conservator, Ulrike Bürger.

Due to the extent of the iconographic cycle, the book, enhanced with 545 comparative illustrations, a complete English translation of the prayers, and an apparatus of sources, provides a virtual handbook of late medieval religious art and devotional literature, as well as a page-by-page guide to the manuscript’s contents. Special attention is paid to the place of this hitherto virtually unknown ensemble of remarkable texts and illustrations in the visual and literary culture of late-medieval Strasbourg, where the manuscript finally came into the possession of Ursula Begerin, an Alsatian noblewoman who had become a nun in the order of Penitent Sisters of St. Mary Magdalen. She died in 1531, and it is from her that the manuscript takes its name.

Jeffrey F. Hamburger is the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art &
Culture, Harvard University

Nigel F. Palmer is Emeritus Professor of German Mediaeval Studies
at the University of Oxford

Informations pratiques :
Jeffrey F. Hamburger et Nigel F. Palmer, The Prayer Book of Ursula Begerin, Dietikon, Urs Graf Verlag, 2015. ISBN 978-3-85951-280-1. Prix : Europe € 135.00 (postage € 30.00).

Volume 1 : Art-Historical and Literary. Introduction With a Conservation Report by Ulrike Bürger, 220 x 297 mm, 676 p., 545 ill. all in color.

Volume 2 : Reproductions and Critical Edition, 220 x 297 mm, 204 p., illustrations in color.