Author Description

"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 full-page 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 compre-hensive 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 develop-ment of illustrated prayer books and picture cycles in the Middle Age, Jeffrey Hamburger's contribution provides a detailed discus-sion 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...."--[Site Web de l'éditeur].