From Devotional Aids to Antiquarian Objects: The Prayer Books of Medingen

Abstract

Henrike Lähnemann discusses the production and transmission of late medieval manuscripts, reflecting on the changeable nature of engaging with books as objects. She explores the layered meanings of a group of late medieval prayer books from the Abbey of Medingen‚ a Cistercian convent. Originally written as devotional aids for personal use in the late 15th and early 16th centuries‚ these acquired new cultural significance in the course of time, starting with adjustments prompted by the Lutheran Reformation. Sold in the eighteenth century as "precious objects", they furthered emerging Germanic philology and exemplified cultural shifts as antiquarian objects in the nineteenth century, to attract international attention in twentieth and twenty-first-century. Lähnemann explores the implications of such adjustments by assessing the materiality of the medieval manuscripts as well as devotional, linguistic and cultural significance.