Volume 24, Issue 2

This article focuses on the connections between prayer and indulgence established in the 13 th and 14 th centuries. Since the Early Middle Ages, practices of prayer played a significant role in the ecclesiastical system of penance. They were supposed to provide salvation by redeeming the devotee from sins. With the advent of indulgence, the salvific value of prayer became more closely entangled with the authority of the papacy and the bishops. Generally speaking, papal indulgences were very standardized, and thus only few practices of prayer are mentioned in the respective documents. Episcopal grants of indulgence, on the other hand, were influenced more strongly by their recipients and can thus be more detailed. Two types of prayer indulgences were especially successful: first, indulgences for venerating the Veronica and other holy images, and secondly, indulgences granted to those praying for the King’s salvation.

In medieval Switzerland, war prayers were an important ritual that was performed both before battle and after a victory. Swiss troops prayed the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary five times each, kneeling down and stretching out their arms in a prescribed posture. This posture, together with the quintuple repetition of the prayers, evokes the Passion of Christ and his five wounds. The Swiss troops thought of the correct performance of this prayer ritual as crucial for their military success. The Swiss battle prayer also partly constituted a tactical means that was employed to scare or delude enemies unfamiliar with the ritual. From the early 16 th century onwards, German humanist scholars criticized this prayer ritual as an act of superstition and uttered their disconcertment concerning the underlying belief of the Swiss that they were God’s chosen people.

The term ‘apologies’ describes prayers offered by Christians during Mass to express their sinfulness and unworthiness. In liturgical scholarship, these prayers have usually been regarded as early medieval priestly prayers, and it has been argued that they largely vanished after their peak of importance in the 11 th century Order of Mass. In my article, I show that these prayers did not disappear but are transmitted in late medieval private prayer books. In light of this transmission, I propose to conjoin scholarly perspectives from liturgical studies and cultural history in order to understand apologies as expressions of devotional individuation.

This contribution showcases the work of the Vienna Euchologia Project which aims to make accessible the ‘small prayers’ or ‘occasional prayers’ that are preserved in the Byzantine euchologia manuscripts from the late 8 th to the mid 17 th century as sources for daily life and social history. A brief introduction to the project is followed by three thematically focused studies that juxtapose the prescriptive prayers in the euchologia with descriptive evidence from other sources: exorcism and other prayers in hagiographical narratives, prayers with relevance to political history, and prayers relating to women’s purity.

This article addresses the possible conditions under which parodies of prayer could emerge and be transmitted in the High and Late Middle Ages. It aims to offer a systematic overview over the different forms of prayer parody in the German-speaking Middle Ages. After some preliminary remarks on definitions I suggest a typology of German-speaking prayer parodies and conclude with some general observations on the possible contexts in which such texts were used.

By means of a close reading of a single prayer on the Passion of Christ from the 14 th century ‘Engelberg Prayerbook,’ this article analyzes three characteristic effects of reading medieval written prayers: first, the devotee assumes the role of the I constructed by the text. Secondly, this leads to an effect of immersion into a literarily constructed, imagined environment. Finally, these effects of reading aim at being surpassed by an immediacy of a divine answer that transcends the aesthetic and semantic effects of the literary medium.

In medieval Europe, Christian amulets comprised of illuminations and/or script were considered powerful apotropaic shields. This article focuses on a single example, Ms Princeton 235. It is argued that this object primarily functions as a prayer aid rather than as a magical object. Comparable to rosaries or prayer nuts, this amulet conveys its assumed protective powers through specific devotional acts. Its textual program prefigures such pious practices, which include carrying the amulet above one’s heart, folding and unfolding it, reciting a profession of faith and the divine names, making the sign of the cross, and contemplatively looking at a miniature showing the Arma Christi. Through an analysis of how the textual and visual features of Ms Princeton 235 prompt devotional practices, its claim to mediate divine grace and power become comprehensible.

Approaching the interplay of medieval prayer and artificial light, my article shows how artificial light had multiple levels of meaning and functions pertaining to the situation, the subject, and the intention of praying. It served practical purposes such as illuminating and highlighting spaces of prayer, thus enabling the devotees to read. What is more, artificial lighting contributed to orchestrating places of prayer, especially in church buildings, as spaces removed from everyday life, thereby emphasizing the sacredness of liturgical prayers and acts. In this context light also visualized the divine counterpart of prayer and the supernatural par excellence. Furthermore, it enveloped the praying person, who through his baptism regarded himself as a child of light, as it were. The goal of prayer, God’s love and care, seemed to be fulfilled in the here and now and materialized in the light. Artificial lighting was therefore immanent and transcendent at the same time. It communicated the divine and how this reality could reveal itself to human beings in the light – like a medium of salvation.

In the early 12 th century, a Jewish community first settled in the medieval city of Erfurt (Thuringia). The synagogue, the mikvah (ritual bath), and several private dwellings of this community are preserved until today. A room in one of the private houses formerly inhabited by Jews has a wooden beam ceiling, dating from 1244, which is colourfully painted with tendrils, leaves and blossoms. This ceiling was added to the room together with other extensive refurbishments: the former door in the eastern wall was replaced with a built-in cupboard, a new door as well as a recess for an oil lamp were added to the northern wall, and the room received an oriel window. Furthermore, the ceiling shows the remains of suspensions for lamps, and traces of shelves are still visible on the walls. As an ensemble, these alterations suggest that the chamber was converted into a prayer room in the mid-13 th century. As the only preserved example of a medieval Jewish private room for prayer, it constitutes an important source for understanding Jewish piety in the German-speaking lands.