Thank you very much. That was beautiful. So welcome, everyone, to this webinar Singing together, Apart, focussing on the drama in mediaeval chants.
Thank you very much for being here. And thank you to all singers for that lovely introduction.
My name is Helen, I am the Education Officer at the Bodleian Libraries. Just to let you know a few practical things before we start.
We are recording the event, but as this is a Zoom webinar, your video and audio are turned off and you won't appear in the video.
So we won't be able to hear or see you and you can sing as loudly as you wish and complete safety.
We will share a link to the recording about a week after the event.
We will be looking at some original manuscripts that feature the music we will be singing.
So if you would like to ask a question about mediaeval music or the manuscripts in general, please type it in the Q&A window during the event.
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So once again, welcome.
The plan for today is to revisit one of the chants from our last session, led by our singers who are in the Crypt of St. Peter in the East,
and then find out about today's focus piece and how it fits into the Easter drama.
We will learn and sing the piece by ear together, followed by a discussion about the manuscript where the piece is found.
Thanks to the Polonsky Digitisation Project,
we can view the full manuscripts of both chants online at Digital Bodleian and the links are in your joining email.
We've created a modern PDF version of the text and notation to help you follow along.
Remember, we can't see or hear you so you can sing as loud as you like!
Then there will be a chance to ask questions before finally singing the piece again together.
I'll hand over now to our speakers and singers, Henrike Lähnemann, Professor of Mediaeval German at Oxford University,
Andrew Dunning, RW Hunt Curator of Mediaeval Manuscripts at the Bodleian.
Zachary Giuliano, College Chaplain and research fellow at St. Edmund Hall
And Nick Swarbrick, Associate Lecturer at Oxford Brookes and singing leader for today's session.
Over to you. Thank you, Helen, and thanks, Andrew, for again bringing the manuscripts along.
We'll look today at two manuscripts. We'll start with a manuscript we have been seeing in the last two workshops,
which was the Handbook for the Medingen Provost, quarto format in a sturdy leather volume.
And we looked at the one of the first liturgical events of the year.
The Purificat zur Maria, Medingen, was dedicated to Mary, and that was one of the highlights of the year.
And we thought, just to ease you into the liturgical cycle of the year before we leaf through,
we would revisit the lighting of candles at Candlemas because the light is also the leading theme then for Easter we are looking at.
So it starts with an ownership entry, Christmas, and then already on the folio that Andrew is just turning,
it starts Candlemas, several sung prayers by the Provost
and then what the nuns added in because it was their special piece while the church was censed
to sing their version of the Song of Simeon with a repetition of the Lumen ad revelacionem
gencium. You're welcome to join in.
And even those who haven't been to the previous workshops, I think by the fifth repetition you'll be able to get into it.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine
secundum verbum tuum in pace. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Quia viderunt oculimei
salutare tuum. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Quod parasti
ante faciem omnium populorum. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium,
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Gloria Patri, et Filio,
et Spiritui Santo. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
et in secula seculorum. Amen.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
So light remains a theme throughout the liturgical calendar and comes to full force
when Christ the Easter sun rises from the dead and we can see it actually reflected,
literally reflected in the initials of the manuscript. The Easter night starts with the
only illuminated historiated initial where we see Christ leading Adam and Eve out of limbo,
which is the dramatic event actually narrated in the sequence Cum Rex
Gloria and the C of the Cum Rex Gloria furnishes the initial on folio 48 for the
sequence. Good manuscript, will Weile haben.
A bit back. So, yeah, there you see the C of the Cum Rex Gloria, and the red you see on the left hand side,
gives the instructions for the provost, how he should act while he was singing that.
And I'm particularly interested in the instruction on the next folio,
which comes after the gold initial signalling, the actual moment of resurrection, the S for surrexit
He is risen the Lord from the tomb and the text below that reads,
and I need to use my edition as a crib sheet, die inde Victimae paschali laudes. Then they sing the Victimae paschali laudes.
So the clergy is singing the sequence that we are going to sing as well,
Laytis laudem canentibus Christ is
while the lay people are singing the praise
Christ is risen and that's the vernacular piece
that you are going to sing in answer to the Latin praise.
And then follows a theological justification where the nuns quote Gregory the Great who has said that on Easter Day
no tongue should be silent. And I hand over now to Zach Giuliano, who will explain a bit more about the theological significance of Easter.
Thank you. Yes, I'd like to say a little about the theological significance of Easter and then the development of Easter drama and art and music,
very briefly, I mean, the basic point is that within the Christian tradition,
the Easter event is seen to be of such cosmic importance that it calls forth all sorts of different forms of creativity and as Henrike said,
all voices to praise the Lord. But let me back up just a little bit to talk about the development of liturgical drama
and how we get to the point we're at with the sequence we're talking about just now.
To begin with, there's a strong urge toward repetition in Christian liturgy.
We can see this in the service of the Eucharist itself, which recalls the last supper that Christ had with his disciples.
Think of those words, Do this in remembrance of me.
In this and then nearly all other Christian services, biblical readings
bring the events of the past before the mind's eye, but we might imagine, what if you could do more than just read things?
And that's, of course, what happened from at least the fourth century.
There was an increasing attempt to re-enact or dramatise all the events of Christ's passion
and resurrection or to describe them in an increasingly elaborate hymnody and chant.
Some efforts began in Jerusale. Services that the Bishop of Jerusalem put on during Holy Week and Easter moved about that city,
using its spaces and retracing Christ's footsteps in Holy Week and Easter.
So where he walked, where he taught and ate, where he was betrayed, put on trial, beaten and killed and where he was raised from the dead.
In each place, appropriate readings and songs were selected to heighten the drama and draw attention to the significance of the events.
Other liturgical rites arose in later centuries from vivid musical compositions to
small dramatic actions that accompany narrative readings of the passion onto full scale plays.
And that's where we have to place the sequence of the Victimae paschali laudes. To give you one example,
there was something called In modum fur rantes, so right in the manner of a thief.
As a deacon, read John's account of the crucifixion on Good Friday and reads the words they parted my garments among them,
two clerics might approach the altar in the manner of a thief like they were sneaking up to it and
they would remove an altar cloth or divide two cloths lying there before returning to their seats.
So we have an example of that ritual from the 8th century, and it continued for nearly a thousand years.
And there are many others we might name.
If you've been to services during Holy Week, you might think of the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday, the veneration of the cross on Good Friday.
There are many different examples. The sequence takes its place among these dramatic reenactments.
Its verses rehearse Christ's victory in a variety of modes that display the full range of the Christian theology of atonement.
Christ is a sacrifice who may receive sacrifices as we'll hear.
A lamb redeeming other sheep, a fighter or a ruler combating death through death before rising again.
Then a notable shift in the verses focuses on the testimony of Mary Magdalene as the first witness of the resurrection.
This is a reminder to us of her central place in mediaeval devotion and liturgy and also her significance in women's religious houses in particular.
Dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via - speak Mary declaring what thou sawest wayfaring.
Now, I'll just say we're not sure who wrote this piece of chant,
but it became embedded in Latin liturgies from the middle of the 11th century onwards and remains in use today. In its form
and the vivid character of its language lend themselves well to a variety of forms of dramatisation and pictorial representation,
including those at Wienhausen and Medingen, as we'll hear more about now.
So the space you just saw of Wienhausen, the nuns gallery, or really nuns choir up in the, at the west end of the church,
shows this scene setting for the Easter drama as the nuns would have used it,
and under the floorboards of Wienhausen there were little booklets found and among them the role of Mary
Magdalene who would step out from the choir stalls and sing exactly this sequence that we are singing now,
while another nun would step out and sing the answer of Christ.
So the liturgical space is used as a dramatic stage for the nuns to enact that
and you can also see this in the Holy Sepulchre, which stood in the middle of the nuns choir and which shows like a graphic novel,
all the events that happened around passion and resurrection.
So you see on the bottom row, Christ jumping out of the tomb, the angel holding up the linen to the three Marys.
Then you see Christ meeting Mary Magdalene in the guise of a gardener, then Thomas, putting his fingers into the side wound of Christ.
And particularly the role of Mary Magdalene was one that the nuns felt close to and which pictures features frequently in their prayer books.
So now we are going to act it out ourselves.
You are going to take over the role of both the congregation and the questioning disciples, and Nick is telling you how to do that.
So this is a tall order we're asking of you here. We're asking you not only to sing in mediaeval German, but a little bit of Greek as well.
And some Latin. You see that the first line, which I'm going to sing, is about the Christians bringing their praises.
So the next most obvious thing is for the laity. And that's going to be all of us to sing this, it goes Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle
des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis
So let's just try that first bit. Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle, and let's see how we go.
I can't hear you so you can make as much of a mess of this as you want.
But do join in if you can. Crist ist erstanden
von der Marter alle. Lovely, the next bit is, if you like, a response to those very high notes.
des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein,
Let's try it des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein.
And then it finishes with Kyrieleis. Try it - Kyrieleis.
And let's put it all together. Crist ist erstanden vond er Marter alle, des solln wir alle fro sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis. Wonderful.
And in fact, what will happen is that at various points, which will become very obvious,
where we're going to do it, we will all join in and be with you, the laity.
But there's also the question of Mary Magdalene coming and saying, I've got to tell you something.
And the apostles say, well, tell us what you saw on the way, dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via.
And so we're going to try that if we can just see that, the next bit on the music or if you've got it in front of you, it goes like this.
dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via. Let's see if you can try it.
dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via
And then Mary Magadelene Henrike, will take over at that point and be Mary Magdalene -
be one of the sisters responding to that rather wondering and dubious question of the apostles.
And as I said, at various points, we will join in again and again.
with this Crist ist erstanden, and I'm hoping that you will join in and make whatever rafters or vaults you have,
echo to that lay proclamation that we've been hearing so much about.
So let's give it a go.
Victime pashali laudes immolent Cristi ani. Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein.
Kyrieleis. Agnus redemit oves: Cristus innocens Patri reconciliavit peddatores. Mors et vita duello conflixere
mirando: dux vite mortuus, regnat vivus. Crist ist erstanden von der
Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein.
Kyrieleis.
Dic nobis Maria, quid vidisti in via? Sepulcrum Cristi viventis, et gloriam vidi resurgentis: Angelicos testes,
sudarium, et vestes. Surrexit Christus spes mea: precedet suos in Galileam.
Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle;
des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein.
Kyrieleis. So this is what would have happened in the parish church at Medingen at Easter with the nuns up on the gallery,
the parish congregation below at the west end and the clergy at the east end.
But the nuns also took this over into their own devotion,
and what we are going to look at now is how this drama, Easter drama, is put into the personal prayer book of the nuns.
And we are lucky that currently in Oxford we have two specialists for this wonderful prayer book from Medingen. One is Marlene Schilling,
who has just handed in her dissertation on the personification of the Easter night in the Medingen prayer books,
and Carolin Gluchowski, who is a first year DPhil student working on the production processes with which the nuns did, made, these manuscripts.
So over to Andrew Dunning, who will be quizzing Marlene and Carolin on the manuscript.
Marlene, I understand that you actually had the chance to view this tiny little manuscript in person a few weeks ago.
What were your impressions of it? Yes, that's true.
As Henrike said, I worked on the manuscript for my dissertation, and a couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to consult the manuscript in person.
And that was a very fascinating experience because it was my first one-on-one meeting with a mediaeval manuscript.
I had seen the digital images online and I had already worked with them.
So it was just amazing when I then touched a manuscript for the first time.
And my first thought in that moment was it's so tiny because it's really designed to be held in one hand.
So it is really small and the digital images just can't fully transport the scale.
So it was in a way, a bit of a surprise. I had a lot of fun that afternoon in the Weston Library.
I looked at every single folio of the manuscript during my meeting because it's just a fascinating and simply beautiful manuscript.
And so did you have any particularly, did you have any favourite pages that you'd like to show us?
That's a very difficult question because there are dozens of stunning examples in the manuscript,
but I would say folio 20 recto comes very close to being a favourite folio.
It's the start of the Latin prayer Exultet. It's just beautifully illuminated with all the angels and this shiny golden initial.
So this choir of Angels actually reflects and visualises the beginning of the prayer.
And as you can see, these angels are playing various instruments and really show the important role of music for celebrating Easter.
Another interesting example was folio 174 verso
because there we can actually see the nuns with the lay community.
It's such a tiny book, you have to be quite delicate in handling it.
That was quite a challenge. There we go.
There it is. An excellent pick Marlene.
This is a beautiful page of the manuscript, and there's so much to explore from just one page. The rubric tells us it's made for Vespers.
So the evening prayer. You have a huge gold initial introducing the valedictory prayer for Easter Sunday.
And in the margins, you can actually see the nuns themselves.
So if you have a close look, you can see on the left side the nuns and on the right side you can see the Lüneburg patricians.
That's no incidence because many of the nuns were actually related to the Lüneburg towns.
Many town patricians send their daughters off to one of the Lüneburg convents to be in the convent.
Also, the Lüneburg patricians contributed to the living of the nuns via the salt works in Lüneburg.
And if you have a close look at the scrolls above their heads
you can also see that there is an interesting fact about the distribution of Latin and vernacular prayers.
So above the nuns' heads, you can see a Latin text, vale o dies sine vespera and on the other side,
above the heads of the patricians, you can see a vernacular text O sote dach woltestu by uns bliven.
So you can see that actually the nuns make sure that some key aspects of theology make their way into the prayer books.
Maybe we should turn to another page. And this is 116 recto.
There it is. Thank you, Andrew. So maybe we start with the left side, so it's 115 verso actually.
There you can see a pope and actually this refers to what Henrike said at the very beginning of this session.
I'm referring to the provost menu. So here you actually have the quotation of Gregory the Great saying that no tongue should be silenced on Easter Sunday.
And on the right side, you actually have put this into action.
You can see a young man, with a flower crown and a scroll reading Cristus upstanden von der mater so you can see how the lay actually responds to the Victimae paschali.
He is also surrounded by two trees with two birds
and this may refer to that all creatures are encouraged to participate into the Easter prayers.
That actually also refers to what Marlene said, also the angels might join in. Every human being,
every creature on earth, every creature in heaven is welcome to participate.
And also we now in our present time re-enact that, so it's fabulous to be here and to see this manuscript,
which is more than five hundred years old and we're still in this tradition.
Thank you both very much, it's really exciting. We've got some more time,
so maybe we might come back to you and ask you some more about your thoughts about that manuscript, if you're willing to.
We just had a question come in about the kind of technical side of the manuscript.
And I don't know, Andrew, maybe if you could tell us more about how the ink was made for these manuscripts?
So the nuns would do quite a lot of the basic production side in the convent itself.
We have evidence also that they exchanged material between convents.
So, for example, one of the neighbouring convents, Ebsdorf,
was famous for the pearls they cultivated in the river and they would send them over to the other convents to use in the tapestry.
And so things like ink would be produced in-house, as it were, made from natural ingredients.
The gold apples play an important role for that.
Carolin could tell you more about how they made do and mend or recycled elements so they would reuse parchment.
They would buy obviously paper as well, although there are also some convents that had their own paper mills.
They definitely had a mill in Medingen for producing the power for things.
They also did some in-house binding for special
bindings like the one we see here, again, Carolin could tell you more, she has just been working on the particular roll,
but convents would club together and send bulk delivery to Lüneburg, where there would be professional workshops binding it. But simpler
bindings would be done in-house. Carolin, would you be prepared to say a little bit more now, would that be all right?
Oh, yeah, I'm afraid I cannot stop. So just stop me from running away, because, as Henrike said,
I just submitted a chapter on this very manuscript and so I spend a lot of time with it. And just as
Marlene said it's actually teeny tiny. So from this kind of angle, you would think it's actually that large.
It's teeny, teeny, tiny. And what I just found out is that there is an additional example for this roll.
You can see outside on the bindings. So there is an additional Medingen manuscript displaying the very same roll
and you can cross-link different manuscripts via the binding to its place.
So that are also other manuscripts which, which, which could be linked to this one in particular.
So you can say it's probably made around 1530 maybe, but that isn't the case for the entirety of the manuscript.
So maybe Andrew could just open up the manuscript again.
And I think display folio 9 recto, I hope I'm not mistaken here.
Yeah, that's brilliant, actually. That's perfect. So as you can see the script on folio 9 recto changes.
So have a look at the upper lines to see a very fragile, thin script and then it changes after the initial.
So the script after the initial, it's much bolder and it has certain characteristics not visible in the upper lines.
So what I did was, as Marlene did, I read every single page of this manuscript and I was lucky to see it in person.
And I found out that this particular manuscript was produced by five different hands who worked across a period of more than one hundred years.
So what we can learn from it, that, is that manuscripts actually were of huge value to the convent, was not a throwaway object.
They kept it for several generations and also worked on it for several generations.
So when there were major changes to their devotional practices or to their piety profile,
they added new leaves and replaced old ones with updated versions.
So you could see how the prayer book grows with the time.
And that is what I find particularly fascinating about this manuscript.
And I've noticed that you and Marlene were handling it yourselves without gloves and one of our attendees has been quite surprised by that,
I don't know if you can explain a little bit more about why that's Bodleian's policy or maybe Andrew can if not.
Yeah, so that's that's, in fact, a very common question, why are, why are you just using bare hands?
Because, of course, people are often used to watching BBC and they'll, you'll have your, your curator sitting down with a presenter with white gloves.
And the answer is that, that used to be a much more common practice up until really the early 90s.
People used to wear these white cotton gloves because the thought was, oh, we have to do everything we can to just keep off any grime from manuscripts.
What we realise now is that as conservation practices develop, we've realised that we need to actually, it is actually much more effective.
If you ever walk into the Bodleian Library, you'll see all sorts of signs that say, please make sure you have clean, dry hands.
And that's far more effective than having cotton gloves on because, I mean, cotton gloves still get dirty.
If you ever have been to a library, that uses cotton gloves they'll inevitably be really grimy.
And whereas if you have, if you have just your hands, as long as they're clean,
you have much more tactile control over the manuscript, you have, as you're much less, you're much more likely,
really, to snag your glove on the edge of a piece of parchment and cause gradual tearing than you are to actually to damage it just by touching it.
And so it means it's really much more. I suppose there's also the added bonus that it's also much more fun to, to study manuscripts that way.
So perhaps it's just a ploy to get more study, to get more people to study paleography and show up at our library.
Excellent. Thank you Andrew. Marlene, you mentioned that it was difficult for you to choose one folio, rather, that you liked.
I don't know if you want to come back.
We've got a bit of time if you want to say any more about the work you've been doing or some of the folios that you particularly relished looking at.
Maybe one more folio, because there's one that I think is very beautiful.
So, Andrew, if you could go to folio 87 verso,
because we were talking about Christ as the Easter sun and that we have a very
beautiful connection the Easter Night going into Easter Day with sun and stars.
It's just a very beautiful illumination. But as you can see, I mean, more or less every fotio is really beautiful.
But yes, I like that one very much.
Because, yes, with the sun and the stars and the little angels, but even I mean, even 88 recto is very beautiful as well.
So, yes, it's just in general a beautiful manuscript. Do you want to say something about your topic of personification and Easter Night?
Yeah, very briefly, maybe, because, as Carolin, I could go on.
So I worked, I worked on the depiction of Easter Night as personification in the in the prayer book.
And most of the it's time like addressed as and welcomed as the Easter Night.
It goes also for the Easter Day but I worked on the Easter Night and it's most of the time a very light and bright night.
So it's golden and shiny. And I think we see that again in the materiality,
especially on that folio with the golden initials reflecting the golden Night, the golden Easter Night.
So, yeah, I think it's actually very funny because when Andrew moves the page slightly, you can see the reflection.
You can also see the little face within the sun.
Yes, it's very, very nice to see that, there is a tiny face, tiny smiley face.
And you can see how thick the gold actually is. That's incredible.
Thank you very much. I think it's time for some more singing, we have got a couple more questions, which we'll do after some singing.
But I think I'll pass back to our singers in the Crypt and we can revisit our chant for this evening.
OK, so we're going to go back to the Victimae Paschali. And without further ado, let's have a go.
Victime pashali laudes immolent Cristi ani. Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle;
des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis.
Agnus redemit oves: Cristus innocens Patri reconciliavit peddatores. Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando: dux vite mortuus, regnat vivus.
Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle;
des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis. Dic nobis Maria, quid vid sti in via?
Sepulcrum Cristi viventis, et gloriam vidi resurgentis:
Angelicos testes, sudarium, et vestes. Surrexit Christus spes mea:
precedet suos in Galileam. Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein,
Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis.
Lovely, thank you. I think we may come back to that because it's so lovely to sing it one more time.
I'm just thinking about the prayerbook more generally, were this, was this mix of Latin and vernacular,
very common in prayer books like that, at that time.
Actually yes. And it's a characteristic of northern Germany, more than of southern Germany, where the nuns right into the 16th century,
were educated in Latin so the girls would enter the convent at the age of five to seven, a bit like choirboys nowadays, still going into training.
And they would learn all the seven liberal arts that were required to really understand
what they were singing so they would learn music theory as well as singing,
and they would learn not just to read Latin, but also to write accomplished Latin.
And I'm currently editing 1800 letters that are preserved from one of the other convents near Lüneburg,
where you can see that they covered really all topics from business letters
about the delivery of building material to spiritual advice for their families.
But obviously they were in a vernacular surrounding.
So the lay sisters in the convent would read and write low German, but not Latin.
So for them, they translated the prayer books into low German.
so there are several prayer books that are completely in low German.
Also for laypeople, for example, the wife of the mayor of Lüneburg had three sisters who were nuns in Medingen,
and the three sisters wrote for themselves prayer books in Latin.
But for their married sister, they wrote a vernacular prayer book.
And also what I find most fascinating is the correspondence between the convents because they were code switching.
And if you ever have listened to two Germanists like me in Oxford speaking kind of Denglish with each other,
you get an impression of how the nuns would have been in conversation with each other.
So it can be ik hebbe gehort dat iuw werd muteren habitum vestrum.
So they would start a sentence in German, but throw in the technical term for their habit in Latin and vice versa.
They could start a theological debate in Latin, but then suddenly burst into a vernacular song.
So particularly German elements in the prayer books such as the Oxford prayer books,
are the more lyrical elements of rhymed prayers, jubilation that would be imported from the vernacular culture.
Thank you very much, and I wonder, we've had some questions come in about the specifics of the manuscript, because the illustrations are just so fabulous.
And so we had a question about whether they were added the same time as the text or filled in later,
given the very wide history of the prayer book that it was written over so many years, I don't know if you or Carolin can answer that.
Carolin, do you want to take that? I can, but I have to say that my research hypothesis change every time I look into this
manuscript because really research develops when you encounter the object.
So it's worth having a look at the physical object and maybe to give you some impressions how that works.
So first of all, I only had the digital copies at hand, so I read the catalogue entry, try to make sense out of it,
look into the manuscript digital facsimile and try to bring that together.
But looking at the physical objects changed my hypothesis completely because I realised, oh, there is more to it than just what the catalogue says.
And this is how I try to differentiate all these different layers within, within the manuscript.
And first I thought that all the illuminations must have been from one particular layer within this manuscript,
which I thought was maybe closely produced around 1479.
So, so very close to, to the monastery in the convent.
Now I'm not so sure anymore because I've seen there are also some illuminations on the later part, on the latest sheets of this manuscript.
So these are done on paper and the paper is debateable because there are little watermarks.
We have these people in the library who hold the manuscript against the light to see the watermarks on the sheets.
And the sheets are dated from 1510, 1520.
And now I try to make sense out of it, Why there are some illuminations on the manuscript paper parts and some on the parchment parts, I'm not so sure.
But I know for some of the other previous Medingen manuscripts that the nuns
executed the Illuminations themselves and probably after the text had been written.
Henrike, what was your idea about that? So I think the idea of the modern devotion was that everybody should engage
with a material side so you can do the ora et labora in one go if you write a manuscript.
And it wasn't so much the specialist to do one thing and another specialist would do another thing, and only certain nuns would write.
But every nun in Medingen was supposed to write her own prayer books and actually also to illuminated themselves.
And sometimes this led to creative solutions. If a nun wasn't that good at painting. Andrew could you go to 141 verso please.
141 verso.
But you see also these little veils that are sewn in to protect the gold.
Getting there. Yep, I don't know whether you can see on the bottom hand of the left hand side,
the parchment had, is slightly torn and then Andrew is holding it so that you can see behind the maiden because in fact, it's a glued-in print.
So it's cut and paste production of illumination.
And it's obviously the, the same hand that writes the scroll that wrote also the text above.
So what must have happened was the nun wrote the text on this page then glued,
in this snippet from a broadside or pamphlet of the late 15th century and then coloured it in to fit with a whole page.
And she even made sense of what was a fault in the parchment,
because if there is a tear and the parchment is sewn up in the stretching process so that it doesn't open up as a big hole,
and then you take out the thread, but you see still the stitches where the needle has gone through and this is
now turned into a kind of extended branch that the little girl is holding.
So she is holding a flower in her hand and that neatless, seamlessly, or seamfull-lessly goes over into a patched parchment bit.
So that's one instance where we can be pretty sure that the same hand who wrote this portion of the manuscript also did the illumination.
So for other manuscripts, about a slightly more complex and as Carolin says, her research question is shifting.
Mine has been shifting for 20 years now, and the nun still surprises me with their inventiveness and creativity.
Fantastic, thank you. And have you seen any consistency with illustrations in terms of style and content across different manuscripts?
Is there a kind of set look that people would conform to, or not?
There definitely was a kind of house style for writing.
And we even have a little model prayer book where the lay sisters were taught how to write proper Gothic.
So the, and there were certainly models that were copied by several nuns,
but it's nearly never a one to one copy, but it's always a creative adaptation.
And sometimes you see this kind of woodcut aesthetics where it's clearly copied from a print.
Sometimes you have very close relationship also to the tapestries in the convent.
And you saw the beautifully painted vaulted ceiling of the Wienhausen choir.
And we know from charters that actually the ceiling was painted by three nuns all called Gertrude, which was noted as a fun fact in the Chronicle.
It wasn't that unusual that the nuns were painting, but that three were called Gertrude,
was the unusual bit. So you had very skilled nuns.
And you can see this clearly is inspirational.
If you sit there for five, six hours every day chanting your psalms, you get your ideas for your own manuscript illumination.
And we can actually trace, for example, the scenes that you saw on the sepulchre and reappearing then in the prayer books as marginal illuminations.
So it's a material crossover, but as I said, never just a simple copying drop.
It's always an adaptation. And the same is true for the texts.
So it's really a nightmare for any philologist who wants to make a clean stemmer, who copied from whom, you can never say who copied from whom,
you can just say they created from the same source material their own personal version of the Easter events.
Thank you. We also had a Polonsky Foundation event looking at manuscript illumination,
so we'll share a link to the recording of that in the follow up emails for those that are particularly
interested in this sort of illumination. I can really recommend watching Andrew Honey examine
manuscripts, it's just a joy. And we've taken the Medingen
manuscripts to him as well, because also the Medingen,
the handbook of the provost from which we were singing the Lumen ad revelacionem has undergone several transformational processes,
adapting to liturgy and the nuns, carving out more and more space for their own singing, asserting their singing rights against the provost.
Excellent. Good to feel the nuns were actively presenting their work and their faith.
That's fantastic.
I think what would be lovely would be to finish off singing the chant again, maybe twice through as a way to celebrate together if you're happy to do that.
Or we could do. Yeah, I think perhaps the Victime and then the Lumen. Lovely.
Good. Victime pashali laudes immolent Cristi ani
Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis. Agnus redemit oves:
Cristus innocens Patri reconciliavit peddatores.
Mors et vita duello conflixere mirando: dux vite mortuus, regnat vivus. Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis.
Dic nobis Maria, quid vid sti in via? Sepulcrum Cristi viventis, et gloriam vidi resurgentis: Angelicos testes, sudarium, et vestes.
Surrexit Christus spes mea: precedet suos in Galileam.
Crist ist erstanden von der Marter alle; des solln wir alle froh sein, Crist will unser Trost sein. Kyrieleis.
Good. Shall we go back to the Lumen ad revelacionem?
Yes, that would be lovely. Let's finish with that. Thank you. There we go.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Nunc dimittis servum tuum Domine
secundum verbum tuum in pace: Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Quia viderunt oculimei salutare tuum. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Quod parasti
ante faciem omnium populorum: Lumen ad revelacionem
gencium et gloriam
plebis tue Israhel.
Lumen ad revelacionem gencium,
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Santo, Lumen ad revelacionem gencium
et gloriam plebis tue Israhel. Sicut e-rat in principio, et nunc, et semper,
et in secula seculorum. Amen. Lumen ad revelacionem gencium et gloriam plebis tue Israhel.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I hope everyone was singing loudly at home.
That was absolutely lovely. And that brings us to the end of our event today.
Thank you so much to everyone who's joined us. It's been a real pleasure to connect with friends publicly and from all over
the world and to share our singing even if we can't see or hear each other.
Thank you to Henrike Lähnerman, Andrew Dunning, Zachary Giuliano, Nick Swarbrick,
Carolin Gluchowski and Marlene Schilling and our behind the scenes technical team,
Karen and Rebecca. Do look out for an email with a link to the recording of this session.
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And we hope to see you all again soon. Have a good evening and thank you again.