A fifteenth-century prayer book, now Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 1179 Helmst., features two drawings pasted on the flyleaf: a sombre portrait of Jesus and a charming representation of Mary Magdalene. How are we to understand this unusual juxtaposition at the opening of the text?
These drawings provided a visual focus for the viewer’s devotion, while setting her sights on the spiritual landscapes of Rome and Jerusalem. They reframed her devotional experience, triggering her senses and activating personal and liturgical references connected to a relic, a saint, and a censer.
The manuscript’s compact size, which fits neatly in the palm, suggests that it was meant for personal use. An interchanging sequence of red and brown leather book tabs help the reader to navigate in the thick manuscript and are signs of frequent use. Upon unfastening its two brass clasps and opening the book, it becomes clear why it was made so user-friendly. The first folio, featuring the first psalm, discloses the manuscript’s contents: the 150 psalms, the most popular prayers of the Middle Ages, in Low German dialect. The psalter’s owner, likely a religious woman, read this manuscript when chanting the Divine Office or in private daily prayer.
Drawings pasted into Cod. Guelf. 1179 Helmst., fol. i verso
On the left side of the opposite page is Jesus’s dark, bluish face, painted on a small piece of parchment. The papal insignia – the tiara above and St. Peter’s two keys crossing behind the Holy Face – are heavily faded. This drawing replicates the holiest relic of Rome: the sudarium, Jesus’s face miraculously imprinted on the veil of Veronica, kept in St Peter’s until it went missing during the 1527 Sack of Rome.
Veronica holding her veil with Jesus’s face imprinted on it: Martin Schongauer, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1435–1491
The second image portrays an elegant Mary Magdalene, solemnly standing on a harlequin tiled floor. She holds up a jar, in which she carried the balm to anoint Jesus’s corpse on Easter Sunday, while swinging a censer in her right hand. In early Christian art, she was often depicted with this liturgical vessel in the company of the other Maries at Jesus’s tomb (see the sixth-century ampulla), but such representations became increasingly rare by the late Middle Ages. In Lower Saxony, however, they remained in fashion, particularly in the context of sculptural groups of Holy Sepulchres.
Single-leaf images, such as the Holy Face and the Mary Magdalene, circulated widely in German-speaking lands in the fifteenth century. The artists were mostly religious women, who gifted these pictures to their spiritual friends. Perhaps the psalter’s owner also received the two drawings this way; the fact that she pasted them in her codex signals their importance to her. While she might have initially wanted to add some personal touch to her prayer book, the two drawings, once pasted in the codex, assumed new devotional functions. Their deliberate placements at the manuscript’s beginning brought them into fruitful dialogue with the psalter.
At the opening of the psalms, the Holy Face provided the praying individual with a visual focus for addressing the invisible Godhead. This privileged private sight of the divine also carried the promise of salvation in a more direct sense. The sudarium, though of miraculous origin, retained its popularity from papal indulgences, which granted the remission of the sins not only of those praying in front of the iconic relic in St. Peter’s, but also to the ones who had access only to its reproduction. Thus, the small parchment image afforded the viewer to pray for her redemption as if present in Rome.
In the psalter, the Magdalene is placed next to the Holy Face, overlooking the first psalm. This calculated arrangement could activate the censer, so prominently depicted here, in the imagination of a viewer accustomed to seeing this liturgical vessel mostly in use. Swinging in the saint’s hand, the burning incense coated the pages in imaginary smoke and fragrant smell, exalting the sacredness of both the Holy Face and the psalms. In the viewer’s mind, this smoke could also evoke the psalm verse, ‘Let my prayer be directed as incense in thy sight’ (Psalm 140.2, see fol. 348r–v), the words priests also intoned while censing the offerings in the mass. By imagining her prayers like incense rising to heaven before God, the viewer could set her intentions for focused praying. To her, the censer in Mary Magdalene’s hand might have also recalled the Easter liturgy and dramas that featured the three Maries at Jesus’s tomb, thereby virtually transporting her to the actual Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
About the author
Orsolya Mednyánszky is a PhD candidate in art history at Johns Hopkins University, specializing in late medieval devotional art.