Jeffrey F. Hamburger Bücher

Abbildung von Handschrift AN II 3, Bd. 1, fol. 2v der Universitätsbibliothek Basel (Rektoratsmatrikel: Gründungszeremonie der Universität Basel)

Der diagrammatische Modus stellt eines der wichtigsten Merkmale religiöser Kunst des Mittelalters dar. Diagramme erfreuten sich im 12. Jahrhundert einer besonderen Beliebtheit. Daher ist es auffallend, dass eines der spektakulärsten Beispiele von diagrammatischer Darstellung verbunden mit einem höchst einflussreichen Text bisher relativ unbemerkt geblieben ist. Es handelt sich hierbei um die Reihe von Raddiagrammen, die ausgewählte Handschriften von ‚De missarum mysteriis‘ begleiten, einer einflussreichen Erklärung der Messliturgie, die in Rom zwischen 1195 und 1197 von Lothar von Segni kurz vor seiner Wahl zum Papst (Innozenz III.) verfasst wurde. Die 42 Diagramme stellen die anspruchsvollste Reihe ihrer Art dar, die je zusammengestellt wurde, und sind umso eindrucksvoller dadurch, dass sie - bis auf eine Ausnahme - ausdrücklich für diese Handschrift geschaffen und nicht von anderen Quellen kopiert wurden. Die Bildwerke präsentieren einen ausführlichen visuellen Kommentar, nicht nur zum Inhalt, sondern auch zu den Handlungen und dem Prozedere des Messrituals.

Gebaseerd op het in de Stiftbibliothek Einsiedeln berustend handschrift Cod. 710 (322)

The Rothschild Canticles is one of the most unusual illuminated manuscripts to have survived from the Middle Ages. Produced for a nun at the turn of the 14th century, it served as an aid to mystical devotions in which images played as central a role as the written word. Visionary depictions of Paradise, the Song of Songs, the Virgin Mary, the Trinity, and hundreds of other subjects based on texts ranging from the Bible to the Lives of the Desert Fathers together form a devotional program that transports the reader toward contemplative union with God.

The Visual and the Visionary puts the study of female spirituality on a new footing and provides a nuanced account of the changing role of images in medieval monasticism from the twelfth century to the Reformation. In ten essays embracing the history of art, religion, and literature, Jeffrey Hamburger explores the interrelationships between the visual arts and female spirituality in the context of the cura monialium , the pastoral care of nuns.Used as instruments of instruction and inspiration, images occupied a central, if controversial, place in debates over devotional practice, monastic reform, and mystical expression. Far from supplementing a history of art from which they have been excluded, the images made by and for women shaped that history decisively by defining novel modes of religious expression, especially the relationship between sight and subjectivity. With this book, the study of female piety and artistic patronage becomes an integral part of a general history of medieval art and spirituality.The Visual and the Visionary was awarded the 1999 Charles Rufus Prize by the College Art Association and the 1999 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Art and Music History by the Sixteenth Century Conference.

Crown and Veil offers a broad introduction to the history and visual culture of female monasticism in the Middle Ages, from the earliest communities of Late Antiquity to the Reformation. Scholars from numerous disciplines offer a wide range of perspectives not to be found in any other single book on the subject, placing the art, architecture, literature, liturgy, religious practices, and economic foundations of these communities within a wide historical and cultural context. Long considered marginal to mainstream history, nuns and canonesses in fact had a profound influence on medieval culture. Revered and admired as models of piety, they commanded considerable prestige and exercised a significant degree of political power. Whether acting as producers or patrons of art, nuns were widely celebrated for their imaginative accomplishments. Focusing on the visual culture of female monastic communities in the German Empire, Frankish Gaul, Langobard Italy, and Anglo-Saxon England, this volume underscores the richness of largely unfamiliar material and its role in shaping distinctive forms of religious life.

Diagrams were a vital tool for Nikolaus von Kues, the 15th-century scholar, to convey divine truths. He commissioned colorful illustrations for his work, which modern interpretations often reduce to black and white, missing their deeper significance. Cusa's use of color mirrors the interplay of light and darkness, reflecting his theological concepts of God's visibility and hiddenness. These diagrams not only represent his epistemology and ontology but also invite viewers to engage in the pursuit of truth, showcasing Cusa's innovative approach within medieval traditions.

"The history of the book in the fifteenth century is especially associated in German-speaking countries with Gutenberg's invention of printing with movable type. Over a century of scholarship has tended, often in rather gratuitous fashion, to dismiss the majority of illuminated manuscripts produced in central Europe between around 1400 and the Reformation as mediocre manifestations of a culture in decline. This book--originally published in German to accompany a series of exhibitions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 2015 to 2017--was written to challenge these prejudices and the weight of tradition which they represent. It contains four wide-ranging art historical essays which for the first time give an overview of fifteenth-century illumination in Central Europe."--

Written by an international team consisting of two art historians, an historian and a musicologist, this study explores the intellectual, scribal, artistic and musical culture of the Dominican nuns of Paradies from a variety of perspectives. Taking as its subject a little-known group of fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century liturgical manuscripts from the Dominican convent of Paradies bei Soest (Westphalia), the book also offers a revisionary account of the development of the Dominican order in late medieval Germany. Two antiphonaries, three graduals and additional fragments made both for and by the nuns testify to a self-conscious liturgical culture closely tied to the development of the Dominican order’s female branch. One manuscript in particular, a gradual written and illuminated at Paradies ca. 1380 (Düsseldorf, ULB D 11) contains an unparalleled wealth of inscribed images which make it the most extensively illuminated liturgical manuscript of the entire Middle Ages. The learned inscriptions allow for not only a reconstruction of the nuns’ library, but also a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the learning and Latin literacy of mendicant nuns in the late fourteenth century, a period that in the accounts of modern scholars as well as medieval reformers has too quickly been discounted as a time of intellectual and institutional decline. In text, image and chant, the nuns assembled a comprehensive commentary on the liturgy, one which serves as a testament to their creativity, learning and ambition as well as their devotion.