The Hortus deliciarum (Latin for Garden of Delights) was a medieval manuscript compiled by Herrad of Landsberg at the Hohenburg Abbey in Alsace, better known today as Mont Sainte-Odile.
The Hortus deliciarum (Latin for Garden of Delights) was a medieval manuscript compiled by Herrad of Landsberg at the Hohenburg Abbey in Alsace, better known today as Mont Sainte-Odile.
The Hortus deliciarum is one of the first sources of polyphony originating from a convent. The manuscript contained at least 20 song texts, all of which were originally notated with music. Those that can be recognized now are from the conductus repertory, and are mainly note against note in texture. The notation was in semi-quadratic neumes with pairs of four-line staves. [1] Two songs survive with music intact: Primus parens hominum, a monophonic song, and a two-part work, Sol oritur occasus. [2]
It was an illuminated encyclopedia, begun in 1167 as a pedagogical tool for young novices at the convent. It is the first encyclopedia that was evidently written by a woman. It was finished in 1185, and was one of the most celebrated illuminated manuscripts of the period. [1] The majority of the work is in Latin, with glosses in German.
Most of the manuscript was not original, but a compendium of 12th-century knowledge. The manuscript contained poems, illustrations, and music, and drew from texts by classical and Arab writers. [1] Interspersed with writings from other sources were poems by Herrad, addressed to the nuns, almost all of which were set to music. [2] The most famous portion of the manuscript is its 336 illustrations, which depicted theological, philosophical, and literary themes amongst others. These works are well regarded. [1]
In 1870, the manuscript was burnt and destroyed when the library at Temple Neuf in Strasbourg was bombarded during the German Siege of Strasbourg. It is possible to reconstruct parts of the manuscript because portions of it had been copied in various sources; Christian Maurice Engelhardt copied the miniatures in 1818, and the text was copied and published by Straub and Keller between 1879 and 1899. [1] [3]
The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book in Latin, containing the four Gospels of the New Testament together with various prefatory texts and tables. It was created in a Columban monastery in either Ireland or Scotland, and may have had contributions from various Columban institutions from each of these areas. It is believed to have been created c. 800 AD. The text of the Gospels is largely drawn from the Vulgate, although it also includes several passages drawn from the earlier versions of the Bible known as the Vetus Latina. It is regarded as a masterwork of Western calligraphy and the pinnacle of Insular illumination. The manuscript takes its name from the Abbey of Kells, County Meath, which was its home for centuries.
The Chester Beatty Library, now known as the Chester Beatty, is a museum and library in Dublin. It was established in Ireland in 1953, to house the collections of mining magnate, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty. The present museum, on the grounds of Dublin Castle, opened on 7 February 2000, the 125th anniversary of Beatty's birth and was named European Museum of the Year in 2002.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1870.
The Psychomachia is a poem by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius, from the early fifth century AD. It has been considered to be the first and most influential "pure" medieval allegory, the first in a long tradition of works as diverse as the Romance of the Rose, Everyman and Piers Plowman; however, a manuscript discovered in 1931 of a speech by the second-century academic skeptic philosopher Favorinus employs psychomachia, suggesting that he may have invented the technique.
The Vergilius Vaticanus, also known as Vatican Virgil, is a Late Antique illuminated manuscript containing fragments of Virgil's Aeneid and Georgics. It was made in Rome in around 400 CE, and is one of the oldest surviving sources for the text of the Aeneid. It is the oldest and one of only three ancient illustrated manuscripts of classical literature.
The Vienna Dioscurides or Vienna Dioscorides is an early 6th-century Byzantine Greek illuminated manuscript of an even earlier 1st century AD work, De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides in uncial script. It is an important and rare example of a late antique scientific text. After residing in Constantinople for just over a thousand years, the text passed to the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna in the 16th century, a century after the city fell to the Ottoman Empire.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. Originally, Blake illuminated and bound Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience separately. It was only in 1794 that Blake combined the two sets of poems into a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Even after beginning to print the poems together, Blake continued to produce individual volumes for each of the two sets of poetry.
Guda was a 12th-century nun and illuminator from Germany. She was one of the first woman to create a self-portrait in a manuscript, setting a precedent for female medieval illuminators and manuscript writers in the subsequent centuries.
Mont Sainte-Odile is a 764-metre-high peak in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace in France, immediately west of Barr. The mountain is named after Saint Odile. It has a monastery/convent at its top called the Hohenburg Abbey, and is notable also for its stone fortifications called "the Pagan Wall." In 1992, Air Inter Flight 148 crashed near this area.
Mont Sainte-Odile Abbey, also known as Hohenburg Abbey, is a nunnery, situated on Mont Sainte-Odile, one of the most famous peaks of the Vosges mountain range in the French region of Alsace.
Herrad of Landsberg was a 12th-century Alsatian nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains. She was known as the author of the pictorial encyclopedia Hortus deliciarum.
Hortus conclusus is a Latin term, meaning literally "enclosed garden". Both words in hortus conclusus refer linguistically to enclosure. It describes a type of garden that was enclosed as a practical concern, a major theme in the history of gardening, where walled gardens were and are common. The garden room is a similar feature, usually less fully enclosed.
Leiden University Library, VLQ 79, also called the Leiden Aratea, is an illuminated copy of an astronomical treatise by Germanicus, based on the Phaenomena of Aratus. The manuscript was created in the region of Lorraine and has been dated to around 816. It was produced at the court of Louis the Pious, who ruled from 814–840. It is one of the four Carolingian codices that were produced in his court. There are many translations and copies of this text, so it is very well known throughout the Middle East and Europe.
The North French Hebrew Miscellany or "French Miscellany" or "London Miscellany" is an important Hebrew illuminated manuscript from 13th-century France, created c. 1278-98. A miscellany is a manuscript containing texts of different types and by different authors, and this volume contains a wide range of Hebrew language texts, mostly religious but many secular. The manuscript is exceptional among medieval Hebrew manuscripts both for its size and the diversity of the texts and the quality and lavishness of its illuminations, which as was often the case were added by Christian specialists.
Encyclopedias have progressed from the beginning of history in written form, through medieval and modern times in print, and most recently, displayed on computer and distributed via computer networks.
The Voice of the Ancient Bard is a poem written by the English poet William Blake. It was published as part of his collection Songs of Innocence in 1789, but later moved to Songs of Experience, the second part of the larger collection Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 1794.
Gottfried von Hagenau was a medieval priest, physician, theologian and poet from Alsace. As his name suggests, he was probably born in Haguenau, before 1275.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16, also known as the Fairfax Manuscript, is a fifteenth-century Middle English poetic anthology which contains one of the finest collections of Chaucerian verse of this period. Owned and commissioned by John Stanley of Hooton, Cheshire, Fairfax 16 was produced in Oxford or London in the mid-fifteenth century. Thomas Fairfax bequeathed it to the Bodleian Library in 1671.
The Chansonnier d'Arras is an illuminated manuscript of the late 13th century containing a variety of religious and philosophical texts and songs in 220 folios. It is written in the Picard dialect of Old French. It is now manuscript 657 in the municipal library of Arras. In trouvère studies, it is known by the conventional siglum A.
The Guta-Sintram Codex is an illuminated manuscript copied in twelfth-century Alsace. The manuscript is well-known for its depiction of its scribe and its illuminator. It was produced for the female Augustinian community of Schwartzenthann in 1154. The codex received its name from those of its scribe and illuminator, Guta and Sintram. Guta was a canoness at Schwartzenthann. She identified herself as a scribe multiple times within the manuscript. Sintram was a canon and priest at Marbach and the artist who completed the manuscript’s illuminations. The dedicatory miniature depicts the Virgin Mary (centre), Sintram, and Guta. This is one of the only known depictions of a female scribe from the Middle Ages.
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