A Tiny Look Into the Book

This page is intended to give you at least a small insight into the Gebetsbuch to get a sense of what the pages look like, what’s written in there, and what challenges might come up if you’re trying to read it.

Analyzing a prayer book that is several hundred years old is certainly not something that students and therefore young historians often deal with. Especially when they are the first to work with this source and therefore have nothing to fall back on and — to be honest — nothing to copy from what other historians have already done.

Different obstacles that historians come across

For this reason, working with such a source is not always easy, especially at the beginning, as two major problems arise right from the start:
the script and the language used. Although this prayer book is written in German and therefore in my mother tongue and that of the other students from my class, the written German is so-called Middle High German and therefore very different in parts from the language used today. What’s more, all the texts are handwritten and some of the letters used back then are very different from today’s handwriting.

But despite all these obstacles, this page is intended to provide a brief insight into an exemplary page of the prayer book. The page used for this is, as can be seen in the top right-hand corner, the 91st double page, i.e. a “folio” (folio 91r), and therefore roughly in the middle of the entire book.

The page is very legible overall and not damaged by soiling or other things. The text is written in black ink and there are some red markings/decorations scattered across the page. What exactly these mean is not explained in detail. However, the fact that “marie”, for example, is also underlined in red could be an indication that the red markings are simply intended to emphasize and highlight various spiritual terms. But how do I arrive at this assumption?

The Gebetsbuch as a testimony of Christian faith

This question brings me to the more detailed content of the page shown here. Of course, an exact description and analysis of this book page is only possible in full if you also take a closer look at the content of the other pages, because in order to be able to understand perfectly one page of more than 400, you simply need the context. Nevertheless, I will try to summarize the content as well as possible.

As is usual for a prayer book, all texts in the book and therefore also the content of this page are to be seen in the ecclesiastical and Christian context. And this brings me to the explanation of my assumption as to why “marie” is highlighted in red, as it presumably refers to Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is obviously of particular importance in Christianity in general, as in this specific excerpt.

Transcription of a page from the Gebetsbuch

Galilea and its special role in the bible

This Christian context is certainly also the explanation for the content of this particular page, as it clearly refers to the Bible. More precisely, to Galilee (galilea, as written in the text above). Overall, this excerpt is primarily about the region of Galilee, which has a special significance in the Bible. This is because the New Testament in particular tells us that Jesus initially appeared there, preached, called his disciples, and performed his miracles. The text excerpt shown here focuses on this region and mentions, for example, that many pilgrims come to Galilee. It is also said to be the place where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced her death.

Further information is definitely helpful

In order to be able to understand and categorize what this excerpt is about and what it refers to in particular, information on the context and background of the book is necessary, as already mentioned. More detailed information on this can be found elsewhere on this site.

Author: Elisa Fabich