The Pericopes of Henry II (german: Perikopenbuch Heinrichs II.;

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

Bavarian State Library The Bavarian State Library (german: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the bi ...

, Clm 4452) is a luxurious medieval

illuminated manuscript An illuminated manuscript is a formally prepared document where the text is often supplemented with flourishes such as borders and miniature illustrations. Often used in the Roman Catholic Church for prayers, liturgical services and psalms, th ...

made for Henry II, the last Ottonian Holy Roman Emperor, made 1002–1012 AD. The manuscript, which is lavishly illuminated, is a product of the Liuthar circle of illuminators, who were working in the

Benedictine , image = Medalla San Benito.PNG , caption = Design on the obverse side of the Saint Benedict Medal , abbreviation = OSB , formation = , motto = (English: 'Pray and Work') , found ...

Abbey of Reichenau Reichenau Abbey was a Benedictine monastery on Reichenau Island (known in Latin as Augia Dives). It was founded in 724 by the itinerant Saint Pirmin, who is said to have fled Spain ahead of the Moorish invaders, with patronage that included Char ...

, which housed a

scriptorium Scriptorium (), literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes. However, lay scribes an ...

and artists' workshop that has a claim to having been the largest and artistically most influential in Europe during the late 10th and early 11th centuries. An unrivalled series of liturgical manuscripts was produced at Reichenau under the highest patronage of Ottonian society. (Other centers include scriptoria at Lorsch,

Trier Trier ( , ; lb, Tréier ), formerly known in English as Trèves ( ;) and Triers (see also names in other languages), is a city on the banks of the Moselle in Germany. It lies in a valley between low vine-covered hills of red sandstone in the ...

, and Regensburg.) Unlike a gospel book, gospel pericopes contain only the passages from the gospels which are to be read during the liturgical year, making it easier for the priest celebrating

Mass Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different element ...

to find the gospel reading. It is 425 mm by 320 mm and has 206

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. Parchment is another term for this material, from which vellum is sometimes distinguished, when it is made from calfskin, as opposed to that made from other ani ...

folios.

Style of the miniatures

The style of the "Liuthar group", unlike other schools in Ottonian art, departs further from rather than returning to classical traditions; it "carried transcendentalism to an extreme", with "marked schematization of the forms and colours", "flattened form, conceptualized draperies and expansive gesture". Backgrounds are often composed of bands of colour with a symbolic rather than naturalistic rationale, the size of figures reflects their importance, and in them "emphasis is not so much on movement as in gesture and glance", with narrative scenes "presented as a quasi-liturgical act, dialogues of divinity". The group were produced perhaps from the 990s to 1015 or later, and major manuscripts include the Munich Gospels of Otto III, the Bamberg Apocalypse, and a volume of biblical commentary there, and the Pericopes of Henry II, the best known and most extreme of the group, where "the figure-style has become more monumental, more rarified and sublime, at the same time thin in density, insubstantial, mere silhouettes of colour against a shimmering void".Beckwith, 112 The group introduced the background of solid gold to Western illumination.

Notes

References

*Beckwith, John. ''Early Medieval Art: Carolingian, Ottonian, Romanesque'', Thames & Hudson, 1964 (rev. 1969), *Walther, Ingo F. and Norbert Wolf. ''Codices Illustres: The world's most famous illuminated manuscripts, 400 to 1600''. Köln, TASCHEN, 2005.

External links

Bayerisches Staatsbibliothek: "Reichenau illumination"
(in English)
Iconographic analysis of the miniatures in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database, with links to the online facsimile of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek
1000s books 1010s books 11th-century biblical manuscripts 11th-century illuminated manuscripts Christian illuminated manuscripts Ottonian illuminated manuscripts Henry II, Holy Roman Emperor {{manuscript-art-stub

Style of the miniatures

Notes

See also

References

External links