Commemorating the Dead in Late Medieval Strasbourg

The Cathedral's Book of Donors and Its Use (1320-1521)

Charlotte A. Stanford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409401360
• eBook ISBN: 9781317163985
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

The Book of Donors for Strasbourg cathedral is an extraordinary medieval document dating from ca. 1320-1520, with 6,954 entries from artisan, merchant and aristocratic classes. These individuals listed gifts to the cathedral construction fund given in exchange for prayers for the donors' souls. The construction administrators (the Oeuvre Notre-Dame) also built a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary in the nave that housed the book and showcased prayers and masses for the building benefactors. Chapel, book and west front project formed a three part commemorative strategy that appealed to the faithful of the city and successfully competed against other religious establishments also offering memorial services. Charlotte A. Stanford's study is the first to comprehensively analyze the unpublished Book of Donors manuscript and show the types and patterns of gifts made to the cathedral. It also compares these gift entries with those in earlier obituary records kept by the cathedral canons, as well as other medieval obituary notices kept by parish churches and convents in Strasbourg. Analysis of the Book of Donors notes the increase of personal details and requests in fifteenth-century entries and discusses the different memorial opportunities available to the devout. This study draws a vivid picture of life in late medieval Strasbourg as seen through the lens of devotional and memorial practices, and will be of particular interest to scholars of art history, memory, and medieval urban life.

Chapter 1
The Book of Donors: Construction and History

Medieval obituary records are seldom the subject of concentrated individual study. As objects, they are visually unprepossessing, scarcely ever containing decoration beyond simple colored initials. At first glance, their contents seem equally dry. Instead of narratives, they contain long lists of given names without surnames and of properties that today are all but impossible to identify. The handwriting, too, shifts from one script to another. Strasbourg’s Book of Donors is no exception. Yet, like other obituary records, it is an extremely valuable historical record.

Archives municipaux Oeuvre Notre-Dame 1 (AMS OND 1) of Strasbourg is an exceptionally useful document for the study of medieval piety, late medieval economic and social history, and art history. The document has been frequently referenced in scholarly studies of Strasbourg, but never published in depth or detail.1 Yet the book offers a wealth of detail within its lines of squared Gothic script. Though formulaic phrases abound, the differences from formula to formula tell us much about the concerns of those for whom they were penned, and even the repetitive Margarets and Nicholases of the early entries help to determine overall patterns of donor types and gifts. Unlike many obituaries, which boast a few hundred names at best, this manuscript contains 7,803 identifiable individuals giving 8,622 gifts in 6,954 entries—evidence of both its utility and popularity for nearly two centuries. Certainly, given the sheer number of names, not simply those of privileged clergy but of donors from nearly all walks of life, whose meticulously recorded gifts prompted the manuscript’s very creation, the name Book of Donors is highly appropriate.

In order to put this unusual obituary in proper perspective, it must be understood within multiple contexts: the architectural and liturgical framework in which it functioned, the oral and written cultures that the book spanned in its use, the social niches that the book’s occupants held, and its connections to (and differences from) the other religious obituaries within the city during the same period. First, however, it is essential to describe the book as an object, and to look at examples of its contents. By so doing, we can more clearly comprehend the history of the book and its significance.

Description of the Book of Donors, Strasbourg Cathedral, Archives municipaux Oeuvre Notre-Dame, AMS OND 1

Though the book contains the largest number of donors listed in a single medieval Strasbourg obituary, at first glance the pages appear surprisingly empty. Part of this first impression is due to the volume’s layout and size. Bound in leather-covered wood, studded at the corners and center by metal bosses, and closed with two clasps, the closed book is sizeable, measuring 355 by 255 millimeters (approximately 14 by 10 inches). The opened book contains an impressive 368 folios, most of which comprise the names of donors listed according to a standard calendar format. The donation emphasis contrasts with the more usual textual practice of binding a short calendar containing donor obits together with a larger selection of liturgical texts or clerical records.2 The format of the Book of Donors displays a pair of lined pages for each calendar day of the year, with the day in red letters on the verso side and the page number in black Roman letters on the top center recto side (Figures 1.1 and 1.2).

The initial entries are crammed compactly together underneath the date, optimistically leaving numerous blank lines for recording later donors’ gifts. While numerous donations were indeed listed, this initial planning tends to leave the reader with a sense that the book never reached its full potential, especially since nearly every recto side is devoid of any writing beyond the date at the top. This reaction was evidently shared by early sixteenth-century record keepers, who sometimes wrote their entries in a very large script, filling the entire line as if to catch the eye and draw it away from the empty space on the rest of the page.3

Figure 1.1 The Book of Donors, folio created ca. 1318 with additions down through the late fifteenth century; note the entry for Heinricus de Mullenheim, founder of the All Saints chapel, on the eighth and ninth lines (AMS OND 1 fol. 100v, April 11)

Source: Author, with the permission of the Archives municipaux de Strasbourg.

Table 1.1 The Book of Donors: Overall Statistics

Table 1.2 The Book of Donors: Language Statistics

Yet every calendar page enjoyed some entries. Unlike the city’s other ecclesiastical obituaries, which invariably contained at least a few blank days, the Book of Donors has at minimum seven donors per day, ranging up to 42 at maximum, with an average of 18.8 donors. 78 per cent of these date to the century of the book’s creation (see Table 1.1). But unlike most obituaries, where the bulk of entries are recorded by the original book creator-scribe, the Book of Donors has the greatest number of its entries, 2,958 (or 43 per cent), in various scripts that date approximately from ca. 1330 to ca. 1400, indicating its increasing popularity throughout the fourteenth century. And despite the decrease in the number of later entries, the book continued to be used successfully as a memorial strategy in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Entries continued to trickle in until 1521, with donations and donors’ requests marked in greater detail than in previous entries. Moreover, the last few folios, which were placed after the completion of the calendar proper, contain lists of significant donors throughout the manuscript. These lists are in later scripts, which are dated to ca. 1411 and 1460, further indicating the continued importance of this manuscript throughout the fifteenth century. Additional entries in the calendar portion attest to the continuing use of the manuscript down through the first two decades of the sixteenth century. This late popularity is further supported by careful examination of the physical condition of the manuscript, which reveals a history of damage, rewriting, and rebinding at both the beginning and the end of the manuscript.

The layout of the book remains consistent throughout, with one major exception in the addition of two bifolia (fols 364–7) sewn into the book about the year 1460. Each page is fully ruled in brown ink, 37 lines per page within identical margins, wider at the bottom than at the top and the sides (see Figure 1.1). Prick marks for the ruling can still be seen on some of the folio edges, and several pages have holes or sewn tears; this was a working copy, not a luxury production. Recto sides are usually blank, as noted above; the calendar dates begin on the verso of each page. There is no illumination and there are very few flourishes beyond the use of red ink for calendar and saints’ information. The writing begins below the top line, and all of it, even the main script entries, appears to have been added after the book was bound—contrary to usual manuscript assembly practice, but eminently logical for an obituary-based text that would be added to over many years of future use. A leather strip was sewn into the binding, serving as an attached bookmark to help the clerical user find his place quickly during services.

The first folio is unnumbered, and contains liturgical directions in German both for the regular use of the book and for the major masses to be celebrated throughout the year in connection with the book (discussed in Chapter 2). On the verso side of this unnumbered sheet, the calendar proper begins. The next folio is given the Roman numeral I in a Gothic script from approximately the second decade of the fifteenth century; I have called this script the revision script—for reasons discussed below (see Figure 1.2).

The numbering sequence continues consistently throughout the book, ending with its last number on fol. 363 (the last five folios are unnumbered). At folio 12, however, the numbering script, like the bulk of the page’s text, changes to a square Gothic style much earlier in date, which I have called the main script (see Figure 1.1), since it comprises the largest single number of script entries for calendar entries throughout the manuscript (see Table 1.1).

Though folios 1–11 contain the start of the calendar, they are executed with slight differences from the later pages. First, the majority of the entries for these first folios were written in revision script rather than in main script. Each calendar day’s two-page spread begins with a Dominical letter at the top left, followed by a short space—presumably to have contained the appropriate saint’s feast day—and the Roman calendar date in red letters.4 After this incomplete section, the donor names and gifts begin, usually on the same line. The days follow normal calendar sequence, but it is hard to differentiate them because of the missing dates, unfinished by the rubricator (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.2 The Book of Donors, end of first quire and beginning of second; note protruding edge from front cover pastedown in the gutter (AMS OND 1, fols 11v–12, January 12)

Source: Author, with the permission of the Archives municipaux de Strasbourg.

These missing rubrics are evidence of an incomplete repair, which included the entire replacement of the first quire of the manuscript because of severe damage to the opening and conclusion of the book. Directly after the slightly wrinkled but otherwise well preserved folio 11 is a tatter-edged page with darkened edges, while a parchment strip in the gutter between the two folios indicates the insertion of the book’s front pas...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• 1 The Book of Donors: Construction and History
• 2 Architectural and Liturgical Context
• 3 The Social and Political Setting
• 4 The Obituary History of Strasbourg Cathedral
• 5 Commemoration in Strasbourg’s Other Churches
• Conclusion
• Appendices
• Bibliography
• Index