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Rescued from obscurity: hand written, illuminated prayer books from Bohemia and Moravia
by:
Jana Vytrhlik
Unique to rural Bohemia and Moravia was the tradition of hand transcribed miniature prayer books. Undertaken by non-professionals and translated into Czech and German, a significant collection dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries provides important insights into folk art traditions of the region
Illuminated manuscripts have a long history in European culture. Scriptoria (scribes workshops) flourished at the end of the fourteenth and early fifteenth century in and adjacent to monasteries. The richly decorated miniature Catholic manuscripts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, written in Czech and German by untrained scribes, were a unique phenomenon of central European culture, originating in rural Bohemia and Moravia. The handwritten and richly ornamented prayer books are rare, scattered throughout private collections, regional museums and a few public libraries.
The Olomouc collection of four hundred handwritten and illuminated prayer books was formed by Jan Poa [yan posh] (1920-1996), a Prague gallery owner and art collector. Poa was a bibliophile and book connoisseur who recognised the uniqueness of handwritten prayer books. He systematically collected them for over thirty years, becoming well known in Pragues rare bookshops. When travelling outside Prague to smaller towns and villages, his first steps always went directly to booksellers to enquire about his search, and soon they kept items aside for his next visit. One by one, Poa amassed this excellent collection of handwritten prayer books from the rural Bohemian and Moravian regions.
After Jan Poa death, his wife KateYina Poaov￡ (1930-2008) ensured the collection remained intact and through her wisdom and generosity the collection entered the Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc in the Czech Republic in 2002. During the current Year of the Book, the Museum exhibited its collection of handwritten and illuminated prayer books dating from 1750 to 1850.
Each of the prayer books is an original artwork, a witness of one or more personal stories and reflects an earlier political, ideological and economic era. Written in either Czech or German, they are a fascinating part of the bilingual Bohemian and Moravian rural book culture. The books are an interesting literary, artistic, craft and design legacy of a lesser-known central European creative landscape. They immortalise generations of the untrained scribes and illustrators who wrote and illuminated these books. While the content, structure and iconography of these manuscripts were supposed to follow the prescribed rules of the Catholic religion, the actual artistic approach and execution was so individual and personal that there are no two identical books in the collection.
To understand the uniqueness of these prayer books, we have to understand the circumstances surrounding their creation. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) rearranged the European power structure and reconfirmed the Catholic faith in the Czech lands. While baroque Catholicism emphasised individual devotion, the church exercised religious control and censorship over printed religious texts. Handwritten and personalised prayer books provided more freedom in choosing content and form. They becameto a degreea creative reaction against the pressures of the church to conform to the prescribed order and iconography.
By the mid eighteenth century, handwritten prayer books increased in popularity, especially in rural areas as evidenced by their being only books from small regional centres. Among the hundreds of surviving volumes, none originate from Prague, Brno, Olomouc, or any other larger towns in Bohemia or Moravia.
The finesse and soft colours of the books would indicate a feminine hand but men were the creators of all these prayer books. They were teachers, clerks, artisans and commoners. A scribe and illustrator usually worked in tandem. They were not original authors as they copied texts from the standardised printed prayers and replicated prescribed iconography of the saints.
The handwritten prayer books were usually custom made, ordered as a wedding gift, christening gift or for other significant occasions. They were a collection of religious texts, but with a great variety and individual creativity. It would be almost impossible to find two identical prayer books. Prayer books that were not made to order were sold.
The books were very personal possessions accompanying the owners throughout their lives, occasionally to their graves. Sometimes - possible only outside the observant eye of the official ecclesiastic institution - a prayer book was used as a talisman, for protection against premonitions. Frequently the prayer books were handed down through the generations. Most surviving prayer books belonged to women. In rural areas schools were closed to women in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and what education they received took place in the family home. For many women, these prayer books were the only written material they ever owned.
Luckily, the name of the person for whom the book was made was usually recorded in the prayer books, together with the year or even the date of purchase. The inside cover was used by the owner for marking dates of various family occasions, such as weddings, births or deaths. Local events such as fire, flood or an unusually cold winter, were also recorded. Thanks to this information, we know that the handwritten prayer books belonged mostly to women from all social classes. Women understood the depictions, representations and metaphors, perhaps more readily than did men. Carrying a small prayer book - the average size was around 10 x 16 cm - was symbolic and a signifier of womanhood.
Three major themes dominate the covers of the prayer books. The first is the image of Jesus Christ, on the cross, in scenes from his life and the crucifixion, although depiction of Nativity scenes and the Last Judgement are not as frequent. A second recurrent theme is Maria, the Virgin Mary, sometimes shown with a baby Jesus. Thirdly, numerous saints are depicted and include Saints Anne, Barbara, John the Baptist, Catherine, Franciscus, Florian, Jan of Nepomuck and Joseph.
The usually richly decorated title pages were followed by details of the morning and evening prayers, holy days, fasting and prayers dedicated to various saints and patrons protecting the village and people. Many books also contained prayers for church visits and for confession, prayers for the sick and for childbirth. There were prayers for almost every situation of one's life.
The manuscripts were regional baroque, with strong influence of local folklore ornaments, colours and composition. However, some of highly independent forms challenge any categorisation, ranging from quaintly bucolic to fine-line geometrical style. Letters are often part of the decoration. The illustrations often embody stylised presentation of themes inspired by printed prayer books that were more elaborate. Executed very individually, these can be simplewritten in a black ink only without much decorationor may be a richer more colourful page framed with borders. Sometimes, the prayer book maker simply glued in a woodcut or copper print and then hand coloured it.
Title pages usually received most creative attention, followed by full-page images dispersed through the book with intricate initials, monograms, headings, paginations and end of chapter illustrations. All drew on traditional folk art, in particular the Bohemian and Moravian richly ornamented embroideries, glass paintings, ceramics, furniture and other arts and crafts. They reflect a spontaneous creativity driven by enthusiasm, as is frequently found in folk art. In this period, similar creativity was demonstrated in handwritten and illuminated recipe books, home remedy medicine books, calendars, chronicles and souvenir books.
The written text and drawings were executed in ink, watercolour and gouache on a paper of uneven quality. Writing tools were primitive but very effectivea goose feather finely cut, black ink made up from coal dust and arabic gum, a simple ruler, lead pencil and a little paintbrush. The scribe wrote on individual folia cut to the volume's intended size. The oldest known paper mill in Olomouc dates to 1505, and from the mid 1700s, papermaking was widespread in Bohemia and Moravia. From the end of eighteenth century, as mechanical manufacturing of paper began, there was a steady reduction in the price of paper and books.
The scripts used in the prayer book collection are many variations of two commonly used fonts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centurycursive and German Gothic. Interestingly, the writing style in the Czech and German texts is almost identical. Pages were then bound and finally re-cut during the bookbinding. The prayer books usually had 100 to 150 pages, although sometimes more. The most extensive book in the collection has 517 pages.
The binding of these prayer books was done in local workshops. Historically, bookbinding, an important and traditional trade of the region, was located near a monasterys scribe workshop. Despite the mass production of books in the city with the advent of the printing press, bookbinders in smaller provincial towns and villages thrived. A country bookbinder was a respected tradesman making the binding as well as selling books to the local clientele. He also collaborated with paper and vellum makers, leather producers, metal smiths, goldsmiths, weavers and related trades, by selling the materials required for binding.
The writer of the prayer books would have purchased paper sheets from a bookbinder, most likely already cut to the size of the future prayer book. The finished manuscript then returned to the bookbinder, who would cut the book to its final format and make the leather cover. The leather was usually dyed red or green with various gilded and embossed decorations, often with stone or bone inlay and a metal buckle. The usual binding was in full leather with embossed gold ornament, and inscribed with the year and the owners initials. Many older prayer books were further protected with a fitted leather case. The bookbinder also decorated the flyleaf by various techniquesoil marble pattern, starch stamp and cut out stencils. These also reflected baroque ornaments, folklore patterns, geometrical and floral motives or just simple compositions of dots and crosses.
Why have so few handwritten prayer books survived when they were so popular only 150 to 250 years ago? Some wore out and many were committed to the grave with the deceased owner, while some simply disappeared in tragic fires and floods. Undoubtedly, the anti-religious communist regime did little for their preservation and protection, as they were libri prohibiti. It is estimated that hundreds of prayer books vanished between the 1950s and late 1970s.
In memory of Katerina Posova
Reference:
Anezka Simkova (ed.), The Rose Garden: Handwritten prayer books of the 18th and 19th centuries (Prague: Arbor vitae, 2009)
Photographs: copyright Lumir Curik Archdiocesan Museum in Olomouc |
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