Summary: Written by an international team consisting of two art historians, an historian and a musicologist, this study explores the intellectual, scribal, artistic and musical culture of the Dominican nuns of Paradies from a variety of perspectives. Taking as its subject a little-known group of fourteenthand early fifteenth-century liturgical manuscripts from the Dominican convent of Paradies bei Soest (Westphalia), the book also offers a revisionary account of the development of the Dominican order in late medieval Germany. Two antiphonaries, three graduals and additional fragments made both for and by the nuns testify to a self-conscious liturgical culture closely tied to the development of the Dominican order's female branch. One manuscript in particular, a gradual written and illuminated at Paradies ca. 1380 (Düsseldorf, ULB D 11) contains an unparalleled wealth of inscribed images which make it the most extensively illuminated liturgical manuscript of the entire Middle Ages. The learned inscriptions allow for not only a reconstruction of the nuns' library, but also a thoroughgoing re-evaluation of the learning and Latin literacy of mendicant nuns in the late fourteenth century, a period that in the accounts of modern scholars as well as medieval reformers has too quickly been dis counted as a time of intellectual and institutional decline. In text, image and chant, the nuns assembled a comprehensive commentary on the liturgy, one which serves as a testament to their creativity, learning and ambition as well as their devotion

Contents: VOLUME I - Introduction: Liturgy and Learning in the Life of Dominican Nuns. I: The Foundation and Growth of the Monastery. II: The Extant Manuscripts from Paradies. III: The Sequences of Paradies bei Soest. IV: The Shape of the Liturgy in the Gradual. V: The Cult of the Saints at Paradies bei Soest. VI: The Art of Inscription in the Gradual D 11. Conclusion: The Nuns and their Books. VOLUME II - Appendices, Full-page illustrations, Bibliography, Index of manuscripts, General index.

We regret to inform you that this title is no longer available.
Please contact us if you need additional assistance.