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9783895007576

Gebauer, Amy

»Christus und die minnende Seele«

An Analysis of Circulation, Text, and Iconography

2010
17.0 x 24.0 cm, 352 p., 29 illustrations b/w, 63 illustrations color, cloth
78,00 €

ISBN: 9783895007576
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Preface
Table of Contents
Sample

Short Description

The late medieval verse dialogue ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ portrays the journey of the soul as the bride of Christ toward mystical union in a series of 20 to 24 individual scenes. This study provides for the first time a comprehensive examination of all manuscripts and prints containing the work. In addition, a thorough analysis of the context in which the text is embedded in the manuscrips and of the illustrated broadsheet reveals the late medieval approach to broader and often controversial themes such as mysticism and the role of visual images in religious life and practice.

Description

The late medieval verse dialogue ‘Christus und die minnende Seele,’ originally conceived as an illustrated broadsheet, portrays the journey of the soul as the bride of Christ towards mystical union in a series of 20 to 24 individual scenes. Each scene is accompanied by a dialogue text in the form of two rhymed couplets that has been expanded in later versions. The work survives in eight manuscripts, four single-leaf prints and one early printed book dating from the late fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century and representing four different versions.
This study is based on the überlieferungsgeschichtliche Methode, which for ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ requires an interdisciplinary approach drawing from the areas of paleography, social history, art history, literary studies, and theology.
This study provides for the first time a comprehensive examination of all manuscripts and prints containing the work. In addition, an ‘iconographic catalogue’ includes complete descriptions of the illustrations as well as transcriptions of the headings and the first four lines of dialogue along with documentation of other illustrations and ornamentation in the manuscript.
This paleographic investigation not only makes it possible to determine the geographic, chronological, and social distribution of the work, but also helps to complete the picture of both the intended and actual reception of ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ and its illustrations.
A thorough treatment of the context in which the text is embedded in manuscripts (the Mitüberlieferung) reveals not only how the work itself was received, but also the late medieval approach to broader and often controversial themes such as mysticism and the role of visual images in religious life and practice.
Finally, an analysis of the structure and content of the illustrated broadsheet provides fundamentally new interpretations. First of all, the broadsheet has a strong vertical structure, requiring an increasingly sophisticated understanding of images on the part of the reader. In addition, comparison of the earlier broadsheets with a later version shows clearly how attitudes toward bridal mysticism were transformed during the fifteenth century to reflect the skepticism of the reform clergy.
This study of the complete manuscripts and prints from the varying perspectives of paleography, social history, art history, and literary studies shows how ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ reflects the debates and tensions of the late medieval literary landscape. Read by lay and religious audiences, by men and women, comprised of word and image, present in manuscript and printed form, in the vernacular and Latin, ‘Christus und die minnende Seele’ remained a vital work of literature for two centuries.

Reviews

„Das Buch von Amy Gebauer ist in mehrerer Hinsicht ein gelungener Brückenschlag. (...) Das Werk gliedert sich nach einer Einleitung in fünf Kapitel gegliedert es folgen ein summarischer Abschnitt zu Überlieferung, Text und Ikonographie, eine Zusammenfassung und die üblichen, detaillierten Listen, Indizes und die Tafeln. (...) Dem Buch ist über das enge Fachkollegium hinaus erhebliche Verbreitung zu wünschen, da es sowohl formal als auch buchgestalterisch ansprechend gearbeitet ist und eine wahre Fundgrube für die weitere interdisziplinäre Forschung darstellt.“

Von Markus Vinzent

In: Theologische Literaturzeitung 138 (2013) 7/8, S. 816-817.
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“ The author is to be commended for the meticulous archival and librarious research that undergirds the identification and presention of the volume’s thirteen principal source documents. Although she uncovered no previously unknown manuscripts or long-lost incunable, Gebauer’s identification of these thirteen editions of “Christus und die minnende Seele” as a body of documents worth collective analysis is an accomplishment that ought not be overlooked. As she correctly, if perhaps too modestly, remarks in her Introduction, she has indeed coherently fashioned “as a unit” a set of documents, their texts and images, that the two most eminent twentieth-century historians of mysticism, Bernard McGinn and Kurt Ruh, inexplicably did not examine in their own studies in any sustained way. (...)
In sum, Gebauer has brought into scholarly light a neglected text and analyzed it in challenging and creatively convincing ways. In so doing she has shed light not just on a set of documents but on some of the most important aspects of late medieval religious culture. The volume—250 pages of careful presentation and perspicacious analysis, 30 pages of thoroughly helpful back matter, and a stunning 92 plates—is to be very much recommended.”

David J. Collins, SJ

In: Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 112 (2013) 2. S. 251-252.

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„Insgesamt bietet dieses Buch dreierlei: zum einen eine saubere Aufarbeitung der Überlieferung eines wichtigen mystischen Texts aus der Übergangszeit zwischen Handschrift und Buchdruck, zum anderen einige spannende Detaildarlegungen zur Geschichte einzelner Handschriften und ihrem sozialen Kontext, drittens eine überzeugende Deutung von Ikonographie und Text. Was darüber ein wenig (wenn auch nicht gänzlich) verloren geht, ist die Einbettung von Text und Bild in ihre frömmigkeitsgeschichtlichen Traditionen. Das ist unter der überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Perspektive, die Gebauer gewählt hat, im Grunde nur konsequent. Schließlich liefert das letzte Kapitel eine überzeugende Interpretation – aber immer sehr eng an der konkreten Überlieferung entlang. Da muss die reiche Tradition zum Teil eng verwandter mystischer Texte, die sich des gleichen Bildrepertoires bedienen, ohne ersichtlich auf denselben Grundtext aufzubauen, beinahe zwangsläufig außen vor bleiben. Trotzdem hätte man sich – gerade mit Blick auf ein weiteres, vielleicht sogar interdisziplinäres, an Fragen mittelalterlicher Frömmigkeitsgeschichte interessiertes Publikum – zumindest ein paar Zeilen zur Einordnung gewünscht, zumal manche dieser Texte in der älteren Handbuchliteratur von Gödeke bis Wackernagel noch unter ähnlichen oder gar demselben Titel firmieren. Das hätte man in der Einleitung leicht unterbringen können. Dass es unterblieben ist, tut aber der Qualität dieser Arbeit keinen wesentlichen Abbruch.“

Hiram Kümper

In: IASLonline [28.11.2012]
http://www.iaslonline.de/index.php?vorgang_id=3515 (16. Januar 2013)

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„Das Buch (zugl. Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, Diss., 2010) behandelt in erschöpfender Weise einen Textkomplex, der den Weg zur Erreichung der Unio mystica im Dialog zwischen Christus und der Seele als Stufenfolge asketisch-mystischer Übungen darstellt und der in vier verschiedenen Versionen überliefert ist: 1. als Bild-Text-Kombination auf drei Einblattholzschnitten und einem Einblattdruck ca. 1460-1560 mit 20 Holzschnitten und zugehörigen Vierzeilern, 2. als reine Textfassung der Vierzeiler in vier Hss. vom 3. Viertel des 14. Jh. bis ins 16. Jh., 3. als umfangreichere Dichtung von 2.112 Versen (Die minnende Seele) in vier illuminierten alem. Hss. des 15. Jh., 4. als illustrierter ERfurter Druck von ca. 1500 mit den Vierzeilern nebst Prosakommentaren. Die Abbhandlung beschreibt I. die Überlieferungszeugen der vier Versionen (15-74), bietet II. einen ikonographischen Katalog der illustrierten Zeugen mit Bildbeschreibungen und Textabdrucken (75-144), untersucht III. Textgeschichte, Komposition und Struktur sowie Verbreitung und Publikum (145-157), IV. Überlieferungskontexte und Gebrauch vor allem der 3. und weniger detailliert der 2. Version (158-191) und interpretiert V. die 1. Version anhand des von unten nach oben zu lesenden Augsburger Einblattdrucks von ca. 1560 (Taf. 1) im Hinblick auf die je acht Stufen der via purgativa und via illuminata
sowie die vier Stufen der via unitiva (192-253). Eine deutsche Zusammenfassung (255-258), ein Hss.-Register und ein Namen- und Sachregister erleichtern die Benutzung des mit 92 größtenteils farbigen Tafeln vorzüglich ausgestatteten Bandes.“

Frieder Schanze, Tübingen

In: Germanistik. 52 (2011) Heft 3-4. S. 710-711.

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“This beautifully-produced monograph constitutes a welcome and much-needed contribution to hte analysis of “Christus und die minnende Seele”, one of the literary and iconographic puzzles of late medieval devotional culture. The text, a Middle High German verse dialogue between Christ and the soul, combines nuptial imagery with discourses of violence and subjugation, made all the more vivid by accompanying series of illustrations. Although this work has received some critical attention from Jeffrey Hambuger and Hildegard Keller, there was, until now, no comprehensive study of its sources, transmission, literary traditions and iconography. (...)
The arguments are elegantly presented, drawing on the various discourses of literary analysis, theology, art history and social history. Overall, G. helps us towars a better understanding of a difficult but fascinating text.”

Annette Volfing

In: Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch. 47 (2012) 1. S. 106.

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“Overall, then, this is an excellent study of the textual transmission and visual illustration programs of “Christus und die minnende Seele”. And as if that were not enough, we are also given a list of the illustrations, a bibliography, a general index, and then the 92 color and b/w plates showing us the most important episodes in the individual versions. A number of aspects of this text now so well examined with respect to the textual transmission and the interaction between text and image, will probably stimulate further research: the significant role women played in the reproduction of this account, the extraordinarily rich illustration program, and the degree of violence conceptually employed in the discussion of the mystical experience.
Gebauer deserves our full respect for this most impressive critical analysis of the rich manuscript, broadsheet, and print tradition, which she could carry out only by way of long research stays at various libraries.”

Albrecht Classen

In: The Medieval Review. TMR 12.01.20
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/14140 (9. Februar 2012)

Biographical Note

Amy Gebauer

1969 Born in Berlin
1991 B.A. Valparaiso University
1991-98 Teaching Assistant, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
1993 M.A. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1993-98 Ph.D. studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1993-94 and 1996-97 Study abroad at the University of Heidelberg
1998-2003 Lektorin in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg
2003-2008 Self-employment as English trainer
2008-2009 Lektorin in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg
2010 Ph.D. University of Augsburg
2010 to present Lektorin in the Department of English and American Studies, University of Regensburg

Research interests: late medieval religious literature, in particular German mysticism, history of manuscript circulation

Series Description

This series, which will comprise doctoral and professorial dissertations and other monographs as well as collective volumes, aims at highlighting and promoting interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies even more than is currently the case. Works from all branches of Medieval Studies will be accepted, provided they emphasise the aspect of interdisciplinarity, i.e. they attempt to transgress the boundaries of any single subject.

Keywords

13th century, c 1200 to c 1299 (110) || 14th century, c 1300 to c 1399 (102) || 15th century, c 1400 to c 1499 (140) || Aspects of religion (65) || Basel || Buchmalerei (39) || Christianity (67) || Christliche Kunst (4) || Classic & pre-20th century poetry (29) || Deutsches Sprachgebiet || Dorothea, von Hof || Ehinger, Margaretha || Fine arts: treatments & subjects (399) || Frauenkloster || Frömmigkeit (2) || German (72) || Germanic & Scandinavian languages (65) || Germany (242) || Geschichte 1250-1500 || History of art (238) || Ikonographie (29) || Indo-European languages (445) || Inzigkofen || Kirchheim am Ries || Konstanz (2) || Kunst (43) || Langmann, Adelheid || Linguistics (729) || Mainz (5) || Muntprat, Anna || Nuremburg (8) || Poetry (57) || Religion & beliefs (225) || Seuse, Heinrich (2) || Spirituality & religious experience (4) || Spiritualität (3) || Sprachen (5) || Switzerland (10) || Villingen || c 1000 CE to c 1500 (374) || geistliche Literatur (3)