Central European Schools VIII (ca. 1400 - 1450)

The project aims to bring together all illuminated manuscripts originating from Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary, which were produced between the year ca. 1400 and 1450 and which are now held by the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The project will mainly focus on the art historian study of book illumination. This means that the description of stylisitic elements and their scholarly valuation aims to determine the works of the illuminators, workshops, and masters of pen-work; iconographic and technical aspects will be analyzed. However, the catalogue will take into consideration all aspects of the book, such as codicology (study of book covers, watermarks for dating paper), palaeography, the history of origin, provenance, and text analysis. The volume will comprise manuscripts, which were produced for convents and churches throughout the Eastern Central European regions. Special highlights will be the splendidly illuminated missal of archbishop Zbinko Zaji? de Hasenburg (Cod. 1844), a bible of king Wenceslas` IV cook (Cod. 1169), and a huge Cantionale, which perhaps was painted in Moravia (S.n. 4246), but also the richly decorated bible of the Taborite leader Pade?ov (1175), and an extensive Hussite miniature cycle "Vita Christi" (cod. 485). These codices have already been widely discussed by art historians from Otto Pächt up to Karel Stejskal and Gerhard Schmidt, most recently by Milada Studni?kov in the course of the big Luxemburg-exhibitions in New York, Prague and Budapest. Yet also lesser known and many unkown manuscripts will be presented in this volume, e.g. illuminated books, which were produced for the university of Prague with writings of Jan Hus and John Wyclif. Not only the multiplication of texts, but also the fact that these heretic texts were illuminated gives deep insight into the tense political and religious situation which led to the Hussite wars. The catalogue with the German title "Die Illuminierten Handschriften der Österreichischen Nationalbiblitohek. Mitteleuropäische Schulen VIII (ca. 1400-1450). Böhmen - Mähren - Schlesien - Ungarn" would form part of the "Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für Schrift- und Buchwesen des Mittelalters. Reihe 1. Die illuminierten Handschriften und Inkunabeln der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek". Furthermore, all relevant results will be published online through manuscripta mediaevalia website (www.manuscripta-mediaevalia.de), the site for Mittelalterliche Handschriften in österreichischen Bibliotheken (www.ksbm.ac.at/_scripts/mihoeb.php, recently set up by Dr. Alois Haidinger), and also the online-database for iconography and literature of the Austrian National Library (http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Martina.Pippal/simdata/ikonographie/ikon01.cgi).

Central European Schools VIII (c. 14001450). Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Hungary forms part of a series of catalogs of illuminated manuscripts held by the Austrian National Library. The series was started by the art historian Otto Pächt with formal guidelines still applicable today. The art-historically oriented catalog seeks to identify and analyze the book paintings and pen-work decorations according to pictorial content and artistic style. 77 illuminated manuscripts of Eastern Central European provenance from the first half of the 15th century could be identified on the basis of old text catalogs, secondary literature, and esp. depot viewings. The focus lies on their stylistic classification and grouping, identification and localization of illuminators and workshops. It aims to determine provenance and dating of the book decoration, which does not always coincide with the occasionally given date of the text. In this way, many manuscripts could be revealed and interpreted in their proper regional and temporal context. The synopsis of all available information ranging from art history, paleography, text content, codicology, and history helped to correct previously common assignments, such as for the Hasenburg Missal, whose commissioner was not the Archbishop of Prague as previously anticipated, or the Prague provenance of manuscripts like a Czech New Testament, which had been localized to Moravia in regard of Moravian repositories of comparable manuscripts. For the last years of King Wenceslas IV of Bohemia, no major royal book projects are handed down to us. Most book illuminations were commissioned by the clergy and nobility, before a new clientele should occur: the professors of Pragues university and - by outbreak of the Hussite wars - the warlords. Precious Missals and chronicles in Latin were gradually replaced by Czech theological and didactic writings of the Charles University. The Holy Bible, whose Czech translation was edited twice during this period, was the only accepted, divine authority for Hussites. This was expressed by stylistic and iconographic means drawing on the period of the courtly "beautiful style", but subject to a gradual modification of color and proportions and speaks an own iconographic language. However, this change happened gradually over time and - due to different Hussite groups - in a non-uniform way and leads to the question: What is Hussite in Hussite art? Did the Prague illuminators migrate to Moravia during the Hussite wars? Questions that are increasingly discussed by the young generation of researchers and last but not least were fueled by the books found at the National Library, which in the course of this project were already presented at international conferences. This catalog thus widens and corrects the view onto a very rich book production of a transforming society in times that had been regarded as times of cultural decline for the Lands of the Bohemian Crown.