I’ve been re-reading Lorraine Daston’s Rules: A Short History
of What We Live By (which is brilliant -- you should go read it
yourself!), and thinking about its relevance for the
sixteenth-century prayerbooks that are so much part of my life right
now.
Rules, Daston tells
us, are important, but the best rules are thick rules; they are
specific, yes, but they are also supple. They come with examples, and
exceptions, and mechanisms of interpretation that don’t get
befouled by absolutist thinking. Circumstances change; people get
sick; time runs short. And yet in all three instances, the goal of
the rule presumably still applies. A little judgment, she argues,
goes a long way toward effective implementation of “the rule.”
(Her chapter 2 discussion of the Benedictine rule is particularly
fruitful for understanding this perspective.)
What I want to do
here is play a bit with what this might mean in the context of the
sixteenth-century prayerbook copied for women’s use. I’ve chosen
the most ornate of the Thalbach Prayerbooks, ÖNB Cod. 11750, again,
since it represents Thalbach at its most careful. “Nice” hand,
carefully organized layout, clear directions, many labels,
distinction between the red-ink rubrics and the brown-ink text. It’s
tidy, in other words. But it also shows a tidiness of approach, in
that it frequently offers up prefatory instructions to a prayer that
guide the reader into the appropriate stance, place, movement,
mindset. It’s what I think of short-hand as prayer choreography.
So I’m here to
ask: what if we think of those rubrics as “thick rules” instead
of “verbal choreography”? What do we gain? In one sense, of
course, the answer is obvious: rubrics tell readers what to do. But
Daston’s account of thick rules helps me ask a more precise
question: not whether rubrics direct practice, but what
kind of practice they assume, enable, and refine.
Rules that are not
rule-bound
It is easy, especially from a modern
distance, to read rubrics primarily as instruments of control: say
this, do that, turn here, kneel there. But in a pre-modern devotional
manuscript, a rubric may be less like a traffic sign and more like a
craft instruction. It tells the practitioner what kind of action is
called for, while assuming that the practitioner already inhabits a
world in which the action makes sense.
Are rubrics rules? Yes—but I think they are
rules of practice rather than regulations of compliance.
ÖNB Cod.
11750, fol 15r; texts
have been lightly normalized by the author.
Ein
schön Gebet, damit alle Glieder
unseres Herrn gegrüßt werden, vor einem Crucifix zu sprechen.
GEGRJESST ſeyeſtu du aller
heilligſt haubt vnnſers lieben herrn Jesu christi welches für
unns gekrönt mit dörnen
vnd geschlagenn mit einem ror….
A beautiful prayer with which all the limbs
of our Lord are honored, to be recited before a crucifix.
HAIL to you, most holy head of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, which
for us was crowned with thorns and struck with a reed….”
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We have here several elements: a
description (a beautiful prayer), a content summary (with which all
the limbs of our Lord are honored), and the part I am thinking of as
being the rule: performative details of how
and of where the
prayer is to be delivered – it is to be recited (sprechen)
before a Crucifix.
This isn’t complex. The supplicant
isn’t drowning in detail. She’s merely guided to a best practice
in prayer delivery, shifted to a space where sight (the crucifix) can
reinforce the task of prayer (to consider in turn each of the body
parts of the suffering Lord of the crucifixion. As a rule goes, it
organizes her prayer, binding text, image, body, and gaze into a
whole.
It’s a bit like “craft knowledge.”
The rubric assumes some proficiency; the supplicant will know when
the prayer might be useful, But it guides her through specificity of
where she should stand, what she should face, and how she should let
the image structure her attention. In so doing, it invokes a practice
of visual, affective, and bodily meditation.
Yet this “rule” is supple too; this
isn’t necessarily the crucifix of the main altar at the parish
church. She could read this prayer in front of the crucifix by the
convent refectory, or the one in her cell, or by flipping back a few
folios and gazing at the image of the Crucifixion that adorns OENB
11750 folio 8r. The gaze will guide, but how she achieves the gaze is
flexible enough to accommodate a variety of circumstances.
That’s a nuance that I didn’t think
to talk about when thinking of the instruction as choreography. So,
one point for Daston’s utility.
Rules for transitions
A rubric makes the page actionable, but
can also provide guidance for time-of-day transitions, from the
mundane to the spiritual, from the world-oriented to the
spirit-oriented, from the activity of daytime to the closure of
bedtime ritual.
If the crucifix rubric shows how a rule
can organize devotional attention around an object, the bedtime
rubric for our next prayer (OENB 11750 fol. 3v-5r) shows how a rule
can organize an ordinary daily transition. I like this intervention,
since it gives the actions as a set: first the rubric provides a
label, then the confession, then the guiding script to ready the
supplicant for bed:
Bedtime ritual (OENB 11750 fol. 3v-5r,
excerpts):
Volgen schuene gebet so man schlafen
geeth
The
following are beautiful prayers to be said before going to sleep.
So du ietzund
wilt ſchlafen gen: so sprich dise
bekantnus der ſunden. Alſo. ICH
bekenne dir Herr Allmechtiger Gott erſchaffer himel vnd der Orden
alle meine ſünd die ich gethon hab von meiner Iugent an bis diſe
zeit vnnd ſtund...
So now you wish to go to sleep: then say
this confession of sins. Thus: I confess to you, Lord
Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth, all my sins that I have
committed from my youth until this time and hour….
Wan du gleich in dz Beth schlaffenn gehst
so bezaichne dich mit dem Zeihen des ehilligen Creitz an dem
stirn, und sprich also: Iesus von Nazareth sey allezeit
mein abeschiirmer. (An deiner mund) Jesus
von Nazareth sei allezeit in meinen mu/ond. (An
dein brüst)
Jesus von Nazareth sey al zeitt in meinem hertznn. Amen.
[PRAYER]: O Lieber herr Jesu Christe, nur will / ich dise rüo vnd
aüffenthalltung meines leibs empfahenn, in der verantigunng
deiner lieb gegen vns dardürch dü vns den ſchlaf zu guttem
geben hast auch desselben…
When you go
to sleep in your bed, make the sign of the holy cross on your
forehead, and say thus: Jesus of Nazareth, be my protector
at all times. (On your mouth) Jesus
of Nazareth, be always in my mouth. (On your
breast) Jesus of Nazareth, be always in my heart. Amen.
[PRAYER] O dear Lord Jesus Christ, I now wish to receive this rest
and repose of my body, in acknowledgment of your love for us,
through which you have given us sleep for our good, and also...
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It’s sort of like the modern ritual:
first you turn off the TV, then you brush your teeth, then you climb
into bed and take up the work of stilling your mind.
What’s special in the Thalbach rubric
is that it provides a bodily procedure, marking the forehead, mouth,
and breast, along with accompanying words. It’s apotropaic, yes,
spiritually protective, but it’s also that kind of Daston
middle-ground. The instruction is specific, but it’s non-narrative.
There’s no need to explain every theological or bodily assumption.
It presupposes habit – a practitioner who already has insider
knowledge: how to make the sign of the cross, why sleep is
spiritually vulnerable, and how short verbal formulae can guard
thresholds.
The rubric turns ordinary sleep into a
devotional exercise. It does not regulate sleep bureaucratically; it
ritualizes that regular
daily transition.
It is, to use the common convention, a habit-stacking rule.
Again,
“choreography” thinking me was VERY excited about all the actions in
this rubric, but the “rule”-based assessment is more empathetic
to the time-of-day and purpose-driven nature of the actions involved.
Prayer as craft
knowledge
Early modern rules, in Daston’s
account, assume prior experience and promise improvement,
particularly when the stem from the artist’s workshop. They
systematize and extend experience rather than replacing it. They are
designed, she argues, to be learned but also practiced.
“To
formalize craft knowledge into rules was to give it voice and dignity
but not to remove it from the workshop. Dürer intended his
instructions as a 'thorough introduction' to be expanded by 'daily use,' which in turn would deepen understanding and kindle
invention.” (Daston
p. 51)
This observation was particularly exciting to me, since there are so many similarities
here with prayer as codified in prayerbooks. Prayer as something
learned through repeated, bodily, attentive practice. If we draw the
parallel out, we could think of prayer in prayerbooks as a mechanical
art, separate from the theological and argumentatively-grounded work
of the university setting. As a craft, it fits into a realm of
acquired-and-enacted wisdom.
The
fit is imperfect,
of course.
Daston’s artisans are often making things: pictures,
fortifications, meals, calculations. The Thalbach reader is not
producing an external
artifact in the same sense.
She is cultivating attention, protection, repentance, and memory. The
“thing” being shaped is not primarily an artifact but the praying
self: attention, contrition, memory, bodily readiness, protection,
and receptivity and capacity to return to God. That difference
matters because the prayerbook
rule is not only guiding what
she does; it is helping shape how she becomes disposed to pray.
Nor
do I mean that prayer was
mechanical in the sense of being merely manual, servile, or
technical. But I do want to invoke Daston’s ideas to argue that
prayer has craft-like dimensions. It
is learned by repetition. It uses tools. It depends on timing,
memory, posture, voice, attention, sequence, and correction. It can
be done badly, habitually, fluently, intensely, communally, or with
practiced skill.
Daston provides a summary of craft-rule
guidance:
“rules were
always framed in the imperative mood… , the knowledge in question
was often gleaned from personal experience ….seldom addressed to
rank beginners … the promised payoff of mastering the rules was
improvement.”
Yes! That tracks for prayerbooks too:
1) Rubrics are typically imperative, if not always in a strict
grammatical sense. Many are titles or summaries, occasions for use,
or navigational cues. But they are directive all the same: they tell
the reader how a text is to be used. I think that gets at the
“imperative mood” element pretty effectively.
2) Similarly, they share the wisdom of previous enactments in capsule
form.
3) They assume a familiarity with context and pattern, so are not
“beginner books” (those are psalters!) but more the
“intermediate-to-advanced” guide helpful to honing one’s
personal practice. The implied reader already knows many of the
gestures, formulae, and devotional contexts being cued.
4) And, as Daston argues, improvement is the goal.
In other words,
OENB 11750 treats prayer as a practiced art both in the sense of
being enacted and in the sense of being repeated. It assumes that
technique will help devotion take on durable form.
The morning prayer sequence of Segen and
prayer (OENB 11750 5v-7r) illustrates this practice. It’s not a
beginner’s catechism; it’s a set of cues for someone already
embedded in devotional habits. It uses cross-reference, and embodied
action, and praise texts to start the day in a positive and
spirtually grounded way:
Segen and prayer for morning (OENB 11750 5v-7r, excerpts):
Segen vnnd Gebett: Wann man am morgen vom
Schlaf auf steth IN dem Namen des Vatters des Suns vnd des
heilligenn Geists….
Blessing and
Prayer: When one rises from sleep in the morning In the
name of the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit...
Zaichne dich darauf / an dein stirn mit
dem ʒeichen des heilligenn Creütz vnd ſprich. Jeſus von
Nazareth ꝛc. wie oben steth. Darnach knien
ider vnd sprich. ICH bette dich an vnd lobe dich O du
heillige Driualtigkeit du mein Gott alles in allem ich ſage dir
danckh für alle bewarung weissheit vnnd guettigkeit...
Make the sign
of the cross on your forehead with the sign of the holy cross and
say: Jesus of Nazareth, etc., as
stated above. Then kneel and say: I adore you and praise
you, O holy Trinity, my God, all in all. I thank you for all
protection, wisdom, and goodness...
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In the first portion, there’s no need
to tell the informed reader that she’s to speak these words; the
ink-color transition is obvious and her actions implicit. In the
second half of this text, her knowledge of the standard Jesus of
Nazareth formula that she’d said just the night before saves the
scribe some valuable parchment space. In Daston’s terms, these
rubrics offer a system and occasion for practice. But, as she reminds
us, this was already a great deal:
experience refracted through the lens of the rules of art was better
ordered, more sharply focused, and above all broader than that of
most craftsmen occupied with the pell-mell of particulars encountered
in their own workshops” (Daston
p. 69)
Again,
yes for
the prayerbooks too.
Conclusion: rubrics as
supple rules for living
Thalbach’s devotional books preserve
not only texts but habits of life. Their rubrics belong to a world in
which rules were not necessarily the enemy of vitality. Rather, rules
were one way of making practice durable. The question, then, is not
simply whether rubrics direct practice. Of course they do. The more
interesting question is what kind of practice they imagine, and here
the answer is more nuanced. They imagine one that is repeated,
embodied, adaptive, and interiorly formative.
To read rubrics as rules, then, is not
to flatten prayer into procedure. It is to take seriously the
practiced intelligence of devotional life. It is to treat prayer as
practiced and ever-renewed: a craft of spirituality in which small
guiding texts could lead to improvement -- a more ordered
disposition, better attention, more durable memory, more ready access
to words and gestures, a more practiced capacity to return to God.
I
don’t think reading rubrics as rules replaces the choreography
model so much as it shifts the emphasis. “Choreography” catches
the embodied sequence; “rule” catches the learned, repeatable,
adaptable form. Drawing on
both perspectives
gives us the fuller picture.
Considered through Daston’s lens, the
Thalbach sister’s manuscript does not simply tell its reader what
to say. Its rubrics teach the reader when to pray, how to begin,
where to stand, what to face, what to repeat, how to move the body,
and how to carry liturgical forms into the ordinary hours of life.
Its rules are specific enough to guide action and, critically,
supple enough to live with. In that sense, these prayerbook
rubrics belong not only to the history of books, but to the history
of how people learned to inhabit devotion.
WORKS CITED
Lorraine Daston,
Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2022).
On habit-stacking, I
found Clear’s version substantially less smarmy than some of the
more industrial “habit-stacking” banged-it-out-for-a-buck
narratives out there on the market: James Clear, Atomic Habits: An
Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
(2018).
For
a somewhat more choreographic assessment of such rubrics, see Cynthia
Cyrus, "Praying Before the Image of Mary: Nuns’ Prayerbooks
and the Mapping of Sacred Space" Religions
16, no. 10 (2025): 1277. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16101277,
https://www.mdpi.com/3532324
Other posts on OENB
11750:
