So there I was, scrolling through microfilm, as one does, and copying out the openings of prayers in Einsiedeln 654 (olim 1324). This little sixteenth-century communion prayerbook, from the Clarissan house of Villingen, has ninety-nine leaves. Its catalogue entry gives the main divisions, but – as is so often the case for prayerbooks – there is considerably more to discover among the individual prayers.
Near the end of the book, I encountered a most dramatic G: “Gegrützt sigistu herr Jhesu Christe…” – “Hail to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” The letter rises through roughly six lines if its excursion into the upper margin is included. The text has to retreat halfway across the column to make room for the capital letter. Shading in the monochrome microfilm suggests contrasting colors, and wavy inked ornament and feathering extend into the left margin. I don’t have permissions to reproduce the Einsiedeln image here, so you will have to take my word for it: this is a lovely letter.
It is also by size and by placement an attention-getter. Two- and three-line initials are common in this book. This one belongs to a much smaller group of especially prominent openings, alongside the Twelve Desires before communion (3r) and the Three Reverences before receiving the Sacrament (54v). That may not exactly give me a ranked list of the scribe’s favorite prayers, but it does at least tell me that this opening was given room to announce itself. What, I wondered, was being announced?
The prayer is just as lovely as its initial. Christ is greeted as the Lamb of God, the salvation of the world, a fountain of divine goodness, the flower and fruit of the Virgin Mary, the radiance of the heavenly Father, the prince of peace, the door of heaven, and the bread of life. One image spills out after another. Their abundance is part of the prayer’s appeal; each gives the person praying another way to address Christ.
But the sequence also supplies a clue. “Little lamb of God” is hardly an unusual title. Nor is “bread of life.” Finding either one somewhere else would tell us very little. It’s finding these titles in clusters, and then finding the clusters in the same order, that becomes a different matter. After running down the footnotes, this German prayer turns out to belong to the family of the Five Salutations of Jesus Christ, beginning in Latin “Ave Iesu Christe, verbum patris” (Baroffio 2021).
The large G had led me into a familiar prayer in another language. And although I cannot show the Villingen page, another women’s book lets us see its Latin relative.
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| Figure 1. Hermetschwil, Benediktinerinnenkloster, Cod. membr. 40, fol. 151r (e-codices). CC BY-NC 4.0. The first salutation begins on the preceding verso; this page continues it and supplies the remaining four. The Marian prayer beginning Gaude below is a separate text. |
This fourteenth-century psalter was probably made for the Cistercian women of Selnau, near Zürich. By the seventeenth century it belonged to Sister Ottilia Sutter at the Benedictine convent of Hermetschwil. Its Five Salutations begin at the bottom of folio 150v and continue across the upper part of 151r. Red initials pick out the repeated Ave: “Hail” (Bretscher-Gisiger and Gamper 2005, 209–210).
To be clear, this is a Latin witness to the circulating prayer, not a proposed exemplar for the Villingen German version. Its value here is that it makes the pattern visible. We can turn the page and follow the greetings, just as a reader of the psalter could.
| Latin salutation | Villingen German | English sense |
|---|---|---|
| splendor patris | ain schin vnd glantz des himelschen vatters | radiance of the Father |
| vas deitatis | ain vass der gotthaitt | a vessel of divinity |
| lumen caeli | des himels liecht | light of heaven |
| fons amoris | der brunn warer minn | the fountain of true love |
These correspondences occur in the same larger sequence of greetings. The third salutation gathers the Father’s radiance, the prince of peace, heaven’s door, living bread, and the vessel of divinity. The next begins with the light of heaven and the price of the world’s redemption. Then comes the greeting built around sweetness, truth, reward, and love. The German is recognizably related, even where its words do not follow the Latin exactly.
There is another wrinkle. The Five Salutations occupy only the beginning of the Villingen sequence, from 90v to 92r. The greetings keep going until 95v. They gather additional sacramental language and petitions: Christ as true body born of Mary, food for the journey, redemption, and help at death. The page’s visual divisions do not simply number off the five Latin salutations. The familiar prayer has been incorporated into a longer devotional sequence.
That is what makes the comparison interesting. Recognizing a prayer does not finish the work of reading it. It gives us a way to notice what this book does with it: which images it retains, where it changes the wording, and how it continues beyond the recognizable core.
Jenny C. Bledsoe’s study of an early fifteenth-century prayer roll now at the University of Pennsylvania adds another way of encountering the same prayer. On the roll, a Middle English story tells of a cleric in Burgundy who regularly greeted Mary in prayer. Christ promises his own friendship and help if the cleric will greet him too. What follows is only the Latin opening, Ave domine Iesu Christe, verbum patris. Bledsoe suggests that this cue assumes a reader who knows the prayer by heart (Bledsoe 2016, 197–198). Here a brief opening can summon a remembered prayer; in the Villingen book, the greetings are written out in German. The same circulating text could enter devotion through different combinations of language, writing, and memory.
For a musicologist, there is a further pleasure. It turns out, texts from these salutations also occur in the Milanese motet cycle Ave domine Iesu Christe, sometimes attributed to Loyset Compère. There, words encountered in prayerbooks become the material of polyphonic music, although the cycle combines and supplements the greetings, offering another adaptation of the prayer rather than an exact musical counterpart to the Villingen German version. And, of course, such a relationship does not tell us that the Villingen sisters sang this German version, but it does place their prayer within a repertory that could be read, spoken, and set to music (Filippi, MCE 2). (I would love to hear a performance of the cycle, which isn't available as a recording in any of my regular go-to-listen places!)
If the letter was a challenge, I think we're at "challenge met." It caught my attention, took me out to a Latin psalter, an English prayer roll, and a musical setting, and ultimately brought me back to the German text with better questions. I think at some level this is what manuscript decorations can do. That oversized and dramatic letter “G” made me stop, and look, and ponder the manifold meanings and contexts of the prayer.
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- A Shared Devotional Grammar: Prayers after Communion: Communion prayers circulated in changing combinations, yet their devotional sequence could remain remarkably stable. This post follows one prayer’s imagery of food, sunlight, cedar, and the humble worm through a wider repertoire.
- The Verbal Vocative: Change-Ringing Patterns of Marian Address in Der Herr ist mit dir: Repeated greetings can do more than repeat themselves. A long Marian prayer from Thalbach combines Latin and German, accumulating titles and refrains that guide attention, memory, and devotional feeling.
- Supple Rules for Prayer: Daston’s Ideas Meet the 16thc Prayerbook: How much does a prayerbook tell its reader to do—and how much does it assume she already knows? Reading its rubrics alongside Lorraine Daston’s account of rules reveals instructions that connect words, images, bodily action, and practical judgment.
WORKS CITED
Manuscripts
- Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 654 (olim 1324), fols. 90v–95v; the Five Salutations at 90v–92r. German communion prayerbook, Villingen, St. Klara (Bickenkloster), sixteenth century. Work consulted via microfilm from the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, HMML 48672.
- Hermetschwil, Benediktinerinnenkloster, Cod. membr. 40, fols. 150v–151r. Psalterium, southwestern Germany, fourteenth century; probably made for the Cistercian convent of Selnau. Digital facsimile: e-codices. Figure 1 reproduces fol. 151r, and the blog post announcement includes the elaborate "A" for "Ave Iesu Christe" that starts the cycle on fol. 151v. Both images CC BY-NC 4.0.
- Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, MS Roll 1563. Latin and Middle English prayer roll, early fifteenth century. Discussed in Bledsoe 2016, especially 197–198.
Studies and reference works
- Baroffio, Giacomo. Corpus Italicum Precum: Materiali per una storia del sentimento religioso in Italia e in Europa. Version dated 16 April 2021. Entries under Ave Iesu Christe.
- Bledsoe, Jenny C. “A Late Medieval Macaronic Prayer Roll: UPenn MS Roll 1563.” Notes and Queries 63, no. 2 (June 2016): 196–199. https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjw079.
- Bretscher-Gisiger, Charlotte, and Rudolf Gamper. Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Klöster Muri und Hermetschwil. Dietikon-Zürich: Urs Graf Verlag, 2005, 209–210. Description of Cod. membr. 40 reproduced on e-codices.
- Ferro, Eva. “ ‘Old Texts for New Music’? Textual and Philological Observations on the Cycles ‘Salve Mater Salvatoris’ and ‘Ave Domine Iesu Christe’ from Librone 1.” In Motet Cycles between Devotion and Liturgy, edited by Daniele V. Filippi and Agnese Pavanello, 189–218. Basel, 2019.
- Filippi, Daniele V., ed. MCE 2: [Loyset Compère?], Ave domine Iesu Christe. Motet Cycles Edition, Musik-Akademie Basel. https://doi.org/10.48523/zdxh-7324. The attribution to Compère is debated.
- Lang, Odo. Katalog der Handschriften in der Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln. Zweiter Teil: Codices 501–1318. Basel, 2009, 216: Cod. 654 (1324).
Funding: This research was supported by a Carpenter Fellowship from the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML). I am grateful to HMML’s staff for their assistance, hospitality, and support during my residency.
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