The Blood Caught My Eye, But Love Dominated: The Prayer Vocabulary of Innsbruck FB 1118

When I opened the prayerbook, it was the gore that drew my attention first, as I mentioned in a previous post. That is hardly surprising. In Innsbruck FB 1118, Christ is bound, beaten, scourged, pierced, bloodied, abandoned, and repeatedly made to suffer in language vivid enough to provoke a modern “eww” reflex.

But once I stepped back from the most graphic passages and looked at the manuscript’s vocabulary as a whole, a different picture emerged. Blood appears forty-three times. Wound appears thirty-three times. Bitter appears thirty-one times. Yet the most common substantive words in this fifteenth-century Passion-centric prayerbook are not, in fact, words of violence. They are Lord, love, God, holy, heart, soul, eternal, and mercy.

That matters because in my view, frequency reveals something different from intensity. Graphic details may dominate the reader’s memory precisely because they are unusual, concrete, and difficult to ignore. But they do not necessarily dominate the manuscript’s devotional world. Love appears 117 times, far more often than blood, wound, or even sin. Mercy appears eighty-one times; grace fifty; peace forty-five; good forty-four; life forty-three; and joy thirty-one. The manuscript’s most startling images are embedded in a vocabulary of divine generosity, intimacy, and hope.

The same is true of the prayerbook’s anthropology. The body matters—body appears fifty times—but it is not treated as a prison or merely as a site of punishment. The heart appears ninety-eight times, the soul eighty-four, the mind forty-five, and the spirit forty-four. Such terms suggest an integrated devotional person: bodily, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually engaged all at the same time. The prayers do not simply ask the reader to contemplate Christ’s damaged flesh. They ask that her heart be changed, that her soul be released, that her mind be directed, and that her spirit join more closely to God. They ask, in other words, that she be acted upon to increase her own faith.

Even the vocabulary of suffering is usually oriented toward a particular outcome. Death appears eighty-seven times and suffer sixty-four, but redeem appears twenty-seven times, forgive thirty-four, grant forty-one, and offer forty-seven. Christ’s suffering, gruesome as it is, is not presented as pain for pain’s sake. It is repeatedly converted into mercy, pardon, protection, intercession, and transformation. The structure of the prayers makes that logic explicit: because Christ endured, the speaker asks that God now forgive; because Christ shed blood, a soul may be released; because Christ offered himself, the reader may offer herself in return.

The vocabulary of relationship is equally prominent. Father and Jesus each appear seventy-one times; beloved fifty-eight; Son forty-two; Mother twenty-nine; child twenty-five. This is not an emotionally bleak religious world populated only by sin, punishment, and fear. It is a familial and relational one. God is invoked as Father, Christ as beloved Lord and Son, Mary as mother, and the praying subject as one seeking incorporation into a sacred network of care. Even the repeated appeals to Christ’s Passion operate within this language of attachment. The prayers are gruesome, yes, but they are also intimate.

Word counts cannot by themselves tell us what a manuscript means. They flatten context, treat every occurrence as equivalent, and cannot distinguish a dominant theological concept from a repeated grammatical formula. Still, they offer a useful corrective to selective attention. The blood caught my eye, but upon deeper consideration love structures the manuscript more deeply. FB 1118 presents suffering as real, prolonged, and bodily; yet equally and importantly, it also insists that suffering will eventually open out toward mercy, grace, peace, life, and joy. Taken as a whole, this is not a faith obsessed with pain. It is a positive Catholic faith confident that pain can be remembered, offered, and ultimately transformed.

METHOD:

A complete transcription of Innsbruck FB 1118—including prayers, rubrics, reflections, and short treatises—was rendered into English with the assistance of Google Translate in July 2026. Passages central to my analysis were subsequently checked against the German transcription and revised as needed by the author.

The resulting English text served as the basis for this exploratory vocabulary assessment, in part because machine translation regularizes variant spellings of the Alemannic original. To be clear, the frequencies reported here describe the vocabulary of the translated text rather than providing a precise lexical analysis of the German original.

The translated text was uploaded to the word-cloud generator WordArt, with common stop words excluded. Word frequencies were then reviewed manually, with particular attention to emotionally charged vocabulary and to the relative prominence of words associated with suffering, sin, mercy, love, grace, peace, and joy. The results are intended as a broad indication of the manuscript’s devotional emphasis, not as a statistically rigorous linguistic analysis. As a rough cross-check, however, I also reviewed frequencies in the German transcription after consolidating obvious spelling variants; this produced the same broad pattern, with vocabulary of love, relationship, petition, salvation, and interior life appearing prominently alongside terms for suffering and death.

RELATED POSTS

Seven Times a Day: Prayer as Humane Practice:What did medieval prayerbooks actually ask their readers to do? This post explores repeated daily prayer in the Thalbach sisters' prayerbook and argues that devotion was built through small, regular acts of return rather than extraordinary spiritual experiences. A perfect companion to this look at the vocabulary of prayer. 
Counting Drop Caps: What a Prayerbook's Initials Reveal about the Divine Office Words are only one way a prayerbook communicates. Here I examine how large initials, layout, and page design quietly reveal the devotional priorities of a medieval community, showing that manuscripts guide prayer visually as well as verbally. 
Sooner or Later It All Gets Done: How History Emerges from Small Details Why spend so much time counting words, tracing tabs, or studying repeated prayers? This reflection explains how seemingly insignificant details accumulate into meaningful historical evidence—and why patient, close attention often changes what we think we know about the medieval past. 

Passion, Pain, and the Work of Prayer

Fifteenth-century prayer could, we have long known, center its attention on the more graphic elements of the Passion. Such imagery permeates certain kinds of prayerbooks, centering the darker side of the emotive wheel – pain, despair, angst, upheaval – as both warning and explanation, and I’ll come back to both of those elements. This Passion-based prayer is purposeful, designed to produce several kinds of somatic empathy.

First, it makes suffering hard to abbreviate. The reader must remain with particular blows, wounds, bodily positions, and losses. Not only does the prayer-cycle spend time rehearsing details, it does so in ways that are multi-sensory – the sight of the passion instruments one kind of signal to the reader, the sounds of cries (schrayen) and shouts, the texture of cloth or of wood evoked, and later the tang of vinegar or the metalic odor of spilled blood each calling for a sensory memory of the here-and-now to be repurposed to this form of cultural remembering. Matins becomes a time to rehearse Christ’s treatment as a criminal, the crowd surging around

with swords and clubs, shouting and terrifying visages; seized in fearful panic, captured and bound with covered face, led along rough paths amidst abusive words and blows [mit schwertern vnd knüttel gesuͦcht geschraÿ vnd erschrockenlich gesicht weiblichen ir vngestumme forcht erschrocken begriffen vnd gebunden mit verdecktem antlit durch scharpff weg gefirt mit laster worten vnd straichen bekuͦm...]

Things and sounds, touch and texture, motion and mortality: these elements expand from narrative to somatic experience. Which leads us to function.

In using such somatic details, such a prayer recruits the reader’s own body: her heart, limbs, tears, her knowledge of pain, fear, and exhaustion – all of these become instruments of meditation. The evocation of “spittle, blows, and filth,” the familiar unpleasantnesses of her present day, become through their function of opposites a way of understanding the “form … fairer than that of all the children of men.” [jn din antlit verspugt mit spaichel vnd schlegen vnd trächern begossen Du schone gestalt für all sün der mensche…] The tangible and familiar helps to frame out the space of the unfamiliar wonder of this miraculous story.

Such details help to convert empathy into action. The reader does not merely feel sorry for Christ; she uses recollected suffering to petition for forgiveness, a soul’s release, protection, or transformation. This is built into the structure of the Ermahnung; an early exhortation – I call upon you to remember – creates a dialogic space between the speaker and the divine. Their joint experience through guided recall of a narrative of suffering and redemption is then directly invoked as a motivation for future care. The framing lays out the logic of the requested action: “because you once did this, will you now do that?”

But it also hinges on the prayer-giver’s own involvement in this process. Because *she* has entered into this scene, with its dark intensity, its blood and its pain, she too has shared in the Passion experience. During her articulation of the Hours, she asks that this willing participation be enhanced – that she become “prepared to endure—not merely suffer, but with ardent longing—all Your trials and even death for Your sake.” (vnd allen dine pingungan vnd och den tod sy berait nit allain zeliden). In other words, this prayer format with its graphic and sometimes gory details can usefully complicate the word “empathy.” The goal is not necessarily modern emotional identification—“I can imagine how he felt”—but devotional conformity, compassionate participation, and the activation of Christ’s suffering as salvific currency.

Moving further into the manuscript, the 33 Ermanung (aka 33 Miserere) call up the kind of details that provoke my “eww” reflex. (Content warning for the remaining paragraphs – gruesome imagery included.) Here again, the blood and gore has a function, but these details may actually press against the too-easy “somatic empathy” explanation.

Here’s a bit of what the prayer says:

Then they seized you and stripped off your garments, and bound you to a massive pillar—so large that your arms could not reach around it. Then they took ropes and bound your holy hands to it, and pulled so hard that the blood forced its way out from under your fingernails [dz ſy dich do nomēd vnd dir dine claider ab zu: gend vnd bundend dich an ain stammne sul die wz groß daz dir dine arm nit darvmb mochtend geraichen do nomen̅s sy saͤiler vnd bundentz dir an dine gottlichen hend vnd zugend als ser dz daz blut zu den negeln vßtrang...]

Imagining the pinning of the limbs so hard that the skin ruptures and the fingernails become bloody from mere pressure strikes me as being disturbingly akin to a scene out of a horror movie. That kind of graphic detail asks us to do more than just invoke our own deflective shielding. It asks us to consider:

• Whether pain must be imaginable to be devotionally useful. This fingernail detail is so hyper-specific that it forces the reader to test the limits of bodily imagination. Can she feel pressure, constriction, throbbing, skin-rupture? The prayer here doesn’t just report suffering; it engineers an attempt to simulate it through imaginative reconstruction.

• Whether plausibility even matters. Blood forced from beneath the fingernails is probably not medically exact, but anatomical accuracy isn’t the point. The image translates the invisible extremity of Christ’s experience into a bodily sign that the reader herself can grasp. Its truth is more affective (or perhaps theological) than forensic.

• Whose body supplies the knowledge. Fingernail pain is intimate and commonplace in a way that crucifixion is not. (Yes, I’ve had the hammer experience; haven’t you?) The prayer bridges historical distance by using a vulnerable bodily site the reader already knows. Small pain becomes the imaginative entrance into unthinkable pain.

• How excess functions. The detail exceeds what is needed to identify a scene of scourging or restraint. That excess functions as a mechanism for prayer. If ordinary language cannot adequately represent Christ’s suffering, the prayer can escalate until the body itself appears to exceed its limits. Just as opposites taught the reader understanding in one context, exaggeration does in another.

• Whether the detail implicates the reader as well as aligning her with Christ. This is a critical question, since these prayers often move from “they did this to you” toward “you endured this for us” and its tag-along admission: “because of our sins.” Fingernail blood can therefore produce an unstable identification: the reader is compassionate witness, intended beneficiary, and indirectly one of the causes of the suffering.

In other words, these details of blood and pain ask us to consider not only how pain is shared, but how it is made credible, excessive, memorable, and morally implicating. The reader is invited to feel with Christ, but also to confront the uncomfortable fact that she occupies several places in the scene at once: witness, beneficiary, petitioner—and cause.

I mentioned in a previous post the importance to the manuscript’s rubricator of the kind of prayer-work such scenes invoke. The rubric says the brief Ermanungen should be expanded through meditation because the deeper one enters the Passion, the more unfathomable it becomes. To the world in which this prayerbook was copied, vivid elaboration is not incidental stylistic excess; it is part of the intended practice.

Gruesomeness, in other words, can be functional. It keeps the Passion from collapsing into an overly-familiar theological shorthand. It makes suffering available for repeated acts of memory, compassion, and intercession. The bloody fingernails matter because they resist abbreviation. They prevent “Christ suffered” from becoming a phrase one can recognize without bothering to enter. I paused over transcribing that particularly passage, and I’ll bet the Thalbach sister reading this prayer did too. It’s a moment of discomfort just to imagine that scene with all its sensorial cues.

And that, I believe, is the point of such details. Blood was supposed to slow the reader down until doctrine became scene, scene became sensation, and sensation became prayer.

RESOURCES

Thalbach prayerbook: Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum, Cod. FB 1118, Gebete und Betrachtungen, copied (in part) in 1489.

Related posts: 

How Long is a Long Prayer? Medieval prayerbooks could ask readers to stay with a devotion far longer than we might expect. This post looks at what “long” prayer meant in practice—and what such length tells us about attention, repetition, and the work of prayer.

Practicing Death: The “Seven Last Words” at Thalbach: How did medieval women pray with Christ’s final words from the Cross? Looks at the Seven Last Words as a way of entering the Passion slowly, imaginatively, and personally.

An Indulgence Prayer for Mary of Swords: Centers on the Seven Sorrows of Mary to show how devotion to the Passion could move through the Mother of Christ. We don't simply observing her grief, but ask to share in it and to be spiritually changed by it. 

A Sixteenth-Century Segen for the Mass, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2 — Christ’s wounds, blood, hands, and feet are not just remembered here; they are called upon for protection. This unusual prayer shows how vivid Passion imagery could become something active in everyday devotional life. 

 

Counting Drop Caps: What a Prayerbook’s Initials Reveal about the Divine Office

One of the small, slightly ridiculous things I sometimes do in the archive is count the lines in decorative initials – the enlarged “drop caps” that begin sections of text.

Example of a drop cap "H" for "Herr" (spelled "Her" by this scribe):Her du hast gesegnet den ertrich, du hast hin gekert die gefencknus Jacobs (Ps 84/85: Benedixisti Domine terram tuam, avertisti captivitatem Jacob.) From Prime, Bregenz VLB, fol 50v.

Two lines. Three lines. Occasionally six.

If you’ve never spent time staring at an early modern prayerbook, this may sound like the sort of scholarly detail that proves that historians have too much time on their hands.

But sometimes those tiny details tell us something important.

Recently I went through the Office of the Virgin in a sixteenth-century German prayerbook from the Lake Constance region and tagged every decorated initial. Not just whether there was an initial, but how large it was: two lines, three lines, sometimes a larger marginal initial. I also recorded the genre of the text that followed – psalm, antiphon, collect, hymn, and so on.

In other words: I counted them.

Every. Single. One.

The result is the sort of table that delights the inner nerd.

	Total	Total Larger Caps	3-line (or more)	2-line	Includes Latin incipit
TOTALS	117	92	29	63	41
Psalm	37	34	17	17	28
Antiphon	26	20	3	17	5
Collect	14	14	3	11	4
Chapters / lessons	10	8	3	5	1
Ymnus	7	6	1	5	1
Other	3	5	2	3	1
Responsories	3	3	0	3	1
Versicle	17	2	0	2	0

Table 1. Raw counts of decorated initials by genre in the Office of the Virgin from Bregenz VLB Hs 17, copied by Scribe 2. Before interpretation, the numbers simply show how often each type of text is introduced with enhanced initials.

At this stage the numbers are just numbers. We’ve known for years that manuscripts use two-line and three-line initials as a kind of visual hierarchy (Hughes MMMO). Two-line initials mark many items—antiphons, collects, and psalms. But the three-line initials cluster strongly around psalms, and around the structural openings of the Hours.

To make the pattern easier to see, I reorganized the data and highlighted three clusters:

·         Yellow: Psalms

·         Orange: Musical genres (antiphons, hymns, responsories)

·         Blue: Collects

	Total	Total Larger Caps	% 3-line	% 2-line	Latin incipit
TOTALS	117	92	25%	54%	41
Psalm	37	34	46%	46%	28
Antiphon	26	20	12%	65%	5
Collect	14	14	21%	79%	4
Chapters / lessons	10	8	30%	50%	1
Ymnus	7	6	14%	71%	1
Other	5	5	40%	60%	1
Responsories	3	3	0%	100%	1
Versicle	17	2	0%	12%	0

Table 2. Percentages of each genre marked by enhanced initials. Converting the raw counts into proportions reveals the manuscript’s visual hierarchy: psalms (yellow) receive enhanced initials most frequently, while musical texts (orange) and collects (blue) are marked but less often emphasized.

Once the colors are added, the structure of the Office jumps out immediately.

The psalms dominate the enhanced initials. They receive the largest and most frequent decorative emphasis. Visually, they anchor the page.

The musical genres, by contrast – antiphons and hymns – are consistently marked but rarely elevated to the highest level of prominence. They are clearly signposted, but not treated as the structural core.

The collects occupy an interesting middle position. They are marked reliably and occasionally emphasized, suggesting that the scribe saw them as moments of liturgical articulation – points where the flow of psalmody gathers into a focused prayer.

Put together, the manuscript’s visual system reflects a three-part hierarchy of the Office:

·         Psalms as the structural backbone

·         Musical texts as framing elements

·         Collects as moments of devotional focus

This is interesting, and maybe even a bit disconcerting, because if you ask a modern musicologist what matters most in the Office, the answer is often the antiphons. Those are the musically distinctive parts. They carry the chant melodies that change from feast to feast. They are where the repertoire becomes specific.

But this prayerbook suggests that the Thalbach sisters who used it experienced the Office somewhat differently.

For them, the antiphons were important – but the psalms were the real center of gravity. Psalms structured the Hours. They carried the devotional weight. They were the texts that deserved the most visual attention on the page. And, of course, they were the first texts that novices would have learned – the most familiar part of the Latin liturgy. The heavy presence of Latin incipits for the psalms – and the relative paucity of those labels for other genres – reinforces their importance to the Sisters whose book this was.

In other words, the page layout quietly encodes that understanding of the centrality of psalmody. The decorative hierarchy mirrors the liturgical one, our musical longing notwithstanding.

Which is why counting the lines in drop caps – two lines, three lines, occasionally six—turns out not to be ridiculous after all.

WORKS CITED

Bregenz, VLB Hs 17, a Thalbach Sister's Prayerbook from the 16th century

Hughes, Andrew. Medieval Manuscripts for Mass and Office: A Guide to their Organization and Terminology. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 1995/r2017.

 

 

Total

Total Larger Caps

3-line (or more)

2-line

Includes Latin incipit

TOTALS

117

92

29

63

41

Psalm

37

34

17

17

28

Antiphon

26

20

3

17

5

Collect

14

14

3

11

4

Chapters / lessons

10

8

3

5

1

Ymnus

7

6

1

5

1

Other

3

5

2

3

1

Responsories

3

3

0

3

1

Versicle

17

2

0

2

0

 

Total

Total Larger Caps

% 3-line

% 2-line

Latin incipit

TOTALS

117

92

25%

54%

41

Psalm

37

34

46%

46%

28

Antiphon

26

20

12%

65%

5

Collect

14

14

21%

79%

4

Chapters / lessons

10

8

30%

50%

1

Ymnus

7

6

14%

71%

1

Other

5

5

40%

60%

1

Responsories

3

3

0%

100%

1

Versicle

17

2

0%

12%

0