Seven Times a Day: Prayer as Humane Practice

One of the things that shows up again and again in early devotional books is instruction that feels, at first glance, almost excessive.

“…und bett das gebet ze vii malen ain tag… also an den vii tagen…”
(“…and pray the prayer seven times in one day… and so across the seven days…”)

Say this prayer seven times.
Do this (described action) for seven days.
Add seven Ave Marias.
Repeat it again tomorrow.

And again.

If you’ve never spent time with this kind of prayerbook material, it can feel like a kind of spiritual overkill. Surely once would do? Doesn’t sincerity matter more than counting?

But the more time I spend with these books, the more I think that repetition is not the excess. It’s the point.

In one section I’ve been working through recently, the instructions are precise and insistent: the prayer is to be performed multiple times a day, across a structured sequence of days, with additional prayers layered in. It is not simply said – it is kept in mind as active practice. Maintained. Carried forward.

“wer dis nachgeschriben gebett ain gantzes iar spricht…”
(“whoever says this written prayer for a whole year…”)

What’s going on here is not just devotion. It’s a kind of sacred timekeeping. Repetition, in this context, does something very particular: it organizes the day. It creates a rhythm that the body can learn: Stand. Kneel. Speak. Repeat. Rinse and repeat tomorrow.

“…sprich vii ave maria stend und knüw…”
(“…say seven Ave Maria, standing and kneeling…”)

These actions sculpt reliability, less by adding than by uncovering. (I’m thinking here of Michelangelo, releasing the sculpture from the stone.) Coming back to the same kind of prayer hones the inner person in an act of “social becoming,” crafting a prayer-centered persona which is the reader’s presumed ideal.

This matters because late medieval devotion – especially outside strictly regulated liturgical settings – has a problem to solve. How do you ensure that prayer actually happens? Not once, not in a moment of crisis, but consistently, over time?

Repetition is one answer. It’s the medieval equivalent of habit-stacking.

Not because people are forgetful (though they are), and not because God needs reminding (He does not), but because *practice needs structure*. A prayer said once is an event. A prayer said seven times a day becomes a habit. A prayer repeated across days becomes part of the fabric of life.

There’s also a sonic dimension to this that I don’t think we pay enough attention to. A single utterance disappears almost as soon as it is spoken. But repetition accumulates. It lingers. It fills space – not just physically, but socially. If multiple people are engaged in similar cycles of prayer, the result is not isolated sound, but patterned sound.

You start to get something like a devotional soundscape.

And that soundscape? Not grand or monumental. It’s small-scale, iterative, almost backgrounded. But it is persistent. It marks time as surely as bells do – just on a different register.

Repetition also does something else: it redistributes effort. If a single, perfectly attentive prayer is hard to sustain (and it is), then repetition allows for fluctuation. Some iterations will be distracted. Some will be rushed. Some will “land.” The concern is real; the scribe-compiler repeatedly reminds the reader that attitude matters:

“…ob mit andacht…”
(“…if [it is done] with devotion…”)

Attention and devotion can wax and wane; structured prayer – cycles of repetition – absorbs that variation so the cumulative effort preserves the necessary attitude.

I find this to be a very humane system. It doesn’t require perfection. It only requires return.

And then there’s the number itself: seven. Seven days. Seven repetitions. Seven Ave Maria.

This is not arbitrary, of course. It resonates with biblical time (creation, completion), with liturgical cycles, with long-standing symbolic structures. But in practice, it also functions as a manageable unit. Neither endless nor trivial. Just enough to feel like something has been properly fulfilled.

Enough to count.

“…so wirstu erhört und erlöst uff aller dinen not…”
(“…then you will be heard and released from all your need…”)

So when we see these instructions – repeat this prayer seven times a day, for seven days – it’s tempting to read them as quantitative, even mechanical.

But I’m increasingly convinced that what’s at stake here is not quantity, but persistence.

These repeated forms take something inherently fleeting – spoken prayer – and embed it within a set of temporal and bodily structures that allow it to endure: across the day, across the week, across the community that performs it.

These forms do so not by heightening a single utterance, but by distributing it.

Repetition, in sum, is not excess. It is a technology for making prayer last.

---

WORKS CITED

All prayer excerpts come from VLB Hs 17, the Thalbach Sister’s Prayerbook, fols. 142-149. This section contains a prayer for sorrow and worry; the prayer "Stand auf"; a Prayer of St Bernard; the Prayer “In gotes namen”; a wonky version of the Golden Crown Prayer; a prayer in four sections to ULF (Mary) to be said on Fridays; a morning greeting to the ULF; and a prayer to Christ, O her jesu christe des ůbersten vatters sun.

Discovering Johannes Nider on the fly: A binding fragment from Thalbach

Every archival journey has its moments of mystery. One of those dropped in my lap this week. Late last year, one of the Thalbach library volumes was digitized (yay!), and made its way to my attention thanks to a very helpful librarian. (Andrea Kollinger of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum is my “thank you” of the week!)

The volume itself has now entered my “to-do” stack, but as a curious nerd, I did have to open the digital link and glance at the volume to see what state it was in.

And, happily for me, it had paste-down flyleaves – some old folio something-or-other in dense Latin with all those chewy abbreviations that allow for efficient text rendition, if not always the most fluent reading.

Front Flyleaf, GNM 22273

The type is the dense, angular Gothic used in many incunable theological folios – compact, heavily abbreviated, and clearly meant for readers already fluent in the conventions of scholastic Latin.

Okay, I love a challenge. And it’s spring break, so I can play with my material if I want to, right? And so I launched a journey of more hours than it should have been.

A few words jumped out at me immediately: scandalum, peccatum, ignorans. Clearly in the theology orbit. But what theology, and from where?

This kind of work is always a mixture of frustrating and tantalizing. As you can see from the image, the page was trimmed down – just half the folio sheet – and parts of the first column had been effaced at some point in the book’s journey. So one winds up with fragments of a fragment to work from, and a chance to practice one’s transcription skills.

A quick flip to the back fly showed more of the same.

Back Flyleaf, GNM 22273

Still two columns, no helpful headers (sigh), no big paragraph marks or drop caps or other orientation marks. Well, there’s that marginal “E.” So, probably two fragments from the same folio book, and some kind of marginal reference system. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to notice the I/J in the margin of the front fly. I was distracted by the Latin.)

The text was organized as a scholastic discussion: questions introduced with phrases like An autem… and Dubitat secundo…, followed by tightly argued distinctions. Elsewhere the text referred to examples from Scripture – including the familiar Pauline warning about food that might cause a weaker Christian to stumble.

All of that pointed toward a very specific intellectual world: the dense, systematic moral theology taught in late-medieval universities and religious orders. The fragment clearly belonged to a large theological folio, the kind of book used for teaching and preaching rather than private devotion. But which one?

That question turned out to be the beginning of a small detective story.

DETERMINING CONTENT

The first step with a fragment like this is simply to slow down and read what survives. Even when the page is incomplete, scholastic texts tend to give themselves away through their habits: recurring vocabulary, familiar examples, and the logical scaffolding of argument.

In this case, several phrases began to stand out as I worked through the abbreviations. The text discussed “scandalum activum” and “scandalum passivum”, distinguishing between the act of leading another person into sin and the act of taking scandal from something done by another. It cited the Pauline warning: “Si propter cibum frater tuus contristatur, iam non secundum caritatem ambulas” – if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking according to charity. There was also the classic example about eating meat sacrificed to idols in front of weaker Christians.

If that sounds familiar, it should. These are standard examples in the medieval theological discussion of scandal, a topic that runs through the moral theology tradition descending from Thomas Aquinas. The fragment also asked a question about ignorance – “Cum omissio sciendi sit peccatum…” – and went on to discuss when failing to know something might itself be sinful. Again, very much in the Thomistic moral-theology orbit.

The structure reinforced that impression. There were a couple of slightly larger cue words, “An autem,” and “Dubitat,” which signaled the start of a formal question, followed by argument and resolution. And those marginal letters fitted with this type of writing: best guess was a scholastic teaching text, the kind used in classrooms and by preachers preparing sermons. Maybe not the kind of devotional reading that was most common in the Thalbach library, but not completely out of character either.

So far, so good. But where to go from here? “Scholastic teaching text” covers a very large swath of early printed books, and I do mean very large. The later Middle Ages produced a small mountain of theological compendia, and many of them summarized or adapted Aquinas. Some were organized by topics such as sin or virtue; others followed the Ten Commandments; still others took the form of alphabetical confessor’s manuals. All of them could look, at first glance, rather like this fragment.

My first guesses followed that logic. Perhaps the leaf came from a Dominican moral-theology summa such as the widely printed works associated with Antoninus of Florence. Or from another scholastic digest circulating in the late fifteenth century. The typography – that dense two-column Gothic type I mentioned above – certainly suggested a large theological folio of the incunable period. And Fechter (Inkunabeln) noted only that it was a fragment of a moral-theological text. Hmmm, that’s not very specific.

But guesses only get you so far. At some point, one has to start matching words on the page with words in actual books. And that meant turning the fragment’s surviving phrases into search clues and seeing where they led.

BREAKTHROUGH!

This is where the detective work became a little more methodical. With fragments, the trick is to find a phrase distinctive enough to search, but not so damaged by abbreviations that it disappears in transcription. Scholastic Latin can actually be helpful here: its formulas repeat across texts, but the exact phrasing often remains recognizable.

One of the lines that caught my eye early on was the question about ignorance: “Cum omissio sciendi sit peccatum…” Another promising lead was the formulation of the problem of scandal: “An autem scandalum sit speciale peccatum vel generale.” These phrases were long enough to be distinctive, but common enough in moral-theological discussions that they might turn up somewhere searchable.

So I started doing what scholars increasingly do with fragments: turning bits of Latin into search strings and seeing what the digitized book world would give back.

At first, the results pointed broadly in the direction I expected: Thomistic moral theology, discussions of scandal, questions about ignorance and culpability. But then one of the searches landed on something more specific – a passage that looked suspiciously familiar, not just in topic but in the sequence of arguments.

The text belonged to the Dominican theologian Johannes Nider, in his Praeceptorium divinae legis (often also called the Expositio Decalogi). Nider organized this work as a commentary on the Ten Commandments, and within each commandment he developed a series of scholastic questions about moral life. When I looked more closely, the match became unmistakable.

NERD ALERT: When I’m working with a just-matched text, I work forward and backward from my new-found phrase. Particularly given all of the abbreviations in my flyleaf fragments, it’s helpful to work through the more spelled-out text and do the matching. Being a color nerd, I do that by taking images of the text and its match, and highlighting the match – first match is always in yellow in my process – to see the extent of the parallel. This is helpful – earlier in the research journey I’d actually matched a passage to Aquinas himself, but that moment of joy soon dissipated as I realized that unless someone’s paraphrase had gotten out of hand, it was actually a passage citing Aquinas as authority, and not an actual ID to my text. Patience is a virtue. When I did get a hit, the yellow extended backwards, and backwards again across a couple of different screenshots. We definitely had a match.

Also in nerd-dom: when I moved to the back fly, I was cautiously optimistic that I might have a single folio sheet cut into two pieces, but I use a different highlighting (blue) until I match the sections. That was a no-go; I did find the text of the back fly in the same book, but it was NOT in the same section – it was several gatherings away.

The fragment from the front flyleaf corresponds to Nider’s Praeceptum Nonum, chapter III, discussing the nature of scandal. The back flyleaf comes from Praeceptum Quintum, chapter XIII, dealing with related moral questions about ignorance and culpability. In other words, both scraps derive from the same book – a large scholastic folio – even though they preserve pieces from different parts of it.

That also explains why the fragments look the way they do. The binder who reused the pages was not preserving a coherent leaf, but simply cutting up a worn-out theological volume and using the pieces where they were structurally useful. What survives in the binding is therefore not a single continuous page, but two scraps from different leaves of the same discarded book. I can live with that.

Once the identification clicked, the rest of the puzzle fell into place. The typography matches what we would expect for an incunable or very early sixteenth-century printing of Nider’s work: dense two-column Gothic type, heavy abbreviations, and just enough typographic cues – An autem, Dubitat – to guide the reader through the scholastic argument. What had looked at first like an anonymous piece of dense Latin suddenly resolved itself into a recognizable voice from the late medieval Dominican-orbit classroom.

WHAT’S THIS DOING AT THALBACH?

Identifying the fragment raises the question: who was Johannes Nider, and what would a book like this have meant in the world around Thalbach?

Johannes Nider (c. 1380–1438) was a Dominican reformer, university teacher, and prolific writer. His works circulated widely across fifteenth-century Europe, and – importantly – had an influence outside of the Dominican Order. In the present day, he’s most famous for the Formicarius, since witch trials are an evergreen source of fascination. (For the record, the Praeceptorium is NOT about witches! And I suspect Nider might be disappointed that “witch trials” rather than “intellectual breadth and prowess” became his claim to fame, but maybe that’s just me.)

Nider taught theology at Vienna and Basel and was closely connected to the reform movements within the Dominican Order and, by extension, with the broader currents of ecclesiastical reform in the decades surrounding the Council of Basel. His writings were practical as well as intellectual, meant to help clergy and religious communities think clearly about the moral and pastoral problems of Christian life.

The Praeceptorium divinae legis belongs squarely in that world of applied theology. It is organized as an exposition of the Ten Commandments, and within each commandment Nider develops a sequence of scholastic questions: what constitutes sin, what causes moral harm, when ignorance excuses responsibility, when it does not. The text is deeply shaped by the theological tradition of Thomas Aquinas, but its purpose is not simply academic commentary. Works like this functioned as teaching tools, helping preachers, confessors, and monastics in general reason through the moral complexities they encountered in pastoral care.

In other words, this was not a devotional book for private reading. It was a working manual for theological thinking – the sort of book used in classrooms, study circles, or by clergy preparing sermons and confessional guidance.

That context makes the fragment especially interesting for Thalbach. The library there, as far as we can reconstruct it, leaned heavily toward vernacular devotional literature: prayerbooks, saints’ lives, sermons, and spiritual reflections. A dense Latin scholastic folio like Nider’s stands somewhat apart from that landscape. It represents the learned theological infrastructure that supported the devotional world we see more clearly in the surviving books.

In practice, a text like the Praeceptorium could have been used by the clerical figures connected with the community – chaplains, confessors, visiting preachers – or perhaps even educated members of the religious house itself, since the sisters read enough to acquire a quite respectable-sized library. The sisters of Thalbach did not live in an intellectual vacuum; their devotional life was shaped by pastoral instruction, preaching, and sacramental guidance that drew on exactly this kind of moral theology. To the sisters, Nider’s discussions of scandal, ignorance, and responsibility would not have been abstract puzzles. Rather, they represent attempts to map the moral terrain of everyday Christian life: how one’s actions affect others, when a mistake becomes a sin, how responsibility is understood.

Moreover, thanks to the always-helpful Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, we know from surviving incunables that Nider’s Praeceptorium was owned by at least fourteen Franciscan houses, so Thalbach’s connection to the book is not an anomaly, but rather part of a broader pattern in the circulation of Nider’s ideas. (https://www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de/, known familiarly as GW.)

Seen from that perspective, the fragment becomes more than a curiosity tucked into a binding. It offers a small glimpse of the intellectual toolkit of a late-medieval religious community.

NERDS WANT TO KNOW

You aren’t really done with an incunable identification, of course, until you know when and where the item was published. Here’s where a bit of brute force comes in. Since the typeface looked early (all those angles, and the heavy abbreviation), I was pretty sure the copy was late 15^th century. For that, the GW is the place to start. Look up the author, click through to the list of published works, and then just plow through the printed candidates until you get a match. I decided to use the front fly (Praeceptum Nonum, chapter III) simply because it was close enough to the volume’s end to make navigating relatively easy. Yes, it meant I was checking bottom-of-page and end-of-line, but that’s just as good as beginnings when you’re looking for a typographical match. I made myself a quick cheat-sheet card with the text for the bottom of the two columns and clicked through editions. It’s easy to eliminate the single-column printings, and eventually (TAH-DAH!) I found it. My Thalbach fragments (and they are mine, now that I’ve spent this much time on them!) turn out to be pages from the Basel printing of 1481: M26911 Nider, Johannes: Praeceptorium divinae legis. Basel: [Johann Amerbach], 1481. 2°:

Comparison 1 of Darmstadt and Thalbach copies of Nider's Praeceporium

Starts and ends of lines match; the larger type for “Dubitat'” is a confirmation; the marginal I/J is there. The Darmstadt copy got some rubricating that the Thalbach version lacks, but those kinds of differences are post-production. Confirmation of the shared identity comes with the back flyleaves:

Comparison 2 of Darmstadt and Thalbach copies of Nider's Praeceporium

Again, larger type for “An autem”; a shared marginal letter; starts and ends of lines align; abbreviations are shared: BING BING BING we have a match!

WHY IN THE FLY?

And then, of course, we need to grapple with the afterlife of the book itself. By the sixteenth century, works like Nider’s were gradually superseded by newer theological manuals. Not only do Nider editions drop off precipitously at the turn of the 16^th century, the large scholastic folio volumes also seem to go out of style. Thus, these “old fashioned” volumes became expendable, especially in smaller libraries. It’s a case of “use then re-use”: when binders needed sturdy paper to reinforce a book’s spine or flyleaves, an old theological volume provided excellent raw material. The leaves that once carried Nider’s careful distinctions about scandal and ignorance were cut up, pasted into a binding, and sat around as structural supports for a quite different text doing structural work for centuries.

The fragments from Nider’s book now serve as the pastedown flyleaves of a much smaller devotional work: Ludwig Moser’s Bereitung zum heiligen Sakrament, printed in Basel around 1493 by Michael Furter. This little octavo book offers preparation, in German, for receiving the Eucharist—the kind of spiritual guidance meant for personal devotion and practical religious life. Different in language, different in audience, and physically different too: Nider’s work circulated in large folio volumes, while Moser’s book is a compact octavo, designed to be handled and read easily. The two texts almost illustrate a miniature map of late-medieval religious culture. On the one hand, we find the scholastic theology of the university and the religious orders, where moral problems are dissected through carefully structured questions and distinctions. On the other hand, we have the vernacular devotional literature that translated those theological concerns into forms accessible to a wider religious readership.

Perhaps this should serve as a cautionary tale. We tend to look at Thalbach’s intellectual world from the perspective of the inventory of its book collection upon dissolution in 1783 (Fechter, Neuhauser). Of course, the books listed there do provide a wonderful glimpse into the interests and intellectual habits of the sisters. But those are the books that made it through and survived.

Piecing together a history that includes the books that “didn’t make it” – those carved up into flyleaf fragments, those mentioned only in archival records, those cut into tiny binding scraps to hold other books together – adds important details to the Thalbach story. It shows us that intellectual tastes change: that changes of liturgical practice or scholastic habits could render books obsolete. But those fragments also tell us that once-upon-a-time, Thalbach readers too were interested in the world of scholastic considerations of how best to live a moral life.

As resources such as the GW and https://fragmentarium.ms/ have made obvious, fragments are not merely accidents of survival. They serve as valuable witnesses to the circulation of texts and ideas. In other words, even a hard-to-decipher bit of Latin text on a flyleaf can tell us something important about the intellectual worlds of the past.

WORKS CITED

GNM 22273: Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Inc. 22273: Ludwig Moser: Bereitung zum heiligen Sakrament. [Basel: Michael Furter, um 1493]. 8°. https://dlib.gnm.de/item/8Inc22273. A Thalbach incunable.

GW M26911: Nider, Johannes: Praeceptorium divinae legis. Basel: [Johann Amerbach], 1481. 2° (Darmstadt exemplar inc-iv-420, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:tuda-tudigit-23203)

Fechter, Walter. “Inkunabeln aus Thalbacher Besitz.” Biblos 25 (1976): 233–42.

Fechter, Walter. “Eine Thalbacher Handschrift mit Eckhart-Predigten, Exzerpten aus Seuse, dem ps.-albertischen 'Paradisus animae' und anderem in Pavia,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 103 (1974): 311–33.

Fechter, Walter. “Thalbacher Handschriften im Ferdinandeum Innsbruck.” Codices manuscripti 2 (1976): 113-117

Neuhauser, Walter. “Der Thalbacher Übergabekatalog von 1783.” In: Gedenkschrift Eberhard Tiefenthaler, ed. by Helmut Meusburger, Thomas Feurstein. Graz: Neugebauer 1996, pp. 88-117; rpt: In libris: Beiträge zur Buch- und Bibliotheksgeschichte Tirols von Walter Neuhauser, ed. Claudia Schretter and Peter Zerlauth. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2010, pp. 311-341.[The Thalbach transfer catalog from 1783 = inventory at the Aufhebung.]

Sooner or Later It All Gets Done: How History Emerges from Small Details

One of the recurring themes in my scholarly life is “lots of little details.” That’s true of many things in life, of course, but this morning I’m struck with its scholarly application. I’m prone to taking account of a lot of bits-of-evidence, the small details that by themselves are trivial but in the big picture add up to something significant. Assuming I’m lucky, of course.

Historians often inherit sources shaped by earlier editors’ priorities, so part of my work has been learning how to ask new questions of familiar materials. Many of our sources with “lots of details” come from the nineteenth century -- Ludwig Rapp and his mastery of parish clerical details in Topographisch-historische Beschreibung is one of my current faves! Wow, what a collector of detail! So truly, local archives and chronicle accounts were edited by folks excited for what the data can show – about war, about politics, about economics. Their questions, however, did not always extend to other kinds of questions, like those about relationships, and households, and famine, and fear.

Thus, even in a place like Bregenz, where the surviving sources were so negatively impacted by war, and invasion, and the predations of time, I love that there are still questions I can ask, and answers in the little details that come from careful consideration of the sources with new questions in mind. I’ve turned up “new” sources on Thalbach, for instance, not by finding actual new documents, but by reading the extant documents for details that didn’t matter to the indexers of past times – payments to and charity for the devout women of the town. Sometimes the clue is as small as a repeated instruction to light a candle at a grave — something no nineteenth-century editor thought worth indexing, but wonderfully delicious for my argument.

And now, I’m plowing my way through prayerbooks, looking for ways in which spirituality is manifest not as treatise but as practice. We have given preference to the authorial voice, particularly those by named authors and/or those approved by the church, for instance. But what is interesting to me is how those sermon-shaped ideas became fixed in these women’s lives – not so much what they *heard* but what they *did* with that spiritual guidance provided to them.

So yes, I’m reading 15^th century prayerbooks for fun and enlightenment. I think these sources can tell us something important – not so much about what these women actually believed, but about what they did as a matter of practice. Actions speak louder than words; prayers, repeated, and copied, and collected, and shared, tell us a lot about how belief became present as part of daily life.

That’s an awful lot of words, of course. Words words words. Oodles and scads of words. 397 folios of words in one case. 120 pages of words in another.

But little by little by little, and sooner or later it all gets done.

Or, as we also say, “every day a little progress.”

That, in the end, is often how historical knowledge grows: not from dramatic discoveries, but from patient attention to what earlier readers overlooked. And spreadsheets. But that’s another post.

WORKS CITED

Image from Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek, Hs 17: a late 16th-century Thalbach prayerbook, fol. 216, "O junckfrow maria ain künigin der himel," marked with a tab in its left-hand margin.

Ludwig Rapp, Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, 5 vols (Brixen: Weger, 1894-1924). I especially love volumes 2 & 3, the Bregenz volumes.

Practicing Death: The “Seven Last Words” at Thalbach

The back-end of the Thalbach prayerbook (ÖNB Cod. 11750, 56v-60r) provides an early modern devotional adaptation of the “Seven Last Words” (Sieben Worte Christi am Kreuz), transformed into a death-bed meditation cycle. This is a localized, pastoralized, and affectively expanded version of a common text-type, rather than a “standard” translation of a single printed source. They all start from the biblical sequence (Luke, John, Matthew) but are freely paraphrased and expanded.

The tradition itself was extremely widespread. As a genre, the Seven Last Words meditation typos predates the Reformation and survives confessionalization pretty well intact, growing and adapting to local belief and its needs. The genre draws on at least three major late medieval/early modern currents. Like much of the Passion meditation literature in general, it promotes imaginative participation in a visually re-enacted passion scene, along with the attached emotional identification and afirst-person response that sees oneself as part of that broader narrative. It fits in too with other ars moriendi texts, in that it emphasizes a readiness for death along with a renunciation of “zeitliche” things. The penitent soul submits to God will, echoing--through an act of will--the Passion as a model (“into your hands I commend myself”). And, it fits with its late 16^th century ethos, a time when structured death prayers and affective piety intermingled as a way of coaching the devout toward a particular kind of religiosity.

The Thalbach version—copied as an addition to the manuscript in a dubious scribal hand and bearing several signs of amateur copying (from letter forms to transcription errors)—is interesting for several reasons. (I give a provisional transcription of the Seventh Word at the end of this post for those interested.)

BIBLICAL ALLUSION: It is typical of post-1500 vernacular adaptations of this sort, in that it boasts a kind of biblical in-fill with a number of loose biblical quotations shaping its language and approach. For instance, the text integrates not just passion narrative, but scriptural allusion. For example, the end of the fifth word brings in the deer of Psalm 42:

• darumb durstet mein Seel nach dir, dem Leben: unnd Gleich wie ein Zürsche eilet, Zu den Wasser brunen, Also Blomiget mein Seel nach dir, das du sie trenkhe mit dem siirssen kranckh de mer ewigen khlarheit, vnd sie behrtest vor dem hellischen durß in Ewigkheit, Amen

• therefore my soul thirsts for you, the living word, and just as a deer hastens to the water springs, so my soul longs for you, that you may quench its thirst with the sweet drink of your eternal clarity, and preserve it from the hellish thirst in eternity. Amen.

• (Psalm 42, NIV: As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. 2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? 3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”)

This text lives in a world shaped by the Psalm’s echo, a strong framing for affective contemplation. Such biblical saturation suggests a deeply grounded reader, someone who could “get” the allusions without citation or further prompting. To my eye, that speaks to Thalbach educational practices; sisters of whatever level were expected to know their psalter intimately.

FIRST PERSON FRAMING ON THE DEATHBED: The text, divided into seven parts, with each part on its own page-or-two, serves as a bit of a how-to guide to walk you through the final hours of life. That process demands a kind of penitential self-examination, common to early modern Catholicism. There is a strong first-person presence in this version of the Seven Last Words, and that is shaped around the actual act of dying, not just a meditation-on-death.

Death is a consistent presence: “meines Todts… Sterben… mein Leiden… meiner Seele… bereit zu sterben” (my death... dying... my suffering... my soul... ready to die). In case the text itself wasn’t a good enough pointer (and it clearly is), the rubric tells us so: den Sterbenden mensch Trostlich (Comforting the dying person). This is devotional literature aimed at actual dying, not general piety.

INTERIORITY: Almost every section moves quickly into a confessional self-assessment: As a sinner, a poor sinner, I recognize my sins, she posits repeated. This is commission, the things she has done that are wrong, but also omission: “ich … wenig guets gethan, darumb ich billich ewige Straffe (I have done little good, therefore I deserve eternal punishment.)

We are seeing here an individualistic interiorization of the need for forgiveness, not a communal experience of death. There’s no collective voice, and no institutional framing. We don’t have the sisters coming to the sound of the clapper; this is death as an act of self identity through a direct encounter, God to soul. It has a lot of parallels with the shift in how Bregenz memoria were constructed, to be honest, but that’s for another (and extensive) bit of writing.

SOCIAL ETHICS OF DYING: She may be considering her interior spiritual needs, but those needs are also manifest as the things she has done to others while in the world. In the Second Word, for instance, she ask forgiveness:

die ich beleidige, zu sünden verursacht habe (whom I have offended, and caused to sin)

So death is framed as a moment of social repair, not only private salvation.

MY TAKE-AWAY:

For me, this modest, messy text is a reminder of why these prayerbooks matter so much. Its theology is not expressed in polished argument, but in repetition, hesitation, and emotional insistence. It shows how the sisters were taught to inhabit their own deaths in advance—through scripture, through penitence, through acts of reconciliation. Read alongside Thalbach’s commemorative practices and memorial networks, it suggests that preparation for death was not only something done for others, but something carefully cultivated within the self. This small addition thus opens a window onto the inner work of memoria: the quiet, disciplined labor of learning how to die well.

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DAS SIBENT WORT / THE SEVENTH WORD:

What follows is a provisional transcription and translation of the Seventh Word, offered to illustrate the tone and structure of the text rather than as a definitive edition. I have lightly normalized the German: vnnd = und, dir außgangen = dir ausgegangen; schopffung = Schöpfung, and so on.

60r das sibent wort Herr Gott vnnd Vatter, Ich bin von die außgangen, durch die schopf: fung in dise welt, Nun aber muß in alles was zeitlich ist, Er lasse vnnd widr zu die komen in dem ewigs reich, denn es nachet die Stundt, vnd ist kost auß mit meinem ellenden vergenkhlich Leben, Doch bin vnuerzogt, den mene seeligkheit stehet in deiner handt, darein ich dir auch mein Armen seel treulich wil be- folchen haben Vnd bin berait zu Sterben, Darumb Laß mich dir aller Liebster vatter, Zu aller Zeit beuolchen sein, vnd wie ich dir utrån, er weckh nich wid om Inngste, tag, mit denen Ausser wollen dich ewigkhlich zu Loben

The Seventh Word Lord God and Father, I have come forth from you through creation into this world. Now, however, I must leave behind everything that is temporal and return to you in the eternal kingdom. For the hour draws near, and my wretched, perishable life is soon at an end. Yet I am not afraid, for my salvation rests in your hand, into which I faithfully commend my poor soul. And I am ready to die. Therefore, let me, most beloved Father, remain entrusted to you at all times. And just as I place my trust in you, do not raise me up again on the Last Day among those who are rejected, but among those who are chosen to praise you eternally.

A 16thc Segen for the Mass, Pt 2

The Thalbach Segen for the Mass

The first half of this Segen – which I posted about last week – establishes its logic through enclosure, accumulation, and analogy: the devotee commends herself into sacred realities, borrows the authority of the Mass, and maps Christ’s body onto her own as a form of protection. Part 2 intensifies this same logic, shifting from verbal placement to embodied action. What was established through words is now reinforced through gesture, orientation, and repetition, as the sign of the cross is deployed to surround the body, bind danger, and authorize protection in motion. 

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PART TWO OF THE SEGEN, "HErr ich bevilch mich dir in alle die heillige wortt die alle Priieſter ſprech"  ÖNB Cod. 11750, fols. 21r-22v (Part 1 is transcribed and translated here). Division into segments reflects editorial assessments; bold is added to highlight structural repetition. Transcription and translation are CC-BY Cynthia Cyrus.

Beth ein vatter vnser vn̅ ein Aue mar[ia] 

           Pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary.

Das heïllig Gottes Creütz [REDCROSS] Jhesu christi seẏ heutt vor mir. [REDCROSS] Vnsers herrn creutz seẏ heutt hinder mir. Vnſers herrn creutz. [REDCROSS] ſei ob mir Vnſers herrn creutz [REDCROSS] sey heut zuͦ den ſeittenn neben mir. Ach Gott gesegne mich heut vnd Jmer bei dem heilligenn fron [REDCROSS] Creütz dagott die marter an leidt durch mich vund aller Chriſtenhait ·

The holy cross of God [REDCROSS] of Jesus Christ be before me today. [REDCROSS] Our Lord's cross be behind me today. Our Lord's cross [REDCROSS] be above me. Our Lord's cross [REDCROSS] be on my sides next to me today. Oh God, bless me today and forever by the holy [REDCROSS] cross, where God endured the suffering for me and all of Christendom.

Nur můs ich als wol geſegnet ſein als der Kelch unnd der wein den ein ieder Priester muß es das er die mass volbringen kan. [REDCROSS] Nur můs ich als war gesegnet sein, als des gutten hern Tobias ſun, do er in frembden landenn was [REDCROSS] Nur mus ich als war geſegnet sein, als dir heillige drei nagell / die Gott durch hend vnnd füess würden geſchlagen

I must be as well blessed as the chalice and the wine that every priest must have so that he can perform the Mass. I must be as truly blessed as the son of the good Lord Tobias, when he was in foreign lands. I must be as truly blessed as the three holy nails that God was struck with through his hands and feet.

Ich beüilch mich in die krafft vnd in die krafft wortt / da gott mensch inn ward. Ich beüilch mich in die fliessende bach vnd schwayss vnnd bluts, so vnnser lieber herr vergossenn hat. Ich beuil mich heut in die seligkeit ich armer sunder, vnd durch die krafft seines Lebendigen Sons gebe nedeiten tods. / Ich beuilch mich heutt in die seligkeit seines heilligen sacraments Ich fleuch heut vnder den schult vnnd vnder den frid, vnnd vnder dz heillig Creitz [22r] Das ſelber durch mich vnnd alle menſchen zuͦ einem Creutz gemacht hat Jch beuil mich heüt vnd allweg in die heillige Driualtigkeit vnſers herrnn Jeſu chriſti vnd in die heilige Senfftmuettigkeit Barmhertzigteit keuschheitt vnser lieben frawen Maria, vnd in die gemainſame aller heiligen.

I commend myself to the power and the word in which God became man. I commend myself to the flowing stream of sweat and blood that our dear Lord shed. I commend myself today to salvation, I poor sinner, and through the power of his living Son, grant me a blessed death. I commend myself today to the salvation of his holy sacrament. I flee today under the protection and under the peace, and under the holy cross which he himself has made into a cross for me and all people. I commend myself today and always to the Holy Trinity of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the holy gentleness, mercy, and chastity of our dear Lady Mary, and to the communion of all saints.

Dz creutz [REDCROSS] vnſers herrn Jeſu chriſti ſei heut mit mir Das [REDCROSS] Creutz vnsers lieben herrn verbind mir aller meiner feinden ſchwert. Das [REDCROSS] Creutz vnsers herrn eroffne mir alles güts Dz [REDCROSS] Creutz vnsers herrn neme von mir alles vbell vnd alle pein des ewigen tods. Nur [REDCROSS] geſegne mich der heillig ſegenn den gott vber sich ynnd alle menschen hatt gebem da gott ſelbs inn beſchaffenn wz.

The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ be with me today. The cross of our dear Lord bind the sword of all my enemies. The cross of our Lord open to me all good things. The cross of our Lord take from me all evil and all the pain of eternal death. May the holy blessing that God gave over himself and all people, in which God himself was created, bless me.

Ich beuil mich heut in die ſiben wort, die gott selbs ſprach an dem heilligen creütz. Ich beuil mich heut in den heilligen frid vnſers hern gesuchristi, der sei mir heut ein anfang vnd einausgang in allen meinen nötten, wo ich Jn der Welltt hinkör

I commend myself today to the seven words that God himself spoke on the holy cross. I commend myself today to the holy peace of our Lord Jesus Christ, may it be for me today a beginning and an end in all my needs, wherever I go in the world.

Nur gelegne mich heut der lieb herr Sannt Johannes in ſeiner keussigheitt. Nur geſegne mich der gut ſant Benedict vor Zauberei, diſe zwen haben gebet vnſern herrn Jeſum chriſtum, Welcher man oder fraw ſchmertzen hat, dz in ſeinem verdiennſt er geſundt werd. O Schmertz dich zerſtrew gott der Sun. O ſchmertz dich zerstrew gott der Heillig Gayſt. Jn dem Namenn gott des Vatters vnnd des Süns vnnd des heilligen Geists. Amen.

May the dear Lord Saint John bless me today in his chastity. May the good Saint Benedict bless me against sorcery; these two prayed to our Lord Jesus Christ, that whoever, man or woman, has pain, may be healed through his merit. O pain, may God the Son scatter you. O pain, may God the Holy Spirit scatter you. In the name of God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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ASSESSMENT

Part 2 opens with formulaic prayer – an Our Father and a Hail Mary – and then immediately shifts register. The prayer stops asking and starts placing. What follows is no longer a petition addressed upward, but a sequence of directional statements that actively organize space around the speaker. Repeated invocations of “Das heilig Gottes Creutz … sey heut vor mir / hinder mir / ob mir / zu den seiten neben mir” (before me, behind me, above me, and to my sides) construct a six-directional enclosure, situating the devotee within a protective field defined by the cross.

This language is not metaphorical. It performs a spatial act. The cross is placed before and behind the body, above it, and on both sides; it creates a perimeter that surrounds rather than adorns. The red crosses marked in the manuscript are not ornamental flourishes, but operative cues. They prompt gesture, orientation, and repetition. They invite the speaker to action -- to trace the cross repeatedly in space, turning the prayer into enacted words that produce protection through kinetic movement.

In this sense, Part 2 takes up and extends the work already begun at the end of the first half of the prayer. There, the speaker mapped herself onto Christ’s body as a way of securing protection; here, that logic is expanded outward. Protection is no longer only anatomical or analogical but locational. The body is not simply aligned with Christ’s wounds or limbs, but physically enclosed within the sign of the cross itself, now rendered as a mobile defensive geometry.

This is characteristic Segen practice. Rather than cultivating inward reassurance, the prayer re-positions the body in sacred space. Safety is achieved not through reflection but through placement – through saying, marking, and standing within a configuration that has been declared protective. Like prayers before the image of Mary, the actions of the praying sister are integral to the prayer itself.

AUTHORIZATION THROUGH ANALOGY AND EQUIVALENCE

The prayer then pivots to a striking rhetorical strategy, signaled by the repeated formula “Nur muß ich als wol gesegnet sein als …” Rather than petitioning for blessing, the speaker asserts a claim to it through a series of carefully chosen comparisons. What follows is not metaphor but equivalence: the devotee aligns herself with persons and objects whose efficacy is already established.

Three such alignments structure this section. First, the speaker claims to be as well blessed as the chalice and the wine required for the priest to complete the Mass. Here, efficacy is functional and liturgical: these objects are blessed not because they are morally exemplary, but because without them the sacramental action cannot occur. Second, she likens herself to Tobias’ son, protected by the Angel Raphael while traveling in foreign lands. This comparison draws on narrative precedent, invoking a scriptural story in which divine protection accompanies movement, risk, and vulnerability. Third, she claims the blessing of the three holy nails of the Crucifixion, instruments rendered powerful through direct contact with Christ’s suffering body.

Taken together, these comparisons establish a logic of borrowed authority. The speaker does not present herself as worthy in her own right, nor does she wait for blessing to be conferred. Instead, she places herself on the same plane as liturgical vessels, biblical travelers, and relic-like instruments – things and figures already known to work. In doing so, the prayer authorizes lay access to protective power by grounding it in recognized sites of efficacy. Blessing here is not requested but claimed, secured through alignment with what has already proven capable of bearing and transmitting divine force.

SALVIC THINGS

The long middle section (Ich beüilch mich…) is a catalog of efficacious media:

• the wort of the Incarnation
• sweat, blood, and flowing fluids
• the sacrament
• peace
• the cross
• the Trinity
• Marian virtues
• the community of saints

This is not redundant piety. It is strategic stacking. Each item is something that:

• has already worked (historically or liturgically)
• can be entered or taken refuge under
• and can be carried by the speaker.

The repeated ich bevilch mich performs self-placement again and again. The speaker repeatedly moves themselves into zones of protection, as though tightening a net. Part one of the prayer set up her spiritual safety; her active remembrance of these holy things thus reinforces that zone.

The cross, of course, has a special status, and the next unit of the Segen re-activates it, showing its kinetic and temporal power through verb choice. It:

• binds enemies’ swords
• opens all good
• removes evil and eternal death

The cross operates metaphorically as weapon, key, and filter. This is apotropaic language in its strongest form: harm is actively restrained, not merely avoided.

COMPLETENESS IN TIME AND IN BINARIES

By invoking the seven last words spoken from the cross, peace as both Anfang and Ausgang (beginning and end), and movement “wherever I go in the world,” the prayer works deliberately to close all remaining gaps. Time is framed from beginning to end, speech is completed in silence, motion is paired with rest, pain with healing, and present vulnerability is extended forward to encompass future death. These paired terms are not incidental but systematic: the Segen seeks to leave no interval, condition, or threshold unguarded. What emerges is a prayer oriented toward completeness rather than intensity, one that aims not at a single moment of relief but at comprehensive coverage across the temporal and existential spectrum.

To this, she adds the saints as targeted intercessors. John, whose chastity aligns with bodily integrity; Benedict, who provides protection against sorcery, mark her world as one of pragmatic sanctity. Saints are invoked for what they do, not who they are. The direct address to pain (O Schmertz…) completes the transition from prayer to command. Pain is not asked to leave. It is told to disperse – twice, under Trinitarian authority.

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THE SEGEN AS PRAYER ACT

Taken together, the second half of this prayer is neither contemplative nor primarily petitionary. It is not oriented toward extended reflection or interior cultivation, but toward use. The prayer functions instead as a ritual technology of protection, assembled from spatial enclosure, authorized comparison, accumulated salvific matter, spoken command, and repeated acts of self-placement. What gives it force is not doctrinal exposition but correct enactment: familiar words spoken in the right order, gestures traced in space, and authoritative figures and objects invoked because they are already known to work.

Read in this way, the prayer aligns closely with recent scholarship that emphasizes the everyday, practice-oriented character of Segen. Ulrike Wagner-Rau, writing in Segen, characterizes blessings as rituals that are “unverbrüchlich angesehen” not because they offer explanation, but because they provide reliable ways of navigating ordinary life through repeated action. Christopher Spehr’s contribution to the same volume likewise underscores the diversity and adaptability of late medieval blessing practices, situating Segen firmly within lived religious routines rather than at the margins of official devotion. To make the point more directly: for our Thalbach sister to be enacting her Segen during and in the presence of the Mass is every bit as standard a sacred and parallel act as is the spoken delivery of requiem masses at a side altar underneath the Fronmass. Simultaneity has its own kind of sacred power.

Although he deals with an earlier 12^th to 14^th century repertoire of such Segen, Derek A. Rivard’s Blessing the World helps clarify what is at stake. His study shows that blessings were shaped by lay needs and aspirations and that their protective focus complemented the Mass’s role in sustaining communal order and integrity. I would argue that the Thalbach Segen operates in precisely this register. Drawing on familiar narratives, liturgical forms, and bodily practices, it translates shared Christian knowledge into ritual action calibrated for vulnerability – illness, danger, movement, and the prospect of death.

What emerges, then, is not an alternative to theology, but a way of living it. This Segen does not seek to explain suffering or risk; it offers a means of addressing them through repeated, embodied practice. Anchored in the Mass yet usable beyond it, the prayer extends ecclesial protection into the rhythms of everyday life. For the Thalbach sisters, and for others who prayed in similar ways, safety was not a matter of abstract belief but of learned habit: something done, enacted, and carried forward through words and gestures that had already proven their worth. At Thalbach, such habits were cultivated collectively – through shared prayerbooks, repeated attendance at the parish Mass, and the parallel rhythms of memoria and devotion – so that protection was not merely personal, but explicitly embedded in the sisters’ communal practice.

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WORKS CITED

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

Martin Leuenberger (ed.) Segen. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

See especially Ulrike Wagner-Rau and her discussion of everyday rituals, “Unverbrüchlich angesehen – Der Segen in praktisch-theologischer Perspektive,” 187-210, here p. 194.

In the same volume, Christopher Spehr addresses the diversity of blessings in late medieval practice, and their re-evaluation in the Reformation; “Sengespraxis und Segenstheologie in der Christentumsgeschickte,” 135-164.

Derek A. Rivard, Blessing the World: Ritual and Lay Piety in Medieval Religion (Washington DC: Catholic U of America Press, 2009)

Note: This post presents a working transcription, translation, and preliminary analysis in advance of a planned journal article.

A Sixteenth-Century Segen for the Mass, Pt 1

A “Segen” is a prayer genre that combines words, gestures, and formulas to bring about a positive end such as divine grace, desired happiness, or protection from harm. Commonly translated as “blessing,” it is more than just cheery words or good wishes. It exists as a multi-dimensional “act” that can create good. Each element – words said, gesture properly performed, and multiple iterations – contributes to its successful deployment. A Segen is effficacious through utterance when properly performed. I always think of them as “an active saying”: something that calls on a human agent to take on its power. It is a speech act with material consequences.

PRAYER TYPE

A Segen differs from a Collect, which belongs to the formal liturgy, and from prayers of petition (Gebet, Bitte), which structure ordinary devotional speech. It can be recognized by its formal stability – since the wording matters, variation is limited. It’s also inherently performative speech. It does something when spoken: it protects, heals, averts danger, prepares for death. If you’re traveling? There’s a Segen for that. Childbirth? Likewise. Is it time for a transition, say, to get out of bed, or go to sleep? There is a Segen that will suit your purpose. Danger, uncertainty, the evils of pestilence? The warding function of the Segen makes it a deployable ritual technology for navigating risk, transition, and moments of vulnerability. They fit into the rhythms of the everyday.

Because it is a prayer of “doing,” it is suitable for a variety of contexts, be they lay, domestic, or paraliturgical. Segen often occupy spaces later described as “folk,” since apotropaic functions and familiar protective formulas are common. Warding off evil and thereby doing good in the world: Segen were thought to do useful work. And, the prayer workers, importantly, did not need to be clerical. Lay folk could use them, and so could monastics. In memorial contexts, like the ones I’m working on, a Segen can function as a spoken intervention on behalf of souls, even when no mass is present.

One of the reasons I’m drawn to Segen as a category is that they have a devotional logic that prioritizes outcome over explanation. They show a world in which prayer is not only expressive but operative. In other words: a Segen is not just a blessing, but a technology of care and control, especially potent in contexts of illness, death, and remembrance.

THE SEGEN ITSELF

To take up a specific case, here is “A Protective Segen anchored in the Mass,” as its label tells us, this one a sixteenth century prayer from a Thalbach prayerbook, ÖNB Cod. 11750, fols. 20v-21r.

Line numbers are for ease of reference; bold is to highlight the formulaic elements of the prayer. This is the first half of a two-part prayer.

Ein schoner segenn bei der heilligen Mäß

1. HErr ich bevilch mich dir in alle die

2. heillige wortt die alle Priieſter ſprech

3. enn von dem da du in verwanndlet haſt vorrden

4. brott in fleiſch vnnd in blutt. Herr ich beuilch

5. mich heut vnd allweg in die heillige gottheitt

6. vnd in die heillige menſchhait vnnd in die heil

7. lige Drÿfalltigkeitt vnnd in dem heillige seel

8. deinem leib / Jn dein heillige gegenwertigkeit

9. in deinem heilligenn fronleichnam deinem

10. heilligen fleisch deinem heilligen blutt beuilch

11. ich mich mit flaiſch vnnd blut mit leib vnd ſeel

12. mit zeittlicher eher vnnd allen meinen gelider

13. in deinen heilligenn frid / dz du mich beſchur⸗

14. meſt vnd behuetest vor allem ybel vor waffen

15. vor gefenckhnüs vor gesigung [=Geißigung] vor werffenn

16. Schüessenn vor waſſer vor Zauberey ehren

17. abſchneidenn vor feur / vor allem dem dz du er⸗

18. inneſt in deiner weiſzheit dz mir ſchaden mag

19. an leibvnnd seel an allen zeittlichenn dingen

20. vnd ehren: Behuetest mich herr durch dein

21. grundlose barmhertzigkeit, durch dein manig

22. faltige erbernd Guettiger herr ich bürg mich

23. in die verborgne tugent, als sich die hoche gott,

24. heitt verbarg indte krancke menſchheut vnd

25. als du dich uerbirgeſt in des Pruësters hennd

26. indem ſchein des brotts warer gott vnnd mēſch

27. Herr ich bürg mich heüt vnnd Jmer in deine

28. heillige fünnff wunden / trennck mich mitt

29. deinem roſen farbenn blutt: dein heillige dri-

30. ualltigkeit ſei mir ein ſchüllt vnnd ſchürm,

31. vor allem meinenn feinden / deine heillige

32. hennd seÿenn heütt v̈ber mich/ deine heillige

33. füess seind heut vor mir dein heilliger mund

34. beſcharme mich heütt / fruſch vnnd geſünd

35. vnnd vor allem vnglückh. Amen.

This is a protective, performative Segen that anchors itself in the Mass in order to borrow its power. The Mass is the source of authority, but the Segen is the mechanism by which the devout sister will deploy it. Flesh, blood, body; body, blood, flesh: this is God made man to act as armor. He can protect her without being consumed.

A TRANSLATION

1 Lord I commend myself to you in all the 2 holy words that all priests speak 3 from that moment, when you transformed it, 4 the bread turned into flesh and blood. Lord, I commend 5 myself today and always in the holy Godhead 6 and in the holy humanity and in the holy 7 Trinity and in the holy soul 8 of your body / In your holy presence 9 in your holy body, your 10 holy flesh, your holy blood, I commend 11 myself with flesh and blood, with body and soul, 12 with temporal honor and all my limbs 13 in your holy peace, that you may protect 14 and guard me from all evil, from weapons, 15 from imprisonment, from defeat, from throwing [=missiles] 16 and shooting, from water, from sorcery, from 17 dishonor, from fire, from everything that you 18 know in your wisdom that may harm me 19 in body and soul, in all temporal things 20 and honors: Protect me, Lord, through your 21 boundless mercy, through the many and 22 manifold compassionate goodness, O gracious Lord, I entrust myself 23 to the hidden virtue, as the high God 24 hid himself in frail humanity and 25 as you hide yourself in the priest's hands 26 in the appearance of bread, true God and man. 27 Lord, I entrust myself today and forever to your 28 holy five wounds; refresh me with 29 your rose-colored blood: may your holy 30 Trinity be my shield and protection, 31 from all my enemies; may your holy 32 hands be over me today; may your holy 33 feet be before me today; may your holy mouth 34 protect me today, fresh and healthy, 35 and from all misfortune. Amen.

HOW THE SEGEN WORKS

The Thalbach speaker who reads this prayer starts here with an act of self-enclosure (ll. 1-13): as devotee, she uses the repeated formula “ich bevilch mich” (I commend myself) to place herself inside sacred realities. The words of consecration, the reality of Christ’s body and blood, the Trinity, the holy peace: these are the space of devout devotion that she is actively choosing to inhabit. Moreover, she treats the Eucharistic presence as protective substance, not through communion and consumption, but through observation and modeling. His embodiment (ll. 8-10) is a model for hers (ll. 11-13).

The Segen here has a broad apotropaic scope, from the abstract to the concrete (ll. 13-20). She is to be protected from evil, dishonor and defeat, and more tangibly from weapons, imprisonment, shooting. Water and fire, sorcery, and “everything that you know in your wisdom may harm me”: God’s protective shield is all-encompassing life protection: bodily, social, legal, and moral. A prayer that names Zauberey, magic, is almost never a neutral “Gebet”; it is operating in a world where spoken formulas are understood to counter spoken threats.

The Segen shifts from protection to hiddenness: the hidden virtue (die verborgne tugent), the hiddenness of Christ’s nature as frail human, and the hiding of the eucharistic wonder in the Priest’s hand. She entrusts herself to what is hidden; faith does not need to see to be lived. This is a sacramental theory of invisibility, and to my eye touches on what Maaike de Haardt terms the quotidian aspect of faith:

They [daily behaviors and spatial practices, aka the quotidian] reveal the how of belief, much more than the what of belief, the subject of the ministers of belief. Besides the ethical and political choice implicated in this approach, there is yet another important dimension, which I have called a sense of presence, or aesthetic presence, sacramental presence, or incarnational presence.

De Haardt describes the way in which sensorial abundance -- sensual knowledge of touching, tasting, smelling – become a way of being -- of inhabiting the everyday sacred. For the Thalbach sister, her presence in church, with incense and candles and ritual action observed intently, but not intimately, is sufficient to call to mind the divine.

The Segen ends by mapping Christ’s body to the speaker’s body. Hands above, feet before, mouth protecting, wounds enclosing. We have here somatic ritual geometry. The body is reoriented inside of Christ’s body, not so much improved as guarded. Through the Segen, she achieves safety.

SEGEN AS RITUAL OF PROTECTION

In articulating the segments of the prayer, the devotee generates her own ritual of protection from all ills, based on and parallel to that of the formal Mass on which it depends. By invoking the correct wording, by using the Segen in the correct ritual space (at Mass, in the presence of the host), and by invoking the correct theological anchors, she creates a sort of spiritual insurance policy that will protect her, body and soul. This shows that a Segen is not marginal or “folk-like” in opposition to theology. Rather, it is orthodox theology operationalized for protection and survival.

The first half of the Segen, then, carries the devotee on a multi-staged spiritual journey, where her act of commending herself results through transformation to her being mapped to Christ’s body, secure in the warded protection of Christ’s love:

Commend self >> Eucharist >> Protection >> Hiddenness >> Mapped to Christ’s body

As we will see in a future post, part 2 of this Segen provides a layered ritual deployment of these same themes -- protection, enclosure, and authorization remain central, but in part 2, the physicality of the prayer is reinforced through keyed moments of signing the cross.

WORK CITED:

Maaike de Haardt, “Incarnational presence: Sacramentality of everyday life and the body or: unsystematic skeptical musings on the use of a central metaphor,” in Envisioning the Cosmic Body of Christ, edited by Aurica Jax and Saskia Wendel (Routledge, 2019): 114-125.

Note: This post presents a working transcription, translation, and preliminary analysis in advance of a planned journal article.