Why illustrate a prayerbook?

Woodcuts from Vorarlberger Landesbibliothek Handschrift 17

So there she was, my scribe. She’d put all this effort into copying out all those individual prayers. In a manuscript of more than 300 folios, that’s a lot of writing time. And then, before binding the manuscript, she – or one of her sisters? Or the binder himself? -- ran through the visual images available and plopped in two woodcuts, one an image of Mary with child (derived, as it happens, from a plague image), and one a Mary as Mother of the Seven Swords.

I’ve written about both prayerbook images (Cyrus, 2020), but have been thinking more about their purpose, and found it helpful to put the Thalbach tradition of using devotional images into dialog with a non-Western practice of the same period.

To do so, I’ve read Jahnabi Barooah Chanchani’s “Text, Image and Devotion,” (2018), looking at a Sanskrit devotional fragment, “two illustrated folios from a dispersed late 15th-century manuscript of the Bālagopālastuti (BGS) in the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.” I was drawn to the use of color in her fragments – so much more fun than mere woodcuts – but I was also drawn to her argument, which I put in dialog with my own material below.

In both cases, text and image work in tandem not to narrate a story literally, but to prompt affective and imaginative engagement. Each pulls its weight in its own way; and bundled together – literally! – word and illustration open up multiple pathways to the divine.

1) Chanchani tells us that in Sanskrit realms, looking at images “was a vital component of the devotional praxis…. The verses and paintings complement each other in helping a devotee envision” their target divine figure.

The same is true for the sisters at Thalbach – or for those at any of a host of women’s houses in late-medieval German lands. For Chanchani’s text, the reader cogitates on Kṛṣṇa,in the Thalbach prayerbook, it’s the suffering Mary of the Seven Swords. In both cases, the role of reader presumably toggles with that of viewer. Each act of engagement informs those that follow, so that meaning is additive across the multiple media being consumed.

2) Chanchani’s manuscript fragments are part of an illustrated “picture-book of songs,” drawing on familiar texts. Nevertheless, as she points out, the paintings don’t directly illustrate the verses. In the images of the first folio, for example, no flute appears, and the extra women of the songs are missing.

Likewise, in the Thalbach prayerbook, Mary’s suffering is represented as a totality; all seven swords piercing her at once, whereas other rendition of Mary’s sorrows become composites, with rondels to narrate the details of her individual sorrows, as Carol Schuler articulates. In the prayers that follow, we instead dwell on details of Mary’s losses. The images in both cases are weirdly both summative – here is a divine personage in the midst of activities – and reductive, in that we are faced with a reduced single-moment capture of that experience.

3) Chanchani explicates that darśan, the process of exchanging gazes with divinity, is at the heart of Hindu devotional practice. Seeing, as she articulates it, is a form of knowing.

For sisters in a monastic environment, the same could very often be true. Jeffrey Hamburger in particular has explored the ways in which images serve as vehicles of inspiration. “Images,” as he establishes, can “serve not as props, but as the principal protagonists” in ceremonies, for instance.(Hamburger, 429). Images could spark visions and other personalized experiences of the divine; many instances can be found among the Nonnenvitae in convent chronicles. Given their status as launching-points for individuated faith experiences, Hamburger argues, images called out for control, duly provided through regulation and admonitions over the later medieval period.

And yet, sisters continued to incorporate images into their worship practices, saying particular prayers at specific altars, gazing on their precious pages in the choir stalls. The two devotional pictures found during archaeological excavation at Wienhausen (Appuhn) are a case in point; worship and gaze are intertwined as practice.

4) Why? Why intermingle imagery and text? I think here Chanchani’s observations are apt. As she explains, reading and looking are (both) imaginative acts. They invite readers to hold multiple aspects of the God-reference in mind. For Chanchani’s text, it is Kṛṣṇa; for the Thalbach sisters it is Mary, apostrophized in multiple metaphors as a signal of the complexity inherent to the divine

Illustrating a prayerbook, then, is not a matter of ornament – instead, it’s about amplification. Just as Chanchani’s manuscript invites the devotee into a multisensory encounter with Kṛṣṇa, so too do the Thalbach images summon a similarly layered engagement with Mary -- not to explain the prayers, but to deepen the contemplative practice surrounding them. Read, look, think, intuit: the praxis of devotional reading is more, so much more, than just working through the words.

In other words, in both Hindu and Christian-monastic tradition image and text operate not merely in service to each another, but work instead through a process of dynamic tension, for each pushes the devotee toward a more expansive and imaginative apprehension of the divine.

WORKS CITED

Appuhn, Horst. Der Fund im Nonnenchor. Kloster Wienhausen, Bd 4. [Wienhausen]: Kloster Wienhausen, 1973.

Chanchani, Jahnabi Barooah. “Text, Image and Devotion in a 15th Century Western Indian Manuscript.” Aziatische Kunst 48/1 (2018): 42–53. Academia link.

Cyrus, Cynthia J. “Printed Images in a Thalbach Manuscript Prayer‑book of the Sixteenth Century.” Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 173–82.

Hamburger, Jeffrey. The Visual and the Visionary. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998.

Schuler, Carol M. “The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin: Popular Culture and Cultic Imagery in Pre-Reformation Europe.” Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art 21 (1992):5–28.

Diligent Devotion: Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s Leadership at Thalbach

Image of the Annunciation as a Thalbach monastic seal (from the hand of Euphrosina Vöglin)

The women’s tertiary monastery of Thalbach in Bregenz benefited from a series of long-serving and devoted leaders. A peek into the short narrative descriptions of their convent efforts provides a glimpse into the varied emphases these convent administrators placed on spiritual life, governance, and the material well-being of the community. Some prioritized the stability of the convent’s finances, others focused on the education of the sisters, while still others devoted their attention to the aesthetics and soundscape of worship. In her thirty years of convent service, Maria Euphrosina Vöglin (r. 1683–1713; d. 1716) had a chance to embody all three. She shaped the convent through her personal devotional practices, her canny skills on the administrative front, and a marked sensitivity to the role of music and ritual in the convent’s spiritual life.

Diligently Devoted

At the end of the seventeenth century, Sister Maria Euphrosina Vöglin was elected Maisterin at Thalbach by the sisters and duly endorsed by the appropriate male clerics, including the Order’s Provincial. Euphrosina was a particular devotee of the Virgin Mary, for the Chroniclist tells us that she prayed her office fervently on a daily basis. Since, in a post-Tridentine environment, the Little Office of the Virgin – her presumed prayer focus – was normally assigned only to Saturdays and special feast days, we learn from this introduction that she was enacting a more-is-better faith practice, for she performed privately what was done more publicly in the convent’s regular cycle of prayer. In other words, the first thing we learn about Euphrosina is her exemplary faith; as convent leader she serves as a model to the other sisters, who should prioritize prayer even if it should fall outside of the bounds of performed liturgy.

Not only was she a faithful Catholic; according to the convent’s Chronicle, she served “laudably and well” as Maisterin for 30 years. Given her length of service, she developed skills as an able administrator. Some of her attention was architectural. It was during her reign that the monastery building refurbishment was completed, for instance, and she also expanded the choir; this may be the time when the interior window was added. Ludwig Rapp reports that she drafted a letter to the Mayor and Council of inner Bregenzerwald, in which she begs them for a “generous” contribution for her monastery. She points out that their need was great both architecturally and spiritually: “so that it does not fall into disrepair and the divine service and holy order's discipline do not disappear” (Euphrosina Vöglin petition, as quoted in Rapp 634).

She also focused on the nuances of the divine service “because of the music and the chorale,” as the Chronicle tells us. This I take to mean that she oversaw both the instrumentalists and the sisters’ own performances in services. The chroniclist confirms that “She also paid diligent attention to the fact that the divine service was held properly.” She was, in other words, a stickler for the forms and orders of the church, and also for the richness of their living and resonant sounds. She must have appreciated the multimedia appeal of the services. She also evidently recognized beauty itself as an element of spiritual life, for she also “had many beautiful vestments, antipendia and other things made for the church,” as we learn near the end of the Chronicle chapter.

I stress the distributed nature of the Chroniclist’s account, focused early on prayer placement and sound, and only later on visual splendor, since that suggests to me an element of hierarchy in the description of Euphrosina’s devotions. The assessment offered emphasizes what I suspect was the more unusual capacities that she brought – the aural and devotional – and left more stereotypical contributions of feminine handwork for the close of the entry. This also could reflect a gradual shift of Euphrosina’s physical efforts over time. Her active engagement with liturgy and prayer coincides in the account with her emphasis on bricks-and-mortar projects, a spiritual match to the physical enhancements of the cloister. The feminine handwork, in contrast, coincides with text focused on her  charitable work and her resignation of office at age 74.

In addition to her advocacy for prayer and worship, Euphrosina also led the sisters in more educational endeavors, for we know from Leroy Shaw’s theatrical research that she produced at least one Latin play (“De Theophila a mundi voluptatibus abstracta”) during her years in service. She also acquired Gallia vindicata (1594/r.1702) by Paolo Sfondrati, a defense of the Catholic Church’s position against the political and religious turmoil in late 16th-century France, demonstrating her interest in the broader landscape of Catholic counter-reformation polemics (Fechter). (She is not, however, the same Euphrosina Vöglin responsible for the book of prayers published in Augsburg in 1682; that Euphrosina was a widow, a Lutheran, and of the previous generation, dying the year before our Euphrosina ascends to the role as head of convent.)

Managing in Times of Hardship

Given the historical circumstances, Maria Euphrosina was required to guide the convent through hard economic times. The cost of grain skyrocketed, and a series of war taxes were imposed, so that the coffers ran thin. In response, she did two things. She appealed the taxes, which were bitterly high, and would have confiscated 1/3 of the convent’s lands (Thalbach Chronicle Gathering 2 fol. 6; Rapp, p. 633-4). As she wrote to a convent advocate in Constance, “we (the nuns) have no foundation, nothing superfluous, but we, 24 professed nuns, are barely able to provide the necessary maintenance of our order and poorly managed cloister, and we have no daily mass and no dedicated confessor." (As quoted in Rapp 631). We learn from other documents that some relief was awarded, perhaps because the sisters were able to demonstrate that they had to help with the farming by bringing in their own crops (!) (Rapp, p. 633), but ultimately they had to pay 40 fl. in war contributions in 1686, and pay the Turkish tax again in 1708 (Fussenegger, 123).

Euphrosina also indulged in some creative fundraising, and her own mother donated to the convent to help stabilize their finances. Well, sort of. Technically, her mom repurposed her brother’s funds for Euphrosina’s own use, and Euphrosina gave them outright to the convent (Thalbach Chronicle, gathering 2, fol. 6r). We have no evidence that her brother was happy with this outcome, but he didn’t try to retrieve the funds, either.

During these years of hardship, Euphrosina proved flexible: she might be a taskmaster in the context of the order of services, but demonstrated more compassion in the lives of the sisters. She arranged that during the 40-day fast of Lent when the convent was subsisting largely on fungi and herbs, they would have roasted meat on Sunday night (in contravention of the regular rules) in order to keep them hale (Thalbach Chronicle Gathering 2, fol. 6r). This practice seems to have been surprisingly common. The sisters of Kirchheim unter Teck similarly broke their fast when roasted meat was “all that was available” (Kirchheim Chronicle). Practical constraints meant that the choice of health with a few bent rules triumphed over near starvation in both contexts. Since many individuals paid their debts in the form of foods – a half a lamb, a basket of eggs, and so on –  pragmatism in a context of hardship might mean that the food available was the food consumed.

This pragmatism and empathetic management was rewarded by an increase in convent recruitment, particularly among the monied class. Large dowries were paid to the convent and material goods such as religious garments, bedclothes, breviaries, silver spoons and silver jugs were provided to the entering daughters, as mentioned in the dowry documents that Euphrosina so frequently signed in her role as Meisterin. (Bregenz KA 15 Schachtel 225A, Mitgleider).

Generous to traveling clerics and to the city’s poor, she was seen by the Chroniclist and convent alike as “a true child of the order” (ein getreyen ordnuß kind). After her death, the convent pledged to say a Pater noster and an Ave Maria for her every Sunday without exception, both a signal of their dedication to keeping her name in Convent memory and a curious observation about the ways in which conflicting demands could otherwise interfere with memorial practice (Chronicle Gathering 2, fol. 6r).

Life Context

Bregenz-born, Euphrosina had arrived at the convent in 1652 at age 13 under the birth name of Maria Franziska Vöglin. She lived there until her death in 1716. Curiously, these details (found in the Chronicle’s gathering 5) are separate from the discussion of her administrative service.  Her family was evidently poised for religious service, for her brother Anton Vogel was Abbot of Mehrerau (1681–1711) (see MehrerauKl, 2639)

What’s at Stake

Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s long tenure at Thalbach demonstrates how convent leadership in the early modern period was far more than a matter of spiritual devotion—it required financial acumen, political navigational skills, and an understanding of the sensory and aesthetic dimensions of worship. Her case challenges simplistic views of female monastic life as passive or cloistered away from the world; instead, she emerges as an active agent shaping not only her convent’s inner life but also their relationships to the civic and religious landscape of Bregenz.

By paying close attention to figures like Euphrosina, we gain insight into the lived realities of post-Tridentine monasticism, where prayer, administration, and survival strategies were deeply entwined. Her legacy, preserved in archival traces, folded in as an illustrative story in the house chronicle, and reiterated through convent memoria “without exception,” raises broader questions about the role of women in shaping institutional histories—who gets remembered, and how?

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Primary Sources 

Appointment of Antonius Vogel as abbot: Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Mehrerau Kloster, Charter 2639 (6. März 1681).

Kirchheim unter Teck Chronicle: edited in Christian Friderich Sattler, “Wie diβ loblich closter zu Sant Johannes bapten zu Kirchen under deck prediger-ordens reformiert worden und durch wölich personen,” in Idem, Geschichte des herzogthums Wurtenberg unter der regierung der herzogen, 5 vols (Tübingen, 1779–1783), vol. 4, Beilagen, Num. 42, S. 173–280. Note: Sattler 280 is also numbered 296.

Maria Euphrosina Vöglin’s seal (e.g. from a document of 1686)

Thalbach Chronicle (consulted from manuscript): Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Kloster Thalbach Hs 9, Chronik des Klosters 1336–1629.

Thalbach membership documents: Bregenz, Vorarlberger Landesarchiv, Klosterakten Schachtel 15, 225A–225C, Kloster Thalbach, Konventmitglieder, Aufnahmen und Abrechnungen, Erbschaften.

Secondary Literature 

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

Fussenegger, Gerold. “Bregenz: Terziarinnenkloster Thalbach.” In: Alemania Franciscana Antiqua 9 (1963): 93-140.

Jenisch, Georg Paulus. Davidischer Seelen [Funerary memoria for Fr. Euphrosina Vöglin]. Augspurg: Johann Jacob Schonigk, 1682. This book of prayers is dedicated to a different individual, one who had been married, lived in Augsburg, and died shortly before our Euphrosina took over as Thalbach’s Maisterin.

Rapp, Ludwig. Topographisch-historische Beschreibung des Generalvikariates Vorarlberg, Bd. 2.  Brixen 1896.

Shaw, Leroy R. “Georg Kaiser auf der deutschsprachigen Bühne 1945–1960,” Maske und Kothurn, 9(1963-12): 68–96.