Rewriting Easter

A Medingen Prayer Book between Convent Reform and Nordic Manuscript Culture

Lecture by Carolin Gluchowski (Universität Hamburg)

What can a small, heavily used prayer book tell us about the religious lives of medieval women? This lecture explores one of the earliest securely datable manuscripts from the Cistercian convent of Medingen near Lüneburg: the Easter Orationale GKS 3452 8°, written in 1408 by the nun Cecilia de Monte and now preserved in the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen. Far from being a static container of liturgical text, the manuscript bears visible signs of change: erased passages, rewritten sections, and a missing opening quire. These material traces reveal how the book was repeatedly adapted over time and show that liturgical manuscripts were living objects, shaped by use, reform, and changing devotional needs. The manuscript also offers important evidence that Medingen possessed a rich and dynamic manuscript culture well before the Observant reform of 1479. By following the book from a women’s convent in the Lüneburg Heath to its present home in Copenhagen, the lecture sheds light not only on one remarkable manuscript, but also on the transmission, preservation, and northern afterlives of late medieval religious books.