Jena Martyrology

Jena Martyrology

A martyrology or calendarium sanctorum, is a catalog of saints, mostly martyrs, who are usually attributed to the day of their death, which is also their day of remembrance. The Memoria of their martyrdoms had a fixed place in the liturgy, but also in the tightly organized daily schedule of the monks and nuns. Therefore, the respective passages from a martyrology such as the one in the Thuringian University and State Library were read out.

The Martyrdoms of the Saints in Thuringian

The Jena Martyrology was probably written around 1275 for an unknown patron and is thus the oldest surviving German-language martyrology. The dialect of the writing language indicates that the text was written in Thuringia, although it was not a completely new work, but rather a copy of a manuscript from the middle of the 13th century. The codex was probably used in a liturgical context: research assumes that the martyrdoms were recited by a reader to a clerical audience with insufficient knowledge of Latin after the common choral prayer.

Gilded Images of Death and Torture

The text of the Jena Martyrology is based on earlier martyrologies by various Carolingian authors, including Ados of Vienne (799–875), Notker (around 840–912) and Usuard († 877). The entries range from simple enumerations to more detailed accounts of individual saints' legends. The martyrdoms are not only recorded textually, but are also brought to the reader's attention visually.
Almost every daily entry is accompanied by a five-line picture strip in bright colors. Only the entry for December 17 (f. 103r-v) was illuminated twice, while the one for June 30 (f. 49v) was not illuminated at all - probably for reasons of space. The total of 366 colored pen and ink drawings decorated with gold and silver mainly show the saints, but some also depict architecture, ships and other objects, some of which have or had specific real-life counterparts.

Instruction to Perfection

It is not only the extensive and splendid illumination that makes the Jena Martyrology a true treasure of medieval book illumination. The last pages of the manuscript also contain the spiritual didactic poem Unterweisung zur Vollkommenheit, which has been handed down to us uniquely and solely in the Jena codex.
In the couplet rhymes, an anonymous narrator, who introduces himself as a poor man and is thus all the more suitable as a spiritual advisor, first laments his own imperfection while invoking Mary and Christ. Mary then gives him advice, whereupon the author instructs the reader on how to achieve perfection in the Christian-ascetic sense.
The moralizing text also differs from the martyrology in several respects: the poem was written in two columns and not illuminated – but was nevertheless created by the same hand.

A Gem of the Elector's Library

The codex did not receive its brown calfskin binding with lily-shaped brass clasps, which is also reproduced in the facsimile edition, until around 1500, when it was housed in the Bibliotheca Electoralis, the palace and university library at Wittenberg founded by the Saxon Elector Frederick the Wise (1463–1525). The decorative binding is the work of the Erfurt bookbinder Nikolaus von Havelberg (fl. 1477–1505). It is not known how the manuscript came to Wittenberg. However, the martyrology came to Jena as early as 1549 together with the rest of the Bibliotheca Electoralis when Elector Johann Friedrich (1503–1554) lost the electoral district of Wittenberg.