Saint-Johanner Codex

Saint-Johanner Codex

The Saint-Johanner Codex of Jánossomorja, Hungary is a remarkable 19th century codex from the Protestant German minority of Hungary. It could already be a surprise for many people, specifically in the US, that there is a significant number of Protestants living in Hungary, not to mention the fact that many of them belong to German speaking minorities. I’m sure that people will also be surprised to hear that at the end of the 16th century, 80–90% of the inhabitants of historic Hungary were Protestant. Hungary was not alone in the region: Poland, now the most Catholic country in the area, was solidly Protestant as well. The written heritage of the German population of Jánossomorja is part of the cultural heritage of the Moson region. The Saint-Johanner Codex is a very significant handwritten codex that was written for everyday use by families. Fathers would read from the book to the children and to the family on Sundays. It contains prayers and songs, notes referring to important events in the family, secular tales and even recipes. The prayer book that this codex was based on could still have been found in every Protestant German household about a hundred years ago. Its genre is closest to the so-called Biblia pauperum (“Paupers’ Bible”) a tradition of picture Bibles from the later medieval period.

The writer and illustrator

The Saint-Johanner Codex is the work of Johann Anton Lang, it was written and illustrated in 1809, and is considered to be the most beautifully decorated and most precious example of its kind. The illustrations were created with paints mixed with egg white, which enables them to shine with very vivid colors. It was bounded in wood and leather and contains 569 pages decorated with 51 illustrations. The images are not only beautiful but tell a lot about the life of the people, their dress, and their day-to-day activities, raising the importance of the codex as a source of local history.