Praying Before the Image of Mary
Nuns' Prayerbooks and the Mapping of Sacred Space
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5319562 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Cynthia J Cyrus (0000-0001-7206-1177, Institute of Musicology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue | 10 |
| Pages | 1277 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-07 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religions (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/rel16101277 |
| OpenAlex | W4414913681 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 17 |
This study examines the performative, spatial, and affective dimensions of Marian devotion in two early modern women's prayerbooks from Vorarlberg: the Valduna Prayerbook (Freiburg i. Br., UB Hs. 1500,30) and the Thalbach Prayerbook (Bregenz, VLB Hs. 17). Both manuscripts demonstrate that prayer was not a purely mental act but a choreographed devotional performance shaped by posture, gesture, and gaze. Rubrics repeatedly direct the devotee to pray before an image of the Virgin, transforming the image into a locus of embodied interaction that engaged sight, movement, and emotion. Analysis of sixteen such image-based prayers reveals how spatial instructions, somatic cues, and affective language converge to produce a physically enacted piety. Quantitative assessment of affective vocabulary shows that gaze-based prayers concentrate emotional language-especially of joy, sorrow, and distress-at twice the density of other texts in the same manuscripts, underscoring their heightened emotional charge. These prayerbooks thus construct a devotional choreography in which the devotee's body becomes both instrument and interpreter of spiritual meaning. By situating image, word, and motion within the convent environment, the study reveals how female religious communities enacted Marian devotion as lived performance, where space, gesture, and affect generated spiritual presence
Choreography · Embodied cognition · Interpreter · Prayer · Rubric · Vocabulary · Early Modern Women Writers · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious Tourism and Spaces
Gesture and Thought
Anger's Past
Images and Performative Vision in the Middle Ages
Thinking Historically about Medieval Emotions
The Sweet Lean of His Head
Virtual Pilgrimages? Enclosure and the Practice of Piety at St Katherine's Convent, Augsburg
Visualisation in Late-Medieval Franciscan Passion Literature from the Low Countries
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |