Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius

Album of Engravings and Devotional Texts by Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius

This Prayer Book pairs a unique selection of texts with an extensive cycle of printed images, demonstrating an alternative to the Book of Hours in a period of religious foment. It contains popular devotional works by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), Marco Girolamo Vida (ca. 1485–1566), and Prudentius (ca. 348–413), copied by hand from printed sources. Within the first half of the book are also sections from the Christiad, an epic poem published in 1535, first written by Marco Girolamo Vida, a humanist bishop, at the request of Leo X, which provides a Christian counterpart to Virgil’s Aeneid. It also features works by the early Christian poet Prudentius, such as hymns, which were appreciated by Erasmian humanists for their conflation of classical Latin forms with Christian motifs. This manuscript demonstrates how readers adapted modern and ancient devotional texts, replacing the traditional Book of Hours.

Authors: Erasmus, Marco Girolamo Vida, and Prudentius

ca. 1540

Manuscript on paper, 109 fols.

The Free Library of Philadelphia, Lewis E 179

Flanders