#vergänglichkeitsbuch

[cuties-in-codices]

the dance of death

illustration from a manuscript of the "totentanz" by wilhelm werner von zimmern, swabia, c. 1575

source: Stuttgart, Landesbibl., Cod. Donaueschingen 123, fol. 84v

[signorformica]

Vergänglichkeitsbuch. Wilhelm Werner von Zimmern ~ ca.1540 Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart • Bibliothèque Infernale on FB

[cuties-in-codices]

demonic torture

in a 'vergänglichkeitsbuch ('book of evanescence'), swabia, ca. 1575

source: Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, Cod. Donaueschingen 123, fol. 20v

[cuties-in-codices]

the dancing dead

in a "Vergänglichkeitsbuch" ("book of evanescence"), german illustrated manuscript, swabia, 16th c.

source: Stuttgart, Landesbibl., Cod. Donaueschingen A III 54, fol. 89v

[cuties-in-codices]

death's reminder

in a 'Vergänglichkeitsbuch' (book of evanescence), german illustrated manuscript, swabia, 16th c.

source: Stuttgart, Landesbibl., Cod. Donaueschingen A III 54, fol. 120v

[cuties-in-codices]

death joining in

in a 'vergänglichkeitsbuch ('book of evanescence'), swabia, c. 1575

source: Stuttgart, Landesbibl., Cod. Donaueschingen 123, fol. 67v

[cuties-in-codices]

About the scaped off/cebsored manuscripts: I have never noticed that before! Can you say more about this? Do we know when it was censored? Was it during the medieval times, or later?

Makes me think of how the victorians overpainted exposed nipples etc with flowers when 'restoring' 18th century art

hii good question! i'm not an expert at all and i ask myself the same questions (when were they censored? by whom? why?), but i've definitely encountered this phenomenon a lot when going through medieval manuscripts. here are some examples i could find on the fly (my personal record-keeping system isn't the best, so this is just an incomplete list of what i've come across):

a censorship of noah's exposed genitals (genesis 9:22) in a german bible, ca. 1425.

(Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 871, fol. 12v)

in the same bible: a censored image of a couple having sex!

(Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 871, fol. 12v)

classic nipple censorship 💯💯 (the nipples of no one less than the mother of the antichrist!) in another bible, alsace, early 15th century

(Colmar, Bibliothèque municipale, 0213 (306), fol. 261v)

censored sexual acitivities (probably missionary sex, as that is what's depicted in the same 'spot' in similar manuscripts -- i'll post it soon, it's spicy). in a german fortune-telling manuscript, ca. 1450-1473

(Munich, BSB, Cgm 312, fol. 56r)

then there's also sometimes censorship of non-sexual contents. all three of the above images are from a swabian 'vergänglichkeitsbuch' ('book of evanescence'?), ca. 1575, where a ton of faces have been censored (no idea why). love the demon btw. i wonder whether the 'black scarf' was also added belatedly to cover something up?

(Stuttgart, Landesbibliothek, Cod. Donaueschingen 123, fol. 10v, 11v and 12v)

there's also a different type of censhorship: cut out images! this one's from a medical-astrological manuscript ("iatromathematisches hausbuch"), bavaria, ca. 1474. i don't know what the intention behind this cutting out was, so maybe it wasn't even intended as a censorship?

(Munich, UB, 2º Cod. ms. 578, fol. 10r)

in the same manuscript (the "iatromathematisches hausbuch"), we also find quite a lot of censored faces though.

(Munich, UB, 2º Cod. ms. 578, fol. 21v)

so yeah, these are just some examples i can provide. if anybody knows more about the context(s) of this phenomenon, please let us know!

the only thing that i could add is that there's a word for when a text has been scraped or washed off from a manuscript page, which is "palimpsest". but this term is typically used for when a page of parchment was re-used for a new text by scraping off the previous writing, so it's typically not about censorship and idk if the examples i provided would also be considered palimpsests.

thank you for the question! :)