At the end of the 15th century, in a time of social and religious change, six nunneries from the Luneburg region came together to overhaul their communal life, including special musical education. Yet, each community established their own focal points. The Dombibliothek owns two of the 43 known manuscripts from Luneburg nunneries. They were made in Medingen, where nuns focused on designing devitional and prayer books for personal use.
The two manuscripts - a psalter and a prayer book - in the Dombibliothek are characterised by their high artistic quality that speaks of laborious and varied work for none of the numerous pictures, initials and decorations are identical. They often show songs and prayers with accompanying pictures that are interwoven with banners or musical notes.
The Medingen manuscripts have only recently caught the attention of scientists, who then made the classification and identification of these manuscripts possible for the first time.
The Dombibliothek's Medingen manuscripts were digitized in 2019 for the project "Manuscripts from German speaking lands" and are available to the public:
