Didaktik und Augenlust – die Biblia pauperum-Handschriften in Gotha und Jena

The interdisciplinary conference focuses on two formally similar, vividly illuminated manuscripts of the Biblia pauperum (Poor Man's Bible) genre in the Gotha Research Library (Memb. I 54) and in the Thuringian University and State Library in Jena (Ms. El. f. 51b). The Jena copy, dated 1462, was produced in Lower Bavaria, and the Gotha copy clearly belongs to the same temporal and topographical context. Both belong to a group of 68 surviving manuscripts from the 14th and 15th centuries in which events from the Old and New Testaments are typologically related. These two manuscripts have not escaped the attention of researchers, but apart from being catalogued in the relevant manuscript catalogues, they have mostly only been touched upon. Key aspects such as the background to their production and the examination of the painting techniques used in the manuscripts, their place in late medieval book illumination, the iconography, which is sometimes strikingly different in the two sister manuscripts, the script and the text versions have not yet been investigated.The conference brings together experts in late medieval book culture and intellectual history who deal with questions of provenance, palaeography, text and art history, and the reception history of this contemporary successful book type