HORTULUS ANIMAE. – A group of prayer books widely circulated in the 1500s, especially in the German-speaking countries (Seelengärtlein, Seelenwurzgerlein, Zeitglöcklein, etc.). Analogous to the French Livres d'heures, from which they derive, they are more popular in character and habitually smaller in format. They contain the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, the penitential psalms with the litanies, fragments of the Gospel, but devote considerably more space to private devotions and prayers.
The H. has its place in the history of art. The first Latin edition, from around 1491, is adorned with 49 woodcuts; those of Strasbourg from 1498 and 1500 have 72 and 74 respectively. There are German editions with engravings by Holbein the Younger, Ursus Graf, Baldung Grien, etc. A manuscript H., splendidly illuminated in Ghent for the governor of the Netherlands, Margherita d'Austria, was reproduced in facsimile with a study and notes by F. Dörnhöffer: H. A., Zielentuinje. Cod. Bibl. Vindob. 2706, Utrecht and Vienna 1907–11, 3 vols. of plates and one of text.
The success of the H. gave rise to Protestant editions, e.g. those of Giorgio Rhav, H. A., Lustgarten der Seele, mit schönen Figuren, Wittenberg 1547, 1548, 1550; Nuremberg 1548, 1562, etc. Catholic Hortuli were prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition (1559), among other reasons on account of their apocryphal indulgences; after the corrected edition of the Office of the Blessed Virgin, their reprinting was also prohibited by Rome (bull of St Pius V, 11 March 1571; Index of Sixtus V, 1690; quamdiu secundum regularum formam corvectus non prodierit).