HORTULUS ANIMAE. — A group of prayer books widely circulated in the 1500s, especially in Germanic countries (Seelengärtlein, Seelengürgertlein, Zeitglöcklein, etc.). Similar to the French Livres d'heures, from which they derive, they are of a more popular character and usually smaller in format. They contain the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin, the penitential psalms with the litanies, fragments of the Gospel, but give greater development to private devotions and prayers.
The H. holds a place in art history. The first Latin edition, from around 1491, is adorned with 49 woodcuts; those from Strasbourg (1498 and 1500) have 72 and 74 respectively. There are German editions with engravings by Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Baldung Grien, etc. A manuscript H., splendidly illuminated in Ghent for Margaret of Austria, governor of the Netherlands, has been reproduced in facsimile with study and notes by F. Dörnhöffer: H. A., Zielentuinje. Cod. Bibl. Vindob. 2706, Utrecht and Vienna 1907–11, 3 volumes of plates and 1 of text.
The success of the H. gave rise to Protestant editions, e.g., those by Georg Rhau, 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 for their apocryphal indulgences; after the corrected edition of the Office of the Blessed Virgin, their reprinting was also forbidden by Rome (bull of St Pius V, 11 March 1571; Index of Sixtus V, 1690; “quadri secundum regularum formam correctus non proderit”).