Hortulus Animae

HORTULUS ANIMAE. - A group of prayer books widely circulated in the 1500s, especially in the Germanic countries (Seelengärtlein, Seelenwurzgerlein, Zeitglöcklein, etc.). Similar to the French Livres d'heures, from which they derive, they are more popular in character and usually smaller in format. They contain the Little Office of the Virgin, the penitential psalms with the litanies, fragments of the Gospel, but they give greater development to private devotions and prayers.

The H. has its place in the history of art. The first Latin edition, of ca. 1491, is adorned with 49 woodcuts; those of Strasbourg 1498 and 1500 have 72 and 74. There are German editions with engravings by Holbein the Younger, Ursus Graf, Baldung Grien, etc. A manuscript H., splendidly illuminated at Ghent for the governess of the Netherlands Margaret of Austria, has been 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 Georg Rhav, H. A., Lustgarten der Seele, mit schönen Figuren, Wittenberg 1547, 1548, 1550; Nuremberg 1548, 1562 etc. The Catholic Hortali were prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition (1559), among other things for their apocryphal indulgences; after the corrected edition of the Office of the Virgin, their reprinting was likewise prohibited by Rome (bull of St. Pius V, 11 March 1571; Index of Sixtus V, 1690; quamdiu secundum regularum formam corvectus non prodierit).

Edmondo Lamalle