Ludolf of Saxony, Vita Christi, a meditation on the life of Christ, in Latin, decorated manuscript on vellum [Spain (probably Salamanca), fifteenth century (most probably 1417-31)]

provenance

Most probably from the medieval library of the convent of Las Dueñas, Salamanca (dedicated to Santa María), founded in 1419: partly erased ex libris on fol.4r of "iste liber est domus beate marie de s...". The scribe Alvarus Salamantinus, who signs at the end of the text and in a brief colophon below that in red ink, is elsewhere recorded as a Franciscan friar who held the office of Master of Theology in the University of Salamanca during the reign of Pope Martin V, ie. 1417-31 (J. de Soto, Bibliotheca Universa Franciscana, 1733, p.154).

text

This is a vast work, more of a summa evangelica than a biography of Christ, which harmonises the Gospel accounts, and embraces commentaries, quotations from numerous patristic writers and ancient authors (including Cato, Horace, Ovid, Pliny, Seneca and Cicero), dogmatic and moral dissertations, and various spiritual instructions and meditations. To complete this comprehensive tool of practical aestheticism, each chapter ends with a prayer which gives the quintessence of its thesis. Its author, Ludolf of Saxony (d.1378), joined the Carthusians in Strassburg in 1340, was prior of Coblenz in 1343, but resumed the status of a monk in 1348, and spent the rest of his life in the Carthusian houses of Mainz and Strassburg. The text was prescribed refectory reading throughout the Carthusian order, and has been described as the most influential work of north European mysticism of the late Middle Ages, ahead of the Horologium Sapientiae of Heinrich Suso or the Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis (Boehmer, Loyola und die deutsche Mystik, 1921, p.305). It found an eager audience in the secular elites of Europe and was widely copied and read, and became far better known than even the Bible. It was printed first in Cologne in 1472, and reprinted nearly a hundred times before the seventeenth century, retaining much of its appeal to the present day; it "pulsates anew ... not only in the Middle Ages, but even for readers today" (M.I. Bodenstedt, The Vita Christi of Ludolphus the Carthusian, 1944, p.147).

It is of particular note that this manuscript is from Salamanca, where it may have been consulted by St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556; founder of the Jesuit Order). Having chosen a secular life in the service of Juan Velásquez de Cuellar, contador mayor to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Ignatius was badly wounded at the Battle of Pamplona in 1521, and while in recovery he read Ludolf's text and underwent a spiritual conversion. He set aside his earlier life, hanging his armour and weapons before an image of the Virgin in the church of Santa Maria de Montserrat, and committed himself to his education, studying first among school-boys at Barcelona, then in 1526 in the University of Alcalá, and in 1527 in the University of Salamanca. The Vita Christi and his own experiences forged a belief in the combination of a life of prayer and penance with teaching and study, a belief that was fundamental to his foundation of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1541. This is not the copy he read in Loyola during his convalescence. However, it is hard to believe that he would not have sought out and compared the readings of a manuscript such as this, once used by the Master of Theology of Salamanca, who had died only decades before Ignatius came to study there.