Northern German devotional manuscripts

Medieval Hymns in Germany; The Medingen Manuscripts. German hymns are only rarely noted down in full before the Lutheran reformation. Then, a major need for spreading the gospel in German led to the wide distribution of hymns via pamphlets, single-leaf prints and hymnbooks. Many of these reformation hymns were based, at least partly, on earlier material as titles such as ‘Christ ist erstanden, gebessert’ (‘Christ is risen, in a better version’) demonstrate (see ‘Christ lag in Todesbanden’*). Leisen* seem to have been popular throughout the German Middle Ages; these are hymns consisting of a few verses, sometimes only one, ending in ‘Kyrieleis’. The problem with reconstructing such early...