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Abstract
The Speculum Humanae Salvationis (SHS)---composed, it is thought, by an anonymous Italian Dominican in the late thirteenth century---has long been recognized as a key witness to the world of late medieval piety. A work in Latin rhymed prose, each of its forty-five chapters is typically illustrated with a sequence of four scenes, the first representing an episode from the life of Christ or the Virgin and the others depicting prefigurations drawn primarily from the Old Testament. Although rarely noted, the SHS commonly closes with three meditational chapters presenting the Hours of the Passion, the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, and the Seven Joys of the Virgin, in which especially dramatic and poignant moments described in the typological chapters are recast as the focus of devotional exercises. This dissertation, treating the structure, organizing systems, and implied functions of the SHS, examines the earliest of the 394 surviving manuscripts---a corpus of thirty-eight illustrated codexes datable to the fourteenth century; it focuses on Vienna, ÖNB 2612, a manuscript shown to be representative in terms of content, layout, structure, iconography and style.
An analysis of the structure of the book reveals how the author weaves together two organizational systems---salvation history and typology---to help readers grasp the meaning of God's plan for salvation at each step in its unfolding and to guide them toward personal salvation. The text transcribed in columns beneath the typological images is shown to be more than a commentary on the images and to extend far beyond typology: in the course of the book the author proceeds from catechetical, to moralizing, to anagogical forms of Christian instruction. An examination of Passion imagery elaborated on in the SHS reveals links with the Christological focus of late medieval devotion. Similarly, the SHS is shown to occupy an important place in the development of late medieval Marian imagery, including representations of the Madonna of Mercy, the Madonna lactans and the Madonna of Seven Sorrows. The SHS emerges as an important work for understanding a range of devotional protocols that enjoyed widespread popularity in the late middle ages.
