Remarkable 19th-century illustrated manuscript with the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dutch. Each prayer is accompanied by an engraved plate which depicts that particular prayer. These beautiful engravings were made by Joseph Sebastian Klauber (ca. 1700-1768) and his brother Johann Baptist Klauber (1712-1787), who both worked in Augsburg. They specialised in Catholic printed art and are considered some of the best artists from Augsburg in their genre. The present illustrations are highly detailed. The numerous allegorical and symbolical elements in them would have inspired hours of study, especially when combined with the prayers.
The litany was originally composed in Latin, but has here been translated into Dutch. This indicates it was probably made by and for a layman or -woman. It was likely made in Flanders and used for private devotion. The engravings are older than the text. They were taken from Litaniae Lauretanea ad beatea virginis (1750) by Fransisco Javier Dornn and reused in the present manuscript. With the exception of the frontispiece, all engravings from this work have been included.
The litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary is also known as the litany of Loreto. It was originally approved in 1587 by Pope Sixtus V (1521-1590) and received its name from the place where it was first recorded, namely at the shrine of Our Lady of Loreto. The text starts with the Kyrie and invocations for the Holy Trinity. These are followed by series of invocations for Mary, each one using a different title for her, including, for example, "Mother of Christ", "Virgin most powerful", and "Mystical rose". The litany is still in use and continues to be updated; three new invocations have been added in 2020. The present work does not contain the invocation "Queen conceived without original sin", which was added to the litany in 1843. The manuscript must therefore have been made before that year.
With a small annotation in ink ("1792") on the recto of the first free end leaf, the pages are numbered in roman numerals, which are written in pencil and ink in the head margin of the pages. The edges and corners of the boards are scuffed, the joints are somewhat weakened, but the boards are still attached, with some loss of material at the head and foot of the spine. The leaves are somewhat browned around the edges, with a wormhole on the last 5 leaves and the back pastedown, the engraved plates are slightly smaller than the other leaves. Otherwise in good condition. Cf. Thieme/Becker 20, p. 411.