Trying to get blood from a... book!

This post is a short update of where my research has taken me recently, and where I plan to go with it in the coming weeks.

Woodcuts

I've recently looked into the woodcuts. It appears that very similar, or even identical woodcuts to the ones in this book were very popular during the early 16th century (particularly the man of sorrows and arma christii). Unfortunately manuscripts are more likely to be digitized than print texts, so it is very difficult to find codices containing the same prints online. What images I have come across are found are in blogs or grey literature websites that offer little information on their context. From what I can tell very few of these woodcuts received coloring as they did in this codex. It would make me very happy to find a devotional book (even a print book) with the same woodcuts as this one to see if they also had evidence of kissing or rubbing.

Crossed out text on F8v

Since this project is for a course on text image relationships, I figured it would be a good idea to attempt deciphering the crossed out middle English on folio 8v. It is very clearly an indulgence, and runs something along the lines of the following.

"To all the devout, lay (say?) ...x... and be granted xxxiim... (over 30,000?!) years of ...pardon...?"

It would be interesting to know when the text was crossed out, as a rejection of the indulgence could be used to argue why f2r was the target of physical devotion instead.

While the culprits could be militant protestants modifying the text in later years, I think it is possible that indulgences were seen with disdain in the late 15th century and that the patron immediately crossed out the text. In the 14th century we have Chaucer famously deriding pardoners and their relics in the Canterbury Tales, so I see no reason why print indulgences would seen in any better light a century later. A very similar (but not identical) woodcut with possibly the exact same text also crossed out can be found on this blog. Evidently the sentiment was widespread.

Upcoming goals

In the coming weeks I'm hoping to look more deeply into the significance of blood in late medieval devotion since my arguments could really just as easily be made had the book been covered with blue tears and rainbows.  From what I have read so far, bloody imagery appears to have been very popular in Germany in the late middle ages. Is this codex is an example of cultural diffusion?, or has modern scholarship on the topic simply concentrated on Germany? I guess I'll have to find out.