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The Hortus Deliciarum, Plate 3

Made at the Hohenburg Abbey, France, 1185
by Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130 - July 25, 1195)

Click on the picture for a detail of that section.

Source: Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg
Herrad von Landsperg, Aebtissin zu Hohenburg, oder St Odilien, im Elsass, im zwölften Jahrhundert und ihr Werk, Hortus deliciarum : ein Beytrag zur Geschichte der Wissenschafte, Literatur, Kunst, Kleidung, Wassen und Sitten des Mittelalters / von Christian Moritz Engelhardt.

Text links to the larger images:
Hortus Deliciarum: Goliath
Hortus Deliciarum: The three Magi
Hortus Deliciarum: Parable of the vigneron homicides
Hortus Deliciarum: Joshua's Battle Against the Amalekites
Hortus Deliciarum: Assault on the City of Dan
Hortus Deliciarum: Battle Between Greed and Generosity

Herrad of Landsberg (c.1130 - July 25, 1195) was a 12th century Alsatian nun and abbess of Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains. She is known as the author of the pictorial encyclopedia Hortus deliciarum (The Garden of Delights). Herrad of Landsberg was born about 1130 at the castle of Landsberg, the seat of a noble Alsatian family. She entered the Hohenburg Abbey in the Vosges mountains, about fifteen miles from Strasbourg, at an early age. She became abbess there in 1167 and continued in that office until her death.

These illustrations are from a reproduction by Christian Maurice Engelhardt, 1818. The original perished in the burning of the Library of Strasbourg during the siege of 1870 in the Franco-Prussian War. The text was copied and published by Straub and Keller, 1879-1899.

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Referenced on pp.174-5, Arms and Armour of the Crusading Era, 1050-1350, Western Europe and the Crusader States by David Nicolle
436A-E Hortus Deliciarium, Germany, c.1180
(ex-Library of Strasbourg; from a facsimile made a few years before the destruction of the original in a fire in 1870)
Nineteenth-century copies of some of the illuminations in this lost manuscript might be unreliable in detail but they do show certain major features. One is the very tall, perhaps segmented or painted helmet with nasal (A). This is worn by a figure who otherwise uses standard equipment comprising a long-sleeved mail hauberk with coif and mittens, mail chausses on the front of his legs, a sword with straight quillons, and a tall, distinctly curved, flat-topped kite-shaped shield. A longbow of just under a man's height (C) and a simple quiver in which the arrows are placed points uppermost (B) are seen in the hands of a presumed hunter. An interesting variety of gonfanons or banners are shown (D), as well as another certainly segmented tall, round-topped helmet with a nasal (E).