The project will bring together virtually the scattered late medieval library of the Cistercian convent of Medingen. Between the internal reform of the convent in 1478 and the advent of the Lutheran Reformation in the neighbouring town Lüneburg, the Medingen nuns developed their own form of Latin and Middle Low German prayer-books. They produced an astonishing wealth of manuscripts in which they expanded the Latin liturgy with vernacular prayers, lay-songs and meditations and which they illuminated - for themselves as well as for the noblewomen of the neighbouring town.


The Medingen reform was part of a major movement that took place in most of the so-called Lüneburg convents, the five convents located on Lüneburg Heath. In the reform of these convents, the old monastic injunction "to work and pray" was put into new practice. Each of the convents found a specific solution, for example the production of tapestries at Lüne convent. But Medingen was the only one to engage in manuscript production on a larger scale.