Sacramentary of Henry II (Regensburg Sacramentary)
Sakramentar Heinrichs II. (BSB Clm 4456)
Te igitur, clementissime Pater, per Iesum Christum Filium tuum Dominum nostrum supplices rogamus ac petimus.
Our renderingTherefore, most merciful Father, we humbly pray and beseech you through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord.
What it is
Created at St. Emmeram's Abbey in Regensburg under Henry II's commission, this sacramentary (BSB Clm 4456) served as the Mass book for Bamberg Cathedral's high altar or for Henry's own court chapel — scholars have debated both functions — and was donated by the emperor as part of his systematic creation of Bamberg as a new sacred centre of the empire. Its 358 leaves contain the Canon of the Mass, prefaces, collects, and a liturgical calendar, prefaced by a full-page miniature of Christ crowning the emperor. The manuscript is particularly important as evidence of how the Mass itself functioned as the core devotional act of the Ottonian court and as a vehicle for the emperor's ongoing self-presentation before God. Its collects follow the Gelasian and Gregorian sacramentary traditions that remained foundational for Western liturgical prayer.
Why it still matters
The Canon of the Mass it preserves — Eucharistic Prayer I of the Roman Rite — remains in full liturgical use today, identical in its core to what Henry II prayed over at the altar. Christians who pray the Roman Canon are participating in an unbroken tradition traceable directly through this manuscript.
Kept alongside
Penitential Psalms and Litany of Saints (as compiled in Ottonian royal use)
Psalmi poenitentiales cum litania sanctorum
The seven Penitential Psalms (Psalms 6, 32, 38, 51, 102, 130, 143) combined with the Litany of Saints form the core private prayer structure documented directly in the Prayerbook of Otto III (BSB Clm 30111), where Archbishop Bernward of Hildesheim employed them in the young emperor's spiritual formation. This pairing — penitential self-examination before God followed by intercession from the whole company of heaven — was used by Christian teachers as early as Origen and Augustine, ordered for Lenten use by Pope Innocent III, and embedded in the Use of Sarum and successive Books of Common Prayer. Its place in the weekly devotional rhythm of the Salian and Hohenstaufen courts via their breviary traditions makes it the single most broadly transmitted prayer form in this dataset, extending across all dynasties and centuries. The sequence remains structurally unchanged in the Roman Rite today.
Prayerbook of Otto III (Gebetbuch Ottos III.)
Gebetbuch Ottos III.
One of only two royal prayer books from the early Middle Ages to survive intact, made for the personal devotion of the boy-king Otto III and probably commissioned by his mother Empress Theophanu and Archbishop Willigis of Mainz between 983 and 996. Written entirely in gold ink on purple-stained parchment, it contains the seven Penitential Psalms, a litany of saints, morning prayers, and prayers for entering and leaving church. Its miniatures depict the young prince praying between Saints Peter and Paul and kneeling before the enthroned Christ — a programmatic image of what a Christian emperor ought to be. Scholars have identified the book as functioning simultaneously as a personal devotional and a mirror for princes, embedding a monastic ideal of sovereignty into the young ruler's daily prayer.
Bamberg Apocalypse
Bamberger Apokalypse (Staatsbibliothek Bamberg, Msc.Bibl.140)
The Bamberg Apocalypse is an illuminated manuscript containing the Book of Revelation with an accompanying Gospel lectionary, produced at Reichenau and donated by Henry II and Empress Cunigunde to the Collegial Abbey of St. Stephen at Bamberg, now held in the Bamberg State Library with UNESCO Memory of the World status (inscribed 2003). Its 106 folios are illuminated with 57 gilded miniatures depicting the Apocalyptic narrative in vivid colour, making it one of the most visually arresting devotional manuscripts of the Ottonian era. Meditation on the eschatological sovereignty of Christ — Rex regum, King of kings — was central to Ottonian imperial piety, reminding the emperor of divine accountability at the end of all earthly rule. Sources indicate the manuscript was begun at the order of Otto III and completed or donated under Henry II.