Fragment of a Bamberg Missal

The Nuremberg printer Johann Sen­sen­schmidt was called to Bamberg by abbot Ulrich III Haug of the Benedictine monastery of Michels­berg around in 1480 and commissioned to produce liturgical books for the Benedictine order. Ten years later, Sensen­schmidt printed the first missal for the diocese of Bamberg. Six copies of this missal as well as several other books were given to the Nuremberg parish church of St Sebaldus by its administrator Sebald Schreyer and the city’s tax official Paul Volckamer. The donors had all books enhanced with miniatures which depict the church’s patron saint wearing a pilgrim’s hat and the model of the church. Two angels bear his coat of arms, and the two donors kneel in the foreground.