Albrecht von Eyb, Ehebüchlein (Marriage Booklet)

The humanist Albrecht von Eyb (1420-1475), a native of the old Franconian aristocracy and canon of Eichstätt and Bamberg, is considered the founder of this literary genre with his "Ehebüchlein".

The work, first printed in 1472, speaks of love and chastity, child rearing and all sorts of ups and downs in everyday married life and became a favourite book of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Cgm 5185 is a paper manuscript owned by Hartmann Schedel (see also the "Songbook" and "The Book of Chronicles and Stories") and contains verse adaptations from the "Ehebüchlein" as well as the "Spiegel der Sitten" also by Eyb.

There are 24 poems with 30 verses each on the following topics: Virtue (leaf 2r); Planets and planets in astrology (leaf 2v-6v); Signs of the zodiac with regimina (leaf 7v-14v); Happiness (leaf 15v-16v); Happiness (leaf 16r-v); Death (leaf 17r-v); Sin (leaf 18va); The four elements (leaf 18vb). The manuscript that dates from the 4th quarter of the 15th century is provided with 26 coloured pen drawings, possibly copies of wall paintings from the canon's court of Albrecht von Eyb and is of North Bavarian-Eastern Franconian origin. It was originally part of Clm 351 and was removed from this corpus in 1867.

To the digitised copy