Learned nuns (14th century)
This richly illuminated book of homilies was made in the fourteenth century for the use of an unidentified community of nuns in northern Germany. The ‘N’ (for ‘Nativitas’) begins the Christmas section of the volume. Below is an unusual depiction of the education of the Virgin in a class of girls; she was more commonly depicted being privately educated by her mother. Her fellow pupils hold books and weaving tools while two nuns worship in the margins.