Codex of Lubin (Vita beatae Hedwigis – The life of the blessed Hedwig) was funded in 1353 by Prince Ludwik I of Brzeg, a great grandson of St. Hedwig. In this way he wanted to commemorate her and remind people about the cult of the saint, as well as preach the greatness of his family, from which such an eminent ancestor originated. Nicholas Pruzia from Lubin was involved in preparations of the Codex, and bishop Przeclaw from Pogorzela patronized his work.
The Book was initially stored in the collegiate in Brzeg, and from the time of the reformation at the Piast Gymnasium. During the Thirty Years’ War it was passed to Bohemia and then to the Gutmann family in Vienna. Confiscated by Nazi authorities in 1938, it was regained by its previous owners in 1947 and it was passed to Canada. In 1964 the Codex came back to Europe for nineteen years in order to finally – in 1983 – be purchased by Jean Paul Getty to go to the USA to J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu.
Codex of Lubin consists of texts written in Latin: the genealogy of St. Hedwig, her biographies – greater and smaller, a prayer to her, sermons of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the bull of Clement IV with the canonization document of St. Hedwig and an occasional sermon of Pope related to it. The book speaks with words and images. It contains sixty miniatures in color presenting events from the life of the saint and events related to her canonization and cult. Due to a dynamic way of communicating the content and relation between particular scenes in one cycle, one could consider this legend to be a prototype of a modern comic book – what is stricking, even dialogues were written on stripes which look like comic speech bubbles.