The Medieval Latin Literature of Germany as German Literature

The Medieval Latin Literature of Germany as German LiteratureAuthor(s): Edwin H. ZeydelSource: PMLA, Vol. 80, No. 1 (Mar., 1965), pp. 24-30Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461122 .

Accessed: 02/07/2014 22:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 204.169.29.107 on Wed, 2 Jul 2014 22:26:29 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mla

http://www.jstor.org/stable/461122?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


THE MEDIEVAL LATIN LITERATURE OF GERMANY AS GERMAN LITERATURE

BY EDWIN H. ZEYDEL

IN THE vast body of medieval literature written in what is called the Germanic area of

Europe-and in the Middle Ages that included parts of present-day France, Italy, Czechoslo- vakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland-there is an im- mense amount of writing in a non-vernacular language known as Medieval Latin, in German Mittellateinisch-a term not coined by Wilhelm Meyer in 1882, as Karl Langosch claimed.' It was used as early as 1838 by Jacob Grimm in the epoch-making Lateinische Gediclite des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts,2 prepared in collaboration with Andreas Schmeller. Mittellateinisch, among other things the medium of the Roman Catholic Church, is a language apart, growing not directly out of that of Cicero and Vergil, but rather originating from the late Latinity of Antiquity in its dying stages, and under the influence of tenden- cies present in the vernacular tongues.

1. Authors and Works We possess early Medieval Latin works by

Merovingian (Frankish) writers, who lived before the political distinctions between Germanic and Romance regions had crystallized. The poet Venantius Fortunatus is such an author; his works are considered source materials by German historians. Born in the sixth century in what is today northern Italy (a Germanic borderland), he gives a vivid account in the poem De navigio suo of a dangerous river trip on the Mosel and Rhine, from Metz (M1eltica moenia) to Andernach (arces Antonnacensis castelli). He comments on the smoking chimneys of the peasant houses, the walls of Trier, the cliffs along the river, the vineyards, the confluence of the rivers where Koblenz stands, the singing to instrumental accompani- ment on shore, and the lovely scenery (translated in the notes):

Mosellam hinc iubeor percurrere navita remo, Accelerans tremulis pergere lapsus aquis; Ascendensque ratem gracili trabe nauta cucurrit, Nec compulsa notis prora volabat aquis.

Interea locus est per saxa latentia ripis: Litore constricto plus levat unda caput;

Huc proram implicitam rapuit celer impetus actam, Nam prope iam tumidas ventre bibebat aquas.

Ereptum libuit patulos me cernere campos, Et fugiens pelagus ruris amoena peto.

(11.3-12) Inter villarum fumantia culmina ripis

Pervenio, qua se volvere Sura valet. Inde per extantes colles et concava vallis

Ad Saram pronis labimur amnis aquis. Perducor Treverum qua moenia celsa patescunt,

Urbs quoque nobilium nobilis aeque caput. (11. 17-22)

Undique prospicimus minitantes vertice montes, Nubila quo penetrans surgit acuta silex,

Qua celsos scopulos praerupta cacumina tendunt, Hispidus et tumulis crescit ad astra lapis.

Nec vacat huc rigidis sine fructibus esse lapillis: Denique parturiunt saxaque vina fluunt.

Palmite vestitos hic respicis undique colles, Et vaga pampineas ventilat aura comas;

Cautibus insertae densantur in ordine vites, Atque supercilium regula picta petit;

Culta nitent inter horrentia saxa colonis, In pallore petrae vitis amoena rubet ...

(11. 25-36) Tum venio, qua se duo flumnina conflula iungunt,

Hinc Rhenus spumans, inde Mosella ferax. (11. 47-48)

Ne tamen ulla mihi dulcedo deesset eunti, Pascebar Musis aure bibente melos:

Vocibus excussis pulsabant organa montes, Reddebantque suos pendula saxa tropos.

(11. 51-54) Nec tremulo fremitu, modo plano musica cantu

Talis rupe sonat, qualis ab aere meat. (11. 57-58)

Antonnacensis castelli promptus ad arces Inde prope accedens sarcina pergo ratis.

Sint licet his spatiis vineta in collibus amplis, Altera pars plani fertilis extat agri.3

(11. 63-66)

I Merker-Stammler, Reallexikon der deutschen Literatur- geschichte, 2. Auflage, iI (Berlin, 1960), 335.

2 Gbttingen, 1838, p. viii. 3 Die Moselgedichte des D. Magnus A usonius un.d des

Venantius Fortunatus herausgegeben und erklart von C. Hosius (Marburg, 1926), pp. 104 ff. This is the third of Venantius' Mosel poems; the other two are on pp. 97 ff. and 102 f.

English translation: LI. 3-12: From here (i.e., Mainz) I am ordered to travel down the Mosel in a boat as a sailor,/ To proceed hurriedly, wafted along on the rippling water;/ And so (I) the seaman boarded his skiff and glided along in the sleek craft,/ Though not propelled by south winds, the prow speeded along the river./ However, there is a place near the bank with hidden rocks:/ Since the passage is nar- row, the waves raise their heads higher;/ Here the swift cur- rent snatched the prow and dashed it against the reefs,/ And it was well-nigh swallowing up the rushing waters with its belly./ In safety, I was happy to see the spacious fields, And fleeing the river, I sought the pleasant countryside.

Ll. 17-22 (back on the river): Past the smoking chimney- tops of the village houses on shore:/ I glide where the Sauer river rushes along with speed./ From there, past projecting hills and sloping valleys,/ We glide to the Saar on the head- long currents of the river./ I am borne past Trier where high walls are open to view,/ A noble city and the leader among noble cities.

Ll. 25-36: Everywhere we behold mountains menacing

24



Edwin H. Zeydel 25

Some two hundred years before Venantius, the French poet Ausonius of Bordeaux had, with more classical allusions, humor, and even better descriptions of nature's beauties, depicted the same river journey in the opposite direction, from Bingen to Trier.4 His poem is considerably longer.

Late in the eighth century the famous Lango- bard Paulus Diaconus from Friuli near Venice, in the service of Charlemagne, wrote the unfinished history of his people, rich in legends and oral traditions, while two generations later another scholar at Charlemagne's court, the Frank Angilbert, described in trochaic tetrameters the blood-bath suffered by his people in the fratri- cidal battle of Fontanetum (Fontenoy): St. 1: Aurora cum primo mane tetram noctem dividet,

Sabbatum non illud fuit, sed Saturni dolium, De fraterna rupta pace gaudet demon impius.

St. 4: Dextera prepotens dei protexit Hlotharium, Victor ille manu sua pugnavitque fortiter: Ceteri si sic pugnassent, mox foret concordia.

St. 6: Fontaneto fontem dicunt, villam quoque rustici, Ubi strages et ruina Francorum de sanguine: Orrent campi, orrent silvae, orrent ipsi paludes.5

Hrabanus Maurus (780-856) may be called the father of the German medieval Latin poets. A native of Mainz and the pupil of the Anglo- Saxon Alcuin, who called him Maurus after St. Benedict's favorite disciple, he made Fulda the most important school in all of East Franconia and gave wide currency to Carolingian culture. From Fulda his influence spread over the German lands. Through his poetry, text books, and com- mentaries, Hrabanus established himself as the most fruitful author and most learned scholar of his time, though not original in his thinking. His writings and those of such pupils as Walafrid Strabo served the vast territories beyond the Roman limes and contributed importantly to the cultural development of the occidental world during the centuries that followed.

In his verse Hrabanus had an opportunity to develop a degree of originality. However, we are disappointed to find that he wrote mostly occa- sional verse, impersonal and general in content, monotonous in form (although he did compose in various meters, e.g., Horatian), and on the whole colorless and unoriginal. Hrabanus is a traditional- ist; his poetry too is derivative. It reminds us in places of the centos of a later date, revealing wide reading but little more. The Liber de laudibus sanctae crucis, with its twenty-eight figural poems, is full of symbolic-allegorical artistry. The imagery of his hymns is clearer and simpler. The best-known and most pleasing-though many

deny his authorship of it-is the Whitsuntide song "Veni creator spiritus,/ Mentes tuorum visita." It is a little gem which, however, not even so detailed a work as Ehrismann's mentions.

Hrabanus's secular poetry is at its best in the six allegorical elegiac couplets prefacing the volume De Virtutibus et Vitiis, dedicated to Emperor Ludwig I, which contains echoes of Ovid, Vergil, and the Latin Anthology:

Rure morans flexo decerpsi pollice flores, Qui mixtim spirant nectar odoriferum.

Arboribus celsis evulsi ex cortice ramos, Qui foliis myrram, balsamra rore dabunt.

Haec quoque collecta calathis cum, lector opime, Cernas, non spernas, sed relegens teneas.

(11. 1-6)

with their peaks,/ Where needle-like crags rise and pierce the clouds,! Where steep peaks stretch out high points,/ And the rough rocky mass on the heights rises to the stars./ But here too the rugged cliffs are not without advantage:/ Indeed the rocks give birth, and wine flows from them./ Here you see hills everywhere clad with vineshoots,/ And an errant breeze is wafted through the foliage of the vineyards;/ Tied to props, the vines are arranged in dense array,/ And the marked plots reach up to the point;/ The cultivated land of the peasants stands out among the coarse cliffs,/ And amid the rocky pallor the pleasant vine turns red.

Ll. 47-48: Then I come to where two rivers join in confluence,/ Here the foaming Rhine, there the fierce Mosel.

Ll. 51-54: Now, so that no sweetness might escape me as I travelled,/ I fed upon (enjoyed) the Muses, where my ear drank in their song:/ With resounding notes the horns struck the mountains,/ And the hanging cliffs reechoed their melodies.

Ll. 57-58: Not with quivering sound, but with clear song such harmony/ Resounds from the shore as issues from brass.

Ll. 63-66: Then, carried on the parapets of the fort of Andernach,/ I proceed thence, approaching as the burden (passenger) of my skiff./ Though on this side there are vineyards on the hills in ample spaces (numbers),/ The other shore is fertile with fields stretched out in a plain.

4 Ibid., pp. 24-89. 6 Monumenta Germaniae Ilistorica: Poetarum Latinorum

Medii Aevi (MGH, Poetae), II (Berlin, 1884), 138-139. This is the battle in which Emperor Lothar was defeated by his two brothers, Ludwig the German and Karl the Bald, 25 June 841, some eight months before the Strasbourg oaths. See also Helen Waddell, Medieval Latin Lyrics, London (1947 printing), pp. 102 f. and 313.

English translation: St. 1: When first Aurora breaks up ugly night in the morning,/ It was no Sabbath, but a keg (curse) of Saturn,/ In the fraternal rupture of peace the evil demon rejoices.

St. 4: The overpowering right hand of God protected Lothar,! He was victor by dint of his hand, and fought valiantly:/ If the rest had fought thus there would soon be peace.

St. 6: Fontanetum the peasants call the spring and also the village:/ WVhere the carnage and blood-letting of the Franks (took place),/ The fields, the woods and even the swamps are dismayed.

Gustav Ehrismann, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, i (Miinchen, 1954), 234, makes comparisons between this poem, the "Modus Ottinc" (see n. 15 below) and the Old High German Ludwigslied. The



26 The Medieval Latin Literature of Germany

Collectoris enim nomen si noscere quaeris, Maurus dicor ego: tu sine fine vale.6

(ll. 11-12)

A note of more genuine feeling is struck by his Swabian pupil Walafrid Strabo in the Sapphic poem of homesickness for his beloved Reichenau:

St. 8: Ecce prorumpunt lacrimae, recordor, Quam bona dudum fruerer quiete, Cum daret felix mihimet pusillum

Angia tectum. St. 11: Tu licet cingaris aquis profundis,

Es tamen firmissima caritate, Quae sacra in cunctos documenta spargis,

Insula felix.

St. 12: Tu quidem semper cupiens videre, Per dies noctesque tui recordor, Cuncta quae nobis bona ferre gestis,

Insula felix.

St. 16: Da, precor, vitae spatium, redemptor, Donec optatos patriae regressus In sinus, Christi celebrare laudis

Munera possim.7

The poem "Ut quid iubes" of the Saxon Gott- schalk of Fulda (Godescalcus), another pupil of Hrabanus, on his banishment and excommunica- tion, is also deeply felt:

St. 1: Ut quid iubes, pusiole, Quare mandas, filiole,

Carmen dulce me cantare, Cum sim longe exul valde

Intra mare? 0 cur iubes canere?

St. 4: Scis, divine tyruncule, Scis, superne clientule,

Hic diu me exulare, Multa die sive nocte

Tolerare. 0 cur iubes canere?

St. 9: Exul ego diuscule Hoc in mare sum, domine:

Annos nempe duos fere Nosti fore, sed iam iamque

Miserere. Hoc rogo humillime.8

With Hrabanus and his pupils, some of whom he outlived, we have passed beyond the middle of the ninth century. In the tenth century more familiar names, such as Notker Balbulus, Tutilo, and Ekkehard, all of St. Gall, and Hrotsvit and Widukind of Corvey mark peaks-higher than that attained by Froumund, the editor of the Codex epistolaris, whom Schmeller took for the author of the Ruodlieb, and who indeed is better known as the author of works falsely ascribed to him than for works which he actually wrote. The

Ecbasis Captivi, still one of the most underrated works of the German Middle Ages, was written not around 930, but between 1040 and 1050, as is now pretty generally agreed, and the Ruodlieb, about which we now know more than we did a generation ago, came but a few years later. Dur- ing the same period lived Wipo (born in Bur- gundy but considered by some German). In his "Sutrilied" he complained to Emperor Henry III:

St. 1: Romana superstitio Indiget iudicio, Romanum adulterium Destruet Imperium.

St. 4: Propter aurum et argentum Hoc malum est inventum, De matre avaritia Nascuntur haec vitia.

St. 6: Serpit hoc maleficium Mox in pontificium, Ad omne sacerdotium, Si habebit otium. Sic de capitali morbo Minor languescit ordo.9

Romanesque Lyric by Philip Schuyler Allen (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1928) contains renderings by Howard Mumford Jones of several of the poems here quoted.

6 MGH, Poetae, ii, 169. English translation: LI. 1-6: Tarrying in the country, I

twined my fingers around the flowers to pluck them/ As they breathed their sweet nectar in a concert of fragrance./ I tore branches from the trunks of high trees/ That will give myrrh with their leaves and balsam with their sap./ When you behold them, dear reader, gathered in baskets,/ Spurn them not but gather them once again.

LI. 11-12: If you seek to know the name of the one who gathered the flowers-/ I am called Maurus; hail without end to youl

7 Ibid., ii, 412. Also Helen Waddell, op. cit., pp. 110 f. and 316 ff.

English translation: St. 8: See, my tears burst forth when I recall/ What a good tranquil life I used to enjoy,/ When happy Angia (Reichenau) gave me! Modest shelter.

St. 11: Though you are surrounded by deep waters,/ You are none the less steadfast in love,/ You who scatter holy writings among all,/ Happy island.

St. 12: Always craving to see you,/ Day and night I re- member you,/ Who strive to bring us all that is good,/ Happy island.

St. 16: Grant me, Redeemer, I pray you, a span of life/ Till returning to the yearned-for lap of my fatherland,/ I can sing a service of praise/ To Christ.

8 MGH, Poetae, iII, 731 f. See. F. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1953), pp. 189 ff.

English translation: St. 1: Why do you bid me, little fellow,/ WVhy do you order me, little son,/ To sing a sweet song/ When I am far away as an exile/ In the midst of the sea?/ 0 why do you order me to sing?

St. 4: You know, clerical tyro,/ You know, little prot6g6 of heaven,/ That I have been an exile here for a long time/ And have suffered much day and night./ 0 why do you bid me sing?

St. 9: I have been an exile for a long time/ Here at the sea,



Edwin H. Zeydel 27

The short, humorous Dutch-Flemish Unibos (probably of the eleventh century), the long Flemish bestiary Ysengrimnus of Nivardus (ca. 1150), the comical South German Rapularius and Asinarius (around 1200), as well as the ecclesias- tical dramas in Latin, also represent important genres and regions.

Wipo's "Sutrilied" reminds us of the sixteenth century, but also of one of the brightest and liveliest elements in this early literature of its own time, the Latin songs. The oldest of these are the Carmina Cantabrigiensia of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Of somewhat later date are the Carmina Burana, now better known through the musical settings of Carl Orff. More of them later.10

Although at the moment opinion opposes it, there is the possibility that such Middle High German poems as the Nibelungenlied existed in Latin in some form or other as early as the eleventh century.

2. Critical Opinions The important question is whether this me-

dieval Latin literature, so far as it reflects the German cultural sphere, should be included in the body of German literature. It is of interest to see what representative scholars have to say on this subject.

One of the most widely used older histories of German literature, often quoted and considered standard a hundred and more years ago (in two dozen editions from 1844 to 1894), is that of August Friedrich Christian Vilmar. The sole Latin work which it discusses is Waltharius, but only as the "translation" of an alleged German original. Hrotsvit is barely referred to, as are the historians Widukind of Corvey, Thietmar of Merseburg, and Lampert of Aschaffenburg. Ruodlieb and Ecbasis are not even mentioned. The era of the tenth and eleventh centuries, which marks a climax of the medieval Latin age in Germany, is termed a slumber period of the poetic powers of the nation.

When Vilmar's purely descriptive treatment began to go out of style (by 1883), Scherer's positivistic method came in, and buttressed in 1928 by Oskar Walzel's somewhat different method, maintained its position for a long time, in spite of the contrary influence of Gundolf. Scherer devotes due but eclectic attention to some of the Latin documents, especially Wal- tharius, Hrotsvit (only the dramas), and Ruod- lieb, as well as the Latin hymns (not however the Ecbasis), and accepts the lyrics, insofar as they reflect German folkways. This is the criterion of Nadler too when he speaks of Waltharius and

Ruodlieb, "in denen zum erstenmal lebendiges Blut der neuen r6mischdeutschen Einheit zu rollen begann, r6mische Form und Bildung, deutscher Geist und Gehalt.""l Ehrismann,12 despite his expansiveness and specialization, is very selective, discussing some of the Latin writings (sometimes under erroneous dates) but ignoring many others. Schwietering, although referring to the ethnic pride and love of home of Hrotsvit and Widukind and giving Ruodlieb and Ecbasis Captivi considerable space, has little or nothing to say about Hrabanus Maurus, Paulus Diaconus, Strabo, Angilbert, the Saxon Gott- schalk, Wipo, and the secular lyrics in the Ger- man Carmina Cantabrigiensia and Carmina Burana. Betz, too, in the Reallexikon, as well as Schwietering, is selective.13

In particular, one recent product of German literary historiography is negatively inclined toward the Latin literary monuments; it is the representative and often quoted Die deutsche Dichtung von Karl dem Grossen bis zum Beginn der hbfischen Dichtung, 770-1170, a part of the ambitious Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart (by Helmut de Boor in collaboration with the late Richard Newald).14 De Boor emphatically asserts that these monuments shed no light on "das geistige Gesicht" of their period, are "kosmopolitisch," originated "in einem uberv6lkischen Raum," do not flow "im Flufl der deutschen Dichtung" but stem from the "geistige Luft des deutschen Klosters," and are therefore not "volkstiimlich."

master:/ Know indeed that it has been almost/ Two years, but now at last/ Take pity on me./ This I ask most humbly.

9 Historisches Jahrbuclh, xix (1898), 254. English translation: St. 1: False Roman belief (madness)/

Requires judgment (chastisement),/ Roman adultery/ Will destroy the Empire.

St. 4: For gold and silver/ This evil has been devised,/ Of Mother Avarice/ These sins are born.

St. 6: This evil-doing will soon steal its way/ Into the pontificate,/ Into the whole clergy/ If it had a chance./ Thus, because of the malady of their head,/ The lower clergy too will suffer.

10 A selection, Vagantendichtung, edited by Langosch, with German translations, has appeared as No. 78 in the paper- back Fischer-Biicherei, Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1963. The critical Hilka-Schumann edition (i, 1, appeared in 1930), still incomplete at this writing (i, 3, and ii, 2, 3, are missing), is now under the editorship of Bernhard Bischoff of Munich. A recording of Orif's work is available (Angel record No. 35415).

11 Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung und Schrifttum der deutschen Stimme und Land- schaften, 4. Auflage, i (Berlin, 1939), 47.

1 See n. 5 above. 13 Werner Betz in Merker-Stammler, Reallexikon, 2. Auf-

lage, i (Berlin, 1958), 24 ff. Julius Schwietering, Die deutsche Dichtiung des M1ittelalters (Potsdam, 1932; new ed., 1957).

14 MUinchen, 1949, pp. 96 ff.




There is good reason for complete disagree- ment with de Boor. To mention but a few names, it must be conceded that Waltharius, Hrotsvit, Ruodlieb and Ecbasis, also the Ludus de Anti- christo (of the late twelfth century), the Latin hymns and sequences, and certainly the Vagan- tenlieder, so far as they originate in Germany, are not only important poetical products of their time on German soil, throwing light upon the "intellectual countenance" of their respective ages, but also form a part of the framework of German literary history. Though they may be "cosmopolitan" to a certain degree (that can be said of numerous German writings universally recognized as a part of German literature), they do not issue exclusively from a "supranational" area; they offer insight into the progress of Ger- man literature and belong "in the stream of that literature." It should be realized too that the "intellectual atmosphere" of the German monas- teries from the tenth to the thirteenth century is just as much a part of the cultural life as any contemporary lay ruler's court in Germany (and perhaps no less German than was the "intellectual atmosphere" of the eighteenth-century courts). If this is true of literature, it is just as applicable to handicrafts and related arts.

If this German-Latin literature of the Middle Ages had no German earmarks, von Winterfeld and Strecker would hardly have found the means of refuting French scholars (in a chauvinistic era now gone forever, it is to be hoped) when they laid claim to one after another of these works, including Waltharinus, Ruodlieb, and Ecbasis Captivi.

It seems to be a safe assumption that in the tenth century, and even more so in the eleventh, there no longer existed a homogeneous clergy in Europe, because regional attachment and ethnic differences had already made themselves felt. Middle Latin poetry had by this time assumed a regional (sometimes culturally national) stamp in the various socio-ethnic areas, and every signifi- cant work originating on German soil necessarily bore the criteria of the German area.

There are hints of interest in, and even a liking for, the German scene in the Merovingian Venan- tius Fortunatus and Walafrid Strabo, Abbot of Reichenau, as well as in the Latin Carmina Burana, many of which are clearly of German origin. Cultural nationalism is to be detected long before Walther von der Vogelweide in Paulus Diaconus and Widukind, and in a poem (ca. 800) which calls Aachen "Roma secunda." It is particularly true of some of the Carmina Canta- brigiensia manifestly coming from Germany, e.g., the poem "Modus Ottinc," in which "centum

Teutones" rout "milia" of Parthi (Huns or Hungarians), and in the earliest recorded "Schwabenstreich" about a clever Swabian pre- varicator appearing in the same collection."5 The Waltharius is a treasury of Germanic hero lore. Hrotsvit unconsciously betrays her Low-Saxon origins; a turbulent stream is to her like the wild surf of the northwestern seacoast of Germany in a typical storm.'6 When she describes the flight of Queen Adelheid in the Gesta Oddonis, she uses the means and devices of the indigenous Germanic epic employed a generation before by Ekkehard of St. Gall to describe the flight of Walther and Hildgund in his Waltharius. The Ruodlieb deals with native lore, represents more than a purely monastic product, and has roots deep in the native soil. In calling Ruodlieb merely a ripe fruit of Benedictine monastic culture, Werner Braun in Studien zum Ruodlieb: Ritterideal, Erzdhlstruk- tur und Darstellungsstil'7 overlooks the fact that this eleventh-century "Klosterkultur" was already tinged with non-monastic, secular, and Germanic culture. The author of Ruodlieb has taken more than a casual look into the castles of the nobility as well as the cottages of the peasant- ry, and is familiar with the literature of the mimes.

As for the Ecbasis Captivi,'8 if we read 11. 1-68 and 1225 to the end with more care, we see that this is the work of a man of typically Germanic, somewhat Faustian temperament, dissatisfied with his lot, his attainment, and his environ-

1' These two poems, "Modus Ottinc" and "Modus Florum," Carm. Cantabr., xi and xv, can now be found most conveniently in Langosch's Hymnen und Vagantenlieder, 2. unveranderte Auflage (Berlin, 1958), pp. 92 ff. and 126 f. The standard edition of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, by Karl Strecker, is in a separate volume of MGH (1926), but the edition of Walther Bulst (Editiones Heidelbergenses 17, 1950) is more convenient. The poem on Aachen is in F. J. E. Raby's Oxford Book of Mledieval Latin Verse (Oxford, 1959), pp. 89 ff.

18 In the Legend of Pelagius, 11. 323-330. See Sister M. Gonsalva Wiegand, The Non-Dramatic Works of Hrosvitha: Text, Translation, anzd Commentary (St. Louis, Mo., 1936), p. 148.

17 Quellen und Forschungen, N. F. 7 (Berlin, 1962), p. 106: "Der Ruodlieb ist eine reife Frucht der benediktinischen Klosterkultur des elften Jahrhunderts. Nicht in der reali- stischen Schilderung des Lebens seiner Zeit oder in der Kraft und Fille der eigenen Empfindung, sondern in der umfor- menden Zusammenfassung des in seiner Bildungswelt Leben- digen zu einem weit in die Zukunft hinausgreifenden Wunsch- bild eines christlichen erneuerten und verwandelten Lebens liegt die wesentliche Leistung seines Dichters."

18 The first English translation, with Latin text, introduc- tion, and commentary by E. H. Zeydel appeared in the spring of 1964 in the Univ. of North Carolina Studies in the Ger- manic Langs. and Lits. (No. 46). A German edition and translation by W. Trillitzsch and S. Hoyer appeared later in 1964.



Edwin HI. Zeydel 29

ment, and striving for such personal improve- ment as will bring better performance and greater happiness.

The Vagantendichiung represents in part secular folk poetry as it has existed since pre- historic times and constitutes one of the popular sources of the minnelied, especially of the so- called "nidere minne." Nor is the Vagantendich- tung as a whole culturally supranational. In one of its poems, "Hospita in Gallia," the Swabian vagabond student, bound for France, takes leave of home and of his friends:

Vale, dulcis patria, Suavis Suevorum

Suevia.'9

Moreover, there are socio-ethnic distinctions to be made among the vagabond singers. The songs of the Gallic poets Hugh of Orleans (called Primas) and Walter (or Gautier) of Chatillon with their typical esprit, stylistic legerdemain, and (in the case of the former) outspoken treatment of sex, contrast sharply with those of the German Archipoeta.20

If we turn to such ninth-century works in the vernacular as the Hieliand, we find, as Hauck said: "Da ist nun die erste Bemerkung, die sich auf- drangt, daf nicht absichtlich sondern unwill- kiirlich die heilige Geschichte germanisiert wird" ;21 or to Otf rid's Evangelienharmonie, Chap- ter i of the First Book of which extravagantly champions the Franks, their language and prow- ess, and compares them with the contemporane- ous Latin works, we may wonder why the Ger- manic element is comparatively sparse in the latter. The answer must turn to sociology; it involves the type of reader and audience addressed. While the Latin works by no means ignored book-learned fellow-countrymen, they were addressed to a wider international circle of fellow-professionals, or "Standesgenossen" everywhere, or in some cases, as for example Waltharius and Ecbasis, to the educational needs of the monastic schools. In such frameworks conscious references to specific locale and folkways are less appropriate.

3. Latin in the Medieval World It will now be in order to discuss the related

question of the place of Latin in the medieval world in general. Despite the well-meant reform movement of Charlemagne, Latin undoubtedly kept a commanding position as a written and spoken language throughout Europe until well after the twelfth century. But it was a language without a folk, not a mother tongue, or sermo maternus. Wolfram von den Steinen has called it

a sermo patrius,22 or father tongue, although sermo almae matris would seem preferable because it was usually learned and used at school. But we must bear in mind the situation in which German, High and Low, found itself throughout the Middle Ages. It was sparsely cultivated in writing, particularly in writing of any literary pretension (Otfrid is a shining exception, despite Nemitz's recent findings),23 and had the status in most cases of a household means of vernacular communication-that of a baby or nursery language, if that is not putting it too drastically. It offered little opportunity for any choice, not to say elegant expression. Such opportunity was offered through Latin in the Latin or monastic school, to which only the intellectually elite had access. There the students learned the only language which they would employ for any kind of ambitious literary use.

It is not surprising, then, that some writers, like the sixth-century Venantius Fortunatus, looked down upon the vernacular, even if they knew it, and upon native practices, preening themselves on their expertness in Latin and cultivating it to the point of preciosity. Of the vocal and instrumental music of his day he says in his overrefined Latin: Ubi mihi tantundem valebat raucum gemere quod cantare, apud quos nihil disparat aut stridor anseris aut canor oloris, sola saepe bombicans barbaros leudos arpa relidens; ut inter illos egomet non musicus

19 J. Werner, Beitrdge zur Kunde der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (1905), pp. 134 f.; now also in Langosch (n. 10 above), pp. 158 if. Perhaps st. 1-4 and st. 5-8 were originally separate poems.

20 See the poems of these three poets in the Langosch publications mentioned above in nn. 10 and 15. The con- troversial question whether the Archipoeta was Germanic or not may be answered conclusively by the poet himself in favor of our assumption. In the poem "Omnia tempus habent" (Langosch, Hymnein und Vagantenlieder, pp. 220 f.), addressed to the German Archbishop Rainald of Cologne, the Archipoeta refers to himself as "nos . .. Transmontanos" and addresses the Archbishop as a compatriot-"vir Trans- montane." His ten extant poems, edited by H. Watenphul and H. Krefeld, appeared in 1958 in Heidelberg. The poem "Omnia tempus habent" is No. iii. The poems of Hugh of Orleans were published by W. Meyer: Nacliricliten von der kgl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen. Phil.-hist. Klasse, pp. 73 ff., 113 ff., and 231 ff., 1907. The poems of Walther (Gautier) von ChUtillon, from the St. Omer manu- script, were critically edited in two volumes by Karl Strecker (Berlin, 1925, and Heidelberg, 1929).

21 Albert Hauck, Die Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, it (Leipzig, 1890), 706.

22 "Das mittelalterliche Latein als historisches Phainomen," in Sc/weizerische Zeitschrift fur Geschichte, viI (1957), 1 ff.

" Werner Nemitz, "Zur Erklarung der sprachlichen Ver- st6f3e Otfrids von Weii3enburg," in Beitrdge zur Gesckichic der deutschen und Literatur, 84. Band (Ttilbingen, 1962), 358- 432.




poeta, sed muricus deroso fore carminis poema non canerem, sed garrirem, quo residentes auditores inter acernea pocula salute bibentes insana Baccho iudice debaccharent.24

Even as late as the second half of the fifteenth century Sebastian Brant trained himself labori- ously during his upper thirties (he lived to be sixty-four) to write in German, yet to the end of his life wrote Latin with greater facility and felicity.

To what extent, then, was medieval Latin a living language? The famous Romanist Karl Vossler says in Geist und Kultur der Sprache:

Wenn man die kraftvollen Dichtungen bedenkt, zu denen das Latein manchmal wieder aufersteht: die Hymnen und Sequenzen, die frohe derbe ausgelassene Goliardenlyrik . . . , so m6chte man dieses Schulla- tein beinahe einem jener zeitlosen Elementargeister, etwa den Gnomen unter der Erde, vergleichen, oder gar einer Undine, die in heimlichem Verkehr mit einem auserwiihlten Manne wirkliche lebensfahige Kinder bekommt . . . und zugleich fUir sich selbst eine menschliche Seele empfdngt.3

Paul Lehmann in Erforschung des Mittelalters compares Medieval Latin with a beast or bird in a cage, or with transplanted flowers which even in a new habitat can show forth some of their native qualities.26

Horst Kusch, in Eitfiilsrung in das lateinische Mlfittelalter, remarks:

Ist eine Sprache lebend nur, wenn sie in einer Sprach- gemeinschaft gesprochen wird, dann ist das Mit- tellateinische eine tote Sprache, es hat in diesem Sinne keine echte sprachliche Geschichte mehr. Ist aber eine Sprache lebend, solange sie bestimmte Funk- tionen einer lebenden Sprache erfiillt, also etwa Mittel des Verkehrs ist, zwischen Autor und Publikum Gemeinschaft schafft und sprachliche Erscheinungen wie Neubildungen, Entlehnungen und Bedeutungs- wandel zeigt, dann ist auch das Mittellateinische eine lebende Sprache.2"

It should be added that this is particularly true at a time when a literary mother-tongue has not yet developed in the country in question.

In a deeper sense the literature of Mittellatei- nisch is also a living body. We go a step further in stressing that they are in error who would divorce the medieval Latin literature of the German area from the other literature of that area. As far back as 1907 Eduard Norden stated in Die lateinische Literatur im Ubergang vom Altertum zum Mit- telalter: "Eine Literaturgeschichte der unter- gehenden okzidentalischen Welt des Altertums muss landschaftlich gegliedert werden . . . eine gesonderte Entwicklung provinzialer Literaturen

ist klar erkennbar ... es kommt hinzu, dail die verschiedenen Schicksale der einzelnen Provinzen auch die Literatur entscheidend bestimmt haben."23

In 1958 Heinz Rupp stated: "Man mu3, meine ich, die mittellateinische Dichtung starker und intensiver als bisher in die Erforschung der deutschen Literatur einbeziehen."29 Rupp con- tinues, p. 34: "Europaische Literatur und la- teinisches Mittelalter [the title of E. R. Curtius' important work, 2nd ed., 1954]: dieser Begriff hat seine Giiltigkeit, aber es gibt im literarisch- geistigen Bereich auch ein deutsches Mittelalter in seiner vom franz6sischen oder englischen Mittelalter abgehobenen und abzuhebenden spezifischen Eigenart."

Unfortunately the study of the Medieval Latin literature of Germany as an expression of Ger- manic culture has been neglected in many Ameri- can graduate schools. Much of this field is still almost virgin soil waiting to be tilled. Unless the Germanists turn their attention to it, there is little prospect of its being explored as a manifes- tation of that culture. The fruit of the tiller's toil will prove eminently valuable."0

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Cincinnati, Ohio

24 MGH, Auctorum Antiqiissimorum Tomi IV pars prior (Berlin, 1881), p. 2: Praef.

English translation: Among them it was the same if I bellowed coarsely or sang; to them the cackling of a duck is no different from the singing of a swan, for their harp only gives back the strumming sound of barbaric songs, so that in their midst I, not as a musical but rather as a mousey poet, did not sing but chattered my poem, the flower of the song having been gnawed to bits, while they, the listeners, sitting at their maple tankards, pledging each other's health like mad, caroused with Bacchus as their arbiter.

This passage is quoted with omissions and errors by Ehris- mann, op. cit., p. 13.

In his Carmina (vii, 8,11. 61-64), MGH, loc. cit., pp. 162- 163, Venantius distinguishes bet-ween the "Romanus" and his "lyra" and the "barbarus" with the "harpa."

25 Geist und Kultur der Sprache (Heidelberg, 1925), p. 57. 26 Erforschung des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1941), p. 64. 27 Einfukrung in, das lateinische Mittelalter, i (Berlin, 1957),

xxviii. Death prevented the completion of the other two planned volumes. The two preceding references (nn. 25 and 26) are also quoted by Kusch.

28 Die rdmische Literatur. Mit Anhang: Die lateiniische Literatur im Ubergang vorn Altertum zumn Mittelalter. 5. erganzte Auflage (Leipzig, 1954), p. 107.

29 Germanisch-Ronzanische Afonatsschriftl viii, 1, p. 20. '? On Middle Latin literature in general see the bibliogra-

phies in M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munchen, 1911-31); F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Aliddlc Ages, 2 vols., 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1957); and Raby's work mentioned in n. 8 above.



Date post:	27-Jan-2017
Category:	Documents
Upload:	edwin-h
View:	228 times
Download:	7 times

The Medieval Latin Literature of Germany as German Literature

Documents