Agnes finger

Agnes Finger, unknown artist, probably from the 17th century.

Agnes Finger , also Agnes or Agnete Fingerin, († around 1514 in Görlitz ) is one of the few women from the Görlitz Middle Ages who emerges from the town's history. She was a pilgrim to Rome and possibly also to Jerusalem .

Life

Finger was married to a cloth maker and merchant in Görlitz and, after a short marriage, became a widow in 1465 . As a widow, she continued her husband's business independently. In the historical documents she is described as wealthy and beautiful. Contrary to custom, she never married again and had no children. In 1471 she founded the “Pious Foundation of Bread and Salt” for poor people, which was supposed to distribute the “Agnetenbrot” until 1563.

Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

In 1476 she probably traveled to the Holy Land with the travel company of Duke Albrecht of Saxony . Since, as a business woman, she had to pay her taxes in the trade , she had to “buy her way out” of the taxes in preparation for her pilgrimage , as trips at that time were always undertakings with an uncertain outcome. She put her property in order and left her house to her brother-in-law on the condition that she could live freely in the “study” upon her return. By selling the goods to her brother-in-law, she had taken precautions in case something should happen to her on the way. The money was earmarked for various pious works.

In the travelogue of the Saxon Hans von Mergenthal († 1448), “two married couples from Görlitz” are mentioned, who took the blueprints of the Holy Sepulcher from Jerusalem with them. There is no evidence of who was her companion. Georg Emmerich , who was mayor of Görlitz at the same time and also went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was not. The construction of the Holy Sepulcher in Görlitz only began after her return in 1481. She also continued to act as a donor for the Church of St. Peter and Paul and hospitals. She died very old in 1514 or 1515, without leaving any “lying or standing property”. According to the Görlitzer Ratsannalen, there was a dispute between two distant relatives about their inheritance.

Agnes Fingers Pilgrimage in Recent Research

The fact that Agnes Finger went on a trip to Rome does not result from her will, but from the entry in the Görlitz city book that followed. There her brother-in-law Hans Schmidt confirms that he had bought goods worth 500 florins from Fingerin  . Recently, Katrin Schreyer has attempted a new interpretation of the sources brought by Richard Jecht and claims that Agnes Fingerin made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with a certain Gabriel. This connection cannot be proven in the sources.

Problematic in his assessment, however, is the entry in Johannes Frauenburg's diary : Alte Fingerin, so in 1465 July 11th in Jerusalem since Georg Emmerich was knighted, in the middle of it . Due to the incorrect edition of this diary, it is not clear whether the entry actually comes from Frauenburg, then there would be no doubt about her trip to Jerusalem, or whether it is an addendum by Bartholomäus Scultetus , who handed down a literary fiction as it is in the saga of the Lausitz appears.

A passage in the annals makes it probable that Agnes Finger may have made a pilgrimage on to Jerusalem: (anno 1519) the same [A. Fingerin] has meanwhile been advocating how it happened to move Duke Albrechte [...] to the holy land [...] . The most important argument against the Jerusalem trip is an entry in the town book in the Görlitz Council Archives. There it says, when she forgives her friend Marcus Michler part of his debts, at the time of the money lending: formerly sy gen Rome withdrew . Had she traveled as far as Jerusalem, this would certainly have been noted.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans von Mergenthal. In: Burghart Wachinger et al. (Hrsg.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . 2nd, completely revised edition, volume 3: Gert van der Schüren - Hildegard von Bingen De Gruyter. Berlin / New York 1981, ISBN 3-11-007264-5 , Sp. 458 f.
2. ^ Johannes Hasse , Theodor Neumann : Görlitzer Rathsannalen. Collection of Upper and Lower Lusatian historians . Hein, Goerlitz 1852, p. 583 ( Google eBook [accessed July 22, 2011]).
3. ↑ Katrin Schreyer: The life of Agnes Fingerin in the mirror of contemporary sources. In: Görlitzer Magazin. Volume 18, 2005, pp. 74-85
4. ↑ Richard Jecht : Documentary news about Georg Emerich. In: New Lusatian Magazine . Volume 68, 1892, pp. 85-164 ( digitized version )
5. ↑ Christian Speer : From Görlitz to Rome. Regesta on the history of the pilgrimage in Upper Lusatia according to the Görlitz town books, council bills and wills [1358–1545]. In: New Lusatian Magazine. New series, Volume 10, 2007, pp. 93–132, pp. 118 f, no. 105
6. ↑ ^{a b c} Christian Speer: Piety and Politics. Urban elites in Görlitz between 1300 and 1550 (Halle contributions to the history of the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era 8) , Berlin 2011, p. 86, note 142.
7. ↑ The diary of the Görlitz town clerk Johannes Frauenburg 1470–1480, based on the copy and with notes by Bartholomäus Scultetus , ed. by Moritz Oskar Sauppe . In: New Lusatian Magazine. Volume 65, 1889, pp. 151–189, here p. 176 ( digitized version )
8. ^ Richard Jecht: Sources on the history of the city of Görlitz up to 1600. Görlitz 1909, p. 132
9. ^ Karl Haupt : Lusatia saga. In: New Lusatian Magazine. Volume 40, 1863, p. 332 ff. ( Digitized version )
10. ↑ Görlitzer Ratsannalen of Mag. Johannes Hass, 1st and 2nd volume [1509–1520] [Scriptores Rerum Lusaticarum New Volume 3], ed. by Theodor Neumann, Görlitz, p. 550
11. ↑ Liber actorum 1478–1487, fol. 48v [9. July 1479]

literature

• Lusatian Jerusalem. 500 years of the holy grave in Görlitz. Edited by Ines Anders and Marius Winzeler for the City Collections for History and Culture Görlitz (series of publications, New Volume 38) and for the Aktionkreis Görlitz eV - publication accompanying the exhibition. Verlag Gunter Oettel Görlitz-Zittau 2005, ISBN 3-932693-89-2