Codex Sangallensis 911

Repository	St. Gallen Abbey Library
Place of origin	unknown
Time of origin	End of the 8th century
Writing material	parchment
scope	323 pages
format	approx. 17 x 10.5 cm
language	Old High German , Latin
Number of lines	14-21
font	several hands, Alemannic minuscules

The Codex Sangallensis 911 is a collective manuscript with an Abrogans script , the St. Gallen Paternoster and the Credo , which together are among the oldest Old High German sources and were created at the end of the 8th century.

General Information

The Abrogans manuscript is now kept in the St. Gallen Abbey Library. This is a Latin language dictionary with Old High German translations, which was supplemented by a Paternoster (Our Father) and a Credo (creed) in Old High German after it was written.

The collective manuscript is called Abrogans-Handschrift, based on the first word of the first part of the manuscript (the dictionary): abrogans = dheomodi (modest, humble).

All three texts have been written down by several scribes on parchment that is partially poor and full of holes in Alemannic minuscule . The use of inferior parchment indicates that the manuscript was intended for internal use rather than the public. It is believed to have reached St. Gallen from the Alsace region in the first half of the 9th century .

content

Abrogans

First page of the Abrogan (Codex Sangallensis 911)

The dictionary contains 3,239 Old High German and 3,670 Latin words, although the German translations are incorrect. The glossary thus serves as a source for knowledge of the oldest German language, as it also contains 700 words that are otherwise no longer present in any other Old High German text. No less than twenty hands have written the abrogans on inferior parchment. This indicates that the handwriting was intended more for internal use and probably served as a rhetorical exercise in style. Except for a few initials , such as at the beginning of the text, the handwriting is kept quite unadorned, which in turn indicates the assumption that the document was not intended for the public. Probably in the old Bavarian diocese of Freising , under Bishop Arbeo , the dictionary was finally 'translated' into German in the second half of the 8th century. Both the Latin headwords and their Latin renditions were glossed with Old High German equivalents. The German translations do not appear interlinear as usual, but next to the terms.

No copy has been preserved from the time the glossary was created in the 8th century. There are three more recent manuscripts of the "Abrogans Deutsch" in Paris ( Bibliothèque nationale de France , Ms. lat. 7640, Bl. 124r-132v), Prague ( National Library of the Czech Republic , Cod. XXIII.E.54, Bl. 22r- 47v) and Karlsruhe ( Badische Landesbibliothek , Cod. Aug. perg. 111, Bl. 76r-90r). In relation to the manuscript from St. Gallen, the research deals on the one hand with the question of whether one or more scholars worked on the Old High German translations and, if there were several translators, whether they came from the same language area. On the other hand, it is questionable whether the words are in their basic grammatical form in the glossary or whether the expressions were not taken from existing texts when the handwriting was written, which then means that the dictionary was used for explicit text explanation. Linked to this is the question of whether the St. Gallen Abrogans is a "secondary Bible glossary" that took over glossary groups from existing glossaries.

paternoster

(true to line playback)

Pater noster (Codex Sangallensis 911)

Old High German	Latin	New High German
Fater our thu	Father noster, qui	Our father who you
pist in himile uuihi	it in caelis: sanctificetur	are in heaven, sanctified
namun dinan.	noun tuum.	become your name;
qhueme rihhi	Adveniat regnum	your kingdom come to us;
din uuerde uuillo diin	tuum. Fiat voluntas tua,	Your will will happen,
so in himile sosa in erdu.	sicut in caelo, et in terra.	as in heaven, also on earth!
prooth our emez-	Panem nostrum cotidianum	Our daily bread
zihic kip us hiutu oblaz	da nobis hodie. Et dimitte	give us today; and forgive
us sculdi unseero	nobis debita nostra,	our fault
so uuir obla-	sicut et nos dimittimus	as do we
zem us scul-	debitoribus nostris.	forgive our debtors;
dikem enti ni	Et ne	and
unsih firleiti in kho-	nos inducas in tentationem,	do not tempt us
runka uzzer losi un-	sed libera	but deliver us
sih fona ubile.	nos a malo.	of the evil.

Despite the centuries that lie between the development of Old High German to today's New High German , the Old High German Paternoster is easy to understand, also due to the familiarity of the Our Father in the church. The few changes can be seen in the word 'khorunka' (= temptation, lines 13f.), Which has disappeared and 'emezzihic' (lines 7f.) With its change in meaning from the earlier 'daily' to the now common 'industrious'. There are also a few words with full Endsilbenvokalen present, over the following centuries weakened in Middle High German (rihhi, Erdu) and some terms of the sound shift of Südalemannischen are marked. It is unclear whether the translation refers to a template. A dating even further back than the 8th century is not assumed by research due to the language level and tradition. The translation is often viewed as a failure in research, which can be stated at a few points. For example, 'uuihi namun dinan' (lines 2f.) (= Hallowed be your name) is translated from the Latin passive voice , as in today's German Our Father, not passively, but actively. The question arises whether this is really a translation error or a deeper theological thought, since only God, the Almighty, can sanctify his name.

Creed

(true to line playback)

Second page of the Credo (Codex Sangallensis 911)

Old High German	Latin	New High German
kilaubu	Creed	I think
in excrement fat (er) almah-	in Deum, Patrem omnipotent,	to God the Father Almighty,
ticum ki-	Creatorem	the creator
scat himiles	caeli	Of the sky
enti erda enti in Ih (esu) m	et terrae. Et in Jesus	and the earth. And to Jesus
christ sun sinan aina-	Christ, filium eius unicum,	Christ his only begotten Son
cun unsanely	Dominum nostrum:	our Lord,
the inphangan is fo-	qui conceptus est de	received by the
na uuihemu keiste	Spiritu sancto,	Holy Spirit,
kiporan	natus	born
fona mariun	ex Maria	of the Virgin Mary
macadi euuikeru	Virgin,
kimart red in ki-	passus sub	suffered from
uualtiu pila-	Pontio Pilato,	Pontius Pilate
tes
in cruce pislacan dead enti	crucifixus, mortuus, et	crucified, died and
picrapan stand in uuizzi	sepultus, descendit ad inferos:	buried, descended into the realm of death
in threesome take destroyed	tertia the resurrexit	rose on the third day
fona tote (m)	a mortuis;	from the dead,
stand in himil	ascendit ad caelos;	ascended to heaven;
sizit az zesuun	sedet ad dexteram	he sits on the right
cotes fateres almahtikin	Dei patris omnipotentis:	God the Almighty Father:
dhana chui (m) ftic is sonen	inde venturus est iudicare	from there he will come to judge
qhuekhe enti tote ki-	vivos et mortuos. Creed	the living and the dead. I think
laubu in uuihan keist in uuiha	in Spiritum sanctum, sanctam	to the Holy Spirit, the holy one
khirihhun catholica uui-	ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum	catholic church, community
hero kemeinitha urlaz	communionem, remissionem	of saints, forgiveness
suntikero fleiskes urstodali	peccatorum, carnis resurrectionem,	of sins, resurrection of the dead
in liip euuikan; Amen)	vitam aeternam. Amen.	and eternal life. Amen.

The translation of the Credo, like that of the Paternoster, is regarded as incorrect. In research, one deals primarily with the question of whether the well-known Latin symbolum Apostolicum served as a template for the Credo . At the same time there is also the assumption that the Latin model of the Credo, like that of the Paternoster, comes from northern Spain or western Gaul and was brought to the east and to St. Gallen by Irish monks.

literature

• Gustav Must: The St. Gallen Credo . In: Karl Hauck (ed.): Early medieval studies. Yearbook of the Institute for Early Medieval Research at the University of Münster . Volume 15. Berlin 1981, pp. 371-386.
• Gustav Must: The St. Gallen paternoster . In: Hans-Gert Roloff (Ed.): Files of the 5th International Congress of Germanists Cambridge 1975 . Leonard Forster. Issue 1, Bern 1976, pp. 396-403.
• Peter Ochsenbein: The oldest German book with the oldest native speaker 'Pater noster' - The 'Abrogans' handwriting with the' St. Gallen Our Father ' . In: Cimelia Sangallensia. Hundreds of treasures from the St. Gallen Abbey Library , Karl Schmuki, a. a. St. Gallen 2000, p. 32f.
• Stefan Sonderegger: Old German in St. Gallen . In: Peter Ochsenbein (Ed.): The St. Gallen Monastery in the Middle Ages. The cultural bloom from the 8th to the 12th century . Darmstadt 1999, pp. 205-222.
• Stefan Sonderegger: St. Gallen Paternoster and Credo . In: Kurt Ruh u. a. (Ed.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Volume 2. 2nd edition. Berlin 1980, pp. 1044-1047.
• Jochen Splett: Abrogans German . In: Kurt Ruh u. a. (Ed.): The German literature of the Middle Ages. Author Lexicon . Volume 2. 2nd edition. Berlin 1978, pp. 12-15.
• Jochen Splett: The Abrogans and the use of Old High German writing in the 8th century . In: Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl (Hrsg.): Types of ethnogenesis with special consideration of Bavaria . Volume 1. Vienna 1990, pp. 235-241.

Web links

Commons : Codex Sangallensis 911  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• e-codices.unifr.ch

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Quoted from: Jochen Splett: Der Abrogans and the use of Old High German writing in the 8th century. In: Herwig Wolfram, Walter Pohl (Hrsg.): Types of ethnogenesis with special consideration of Bavaria . Volume 1, Vienna 1990, p. 240.
2. ↑ busy . duden.de
3. ↑ Peter Ochsenbein: The oldest German book with the oldest native speaker 'Pater noster' - The 'Abrogans' handwriting with the' St. Gallen Our Father ' . In: Karl Schmuki, u. a .: Cimelia Sangallensia. Hundreds of treasures from the St. Gallen Abbey Library . St. Gallen 2000, p. 32 f.
4. ↑ Gustav Must: The St. Gallen Credo . In: Karl Hauck (ed.): Early medieval studies. Yearbook of the Institute for Early Medieval Research at the University of Münster . Volume 15. Berlin 1981, pp. 371-386