Epikedeion

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An epikedeion (Greek ἐπικήδειον, Latin form Epicedium , also Epizedium ) was a funeral chant in ancient Greece that was sung during the laying out and burial of the corpse (in contrast to the threnus , which could be sung during the entire funeral service).

Numerous poems in Greek and Latin literature can be assigned to the genre of the Epikedeion, for example by Aratos , Horace ( Carmen 1, 24) or Properz (4, 11). As a specialty one can find mourning poems about the death of animals since antiquity, also bent parodistically like in Catullus (carm. 3).

In the 17th century the Epicedien experienced a new heyday due to the popularity of extensive printed funeral sermons in Protestant Germany. Friends as well as professional poets wrote numerous epices in the appendix to each such volume . In the larger baroque libraries like Wolfenbüttel there are tens of thousands of such funeral sermons with hundreds of thousands of German and Latin epices. Almost all well-known poets of the 17th century wrote such texts.

literature

  • Gerhard Herrlinger: Lamentation for animals in ancient poetry. With an appendix from Byzantine, Middle Latin and New High German animal pikes (Tübingen Contributions to Classical Studies, 8). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer 1930.
  • Hans-Henrik Krummacher: The Baroque Epicedium. Rhetorical tradition and German casual poetry in the 17th century. In: Yearbook of the German Schiller Society. 18: 89-147 (1974).
  • Theodor Klein: Parrasios Epikedion on Ippolita Sforza. An example of creative appropriation in particular of the Silven of Statius (with Editio critica, transference, commentary) (Studies on the History of Antiquity, NF 1,3). Paderborn: Schöningh 1989, on this the review by Elisabeth Klecker: Wiener Studien 103 (1990), 285f.
  • Franz Eybl: Epicedium. In: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Vol. 2. De Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-484-68102-0 , Sp. 1250 f.
  • Franz Eybl: funeral rhetoric. In: Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric . Vol. 2. De Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-484-68102-0 , Sp. 478-484.
  • Emmens Robbit: Epikedeion. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , column 1116 f. (only for the ancient Greek lamentation).
  • Wulf Segebrecht : Tübingen epicures on the death of the reformer Johannes Brenz (ed.), Commented by Juliane Fuchs and Veronika Marschall, with Guido Wojaczek. Verlag Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-631-33358-7 .
  • Reinhard Breymayer (Ed.): Luctuosa desideria. Recovered memorial writings on the pietistic student Martin Born (1666 - 1689) from Leipzig. With poems by Joachim Feller , August Hermann Francke and others . Part 1. Luctuosa desideria and Cousin and Friend-related Final Duty . Text. 1st edition, Noûs-Verlag Thomas Leon Heck, Tübingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-924249-42-7 . - On pp. 24–25 you can find Feller's famous sonnet by Martin Born in the facsimile of the Fraktur text of the first edition, which has been lost for centuries, pp. 12–13 in Roman roman inscription.