Big Burgundy Chronicle
The Great Burgundy Chronicle was written by Diebold Schilling the Elder around 1480 . It is also called the Zurich Schilling after its location in the Zurich Central Library . The Burgundy Chronicle is considered to be the most comprehensive contemporary source on the Burgundian Wars .
Emergence
On January 31, 1474, Schilling was commissioned by the councilors of Bern to write a chronicle of the city from its foundation to the present day. Schilling wrote a three-volume “Official Chronicle” for the city of Bern, which he presented to the Bern Council on December 26, 1483. The illustrated draft for the third volume of the Official Schilling Chronicle is known as the Great Burgundy Chronicle . It covers the period from 1466 to 1484 and is the most extensive of Schilling's chronicles. Schilling wrote the text based on his own experiences and experiences in the Burgundy Wars. In 429 chapters, Schilling describes individual events such as military campaigns, looting, sieges and court judgments; historical connections interested him less. The chronicle is illustrated with 199 watercolor pen drawings, which are considered to be the early work of the painter Hans Fries .
description
Of the original 542 sheets, 521 have survived. The 1 centimeter thick wooden lid (39 × 24.4 cm) are covered with white pigskin and are held together by two brass clips. A full page counts at the beginning 25 to 36, towards the end sometimes more than 40 unlined parallel lines. Schilling described the more than 1000 pages without ever painting or mending. He also described the pages on which illustrations were provided. When released, he gave the draftsman the subject and size of the picture.
history
Zurich owes the Burgundian chronicle largely to Hans Waldmann , mayor of Zurich from 1483 to 1489. He played a leading role in the Burgundian Wars and was interested in history. Waldmann headed a commission that had the task of creating a Zurich city chronicle. He ensured that Zurich received the illuminated manuscript sold by Schilling's widow, which his stepson Gerold Edlibach had already used for his Swiss Federal Chronicle in the summer of 1486.
In 1506 a second commission under Gerold Meyer von Knonau was commissioned to rewrite Schilling's chronicle based on Zurich conditions - a project that was never implemented. When the text was copied around 1532, several illustrated sheets were already missing in the foremost part; In the following years around twelve more sheets disappeared, so that around 1600 the decision was made to use the binding that is still available today. The leaves were trimmed again and at least 44 new endpapers were inserted. The loose, still existing original sheets in the foremost part could no longer be classified correctly because of the lack of pagination; a reconstruction would only have been possible with the help of the Bern fair copy.
It is not known whether the chronicle was already in private hands at the time. Johann Heinrich Hottinger used a chapter of it for his Historiae ecclesiasticae in 1675 . In doing so, he seems to have referred to the copy from 1532, which was then kept in the city library founded in 1629 . 1693 records a dedication that the original also got into the city library: This chronicle venerates the 2nd Jenner 1693 in the common civil library. Hanns Heinrich Holtzhalb Bouw, and Zügmeister in Zurich.
In 1735/36 Johann Jakob Breitinger and Johann Jakob Bodmer published several chapters from Schilling's Burgundy Chronicle in their Thesaurus Historicae Helveticae , which they found in the local citizen library . In a report they record: « … there are two copies of Schilling's Chronicle; a very old one with illuminated figures ... and a little less old. The former is somewhat defective in several places: there are other things bound to the other, both in large folio. »
Between 1736 and 1743 the chronicle was expertly restored. The text of the missing sheets was transferred from a Bern copy to the flyleaves added around 1600, which were removed from the chronicle and reinserted in the right place. At the same time the order of other sheets was corrected. The Chronicle had previously been paginated. In 1786 the Bernese historian Gottlieb Emanuel von Haller mentioned it in his library of Schweitzer history , then it was forgotten.
expenditure
- In the last years of the 19th century Gustav Tobler (1855–1921) recognized it as the original and published it in 1897 on behalf of the Historical Society of the Canton of Bern.
- In 1943/45 Hans Bloesch and Paul Hilber published a facsimile of all three volumes of the Official Chronicle, but without any scientific commentary.
- In 1985 the Lucerne Facsimile Verlag published a facsimile edition in a limited edition of 980 numbered copies.
Facsimile of the Great Burgundy Chronicle
Double page
Small Burgundy Chronicle
The so-called Little Burgundy Chronicle is considered Schilling's first independently written work, which Schilling completed at the beginning of 1477. It covers the period between 1466 and 1469 and between 1474 and January 1477. The original has been lost. Several copies of it have survived, the most important of which is the Freiburg Chronicle written by Peter von Molsheim .
literature
- Carl Pfaff : The world of Swiss picture chronicles. Edition 91, Schwyz 1991, ISBN 3-905515-01-7 .
- Carl Gerhard Baumann: About the origin of the oldest Swiss illustrated chronicles (1468–1485). Writings from the Berner Burgerbibliothek, Bern 1971.
- Ernst Walder: Questioned and corrected by councilors and burgers. Diebold Schilling's three editorial offices of the Bern Chronicle of the Burgundian Wars. In: Berner Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Heimatkunde , 48 (1986), pp. 87–117.
Web links
- Carl Pfaff: picture chronicles. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Great Burgundy Chronicle: E-Manuscripa
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manuscript census
- ↑ Ziereis facsimiles
- ^ Carl Gerhard Baumann: About the origin of the oldest Swiss illustrated chronicles (1468–1485) ; Writings from the Bern Citizens' Library; Bern 1971