Codex Hirsaugiensis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Heilbronn Hirsauer Codex 1146 one.jpg
Heilbronn Hirsauer Codex 1146 two.jpg
Mention of Heilbronn
in the Hirsauer Codex

The Hirsau Codex (Latin: Codex Hirsaugiensis ) is a compilation of texts from the Hirsau Monastery , which was created around 1500 and relates to the history of the monastery as well as to foundations, acquisitions and barter transactions that began at the end of the 11th and 12th centuries Century were made and in which the monastery was involved. The manuscript is kept in the main state archive in Stuttgart . The name “Codex Hirsaugiensis” goes back to the first print of the manuscript by August Friedrich Gfrörer in 1843. The manuscript is an important source for the history of southwest Germany in the High Middle Ages. Numerous localities and aristocratic families from the region are mentioned for the first time in the list of goods in the donation book .

content

The manuscript, written in Latin, consists of 70 parchment sheets in the format of approx. 29 × 19.5 cm and comprises four parts in terms of content: Sheet 2–15 contains the first history of the foundation of the monastery with a chronological sequence of the biographies of the first abbots of the monastery from the year 1065 to 1205. Pages 17–19 describe the career of mostly named conventuals who were raised to bishops in the course of the Hirsau reform or appointed as reform abbots in other monasteries. Pages 21–24 list the many altars in the monastery church of St. Peter and Paul, including the relics they contain. Pages 25-70 consist of a second history of the founding of the monastery and then a compilation of hundreds of acquisitions and barter transactions of the monastery. Most of the texts belong to the 11th and 12th centuries, with some additions up to around 1500; the list of abbots is continued as a supplement from a later hand up to the year 1596.

Emergence

The Hirsauer Codex was written around 1500 by an unknown scribe on the basis of older sources and templates in calligraphic script. The writing of the text is probably related to the work of the Sponheim abbot Johannes Trithemius (1462–1516), who in the same period, commissioned the Hirsau abbots Blasius Scheltrup and Johannes Hanssmann, wrote two histories about the Hirsau monastery, the Chronicon Hirsaugiense (1495– 1503) and the Annales Hirsaugienses (1509–1514).

state of research

The way in which the Hirsauer Codex was written around 1500, which was deliberately historicizing for its time, was evidently related to the Bursfeld reform , which urged the Benedictine monasteries to return to their origins. Because of this presumed rhetorical function, the Codex was long considered an unreliable source. In 1949, however, the archivist Karl Otto Müller found two parchment papers in the main state archive in Stuttgart , which had served as bindings of files in the old Württemberg landscape registry from the 17th century and which turned out to be the remains of a Hirsau tradition book from the 12th century. Both sheets contain donation entries and an anniversaries list of the Hirsau convent at that time. This “Traditiones Hirsaugiensis” manuscript from the 12th century is now considered to be one of the possible preliminary stages of the Hirsauer Codex and largely corresponds to its contents. This proof of the actual existence of a Hirsauer donation book, the contents of which corresponded to the manuscript of 1500 in essential parts, led to a rehabilitation of at least the 4th part of the Hirsauer Codex (pages 25-70) as a "flawless traditional book".

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart, signature H 14 vol. 143.
  2. ↑ Dieter Mertens: Beutelsbach and Wirtemberg in the Codex Hirsaugiensis and in related sources . http://www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de/volltexte/2783/index.html
  3. ↑ See: Stephan Molitor, Der "Codex Hirsaugiensis". In: Landkreis Calw, Ein Jahrbuch, Vol. 22, Calw, 2004, pp. 184f.
  4. ↑ Main State Archives Stuttgart J 522 B VI No. 741 Traditiones Hirsaugienses M., Traditiones Hirsaugienses, ZWLG 9 (1949/50) p. 21 f.
  5. ↑ Stephan Molitor, The "Codex Hirsaugiensis". In: Landkreis Calw, Ein Jahrbuch, Vol. 22, Calw, 2004, p. 192

Web links