Otto of Passau

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Otto von Passau († after 1383/86) was a Franciscan in Basel and author of the edification pamphlet "The twenty-four olds ".

Life

Little is known about the edification writer Otto von Passau. Only four documents and the preface to his Christian doctrine of life give some pointers. Thereafter Otto von Passau (also Otho von Passow) was lecturer of the Franciscans in Basel and as such testified on August 8, 1362 a gift from the papal military leader Hüglin von Schönegg († 1386), whose confessor Otto was. In 1363 Otto appears as the custodian of the Basel Franciscans, and in 1384 he reformed the Königsfelden Monastery as a visitor, In 1385 he was still a member of the Basel Franciscan Convention. On February 2, 1386, he is said to have completed his work “The twenty-four old men or The golden throne of the mincing soul”, which contradicts the oldest surviving manuscript.

The twenty-four old people

The "Twenty-Four Elderly" is a writ of edification. It presents a Christian doctrine of life in the form of a collection of sentences containing sentences from more than a hundred Christian and ancient authors. Each of the 24 ancients of the Biblical Apocalypse speaks on a topic, and each speech begins with a letter in the sequence of the alphabet (1st speech: A to 23rd speech: Z, 24th speech: W). The 2nd speech deals with the search for God and the essence of God, the 12th with Mary, the Mother of God, the 17th with prayer . Otto von Passau's writing is aimed at laypeople, monks and nuns and, with its explanations, goes into all areas of Christian faith, such as man's attitude towards God and life in life , love or death .

The effect of the work was great. From the 15th century on, it can be traced how it first spread on the Upper Rhine, later in Swabia, Bavaria and Switzerland. The "Twenty-Four Olds" were printed for the first time around 1480 . The "twenty-four olds" seem to have been widespread, especially in nunneries. This is also proven by the rich tradition: more than 150 manuscripts of the text have been preserved. The oldest, which probably most directly contains the work of the "Twenty-Four Elderly" Otto von Passau and is kept in the Badische Landesbibliothek in Karlsruhe, is a paper manuscript (Cod. St. Georgen 64), which was written down in 1383, like the date and colophon show handwriting towards the end. In the 17th or 18th century it was kept in the Amtenhausen nunnery and later moved to the Benedictine monastery of St. Georgen . The codex thus shows the greatest temporal and spatial proximity to the original (which was created before 1383), even though the text contains many changes from the 16th century. From folio 47 onwards, the manuscript was written by a certain "Erassimus Hemeling". Regarding the production of the codex, reference is made to the Freiburg area, as shown by the 23 preserved miniatures of the ancients - the miniature of the first old man is missing as well as the beginning of the teaching on life - and the parchment documents used as waste. The two German documents from the 14th century and from 1381 deal with Rottweiler legal transactions.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Book: The twenty-four olds, 1568 is dedicated to "Wigileus, from God's grace bischoue to Passaw"

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Otto of Passau
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Otho von Passow
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Franciscans in Basel and author of the edification "The Twenty-Four Elderly"
DATE OF BIRTH 14th Century
DATE OF DEATH after 1383