Prologus arminensis

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Beginning of the Prologus , digitized version of the Munich copy

Prologus Arminensis (complete: [Incipit] Prologus Arminensis in mappam Terresancte Templi Domini Ac sancte ciuitatis Hierusalem , after the incipit on sheet 2r; also: Tractatulus totius sacrae historiae elucidativus after the Colophon ) is a written incunable in Latin with the first written description of the Holy Land and especially of Jerusalem . According to general opinion, it was published by Lukas Brandis in Lübeck around 1478 .

Structure and content

Scheme of the Temple of Solomon

Just a few years after the monumental Rudimentum Novitiorum (1475), which contained the first printed map of the Holy Land, Brandis published on 30 folio sheets (with an ox's head as a watermark ) of 58 lines each in two columns (without custodians or pagination ) the first printed detailed description of the temple, the city of Jerusalem and the places in the Holy Land. With the exception of a few rubrications , the volume is unadorned. The cards in the Prologus are mute cards that contain only text arranged like a card, but no drawings: the volume opens on sheet 1 v with a scema of the Temple of Solomon . An equally silent map of Jerusalem is printed on page 6v , and on a double page 11r / 12v a similar overview of the entire Holy Land is printed. After a short introduction, the actual prologue on sheet 2r , first the description of the temple in 25 short capitula follows , then from sheet 7r the description of Jerusalem in 39 sections, beginning with the Calvary and ending with Bethphage , a place on the Mount of Olives . From sheet 10v onwards, the view extends to other places in the Holy Land, which are described in 150 short sections, ending with Egypt on sheet 25r. In all three parts, the number of the chapter corresponds to the number given to the location on the overview map . This is followed by a fasciculus (cap. CLI – CLXV, sheets 25r-29r) about the difficult chronology in the 1st and 2nd books of the Maccabees with references to their harmonization. Attached is a register and a colophon on sheet 30r , which provides a kind of summary , but does not name the printer, place or date.

meaning

The work was not primarily intended to provide geographical information as we understand it today, but, like many comparable writings and maps, as an orientation aid for the localization of places of biblical history and thus of salvation history. The aim was a systematic, comprehensive representation of the Holy Land, which should give young preachers a feeling for the localization of the places and for the distances. It was both a Bible study tool and a book of edification. Thus on sheet 2v the stimulation of prayer and understanding of the biblical texts is stated as the aim of the book. The Prologus stands in a tradition that goes back to Eusebius of Caesareas Onomasticon . Its main source is the description of the Holy Land by Burchardus de Monte Sion in the form as it was in the Rudimentum novitiorum , also printed by Brandis in 1575 . But your own perception, probably from a pilgrimage , is sometimes visible, especially since the author gives the distances in German miles ( miliaria teutonicalia ). In Lübeck, the creation of this literary work is closely related to the construction of the Lübeck Way of the Cross after Councilor Hinrich Constin returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1468.

Author's question

In 1798 Paul Jakob Bruns assumed that a c. Westphalian clerics who returned from Palestine in 1460 wrote the work.

In 1885, Wilhelm Anton Neumann advocated the thesis, which is still widely accepted today, that Hermann von Sina , the reading master of the Lübeck Dominican monastery , should be regarded as the author, which would also clarify the Arminensis .

Karl von Stern, on the other hand, suspected the priest Johannes von dem Berge in 1903 , who is documented as early as 1467 in Lübeck as Michaelisfrater ( brothers from living together ). For his old age he bought Steffen Arndes' outbuilding in Königstrasse , where he also died in 1495.

Lore

The incunable was first described in 1798 by Paul Jakob Bruns. He was presented with a copy that had belonged to the Benedictine monastery Clus and had come from there to the library of the University of Helmstedt ( Bibliotheca Julia ); today it is in the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel .

1885 was the "Societe de l'Orient latin", which in 1875 by Paul Riant had been established, one in Geneva light pressure - facsimile of the copy of the Bavarian State Library (Inc T-407) to commission in an edition of 100 copies and Vienna by the Publish Professor Pater Wilhelm Anton Neumann. In connection with this edition, a first compilation of the surviving copies was made, the number of which was given as 13 at the time. At that time there were three beautiful copies in the Lübeck city library ..., two in anthologies and a single one with a wide margin and some handwritten additions that were difficult to read at the same time. Shortly afterwards, however, on instructions from a higher authority, the latter was separated out as a duplicate in exchange for one of the facsimile copies and given to the Société. It was considered to be no longer available for inquiry , but apparently came in 1899 with the Count's private collection in the Houghton Library of Harvard University , where it is still located today. The other Lübeck specimens were relocated to a salt mine in Saxony-Anhalt during World War II and then transported to the Soviet Union as looted art , where one of them was located in the St. Petersburg library. For this, the Lübeck city library received the copy of the church library of the Nicolaikirche in Mölln for the 375th anniversary in 1997 as a permanent loan .

The Incunabula Short Title Catalog shows in addition to the already mentioned other copies, namely in Germany in Barth (Library of the Marienkirche ); State Archives Bückeburg (on permanent loan from the Ratsgymnasium Stadthagen ), City Library Hanover , University Library Kiel (from the Bordesholm Monastery , connected to Typ. Bord. 20); Lüneburg council library. In the Netherlands there is a copy in Middelburg , in the Danish Royal Library in Copenhagen , in the Uppsala University Library (from Braunsberg ) and in the Prague Czech National Library . In the USA the work can be found in addition to Harvard in the Morgan Library in New York City .

Digitized

facsimile

literature

  • Paul Jakob Bruns: The oldest printed description of Palestine so far unknown. In: Johann Friedrich Schleusner and Carl Friedrich Stäudlin: Göttingen library of the latest theological literature. Göttingen 1797, III, 2nd piece, pp. 159–204
  • Titus Tobler :  Arminensis . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1875, p. 536.
  • Reinhold Röhricht : Bibliotheca Geographica Palaestinae: Chronological index of the literature relating to the geography of the Holy Land ... Berlin: Reuther and Reichard 1890, p. 126f. ( Digitized version )
  • Karl von Stern: Fragments of knowledge of the Lübeck first prints from 1464 to 1524, together with a look back at the later time ... Lübeck 1903 ( digitized version )
  • Holger Roggelin and Joachim Stüben: Orate pro patre Seghebando! On the origin and meaning of the Möllner cradle prints. In: Lauenburgische Heimat , Neue Zusammenarbeit, Issue 144 (September 1996), pp. 40–59 (for the Möllner copy, now in Lübeck)

Web links

Commons : Prologus Arminensis  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ ISTC
  2. ^ Ingrid Baumgärtner : Travel reports, maps and diagrams. Burchard of Monte Sion and the Holy Land. in: Steffen Patzold (Hrsg.): History presentations. Images, texts and terms from the Middle Ages. Festschrift for Hans-Werner Goetz on his 65th birthday. Vienna: Böhlau 2012 ISBN 978-3-412-20898-1 , pp. 460–507, digitized , here pp. 491f.
  3. ^ Wilhelm Heyd:  Burchardus de Monte Sion . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 3, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1876, p. 567 f.
  4. ↑ after Röhricht (Lit.), p. 127
  5. ↑ Evidence in the HAB Opac.
  6. ↑ Stern (lit.), p. 3
  7. ↑ Stern ibid.
  8. ↑ The Houghton Library, which is responsible for Harvard's old holdings, has more than 2500 incunabula - Houghton Library in the English language Wikipedia.
  9. ↑ To the Riant Collection
  10. ↑ Proof
  11. ↑ Press release of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck from September 12, 1997, accessed on May 26, 2010
  12. ↑ Kiel University Library (PDF; 1.0 MB), p. 58, accessed on May 26, 2010
  13. ↑ Catalog entry , accessed on October 5, 2012