Sigismund Meisterlin

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The chronicler Sigismund Meisterlin (left) presents Sigismund Gossembrot with his Augsburger Chronik (book miniature by Sigismund Meisterlin)
Dedication image from Sigismund Meisterlin's Augsburger Stadtchronik from 1457. The author (front right) hands over his chronicle to the client Sigismund Gossembrot the Elder and the Augsburg Council.

Sigismund Meisterlin (* around 1435 perhaps in Augsburg , † probably after 1497 ) was a German humanist , monk and historian.

Life

Meisterlin entered the Benedictine monastery of St. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg around 1440 and spent the next 20 years of his life there.

The connection to the early humanist circle in what was then Augsburg around the mayor Sigismund Gossembrot became intellectually important for him . At his request, Meisterlin wrote a "Chronographia Augustensium", which he completed in June 1456. Immediately afterwards he prepared a German translation and presented it to the Augsburg city council at the beginning of 1457. What was new was the detailed presentation of the ancient history of the city based on the ideas and aspects of early humanism . It is the first German humanistic historical work that wanted to be committed to the truth in order to explain the present from the past, and which included the country and its people in the presentation. In addition to his involvement in the local group of clerics and lay people interested in humanism, Meisterlin already had good contacts with Italian humanists. For example, Enoch von Ascoli had visited him in Augsburg in 1455 on his way back to Italy and probably reported on the manuscript of the Germania des Tacitus he had just acquired.

After completing the Chronicle, Meisterlin traveled to Pavia with the permission of his bishop, Cardinal Peter von Schaumberg , who was interested in humanism , where he used Artes and Canon Law and every opportunity to search for manuscripts and study humanism.

It was not until 1476 that he reappeared in tradition as cathedral preacher in Würzburg and is said to have participated with Kilian von Bibra in the questioning of the preacher Hans Böhm .

In 1478 Meisterlin was employed as a preacher at St. Sebald's in Nuremberg . In addition to the preaching office at St. Sebald, he received the parish of Laudenbach (Kr. Karlstadt) before October 8, 1481, but exchanged it with the parish of Großgründlach (near Nuremberg) and kept it until 1488. He lived there until 1488.

Soon after Meisterlin moved to Nuremberg, he took on the task of writing a history of the city. Here, too, a group of humanists had established themselves, including Hermann and Hartmann Schedel and Sebald Schreyer (1446–1520).

In 1481 Meisterlin wrote the "Chronicon Augustanum ecclesiasticum" on behalf of the abbot of St. Ulrich and Afra zu Augsburg, and immediately afterwards the "Index monasterii SS. Udalrici".

In 1488 Meisterlin completed the Nuremberg Chronicle, first in Latin, then also in German. The Latin version was not printed until the 18th century, the German only in the 19th century. It is also a typical testimony to early German humanism.

Soon afterwards, around 1488, Meisterlin swapped the parish of Gründlach with that of Feucht (also near Nuremberg) and this mention is the last news regarding his biography.

Works

  • Cronographia Augustensium, 1458 (German 1457)
  • Liber miraculorum St. Simperti, around 1473
  • Chronicon ecclesiasticum, 1483
  • Index monasterii SS. Udalrici et Afrae, 1484
  • Legenda nova St. Sebaldi, 1484 a. 1488 (German after)
  • Nieronbergensis cronica (Latin and German), 1488

literature

  • Milde, Wolfgang: On the librarianship of the early humanist historian Sigismund Meisterlin OSB Florence 1976.
  • Norbert H. Ott: From handwriting to printing and back. Sigismund Meisterlin's chronicle of the city of Augsburg in manuscript and print illustration , In: John Roger Paas (ed.), Augsburg, the picture factory of Europe. Essays on Augsburg prints in the early modern period, Augsburg 2001, pp. 21–29.
  • Ott, Norbert H .: On the equipment requirements of illustrated city chronicles. Sigismund Meisterlin and the Swiss Chronicle as examples . In: Stephan Füssel (ed.), Poesis et pictura. Studies on the relationship between text and image in manuscripts and old prints. Festschrift for Dieter Wuttke on his 60th birthday, Baden-Baden 1989, pp. 77–106.
  • Paul Joachimsohn: The humanistic historiography in Germany. Volume 1. The beginnings: Sigismund Meisterlin (The humanistic historiography in Germany) . Bonn 1895.
  • Schneider, Joachim: Humanistic aspirations and urban reality. The bilingual Nuremberg Chronicle of Sigismund Meisterlin . In: Rolf Sprandel (ed.), Bilingual Historiography in Late Medieval Germany, Wiesbaden 1993, pp. 271-316.
  • Weber, Dieter: Historiography in Augsburg. Hektor Mülich and the imperial city chronicle of the late Middle Ages . Augsburg 1984.
  • Pataki, Z. Ágota: Images create identity. On the construction of an urban self-image in the illustrations of Sigismund Meisterlin's Augsburger Chronik 1457-1480 , in: Christoph Dartmann and C. Meyer (eds.), Identity and Crisis? On the interpretation of premodern experiences of the self, the world and others, Münster 2007, pp. 99–118.
  • Harald Müller: Habit and Habit. Monks and humanists in dialogue . Tuebingen 2006.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Colberg, Katharina, "Meisterlin, Sigmund" in: Neue Deutsche Biographie 16 (1990), p. 730 [online version]; URL: https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/gnd100308309.html#ndbcontent
  2. ↑ Dieter Mertens: The instrumentalization of the Germania of Tacitus by the German humanists. In: Heinrich Beck (Hrsg.): On the history of the equation Germanic - German. Language and names, history and institutions. Berlin et al. 2004, pp. 37–101, pp. 39 and 59–61.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Meisterlin, Sigismund
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meisterlin, Sigmund
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German humanist and historian
DATE OF BIRTH around 1435
PLACE OF BIRTH uncertain: Augsburg
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: after 1497