Dead Red

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The Totenrotel (from Rotel = parchment roll from Latin rotulus "roll", "wheel") was a written death message from one monastery community to another.

Monasteries have maintained a network of brotherhoods in prayer since the 9th century , mainly practiced in the Benedictine orders and its branches as well as under canons . In later times, the sending of the Totenrotel was limited to Central and Western Europe, especially northern France, England, Belgium, Bavaria and Austria. A total of around 300 medieval dead reds have been preserved, ten times as much from the early modern period.

A "rotel" in the general sense was a roll of parchment that was wound around a wooden stick. Since its suppression by the Codex , such documents have been used almost exclusively in the liturgical area. The Totenrotel was such a role that was made once a year or when a monk died (since the 11th century mostly only for dignitaries) and carried from monastery to monastery by a messenger, the rotularius or roligerus . In most cases it seems that this task was done by a lay brother.

The dead reds of the Middle Ages often circulated for years. At first they only contained a vita of the deceased in the actual death announcement or encyclica , created by attaching parchments written on both sides to each station, so-called tituli , with time long (and difficult) scrolls: The Totenrotel of Abbot Vitalis von Savigny († 1122) For example, in the course of two years in which it was worn by English and French monasteries, it reached a length of about 10 meters, specimens of 30 meters in length are known to research.

The forerunners of the death roll were the mortuaries or breves called death lists, which were exchanged between two institutions. After the Roteln themselves were no longer dispatched, the term "Rottel" for necrologists in codex format remained in use.

Well-known Totenrotel collections

  • The Ensdorf Monastery (1716–1789) collection of totenroteln with 1497 totenroteln
  • The collection of the Admont Abbey Library contains 11 Roteln from the 15th century (1442–1496).
  • In the archives of the Archabbey of St. Peter in Salzburg the extensive Rotel collection comprises 55 folio volumes.
  • 35 tomes by Roteln have been preserved in the Benedictine Abbey of Michaelbeuern .

literature

  • Dead Red. In: Peter W. Hartmann: The great art dictionary . GR sales agency , Salzburg 1996, ISBN 3-9500612-0-7 .
  • J. Dufour: Totenroteln . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Volume 8, Stuttgart 2000, pp. 897f.
  • Ulrich Arco-Zinneberg: Brotherhood of prayer and death redot. In: Karl Brunner (Ed.): Seitenstetten. Art and monasticism at the cradle of Austria. Seitenstetten Abbey 1988, ISBN 3-900-464-731-0 .
  • Gerald Hirtner: "Network of the virtuous. Modern dead reds as a historical source" (Studies and communications on the history of the Benedictine order and its branches. 48th supplementary volume) Sankt Ottilien 2014

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Werner Robl: An elegy from the hand of Heloïsas on the Totenrotel des Vitalis von Savigny? In: abaelard.de , 2001. Retrieved November 9, 2008.
  2. ^ Bavarian State Library: Totenrotel Collection of the Ensdorf Monastery
  3. ^ Paul Baethcke: The Roteln of Admont . In: Communications from the Association for Gotha History and Antiquity Research . Born in 1905. Thienemannsche Hofbuchhandlung, Gotha 1905, p. 1-42; 94-108 (improvements) . (online) ( Memento of the original from February 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ecb.thulb.uni-jena.de
  4. ^ Hans-Joachim Genge: Totenroteln from the Regensburg Schottenkloster St. Jakob in the archive of the Archabbey of St. Peter in Salzburg. In: Negotiations of the Historical Association for Upper Palatinate and Regensburg , Vol. 135 (1995), pp. 133–159, ISSN  0342-2518