Visio Tnugdali

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tundalus and the angel before the jaws of a hell monster (illustration by Simon Marmion )

The Visio Tnugdali (lat. "Vision of Tnugdalus") is a religious text from the 12th century , which tells of the afterlife of the Irish knight Tnugdalus (later simplified "Tundalus" or "Tondolus").

Shortly after 1149 , the Irish wandering monk Brother Marcus wrote the vision report in Latin prose in the Schottenkloster in Regensburg . He himself mentions the year as the time of the rapture of the Tundalus. Marcus claims that, at the request of a Regensburg abbess, he translated the experiences of Tundalus, which he claims to have heard from himself, from the Irish and written them down.

content

The legend tells how the proud and easy-going knight suddenly falls into catalepsy and lies there for three days as if dead. During this time his soul is led through hell and heaven by an angel and has to suffer some hellish punishments himself. Finally, the angel instructs him to take note of what he has seen and to announce it to his fellow men. Then the soul is sent back into its body. Through the experience of this hike in the hereafter, Tundalus is converted and turns away from his unchristian behavior in order to lead a pious life.

The Visio also shows a remarkable assessment of the myths of Ireland : The two legendary heroes Conall Cernach and Fergus mac Róich have to serve the soul-eating monster Acharon for all eternity as a jaw lock in his huge mouth in the "Hell of the Greedy" .

The Visio Tnugdali with her interest in the topography of the hereafter available in a wide tradition fantastic Irish Beyond travel stories ( Imrama on one side); the best known is probably the Navigatio Sancti Brendani of St. Brandan , an already Christianized version of the Imrama narrative type (journey into the otherworld ). On the other hand, there is the tradition of Christian visions of the afterlife, which in turn is influenced by pre-Christian ideas of the afterlife. In addition to the Visio Tnugdali, important texts from this tradition include the Visio Thurkilli , the Visio Godeschalci and the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii .

Reception history

Early print by Johann and Konrad Hist in Speyer (1483): Tundalus and his guardian angel look over one of the walls that divide the regions of the sky

The Latin tundalus quickly found widespread handwriting; 172 manuscripts have been discovered so far . The text was also the template for Middle Low and Middle High German arrangements; The rhymed version of the Tundalus by Alber from the Windberg Monastery (around 1190) or the Lower Rhine Tundalus fragments (around 1180/90) date from the 12th century . Both Middle High German transmissions do not seem to have met with a great response; they have only survived in a single manuscript (or in fragments of a manuscript).

In the early modern period, the template was translated into German and printed several times by Marcus. The 40 surviving manuscripts and 27 early prints show that the Visio Tnugdali was translated at least twelve times into German or Dutch.

The vision was rarely illustrated. Only one of the manuscripts contains illustrations (Simon Marmion, 1474), but there are some woodcuts in the early prints.

Editions and translations

  • Hans-Christian Lehner, Maximilian Nix (ed.): Marcus von Regensburg: Visio Tnugdali. Vision of Tnugdal (= Fontes Christiani , Volume 74). Herder, Freiburg et al. 2018, ISBN 978-3-451-32921-0 (edition with translation and commentary)
  • Albrecht Wagner (Ed.): Visio Tnugdali. Latin and Old German. Andreas Deichert, Erlangen 1882 ( digitized in: austrian literature online - alo )

literature

  • Nigel F. Palmer : Visio Tnugdali. The German and Dutch translations and their circulation in the later Middle Ages (= Munich texts and studies on German literature of the Middle Ages. Volume 76). Artemis, Munich / Zurich 1982, ISBN 3-7608-3376-4 (also: Oxford, Univ., Dissertation, 1975).
  • Brigitte Pfeil: The 'vision of Tnugdalus' Albers von Windberg. History of literature and piety in the late 12th century. With an edition of the Latin 'Visio Tnugdali' from Clm 22254 (= Mikrokosmos. Volume 54). Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M./Berlin u. a. 1999, ISBN 3-631-33817-1 (also: Mainz, Univ., Dissertation, 1997).
  • Herrad Spilling: The Visio Tnugdali. Character and position in medieval vision literature up to the end of the 12th century (= Munich contributions to medieval studies and Renaissance research. Volume 21). Arbeo-Gesellschaft, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-920128-22-1 (also: Freiburg i. Br., Univ., Dissertation).

Web links

Commons : Visio Tnugdali  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Online editions:

  • Edward E. Foster (Ed.): The Vision of Tundale. Introduction (English) and edition of a Middle English version.
  • Tondolus der Ritter , late medieval incunabula (Speyer: J. and C. Hist, 1483) in the Oxford Text Archive, edition by Nigel F. Palmer, printed as Tondolus der Ritter. The version printed by J. and C. Hist (= Small German prose monuments of the Middle Ages. Issue 13). W. Fink, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-7705-1635-4 .
  • Tondalus eyn rytter wayl born , Low German illustrated print (approx. 1520), digital copy from JALB Emden.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Helmut Birkhan : Nachantike Keltenrezeption. Celtic culture projections. Praesens Verlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-7069-0541-1 , p. 71 f.
  2. ↑ Recorded around 1300 in Codex Vindobonensis 2696 .
  3. ^ Peter Dinzelbacher : Visio Tnugdali . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 8, LexMA-Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-89659-908-9 , Sp. 1734 (summary of the results by Nigel F. Palmers).