Virgins' legends of the Middle Ages
The Roman poet Virgil , a highly respected school author throughout the Middle Ages, was also the subject of various legends and strange stories from the 12th century onwards , in which he appears as a sometimes powerful, sometimes helpless magician. The narratives were widespread, also as a motif in the performing arts, and only lost their impact from the 16th century.
The setting of the older stories is usually Naples , where Virgil is said to have lived. The later ones, however, play more often in Rome .
They say
Protection of Naples (and Rome)
Alexander von Telese names in the Ystoria serenissimi Rogerii primi regis Siciliae (around 1140) Aeneas the founder of Naples (which is called "Eneapolis" a little later by John of Salisbury ); Virgil wrote the Aeneid there and was made lord of the city by Augustus .
John of Salisbury, in his Policraticus (completed 1159), was the first to attribute magic powers to Virgil. He asks Augustus' nephew Marcellus whether he would rather have a bird that catches all other birds or a fly that kills all other flies. Marcellus opts for the fly to free Naples from its plague of flies. In another episode, Johannes reports that a philosopher tried in vain to take Virgil's bones with him to France.
In the popular satire Apocalypsis Goliae Episcopi (approx. 1180) Virgil is named as the inventor of a brass fly.
In the Dolopathos of Johannes von Alta Silva (1184), an influential collection of early novels with a framework plot, Virgil is the wise teacher of the prince's son, who is at the center, and ultimately saves him from severe trials and mortal danger.
Alexander Neckam , Richard the Lionheart's foster brother , lists various wonderful protective measures by Virgil in his prose work De naturis rerum (end of the 12th century): he freed Naples of poisonous bloodsuckers by throwing a golden leech into a well; he had helped the meat sellers in Naples to prevent their meat from spoiling too quickly; his garden was surrounded by walls of air; In Rome he had built a palace in which wooden figures with bells in hand personified the provinces of the empire and rang the bell when danger threatened. He proclaimed that the magic was effective until a virgin gave birth to a child, which was then promptly ... In the Liber de vita et moribus philosophorum , written a little later and long ascribed to Walter Burley , these stories were spread further.
Konrad von Querfurt , the Heinrich VI. accompanied to Italy (where Heinrich first failed in 1191 before Naples, in 1194 he was able to conquer it), reports in a letter in 1196 that Virgil tried to protect Naples with a palladium , a picture of the city sealed in a bottle, the bottle but last jumped. With a brass fly he protected the city against flies. Meat preservation also returns here. Virgil built medicinal baths. His bones would be kept in a castle on the sea (the Castel dell'Ovo on a rock in front of Naples), if they were exposed to the air, there would be a storm. A bronze archer he created would keep Vesuvius in check. When his arrow was shot off by a careless touch, it broke out.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival , Virgil is mentioned as the uncle of the magician Klingsor .
In his Otia imperialia (around 1211), Gervasius von Tilbury repeated the stories of the brass fly, of meat preservation and of the medicinal baths, to which Virgil gave precise instructions for use, but which were removed again by jealous doctors. Instead of the archer, Virgil placed a trumpeter facing Vesuvius with him. He created a tunnel under a mountain. When an Englishman searched for the hitherto unknown remains of Virgil at the time of Rogers II of Sicily and found them, they had a magic book with them that Gervasius himself claimed to have successfully experimented with. The bones were brought to the Castel del Mare, probably the Castel dell'Ovo.
At the same time, Hélinand de Froidmont also wrote about Virgil in a lost part of his Chronicon , which Vincent de Beauvais referred to in his Speculum historiale of 1244. Here, too, some of the motifs mentioned recur.
Trouble with women (Virgil in the basket)
Around 1200, the Provenzale Guiraut de Calanso also listed Virgil in a collection of material for troubadours , "how he managed to protect himself against women (...) and how he let the fire go out". In the Image du monde from around 1245, Virgil found Naples on an egg; in revenge for a woman's insult, he puts out all fires in a city; he himself creates an indelible light and a head that predicts his death, but so mysterious that he does not understand it.
In another version of this text, Saint Paul who wants to convert Virgil finds his shadow in a cave, but everything immediately crumbles to ashes.
In his Speculum historiale, Vincent de Beauvais rejects the view, which has been held by Christians for centuries, that Virgil predicted the birth of Jesus in his 4th Eclogue . Thanks to his book, which was frequently printed as early as the 15th century, the Virgilian narratives became widely available.
In a Latin manuscript from this period that is kept in Paris, Virgil falls in love with Nero's daughter . At night she lets a basket down from her tower, which he climbs naked - but then leaves it hanging halfway up, so that it is exposed the next day. Nero sentences him to death, but Virgil escapes.
In his world chronicle , written in Vienna around 1280 , Jans made the enicle Virgil again a necromancer: While working in the garden, he found a bottle with devils who taught him their art. He created a female statue that drove away unchaste thoughts, but was inflamed even for the virtuous wife of a fellow citizen, who then teamed up with her husband to expose him. She offers him to pull him up to her tower in a basket at night, but leaves him hanging halfway up, to the mockery of the city that sees him there the next day. Virgil then extinguishes all the fires in the city and forces the woman to stand up in public with lightly clad legs apart, whereupon everyone individually has to light his fire at her place. - He built Naples on three eggs. A golden statue pointed with one hand "to the mountain" and carried the inscription that it was pointing to a treasure. After a long and unsuccessful search, the treasure was found inside where the other hand was pointing.
While the previous authors mostly only referred to their stories, Enikel tells them in detail.
The basket episode is next rendered by Provencal poet Guylem de Cervera.
Automatons and other marvels
Adenet le Roi tells in Cléomadès around 1285 that Virgil built two castles on two eggs in Naples, one of which is still standing. In Rome he had set up a magic mirror that showed newcomers as well as bad and treacherous thoughts. At the four corners of a city he had set up large stone figures of the four seasons, each throwing an apple at the end of its season.
In the Wartburg War, which began in 1287 , Virgil drove through the sea to a magnetic mountain in search of the magic book of a Zabulon. He has a devil in the form of a fly that Aristotle locked in a ruby. In the Reinfrit von Braunschweig from around 1300, Zabulon, whom Virgil found on the Magnetberg with the help of his devil, is killed by an automaton and at the same time Christ is born. This text also alludes briefly to the basket episode. Heinrich von Mügeln (14th century) referred to the Wartburg War, with him Virgil finds Magnetberg, Bottle Devil and Magic Book and lets other devils build a road through the mountains.
In a French manuscript from 1311, Virgil Nero proclaims the destruction of his palace if a virgin gives birth to a child and measures his learning against him until he subdues and beheads him with his knowledge of the Bible.
The Middle English Seven Sages from around 1320 have the perpetual fire, which is extinguished by an automatic archer, and the Roman mirror, in which one can see seven days' journey. The King of Apulia instructs two clerics to hide gold in different places and, in their search for it, even destroy the mirror with the permission of the Emperor. The book was printed well into the 19th century.
The free thinker Cecco d'Ascoli explained how Virgil's magical fly worked with the application of astrological knowledge in its manufacture. Around 1330 his friend Cino da Pistoia also came back to her in a poem.
In the novel de Renart le Contrefait from 1319 there is a bronze fly, mirror, basket and vengeance, prophetic head - and a pipe that Virgil used to direct wine from Naples to Rome. Almost all stories to date, with the exception of the basket and the revenge episode, also appear a few years later in the Neapolitan Cronica di Partenope .
Around 1342 the English author of the Gesta Romanorum Virgil had a horse available to the emperor to kill those who were still out in the evening. He uses his mirror to overcome another magician and offers more than his fortune to sleep with the emperor's daughter. When he succeeds, he forgets the due date of the loaned money and is called to account in a procedure very similar to that later on the merchant of Venice .
In 1343 Juan Ruiz told the story of the basket and Virgil's revenge in El libro de buen amor . He lets the humiliated woman again plan an attack on him, which Virgil discovers as a magician, whereupon he loses his interest in her.
The mouth of the truth
In an anonymous German poem from the first half of the 14th century, Virgil creates a stone portrait in Rome that bites off the hand of adulterous women ( Bocca della Verità ). The Empress, herself under suspicion, subjects herself to the test, but beforehand instructs her lover to bump into her disguised as a fool and kiss her on the way there. With her hand in the stone portrait she explains that besides her husband only this fool has come so close to her, and insists.
Petrarch usually refused to refer to the Vergillegends, but mentions the mountain tunnel and the Castel dell'Ovo in the Itinerarium Syriacum (around 1360). Both return in the simultaneous Danse commentary by Benvenuto da Imola. Boccaccio into his lectures on Divine Comedy 1373-4 to the brass fly and other marvels that had been already rumored before.
In Evrart de Trémaugon's Somnium viridarii (“The Gardener's Dream”, around 1374), Virgil advises the king of the Romans to rule his people with prudence, without any secret knowledge or mechanical skills.
Caesar's obelisk
Jean d'Outremeuse reports a plethora of episodes in his Ly Myreur des Histors . He distinguishes between five Virgiles, whose life stories he embellishes on dozens of pages. Virgil announced the coming of Christ to him and was baptized himself, but he also taught the Egyptians astrology. He has Caesar's body cremated and places the ashes in a ball on an obelisk (meaning the obelisk on St. Peter's Square in Rome). I.a. d'Outremeuse calls mirrors, basket, vengeance, bronze fly, walls of air, wine pipe, rock road, baths and Virgil's bones that stir the sea when they are disturbed.
At the end of the 14th century, Jacobus de Theramo mentions the basket episode in the Litigatio Christi cum Belial , as does Giovanni Sercambi in his Croniche of 1400, but without Virgil's revenge. Virgil is about to be executed, but is kidnapped by evil spirits. Korb and vengeance then appear in the influential Der Minnen Loep by the Dutchman Dirc Potter (around 1412), as well as in the Cronica de Mantua by Bonamente Aliprandi (around 1414), which adorns its story as richly as Jean d'Outremeuse: Virgil is on arrested for his vengeance, but escapes. He creates a magical wine barrel and an oil well, and his pupil Melino ( Merlin ) comes across devils who are building a road for him from Rome to Naples with a book of magic that Virgil lets get him.
In El Vitorial des Gutierre Diez de Games, written in the second quarter of the 15th century, Caesar is concerned about his fame. Virgil had him named July after himself and with his magical powers brought a huge obelisk with a golden apple on top, which Solomon had made but not erected, to Rome, where Caesar's ashes were given a worthy place in the apple.
1438 Alfonso Martínez de Toledo tells in his successful El Corbacho of Virgil in the basket and his revenge, shortly afterwards Martin le Franc in his Le champion des dames published in Basel , 1444 Enea Silvio Piccolomini, the later Pope Pius II. (Who got the first name Enea from the figure of Virgil), in the Historia de duobus amantibus . The episode is encountered in 1506 in Stephen Hawes' Pastime of Pleasures , 1531 in Sebastian Franck's Chronica, Zeytbuch and geschychtbibel , along with other episodes, in 1534 in Gratian Dupont's Les controverses des sexes masculin et feminin . Around 1550, The deceyte of Women ... both basket and vengeance and the mouth of truth appear.
Felix Hemmerlin tells in De nobilitate et rusticitate dialogus (around 1445) that Virgil introduced the necromancy in Italy with the help of the bottle devil and the magic book. He built the Castel dell'Ovo, which would sink if an egg were broken in it, which is why it is still guarded today. Hemmerlin also names the baths, the tunnel through the mountains, fly, meat market and other motifs.
Virgil's protection for Rome through images or figures that ring a bell in danger is the subject of John Lydgate and John Capgrave . In a German book of pilgrims from 1475, Virgil is again ascribed the mouth of truth.
Folk books and further work
Around 1515, Les faictz merveilleux de Virgille , a detailed biography of Virgil , appeared in Paris . He learns magic in Toledo , builds numerous miracles, including the Castel dell'Ovo, ends up in the basket and takes revenge, then disappears in the sea. The book was soon translated into Dutch and English, and into Icelandic in 1676, while a German version that appeared in the 19th century was probably taken from the same. Quite independently of this, a German book From Vergilio the Magician , with Basket and Vengeance, Naples on Three Eggs, the Statue with the Treasure and the Mouth of Truth , was written around 1520 .
Dirc Potter's Dutch version of the story of Virgil in the Basket led to several adaptations, in which, however, Vergil himself no longer appears, up to and including Richard Strauss ' opera Feuersnot from 1901. In Germany, Hans Sachs varied the subject several times, also by reversing the gender roles ( the Filius in the basket , the pürgerinn in the basket , the young fellow Fellet through the basket , etc.). The expression “ give a basket” is said to have something to do with these stories, according to an explanation.
Representations in art
Especially Virgil in the basket and his revenge, but also the mouth of truth were popular artistic motifs. The former can be found in the 14th century on a column capital in Caen in Normandy and on the Freiburg painter's carpet , then on illustrations for the world chronicle of Jans des Enikels and even for Petrarch's Trionfi . In a depiction on Philippe de Commines ' grave , Virgil appears hanging on a rope - a version that Cervantes also used for an adventure by Don Quixote (I, chapter 43).
In the 16th century, Albrecht Altdorfer portrayed Virgil's revenge and the mouth of truth, Lucas van Leyden the latter and the Korbepisode. Around 1516, Ambrosius Holbein or one of his assistants created a woodcut with several examples of women’s power , including Virgil in the basket, which was subsequently used by his publisher Pamphilus Gengenbach in a wide variety of books, the editions ranged from Horace to Luther and his own works. His successor Johann Faber continued to use the woodcut, including in an Erasmus edition in 1530 . At the same time, Urs Graf the Elder created a woodcut that was first printed in a Cicero commentary (published in Paris) in 1520 . It was used in a wide variety of books, in a Greek lexicon, but also on the title page of Jean Petit's edition of the Aeneid from 1529. Editions of Pliny 's Natural History , Ovid's Metamorphoses , Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum gentilium and Petrarch's Trionfi also showed it.
Criticism and aftermath
In De magorum daemonomania (1580) Jean Bodin expresses himself cautiously about Virgil's magical powers, but shortly afterwards the author of Virgil's biography, which was published with Annibale Caro's translation of the Aeneid in 1584, vehemently rejected popular beliefs about the poet. Other authors of this time are again skeptical or make their own distinctions. In 1625, Gabriel Naudé collected in his Apologie pour tous les grands personnages qui ont esté faussement soupçonnez de magie numerous forgetting figures in order to reject them energetically and mockingly. Jacques Gaffarell, an orientalist and occultist, contradicted him on the spot. Charles Sorel in turn opposed this with the authority of Pliny, who knew nothing of Virgil's magical abilities. Others continued the argument. Pierre Bayle tried again to draw a line in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697), without final success.
More recently, Avram Davidson has published several fantastic novels and short stories with Virgil Magus as the main character.
Origin, originality of the stories
In his fundamental study Virgil in the Middle Ages, Domenico Comparetti took the view that the stories about Virgil came from popular traditions. Spargo, who sees no evidence for this, assumes that the multiple unsuccessful sieges of Naples by Roger II of Sicily from 1130 onwards favored accounts of the wonderful protection of the city. Since the coffin of Aristotle was venerated in Roger's capital, Palermo , it made sense to claim the remains of Virgil for Naples. When the city of Staufer Heinrich VI. was again besieged unsuccessfully, these stories were taken up again.
The story of Virgil in the Basket goes back to oriental tales in which the lover is dragged into his beloved's bedroom in a basket. In the West, the motif appears in a version of the Li novel of the Sept saga from the end of the 13th century, where a “Ysocars” ( Hippocrates ) arrives at the daughter of Darius in this way . In all these versions, however, the man is successful, only Virgil gets stuck and is subjected to mockery. In the stories about him, therefore, the motive of vengeance follows from the beginning.
In the Hebrew Sefer ha-Zikhronot ("memorial book") of the Rhinelander Elieser ben Ascher ha-Levi (beginning of the 14th century), which dates back to the middle of the 12th century in southern Italy, which was otherwise lost , there is an early chronicle of Jerachmeel Version of the story of Virgil in the basket, in which Virgil's name is not mentioned. An evil magician is chasing after a virtuous woman who lived in a high tower in Rome at the time of Titus . In the absence of her husband, she decides, unlike Jans the Enikel, to expose him alone and for three days exposes him to the mockery of the crowd while hanging in the basket, finally she lets him fall down so that he injures himself. As is known, the wizard takes revenge.
In the so-called "Obelisk of Caesar" the ashes of Caesar were already suspected in antiquity. The fact that he was promoted to his place by Virgil, on the other hand, is a medieval invention. Likewise, there does not seem to be any forerunners to associate the “Mouth of Truth” with Virgil.
Ziolkowski assumes that in the 13th century the figure of the magician Virgil was better known than that of the poet.
literature
- Domenico Comparetti: Virgilio nel medio evo , 2 vols., Livorno 1872, expanded 2nd edition Florence 1896. The 1st edition also appeared in German as Virgil im Mittelalter , Leipzig 1875. (Important reference work, the English edition was published in 1997 reprinted.)
- John Webster Spargo: Virgil the Necromancer. Studies in Virgilian Legends , Cambridge, Mass. 1934. (With a detailed description of the history of some motifs.)
- Jan M. Ziolkowski, Michael CJ Putnam (eds.): The Virgilian Tradition. The first fifteen hundred years , New Haven, Connecticut, London 2008, therein Chapter V: “Virgilian Legends”, pp. 825-1024. (Extensive source citations and English translations.)
- Eli Yassif: 'Virgil in the Basket': narrative as hermeneutics in Hebrew literature of the Middle Ages, in: Deborah A. Green et al. (Ed.): Scriptural Exegesis. The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination. Essays in Honor of Michael Fishbane , Oxford 2009, 245-267. (Discussion of the psychoanalytic and folkloric content of the story and the function of its reception in the history of Eliezer ben Ascher ha-Levi.)
Web links
- Lucas van Leyden, The Poet Virgil in a Basket , copper engraving, 1525.
proof
- ^ Parzival , XIII. Singing: “sîn lant heats Terre de Lâbûr: from des nâchkomn he is erborn, the ouch vil wonder het Erkorn, from Nâpels Virgilîus. Clinschor des neve warp alsus. "(After Karl Lachmann: Wolfram von Eschenbach , Berlin 1833, 5th edition Berlin 1891. [1] )
- ↑ According to Spargo, p. 15.
- ↑ Spargo gives the entire German text in an appendix, pp. 453–471.
- ↑ Most of these representations are reproduced by Spargo.
- ↑ Spargo, pp. 137-141.
- ↑ The Hebrew text was first published in 1978, and in English it is contained in Yassif, 245-247.
- ^ Ziolkowski and Putnam, p. 829.