Welfensage
The Welfensage is a late medieval legend , which tells of the naming of the ruling house of the Welfs . There are several versions of the legend.
legend
According to a popular version, the legend goes like this:
A long time ago there was a castle near Weingarten , where the mighty Count von Altdorf lived. The people revered him as a stern but righteous lord, whereas his wife was feared because of her hard-heartedness and her greed. She met a poor widow who asked for alms for her children. When she was rebuked by the countess with bad words, she uttered a curse on the noblewoman. Soon afterwards the countess came down and gave birth to twelve boys. At that time, this was considered a bad sign, because according to medieval beliefs, multiple births symbolized adultery: "How many children, so many fathers are there," was the phrase at the time. So the countess had eleven boys secretly put aside. A maid was supposed to drown her in the brook. Unhappy she set out on her way. No sooner had she left the castle than the count came towards her, who had just returned from the hunt. When asked what was being carried in her basket, the young woman replied, trembling, that there were eleven young puppies that she should drown because the countess was so disturbed by the loud barking. The count suspiciously ordered the basket to be opened. The maid fell down in front of him, sobbing, and confessed what had happened. When the count regained his composure, he told the maid to tell the countess that she had carried out her assignment, but otherwise she should be silent. He himself gave the boys to a miller in the neighborhood, but told him nothing about their origins. Years passed. When the boys had grown up, the count invited them to a big party and told many a story at the table; also from a mother who wanted her own children to be drowned like young puppies. What punishment such a mother deserved, he turned to his wife. Sensing evil, she stammered: "Death." At a sign from the count, the maid opened the doors of the knight's hall and the eleven boys entered with the miller. The count told his guests what had happened years ago. The countess threw herself at his feet and asked for mercy. The count only allowed himself to be softened by the intercession of his sons and spared her life. From then on, however, the boys were called "the Guelphs".
This version is still popular in Weingarten and Ravensburg today.
Different version
According to Alexander Schöppner, the legend goes like this in its original version:
Duke Balthasar of Swabia and his wife, the daughter of Duke Alban of Munich, could not have children for fourteen years. Balthasar therefore made an appointment with his hunter, whom he trusted in every respect, that the next pregnancy of the hunter's wife should be kept secret and that the duchess should simulate a pregnancy. After the birth, this child was brought to the Duchess and passed on as hers. The boy was given the name Bundus. The hunter's neighbors had heard a noise that night and asked the hunter what had happened at his home. He replied that his hunting dogs had had puppies.
When the boy was fourteen he wanted to go with the hunters, and when he was twenty-two the old duke died. Bundus was now to be married to the Duchess of Geldern . The hunter had attacked someone at court at the time and had therefore been thrown into the tower.
His wife now asked so urgently to be allowed to speak to the young duke confidentially that the young gentleman let her in and expelled everyone else from the room. Then she fell on his neck, called him her dear son, and told him that she and the hunter were his parents.
Bundus was very frightened and called his confessor, who advised him not to marry if he did not want to lose his soul. So Bundus called Hugo von Heiligenberg to him, gave him, with the consent of the other rulers, the reign over Swabia and arranged for Hugo and the Duchess of Geldern to marry.
But he himself took a lot of money and goods and went to the Altorf monastery, where he devotedly served God for twenty-nine years. Shortly before his death, he called Duke Hugo and the most powerful rulers to him. He revealed to them whose son he was and told them his story. Since then he has been called Duke Wolf (Welf) and that's how he went down in history.
Emergence
The legend in its late medieval version is based on Thomas Lirer's Swabian Chronicle of 1485. In Section 8, Lirer mentions a (historically unknown) Duke Balthasar of Swabia , followed by his son Bundus as an illegitimate duke .
The connection between Lirer's account and the sex of the Guelphs is only vague. In fact, the Guelphs are known as a sex and by this name as early as the early Middle Ages with Count Welf I at the time of Charlemagne , whose son and heir, Emperor Ludwig the Pious , married Welf's daughter Judith († April 9, 843). Came around the middle of the 9th century, the average Schussental as county Schussen gau in possession of the Swabian branch of the Guelph (originally francs from the Meuse-Moselle) occurring in Altdorf one opposite the Martin Berg Palatinate built their new family seat. The legend was therefore certainly only constructed afterwards and related to gender.
Remarks
- ↑ Britta Zimmermann: The Welfensage, family drama from olden times (Internet Archive) ( Memento from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). For this version cf. also the information from Klaus Graf : https://archivalia.hypotheses.org/12069 .
- ↑ Alexander Schöppner: Sagenbuch der Bayer. Land 1–3 . Ed .: Karl-Maria Guth. 1st edition. tape 3 . Hofenberg, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-8430-3749-5 , pp. 353–354 ( zeno.org [accessed on December 6, 2017] Original title: Sagenbuch der Bayerischen Lande: Third volume . First edition: Rieger, Munich 1853).
- ↑ See the original version by Schöppner at zeno.org
- ↑ J. Fleckenstein: About the origin of the Guelphs . Pp. 105-107
Web links
- Duke Bundus, called the wolf in Wikisource