The End-Times in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse 9781571139894, 1571139893, 2019023693, 9781787445024

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The End-Times in Medieval German Literature

Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

The End-Times in Medieval German Literature Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse

Edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski

Rochester, New York

Copyright © 2019 by the Editors and Contributors All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2019 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.camden-house.com and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-989-4 ISBN-10: 1-57113-989-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hintz, Ernst Ralf, editor. Title: The end-times in medieval German literature : sin, evil, and the Apocalypse / edited by Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski. Description: Rochester : Camden House, 2019. | Series: Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019023693 | ISBN 9781571139894 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781787445024 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Apocalyptic literature. | German literature—History and criticism. | Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. Classification: LCC BL501 .E535 2019 | DDC 830.9/382360902—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019023693

This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Dedicated to our mentor and Doktorvater, Francis G. Gentry

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski

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Thiu wirsa giburd: Cain’s Legacy, Original Sin, and the End of the World in the Old Saxon Genesis Alexander Sager

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The Heliand Revisited: Spiritual Transgendering and the Defiance of Evil Ernst Ralf Hintz

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The Beginning of the End: Binary Dynamics and Initiative in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius Will Hasty

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Poetic Reflections in Medieval German Literature on Tragic Conflicts, Massive Death, and Armageddon Albrecht Classen

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Beyond Good and Evil: Apocalyptic Vision without Judgment in the Nibelungenlied. An Essay Winder McConnell

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End-Times in the Hall: The Modern Reception of the Apocalyptic Ending of the Nibelungenlied Scott E. Pincikowski

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Past Present, Future Present? Visualizing Arthurian Romance and the Beholder’s Share in a World That Refuses to End Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

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Ich diene und wirbe / biz ich gar verdirbe: Lovesickness, Apocalypse, and the End-Times in Mauritius von Craûn and Das Nibelungenlied Marian E. Polhill

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The Slippery Concept of Evil in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec and Iwein Evelyn Meyer

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10: Wigamur’s Lessons on the Complexity of Evil Joseph M. Sullivan

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11: The Miracles of the Antichrist Tina Boyer

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12: Monsters and Monstrosities in the Pamphlet Wars of the Reformation Winfried Frey

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Notes on the Contributors

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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hᴇ iᴅᴇᴀ fᴏr ᴛhis bᴏᴏᴋ would never have been conceived if not for Francis G. Gentry. As our teacher, mentor, and Doktorvater, he made our successful lives in academia possible in more ways than we can say. We dedicate this book to him as a small token of our appreciation for all he has done for us and for the field of medieval German literature. In turn, we also wish to acknowledge and express our deep gratitude to Edda Schrader-Gentry, whose unflagging support, humanity, and kindness over the years have buoyed our spirits to this day. As with any project of this nature, of course, there are many other people to whom we owe thanks. First, our appreciation goes to our editor at Camden House, Jim Walker, for his incredible patience at the different stages of this project. In addition, many thanks must go to the contributors to this volume. We appreciate your hard work, good humor, and patience with us. Many thanks for our colleagues and friends at Hood College, Truman State University, and beyond for lending their collective critical ears, inspiring scholarship, and showing interest in this project, especially Klaus Amann, Helmut Brall-Tuchel, Robert Casas, Didier Course, Michael Gebhardt, Amy Gottfried, Elisabeth De Felip-Jaud, Rebecca Harrison, Johannes Keller, Vince Kohl, Lisa Marcus, Matthias Meyer, Stephan Müller, Markus Stock, Max Siller, Donald Wright, and Griselda Zuffi. For their generous financial support of this book, we would like to thank the Board of Associates and the Faculty Development Committee at Hood College and the School of Arts and Letters at Truman State University. Without the resourceful library staff at our institutions, it would have been impossible to obtain the more obscure sources that are used in this book. Last, but certainly not least, we would like to give special thanks and love to our families, for their love and support, during what probably seemed like a project without an end. We would never have completed this book without Kate, Lukas, Kylie, Juniper, Jeri, Katya, Kira, Matt, Jessica, and Judeau. E.R.H and S.E.P. May 2019

Introduction Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski

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hᴇ ᴄᴏnᴛᴇᴍᴘᴏrᴀry fᴀsᴄinᴀᴛiᴏn with the end of the world and life as we know it would have surprised our counterparts a millennium ago only insofar as the end has not yet occurred. In the early twenty-first century, our vision of the apocalypse encompasses climate change, terrorism, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and war. Popular culture expresses the fear associated with these global crises, obsessively portraying zombies, alien attacks, pandemics, and self-destructive technologies. This book investigates how people in medieval Germany and beyond envisioned their own end-times, their expectations of the apocalypse, the fear of evil, and dread of imminent judgment. Akin to the fear of nuclear Armageddon in the Cold War decades of the last century, a time when schoolchildren cowered under wooden desks for shelter, the fear of the end of days has permeated and helped shape Western society from the early church well into the early modern era. Even for many circumspect people in our own century, concern over a looming dystopia remains ever pervasive. In Western Christendom, a befitting image of the echatological undercurrent that flowed through centuries deemed “medieval” appears in the New Testament Book of Revelation, known also as the Apocalypse. When the Lamb breaks the first four of seven seals, four horsemen emerge (Rev. 6:1–8). The first rider, on a white horse, carries a bow and embodies the conqueror. The second rides a red horse, bringing conflict to inflict suffering on the world. The third rider, on a black steed and with scales in hand, spreads scarcity in myriad ways, by famine as well as economic uncertainty from war and inflation. In concert with the first three, Death, the fourth horseman, rides a pale horse reminiscent of decay and putrid flesh. All four are bound together and share a mutual causality, expressing an underlying anxiety about the causes of human suffering and death, and the promise of an afterlife in hell for sinners and the potential reward of eternal joy in heaven for the righteous. It can be said with a measure of certainty that the longevity of this eschatological anxiety attests to our human predilection with finality, be it our own finite span or the end

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of life on earth as we know it. For almost two millennia the four horsemen have captured the imagination of biblical exegetes and artists alike. Just like exegesis for the Book of Revelation itself, there have been three ways of looking at the horsemen. The first, the contemporaneous one, views the plight of the seven fledgling churches and their persecution, probably under the emperor Domitian at the end of the first century C.E. The second is the futuristic, prophetic view that looks ahead to what is to come. The third way of understanding the biblical events, to which the apostle John was initiated on the Isle of Patmos, is an idealistic one, one that is currently happening in the triadic relationship among God, his kingdom on earth, and Satan. Each of these three exegetical methods may also accommodate the other two.1 In Augustinian fashion, they encompass all eschatological time as immediate reality—as “a present time of past things, a present time of present things, and a present time of future things.”2 In his well-known woodcut from 1498, Albrecht Dürer depicted die vier apokalyptischen Reiter with German subtitles; he portrayed them again in the Latin version of 1511. The artist amplified the theme by adding a large serpent that trails Death and devours the sinful with no regard to their station in life. Just like the varying intertextual ways of understanding the Book of Revelation and relating it to an immediate perception of reality, Dürer’s woodcut may well have drawn viewers into an intervisual mode that invited them to relate their own experiences of past, present, and foreboding calamities to the arrival of the four horsemen as heralds of the end-times and a persisting anxiety within both religious and secular spheres. The essays in this volume explore the medieval fascination with the apocalypse by introducing current methodological approaches to this age-old topic. These essays examine different permutations of end-times in a wide range of literary genres, including texts easily connected with end-times such as early biblical ones; legends; epics; and blockbooks, also known as xylographica, short books of up to fifty leaves, blockprinted in Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century with blocks carved to include both text and illustrations. In addition, this volume analyzes genres that heretofore have not been connected to end-times, such as the courtly romance, the so-called postclassical romance, and Reformation pamphlets. Delving into diverse topics such as gender, the meaning of violence, the significance of space and place, courtly love, reception and adaptation studies, monster studies and the “other,” and memory studies, this book uncovers the didactic, narratological, mnemonic, thematic, cultural, and political functions of end-times in medieval German texts. The essays also expand the traditional notion

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of end-times, moving beyond the customary motifs associated with last days, such as the plague, an eclipse of the moon, the resurrection of the dead, and the Last Judgment, by considering other issues connected to end-times, including original sin, good versus evil, mass destruction and death, the end of a genre, the role (or lack thereof) of Christian values in the face of Armageddon, and even the relationship between lovesickness and the apocalypse. The contributions also consider how literary culture often subverts the idea of end-times; for even as texts depict the end of a people and the struggle of good versus evil (and sometimes the struggle to draw a distinct line between them), they ultimately continue to communicate these “ends” for contemporary and future audiences, revealing that end-times are a productive literary means to an end: these texts teach, warn, and even manipulate their audiences, moving them to reflect upon the meaning of the end and how one should behave in the face of apocalyptic forces. The first two essays explore Old Saxon biblical poetry and the literary depiction of original sin and the defiance of evil. Alexander Sager looks anew at one of three Old Saxon fragments preserved in the Old English Genesis B: the Cain fragment. By recontextualizing it as the Cain “poem,” Sager focuses on how it recounts the emergence of moral corruption in a postlapsarian world. In doing so, he argues convincingly that the poem demonstrates a “major repositioning of original sin” with regard to the orthodox Christian tradition. He calls to our attention how the “Cain” poem as well as the “Sodom and Gomorrah” poem point toward the apocalypse. In a further look at Old Saxon literature, Ernst Ralf Hintz examines the Heliand from a threefold perspective: the defiance of death, the spiritual progression toward salvation or damnation, and the significance of spiritual transgendering. Hintz sheds light on the poet’s synthesis of all three narrative components in shaping a Gospel account aimed at realigning Saxon religious practice, moving it from loyalty to an established Germanic cosmology, on the one hand, to allegiance to Christ and his radically new warrior ethos, on the other. In the contribution that follows, Will Hasty focuses our attention on Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius by way of “binary dynamics.” This framing reveals a narrative momentum aptly described as the “beginning of the end.” Hasty analyzes the legend of courtly incest and saintly redemption “from two distinctive evaluative orientations—courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic.” This combinational approach offers new insights into a work that has remained a contentious object of interpretation among medievalists for well over a century. The next three essays examine different aspects of the apocalyptic vision of heroic epics. Albrecht Classen demonstrates that the

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apocalyptic vision of these texts teaches lessons about the consequences of violence. His essay considers how some epic literature provides critical responses to the tragedy of war. Classen finds such critiques in a wide range of epics from the early to the late Middle Ages, including the Hildebrandslied; the Nibelungenlied and its continuation, diu Klage; Kudrun; and Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring, a work that contains epic elements. He shows that these epics—with Kudrun being the only text to demonstrate strategies to avoid conflict—highlight the fact that, until humans consider means other than war to solve conflicts, disagreements, or cultural differences, we are doomed to a never-ending cycle of death and destruction. In the next essay, Winder McConnell reassesses the role that Christian values and ethical codes play in understanding the Nibelungenlied and its apocalyptic ending. Contrasting the Nibelungenlied with the Nibelungenklage and Kudrun, which contain substantial Christian elements, McConnell demonstrates that, while the Nibelungenlied includes Christian tenets, they are superficial ones not central to the meaning of the apocalyptic ending of the text. McConnell is able to show that the apocalyptic vision of the Nibelungenlied is not tied to divine judgment and redemption but rather is grounded in older worldly values and warrior codes that do not rely on religious categories such as good and evil or forgiveness and damnation. For his part, Scott E. Pincikowski shows how the apocalyptic vision of the heroic epic refuses to end even after the medieval era. Examining the destruction of the Germanic hall in the Nibelungenlied in different modern media, including texts, paintings, and films, Pincikowski demonstrates that the fascination with Armageddon and destruction continues to reverberate in the collective memory of modern and postmodern audiences alike. He explores the varying functions of this ideologically fraught and unstable memory space, finding that the modern reception of the endtimes in the hall is a process marked by the politicization and instrumentalization of destruction. Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand’s contribution examines memory in the courtly context. She looks at how the fictional Arthurian world resists becoming obsolete, analyzing the way in which courtly culture actively and continuously engaged with its past to maintain and suggest courtly modes of expression and being for the present and future. Exploring the Iwein murals in Rodenegg and sculpture portraits in the Naumburg Cathedral, Sterling-Hellenbrand is able to show how the interplay between secular and sacred imagery/iconography in different medieval media, such as Arthurian texts like Der Pleier’s Meleranz and Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein, murals, and sculptures, exploits the elasticity of the medieval notion of time to make the auditor/recipient an

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active participant in the continuation of imagining and reimagining courtly culture. In doing so, Sterling-Hellenbrand makes a compelling case for why courtly culture, and particularly the reception of the genre of Arthurian romance, refused to end during the Middle Ages. In her essay, Marian E. Polhill observes that depictions of courtly love service are often accompanied by images of illness, the apocalypse, and the end-times. She analyzes these neglected themes in Mauritius von Craûn and Das Nibelungenlied. By looking at the anxiety inherent in courtly love service and its effects on medieval masculinity and traditional gender roles, she demonstrates how doomsday imagery shapes a common narrative about the dangers of inverting gender norms in two works of very different literary genres. In their contributions, Evelyn Meyer and Joseph Sullivan explore the concept of evil in courtly and “postclassical” romances, respectively, a topic that has received little attention in romance studies, and genres that are not readily associated with end-times. Meyer and Sullivan both demonstrate that, while evil has a didactic function in courtly texts, it also holds an uneasy position within the ethical and moral framework of courtly culture. Meyer shows just how complex evil is in Hartmann’s Erec and Iwein. She finds that even as Hartmann places courtly and noncourtly characters on a social and moral continuum, both types of characters commit evil acts, forms of violence that break with the courtly code of behavior. Meyer demonstrates that Hartmann condemns the “other” in the courtly world, such as giants, for their illegitimate use of violence. At the same time, Hartmann creates ambiguity in the case of knights, allowing most knights to perform evil deeds; for these knights are still learning proper conduct and the responsibilities of knighthood. Here final judgment must be withheld, for unlike uncourtly characters, knights can be redeemed, and evil acts even appear to be necessary steps on the knight’s difficult path to moral and social development. Sullivan examines the evil actions of the main characters of the thirteenth-century postclassical romance Wigamur. He finds that evil is just as complex a topic in the postclassical romance as in the classical romance: each of the main characters he studies is both good and bad, leaving it up to the reader to judge the character’s actions. Like Meyer, Sullivan also determines that evil acts are intended to teach the noble audience valuable lessons about proper behavior. In doing so, Sullivan shows just how unique Wigamur is and makes the case that this postclassical romance has more literary value than earlier scholarship thought. The two essays rounding out this book examine monsters and monstronsities. Tina Boyer’s article helps us to better understand how blockbooks were read and the Antichrist figure and evil were understood

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during the fifteenth century. She examines the meaning and origins of the “miracles” of the Antichrist through the relationship between their portrayal in the text and corresponding images of the blockbook Puch von dem Entkrist. Her analysis of three specific miracles that have been difficult to connect to the eschatological tradition—the conjuring of a giant from an egg, the suspension of a castle in the air by a thread, and the drawing of a stag from a stone—convincingly shows the evolution of the nature of the Antichrist during the fifteenth century from an overtly monstrous figure to one that relies on subtle lies, deceit, and cunning. Winfried Frey’s contribution, finally, sheds light on how the authors and artists of pamphlets during the Reformation created satirical monsters out of their opponents and demonized their religious institutions. Drawing upon rich source material by Lucas Cranach, Martin Luther, Melchior Lorck, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Cochläus, and Kaspar Goldwurm Athesinus, Frey shows that the sixteenth century was a fruitful time for this biting satire, whereby both sides of Reformation debate drew upon and further developed a preexisting caricature tradition to undermine a given opponent, whether it was to depict him as a papal ass, a monk calf, a wild man, or a devil with a bagpipe. By highlighting this “mutual demonization,” Frey is able to suggest that in the end the rhetorical violence of this satirical “othering” was ultimately transformed into the real violence of the Thirty Years’ War. In sum, the essays presented here show how medieval German literature apprehends the end-times and their eschatological anxiety in a myriad of ways. The different analyses explore issues that focus primarily on sin, evil, and apocalypse, not only in the expected sacred and religious context but also in the secular. As our readers consider through the essays in this book the modes of medieval cultural production that address fear and uncertainty in the end-times, we hope they find this volume as fascinating as we and our colleagues who contributed to it do.

Notes 1 2

The Orthodox Study Bible (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), 588.

“tempora sunt tria, praesens de praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris.” Augustine, St. Augustine’s Confessions, trans. William Watts, vol. 2 (London: Loeb Classical Library, 1979), 252–53.

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Thiu wirsa giburd: Cain’s Legacy, Original Sin, and the End of the World in the Old Saxon Genesis

Alexander Sager

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ᴄhᴏᴌᴀrs ᴏf Oᴌᴅ Sᴀxᴏn alliterative biblical poetry have tended to fall into two camps: those who emphasize the Germanic culture behind the form, and those who emphasize the Christian tradition behind the content. All interpretations take both into consideration, but this difference in basic emphasis can lead to major divergences in what is seen as the overall meaning of the poems. One of the main divergences is that scholars in the first camp, usually in reference to a sociocultural model derived from the Germanic comitatus or the feud, tend to interpret the Adam and Eve story in terms of a relatively straightforward relationship of loss and restoration of favor with one’s Lord. These readings, by and large, proceed from what one would call in German a “positives Menschenbild” (positive view of human nature). Those who emphasize the Christian tradition, on the other hand, tend to regard the same story as transporting an essentially negative Christian anthropology and psychology of sin. In a recent study, John Vickrey has called these scholarly camps the “exonerative school” (those “exonerated” being Adam and Eve) and the “orthodox school” (the orthodoxy being that of the patristic, Augustine-oriented exegetical tradition of early medieval Catholic Christianity).1 All of this has been argued at length with regard to the Adam and Eve story, the subject of one of the three surviving Old Saxon fragments of biblical poetry, a fragment preserved in a significantly longer version in an Old English transliteration known to scholars as Genesis B.2 The two other fragments, which deal with the stories of Cain and Abel and the destruction of Sodom, respectively, have received very little independent critical attention.3 This essay deals primarily with the Cain fragment, which, for reasons that will later become clear, I will call the Cain poem. Specifically, I argue that this poem undertakes a major repositioning of original sin vis-à-vis the orthodox Christian tradition (including a rather puzzling apocalyptic coda), a state of affairs that has not received due recognition in the scholarship.

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Original Sin One of the main achievements of the “orthodox” school has been to demonstrate convincingly the great extent to which the biblical poetry in Old Saxon is informed by contemporaneous Christian sources and perspectives, most notably patristic commentaries on the Bible used in Carolingian monasteries, biblical apocrypha and parabiblical narratives, and Church practice. Even those scholars who emphasize the Germanic background, as well as “exonerative” readings of the theological meaning, have generally come to accept its embeddedness in a highly learned ecclesiastical context. This being the case, it seems safe to assume that the representation of original sin in the Old Saxon Genesis fragments derived from an environment in which the orthodox understanding of that doctrine was dominant. Although the origins of the doctrine of original sin are complicated, the orthodox view in the early Middle Ages is easily summarized. In eating the forbidden fruit, Adam brought a twofold death into the world as a condition inherited by the whole human race thereafter: the death of the physical body; and the death of soul—that is, a condition of inner moral corruption.4 This understanding, worked out in a climate of debate and controversy in the early church, was set by the Council of Orange in 530, notably in the second canon: II. Si quis soli Adae praevaricationem suam, non et eius propagini adserit nocuisse aut certe morte tantum corporis, quae poena peccati est, non autem et peccatum, quod mors est animae, per unum hominem in omne genus humanum transisse testatur, iniustitiam Deo dabit contradicens apostolo dicenti: Per unum hominem peccatum intravit in mundo et per peccatum mors et ita in omnis homines pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt.5 [If anyone asserts that Adam’s sin affected him alone and not his descendants also, or at least if he declares that it is only the death of the body which is the punishment for sin, and not also that sin, which is the death of the soul, passed through one man to the whole human race, he does injustice to God and contradicts the Apostle, who says, “Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men; in whom all men sinned.” (Rom. 5:12)]6

Note the nature of the counterclaims: there were those arguing that Adam’s descendants were not punished at all by his sin, and others arguing that this punishment involved only bodily mortality, not a heritable condition of moral corruption. This canon formed the basis

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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of commentary on original sin throughout the ninth-century Frankish empire.7 The manner in which the Old Saxon Genesis represents the transmission of Adam and Eve’s sin puts these poems into considerable tension with the orthodox view of original sin. Essentially, the Saxon Adam and Eve only pass down bodily mortality; an inheritable condition of moral corruption enters the world only with Cain’s slaying of Abel.

The Genesis B In the Bible (Gen. 3:7–19) Adam and Eve, after eating the forbidden fruit, immediately become aware that they have sinned and seek to hide from God. He comes looking for them and confronts them, whereupon they shirk responsibility. Adam inculpates Eve, with the implication that God himself is ultimately responsible (“The woman you gave me made me do it!”), and Eve blames the serpent. God curses all three of them and expels Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In the Genesis B, in contrast, the couple, after eating the fruit, are both filled with rue and regret (765b–70a).8 Eve, realizing that she was the one who first abandoned God’s teaching, is especially contrite (770b–72a). The couple fall down on their knees in prayer, beseeching God for due punishment for having violated his command (777b–83a). Adam castigates Eve thoroughly (790a–820b). She accepts the blame, telling him that her remorse is as great as his (821a–26b). Together they undertake continual prayerful penance in the forest, asking God for counsel. Here the poem ends, or breaks off. A confrontation with God after the biblical model does not exist, either intentionally on the part of the poet, or because the rest of the poem was lost, as—in the view of most scholars— with other sections of all three fragments. In a recent article9 I argued that this “open” ending was intentional and part of a major reconception of the judgment scene, not only vis-àvis the Bible but also with regard to the traditional patristic exegesis that informs this text as well as early Germanic biblical literature as a whole. According to St. Augustine, Adam and Eve’s problematic attitude and behavior during the confrontation with God (their hiding and shirking) was just as instrumental in the Fall and its consequences as was the violation of the original prohibition. One vernacular source contemporary with the Genesis B, the Evangelienharmonie of Otfrid von Weißenburg, goes so far as to state flatly that if Adam had felt contrition and confessed his sin, God would have pardoned him.10 Otfrid’s comment, I argue, reflects a strain in mainstream Carolingian theology emphasizing the efficacy of the human will in questions of sin, repentance, and

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salvation. In my view, the Genesis B, in concluding with a repentant Adam and Eve, seeks to retell the foundational story of sin in a way that will prompt not only identification with the characters but also concrete action on the part of the audience with regard to the new culture of personal confession just getting started in the Carolingian empire. The Genesis B can be interpreted as a penitential text, targeted at the Saxon subjects of the Carolingians in the ninth century and tailored to their particular postpagan sociocultural situation.11 In his recent book mentioned above, John Vickrey, one of the major voices in the theological turn in Genesis B scholarship during the 1960s (and a self-identified member of the “orthodox” school), independently came to similar conclusions shortly after my article was published. Vickrey recognizes the unprecedented nature of Adam and Eve’s repentance, both in terms of its contrast to the Bible as well as in the wider literary field. As he notes, the text “is alone among Old English and Old Saxon poems in its implication that the way of exile for Adam and Eve is the way of the Christian penitent” (253). He, too, regards Genesis B as a “penitential poem,” one that was “transmuted into the penitential modes of the poet’s own age” (238, 253). I see the penitential mode in more practical-pastoral terms than Vickrey does, and in my view, he fails to do justice to the figure of Eve as penitent—about which more later. But otherwise his book offers a confirmation of the view—all the stronger for being independent—that the Genesis B fundamentally reconceptualizes the representation of sin and judgment. The Genesis B contains several statements relevant to original sin. After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, two passages of narrator commentary suggest that humanity has been fatally compromised: “nyste þæt þær hearma swa fela, / fyrenearfeða, fylgean sceolde / monna cynne, þæs heo on mod genam / þæt heo þæs laðan bodan larum hyrde” (708b–11b; Eve did not know that there harms so many, sinful woe, would pursue mankind, because she took into her mind what she heard from that evil messenger). A few lines later we are told that “hit wæs þeah deaðes swefn and deofles gespon, / hell and hinnsið and hæleða forlor, / menniscra morð, þæt hie to mete dædon, / ofet unfæle” (720a–23a; it was death’s dream and devil’s deception, hell and deathjourney and loss of heroes, death of humankind, that they took as nourishment, the evil fruit). Together, these passages suggest a view of original sin in keeping with—or at least not incompatible with—the orthodox understanding of a twofold corruption, physical and moral, passed down to humanity by the first parents. This section is, however, both preceded and followed by statements of a very different nature. Just after Eve eats the forbidden fruit, the narrator turns to the audience and

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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draws a parallel to contemporaneous society: “Swa hire eaforan sculon æfter lybban / þonne hie lað gedoð: hie sculon lufe wyrcean, / betan heora hearran hearmcwide ond habban his hyldo forð” (623a–25b; Thus should her descendants live when they do wrong: they should do good, amend the accusations of their Lord, and have his favor from then on). Then, at the very end of the poem, he tells us that the penitent couple “wel meahton / libban on þam lande, gif hie wolden lare godes / forweard fremman” (786b–88a; might live in that land if they wished to carry out the command of God from then on), which is something they very obviously wish to do.12 These comments are less easily reconcilable with the orthodox view that original sin involves moral corruption, the “death of the soul.” The earlier passage makes the first sin analogous to any quotidian act of wrongdoing, amenable to a straightforward process of atonement. The latter comment suggests that the parents of humanity still might recuperate or preserve a quasi-Edenic condition, accepting physical death but otherwise restored in their relationship with God. This sounds like the kind of view being attacked in the Council of Orange—namely, of those who “declare that it is only the death of the body which is the punishment for sin.” With regard to original sin, then, the Adam and Eve poem is ambiguous, even a hybrid. There are good practical-pastoral reasons for this. In representing humanity’s parents as sincere and hopeful penitents and in omitting the confrontation with God, the poem seeks to create a motivation for auditors to engage in the sacrament of confession, one of the main concerns of the Carolingian ecclesiastical agenda for postpagan Saxony. In the abovementioned article I describe this incentive structure in terms of a prospective “personal-symbolic undoing or reversal of the Fall” on the part of the audience.13 This seems to be the thrust of the narrator’s claims that Adam and Eve might continue living in the Garden and that their descendants can restore favor with their Lord through proper penance. An exclusive focus on the orthodox doctrine of original sin would certainly have undermined this incentive and therefore the pastoral agenda behind the story. At the same time, the story does gesture at the orthodox understanding of original sin in the two other narrator comments. One might say that the Genesis B contains the orthodox view in theory but not in practice.

The Cain Poem Putting original sin into practice seems to be the main purpose of the Cain poem. The discussion is highly orthodox in one particular way tied directly to the deficit in the Genesis B: the heritable condition of

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interior moral corruption is now represented with absolute clarity. But there is a major catch: the sin that transports this condition is not the eating of the forbidden fruit but, rather, Cain’s slaying of Abel. For the Saxon Genesis, the first homicide is the original sin that corrupts the heart of humanity and puts it in need of redemption.14 This repositioning of Cain’s deed occurs along several lines. First, it is represented as a morally far worse and vastly more consequential act than the eating of the fruit. The narrator comments that Cain “habda im miđ is handun / haramuuerek mikil / uuamdadiun giuuaraht, / thius uuerold was so suiđo / besmitin an sundiun” (35a–37a; had worked a great sin against himself with his own hands, in this way the world was powerfully soiled with sins).15 The expression “soiling the world with sin” sounds much more commensurate with original sin than any description in the Genesis B of the act or the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. Moreover, in telling us that the world was soiled with sin “in this way” (so), that is, through murder, the poet implicitly denies or strongly qualifies the consequentiality of Adam and Eve’s earlier sin; “it happened in this way” implies it did not happen in another way. Finally, that Cain’s deed is the worst possible sin is the assessment of God himself: “ni mag im enig mann than suiđor / uuero faruuirikian an uueroldrîkea / an bittron balodadion / than thu an thinun bruođar habas / firinuuerek gifremid” (52b– 55a; No man can ever sin more intensely in the kingdom of the world with bitter baleful deeds than the crime you have committed against your brother). By its very nature, the voice of God is the most authoritative in the text. A second way in which Cain’s crime acquires the status of original sin is that, unlike the eating of the forbidden fruit, the slaying of Abel is placed outside of the economy of individual repentance and forgiveness. As we might expect, coming from the repentance-oriented Adam and Eve story, a penitential expectation is created; in his response to God’s reproach, Cain initially sounds quite remorseful: “so ik is nu mag drubundian hugi,” quađ he, “beran an minun breostun  thes ik minan bruođar sluog thuru min handmegin.  Nu uuet ik, that ik scal an thinum heti libbian, forđ an thinum fiundscepi,  nu ik mi thesa firina gideda, so mi mina sundia nu  suiđaron thunkiat, misdad mera,  than thin mildi hugi, So ik thes nu uuirđig ni bium,  uualdand thie guodo, that thu mi alatas  leđas thingas, tianono atuemeas.” (58b–66a)

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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[“I will carry,” he said, “downcast thoughts in my breast of how I slew my brother with the strength of my hand. Now I know that I will live under your hatred from now on, under your enmity, since I have done this evil to myself, so my sin seems worse to me now, my misdeed more than your generous thought, and so I am now not worthy, good Lord, that you absolve me of the evil thing, release me from the sin.”]

This seems like proper repentance, not unlike the attitude of Adam and Eve at the end of Genesis B. The difference is that unlike his parents, who await God’s decision about how they should now live their lives, Cain preemptively decides this for himself.16 Finding himself unworthy of forgiveness, he will break fealty with God: “nu ik ni uuelda mina triuuua haldan, hugi, uuiđ them thinum hlutrom muoda:  nu uuet ik, that ik hier ni mag eniga huila libbian, huand mi antuuirikit,  so hwat so mi an thisun uuega findit, aslehit mi bi thesun sundeun” (66b–69a). [“Now I will not hold my faith, my thought, with your pure spirit, now I know that I cannot live here long, for whatever finds me here on this way will destroy me, kill me in these sins.”]

As we saw, according to the narrator of the Genesis B, the restoration of God’s favor was a possibility both for Adam and Eve and for their descendants (see endnote 3). In the Cain poem, God himself tells Cain that this will be impossible for him: “Fluhtik scalt thu thoh endi fređig  forduuardas nu libbean an thesum landa,  so lango so thu thit liaht uuaros; Forhuatan sculun thi hluttra liudi,  thu ni salt io furthur cuman te thines herron sprako, uueslean thar mid uuorđon thinon.  Vuallandi stet thines brothor uuraca  bitter an helli.” (75a–79b) [“But you shall live transient and exiled henceforth in this land, as long as you possess the light. The pure people shall curse you, you shall no longer come to hold converse with your lord and to exchange words there. The retribution of your brother stands flaming and bitter in hell.”]

The third—and for our discussion most crucial—way in which Cain’s sin is original is that it leads to a heritable condition of moral corruption, whereas Adam and Eve’s sin does not. In fact, the parents, after learning of the fate of their first two sons, first assume that it will lead to such a state:

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   thes im thuo bethiun uuarđ, sinhiun tuem,  ser umbi herta. Oft siu thes gornunde  an griata gistuodun, sinhiun samad.  quađun that sia uuissin, that im that iro sundia gidedin, that im ni muostin aftar  erebiuuardos, thegnos thian. (95b–100a) [On account of that, the couple was hurt in their heart. Often they stood together on the sand lamenting, the couple. They said that they knew that their sin had caused that heirs could not prosper afterward.]

But this turns out not to be the case. As if in confirmation of the narrator’s assurances in Genesis B, the repentant parents are able to restore the favor of their Lord and pass it on to their descendants through Seth:     tholodun siu beđiu mikila morđquala  unt that im eft mahtig god, her hebanes uuard,  iro hugi buotta That im uurdun ođana  erebiuuardos, thegnos endi thiornun,  thigun aftar uuel, uuohsun uuanlîko,  geuuitt linodun, spaha spraka.  spuodda thie mahta is handgiuuerek,  helag drohtin, That im uuarđ sunu giboran  them scuopun siu Seđ te naman uuarom uuordum.  them uuastom leh hebanas uualdand  endi hugi guodan, gamlican gang.  he was goda uuirđig. mildi was hie im an is muoda.  so thana is manno uuel thie io miđ sulicaro huldi muot  herron thionun. Hie loboda thuo mest  liodio barnun, godas huldi gumun.  thanan quamun guoda mann, uuordun uuisa,  geuuitt linodun, thegnos githahte  endi thigun aftar uuel. (100b–118b) [They suffered great deadly pain, so that mighty God, the Lord of heaven, consoled them, so that they were granted progeny, sons and daughters, who throve well afterward, grew prosperously, learned wisdom, wise speech. He was able to advance his creation, the holy Lord, such that a son was born to them. They gave him the name Seth, in true words. To him heaven’s Lord gave prosperity and good thoughts, a joyful path. He was worthy of God, who was generous with him in his mind. So it is well for that kind of man who can serve his Lord with such favor. Of all the children of men, he praised God’s favor to people the most. Good men came of that, wise in words, they learned wisdom, the thanes, and thinking, and afterward throve.]

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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Again, this is not a full restoration of Eden, since Seth and his descendants are presumably subject to physical death. But the scenario described here—a community of good people thriving in the favor of their Lord—is also hardly in keeping with the orthodox view of Adam and Eve’s sin causing a heritable human alienation from God in need of redemption through Christ. There is an interesting ambiguity in the passage concerning what Adam and Eve believe: “that im ni muostin aftar erebiuuardos, thegnos thian.” Two readings of thian/thihan are possible: 1) they believe they will not be physically able to have any more children (thian meaning “to live”);17 and 2) they believe that the children they will have will not be able to “prosper” or “thrive.” The first meaning is also reflected in the statement that God “was able to advance his creation, the holy Lord, such that a son was born to them.” Overall, the second sense prevails; the very existence of Cain and Abel shows that “their sin” (iro sundia) has not prevented conception and childbirth. Rather, the couple’s worry seems to be that their sin has caused their children to be internally flawed in such a way as to prevent them from living properly. And this is what God disproves in Seth and Seth’s people: that Adam and Eve’s sin is not the vehicle of heritable moral corruption that alienates humanity from God. It is, seemingly, only through Cain that this condition first arises, and alienation from God occurs only when Cain’s progeny mix with those of Seth: Thann quamun eft fan Kaina  kraftaga liudi, helidos hardmuoda,  habdun im hugi strangan, uuređan uuillean,  Ni uueldun uualdandas lera lestian  Ac habdun im leđan striđ; Uuohsun im uurisilico.  that was thiu uuirsa giburd, kuman fan Kaina.  bigunnun im copun thuo uueros uuîƀ undor tuisk.  thas uuarđ anuuerđit san Seđas gesidi,  uuarđ seggio folc menu gimengiđ  endi uuurđun manno barn, liudi, leđa  them thitt lioht giscuop— (119a–28b) [Then there arose from Cain powerful people, hard-minded heroes. Their thoughts were tough, their will was wrathful, they never wanted to follow God’s teaching, but rather had hateful strife, which multiplied massively. That was the worse lineage, come from Cain. The men began to exchange their womenfolk. Seth’s host was quickly destroyed by that, became a host of men mixed with sin, and the sons of men, the people, became hateful to the one who created this light.]

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If Seth’s people “became mixed with sin” (“uuarđ menu gimengiđ”) through interbreeding with Cain’s descendants, then clearly their prior condition is not to be understood as bearing a sinful legacy from Adam and Eve. Analogously in the case of humankind as a whole, only now does it “become hateful” to God. What is the reason behind this striking reconception? In general terms it is probably quite straightforward: for the elites of an early medieval Germanic society on the path of reeducation from a pagan cultural orientation and a heroic warrior ethos to a religion of peace (or at least comparatively restricted violence) and turning the other cheek, a story of violent homicide was simply the better cultural vehicle for a drama of disobedience than a story of a forbidden fruit. In making the original sin into a murder, the poem seeks to sanction and delegitimize physical violence in the strongest possible terms. This puts the Cain poem in close thematic alignment with the Old Saxon Heliand. The prominence accorded in that text to the theme of nonviolence has long been noted in the scholarship, especially with regard to the great weight placed on the Sermon on the Mount.18 But the Cain poem goes further than its predecessor in condemning violence, and in one particular respect it might even be seen as providing a sort of corrective. In perhaps the most discussed scene in the Heliand, the apostle Peter, seeking to defend his Lord from capture in the Garden of Gethsemane, loses control of himself and falls into a berserker rage, which the narrator dwells on in an extended description (4865b–82a). As scholars have pointed out, the way that Peter’s behavior runs counter to the overall nonviolent message of the poem (Christ gives his defender a lengthy dressing-down and restores the injured man to health, 4884b–90) may reflect the attempt to accommodate the text to a warrior nobility in which the pre-Christian heroic ethos was still a living force.19 Or, as some have argued, perhaps the “medium was the message” to such an extent in the Germanic alliterative verse tradition that any direct narration of an armed encounter, in the hands of a traditional poet, would be automatically told in such a way as to transport heroic “charisma” despite itself, so to speak.20 If this was the case, it suggests a reason why the Cain poem, which is generally considered to lack the original beginning, might not, in fact, do so.21 In the manuscript the poem begins immediately after the killing of Abel: Siđoda im thuo te selidon,  habda im sundea giuuaraht bittra, an is bruođar.  liet ina undar baka liggian an enum diapun dala  droruuoragana, libas losan,  legarbedd waran,

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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guman an griata.  thuo sprak im god selbo tuo, Uualdand miđ is uuordun,  was im uuređ an is hugi, them banan gibolgan,  fragoda huuar he habdi is brođar thuo, kindiungan kuman.  tho sprak im eft Kain angegen (Habda im miđ is handun  haramuuerek mikil uuamdadiun giuuaraht,  thius uuerold uuas so suiđo besmitin an sundiun),  “Ni ik thes sorogun ni scal,” quađ he, “gomian huar hie ganga,  ni it mi god ni gibod, that is huerigin hier  huodian thorofti, uuardon an thesaro uueroldi.” uuande he suuiđo, that he bihelan mahti herran sinum, thia dadi, bidernian. (27a–42a) [He went then to his house. He had committed a horrible sin against his brother, leaving him behind, lying in a deep dale bleeding to death, a lifeless man, in a grave, in the sand. Then God himself spoke to him, the Lord, with his words. He was angry in his mind, wrathful at the killer. He asked him where he had his brother, the young man. Then Cain spoke back to him (he had worked a great sin against himself with his own hands, in this way the world was powerfully stricken with sins): “I will not concern myself,” he said, “with where the man went, nor did God ever tell me that I needed to watch over him, watch out for him in this world.” He was convinced that he could hide this terrible deed from his Lord, conceal it.]

Avoiding direct narration of the violent encounter between Cain and Abel may well have been a deliberate choice by the poet, in order to deny his audience narrative satisfaction à la Peter’s glorious rage in the Heliand, and to deny Cain’s deed—and with it original sin—even a modicum of heroic charisma. In beginning the story after the deed, he forces his audience to confront violence first and foremost in terms of its terrible consequences. Not specifying the manner in which Cain killed his brother also allows for a high degree of generalizability, suggesting that any and every form of homicide is wrong. We already saw that impulse to generalize in the Adam and Eve story, which analogized the eating of the fruit to unspecified quotidian acts of disobedience. There is one additional structural feature suggesting that the poem’s surviving beginning was original. By opening with the confrontation between God and Cain, the poem effectually supplies the biblical-sense conclusion so demonstratively missing from the Adam and Eve story: a recalcitrant sinner, actively seeking to hide his sin from God, confronted by God, cursed and condemned. The biblical Cain dissembles, but there is no mention of his actively seeking to conceal his sin from God, as here: “He was convinced that he could hide this terrible deed from his

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Lord, conceal it.” This motif is borrowed from the biblical Adam and Eve, who actively hide (“se abscondere”) from God. When we recall the theological significance ascribed to God’s confrontation with recalcitrant sinners in Carolingian theology, this is yet another indication that the Cain story is doing the work of original sin in the Old Saxon Genesis. Apart from reasons of content, a missing beginning has traditionally been seen as suggested by discourse markers like the adverb thuo and the use of personal pronouns for Cain before his name first appears eight lines in. By themselves, however, these phenomena count for little; an account of the conflict between the brothers could have been given before the formal performance of the poem. Such an introduction could have been long and expository, or it could have been very short: “Now you will hear the story of Cain’s slaying of his brother Abel. One day, Cain killed his brother Abel out of envy.” One or two brief statements of this kind would have sufficed as antecedents to thuo and the personal pronouns. In my view, such an introduction would have been shorter rather than longer, and it probably would have eschewed any description of the actual killing, as the poem itself does, and for the same reasons: to avoid incurring narrative “prurience” (here with regard to violence instead of sex) on the part of the audience and to maximize the generalizability of Cain’s crime.

The End of the World Despite the corruption from mixing with the progeny of Cain, a righteous man does arise from Seth’s line: Enoch. At this point the poem suddenly leaps forward to the end-times and concludes in a few dramatic strokes: Botan that iro en habda  erlas gihugdi, theganlica githahtt.  uuas im githungin mann, uuis endi uuordspah,  habda giuuitt mikil. Enoch uuas hie hetan.  thie hier an erđu uuarđ mannum te marđum  obar thesan middilgarđ, That ina hier so quikana  kuningo thie bezto, libbendian an is lichaman,  so hie io an thesun liahta ni staraf Ac so gihaloda ina hier  hebanas uualdand Endi ina thar gisetta,  thar hie simlon muot uuesan an uuunnion,  untat ina eft an thesa uuerold sendit her hebanas uuarđ  helidho barnum, liodiun, te laro.  thann hier ok thie leđo kumit, That hier Antikrist  alla thioda,

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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uuerod auuerđit,  thann he mid uuapnu scal uuerđan Enocha te banon,  eggiun scarapun thuruh is handmegin.  huuiribit thiu seola, thie gest, an guodan uueg,  endi godas engil kumit, uurikit ina, uuammscađon  uuapnas eggiun. Uuirdhit Anticrist  aldru bilosid, thie fiund biuellid.  folc uuirđit eft gihuoroban Te godas rikea,  gumuno gisiđi langa huila,  endi sted im siđor thit land gisund. (129a–50b) [Except that one of them had the mind of a noble man, the thought of a true thane. He was an excellent man, wise and eloquent, possessing much wisdom. He was called Enoch. That one became a great wonder for men in this world, over this middle earth, such that the best king [held?]22 him here alive in the body, so that in this light he did not die, but rather heaven’s king sanctified him here and set him up where he forever might be in joy, until the noble guardian of heaven sends him back to this world to instruct the sons of heroes, the people. Then the evil one also will come, the Antichrist will destroy all people, when he will also become the killer of Enoch, with weapons, with sharp edges, with the power of his hands. The soul, the spirit quickly journeys on a good path, and God’s angel comes, punishes him, the evildoer, with weapon’s edge, the Antichrist will lose his life, the fiend will be felled. People will once again be able to journey to God’s kingdom, the ranks of humankind, for a long time, and this land will afterward stand safe.]

The precise role this apocalyptic scenario is playing in a story from the beginning of the world is not entirely clear. Obviously, original sin has implications for final judgment, both of the individual soul and of humanity as a whole. But the central tenets of Christian apocalyptic soteriology are very difficult to make out here. Christ is not mentioned at all, and despite the corruption of Cain’s line, there is no sense that humankind is in need of actual salvation—though it will receive teaching, through Enoch. There is no hint of a last judgment of souls; the death of the Antichrist seems to restore access to God’s kingdom to all humankind. Nor is the earth physically destroyed (as so impressively in the contemporaneous Muspilli, for example). Instead, the “land will afterward stand safe.” As Alger Doane demonstrates, it is certainly possible to read a great deal of traditional Christian learning concerning the end of the world into the passage. Tellingly, however, he also notes that “this is all sketched without elaboration, like early medieval pictures, meant to be read plainly for their already known meanings.”23 This circular argument—we must already know what the text means before we

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interpret it—is a tacit admission of the conclusion’s ambiguity, and as an interpretive principle it is especially doubtful for a text from a recently missionized area where we cannot assume an educated lay audience (this assumption is a persistent problem in Old Saxon scholarship). Only one aspect of the Cain poem’s apocalyptic scenario seems unambiguously clear: as Doane notes, the Antichrist’s killing of Enoch “thuruh is handmegin” (144a; with the power of his hands) directly recalls Cain’s murder of Abel “thuruh min handmegin” (60a), and the “good path” of Enoch’s soul (“huuiribit thiu seola, thie gest, an guodan uueg,” 144b– 45a) reflects and recuperates the journey of Abel’s “sad” soul (“thiu seola huarobat, thie gest, giamarmuod an godas uuillean,” 49b–50b) after Cain murders him.24 The identification of Abel with Enoch thus adds a potent layer of cosmic evil to the physical violence behind Cain’s crime. And in addition to the theological ends it served (however elaborately we wish to conceive them), surely the Antichrist’s death at the hands of God’s angel also satisfied some craving for vengeance in a recently postheroic society.

Origin and Context The two schools of interpretation noted above have also tended to differ with regard to the identity of the author at work and the nature of the composition. To simplify somewhat, scholars emphasizing Germanic elements generally think that the author was a lay Saxon poet, schooled in the native oral-formulaic, heroic alliterative verse tradition, approaching the biblical material as a cultural outsider and retelling Christian stories in Germanic ways. Scholars of the “orthodox” camp, on the other hand, see a poet schooled first and foremost at the Carolingian monastery and in the exegesis taught there, availing himself of, and probably learning, vernacular poetics as a cultural tool but above all concerned with the transmission of basic Christian doctrine in orthodox terms. Recently an intermediate position has been much discussed in Heliand scholarship. Harald Haferland has proposed that we regard the Old Saxon Gospel as the product of a kind of “teamwork” between a native lay poet, himself possibly illiterate, and one or more learned Carolingian churchmen. The poem is the result of a collaborative process, beginning with the churchmen translating the Bible and the commentaries into the vernacular. Given the dimensions of the Heliand, this interactive process would have been lengthy and complex, with the text itself reflecting only the final stage, the moment of oral composition by the poet.25 In this way, the presence of a dense network of recognized

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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authentic markers of oral-formulaic composition can best be reconciled with the equally undeniable evidence of work with scriptural texts and traditions. To my knowledge, this thesis has not yet been considered for the Old Saxon Genesis. Given both the far smaller number of surviving verses (954 compared to the Heliand’s 5,983), as well as the less clear connection to particular surviving biblical sources (Tatian’s Diatessaron in the case of the Heliand), most of the specifically textual arguments Haferland makes cannot be tested on the Genesis poems. His model of collective authorship, however, also offers a new way of looking at the theological content of Old Saxon biblical poetry26—in our case, the representation of original sin. If the poet of the Genesis B worked with a team of Bible scholars prior to composition, that may explain the conflicting accounts of the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The two statements to the effect that Eve’s actions brought about both death and the moral corruption of humanity likely reflect the “orthodox” view of the poet’s monastic advisers, whereas the comments suggesting recuperation of the Lord’s favor and a quasi-Edenic life “in that land,” certainly more “folkish” in their appeal, are probably also folkish in their origins. To what extent the latter comments represent the poet independently talking out of school, so to speak, without the authorization and possibly to the disgruntlement of doctrinally conscious ecclesiastic paymasters, is uncertain. That seems possible, since the poet, after all, will have had the last word. As we have seen, however, the positive view of Adam and Eve in this text also serves a penitential agenda, which reflects ecclesiastic wishes. In any case, despite its hybridity, the orthodox doctrine of original sin can at least be located in the Adam and Eve story by those with ears to hear. That is not the case in the Cain poem. Although the two ultimate consequences of original sin are represented “correctly,” the agents bearing them are not: while death is inherited through Adam and Eve, the moral corruption of humanity is passed down only through Cain’s line. Seth’s line is morally restored in God’s favor until mixing with Cain’s descendants. What is more, the narrator does not merely show that moral corruption does not pass to general humanity through Adam and Eve. He includes the orthodox doctrine in the story—the parents believe they can no longer have children who prosper—only to have God himself disprove it! It is above all with this move, which reflects awareness of the orthodox teaching while being difficult to reconcile with an orthodox churchman, where a teamwork model such as Haferland describes

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for the Heliand is illuminating. According to that scenario, the poet will have had discussions with his ecclesiastical interlocutors concerning the doctrine of original sin. Such discussions may have been lively, even controversial. We recall that the Council of Orange notes several contemporaneous “misunderstandings” of original sin, including the doctrine of heritable moral corruption, which many believed did not come through Adam and Eve. Not unlike his sixth-century counterparts (many of them Germanic), a ninth-century Saxon lay poet may have had some difficulty with that point and decided, while preserving the overall idea, to do something with it that his Saxon audience would better understand: to make the first murderer in world history into the real embodiment of the origins of moral evil.27 As noted above, the general Sitz im Leben of the Cain poem is fairly straightforward: it accommodates original sin to the worldview of postpagan Germanic warrior society. Nonetheless, it may be possible to be more precise. In his 1998 study of the Heliand, Klaus Gantert has sought to identify a specific audience for that poem: the large numbers of male Saxon nobles who entered the new monasteries in Saxony in the mid-ninth century (265–84). These fratres conversi, having been socialized in the culture and values of the lay nobility and entering the church only in adulthood, were not only in need of the most basic Christian instruction but, under the Benedictine rule, were obligated to regular daily scriptural reading and/or listening amounting to hundreds of hours per year. Since that could not happen in Latin (at least not immediately, and for many, probably never), it had to happen in the vernacular if it was to happen at all. Gantert sees this combination of conditions as unique to the Saxon monasteries. The poem, he argues, is too long and too clearly tied to a practice of recitation to have been of service in either of the two other main contact zones between the church and lay society: sporadic high church festivals and vernacular preaching at the mass (267). For a lay reception of religious literature in the vernacular—by “Saxon lords in their drinking halls”—there is no evidence at all from Saxony.28 The poems of the Saxon Genesis, which, on the surviving evidence, were fewer in number and less interconnected than the individual sections of the Heliand, may have been conceived for several different kinds of audiences in ninth-century Saxony, including lay audiences at church festivals and similar occasions. The message of the Cain poem, however—that killing is not only sin: it is the original sin—seems as if tailored to the fratres conversi in the monasteries, where the avowed ideal was to “turn warriors into monks” as fundamentally as possible.29

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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23

Notes John F. Vickrey, Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2015), 1–2.

1

2 Vickrey, Genesis B, 1–23, reviews the recent scholarship. The orthodox school is comprehensively represented up to 1991 by Alger N. Doane, The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), who covers the Cain and Sodom poems as well. For an especially cogent Germanic/exonerative reading reacting to the orthodox view, see also Thomas D. Hill, “Pilate’s Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve: An Old Saxon Source for the Old English Genesis B,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 101 (2002): 170–184. The complicated textual transmission is described succinctly by Doane, 53–54. 3

The most extensive treatment to date is by Doane, 154–66 (Cain poem), 167–80 (Sodom poem), as well as in the corresponding passage commentary (304–56). 4 George Vandervelde, Original Sin: Two Major Trends in Contemporary Catholic Reinterpretation (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), 22–28.

Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Concilia aevi Merovingici, vol. 1, ed. Friedrich Maasen (Hannover: Hahn, 1893), 47.

5

6

Translation in Vandervelde, 23.

7

It is paraphrased in a “Confession of Faith” by Alcuin of York or one of his circle, Patrologia Latina (hereafter PL), vol. 101, cols. 1076B–C. Hincmar of Rheims quotes it in his 859 polemic against Gottschalk (De praedestinatione dei et libero arbitrio, PL, vol. 125, cols. 197D–98B), a controversy often seen (most recently by Vickrey, 218–29) as relevant to the origins of the Genesis B. This canon also seems to inform Hrabanus Maurus’s commentary on the relevant passage from Romans: PL, vol. 111, cols. 1376D–78B. 8 All textual quotes and references taken from Doane, with minor differences of punctuation and capitalization of proper names for clarity. For a citation and discussion of these passages, see my article below. 9 Alexander J. Sager, “After the Apple: Repentance in Genesis B and Its Continental Context,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 3 (2013): 292–310. 10 Otfrid von Weißenburg, Otfrids Evangelienbuch, ed. Oskar Erdmann and Ludwig Wolff (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973), 2.6, 40–46.

On the question of audience see also my review of Vickrey’s book in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology 116, no. 3 (July 2017): 369–73.

11

12

This and the next passage discussed in Sager, 307–8.

13

Sager, 310.

14

Doane interprets the Cain poem in terms of Augustinian “two cities” theology (155, 162); he sees no particular implications for the representation of original sin.

15 16

Translations are mine.

As noted also by Doane: “Cain, explicitly reversing the pattern of repentance shown by Adam and Eve. . . .” (157).

24 17

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This is Doane’s interpretation, 160.

18

Already Walter Baetke, “Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen: Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Germanisierung des Christentums,” Die Welt als Geschichte 9 (1943): 143–66, here 156–57, emphasized vis-à-vis earlier “Germanizing” interpretations the decided avoidance of militaristic language and themes. On the central role of the Sermon on the Mount, see Gesine Mierke, Memoria als Kulturtransfer: Der altsächsische “Heliand” zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 2008), esp. 42, 211, 230–36, 250. On this view of the so-called “Malchus scene” see Hermann Wiegmann, Und wieder lächelt die Thrakerin: Zur Geschichte des literarischen Humors (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), 53–54. For Wolfgang Haubrichs, Die Anfänge: Versuche volkssprachiger Schriftlichkeit im frühen Mittelalter (ca. 700–1050/60), vol. 1.1 of Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum, 1994), however, the outcome of the scene underscores the message of nonviolence: “Doch folgt in der Szene selbst der christliche Umschlag sofort . . ., läßt die Heldenpose des Petrus in ihrer ganzen Nichtigkeit aufscheinen” (But the Christian subversion follows immediately in the scene itself . . ., underscoring the absolute nullity of Peter’s heroic pose). On “accommodation” see Klaus Gantert, Akkomodation und eingeschriebener Kommentar: Untersuchungen zur Übersetzungsstrategie des Helianddichters (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998), 125–26.

19

20

On this phenomenon see Dieter Kartschoke, “Bibeldichtung: Studien zur Geschichte der epischen Bibelparaphrase von Juvencus bis Otfrid von Weißenburg” (Habilitationsschrift, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 1975), 189, citing Hermann Schneider, Heldendichtung, Geistlichendichtung, Ritterdichtung (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1943), 87 (“eine ganz ungewollte Verheldischung”).

Ute Schwab, Die Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Genesis und ihrer altenglischen Übertragung: Einführung, Textwiedergaben und Übersetzungen, Abbildung der gesamten Überlieferung (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991), 11. Although Schwab believes that the sections dealing with the murder were not recorded in the manuscript, she notes that the surviving parts represent complete Fitten (fits/cantos). 21

22

On this conjecture see Doane, 325.

23

Doane, 164.

24

Doane, 165.

Harald Haferland, “War der Dichter des Heliand illiterat?,” 45–46. As Haferland notes (27, 45), the idea that the poet may have had ecclesiastic advisers is not new in the scholarship.

25

Haferland discusses some aspects of the theological content of the Heliand in “Der Haß der Feinde: Germanische Heldendichtung und die Erzählkonzeption des Heliand,” Euphorion 95 (2001): 237–56.

26

The genealogy of evil in Beowulf (105–14) is analogous: Grendel is of “Caines cynne” (106; Cain’s kin), from whom sprang “Þanon untydras ealla onwocon” (111; every misbegotten thing).

27

28

Gantert, 266n507. The quote referenced by Gantert comes from Ronald G. Murphy, who posits lay reception of this kind.

Cᴀin’s Lᴇgᴀᴄy, Originᴀᴌ Sin, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ ᴏf ᴛhᴇ Wᴏrᴌᴅ

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25

29

The quote paraphrases Widukind of Corvey’s admiring observation that Warin, the second abbot of that monastery, “ex milite factus est monachus.” Cited from Gantert, 281.

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Doane, Alger N. The Saxon Genesis: An Edition of the West Saxon Genesis B and the Old Saxon Vatican Genesis. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991. Schwab, Ute. Die Bruchstücke der altsächsischen Genesis und ihrer altenglischen Übertragung: Einführung, Textwiedergaben und Übersetzungen, Abbildung der gesamten Überlieferung. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991.

Secondary Literature Baetke, Walter. “Die Aufnahme des Christentums durch die Germanen: Ein Beitrag zur Frage der Germanisierung des Christentums.” Die Welt als Geschichte 9 (1943): 143–66. Gantert, Klaus. Akkomodation und eingeschriebener Kommentar: Untersuchungen zur Übersetzungsstrategie des Helianddichters. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998. Haferland, Harald. “Der Haß der Feinde: Germanische Heldendichtung und die Erzählkonzeption des Heliand.” Euphorion 95 (2001): 237–56. ———. “War der Dichter des Heliand illiterat?” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 131, no. 1 (2002): 20–48. Haubrichs, Wolfgang. Die Anfänge: Versuche volkssprachiger Schriftlichkeit im frühen Mittelalter (ca. 700–1050/60), vol. 1.1 of Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit. Edited by Joachim Heinzle. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaeum, 1994. Hill, Thomas D. “Pilate’s Visionary Wife and the Innocence of Eve: An Old Saxon Source for the Old English Genesis B.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 101 (2002): 170–84. Kartschoke, Dieter. “Bibeldichtung: Studien zur Geschichte der epischen Bibelparaphrase von Juvencus bis Otfrid von Weißenburg.” Habilitationsschrift, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 1975. Mierke, Gesine. Memoria als Kulturtransfer: Der altsächsische “Heliand” zwischen Spätantike und Frühmittelalter. Cologne: Böhlau, 2008. Sager, Alexander J. “After the Apple: Repentance in Genesis B and Its Continental Context.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112, no. 3 (2013): 292–310. Vandervelde, George. Original Sin: Two Major Trends in Contemporary Catholic Reinterpretation. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981.

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Vickrey, John F. Genesis B and the Comedic Imperative. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 2015. Wiegmann, Hermann. Und wieder lächelt die Thrakerin: Zur Geschichte des literarischen Humors. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006.

2:

The Heliand Revisited: Spiritual Transgendering and the Defiance of Evil

Ernst Ralf Hintz

T

hᴇ iᴍᴀgᴇ ᴏf Vᴏᴌᴋᴇr calmly, defiantly fiddling before the hall in the Nibelungenlied, or Davy Crockett during the 1836 siege of the Alamo playing his fiddle within earshot of Santa Anna’s army—these are images that remain in our memory. They also lend themselves well to adaptation, whether by Fritz Lang in his 1924 film Die Nibelungen or the last version to date in a long line of Alamo films from 1911 to 2004. During school vacations as a boy, I often ventured into the world of James Fenimore Cooper and the Leatherstocking Tales. Natty Bumppo, aka Hawkeye, and Chingachgook, his Native American companion, embody the heroic ethos of the frontier. In the 1992 film adaptation, Hawkeye is captured and then is released on his word—his honor—and vows to return the next day. After he fulfills his promise to his captors, they bind him for execution. His return is not merely an irrational, impulsive act of heroic bravado.1 While an enemy warrior hurls one tomahawk after another, Hawkeye mocks his aim and laughs in defiance of death. This form of defiance is the first of three narrative components that, when taken together, contribute to a balanced understanding of the Heliand. As Harald Haferland observes in his Heliand study, “The Hatred of Enemies” (2010), resistance in the face of death and insurmountable odds is germane to heroic epic behavior and, as such, is an inherent quality also suited to the Heliand: “The struggle of Jesus’ enemies against him and, in turn, his resistance against them, constitute the center of the poet’s understanding of Jesus’ acts and suffering.”2 Yet, as a biblical heroic epic with religious educational intent, the rationale of heroic defiance differs from the posturing, pride, and sense of honor in conventional heroic epics such as The Battle of Maldon or Das alte Atlilied by the very nature of Christ. As such, the Saxon monastic author adapts the Gospel narrative in portraying the Heliand as a warrior sent from a divine realm on a salvific mission.3 Its chief

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objective is to “heal”—that is, convert the Saxon nobility away from a deep-rooted belief in a spiritually pernicious warrior code that extols the defiance of death for fame and admiration, the traditional hatred of enemies, and associated retribution, to a radically new warrior ethos. Nevertheless, the narrative logic of the poetic style locks the Heliand author and auditors into traditional components of Germanic heroic poetry. As Haferland remarks, If the Gospel, retold in this radical new form, underwent a necessary degree of Germanization, this is less the result of intentional accommodation—or even basic reinterpretation—than it is an inevitable effect of the poetic style of the Heliand. Beyond featuring numerous rigid formulas, this style also brings with it a prefabricated narrative world—the world of heroic poetry in general—in which Jesus’ story is made to take place. As much as the poet admonishes against fighting and conflict, his story involves much of the same: fighting, conflict, and above all hatred of Jesus’ enemies.4

Inexorably, the “poetic style” forms a narrative link and mnemonic portal to a rich tradition of Germanic warrior culture. The poet succeeds in repurposing this potentially subversive memory reserve by concentrating our attention on Jesus’s reaction to the enemies’ hatred ex negativo. In other words, he amplifies Jesus’s unconventional response to his enemies’ conventional hatred. Reacting differently than that which heroic epics traditionally prescribe—that is, by the very absence of what an audience raised in the Saxon warrior culture would see as normative—Jesus’s nonretaliatory behavior redefines what it means to be heroic. By contradicting, therefore, what a nominally Christian audience of converts—and, doubtless, many by the sword—would expect, the poet may well have heightened the narrative impact of positing an alternative course of action. The resulting affectus has a definable pedagogical function. Because the traditional warrior code is likely to have persisted in converts’ memories, the redirection of their expectations would need to exert sufficient force of persuasion to contend with the remnants of an inherent mindset. One could even consider this redirection to be a form of ideological reeducation by the Frankish conquerors of the defeated Saxons, especially of the Saxon warrior nobility after three decades of war with the Carolingian empire. Noteworthy is the persistence of a pre-Christian warrior culture in Carolingian society itself. As in Byzantine culture of the day, only fellow orthodox Christians merited charitas, “the love of neighbor.” For outsiders who were “other,” the ius talionis, the “right of an eye for an eye,” applied.5 Even the efforts of learned men such as Alcuin teaching at the royal seat

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in Aachen could only accommodate the reality that they were erecting their center of learning on a foundation of conquest and brutal suppression of resistance. Accordingly, the Saxon poet adapted the Gospel to comply with the political reality of Frankish domination and so to protect Saxons from any pretext for the use of Frankish military force. In his seminal study, James C. Russell convincingly argues, For Christianity to be accepted by the Germanic peoples, it was necessary that it be perceived as responsive to the heroic, religiopolitical, magicoreligious orientation of the Germanic world-view. A religion which did not appear to be concerned with fundamental military, agricultural, and personal matters could not hope to gain acceptance among the Germanic peoples, since the pre-Christian Germanic religiosity already provided adequate responses to these matters.6

Continuing sporadic flare-ups among lower-caste Saxons would attest to the immediacy of this reeducation, especially as the nobility and its belief system set the tone for the general populace.7 In this regard, Klaus Gantert postulates that the chief recipient group ca. 830 were most probably Saxon fratres conversi, lay brothers or novices to the monastic life in new monasteries in Saxony.8 Indeed, the poet himself may well have belonged to this group. Although well versed in the complexities of oral composition in epic narrative, he will surely have benefited from the counsel of fellow monks who were literate to some degree in Latin and experienced in biblical exegesis. It is hardly surprising, then, that an undertaking of such magnitude as adapting the Gospel to Saxon vernacular would also have required interpretative knowledge to ensure orthodoxy, especially if the poet himself were a recent convert or frater conversus in need of theological guidance. Hence, the project is likely to have had an experienced monastic support group as exegetical advisers, especially for the correct interpretation of parables.9 As for the probable auditors, the daily reading of excerpts from the Heliand during monastic mealtimes may well have instructed fratres conversi in the art of spiritual combat through accounts of Christ’s own spiritual struggles. Nevertheless, performance in the mead hall cannot be discounted, since the Heliand readily assumes the contours of a heroic epic, albeit one with a proselytizing twist. Regardless of venue, the teachings in the Heliand went beyond merely resolving altercations in the mead hall and monastic struggles with temptation to address the greater exigency of how to express aggression in a warrior culture and where to direct it. Of major interest to us, then, is how Jesus engages with “enemies” and resists their assaults through the practice of a new ethos predicated chiefly on the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount—one

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that heroically defies the traditional hatred of one’s own enemy and the imperative for revenge by not responding in kind. In this regard, I would like to consider three salient combat accounts: Christ’s encounter with evil in the desert, his agony and betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the Crucifixion. In narrating these struggles, the poet adapts orthodox biblical accounts to accommodate the tradition of the heroic epic narrative, and does so to striking effect. Our second narrative component is, then, adaptation. In her study A Theory of Adaptation Linda Hutcheon attributes normative importance to adaptation as the very essence of storytelling. In the human imagination, adaptation occurs on a lateral continuum that adapts a text to the particular place and time of its “re-creation.”10 In the Old Saxon Heliand, an adaptation of the Gospel, “creation” is attributable to God alone. Accordingly, the lateral continuum intersects with an ascending or, conversely, descending salvific plane that leads toward or away from God. This ongoing ascensus or descensus presents itself as horizontal verticality—a path forward through life on which everyone is ever in motion, upward with spiritual victory or downward with defeat. A spiritual fall can then lead to penance and a climb, or a climb to superbia and a fall. There is no stasis: no standing still, no treading water, no spiritual status quo. The defiance of inevitable physical death as an insuperable adversary, and eventually the “readiness to die,” is paradoxically the hallmark of life heroically lived.11 Of even greater importance in the Old Saxon adaptation of the Gospel is the defiance of spiritual death in unending resistance to evil in thought, word, and deed as the very hallmark of spiritual life and salvation. In triangulating our Heliand study, there remains a third component, spiritual transgendering, that complements both the defiance of death—or, for our purposes, of evil—and the narrative adaptation of the heroic epic to the constraints of the biblical epic. In the early church and traceable into the early medieval period, Christian values advocate a very different view of gender attributes. Not primarily gender-exclusive, binary, and oppositional attributes command centrality of Christian thought, but rather the traditional grounding of gender in the imago Christi, the image of Christ, and his saints in gender complementarity. Accordingly, distinct gender remains, while particular attributes are transcended. Women and men on an ascending path to salvation might readily apprehend this compelling depiction as transgendered and prerequisite for spiritual combat and its ultimate prize—the laurel wreath of salvation.12 This definition goes beyond a “gendered paradigm for cultural production,” for it signifies a “gendered paradigm” for salvation.13 The

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imago Christi embodies, therefore, a spiritually transgendered paradigm within an authentic genre of salvation literature founded on spiritually transgendered, complementary attributes essential for survival in spiritual combat.14 Before examining specific fits—scenes—that exemplify these attributes, we first need to lend contour to our definition of spiritual transgendering. In medieval Christendom, Christ together with his saints—charismatic men and women—keep their spiritual balance by holistically embodying the virtues they need in bearing their own crosses. Medieval literature often depicted these saintly people as dynamic, with nothing staid and static about them or the virtues they embodied. Many of these ancient virtues appeared archetypically throughout patriarchal cultures as befitting both the “warrior” and the “nurturer,” e.g., fortitudo (fortitude) in battle in the defense of one’s family and country, as well as in the nurturing of a child, teaching it how to live in society, and caring for it when ill. Another example is patientia (patience) both in restraining impulsiveness in battle as well as in persevering in the trials of parenting. As such, a virtue might assume a male or female persona according to its function as required in a particular circumstance. Far from being a rigid dichotomy, these complementary gendered attributes reveal a dynamic quality as agency—as striving to follow Christ in his words and deeds. These virtues are also performative and have to be “lived” to be effective. The performance of virtue evokes a complementarity attributive to both warrior and nurturer alike as a spiritual fusion of masculine and feminine gendered qualities. Thus, each virtue has a martial quality—a force in defense of those who would practice it as well as a fostering, caring power to sustain and guide them to spiritual maturity and salvation. During the earliest centuries of the Christian movement and its fledgling church, these individual traits appeared chiefly as either “masculine” or “feminine” depending on the gendered roles secular society assigned to men and women at a given historical time.15 Yet we need not view these conventionally assigned roles as gender-exclusive and so diminish the range of potential behaviors and life decisions realizable by men and by women. Despite St. Paul’s often touted words that restrict a woman’s right to teach in the early church—which women nonetheless did, well into the twelfth century—the Pauline letter to the Galatians (Gal. 3:28) speaks of an equality that overshadows a person’s gender and social class: “You are all one in Christ.” To strengthen the message, Paul even takes on a maternal role: “My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). As we look at the virtues in the Heliand, we soon recognize that they are inclusive and comprise the totality of virtues both men and women require in their

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pursuit of salvation. St. John Climacus (John of the Ladder) expressed this totality in his sixth-century guide, The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Paradoxically, the salvation to which they aspired is both gendered and nongendered—neither solely masculine nor solely feminine; it transcends a particular gender, yet still remains gendered. By its very nature, salvation is spiritually transgendered. This form of being is not in the physical realm, where a person may feel embodied in the “wrong” gender. Nor is it androgyny as seen in medieval hermaphroditic depictions that often show it as grotesque and demonic—the vice of pride having disfigured the fallen angels and their once-beautiful leader, Lucifer.16 In mythography, the vices themselves may even appear as a half-male, half-female mix in bestial form, void of the beauty of divine creation.17 As the inverse or absence of virtues, vices, too, may display a complementarity as both militant forces warring against “good” and covert, deceptive nurturers of “evil” who tempt and feed the fantasies of the unwary.18 In contrast, whoever becomes saintly does so by balancing the martial and nurturing qualities of virtues traditionally deemed “masculine” or “feminine,” taking care to distribute one’s (spiritual) weight, shifting it at times to rely more upon one side of a virtue than another. Spiritual transgendering is, therefore, all about balance, maintaining your spiritual center of gravity—a vital element for effective warriors. It does not constitute a new gender per se. Even when St. Gregory of Tours speaks of monastic men and women in sixth-century Gaul as a “third gender,” he simply calls our attention to their spiritually transgendered state and focuses chiefly on their pursuit of a single virtue— chastity.19 Yet in following the “Way” exemplified by Christ, one virtue alone is not enough. Holy men and women go beyond the virtues associated with their own gender to become “spiritually” sure-footed. In doing so, they become living icons and hagiographic exempla that may inspire others to do the same. Telling, showing, and being merge in the performance of multisided virtues in saintly human beings, whose very lives become living adaptations of the imago Christi. Accordingly, if the Heliand does proclaim spiritual complementarity within the genre of salvation literature, in which complementary, transgendered attributes are indispensable for victory in spiritual warfare, how might the Saxon nobility and warrior caste, even as fratres conversi, contemporary with the Heliand have become receptive to still new and alien values in a Christian early medieval construct of gender? Indeed, even by 830, the monasteries in Essen, Fulda, Werden, and Corvey had made little headway as missionary centers, despite intervention by monks of Saxon nobility. Both the Germanization of epic biblical narrative with the interpolation of warrior themes and the

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Christianization of Germanic culture with the syncretism of pagan and Christian beliefs existing side by side in the missionary environment of the times have long offered themselves as likely answers, especially in the Heliand studies of G. Ronald Murphy and his invaluable translation.20 Yet, such studies alone may not explain fully the appeal to a warrior elite to embrace beliefs seemingly so at odds with internalized Germanic tradition and social practice. Viewing the text in the light of a Christian gender construct founded on complementarity, we are struck by the Heliand author’s boldness in going beyond mere cultural accommodation to redefine warfare and the warrior ethos by transposing them into the spiritual realm as the primary arena of conflict, wherein the attainment of spiritual rewards far exceeds the conventional prize of fame, wealth, and power in this world. Although an expression of divine love, the Gospel is nevertheless an account of spiritual battle. In his study of warrior saints, Christopher Walter states unequivocally, In the Gospels, those fruits of meditation upon Christ and his mission, perspectives of God’s design for the Israelites and their Christian successors are presented, not, indeed, in an elaborated and carefully reasoned form, but rather in that of frequently recurring obiter dicta. The essential struggle is no longer between the chosen people and their enemies but between the forces of good and evil, although allusion is made to their combat (Hebrews 11:34), where the Israelites’ valiance in war is attributed to their faith. What is rarely evident in the Old Testament but constantly recalled in the New is that the world is in the power of demonic forces. All believers in Christ and his mission will continue until the end of time. They are not alone in this combat; God’s army under the leadership of the archangel Michael will finally overcome the Dragon (Apocalypse 12:7).21

Since it is likely that the Saxon poet was a convert and possibly a lay brother or monk, the monastic environment would have offered him both a measure of tranquility as well as an ongoing spiritual struggle, be it in direct confrontation with a satanic enemy or, more often, in demonic spiritual ambushes—in twenty-first-century terms, terrorist attacks and IEDs. Only adherence to the imago Christi can provide refuge and survival in spiritual warfare. The poet builds upon the Germanic masculine terms “drohtin diurie” (dear Lord) and “adalordfrumo alomahtig” (almighty Leader) in battle—supreme in “spiritual” warfare—to accommodate traditional feminine qualities. The spiritually transgendered image of Christ assumes both contour and balance. Through the struggle to follow his example faithfully and learn from his disciple-warriors, the Heliand introduces its Germanic auditors to

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a performative new gender construct.22 Yet it may not have been as radical as the very underlying Christian belief system itself, for pagan Germanic—that is, Old English—poetry had already inferred a form of complementarity in the embrace of “Father Heaven” and “Mother Earth.” The Heliand author thus calls his auditors to take part in a higher form of combat by relocating warfare in a Christian spiritual arena, one that demonstrates both a horizontal progression through life and a vertical progression marked by varying degrees of ascensus and descensus, continual motion toward or away from God. By fighting along a higher plane, spiritual warriors take on the spiritually transgendered attributes of Christ—that is, put on the “armor of God” to ultimately prevail and ascend to the Father.23 Empires have long accommodated Christianity to their policies of expansion and defense of conquest: for example, Constantine’s validation of Christianity throughout the Roman Empire, East and West, as a validation of his own imperial ambitions. This accommodation often required a reframing of Christ’s injunction against retaliation to exempt military force for imperial self-preservation. In examining Byzantine warrior praxis, Christopher Walter comments that the pragmatic Byzantines differentiated between Jesus’s radical pronouncements in the Sermon on the Mount and the reality of defending their empire: “Christ’s teaching that one should turn the other cheek did not impress the Byzantines unduly.”24 The history of war in the Roman East and elsewhere throughout the empire substantiates what Walter observes to be the discrepancy between religious ideal and political reality. We might well add that the Carolingians were similarly unimpressed. To what extent, then, does the Old Saxon Heliand poet adapt the Gospel’s message of nonaggression and rejection of the ius talionis in accord with Frankish realpolitik and the missionary work of the Frankish church? Or to put a finer edge on the question, how does the Heliand reconcile two opposing interpretations of Christ’s imperative to “turn the other cheek,” one for the Carolingian conquerors and another for the conquered Saxons? As I noted in an earlier study, scholarship has well documented the symbiotic relationship of church and empire.25 Nowhere was this more evident than in the violence of the Carolingian conquest and missionary fervor in Saxony in 776–77, the failed rebellion under the Saxon chieftain Widukind in 785, and the Blutgericht of Verden with the mass execution of Saxon prisoners. The defeat and compulsory conversion of its people was “a late subjugation,” and the extreme missionary efforts of the Frankish church in Saxony revealed the continuing existence of pagan beliefs.26 As scholars have observed, the Heliand does contain

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a measure of critique against Carolingian policies and Frankish conquest.27 Yet, the main thrust of the text remains spiritual and directs auditors steeped in warrior culture away from the politics and kingdoms of this world and, accordingly, Carolingian hegemony, to the kingdom of Christ of the next. Thus, the work did not make an appeal to the Saxon audience solely through a critique of Frankish injustice. Arguably, the Heliand author may well have been an exponent of coexistence with the political realities of the day, advocating spiritual pacification as preferable to further Carolingian military intrusion. As had religious authors before him, the Saxon translator could simply have taught “otherworldliness” and aesthetic detachment, reminding his listeners that the greater struggle lay in scaling the ramparts of heaven and waging war interiorly against a demonic foe that vied for one’s soul. Within the historical context of the work’s initial reception, however, it was precisely the arena of spiritual combat that afforded the militarily defeated Saxons an opportunity to outshine their oppressors and triumph, achieving moral victory by repaying injustice and brutality with just acts, benevolence, and charity. In the Heliand, therefore, the very themes that recall injustice at the hands of their Carolingian conquerors challenge auditors to surpass their enemy in spiritual virtue by emulating Christ, the invincible chieftain and victor over death. As an incentive and guide to live Christian virtues, the Beatitudes present the weaponry for moral and spiritual victory. Christ’s ascensus, the act of ascending to the mount and teaching from on high, actualizes the horizontal verticality for auditors as both a forward and an upward progression toward God. The poet conforms Christian virtues taught on the mount to the spiritual needs of his Saxon audience so that, like the warrior thanes who accompany the chieftain, they, too, might ascend to wisdom to become “thie salige” (the blessed): “There about Christ gathered the followers, whom the Ruler Himself had chosen from the many. . . . Christ the Almighty . . . said to them that they were blessed, those in this world, who were poor in their spirit through humility, to them is given the eternal kingdom filled with holiness” (1279–1304; translation and emphasis mine). James E. Cathey has observed that the poet employed linguistic subversion to transform a once-pejorative term in Saxon warrior culture for weakness into a positive attribute.28 For those who would follow the Chieftan in humility (“an iro môde uuârin arme thurh ôdmôdi” [1301–2; were poor in their spirit through humility]), the Christian virtue was to supplant arrogance and pride as an expression of strength and warrior prowess. The radical nature of this transference is certain to have made a deep impression on Saxon auditors. This narrative mode of engagement also acts as a course correction

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for anyone who still adheres to the traditional association of pride with strength and its counterpart with weakness. Humility is a defining attribute of Christ and its practice a goal for those who would follow him. It also sustains their forward and upward momentum, hastens recovery after a fall, and provides the spiritual balance needed to ascend. As the only nonclassical virtue embodied by Christ, “ôdmôdi” stands out among all other personified Christian virtues. It performs neither an exclusively warrior function deemed masculine nor an exclusively nurturer function deemed feminine. Rather, it performs both at once to be spiritually transgendered. In the admonition that follows, the general Christian interdiction for believers never to judge others, lest they bring damnation upon themselves at Judgment, exempts those auditors who exercise judicial authority in this world, if they do so justly. The conditionality of the pronouncement invites the chosen “apostolic warriors” to experience the performative power of their Lord’s council firsthand, not merely as instruction but as an immediate identification with the blessed so that they, too, may enjoy God’s favor and their reward in his kingdom. This sense of belonging among the blessed also simulates the triumph of spiritual victory. After mentioning the blessed as meek, “ôc sâlige uuârin mâþmundie man,” who will take possession of the kingdom, and as penitent, the poet elaborates on the rewards of exercising judicial authority with justice:29 Sâlige sind ôc, the sie hîr frumono gelustid, rincos, that sie rehto adômien.  Thes môtun sie uuerðan an them rîkia drothines gefullit thurh iro ferhton dâdi:  sulîcoro môtun sie frumono bicnêgan thie rincos, thie hîr rehto adômiad,  ne uuilliad an rûnun besuuîcan man, thar sie at mahle sittiad. (1308–12) [Blessed, too, are they, whose joy here is to judge justly. They shall be repaid in the kingdom of the Lord: those men who pass judgment justly, who do not want to be deceitful at deliberation, when they sit in judgment. (Translation and emphasis mine)]

Not surprisingly, we find that the most vivid realization of blessedness and power for routing the demonic enemy is Christ himself. The author refers to him with a number of epithets. First and foremost, he is the “Heliand,” the “Healer,” strongly connoting the Greek “soter” as savior and rescuer yet also ruler. The auditors also hear of “Holy Christ, the Chieftain,” “Almighty Leader in battle,” “Christ the Ruler,” the “Heaven-King.” Yet, when John baptizes Christ at the Jordan, Christ becomes the “dear Chieftain’s Son,” the “Peace-Child, and the beloved

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Protector of people,” who heals them from their sins. God’s voice from heaven underscores Christ’s role in both releasing and defending humankind from sin: “He has the power of God to take away the sinful crimes of any person. This is Christ himself, God’s own Child, the Best of men, Security against the enemy” (Song 12).30 The attribute of being a protector, of being “Security” itself, previews the first account of spiritual warfare—Christ’s sojourn in the wilderness, the “wostunnea”; in this case, the Germanic forest rather than the wastelands of the Eastern desert fathers and desert mothers.31 Saxon converts and those in the warrior caste new to the faith will surely have admired the Heliand’s self-discipline during the forty-day fast and paid particular attention to the ensuing spiritual combat with the devil. The epistemological momentum of the narrative now intensifies to heighten the sense of verticality. For auditors and for Satan, too, the acquisition of knowledge determines one’s trajectory, that is, the up and down, the ascent to wisdom and light or the descent to foolishness and darkness. Saxon converts along the continuum of their nascent belief could well recognize what the devil himself fails to recognize: the Heliand’s identity. The fit begins by reminding auditors of Christ’s teaching that the greatest prize is eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, a teaching that he will exemplify with a profusion of virtues each time he repulses an enemy assault. Christ, as “the good Chieftain,” ventures out alone without benefit of his followers, showing charitas and compassio—love of neighbor—by taking the danger solely upon himself: “ne habda liudeo than mêr, seggeo te gisi∂un, al sô he im selbo gicôs” (1028–29; “He did not have any people with Him, no men as companions, this was as He chose it to be” [Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, p. 36]). The enemy, meanwhile, displays “anger and ill will” toward humankind, just as in his ancient deception of Adam and Eve, whose sin was “untreuua” (disloyalty). And “sô uuelda he thô selƀan dôn hêlandean Krist” (1048–49; “now he wanted to do the same thing to the healing Christ,” 37). The “Ruler’s Child” responds by the virtue of fortitudo: steeling his heart and mind against the “blasphemer.” Fasting for forty nights, Christ does not arouse the enemy’s suspicion until he, the “Guardian of the Land” and the “holy Guard of Heaven,” finally reveals his human nature through pangs of hunger. Yet, unlike the enemy’s, Christ’s mind is clear and composed for battle. Responding to the first temptation—“If you are God’s Son, then turn these stones into bread”—Christ exhibits three more attributes: spiritual striving, desire to do good works, and obedience to God’s command. “‘People,’ He said, ‘the children of men, cannot live by simple bread, but they are to live on the teaching of God in this world and they should do the works proclaimed aloud by the holy

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tongue, by the voice of God. Human life for any people whatsoever is to want to do what is commanded by the Ruler’s Word’” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, p. 38). Auditors next hear how Christ is longsuffering in submission to God’s will and is resolved to face the trial of combat: the “Peace-Child of God suffered the will of the evil one, and granted him power, so that Satan could test His mighty strength” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, p. 38). As venues of spiritual trial, high places, even when chosen by the devil, still perform an ascending function. Satan, the “people-hurter,” the injurer of people, leads Christ to the top of the Temple in Jerusalem to tempt him to “glide down to earth!” Christ counters in traditional Germanic fashion with his virtue of unswerving loyalty and faithful service to God, instilling the fear of God, timor Dei, in the enemy by saying “that you should not maliciously tempt your Lord and Master” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, p. 38). The final temptation occurs again upon a place on high—an allusion to the later venue where Christ reveals his divinity on Mount Tabor in the Transfiguration: “He let the people-injurer take Him on a third journey up onto a high mountain” (Song 13, p. 38).Yet, just as ascending to God often reveals itself in the scaling of a high place and moving toward the light of salvation, so, too, the heights to which the devil lures one stand in an inverse relationship to holy places—the higher he leads, the greater the potential descent into damnation. The devil’s third spiritual offensive is the lure of earthly possessions and kingdoms in return for submission: “The enemy then spoke to Him and said that he would grant Him all that magnificence, the high princely kingdoms, ‘if You will bow down to me, fall at my feet and have me as lord and pray at my lap. Then I will let You enjoy all theses possessions which I have shown You’” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, pp. 38–39). Christ puts the “malicious destroyer” to flight not through aggression but through the wisdom to serve unwaveringly only God and his kingdom, which is not of this world. Wisdom, both to know and to pursue the saving course of action, is the crowning attribute needed to ascend the ladder without faltering: “He said ‘that one should pray to the all-mighty God up above, and that many noble thanes seeking God’s favor should very devoutly serve him alone’” (fit 39).32 Through holy Christ’s performance of wisdom, a virtue traditionally viewed as feminine, Satan withdraws into the depths of hell.33 As wisdom nurtures godly action, it also performs a warrior function, defying evil by recognizing the wiles and deceptions of the enemy. Entering into a spiritual struggle, Christ often battles on high places—a mountain, hilly terrain where the properties of light and

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darkness magnify the spiritual dimension. Accordingly, the temptations of Christ in the wilderness lead to the final temptation atop a high mountain; the Sermon on the Mount provides warriors with the virtues they need for successful combat; the Transfiguration at the summit of Mount Tabor both reveals and affirms Christ’s divinity; the agonizing prayer at night in the Garden of Gethsemane and the darkness at the Crucifixion on Mount Golgotha all take place on high, where the light and its absence at Golgotha visually accompany the battle. Murphy’s work, in particular, calls our attention to the significance of light in major scenes of the Heliand, the foremost being the central depiction of the Transfiguration.34 After victory over the tempter, auditors learn the final lesson of the struggle when God’s angels come from the “All-Ruler above”: “to minister to Christ, . . . to care for Him when it was over, serving Him with humility. This is the way one should serve the God of the Clan, the King of Heaven, in accord with His graciousness” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 13, pp. 38–39). Essential to spiritual victory and prerequisite for serving God are the virtues of humilitas (humility), fortitude, patient long suffering, and wisdom—divine gifts embodied perfectly in Christ, who is the victor without malice, who fights not for vainglory but for the glory of God, to rescue God’s fallen daughters and sons.35 All the aforementioned attributes as powers for spiritual combat derive from knowledge and recognition of Christ’s divinity—the gift of wisdom manifest in the growing faith of Peter and the power granted to him in the triad fits 36, 37, and 38, the generally acknowledged narrative core, and in the pivotal fit 38 of the Heliand—the Transfiguration. In the blinding light of Christ’s divinity, auditors may glimpse their own potential deification as the highest goal of human striving.36 As St. Athanasius in the early church stated with simple eloquence, “God became man, so that man might become God”—that is to say, not in his divine essence but in acts by which the sons and daughters of God strive to realize the image of God, imago Christi, in themselves. In the light of the Transfiguration, Christ shows Simon Peter, James, and John who he is, that they—and the auditors—might believe and have the fortitude to become like their Lord in his revealed energies.37 The Voice of God from a cloud affirms what they have seen by professing, “‘I love Him very much in my heart, you should listen to Him—follow Him gladly.’”38 Consequently, they are to show charity to their fellow human beings by intervening in the lives of others for their good just as the Transfiguration marks Divine intervention for the good of all. When we look ahead at the exemplifying character of the disciples Christ chose to accompany him, we cannot help but be unimpressed

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by the discrepancy between what the “warrior thanes” profess, indeed promise, and what they do under attack, swayed by fear, self-interest, and the desire for self-preservation in the face of imminent danger. The narrative sequence from fits 46 to 54—“Judgment Day” (46), “The Apocalypse” (49), “Washing Feet” (50), “Jesus Identifies the Betrayer” (51), “Jesus in Gethsemane” (52), “The Capture of Christ” (53), and “Peter Denies His Lord” (54)—herald Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion yet also the practical spiritual education of Peter.39 The poet first tells of the approach of Judgment Day with an aim to elicit a warrior response of being watchful with a clear mind. Auditors next learn that the apocalypse—that is, doomsday—will soon be coming like a thief in the night: “Mûtspelli cumit / an thiustrea naht / al sô thief ferid” (4358–59). The narrative momentum of horizontal verticality increases in both directions—as ascensus up to the light for the saved and as descensus into hell for the damned. The determinant of one’s fate, then, is whether or not one recognizes Christ in the persons of other human beings and acts as would Christ himself.40 Knowledge and the wisdom it provides, therefore, are essential for salvation. Although Peter has been privy to the Transfiguration, he needs to experience firsthand what it means to live and fight in accord with Christ’s own warrior ethos. By refusing to have his feet washed by Jesus, Peter displays his lack of humility. Judas’s horrific disloyalty to his Lord provides a segue and narrative frame for Peter’s own disloyalty. His rash resort to violence in the Garden of Gethsemane shows that he fails to understand what the new warrior ethos demands of him. More directly, the narrative impact of Peter not honoring his word and loyalty to his Lord will surely not have escaped notice by Saxon auditors. By his triple denial, he does more than simply fulfill Jesus’s prophesies of betrayal. Peter also advances his practical spiritual education by recognizing his own shortcomings and, by the same token, human frailty. In my view, this second epiphany of his complements that of his beatific vision of Christ on the mountain. Taken together, they begin his spiritual transformation into the “rock” upon which the new “hall” of faith is to be built and into a more experienced spiritual warrior who is increasingly able to defend his Lord. Peter’s newly acquired humility also instills in him an empathetic caring for others and a willingness to nurture their faith. Nevertheless, Peter’s spiritual education is far from complete. In a distant echo of the age-old question, why bad things happen to good people, the poet answers with Peter as an exemplum: People should not be amazed, warriors need not wonder, why God would have wanted such a loveable man and powerful thane to have

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such an evil thing happen to him as to deny his beloved Chieftain so shamefully because of a servant-girl’s words. It was done for the sake of those people, for the sake of the sons of man. The holy Chieftain intended to make Peter the first man in the leadership of His household, and wanted Peter to realize how much strength there is in the human spirit without the power of God. He let Peter commit sin so that afterwards he would better appreciate people, how all human beings love to be forgiven when they have done something wrong. People love to be freed from their loathsome sins and crimes—just as God, the King of Heaven, forgave Peter the wrong he had done. (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 59, pp. 165–66)

Yet, even after bitter tears of remorse, he fails again by not standing by his Lord at the Cross. Peter exemplifies an upward progression, therefore, in which climbing is paradoxically contingent on falling. It can be said, then, with a measure of certainty that Peter remains the most beloved and relatable of the twelve disciples to this day, for he is undeniably the most human. At the Crucifixion, James, representing the “rank and file,” would flee along with Peter, who is still not ready to defy death in accord with his Lord’s teachings. Only one of the twelve disciples stands watch at the Cross: John, whom Jesus loved the most. What were the attributes of John that rendered him so beloved by Christ and so successful as a spiritual warrior? He was gentle, nonaggressive in his nature, unassuming in his humbleness, yet a paragon of fortitude and patient long suffering. Of all the twelve, only John remained with the three Marys during the Crucifixion. And it is into John’s care that Christ commends his mother, the Virgin Mary, so that she would be a mother to him and he, in spiritual consanguinity, a son to her. St. John, then, is the disciple who exhibits most vividly the complementarity—the balance of attributes characteristic of holiness. He is the most spiritually transgendered and advanced of the twelve—the embodied antithesis of Judas as the least. For just as St. John reveals a compendium of the best of both masculine and feminine qualities—those that bring spiritual victory and salvation—so does Judas embody the worst that lead inexorably to his downfall and damnation. Even his ex post facto change of heart and rejection of the blood money cannot atone for so heinous a betrayal of his Lord. As for Peter, his exemplary quality is precisely his initial lack of complementarity and balance, his imperfect command of spiritually transgendered qualities as demonstrated many times over, be it through lack of humility at the feet washing, arrogant boasting never to betray his Lord, violence by the sword in the garden, and lack of steadfastness

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after the arrest and during the Crucifixion. In contrast, the charity, Nächstenliebe, that Christ shows to Malchus by miraculously reattaching and healing the severed ear acts as a corrective to Peter’s lack of charity and unwillingness to forgive, and most of all, his lack of faith in his Lord and his Lord’s teachings—all qualities that John and the holy women in the Heliand possess in abundance. The greatest exemplum of repentance, misericordia, is Mary Magdalene, who, like Mary of Egypt, evolves from a material existence as a harlot into a spiritual warrior unafraid of keeping vigil at the Cross. Her faith and fortitude enable her to stand fast where Peter falters. Only when Peter weeps tears of repentance does he truly begin to acquire the spiritual balance that complementarity and spiritually transgendered attributes grant for the defiance of evil and for recovery after a nearfatal spiritual fall. Just as Mary Magdalene embodies repentance, a mandatory virtue in the progression to salvation, the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, embodies, among other virtues, fortitudo, an attribute traditionally associated with male warriors, for the iconic image of stabat mater, the heroic mother standing at the Cross, connotes standing firm in the face of pain, sorrow, and grief, and of an enemy void of pity and compassion. Her attributes are at once those of Christ during his humiliation at Herod’s court: “He bore it all with patient humility. He had no intention of paying them back for their evil words, mockery, and insults” (Murphy, The Heliand, Song 63, pp. 174–75). Just as Mary wished to protect and rescue her child from the violence of the Crucifixion, so too did her son wish to “rescue the sons of men from suffering and death” and to do so without violence and desire for revenge. The long suffering and patience so deeply associated with the Virgin Mary as nurturer and spiritual warrior are virtues of the “drohtin diurie” (dear Lord) that ensure spiritual victory to both. The Heliand poet takes care that his auditors learn not only of the One who was crucified on the tree but also of the spiritual warriors who accompanied him—the women and John, who also suffered and endured their own trial of spiritual crucifixion: Than stuod thar ôc Maria,  muoder Cristes, blêc under them bôme,  gisah iro barn tholon, uuinnan uuunderquâla.  Ôc uuârun thar uuîf mid iro an sô mahtiges  minnia cumana— than stuod thar ôc Iohannes,  iungro Cristes, hriuui undar is hêrren,  uuas im is hugi sêrag— drûƀodun fur them dôðe. (5607–13)41

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[Mary, Christ’s mother, was standing under the tree. She was pale, she saw her Son suffering, enduring horrible torture. There were also women with her who had come because of their love for the mighty One—John, Christ’s follower, was also standing there very sad beneath his Lord, his mind in grief—they were all sorrowful because of the death.]42

Since they did so out of loyalty and love for their Lord, their grief became an extension of his agony and confirmation of their own union with him as spiritually crucified co-sufferers and, ultimately, co-victors over death. In fit 66, the auditors also learn: Then the mighty Chieftain, Christ, spoke to His mother, “I will now commend you to my follower who is standing here present. Go along with his warrior-company and treat him like a son.” He then spoke to John and told him to take good care of her and to love her with the generous kindness one should have for his mother: “this woman with no wickedness.” In his clear-minded way, John then took her under his protection just as the Lord had commanded him.43

While the Mother of God, together with St. John, the most perfect of the twelve warrior companions, exemplify ideal attributes for spiritual ascent, St. Peter, the thane chosen as the “rock” upon which the new “hall” will be built, exemplifies through his own imperfections the struggle of all who err and seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and, ultimately, salvation. In true paradoxical fashion, his failings become his strengths in an ever-moving salvific progression of horizontal verticality. By adapting the Gospel for performance as a Germanic heroic epic, the Saxon poet affords his audience a glimpse of “the light of God in Paradise” that is both irrevocably gendered and yet not, and where the Chieftain’s new ethos of spiritual warfare fulfills the Beatitudes in a balance of traditionally masculine and feminine virtues with humility as its spiritual fulcrum. From a twenty-first-century secular perspective, the poet’s adaptation may seem to be merely a ninth-century example of gender instability. Yet, our triangulated approach reveals the very opposite: namely, the spiritualized gender stability in the imago Christi. As Christian belief is intrinsically paradoxical, the Heliand gives voice to apparent contradictions, in which to lose one’s life out of love for God and one’s neighbor is to save one’s life—most assuredly in defiance of evil, and where the first shall be last, and salvation is at once spiritually transgendered in the image of Christ. In the complementarity of mother and son, woman and man, and ultimately God and his holy ones, all spiritually transgendered and victorious in spiritual warfare, is

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the challenging model of saving virtue that would prepare Saxon auditors, whether in monastery or mead hall, for their own spiritual battles.

Notes Klaus von See, “Was ist Heldendichtung?” In Europäische Heldendichtung, ed. Klaus von See (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), 1–38, esp. 37–38. According to von See, the heroic figure boldly demonstrates his/her independence through “irrational” behavior by willfully acting contrary to conventional social rules.

1

2

Harald Haferland, “The Hatred of Enemies: Germanic Heroic Poetry and the Narrative Design of the Heliand,” in Perspectives on the Old Saxon Heliand, ed. Valentine A. Pakis (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2010), 208–33, esp. 19. (Originally published as “Der Haß der Feinde: Germanische Heldendichtung und die Erzählkonzeption des Heliand,” Euphorion 95 [2001]: 237–56.) For a concise background of the Heliand, see A Companion to Middle High German Literature to the 14th Century, ed. Francis G. Gentry (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 65–74. Also see Hêliand: Text and Commentary, ed. James E. Cathey (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002), 1–25.

3

4

See Haferland, “Hatred of Enemies,” 215.

Christopher Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot, Hants, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 41: “Christ’s teaching that one should turn the other cheek did not impress the Byzantines unduly. Currents of pacifism existed, but they exercised an influence only upon the attitude of Byzantines to members of their own society not upon their attitude to outsiders, in which the lex talionis was the prevailing rule.”

5

James C. Russell, The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 4. 6

7 G. Ronald Murphy, “The Old Saxon Heliand,” in Early Germanic Literature and Culture, ed. Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), 263–83 and 263–64.

Klaus Gantert, Akkommodation und eingeschriebener Kommentar: Untersuchungen zur Übertragungsstrategie des Helianddichters (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998), 265–84.

8

Harald Haferland, “War der Dichter des Heliand illiterat?” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 131, no. 1 (2002): 20–48. Haferland offers a plausible argument for collaboration.

9

Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006). She notes in the preface, “we may actually read or see that so-called original after we have experienced the adaptation, thereby challenging the authority of any notion of priority. Multiple versions exist laterally, not vertically” (xiii). Regarding “creativity” in regard to imitatio and aemulatio, see 20–21. Further: “In the telling mode in narrative literature, for example—our engagement begins in the realm of imagination, which is simultaneously controlled by the selected, directing words of the text and liberated—that is, unconstrained by the limits of the visual or aural. . . . Telling a story in words, either orally or on paper, is never the same as showing it visually and

10

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aurally in any of the many performance media available” (23). The second edition appeared in 2013 and deals extensively with multimedia adaptation. 11

In this regard, Haferland insightfully notes, “It is not easy to recognize that from this heroic pride, or at least from this readiness to die, there is a bridge leading to the Heliand, whose author brought the Gospel home to the heathen Saxons” (“Hatred of Enemies,” 211).

12

Ernst Ralf Hintz, “Gendered Attributes for Spiritual Warfare in the Old Saxon Heliand,” in “Er ist ein wol Gevriunder Man”: Essays in Honor of Ernst S. Dick on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Karen McConnell and Winder McConnell (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2009), 191–202. As a note to the reader, the organic development over a decade of research from my earlier study of gendered attributes for spiritual warfare to the tripartite approach in this current article inevitably results in some degree of overlap of material and formulation.

13

The notion of a “gendered paradigm for cultural production” is from the study by Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing, Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 29–39.

14

Hintz, “Gendered Attributes,” 192: “We can hear an exemplary model of this genre during the Lenten services in the Eastern tradition of the Church. The priest reads aloud the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, in particular, the story of the monk Zosimos—full of himself in the overestimation of his intellect and virtue— and of his desert encounter with Maria Aegyptica—St. Mary of Egypt, formerly the harlot of Alexandria. Zosimos and Mary enter into a spiritually symbiotic relationship, for they need each other to become whole spiritual beings and find salvation. Even as an heroic penitent of nearly fifty years in the desert, she still needs to show compassion for another, perform a charitable act, and complete her penance by teaching Zosimos the attributes he lacks. To save his soul, Zosimos must learn humility and longsuffering from Mary as an exemplum of holiness. Only then is he worthy to confess her and bring the Holy Eucharist to her in culmination of her years of repentance in the Sinai and spiritual victory. As the story ends, both Zosimos and St. Mary of Egypt reveal spiritually the transgendered attributes intrinsic to every saintly person, which taken together, transcend any one particular gender.” Joan W. Scott, “Gender, a Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–75. Although Scott speaks of the differing insights to be derived from analyzing gender-related historical materials, she warns that “slippage . . . often happens in the attribution of causality: the argument moves from a statement such as ‘women’s experience leads them to make moral choices contingent on contexts and relationships’ to ‘women think and choose this way because they are women’” (1065).

15

16

In the Harry Potter series that fueled my daughter Kira’s love of literature, J. K. Rowling’s term “dementers” aptly depicts their demonic work of driving the prisoners of Askaban mad. Like the demons of hell, the dementers themselves may be said to suffer from madness—dementia—for they lack the capacity to do good and can no longer be integrated into society, or, in the case of the demons, divine society. Exteriority mirrors interiority.

Hildegard of Bingen, The Book of the Rewards of Life, trans. Bruce W. Horzeski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

17

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In contrast, the simple binary depiction of good versus evil in Prudentius’s Psychomachia and the victory of virtues over vices is a useful catalog. Yet, for spiritual warfare, recognizing the binary dimension of the vices is ultimately more useful.

18

19

The designation of a “third gender” for men and women, primarily monks and nuns living in chastity within medieval religious communities, was not simply an ideal at odds with reality. As a spiritual goal in monastic life, the Christian virtue of chastity goes beyond refraining from sex. As the work from Jo Ann McNamara has demonstrated, practitioners of chastity, especially women, could be viewed as a “third sex” only insofar as the practice could foster social equality among practicing men and women. See her study “Chastity as a Third Gender in the History and Hagiography of Gregory of Tours,” in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 199–209. See also Jacqueline Murray, “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” in Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, ed. Lisa M. Bittel and Felice Lifschitz (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylania Press, 2008), 34–51. G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., trans., The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

20

21

Walter, 13.

See Ernst S. Dick, AE. Dryht und seine Sippe: Eine wortkundliche, kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Betrachtung zur altgermanischen Glaubensvorstellung vom wachstümlichen Heil (Münster: Aschendorff, 1965).

22

23

Referring to Rev. 14:3, Walter observes that what is meant is “a militant rather than a military host.” For the origin of miles Christi, Walter notes the Pauline reference to “God’s armour” in Eph. 6:10–17 and also to 1 Tim. 1:18 in fighting the good fight against the principalities of evil (14–15).

24

Walter, 41.

25

“Gendered Attributes,” 195–96.

Rudolf Simek, Religion und Mythologie der Germanen (Darmstadt: WBG, 2003), 233–34. Also see Warren Brown, Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Brown presents an excellent study of ritualized conflict resolution in Bavaria after the Carolingian conquest, in particular, during the period of Louis the German. In comparison with Bavaria, Saxony still constituted a wild and dangerous frontier.

26

27 G. Ronald Murphy, The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). See also Haferland, “Hatred of Enemies.”

Hêliand: Text and Commentary, ed. James E. Cathey (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002), 14–15. Cathey notes, “To convey the message of Christian charity and ego-denying humilitas the native words that were negative and pejorative in the context of Christian sensibilities were employed with the (indeed eventually realized) hope that the Christian content would also convert their meanings. Subversion of the vocabulary was the only possible method available to spread the gospel.” Also see Russell, who specifies the missionaries’ goal as “to redefine the Germanic values of strength, courage and loyalty in such a manner that would reduce their incompatibility with Christian values, while at the same time

28

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‘inculturating’ Christian values as far as possible to accommodate the Germanic ethos and world-view” (121). In Justice and the Social Context of Early Middle High German Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001), 28–35, Robert G. Sullivan provides an excellent overview of the lively scholarly discussion surrounding the origins and Germanic meaning of reht. His conclusion underscores the connection of the Old High German term reht with justitia.

29

30 G. Ronald Murphy, trans., The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 35. I use Murphy’s compelling contemporary translation wherever I consider it the most accurate rendering of the work in contemporary English. I have occasionally consulted the now dated translation of Mariana Scott, The Heliand: Translated from the Old Saxon (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966).

Albrecht Classen, The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 214. Classen views the “sylvan space” as a realm in which “epistemological challenges” can be “unraveled.” This also holds true when considering the spiritual combat between Christ and Satan in the wilderness, the forests of northern Europe.

31

32

See James E. Cathey, “Die Rhetorik der Weisheit und Beredtheit im altsachischen Hêliand,” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 37 (1966): 31–46.

33

The antique embodiment of wisdom is, of course, the goddess Athena.

G. Ronald Murphy, “The Light Worlds of the Heliand,” Monatshefte 89, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 5–17. See also Murphy, The Heliand, Appendix 4, 221–30.

34

The virtues of patientia, humilitas, and charitas appear prominently in the ninthcentury end-times poem, Muspilli. Directed most likely at the pernicious reign of Louis the German, all three virtues are integral to being a just and good ruler, and, ex negativo, the very qualities lacking in the Carolingian monarch. Further see Ernst Ralf Hintz, “Muspilli: The Old High German Judgment Day,” in A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, ed. Michael Ryan (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 207–32.

35

See Murphy, The Heliand, Song 36, p. 99n137: “It can be argued (and has been) which of the above instances constitutes the precise center (and thus intent) of the author. I prefer to see the three instances: the question, the confession, the transfiguration, as an ascending movement, in which Peter is seen as receiving first power, and then beatific vision in reward for his faith.”

36

37

Murphy, “Light Worlds,” 5–17.

38

Murphy, The Heliand, Song 38, p. 103.

I have taken these particular fit titles from Cathey’s Hêliand, 101–14. The accompanying commentaries (220–33) are especially helpful. The division of Fitten—or “Songs,” as Murphy refers to them and as they are likely to have been performed— differs from Cathey’s. The Fitten/fits that I refer to in regard to Peter’s education are 52 to 59 and, in turn, 46 to 54. 39

40 This admonition finds an echo in the 1970s New Wave spirituality logo “WWJD?”

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Heliand und Genesis, ed. Otto Behaghel, 9th ed., rev. by Burkhard Taeger (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984), 197.

41

42

Murphy, fit 66, p. 185. Note that the numerical designation of songs is in accord with Behaghel.

43

Murphy, fit 66, p. 185.

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Hêliand: Text and Commentary. Edited by James E. Cathey. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002. The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel. Translation and commentary by G. Ronald Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Heliand und Genesis. Edited by Otto Behaghel. 9th ed., rev. by Burkhard Taeger. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984. Hildegard of Bingen. The Book of the Rewards of Life. Translated by Bruce W. Horzeski. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Secondary Literature Brown, Warren. Unjust Seizure: Conflict, Interest, and Authority in an Early Medieval Society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Cathey, James E. “Die Rhetorik der Weisheit und Beredtheit im altsächischen Heliand.” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft 37 (1966): 31–46. Classen, Albrecht. The Forest in Medieval German Literature: Ecocritical Readings from a Historical Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Dick, Ernst S. AE. Dryht und seine Sippe: Eine wortkundliche, kultur- und religionsgeschichtliche Betrachtung zur altgermanischen Glaubensvorstellung vom wachstümlichen Heil. Münster: Aschendorff, 1965. Gantert, Klaus. Akkommodation und eingeschriebener Kommentar: Untersuchungen zur Übertragungsstrategie des Helianddichters. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1998. Gentry, Francis G., ed. A Companion to Middle High German Literature to the 14th Century. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Haferland, Harald. “Der Haß der Feinde: Germanische Heldendichtung und die Erzählkonzeption des Heliand.” Euphorion 95 (2001): 237–56. ———. “War der Dichter des Heliand illiterat?” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 131, no. 1 (2002): 20–48. Hintz, Ernst Ralf. “Gendered Attributes for Spiritual Warfare in the Old Saxon Heliand.” In “Er ist ein wol Gevriunder Man”: Essays in Honor of Ernst S.

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Dick on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, edited by Karen McConnell and Winder McConnell, 191–202. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 2009. ———. “Muspilli: The Old High German Judgment Day.” In A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse, edited by Michael Ryan, 207–32. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Second edition, revised, with Siobhan O’Flynn. New York: Routledge, 2013. Lees, Clare A., and Gillian R. Overing. Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. McNamara, Jo Ann. “Chastity as a Third Gender in the History and Hagiography of Gregory of Tours.” In The World of Gregory of Tours, edited by Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood, 199–209. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Murphy, G. Ronald. “The Light Worlds of the Heliand.” Monatshefte 89 (1997): 5–17. ———. “The Old Saxon Heliand.” In Early Germanic Literature and Culture, edited by Brian Murdoch and Malcolm Read, 263–83. The Camden House History of German Literature 1. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004. ———. The Saxon Savior: The Germanic Transformation of the Gospel in the Ninth-Century Heliand. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Murray, Jacqueline. “One Flesh, Two Sexes, Three Genders?” In Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe: New Perspectives, edited by Lisa M. Bittel and Felice Lifschitz, 34–52. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. Russell, James C. The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Scott, Joan W. “Gender, a Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 1053–75. See, Klaus von. “Was ist Heldendichtung?” In Europäische Heldendichtung, edited by Klaus von See, 1–38. Wege der Forschung 500. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978. Simek, Rudolf. Religion und Mythologie der Germanen. Darmstadt: WBG, 2003. Sullivan, Robert G. Justice and the Social Context of Early Middle High German Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. Walter, Christopher. The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition. Aldershot, Hants, UK: Ashgate, 2003.

3:

The Beginning of the End: Binary Dynamics and Initiative in Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius

Will Hasty

H

ᴀrᴛᴍᴀnn ᴠᴏn Aᴜᴇ’s Gregorius—the “strange tale” of a nobleman born of an incestuous relationship between brother and sister, who later unknowingly marries his mother, thus repeating and aggravating the sin of incest, and after a self-imposed penance of miraculous difficulty and duration is summoned from the wilderness of his penance to be pope in Rome1—seems to have as happy an ending as a story of compounded incest could have. Believing that they will never see one another again after parting upon discovery of their incestuous relationship as husband and wife, son and mother are joyfully rejoined in the end. He, having in the meantime obtained the role of supreme spiritual father, is now positioned to forgive them their sins. Son (now also as spiritual father) and mother live their remaining lives together in what seems a spiritualized and thus redeemed version of their former sinful togetherness, before being received into the eternal bliss of the heavenly afterlife. Interpretations of this tale have tended to focus on the eschatological questions with which the present volume is occupied, particularly the status of the individual (i.e., individual agency, decisions, thoughts, plans, actions, etc.) between the influential effects of the wiles of the devil and God’s power to forgive sin, no matter how heinous or great. Recurring admonitions of different kinds from the storyteller Hartmann have doubtless encouraged the view of Gregorius as in some way or another a cautionary tale. With a view to the potential ultimate result (or end) following from any presumed transgressive action (understood as beginning)—for example, eventual damnation and hellfire following from the deadly sin of zwîvel (desperation)—whatever it may be that the tale is cautioning its audiences against (assuming something other than desperation alone) could be regarded as the beginning of the end.2 This essay explores a different approach to Hartmann’s Gregorius that understands beginning and end as interrelated by what I call binary

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dynamics.3 My approach involves viewing characters and courses of events in terms of two distinctive evaluative orientations that I term courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic.4 Characteristic of these orientations as I view them, besides their common participation both in the makeup of this particular tale as well as in the cultural setting in which the tale was produced and performed, is that they can be readily described even as they necessarily remain in flux by virtue of their contrary and hence dynamic bipolar interrelationships. Accessing Hartmann’s Gregorius via these two orientations may help us understand both the position of this tale in Hartmann’s oeuvre in its entirety (i.e., they could be seen to shape both his chivalric romances and his religious tales) as well as court literature more generally as a documentation of the evolving values and interests of the noble households behind its production. The courtly-chivalric evaluative orientation involves a positive assessment of the space and time of experience in this world (henceforth, I use the term space-time5). I assume that a fundamentally positive assessment of space-time is both consistent with the notion of secularization and also necessarily goes along with the positive valuation of the seemingly endless, variable, and/or divisible properties of space-time that extends to us today (i.e., space-time as something worth discovering, managing, exploiting in all its manifestations and future potential). The religious-dualist orientation places absolute positive value on the eternal heavenly afterlife (i.e., on something that is, in some crucial sense, other than space-time), admonishes us “to die to the world,” and correspondingly brings to bear a fundamentally negative assessment of space-time (e.g., as a vale of tears). Such religious-dualist assessment frames the seemingly infinite variability of space-time as transitoriness (i.e., disintegration, decay, decomposition, etc.) and correspondingly construes it at best as a distraction or impediment to achieving salvation, at worst in a more Manichaean mode as the site of the devil’s scheming and evil.6 To the degree that these two orientations involve contrary fundamental evaluations of space-time, the use of the term binary to describe their interrelationship seems applicable. As individual experience in space-time (whether in the real world or as depicted in a fictional narrative) calls for accommodation with or evaluation of continuously changing circumstances, the binary interrelationship is also necessarily dynamic. In Gregorius, such dynamism is evident in narrative moments where we seem to observe the congruence of, or lack of overt friction between, the two evaluative orientations (both of which continue to be valid and to exert their contrary claims, though one rather than the other may be in the foreground at a given moment according to the

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demands and possibilities at hand). Such narrative moments involve, in more or less pronounced ways, the reflection or echo of one orientation in the other (seeming to mark, as it were, its ongoing claims even when being in, or pushed into, the background)—that is, the religious-dualist life accented with tangibly courtly-chivalric concerns and vice versa— but we predictably also observe these orientations interacting indicatively of their volatile, contending, sometimes overlapping but always mutually exclusive binary (juxta)positions.7 The beginning of the end, as I propose to view it, concerns individual initiative as an aspect of the above-sketched binary dynamics that directs them forward to the happy ending of Hartmann’s tale, thus combining and giving direction to the vying claims and respective (dis)advantages of contrary evaluative orientations (i.e., utter joy in this transitory world and the eternal bliss of heavenly afterlife). Such initiative is evident in the narrative artistry of the performer Hartmann, whereby mutually exclusive evaluative orientations are brought together in a manner that might best be understood as combinatorial.8 As a selfproclaimed “learned knight,” Hartmann produces a poetic performance on behalf of his courtly-chivalric audiences that manages to combine, in a manner as pleasing and productive as possible, the positive evaluation of space-time to which the self-understanding of lay nobility in the High Middle Ages is increasingly attached with a religious-dualist understanding thereof that remains (as yet) just as compelling, judging by its frequent involvement both in Gregorius as well as in court literature in general.9 My principal aim below will be to exemplify the evaluative orientations I am outlining here and to demonstrate their productive harnessing qua individual initiative in the actions of the imaginary characters of Hartmann’s tale, as these initiatives accommodate and mobilize contrary evaluations of space-time. A position is thereby gained, I hope, for better appreciating the broader twelfth-century cultural trend toward secularization, to which Gregorius makes its own distinctive poetic contribution.10

* * * At the beginning of Hartmann’s prologus, we have on the surface what looks like an exemplary instance of the religious-dualistic condemnation of space-time taking the form of an admonition not to count on youth and the time youth seems to leave us for taking care of any necessary unfinished business—with respect to the readiness of one’s soul for the afterlife—at a later point. Hartmann begins the poem with a regretful and quasi-confessional acknowledgment that his own youth

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led him to commit unspecified verbal transgressions in the interest of worldly reward before elaborating his own personal case into a more general, cautionary lesson: swer durch des helleschergen rât den trôst ze sîner jugent hât daz er dar ûf sündet, als in die jugent schündet, und er gedenket dar an: “dû bist noch ein junger man, aller dîner missetât der wirt noch vil guot rât: dû gebüezest si in dem alter wol,” der gedenket anders danne er sol. er wirt es lîhte entsetzet, wande in des willen letzet diu êhafte nôt, sô der bitterlîche tôt den vürgedanc richet und im daz alter brichet mit einem snellen ende. (7–23) [Whoever in his youth trusts the scheming of hell’s jailer, and, trusting in his youth, sins and says to himself: you are still a young man; there is still plenty of help for all your wrongdoings; you can certainly do penance for them in your old age—such a person thinks other than he should. These thoughts will easily vanish when the common fate of us all hinders his will to repent, in that bitter death takes vengeance on his earlier way of thinking, cutting short his life with a sudden end. (167–68)]

Hartmann’s admonition presents itself most immediately as a memento mori that conveys the religious-dualist assessment of space-time as utterly lacking positive value. The Grim Reaper can come at any moment, and we must be prepared at that moment and, hence, continuously at every moment, undistracted by the pleasurable sensations with which space-time can cause us to be caught off guard. Nevertheless, if we endeavor to hold judgment in abeyance—however difficult this may seem, especially here—and read against the pronounced grain of this patently dualist memento mori, an alternative assessment of the value of youth (and, via youth, of time) seems also to be perceptible, at least in outlines or as an echo alongside of or overlapping with the religiousdualistic condemnation thereof.

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The positive value of youth (and via youth of the time one has remaining) is one of the central concerns of the courtly-chivalric evaluative orientation. The beauty and vigor of youth are expressed and celebrated in romance poetry and love lyrics and, as I will observe below, elsewhere in Gregorius. Even as it is being categorically rejected, the outlines of a long and happy mortal life become perceptible ex negativo as something self-standing. Let us hold onto this part of Hartmann’s introductory words: “you are still a young man; there is still plenty of help for all your wrongdoings”—that is, the notion of a young person who believes he/she has time and is comfortable enough in this belief to wait until later to put his/her soul into order for the afterlife. We do well to hold onto this notion, even as any positive view of space-time seems here to be taken away unconditionally corresponding to the dualistic gist. However discouraging things might be at the beginning of this tale for those who would like to invest positive value in space-time, subsequent events in this poem will restore some confidence. The narratio proper begins with a less than straightforward exemplification of the religious-dualistic evaluation of space-time put on display in the opening verses, and with the first of many hybrid characters/scenes in this poem (hybrid denoting the dynamic overlap or juxtaposition of binarily opposed cultural orientations). Here the Lord of Aquitaine lies on his deathbed, about to give up his spirit. He has summoned his household and family, “und in bevelhen wolde / sîne sêle und ouch diu kint” (198–99; to whom he could commend his soul and also his children, 170). Gazing upon his lovely young children, his mournful reaction sets the tone and provides insights into what is most important for this powerful nobleman in his final moments of life: sîniu kint sach er dô an: diu wâren beide gelîche sô rehte wünneclîche gerâten an dem lîbe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . des herren jâmer wart sô grôz daz im der ougen regen vlôz nider ûf die bettewât. er sprach: “nû enist des niht rât, ich enmüeze von iu scheiden. nû solde ich mit iu beiden alrêrst vreuden walten und wünneclîchen alten. der trôst ist nû zegangen: mich hât der tôt gevangen.” (202–5, 211–20)

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[He fixed his gaze upon his children. Both of them had turned out so fair in appearance. . . . This pained his heart very bitterly. The lord’s grief grew so great that rain flowed from his eyes down onto the bedclothes. He said, “There’s no avoiding it. I must take my leave of you. I should have now just begun to enjoy happiness with you and grow old joyfully. That happy thought has utterly faded; death has taken me captive.” (170)]

The scene described in these and surrounding verses is strongly religious-dualistic in tone and might be considered exemplary of or consistent with Hartmann’s cautionary warning from the prologue that death cuts short worldly joys. Things seem less straightforward, however, on closer scrutiny (i.e., somewhat more consistent with the less determinate understanding of the prologue that I suggested). At the very moment when space-time is about to run out for the Lord of Aquitaine, it seems to take on a more positive value than ever owing to the beauty of the young children who stand before him and to the forlorn thought of a happy future time to “grow old joyfully” with them. Death here visibly cuts short worldly joy, but in a way that points to the value of the latter: the future joys (and time) to be missed are translated into present sorrow. The lord spends his final moments of life mourning himself and the loss of future joyful time spent with his own beautiful youths (eventually dying of heartbreak), rather than divesting himself of spacetime and joyfully anticipating the immanent bliss of the heavenly afterlife. It seems that attachments to the world become tangibly stronger here; worldly delights become regretfully sweeter as they are about to be cut short by death. Taking the model of the eremite or martyr saint as exemplification of the ideal religious-dualist posture of a Christian at the end of life and comparing this with the Lord of Aquitaine in this scene, it seems possible to sense a tension if not contest occurring between religious-dualist and courtly-chivalric cultural orientations concerning the valuation of space-time, the outcome of which here has the appearance of uneasy and temporary compromise. Consistent with understanding events in terms of binary dynamics, the first incestuous Fall patently springs out of an excess of worldly joy and fraternal affection.11 The beautiful brother and sister, the children of the recently deceased lord, care for each other faithfully and in a manner befitting the dignity, wealth, and splendor of a household of nobility. Scornful of the plenitude of courtly-chivalric joy that the siblings manage to create because of their superlative personal characteristics—a first indication on their part of initiative as a directing force that will become ever more tangible in this tale—the devil comes into play. Corresponding to a point in this plenitude where the foregrounded

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evaluative orientation switches to its opposed binary, the “enemy of the world” effects the transition from a courtly-chivalric to a religiousdualistic mode in this way: Dô dise wünne und den gemach der werlde vîent ersach, der durch hôchvart und durch nît versigelt in der helle lît, ir beider êren in verdrôz (wan si dûhte in alze grôz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . an sîner swester minne sô riet er im ze verre, unz daz der juncherre verkêrte sîne triuwe guot ûf einen valschen muot. (303–8, 318–22) [When the enemy of the world, who for pride and envy lies locked away in hell, beheld this joy and these comforts, the esteem that both of them enjoyed vexed him, because it seemed to him too great. . . . The devil advised him to go too far in his love of his sister, to the point that the young lord turned his good devotion, into a wrong way of thinking. (171)]

The sense of the dynamics here appears to be this: an evil being such as the devil hates and is jealous of things that are, in themselves, good. The implication is that there is nothing inherently wrong with the positive courtly-chivalric evaluation of space-time (that is, assessed on its own terms/as something self-standing) to the degree the “pride” and “envy” of the devil are involved in its radical devaluation. We seem to observe the performer Hartmann sensing the need to shore up this switch to a negative, religious-dualist evaluation of space-time as a move that must involve more than merely the devil’s hateful scheming (that is, as being in some more fundamental way connected to the inherent or intrinsic fallibility or transitoriness of space-time) when the storyteller goes on to add: wâfen, herre, wâfen über des hellehundes list, daz er uns sô geværic ist! war umbe verhenget im des got daz er sô manegen grôzen spot vrumet über sîn hantgetât die er nâch im gebildet hât? (332–38)

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[To arms, Lord, to arms against the cunning of the hound of hell who lies so menacingly in wait for us! Why does God allow him to bring such great disgrace over His creatures, whom He formed in His image? (172)]

These verses further underscore the devil’s responsibility for the negative turn of events, but we also observe here that God is the ultimate source behind this turn (as must necessarily be the case with an omnipotent deity). Hartmann’s harshest criticism continues to be directed at the devil, but there is also implicitly a questioning if not criticism of God himself for allowing the “hound of hell” to sully humanity as his noblest creation.12 At the same time, the invocation of the positive status of humanity as God’s own “hantgetât”—even in this precarious scene involving the first incest—seems again to suggest the wisdom of holding in abeyance any conclusive condemnatory judgment concerning the value of space-time. Transitioning toward the first incestuous Fall, we observe the switch to a religious-dualist evaluative orientation that occurs in the abovecited verses. The somewhat roundabout manner (via the devil and then God) by which this switch is effected nevertheless seems to leave the value of space-time, and thus of the characteristics of the courtlychivalric life previously enjoyed by sister and brother, somewhat openended. Between the two above-cited passages, which place emphasis on the devil as the reason for the negative course of events, crucial verses qualify further an already complex narrative and ideological transition by giving no less than four different reasons for the incestuous Fall that is about to occur: daz eine was diu minne diu im verriet die sinne, daz ander sîner swester schœne, daz dritte des tiuvels hœne, daz vierde was sîn kintheit diu ûf in mit dem tiuwel streit unz er in dar ûf brâhte daz er benamen gedâhte mit sîner swester slâfen. (323–31) [Love was the first thing that seduced his senses; the second his sister’s beauty; the third the devil’s contempt; the fourth was the lord’s youthful naïveté that, along with the devil, fought against him until the devil drove him to the point of actually considering sleeping with his sister. (171–72)]

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Love, beauty, and youth, previously in this tale features of the exemplary courtly life of the sister and brother, and elsewhere in courtly culture widely celebrated in romance poetry and love lyrics, are here associated with the devil’s scheming and thereby directly implicated in evil, as indeed they must be according to the understanding of the religiousdualist evaluative orientation that is here moving into the foreground. Contrarily, we have observed that the verses regarding the devil that frame this passage seem to leave the evaluation of this scene somewhat open-ended. Based on the positive value we know them to have elsewhere, love, beauty, and youth bring their own outsized positive cultural reputation to a scene already seemingly fraught with volatility as one binary orientation switches to another. Though love, beauty, and youth are clearly associated in this scene with the devil’s contempt and, by implication at least, regarded as similarly evil, it again seems both possible and advisable to take a broader view with respect to the understanding of this scene within this tale more generally and within the vernacular courtly poetry of which the tale forms a part. Love, beauty, youth are in bed with evil here, to be sure; nevertheless, this is not where we can or should generally expect to find them. That love brings its own compelling impetus (even) to this narrative is borne out by subsequent events. The distraught young lovers/siblings, by this time with child, follow the deathbed advice of their father by seeking the counsel of a wise old man.13 The wise elder advises the brother to go on an identifiably penitential pilgrimage to the Holy Land, even as he advises the sister not to reject the world but rather to remain in it because of guot, or wealth, with which the wise man asserts she will be able to do penance “noch bezzer” (616; “even better,” 175). The brother and sister tearfully take leave from one another, and their exchange of hearts—which comes across as a direct transposition of such exchanges between departing lovers in the romances14—is based not on sorrow or regret about sinning but rather on the love and painful longing they continue to feel for each other (as if the brother and sister must continue to be exemplary practitioners of minne, even in this extraordinary [counter]case).15 The minne that had veered precariously close to evil during the description of the motivations leading the brother to want to sleep with his sister assumes more-familiar contours in the death of the brother from lovesickness (consistent with extraordinary cases of courtly-chivalric amatory loyalty, without any overt religious condemnations or reservations). Concern about the readiness of the brother’s soul for the afterlife is nowhere in sight when he dies, even as longing for his sister seems the worst possible cause of death from a religious-dualistic perspective. The tale remains in this regard

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indeterminate until the end, when Gregorius is positioned as pope to issue his father postmortem forgiveness (see verses 3955–57). The life of the son born in sin who becomes pope in the second part of the tale will be arranged—via the combinatorial narrative artistry of Hartmann—around a recurrence of the transgression to which brother/ father and sister/mother fell victim in the initial part. At a poem-specific level, the second Fall can be seen (negatively) as growing out of the first: the sister/mother puts her infant child on the waves with just enough information to know the sinful circumstances under which he was born, which later helps to inspire him to become a knight (perhaps inappropriately, in view of the past sin and the one that is to come), but not with enough information (the specific identities and whereabouts of his parents) to prevent the sin from recurring. Contrarily and taking a broader view, each narrative step from the beginning, whether it has involved a switch from the religious-dualistic to the courtly-chivalric evaluative orientation or vice versa, can be seen as driven by initiatives that present themselves most immediately as functions of seemingly irreconcilable bipolar alternatives respective to the value of space-time: the absolute validity of the respective core tenets of the courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic cultural orientations (or, conversely, the unacceptability of losing either the favor of the world or the grace of God). Via individual initiatives, courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic interests—however seemingly volatile their interconnection (because mutually opposing)—are managed and directed. In the hybridic constitutions/orientations of mother and son before the crucial decision that leads him as adventuring knight and suitor (unknowingly) back to her, the binary dynamics under discussion seem to become increasingly tangible in terms of difficult efforts on the part of individuals, as unconventional ongoing initiatives by mother and son. From the courtly-chivalric perspective of the noble courtiers around her, the mother is one of their own and an exemplary eligible match, and she apparently refrains from undermining this perception in any way: an gebürte und an lîbe, an der rîcheit und an der jugent, an der schɶne und an der tugent, an zuht únd an güete und an allem ir gemüete sô was si guotes mannes wert: (864–69) [In nobility and in appearance, in wealth and in youth, in beauty and in virtue, in upbringing and in goodness, and in her entire being, she was worthy of a good man. (178)]

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At the same time as her beauty and nobility beckon to the courtlychivalric world, she lives akin to an eremite in the desert, as she must do since the devil deprived her of God’s favor. The mother thereby sets herself in this way apart from the courtly world she occupies (though unbeknownst to it): sô daz si naht unde tac solher unmuoze phlac diu dem lîbe unsanfte tete. beide mit wachen und mit gebete, mit almuosen und mit vasten enlie si den lîp nie gerasten. (891–96) [(She) rejected joy and comfort to gain (God’s) grace, and preserved it day and night diligently in penitential acts against her body. Both with vigils and with prayers, with alms and with fasting, she never let her body rest. (178–79)]

At the same time, the young Gregorius similarly shares and carries forward the binary constitution of his mother, though the opposing evaluative orientation is in the foreground of his life experience. From a religious-dualistic perspective, he positions himself quickly as the obvious choice to replace his namesake as abbot when the time comes, and he is a wunderkind in the principal intellectual subject matters of clerics and monks: dô enwas zewâre dehein bezzer grammaticus danne daz kint Grêgôrjus. dar nâch in den jâren drin dô gebezzerte sich sîn sin alsô daz im dîvînitas garwe dúrchliuhtet was: diu kunst ist von der goteheit. swaz im vür wart geleit daz lîp und sêle vrumende ist, des ergreif er ie den houbetlist. (1182–92) [There was truly no better student of grammaticus than the child Gregorius. Three years later his mind had improved so much that he had command of divinitas: this knowledge is about the godhead. Whatever was presented to him that was useful to body and soul, he always grasped the essentials of it. (182)]

At the same time, as we discover from him later in his own words, he wishes in his thoughts for nothing more fervently than to be a knight. In

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harboring this secret desire and managing to accommodate it alongside the spiritual/intellectual demands of his monastic life, Gregorius similarly sets himself uniquely apart from those by whom he is surrounded: “iedoch sô man mich sêre ie unz her ze den buochen twanc, sô turnierte ie mîn gedanc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mînen gedanken wart nie baz dan sô ich ze orse gesaz und den schilt ze halse genam und daz sper als ez gezam und daz undern arm gesluoc und mich daz ors von sprunge truoc.” (1582–84, 1593–98) [“As much as one forced me to the books up to now, my thoughts rode in tournaments. . . . My thoughts never had it better than when I sat mounted and held my shield up to my neck, tucked the lance properly under my arm, and the horse sprang away with me.” (187)]

Mother and son correspond to one another inversely, she an eremite living in the world who woos the love of Christ with all her heart but who is expected to take a courtly husband, he a monk perfecting his soul in divine readings on an isolated island who dreams with all his heart of being a knight and winning a reputation for himself in the world. These inversely corresponding constitutions/ orientations seem both to distinguish one from the other (i.e., his primarily courtly-chivalric orientation from her primarily religiousdualist orientation) and to suit one to the other perfectly (as the only such binarily constructed characters in this imaginary world). The extreme transitions involved in their coming relationship—the focal point of the concluding section of this essay—seem to manifest the force welling up in and between mother and son as a dynamic aspect of their (differing) binary constitutions, as well as of the increasingly extraordinary initiatives required to direct these binary dynamics toward a closure consistent with the values and interests of twelfthcentury lay and ecclesiastic nobility.

* * * If the ancient Oedipus is “a kind of symbol of the human intelligence which cannot rest until it has solved all the riddles—even the last riddle, to which the answer is that human happiness is built on an illusion,”16 then Hartmann’s tale of incest puts us culturally in a very different place.

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The protagonists of Hartmann’s medieval tale are similarly intelligent, restless, and intrepid, but the individual effort this narrative shares with its ancient incestuous literary predecessor—as extraordinarily transgressive and painful as it similarly turns out to be—leads to a place that is not as bleak as space-time ultimately shows itself to be in the ancient tragedy.17 The religious-dualistic view of hell, to which vainly opening oneself to life in this world leads, offers the closest medieval correspondent to the sort of hell on earth to which the ancient Oedipus must heroically accommodate himself. No such accommodation is supposed to occur in the medieval tale (or in Christian culture generally)—though the possibility of going in a somewhat similar direction is held forth by Hartmann at the beginning of his poem in the form of the zwîvel (desperation) to which one is cautioned not to fall victim. We see here that the religious-dualist cautionary admonition is intended to guide individuals to another, better place, to a heavenly afterlife with which one is supposed to put oneself outside or beyond the troublesome flaws and burdens of space-time. According to the religious-dualist orientation, the individual is positioned to dispose universally of space-time, to recognize it for what it really is (i.e., a transitory vale of tears), and thus to spare her/himself the conclusion that happiness is illusory (in view of that blissful heavenly afterlife)—which is the only conclusion or end seemingly available to the ancient Oedipus. The Christian religious-dualist evaluative orientation via its potential to transcend space-time (by means of a universal disposition of or control over it) is positioned in an identifiably binary way to the cosmos as rendered in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, which possessed no such possibility of totalizing transcendence, disengagement, and/or rejection vis-à-vis space-time. Based on Hartmann’s Gregorius and the broader corpus of vernacular court poetry of which this tale forms part in the twelfth century, the original cultural productivity of the binary dynamics—whereby the options of (medieval) Christians can be seen to be increasingly variegated vis-à-vis those of ancients (such as the tragic Oedipus)—seems to have been additionally productive as elaborated in new and different binary dynamics on which I have focused in this essay. As the courtly-chivalric evaluative cultural orientation emerges binarily alongside the religious-dualist one in the twelfth century (perhaps most visibly in court poetry), the question of the value of spacetime seems to be posed anew and to result in new possible answers and options.18 From a religious-dualist perspective, these new (courtly-chivalric) answers and options should not be possible (i.e., they are sinful)

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and seem to lead by way of such sinful entanglements back down a long, winding, discontinuous cultural road in the general direction of Oedipus’s above-mentioned “last riddle.” One of the clearest articulations of this religious-dualist perspective in the medieval tale comes from the abbot, Gregorius’s namesake, when he is trying to dissuade his young protégé from his resolve to ride back into the world as a knight: “vil lieber sun, daz sage ich dir. dêswâr, dáz geloube mir, gestâst dû bî der ritterschaft, sich, sô mêret sich diu kraft dîner tegelîchen missetât und enwirt dîn niemer rât . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sun, nû stant im hie ze klage und verkoufe dîne kurze tage umbe daz êwige leben.” (1785–90, 1795–97) [“My dear son, I shall tell you. This is true, believe me. If you stay with knighthood, see, then the force of your wrongdoing increases daily, and there will never be help for you. . . . Son, stand before Him as one accused and exchange your short days for eternal life.” (189–90)]

The negative valuation of space-time visible here, and visible also in the prologue and in (somewhat less stark) variations elsewhere in Hartmann’s tale—while it gives pause to hedge—patently falls short of being definitive. When, shortly thereafter and despite the abbot’s warning, Gregorius embarks into the world to make a chivalric name for himself, he takes this initiative both as a Christian (thereby presumably positioned to dispose universally of space-time) and as a chivalric adventurer who clearly considers that space-time holds forth more possibilities than sorrows and tears (thereby acting other than as Christians are supposed to do from the religious-dualistic perspective): Nu bôt der ellende herze unde hende ze himele und bat vil verre daz in unser herre sante in etelîchez lant dâ sîn vart wære bewant. (1825–30) [Now the stranger raised up heart and hands to heaven and beseeched Our Lord repeatedly to send him to some land where his journey would find an end. (190)]

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This initiative, as we know, leads to the catastrophic second incestuous relationship between mother and son, which according to the religiousdualist evaluative orientation should finally and conclusively lead to a complete and utter negation of (the value of) space-time. Initial indications are that this is what occurs, at least with Gregorius. Speaking to his mother shortly after their joint discovery of the incestuous sin into which they have fallen (she for the second time), Gregorius states his resolve to leave the court, possessions, and worldliness generally: “dem lande und dem guote und werltlîchem muote dem sî hiute widerseit.” hin tet er diu rîchen kleit und schiet sich von dem lande mit dürftigem gewande. (2745–50) [“Today I renounce these lands, my possessions, and worldly ways.” He set aside his costly apparel and parted from the lands in shabby clothing. (200)]

Gregorius’s self-imposed penance, chained for seventeen years to a rocky jut in the middle of a windswept lake, exposed to the elements and without sustenance other than that provided by the Holy Spirit, matches if not excels the ascetic efforts of the most intrepid anchorites.19 When found on his island rock by the papal emissaries who have come to summon him to Rome to be pope, we observe how Gregorius continues to insist on his hyperasceticism. In his own words responding to and endeavoring to reject the emissaries’ summons, we see him cling to the only posture that—in view of his grievous sin—would seemingly be forevermore appropriate according to a religious-dualistic evaluation of things. Again, though, we also observe the dynamic hybridism we have observed earlier, and in the same ex negativo mode we observed in the prologue at the beginning of this essay: “ich hân umbe unsern herren got verdienet leider verre baz sînen zornlîchen haz danne daz er an mich kêre die gnâde und die êre die ein bâbest haben sol. man enbirt mîn ze Rôme wol: iu wære ze mir niht wol geschehen. muget ir doch mînen lîp sehen! der ist sô ungenæme,

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den êren widerzæme. wart mir ie herren vuore kunt, der ist vergezzen ze dirre stunt. ich bin der liute ungewon: den bin ich billîchen von. ir herren, nemet selbe war, mir sint verwandelt vil gar der sin, der lîp und die site die dem von rehte wonent mite der grôzes gewaltes phlegen sol: ich enzime ze bâbest niht wol.” (3542–62) [“I have earned from Our Lord God much more His angry hate than a bestowal of favor and honor that a pope should have. One can well do without me in Rome. You would not do well under me. Just take a look at my body! It is so unpleasing, repugnant to any honors. If I once was familiar with a lord’s life, it is now forgotten. I am not used to humankind; by rights I have nothing to do with it. You, sirs, observe for yourself: a sound mind, body, and way of life that by rights belong to one who is supposed to wield great power, have been completely deformed in me. I am not well suited to be pope.” (209)]

Favor and honors; a lord’s life; a sound mind, body and way of life; great power—in the context of this utterance, these are all disqualifiers (in a manner akin to the assessment of space-time in the context of the prologue). Yet, they precisely identify salient features of the life Gregorius is on the verge of assuming. Contrary to the gist of the religious-dualist evaluative orientation and the conditions of the departure he took from his mother after the second incest—which coincided in the form of an utter, seemingly final and hence definitive rejection of the value of space-time at which we looked above—Gregorius is joyfully reunited in this life with his mother/wife/spiritual daughter, and he (re)assumes a life of worldly power, wealth, and splendor. To be sure, the primarily religious authority he now exercises differs greatly from the (sinful) worldly authority he possessed previously. Nevertheless, we observe again in the following two passages—the first describing Gregorius’s exercise of worldly power as a knight and the second his exercise of religious power as pope—that the latter outlines or echoes parameters of the former regarding mâze, or restraint, thus indicating the continuation of familiar dynamics: nû wolde er aber der mâze phlegen: durch die gotes êre sô engerte er nihtes mêre

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wan daz im dienen solde: vürbaz er niene wolde. (2272–76) [(He) wanted to cultivate moderation. For the honor of God he desired nothing more than what was supposed to serve Him. He wanted nothing further. (195)] sus kunde er rehte mâze geben über geistlîchez leben, dâ mite der sündære genas und der guote stæte was. (3823–26) [Gregorius knew how to practice moderation in the spiritual life, so that the sinner was healed and the good man was constant. (212)]

In modern colloquial parlance, we might say that the medieval papacy provides the necessary cover for the kind of narrative closure that is being reached by the time of the latter passage, a closure that accommodates the conflicting claims of the binarily positioned evaluative orientations under discussion in this essay. On all difficult questions concerning living in the world to one’s fullest capacities (and according to the fullest capacities of the world) and achieving the eternal heavenly afterlife—as Gregorius and his mother have manifestly succeeded in doing—whose word could be more definitive than that of a pope such as Gregorius will be?20 We have observed that this (imaginary) pope achieves office based on initiatives that have continuously emerged from and addressed the most pressing concerns of the given narrative moment. As Gregorius (along with his mother and father) has negotiated these concerns, the courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic orientations toward (the valuation of) space-time have never stopped being mutually exclusive. But the very binariness seems to have dynamized and been directed by the initiatives to an end in which it seems possible to perceive an expansion of the available cultural options, an increase in the continuously fluctuating values of space-time; a happily ever after in which beginning increasingly shows itself to be an end-in-itself.

Notes 1

“Strange tale” (“diu seltsaenen maere,” verse 176). English translations of Hartmann are from Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, trans. Frank J. Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), and I adopt the translators’ employment of the word tale to designate this narrative. English translations of Gregorius are by Kim Vivian (265–314), and I agree with the observation in

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his introduction to this tale that “perhaps one can best define it as neither fish nor fowl” (265). Hartmann’s Middle High German verses are from Gregorius: Mittelhochdeutsch, Neuhochdeutsch, ed. Friedrich Neumann, trans. into modern German by Burkhard Kippenberg (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1963). 2 Against what remains a crucial question in scholarly appraisals of this tale. The critical discussion of the question of Gregorius’s Schuld, or guilt (in the Christian sense of the sinful Fall)—in some lesser or finer distinction of these terms—was prevalent in scholarly discussion, especially picking up after World War II. See as examples of this scholarly tendency the studies of Albert Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1922), especially 554; Gabriele Schieb, “Schuld und Sühne in Hartmanns Gregorius,” Beiträge zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur 72 (1950): 51–64; Hildegard Nobel, “Schuld und Sühne in Hartmann’s Gregorius und in der frühscholastischen Theologie,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 76 (1957): 42–79; and Frank Tobin, “Gregorius” and “der arme Heinrich”: Hartmann’s Dualistic and Gradualistic Views of Reality (Bern: Peter Lang, 1973). As of the 1960s, the notion of some specific individual or subjective transgression or shortcoming on the part of Gregorius and/or his parents has contended with and to a large degree given way to the notion of an objective guilt; for example, in the work of Christoph Cormeau, Hartmanns von Aue “armer Heinrich” und “Gregorius”: Studien zur Interpretation mit dem Blick auf die Theologie zur Zeit Hartmanns (Munich: Beck, 1966), 72–73; and Volker Mertens, Gregorius Eremita: Eine Lebensform des Adels bei Hartmann von Aue in ihrer Problematik und ihrer Wandlung in der Rezeption (Munich: Artemis, 1978). For a recent example of the latter scholarly trend, see Petrus W. Tax, “Stellvertretendes Rittertum, buoze und die Schuldfrage in Hartmanns Iwein, Gregorius, und Kreuzzugslyrik,” Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur 144 (2015): 442–60.

This approach to events as “dynamics” grows out of my endeavor in The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016) to describe poetry and literature as moments in an always-ongoing “cultural action.” 3

4 There is nothing new in such distinctions, of course. A recent juxtaposition somewhat similar to the one I explore in this essay is visible in Concetta Sipione’s “Der Drang zur vita activa und die Weltentsagung: Zwei Modalitäten der Krisenüberwindung im Gregorius Hartmanns von Aue,” in Text Analyses and Interpretations: In Memory of Joachim Bumke, ed. Sibylle Jefferis (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2013), 247–64. In contrast to this and other earlier studies focusing on transgression- and/ or crisis-management, I endeavor with my focus on binary dynamics and initiative to shift the critical focus to transgression as a moment of/in ongoing cultural production. 5

The use of this term is intentionally evocative of physics; with it I assume a dynamic overlap of the cosmos as imagined in medieval literature and poetry (both Latin and vernacular) with the physical world and suggest that this overlap in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is part and parcel of what we commonly call secularization. 6 In his City of God St. Augustine writes, “A sacrifice, even though it is done or offered by man, is something divine—which is what the ancient Latins meant by

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the word sacrificium. For this reason, a man himself who is consecrated in the name of God and vowed to God is a sacrifice, in as much as he dies to the world that he may live for God.” See The City of God, Books VIII–XVI, trans. Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952), 125–26. A passage from Hartmann’s other religious narrative, Der arme Heinrich, ed. Ursula Rautenberg, trans. into modern German by Siegfried Grosse (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993), illustrates the religious-dualistic evaluative orientation succinctly and pointedly in verses 113–15: “der in dem hœhsten werde / lebet ûf dirre erde, / derst der versmâhte vor gote” (“He who lives in highest esteem on this earth is despised before God”; from Tobin’s translation “Poor Heinrich” in Arthurian Romances, 217–34, here 218). Anticipating the objection that the problem here and elsewhere is not worldliness per se but rather worldliness without God: the above passage from Der arme Heinrich, and other similar ones, are pointedly unqualified—that is, they provide no indication of being amenable to reconciliation or harmonization of religious-dualistic and courtly-chivalric orientations; if it becomes possible, after all, to have worldliness and God, the above passage (according to my binary approach) is necessarily disqualified. In her characterization of Augustine’s conception of caritas, Hannah Arendt indirectly draws attention to a conundrum that I endeavor to conceptualize via the religious-dualist binary I am suggesting: “what we cannot understand is how, through this love by which we deny both ourselves and the world, another person can still be considered our neighbor, that is, as someone specifically connected to us” (Love and Saint Augustine, ed. Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], 95). My point is: as soon as a neighbor “specifically connected to us” is posited—as it is in the court poetry of Hartmann and others—a cultural binary is thereby being established. 7 For reasons already given in the text and in the notes above, I differ in this regard from the view of Cormeau and Wilhelm Störmer, Hartmann von Aue: Epoche— Werk—Wirkung (Munich: Beck, 1985), 119, who state, “Es gibt keine strikte Polarität” (There is no strict polarity) between religious and worldly perspectives. 8

The art of dialectic as practiced by early Scholastic authors such as Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard, turning propositions in their various possible directions as if to see what comes out, has a tangibly combinatorial aspect. In the thirteenth century, Ramon Llull develops a systematic and manifestly combinatorial method for arriving at truth in his ars magna (later in more succinct form in his ars brevis—picked up by Gottfried Leibniz in his Dissertatio de arte combinatoria, largely inspired by Llull). Even if it is situated courtly-chivalrically rather than theologically, I suggest that Hartmann’s narrative art may form part of a broader combinatorial tendency in twelfth- and thirteenth-century literary culture. Referencing Horace, the purpose of poetry is “to instruct and delight”: aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae. In connection to chance or contingency as an aspect or element of narrative art understood in combinatorial terms, see Kein Zufall: Konzeptionen von Kontingenz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Albrecht Hausmann and Susanne Reichlin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). In particular, Hausmann’s article on Hartmann’s Gregorius (79–109) offers an insightful understanding of God as a “Funktion erzählter Kontingenz” (function of narrated contingency). As an alternative approach, I propose viewing not God but rather the constitutions or identities of the main protagonists (Gregorius and his mother)—according to the

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binary dynamics I have outlined (which may be historically and culturally more appropriate)—as a function of the seemingly necessarily contingent interrelationship rendered via Hartmann’s narrative artistry between mutually exclusive binary poles. 10

Such positive value for space-time might already have been gained to some degree in other versions of the Gregorius material, such as the Old French La vie du pape saint Grégoire, but a comparative consideration of this exceeds the boundaries of this essay. For a recent detailed consideration of the narrative material connected to the “good sinner” Gregorius, see Brian Murdoch, Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

I use the word Fall where Ernst Ralf Hintz, “Descensus as Spiritual Realignment and Divine Legitimation in Hartmann’s Later Works,” in Text Analysis and Interpretations: In Memory of Joachim Bumke, ed. Sibylle Jefferis (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2013), 265–73, uses descensus and similarly sees a kind of “realignment” going on, in a manner I find consistent with the binary dynamics I am positing (i.e., descent forms part of a dynamics that also brings things forward).

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Anselm of Canterbury states that humanity is led astray by the devil not “at God’s command, but by the permission of God’s incomprehensible wisdom, which orders even evils in a good way.” See Cur Deus Homo, in Anselm: Basic Writings, ed. and trans. Thomas Williams (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007), 237–326, here 251. No such cut-and-dried recourse to divine inscrutability is visible in Hartmann’s courtlychivalric narrative.

13 Who thus seemingly usurps the position of the ordained minister that would be more

appropriate according to the evaluative logic of the religious-dualist cultural orientation. The very unconventionality of this move on the part of brother and sister, even if they are following their father’s advice, suggests the view of it as an initiative. See Hartmann von Aue’s Erec, ed. Manfred Günter Scholz, trans. into modern German by Susanne Held (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2004), verses 2358–67.

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The storyteller Hartmann here strikingly asserts that the (incestuous) lovers would have willingly endured the scorn of the world and remained together, if it had not been for the need to get right with God (verses 639–41). E. R. Dodds, “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex,” Greece & Rome 13, no. 1 (1966): 37–49, here 48.

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In the latter nineteenth century, Wilhelm Scherer set an influential tone by calling Hartmann’s Gregorius a “medieval Oedipus” in his Geschichte der deutschen Literatur (Berlin: Knauer, 1883), 181. Later, Hendricus Sparnaay doubted the possibility of making any direct connections between the ancient Oedipus and the medieval Gregorius, even as his considerations invited cultural comparisons based on the omnipresence of the theme of incest in mythology and literature around the world: Hartmann von Aue: Studien zu einer Biographie, vol. 1 (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933), 149–55; repr. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1975). While I am largely in agreement with Murdoch’s more recent view that Gregorius is “not an Oedipus, medieval or otherwise” (10), I nevertheless agree with the earlier view of Sparnaay that the theme of incest is a significant cultural common denominator that allows for some potentially fruitful comparisons and contrasts.

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I agree with the gist of Hugo Kuhn’s 1953 assessment, which argues that Hartmann in his Gregorius “destroys . . . the normal fixed justice of God and the world, trust in one’s action, and dependence on guilt and penance, in order to build up a new and deeper human attitude” (cited from Hartmann von Aue, ed. Hugo Kuhn and Christoph Cormeau [Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1973], 81), except that I have endeavored to consider Kuhn’s notion of “deeper human attitude” more constructively as a dynamic that emerges out of the interplay between courtly-chivalric and religious-dualistic evaluative orientations (“Hartmann von Aue als Dichter,” Der Deutschunterricht 5 [1953]: 11–27).

Volker Mertens, pointing to the eremitic model as a Lebensform or “form of life” that would have been familiar to noble audiences via historical figures such as William Firmat, Robert of Arbrissel, Bernhard of Thiron, and Vitalis of Savigny, sees Gregorius’s actions from a more sociological perspective as an extreme form of penance that does not correspond to any particular identifiable transgression but rather occurs spontaneously and gratuitously (50). According to Albrecht Classen in a more recent consideration of Gregorius’s eremitic life, “the island represents the total ‘Other’ where humans have no chance of survival, unless God intervenes”: “Caught on an Island: Geographic and Spiritual Isolation in Medieval German Courtly Literature: Herzog Ernst, Gregorius, Tristan, and Partonopier und Meliur,” Studia Neophilologica 79, no. 1 (2007): 69–80, here 74. Robert Steinke considers functions of water more generally in his article “Providenz und Souveränität: Wasser als Element göttlichen und menschlichen Wirkens im Gregorius Hartmanns von Aue,” in Wasser in der mittelalterlichen Kultur: Gebrauch—Wahrnehmung—Symbolik, ed. Gerlinde Huber-Rebenich, Christian Rohr, and Michael Stolz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2017), 419–30.

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The latter part of Hartmann’s career might have overlapped with the papacy of Innocent III; in this connection see Albert Hauck, “Innocent III Desired to Rule the World,” in Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World? ed. James M. Powell, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 15–18.

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Augustine. The City of God, Books VIII–XVI. Translated by Gerald G. Walsh and Grace Monahan. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952. ———. On Christian Doctrine. Translated by D. W. Robertson Jr. Indianapolis: Liberal Arts Press, 1958. Hartmann von Aue. Der arme Heinrich. Edited by Ursula Rautenberg. Translated into modern German by Siegfried Grosse. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993. Translated by Frank Tobin as “Poor Heinrich.” In Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue, 217–34.University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

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———. Erec. Edited by Manfred Günter Scholz. Translated into modern German by Susanne Held. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 2004. ———. Gregorius: Mittelhochdeutsch, Neuhochdeutsch. Edited by Friedrich Neumann. Translated into modern German by Burkhard Kippenberg. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1963. Translated by Kim Vivian as “Gregorius.” In Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry, 265–314. Llull, Ramon. “Ars brevis.” In Doctor Illuminatus: A Ramon Llull Reader. Edited and translated by Anthony Bonner, 289–364. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.

Secondary Literature Arendt, Hannah. Love and Saint Augustine. Edited by Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott and Judith Chelius. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Classen, Albrecht. “Caught on an Island: Geographic and Spiritual Isolation in Medieval German Courtly Literature. Herzog Ernst, Gregorius, Tristan, and Partonopier und Meliur.” Studia Neophilologica 79, no. 1 (2007): 69–80. Cormeau, Christoph, and Wilhelm Störmer. Hartmann von Aue: Epoche— Werk—Wirkung. Munich: Beck, 1985. Dodds, E. R. “On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex.” Greece & Rome 13, no. 1 (1966): 37–49. Hauck, Albert. “Innocent III Desired to Rule the World.” In Innocent III: Vicar of Christ or Lord of the World?, edited by James M. Powell, 15–18. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1994. Hausmann, Albrecht. “Gott als Funktion erzählter Kontingenz: Zum Phänomen der ‘Wiederholung’ in Hartmanns von Aue Gregorius.” In Herberichs and Reichlin, Kein Zufall, 79–109. Herberichs, Cornelia, and Susanne Reichlin, eds. Kein Zufall: Konzeptionen von Kontingenz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010. Hintz, Ernst Ralf. “Descensus as Spiritual Realignment and Divine Legitimation in Hartmann’s Later Works.” In Text Analyses and Interpretations: In Memory of Joachim Bumke, edited by Sibylle Jefferis, 265–73. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2013. Murdoch, Brian. Gregorius: An Incestuous Saint in Medieval Europe and Beyond. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Reichlin, Susanne. “Kontingenzkonzeptionen in der mittelalterlichen Literatur: Methodische Überlegungen.” In Herberichs and Reichlin, Kein Zufall, 11–49. Tax, Petrus W. “Stellvertretendes Rittertum, buoze und die Schuldfrage in Hartmanns Iwein, Gregorius und Kreuzzugslyrik.” Zeitschrift für Deutsches Altertum und Deutsche Literatur 144 (2015): 442–60.

4:

Poetic Reflections in Medieval German Literature on Tragic Conflicts, Massive Death, and Armageddon

Albrecht Classen

Introduction: War and Death

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hᴇrᴇ ᴀrᴇ ᴍᴀny rᴇᴀsᴏns for us to embrace literature and to acknowledge it as an essential medium to explore and discuss the meaning of human life. From the earliest time, if we think of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, people have struggled to come to terms with the dialectics of all existence. It is difficult to handle the paradox of theodicy, the realization that the human creature has often been nothing but a horrible beast, slaughtering many people if the occasion and opportunity arise, and the observation that violence surfaces more commonly than love.1 The literary discourse, especially in the genre of heroic epics,2 has proven to be open, flexible, responsive, energetic, and expressive in regard to the fundamental need people have to cope with issues, sometimes heartrending, sometimes illuminating, sometimes exuberant, sometimes offering hope, sometimes threatening to annihilate the human race. Even if fictional texts are not chronicles, they still chronicle the dark and bright sides of human existence and serve as crucial catalysts for the analysis of problematic cases pertaining to love, hatred, the quest for God, and the inquiry about the meaning of death. Above all, war and its terrible aftermath are common topics of ancient and medieval heroic epics, and that issue has, unfortunately, continued to torture us to the very present.3 Little wonder that many poets have reflected on those horrors and tried to make at least some sense out of them, or, to put it differently, to lend words to those terrible experiences that seem to be ineffable. How can people do this to other people? Both the Holocaust and the atomic bomb have demonstrated that there is virtually nothing to hold back governments, armies, private organizations, and other groups from developing ever more devastating weapons, allegedly with the purpose of defending themselves. The

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arms race is an ever-ongoing process that began thousands of years ago, although the modern weapons industry has now reached an unforeseen level at which those weapons can annihilate all of humankind. To argue politically, we could even go so far as to claim that the modern world has reached an unprecedented readiness to commit mass violence that makes the conditions in the Middle Ages look rather different. Oddly, however, as we can observe, the literary process has vastly “profited” from those war experiences, as reflected by the countless poems, epic narratives, plays, and novels composed throughout time engaging with war. And although there are plenty of texts that celebrate war, it is also clear that the pain and suffering caused by warfare require expression in order to come to terms with them. This is evinced by the many poems, heroic epics, novels, and other genres that memorialize these experiences. This observation also applies to the Middle Ages, where we encounter numerous literary examples in which the poets target some of the worst transgressions in human history and try to describe and comprehend them in an effort to project alternatives or to outline avenues for humankind to overcome such horrible events in the future. As futile as that might be—no other industry has profited more from war throughout time than the so-called military-industrial complex (and this even in the preindustrial age)—one of the critical tasks of poets (and visual artists, of course) has always been to address this grave danger and to combat it with seemingly helpless and almost inaudible words. Of course, we are today the descendants of the Holocaust and can no longer view human history in any way from a simplistic or naive perspective. Even though Theodor W. Adorno formulated famously that after Auschwitz, poetry was no longer possible, the opposite has happened. After all, human language, especially in its poetic expression, serves fundamentally to address head-on the critical issues in all human life; otherwise, we would fall silent and lose all possibilities to grow, change, mature, and raise a new generation less burdened, if that might be within our reach, in the midst of violence, slaughter, murder, and genocide.4 But the pain affecting us today in light of the horrendous suffering in many parts of the world, whether in Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, or Libya, to name just some of the hotbeds of actual fighting and killing in large numbers, might be overwhelming.

War in the Middle Ages from a Literary Perspective Turning to medieval examples addressing genocide or mass killing offers an intriguing and useful alternative in the critical assessment of

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human misery and its etiology. In particular, there are numerous examples in Middle High German heroic epics where the confrontation between Christians and Muslims results in horrendous slaughter, which the poets reflect carefully and often rather critically, even if influenced by one-sided Christian ideology. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Willehalm (ca. 1220), for example, presents countless illustrations of a true tragedy. The opposing forces coming from a mysterious East are, of course, clearly condemned, and their deaths are viewed with approval because they had arrived with the goal of killing Willehalm and his troops in order to avenge the fact that he had eloped with the Muslim Queen Arabel, later baptized and renamed as Gyburg.5 Eroticism and war here strangely merge and challenge even the most open-minded listener/ reader of this epic narrative; but love can do nothing to stop the military operations, as much as Gyburg appeals to the council to keep in mind that their opponents are also God’s creatures. Christianity must triumph in this Middle High German adaptation of a chanson de geste, but at the end, when Willehalm encounters a tent with all the dead heathen warriors, he immediately ensures that the corpses are worthily treated, embalmed, and then transported back home (bk. 9, chaps. 461–67). Willehalm pays his respect to those kings, as much as he had been previously opposed to their military hostility in the name of their own religion. He acknowledges them as his wife’s family but insists, of course, that Christianity is the only true faith, as his victory confirms in his mind. The Saracens had been his mortal enemies while they had been alive. Ultimately, as to be expected, this does not overcome the global conflict, it does not settle the scores between Christians and Muslims, and it does not establish early forms of tolerance in the modern sense of the word. But Wolfram’s epic poem, while not questioning the justness or necessity of the war Willehalm is fighting, gives vent to profound feelings of sorrow over the bitter conflicts between peoples of different creeds, cultures, and races, and it also acknowledges, in a most curious twist of events, that the enemies are, after all, still human beings and deserve to be recognized as such.6 Killing of family members and friends, killing of one’s own community, and causing a genocide constitute some of the worst crimes any human being can commit, as the story of Cain and Abel has already informed us: “The Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth’” (Gen. 4:10).7 Tragically, however, this very

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same kind of slaughter has continued throughout the entire history of humankind, and the medieval annals are as much filled with reports about massive killing in battles as are modern accounts of military conflicts. The horrifying deeds committed by ISIS from ca. 2014 to the present do not appear to be any different from those committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Nazis in Germany, the Japanese in China, the Turks against the Armenians in Turkey, etc.8 The situation in the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) was deeply deplored by Baroque poets such as Andreas Gryphius, and we read their sonnets with emotional engagement, certainly because they had been able to express their personal distress in such moving terms.9 Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen’s famous novel Simplicius Simplicissimus (1668)10 proves to be a powerful though sad antecedent work to Erich Maria Remarque’s famously meaningful and expressive Im Westen nichts Neues (1928; All Quiet on the Western Front, 1929), which the Nazis unsuccessfully tried to suppress in their public book burnings in 1933.11 And while there are many examples of literature that highlight how the destructive power of war is a purifying ordeal that tests manliness and demonstrates patriotic and nationalistic sacrifice for one’s country, it is useful to look at those literary efforts that engage in the horrors of war.12 In doing so, we find efforts to probe the basic human spirit hiding among all the terror, brutality, bestiality, and cruelty that is encouraged in cultic celebrations of violence. Although no poet has ever been able to stop a war, texts critical of war can contribute to the ongoing struggle to repress violence and aggression by providing a glimmer of hope.13

War in Heroic Poetry The purpose of this article is to demonstrate how several medieval German poets addressed the central issue of human violence as it occurred on a large scale or was aimed at one’s own family members. This essay will first consider the Old High German Hildebrandslied (ca. 820), then turn to the Middle High German Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) and its sequel Diu Klage (ca. 1200–1210), subsequently examine the somewhat later Kudrun (late thirteenth century), to conclude with a discussion of Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring (ca. 1400).14 In light of the continued global concern about war and violence and their relationship with literature, this essay investigates how the issue of mass killing, or killing within the range of one’s own family members, is treated and how this might have a bearing on the relevance of literature in the first place. We will look through a historical lens at the same issues

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that torture us today but were already presented by medieval German poets. The past has much to tell us, almost proverbially, for our future. The pain suffered by people reverberates throughout time, so the literary reflections on the horrors committed in the past establish an endless chain of poetic responses.15

Hildebrandslied What could be worse than when the military code, honor, and structure require a father to kill his son? Would we, however, condemn such an action more harshly than people in the past did? Was it perhaps ordinary for tribally organized individuals to ignore all family bonds and accept their destiny, even if that involved mutual slaying and killing of closest kin? The power of the vassalic oath ruled supreme, and war was, so it seems, the common modus operandi. But by the eighth and ninth centuries Christian missionaries, first from Ireland, then from England, had entered the Continent and had begun to spread their religious messages that most urgently insisted on peaceful cohabitation and mutual trust, if not even love, and hence aimed at building constructive communities. Nevertheless, even—or especially—under the Merovingians and then the Carolingians, warfare continued to be a central operation to defend one’s own kingdom and to expand its borders, even if this fact does not tell us anything about the suffering of the civilian population.16 By that time, military campaigns were obviously more centrally organized in support of the rising tribal unit. This did not, however, diminish the threat to people’s lives as a result of war campaigns. In this regard, the Hildebrandslied invites us to reflect on the actual consequences of war on a personal level. On the basic human level, however, war has certainly been viewed very differently throughout time. Consequently, the discussion of the military framework of the Old High German Hildebrandslied invites us to examine more closely what the poets might have tried to convey to the audience and how that message could translate into the modern world.17 Two monks in Fulda, as we assume, copied down the text on the front and the back of a liturgical manuscript, which clearly signals the considerable importance it enjoyed within at least part of the monastic community. The authorities may well have approved this recording, apparently because the horrible message contained in the short epic poem, a text fragment missing its conclusion, successfully addressed a fundamental concern about military violence. While previous scholarship has mostly focused on the antiquarian nature of this poem, which was possibly preserved by these two monks

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because it mirrored ancient Germanic culture, a close reading indicates how much the outcome of the military confrontation is harshly condemned by presenting the horrifying case of a father and son fighting against one another, each leading an army fighting for a different people. Wolfgang Haubrichs suggested that the Hildebrandslied reflects the deadly destiny of the Germanic warrior who is called upon to rule over his people and also to kill the enemy. Moreover, as he sees it, “Was der Krieger auch tut, dem Gesetz des Krieges entkommt er nicht” (Whatever the warrior does, he cannot escape the law of war).18 While I have previously interpreted this balladic song as a medium to explore the meaning of communication,19 we can now go one step further and identify in it an intriguing expression of severe criticism of the feudal system, the vassalic hierarchy, and the complete subordination of the individual warrior under the value system of killing at any cost. The older warrior, Hildebrand, quickly realizes that he is confronting his own son, Hadubrand, although the latter insists that his father died a long time ago. Despite some attempts by the former, these two leaders of their armies cannot establish any constructive bond. Hostility, deep distrust, and concern about their own heroic honor dominate the exchanges. Gift giving, as tried by Hildebrand, has no effect, since the younger man brusquely rejects the golden rings. Both men are leaders of their armies and represent, seemingly not by their own choice, different ethnic groups, although they belong to the same one. Hildebrand has apparently fought under the leadership of the Hunnish king, while sailors reported to his son that he had fallen in the war. Hildebrand does not know how to communicate with his son, and the latter refuses to listen to any further words. While the situation in the much later Jüngeres Hildebrandslied from 1462 proves to be the very opposite, with both men finally recognizing and accepting each other, which then leads to a happy ending within the family,20 here the tragedy takes its course, ultimately engulfing both men. In the Hildebrandslied, we do not know whether the father kills his son because he is much more experienced and stronger, or whether the son kills the father because of his greater agility and energy, or whether both slaughter each other.21 The only certainty we have is that the fight begins, without any further words exchanged between these two warriors, and that each hacks the opponent’s shield, made out of linden wood, to pieces. They are both filled with great fury and abandon all attempts to listen to the other. Hadubrand refuses to exchange further words fairly early in the poem, while Hildebrand still appeals to destiny and submits himself under its sway, readying himself for the fight, insisting that his

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own honor would be more prized than any attempts to reach out to the young man and to convince him of their blood bonds. From early on, however, he has learned the truth about the opponent, who is his own son. Yet, their profound misunderstanding, the fact of Hildebrand’s absence for over thirty years, the radically different military loyalties, and their clash on the battlefield make it impossible to build any bridges between them. These two men are bound to fail in recognizing and acknowledging one another in this highly tense situation, with two armies about to crash into each other, which proves to be particularly horrendous because of their close family bonds. Hildebrand knows who stands across from him, while Hadubrand denies the truth, relying more on the words of the various sailors who had confirmed his father’s death than on the words of this stranger who appears to be his mortal enemy and seemingly tries to deceive him with his claim on their close kinship and the offer of gifts of heavy bands of gold. Whatever the outcome might be, irrespective of who is going to kill the other person, the poem expresses great concern with the devastating consequences resulting from military conflicts, hostility, enmity, and violence. According to the ancient rules within Germanic society, the vassalic oath obviously counted more than even the closest family bonds. For Christian thinking, however, the relationship between father and son was certainly to be perceived in analogy to the spiritual bond between God and people, and then also, of course, between God the Father and Christ. Killing such a close kin constituted, hence, the worst possible transgression, and the Hildebrandslied illustrates in drastic terms that none of the honor that either father or son might gain through this fight would compensate for this most egregious sinfulness. Whatever this epic poem might have meant for the original composer and his audience, in the hands of the Christian monks it emerged as a powerful warning about the cataclysmic consequences for human society at large. Even though those two warriors prove, for the last time, their military fame and honor, they have lost their basic humanity, abandoned in favor of their feudal value system. If this reading can be supported, then we are in an excellent position to recognize the greater cultural framework as it emerged under the influence of the Christian monks. They were still attuned enough to the old heathen practices and customs to recognize the considerable popularity of such a heroic poem. But instead of replicating this balladic song for antiquarian purposes, they included it in the liturgical manuscript to serve as a drastic literary example warning their stillheathen audience about the destructive forces inherent and endemic in their own culture. When Hadubrand announced that according to his

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knowledge his father had died a long time ago, he did not realize, of course, that his own statement would eventually apply to himself, once he would have been killed by Hildebrand, if that were the case. While we cannot say with certainty that the poet may have intentionally left this ending open, it remains a possibility, because either outcome would be tragic, making the poem even more didactic than if the text as it is transmitted down to us in this manuscript had a singular outcome. The open ending forces its readers to ponder the meaning of either outcome and whether the poet is questioning the value of a warrior ethos that underpinned his society.

Nibelungenlied The “classic” epic poem Nibelungenlied vastly expanded on this theme and projected, worse than ever before, a genocidal Armageddon in revenge for the killing of the protagonist of the first part, Siegfried.22 His widow, Kriemhild, cannot think of anything else but to avenge her suffering, and she instrumentalizes everything in her life for that goal. In fact, she is entirely consumed by the idea of revenge, which ultimately destroys her entire world.23 No one survives at the end, except for the Hunnish King Etzel, his liege man Dietrich, and the latter’s own liege man, Hildebrand. The Burgundian king Gunther, his two brothers, and all their men, but also Hagen and eventually even Kriemhild succumb to the slaughter, not counting the scores of Hunnish fighters. In order to incite her husband, Etzel, into rallying his troops against the Burgundians, Kriemhild goes so far as to sacrifice her child, whom Hagen slays in a fury once he hears that all their squires have been killed. While the older manuscripts tend to vilify Kriemhild as a “she-devil” (“vâlandinne,” stanza 2368, 4), the manuscript C, characterized by numerous courtly features, and later also the heroic sequel, Diu Klage, attempt to exculpate her and adduce reasons and justification for her actions that destroy the entire Burgundian dynasty. But why did the poet(s) depict the devastating outcome of this horrible historical event for the literary-minded Bishop Wolfger von Erla in Passau and his court?24 While the first part deals with the mighty Siegfried, the crushing of the Icelandic queen Brünhild, and the murder of Siegfried at the hand of Hagen, the second part follows the Burgundians on their way to the Hunnish lands, where hostilities quickly erupt and soon lead to a full-fledged war in which no one survives. Even the most loyal Rüdiger—who is extremely tested by destiny and tortured by his inner contradictions, is forced to obey Kriemhild and Etzel’s order, and at the same time to embrace his new

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friends from Worms—ultimately dies. This is a horrible and shocking outcome, with no one surviving, with no hero emerging as a warrior we might want to remember fondly, except with deep fright. Hence, the most critical question, hardly ever raised, amounts to the inquiry why the Nibelungenlied was composed in the first place, and for whom.25 The few surviving Burgundians shed tears when they observe Rüdiger handing over his shield as a sign of his friendship with Hagen, although he would desperately need it himself. They understand that this signals Rüdiger’s preparedness to die, and they are all horrified about the doom that is waiting for everyone.26 We are, thus presented with the collapse of both the Burgundian dynasty and the kingdom of the Huns. The reasons are not hard to fathom, but they are difficult to explain. On the one hand, Siegfried had challenged everyone at King Gunther’s court, especially Hagen, who had recognized Siegfried immediately as his nemesis, superior to him in every regard. Siegfried had been boisterous, arrogant, and dominating and yet had become a pawn in Hagen’s and Gunther’s hands, helping both to squash the Icelandic queen Brünhild and to rob her of all of her power because this was the only way for him to gain the hand of Gunther’s sister, Kriemhild. This ultimately allowed Hagen to turn into Brünhild’s champion when he saw her crying over Kriemhild’s charge that her husband had been the first man to sleep with the queen, as demonstrated by the belt and the ring that Siegfried had taken from Brünhild when he had raped her during Gunther’s and Brünhild’s infamous second wedding night. Hagen does not care about morality or ethics, so his subsequent killing of Siegfried is a logical consequence for him. As a liminal figure, Hagen operates only strategically, not emotionally or with personal concerns, so it matters little for him to turn into a murderer on behalf of Gunther and his brothers.27 All of Hagen’s actions, however, subsequently trigger Kriemhild’s infernal hatred of him, and as the sister of the Burgundian kings and later as King Etzel’s wife she knows how to draw on most formidable forces and means to enact her plan to avenge Siegfried’s death. The consequences are well known, but we need to reflect a little further on what the anonymous poet might have intended with this daunting account. The epic poem concludes with thousands of dead, and no warrior apart from Dietrich and Hildebrand survives. Both kingdoms are thus finished, and virtually no good news awaits the survivors back home. Of course, as we learn in Diu Klage,28 Gunther’s son is eventually crowned as his successor, but the sorrow and pain experienced by everyone seem to make it virtually impossible to resume daily activities and to live an ordinary life.

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The worst part of the Nibelungenlied, however, certainly consists of the cataclysmic results of Kriemhild’s revenge. Hagen is to be blamed for her feelings, of course, but she takes her plans to the very end, disregarding the value of any life until she finally manages to kill Hagen herself. This incenses Hildebrand so much that he can no longer restrain himself and jumps into action, killing Kriemhild as a punishment for this last, infamous deed. While in manuscript B we simply learn that he cut her to pieces, in manuscript b, the Hundeshagen Codex from the early fifteenth century, Hildebrand’s sword proves to be so sharp that she does not even feel that he had cut her through at her waistline. She even mocks him, telling him that he should not fight with such a blunt weapon, but when he then throws a ring at her feet, urging her to pick it up, she tries to do so out of greed, which makes her entire body fall apart.29 This is, of course, a grotesque outcome, but the true victim in all of that, whether in the older or in the later manuscripts, is humankind itself. The Nibelungenlied poet deprives us of all hope and depicts a world where strife, violence, aggression, hatred, and revenge dominate everything and hence engulf all people without fail. No one is spared, and even the noblest, most honest, and deeply loyal characters, such as Rüdiger, are killed because they are all part of one and the same feudal system. Most movingly, the lamenting itself in Diu Klage offers some hope. The poetic reflections on the suffering the survivors must undergo indicate how such a tragedy could be overcome. The literary medium made it possible to analyze the central faults and shortcomings, to highlight the most dangerous transgressions and mistakes, and then to trace the consequences of specific words and actions. The Nibelungenlied outlines in most impressive terms how the Armageddon is triggered, who the major actors responsible for its evolution are, and what the final outcome turns out to be: death for all. Just as in the case of the Hildebrandslied, the depiction of the events at King Gunther’s court and then in the Eastern world of the Hunnish kingdom outlines the grave danger for any human society if certain developments are simply allowed to evolve without being checked, or prevented from happening. As much as we might be able to sympathize with Kriemhild, the final outcome of her revenge-seeking consists of the deaths of everyone involved. Tragedy strikes, and it develops in a painstaking, almost logical, and consistent process that no one can prevent, not even Hagen, although he understands from the beginning that traveling to Etzel’s court could be their doom, and although he is clearly forewarned by the nixies about the certain destiny for them all if they cross the Danube and travel farther east. Life and death oddly

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intermingle in this epic poem, and we never fully learn what to make of Siegfried, who appears to be the crucial source of all the trouble affecting the Burgundian world. Because of his superior power, and because of his carefree attitude resulting from it, he does not understand any of the political, dynastic, or personal concerns dominating the court. Brünhild seems to have been familiar with Siegfried and expects him to be the one who would woo for her hand when the Burgundian troop appears in Iceland. But Siegfried has already aligned himself with Kriemhild, hence with the traditional world, so he fights on behalf of Gunther against the one woman who represents the last vestiges of a heroic world that appears to have been closely associated with the gods. Siegfried himself could be characterized as a semigod, except that he never understands anything about his own position, especially vis-à-vis the Burgundian court and the one ruled by Brünhild. Despite the heavy responsibility imposed on him via the magical cloak of invisibility and the virtually impenetrable skin created by the dragon’s blood, Siegfried operates irresponsibly and lets himself become Gunther’s pawn. Little wonder, then, that he triggers much distress, creates enormous jealousy and hatred, and sets the stage where Hagen will later murder him. Kriemhild’s subsequent attempt to avenge herself can thus be identified as nothing but a corollary of her first husband’s foolish, hypocritical, and arrogant behavior, through which he hurts everyone else’s value system and sense of identity. Despite all the pleas by Gunther’s brothers not to commit murder, they become complicit in Hagen’s nefarious plot against Siegfried. In other words, the catastrophe as it evolves in the second part finds its origin in the first, where the protagonist basically transgresses the traditional social order and tries to integrate himself into a world that is never going to be his own.30 Little wonder, then, that Kriemhild is so deeply roused by her husband’s death and begins to pursue her entire family, which she is then finally willing to sacrifice if this were to help her to achieve her revenge against Hagen. While the first part of the Nibelungenlied is mostly determined by rational and systematic operations, in the second part virtually all forces of hell break loose, so to speak, and bring about the murderous sequence of events in which they all are engulfed as well.31 We might go too far in identifying herewith the ultimate purpose hidden behind the creation of the Nibelungenlied. But there is no doubt about the systematic pursuit of the goal, first by Hagen, who succeeds in killing Siegfried, and second by Kriemhild, who intends to avenge her sorrow by killing Hagen, which requires, however, the elimination of the entire Burgundian army beforehand. We could blame Kriemhild for her entirely utilitarian approach that results in the complete

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destruction of her family; but Hagen did not differ much from her when he murdered Siegfried, allegedly for the purpose of defending the queen’s honor, in reality, however, because he intended to overcome his archenemy. Nevertheless, the end result proves to be nothing but the extinction of the entire Burgundian army, along with the Hunnish court, a profound and historical catastrophe, as the poet of Diu Klage confirms most movingly. We might, however, have to imagine the creation of the latter poem in relationship to the Nibelungenlied. The latter presented the consequences of a disastrous epic development, while the former constituted its bitter lament and criticism. Little wonder that the Nibelungenlied, above all, enjoyed such a long and enduring popularity well into the sixteenth century, and then again from the late eighteenth century until today. Here we are faced with an epic tale about the apocalyptic downfall of human society, which is explained not in religious terms but through references to specific human actions, intentions, motives, and agendas.32 The horror of the conclusion to this epic poem thus finds its explanation not in any grandiose and elusive world scenario but in a very banal situation determined primarily by greed, anxiety, jealousy, and finally by hatred and the unquenchable desire for revenge. Despite the many differences, there are deeply striking parallels to the much shorter Hildebrandslied—individuals shaping history, as much as they are bound by social structures and an overarching value system.33 Ideologues have consistently tried to employ myths about human destiny, projecting forces from out of this world that could be blamed for or credited with the shaping of our lives, when the opposite is normally the case. In essence, however, as also the poet of the Nibelungenlied indicates most brutally but correctly, the deadly outcome can be explained with direct reference to individual actions.

Kudrun—The Only Example of a Counterstrategy Tragic consequences of human actions can lead to catastrophe. This principle finds amazing expression in the thirteenth-century heroic epic Kudrun, which has survived, surprisingly, only in one manuscript, the early sixteenth-century Ambraser Heldenbuch, placed between the Nibelungenlied/Klage and Biterolf (as no. 12 in the manuscript Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Seria Nova 2663).34 Throughout the epic we can observe love, lust, greed, arrogance, and aggression surfacing and determining the course of human history. In every generation, as depicted in this text, marriage and the continuation

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of a dynasty are predicated on violence qua a bridal-quest operation. Every time a young princess enters the age at which she could be married off, suitors appear who apply every power available to them to kidnap her and claim her as their wife. Despite the bloodshed that results from the multiple efforts to win the hands of kings’ daughters by violent means, ultimately mutual understanding and acceptance overcome the hostilities, which allows the productive continuation of the respective dynasties. Everything breaks down again, however, when various suitors appear who woo for Kudrun’s hand. The complicated interactions both in military and political terms do not need to be unraveled here; what matters is only that a catastrophic situation develops at the end, with Kudrun being kidnapped by Hartmuot, who kills her father, Hetel, and escapes from the infamous island “Wülpensand,” leaving behind a decimated army that has lost so many of its soldiers that they have to wait for years until a new generation of men has grown up ready to take up arms again and to fight for Kudrun’s liberation. Finally, the time has arrived, and a new army is ready to engage in a war with Hartmuot, led by Kudrun’s brother Ortwin and her actual fiancé, King Herwic of Sealand. In the meantime, Kudrun and her maids have been treated by Hartmuot’s mother, Queen Gerlint, in a most humiliating manner, and when the war finally erupts, Kudrun’s captors are severely punished or slaughtered. In fact, both King Ludewig and his wife are killed, and scores of other members of their court are in danger of suffering the same destiny, when Kudrun suddenly intervenes and prevents further executions. Although the ferocious warrior Wate, in the service of Kudrun’s mother, Hilde, would have liked to finish off all members of the enemy court, the princess successfully blocks him from continuing with his killing in massive numbers. As she states to Wate, “‘nu lât mîn geniezen  die durch fride sint / her ze mir gegangen  und bî mir gestanden. / daz ist Ortrûn diu edele und ir gesinde von Ormanîelande’” (1525, 2–3; “Let those ones live who have come here to me seeking peace and who are standing next to me. This is noble Ortrun and [the others are] her ladies-in-waiting from Normandy,” 157). In fact, once they have all returned home, and Kudrun is about to marry Herwic, she finally convinces her mother to accept a new strategy and arrange various marriages that serve to overcome all previous hostility: her brother Ortwin marries Hartmuot’s sister Ortrun; Hartmuot marries Kudrun’s maid Hildeburg; King Sifrit marries Herwic’s sister; and Herwic, of course, marries Kudrun.

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While the poet includes detailed descriptions of bloody battles, here—in strong contrast to the Nibelungenlied—Armageddon is suddenly avoided and bloodshed stopped because Kudrun knows how to intervene and to inject a new strategy that promises to avoid further violence. Nevertheless, even here we are confronted with devastating military conflicts in which no one takes prisoners or spares the opponents’ lives. In contrast to the Nibelungenlied, however, the poet of the Kudrun epic presents the history of several generations, and so a much more complex historical development, which is ultimately transformed by means of Kudrun’s amazingly sophisticated diplomatic operations. Whereas in the older poem Kriemhild endeavored to destroy her entire family, which was the only strategy available to her to avenge Siegfried’s death, here Kudrun intervenes in the bloody battle and calls upon Wate and his men to listen to her. She also works hard to convince her mother of the practicality of a different political and military maneuver; and she knows how to offer the right brides to the various leaders, who thus put aside their traditional hatred and agree to accept Kudrun’s offers. Could it be that a woman composed this epic? There are many indicators that could support this argument, though final evidence escapes us, of course.35 As the narrator comments, “Ich wæne als grôziu süene  nie wart als tet daz kint. / die tiure helde küene kômen zesamene sint. / daz riet allez Fruote  ûz Tenelande, / daz man nâch Ortwîne  unde nâch der Mœre künige sande. / . . . / si giengen sundersprâchen;  dô wart der helde rât vil lobebære” (1644, 1645, 4; I do not believe that a greater reconciliation had ever been achieved than the one orchestrated here by Kudrun. All of the bold warriors assembled and Fruote of Denmark recommended that they send for Ortwin and the King of the Moors. . . . They spoke about it with one another and were in full agreement with the arrangements, 168). The peaceful settlement comes about only after many bloody clashes, however, and only because Kudrun embraces a totally alternative concept, leaving the tradition of revenge-taking behind, offering new personal bonds between the various peoples, and signaling that love and marriage are to substitute for the usual violent encounters. Perhaps this might be the reason why the text of the Kudrun was entered in the Ambraser Heldenbuch only after Dietrichs Flucht, Die Rabenschlacht, the Nibelungenlied, and Diu Klage, though it is then followed by Biterolf, Ortnit, and Wolfdietrich A, all rather traditional heroic epics predicated on serious fighting to the very bitter end. While early in Kudrun major battles determined the outcome of a wooing process, at the end Kudrun herself has taken on the role of the matchmaker, which infuses the world with happiness and joy, as we can read in the narrator’s final comments:

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“mit lachen und mit weinen  si und ir magedîn / verwendiclîche giengen  ûz Matelâne. / ir sorge hête nu ende.  man gesach nie niht sô wol getânes” (1700, 2–4; Amidst laughter and tears, she and her maidens then left Matelane, although they kept turning around to look back. All of the unhappiness was now behind her and one had never seen a lovelier woman, 175). It remains impossible, however, to determine to what extent we encounter here an extensive turnaround of the entire heroic world. Considering that Kudrun was copied down only once in the Ambraser Heldenbuch, and that no other poet appears to have reflected on this heroic epic, it appears to have remained an erratic block in the history of late medieval literature. As Victor Millet has observed: “Generell legen fast alle Figuren der Kudrun eine Begabung für Vergebung und Eintracht an den Tag, die die nibelungischen nicht kennen, deren Hass und Feindschaft so radikal sind, dass sie dem Teufelskreis der Gewalt nicht entkommen können” (Generally, nearly all figures in the Kudrun demonstrate an ability/readiness for forgiveness and unity that the heroes in the Nibelungenlied do not know, whose hatred and hostility are so radical that they cannot escape the vicious cycle of violence).36

Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring Tragically, however, the Kudrun did not signal a profound change in the culture of the time; nor did the tradition of military conflicts in all their brutality come to an end in the wake of that poem. Just the opposite: as I indicated initially, the killing technologies improved, the numbers of victims increased, and war turned into a mechanized operation of ever-growing proportion. One other poet dared to address this calamity and formulated in that process very specific warnings about the consequences of unleashed and uncontrolled violence. In Heinrich Wittenwiler’s Ring, an ignorant village population tries to imitate the world of the courts and quickly runs into severe problems. The protagonists, Bertschi Triefnas and Metzli Rüerenzumpf, want to marry, which becomes a reality after some difficult times and conflicts, involving a variety of physical confrontations and Metzli’s rape by the medical doctor Chrippenchra.37 Finally, all problems have been solved, and the wedding festivities can start, when one of the dancers happens to injure the palm of his partner. This immediately arouses her father’s anger; fighting quickly breaks out, and subsequently a full-blown war erupts between the two neighboring villages. The end result is that everyone in Lappenhausen, where the protagonists had lived, is almost entirely decimated; only

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Bertschi manages to survive because he pretends, in this horrible scenario, to have lost his mind, which scares the opponents away. But when he reaches the battlefield where the wedding party had taken place, he finds nothing but dead bodies: “Und sach, wie da verderbet was / Haus und hoff, daz laub mit gras, / Man und weib mit sampt dem kind, / Er und guot also geswind / Und sein liebeu hausfrauw tod” (9662–67; And he saw that everything had been destroyed, the house and the farm, the leaves and the grass, men and women, together with the children, honor and goods without delay, and his dear wife, lying there dead). Whereas Kudrun had realized the great need to develop a completely new strategy in the face of devastating warfare and killing, the ignorant peasants had utterly failed to comprehend the circumstances of their lives and the meaning of their own actions. Allegorically, Der Ring proves to be a mirror of human society at large, although the poet explicitly excludes the world of the cities from this broadly conceived condemnation.38 As Bertschi realizes, though much too late, he had received much intelligent teaching, but he did not understand it and failed to recognize his own responsibility in the horrible evolution of affairs, leading to the deaths of almost the entire village population. He is unable to change anything, of course, and there is nothing left for him to do but to turn away from his old world and disappear into the Black Forest, where he becomes a hermit and tries to regain God’s grace. The verse narrative concludes with the fatalistic insight that everything here on earth is subject to rapid change and that all life quickly turns into death; only the fear of God, and God’s love, remain the same (9690–91). None of the efforts by the peasants in this verse narrative to imitate the nobility, to acquire a higher social status, to achieve a fulfilled married life, and (for Bertschi) to translate the various teachings into concrete concepts with full application are realized, and the outcome of Der Ring is nothing but a total disaster. Chaos and bloodshed are the result of the villagers’ bumbling behavior, thinking, and feeling, and they prove to be entirely subject to simple provocations and irritations, willing rather to destroy the entire world than to be considerate, moderate, understanding, or collaborative. There is no sympathy for the other fellow being. War dominates their entire culture, and so they all become victims of this very war they have triggered themselves. While the European cities deliberately stay away from this conflict, the villagers can attract, in support of their cause, the peasants in the neighboring communities, witches, dwarfs, giants, warriors—an intentionally facetious combination intended by the poet to ridicule that older social class of knights—then heathens and also the Swiss Guards,

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all of whom could be called fools, as the narrator comments with regard to a group of fifty Swiss fighters from “Narrenheim” (7982; Home of Fools). In an additionally ironic twist, Wittenwiler remarks that the famous heroes of traditional courtly romances, such as the one from Montalban (Renaut), then Lantzelott (Lancelot) and Tristan, Stolff (Astolf), and others could not join the fight because they had to defend their castles back home against the threat by the cities. We also learn that “Her Büggel doch von Ellerpach” (8032) would have loved to participate in the war, except that he had not yet been born at that time.39 Only the burghers in the major European cities intentionally stay away, because they regard this war as a dangerous matter in which they should not get involved; and they prove to be right in their decision, considering the horrifying outcome of Der Ring. What remains consists of a devastated world formerly known as Lappenhausen, which represents all the fools and ignoramuses here in this world.40

Medieval Responses to the Apocalypse Each of these four works illustrates the horrible consequences of military solutions to human problems and conflicts. This applies to Kudrun insofar as an end to the sequence of violence occurs only at the outcome of the work, when Kudrun personally intervenes and conceives of an alternative approach to the military conflicts. In the previous generations, however, the same strategies—total warfare with no plans to settle the conflicts in any peaceful manner—were of supreme importance as well. We notice also how hard it proves to be for Kudrun to persuade Wate and the other warriors to terminate the fighting. Conquest, looting, and kidnapping are the regular modus operandi, sustained by such vices as revenge, greed, and arrogance. Tragically, the outcome always proves to be devastating, with virtually no one surviving, both sides suffering tremendous losses. In the Hildebrandslied, the killing affects father and son. In the Nibelungenlied, the entire Burgundian army, including Kriemhild, and the entire Hunnish court are decimated. Only the crying King Etzel survives, helpless and utterly distraught in face of the horrendous outcome in which he even lost his son and his wife, not to speak of the scores of his warriors, friends, and councilors. Death rules supreme, cruelly and without any discrimination slaying everyone. While in the Hildebrandslied the ill-conceived concept of honor destroyed the relationship between father and son, in the Nibelungenlied Kriemhild’s unquenchable desire for revenge over the murder of her

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husband, Siegfried, dominates the entire development in the second half of the epic poem. In Kudrun the various wars are fought over the control of daughters as potential brides. There is hardly any evidence that love might have mattered for any of the kings; rather, the bridal quests and subsequent fighting are based on the need to expand one’s power and to control new lands. Finally, in Wittenwiler’s Ring the cause of the war might have been the newly formed marriage of Bertschi and Metzli, but in reality it can be traced back to the simple fact of the guests’ crude behavior and thinking, their inability to recognize reality and to respond to it rationally. In all of these four works, the central focus rests on cruel and/or massive slaughter resulting from the outbreak of individual emotions, mostly over minor matters. Certainly, Kriemhild was justified in her hope of gaining justice after the murder of her husband, but she failed to understand the political and military realities and blew everything in her life out of proportion. She was willing to get her entire family, including herself, and their warriors killed rather than forgo her revenge against Hagen. We could almost make the same observation with respect to Wittenwiler’s Ring, where the ignorant peasants essentially bring the catastrophe upon themselves. Only Kudrun emerges as a most astonishing individual who has the inner strength to forgive her suffering at the hand of Queen Gerlint, to change the entire course of political events, to convince her own mother and the group of leading warriors to accept her different strategy, and thus to establish peace, for the first and probably last time in the history of heroic poetry. Wittenwiler did not create a heroic epic, but he included many elements from that genre and transported them to the world of the village, where the lack of basic intelligence undermines all efforts to avoid the rise of military conflicts. There is no Kudrun who could intervene; instead, everyone proves to be most eager to enter the fighting, which ultimately engulfs them all. Not quite a hundred years later, Sebastian Brant coined the famous image of the “Ship of Fools” in his allegorical Narrenschiff (1494), which expressed in more satirical, if not sarcastic, fashion the enormous consequences of ignorance, stupidity, and hypocrisy. But Brant did not project images of massive death. That was the domain of heroic poetry, including Wittenwiler’s allegory Der Ring. All these examples finally force us to face the somber realization that massive killing, wars, slaughter, fighting, and other conflicts are simply man-made and horribly foolish. The various poets projected drastic images of apocalyptic dimensions insofar as no family bonds, no

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feelings of friendship, no ethical or moral criteria can be strong enough to avoid human society falling into the deadly trap of warfare. Kudrun represented a remarkable exception, since she, as a victim of long suffering herself, spoke up against further fighting and then conceived of a political solution involving marriage arrangements to overcome the conflicts. Ultimately, then, a critical engagement with these individual works from the early to the late Middle Ages can serve as a reflective mirror for us today in our daily interactions with people, for groups and entire societies that could so easily launch into military conflicts over virtually negligible aspects, misunderstandings, or different value concepts. Altogether, even in the best possible scenario, there is no victor. Armageddon awaits everyone who takes up arms and believes that physical power can achieve the desired goal. The poetic word would certainly not create miracles, but it serves, as all our examples have indicated, as a highly meaningful instrument to make the reader/listener reflect, meditate, and ruminate about the consequences of his or her own actions. It is easy to start a war, and it is most difficult to bring it to an end. Those who take up arms tend to die by arms. As we can read in the Gospel of Matthew, 26:52: “Omnes enim, qui acceperint gladium, gladio peribunt” (For all who draw the sword will die by the sword). This idea was first formulated by Aeschylus in his Agamemnon, line 1558, first performed in 458 BCE, but the biblical statement has reverberated throughout time until the present.41 We can now also point toward the medieval German epics and the one allegorical narrative where the same idea is expressed through the negative example. Not that Hildebrand, confronting his hostile son, could have done much to overcome the conflict; but he was a full member of that society with its heroic value system, so he had to fight. Not that Kriemhild could have changed her mind over Hagen, since no one in her own family supported her or tried to aid her in her effort to avenge Siegfried’s death. They prove to be integral members of the heroic world and cannot overcome the traditional values by which they live. So they all have to die. In Kudrun, no one knows how to overcome the sequence of violence, until Kudrun finally speaks up and changes the world. But she remains the one great exception. And the peasants in Wittenwiler’s Ring are lost in their own ignorance and aggression, and thus they all become victims of their own violence. Altogether, then, reading these medieval narratives gives us much to reflect on. We would be hard pressed to argue that our society has progressed much beyond that time, irrespective of all the international agreements,

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political organizations, peace efforts, and military alliances intended to prevent the outbreak of war. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, in Syria, in Nigeria, and in other parts of the world are just as bloody and brutal as in the past. Armageddon is still right on our heels. In this regard, those medieval poems continue to teach us lessons by presenting to us in highly dramatic form the consequences of violent conflicts, of the lack of communication, of the many human vices (the Seven Deadly Sins), and of the absence of rationality and intelligence.

Notes 1 Jörg Caliess, Gewalt in der Geschichte: Beiträge zur Gewaltaufklärung im Dienste des Friedens (Düsseldorf: Schwann, 1983); Brian Patrick McGuire, ed., War and Peace in the Middle Ages (Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1987); Diane Wolfthal, ed., Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000); Julius R. Ruff, Violence in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Albrecht Classen, “Die sich selbst verschlingende Gewalt: Grundsätzliche Gedanken zu einem global-menschlichen Phänomen mit mediävistischen Perspektiven auf Wernhers des Gaertenære Helmbrecht und Heinrich Wittenwilers Ring,” Futhark: Revista de investigación y cultura 1 (2006): 11–39.

David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub, eds., Epic and History (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2010).

2

3

One could cite a whole litany of relevant research literature, especially because most historical chronicles are filled with reports about wars, some of the most dramatic events in human history; for the Middle Ages, see Clifford J. Rogers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 4 See, for instance, the contributions to Gert Hofmann, ed., German and European Poetics after the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011). 5 Wolfram von Eschenbach, Willehalm, nach der gesamten Überlieferung, ed. Werner Schröder (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978); Wolfram von Eschenbach, Willehalm, according to MS 857 of the Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen: Middle High German Text, Translation, Commentary, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1991).

Jerold C. Frakes, Vernacular and Latin Literary Discourses of the Muslim Other in Medieval Germany (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), misreads this epic poem in his effort to expose medieval German poets in their allegedly imperialist, hegemonic, racist, and prejudicial attitudes. No wonder that he uses the term “tolerance” as a straw puppet, being irritated and frustrated with this text, which he has simply not read carefully enough (see esp. his comments on Gyburg’s speech, which is riddled with factual errors, 106–9). Of course, in a war epic such as Willehalm, we could not expect tolerance to emerge, since Willehalm has to fight for his own life and that of his wife, not to speak of his dukedom, and then of France itself. 6

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But there are clearly elements of toleration to be found, which makes Wolfram’s Willehalm such a “classic” of Middle High German literature. See Barbara Sabel, Toleranzdenken in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003); Barbara Haupt, “Heidenkrieg und Glaube: Zur Toleranz im Willehalm Wolframs von Eschenbach,” in Religiöse Toleranz im Spiegel der Literatur: Eine Idee und ihre ästhetische Gestaltung (Vienna: LIT, 2009), 41–56. I have investigated the entire issue at great length in a new monograph, History of Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval Literature (New York: Routledge, forthcoming). As to the treatment of corpses, especially the respectful embalming of the dead enemies, see Romedio SchmitzEsser, Der Leichnam im Mittelalter: Einbalsamierung, Verbrennung und die kulturelle Konstruktion des toten Körpers, 2nd ed. (Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2016). 7

James M. Glass, “Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present,” Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society 20 (2015): 102–4; André LaCoque, Onslaught against Innocence: Cain, Abel and the Yahwist (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2015); Mark William Scarlata, Outside of Eden: Cain in the Ancient Versions of Genesis 4:1–16 (London: T. T. Clark, 2015). 8 The article on Wikipedia proves to be very detailed and informative: “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant”; modified April 12, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant.

See the contributions to the Gryphius-Handbuch, ed. Nicola Kaminski and Robert Schütze (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2016).

9

See also the contributions to A Companion to the Works of Grimmelshausen, ed. Karl F. Otto Jr. (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2003).

10

Italo Michele Battafarone, Simpliciana Bellica: Grimmelshausens Kriegsdarstellung und ihre Rezeption 1667–2006 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011).

11

12

For example, see Scott E. Pincikowski’s essay in this collection, which discusses the nationalistic use of the apocalyptic ending of the Nibelungenlied. Thomas F. Schneider, Erich Maria Remarques Roman “Im Westen nichts Neues”: Text, Edition, Entstehung, Distribution und Rezeption (1928–1930) (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015).

13

German Epic Poetry: The Nibelungenlied, the Older Lay of Hildebrand, and Other Works, ed. Francis G. Gentry and James K. Walter (New York: Continuum, 1995).

14

Zurück zum Mittelalter: Neue Perspektiven für den Deutschunterricht, ed. Nine Miedema and Andrea Sieber (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2013); Albrecht Classen, “What Do They Mean for Us Today? Medieval Literature and Philosophy at the End of the Twentieth Century: Boethius, John of Salisbury, Abelard, and Christine de Pizan,” Mediaevistik 12 (2001): 185–208; Classen, “The Quest for Knowledge within Medieval Literary Discourse: The Metaphysical and Philosophical Meaning of Love,” in Words of Love and Love of Words in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. Albrecht Classen (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 1–51; Classen, “Medieval Studies within German Studies: The Nibelungenlied and Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich,” in Taking Stock of German Studies in the United States: The New Millennium, ed. Rachel Halverston and Carol Anne Costabile-Heming (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015), 52–67; Classen, “The Meaning of Literature—A Challenge of Modern Times—What the

15

Pᴏᴇᴛiᴄ Rᴇfᴌᴇᴄᴛiᴏns in Mᴇᴅiᴇᴠᴀᴌ Gᴇrᴍᴀn Liᴛᴇrᴀᴛᴜrᴇ

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Sciences Cannot Teach Us: With Emphasis on the Gesta Romanorum, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, and the Verse Narratives by Heinrich Kaufringer,” Humanities 5, no. 2 (2016); accessed December 8, 2016, http://www. mdpi.com/2076-0787/5/2/24/html. Brent D. Shaw, “War and Violence,” in Interpreting Late Antiquity: Essays on the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001), 130–69.

16

Here I quote from Althochdeutsche Literatur: Mit altniederdeutschen Textbeispielen. Auswahl mit Übertragungen und Kommentar, ed. Horst Dieter Schlosser (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2004), 68–71.

17

Wolfgang Haubrichs, Die Anfänge volkssprachiger Schriftlichkeit im frühen Mittelalter (ca. 700–1050/60) (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988), 160. See Albrecht Classen, “Das Hildebrandslied im heutigen Literaturunterricht? Eine Herausforderung und große, ungenutzte Chance,” Unterrichtspraxis 38, no. 1 (2006): 19–30.

18

19

Albrecht Classen, “Why Do Their Words Fail? Communicative Strategies in the Hildebrandslied,” Modern Philology 93 (1995): 1–22; see also Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002), 1–52; see also Victor Millet, Germanische Heldendichtung im Mittelalter: Eine Einführung (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 24–47. Albrecht Classen, “The Jüngeres Hildebrandslied in Its Early Modern Printed Versions: A Contribution to Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Reception History,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 95, no. 3 (1996): 359–81.

20

We do know from Sterbelied Hildebrands and Old Norse Asmundar Saga kappabana that Hildebrand kills his son. For a discussion of the ending of the Hildebrandslied, see Dieter Kartschoke, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur im frühen Mittelalter (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1990), 126–27.

21

Das Nibelungenlied: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Nach der Handschrift B, ed. Ursula Schulze, trans. into modern German by Siegfried Grosse (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2010); see the contributions to Winder McConnell, ed., A Companion to the Nibelungenlied (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998); Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich, eds., The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia (New York: Routledge, 2002); Joachim Heinzle, Klaus Klein, and Ute Obhof, eds., Die Nibelungen: Sage—Epos—Mythos (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003).

22

23

Globally, in historical terms, see the contributions to Susanna A. Throop and Paul R. Hyams, eds., Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud (Farmham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010); see also Daniel Lord Smail and Kelly Gibson, eds., Vengeance in Medieval Europe: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); regarding revenge in this epic poem, see Irmgard Gephart, Der Zorn der Nibelungen: Rivalität und Rache im “Nibelungenlied” (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005); Regina Toepfer, Höfische Tragik: Motivierungsformen des Unglücks in mittelalterlichen Erzählungen (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013). See also the contributions to Martin Baisch, Evamaria Freienhofer, and Eva Lieberich, eds., Rache—Zorn—Neid: Zur Faszination negativer Emotionen in der Kultur und Literatur des Mittelalters (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2014).

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Joachim Bumke, Die vier Fassungen der “Nibelungenklage”: Untersuchungen zur Überlieferungsgeschichte und Textkritik der höfischen Epik im 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996); Walter Kofler, “Die Nibelungen-Werkstatt: Synopse der vollständigen Handschriften,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 142, no. 3 (2013): 415; here quoted from the online version, accessed December 8, 2016, http://www. zfda.de/beitrag.php?id=1131. See also the contributions to Egon Boshof and Fritz Peter Knapp, eds., Wolfger von Erla: Bischof von Passau (1191–1204) und Patriarch von Aquileja (1204–1218) als Kirchenfürst und Literaturmäzen (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1994). 24

25 Jan-Dirk Müller, Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998).

Francis G. Gentry, Triuwe and Vriunt in the Nibelungenlied (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1975).

26

This has been brilliantly discussed by Edward R. Haymes in his preface to The Dark Figure in Medieval German and Germanic Literature, ed. Haymes and Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1968), iii–vi.

27

Diu Klage: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar und Anmerkungen, ed. and trans. into modern German by Albrecht Classen (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1997); see also Elisabeth Lienert, ed., Die Nibelungenklage: Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der Ausgabe von Karl Bartsch. Einleitung, neuhochdeutsche Übersetzung und Kommentar (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000). 28

Michaela Eser, Augsburger Nibelungenlied und -klage: Edition und Untersuchung der Nibelungen-Handschrift b (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2015), stanzas 2343–45.

29

Jan-Dirk Müller, Das Nibelungenlied, 4th rev. and expanded ed. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2015), 92–93.

30

Francis G. Gentry, “Mort oder Untriuwe? Nibelungenliet und Nibelungennôt,” in Ergebnisse und Aufgaben der Germanistik am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts: Festschrift für Ludwig Erich Schmitt zum 80. Geburtstag; dargebracht von seinen Schülern und Freunden, ed. Elisabeth Feldbusch (Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann, 1989), 302–16.

31

32

See Winder McConnell’s contribution in this volume for a discussion of these motives and agendas.

In this regard, I would contradict Müller’s perception (Das Nibelungenlied, 2015) that the conclusion of the epic poem is determined by an epidemic of blood revenge and irrationality, as if some gods were responsible for the tragic outcome (167). There are no elusive forces that influence Hagen and Kriemhild. Both characters pursue very specific and clearly identified goals: self-defense and revenge at all costs. This does not mean that the catastrophe could not have been avoided; on the contrary, as the outcome indicates, human intentions and concrete agendas underlie the Armageddon. There is no elusive god or foggy destiny; instead, the Nibelungenlied is curiously structured by specifically personal intentions and strategies. This has huge implications for the way we interpret history at large. It is not a god, or destiny, we are dealing with, but ordinary individual purposes and operations sustained by selfish and greedy instincts.

33

Kudrun, according to the edition by Karl Bartsch, ed. Karl Stackmann (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000); here I quote, for convenience’s sake, from Kudrun, trans.

34

Pᴏᴇᴛiᴄ Rᴇfᴌᴇᴄᴛiᴏns in Mᴇᴅiᴇᴠᴀᴌ Gᴇrᴍᴀn Liᴛᴇrᴀᴛᴜrᴇ

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Winder McConnell (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1992). For solid studies on the Kudrun, see Ellen Bender, Nibelungenlied und Kudrun: Eine vergleichende Studie zur Zeitdarstellung und Geschichtsdeutung (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987); Barbara Siebert, Rezeption und Produktion: Bezugssysteme in der “Kudrun” (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988); Winder McConnell, The Epic of Kudrun: A Critical Commentary (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988); Scott E. Pincikowski, “Wahre Lügen: Das Erkennen und Verkennen von Verstellung und Betrug in Herzog Ernst B, Kudrun und König Rother,” in Verstellung und Betrug im Mittelalter und in der mittelalterlichen Literatur, ed. Matthias Meyer and Alexander Sager (Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2015), 175–93. See Albrecht Classen, “Eine einsame Stimme für den Frieden im Mittelalter: Der erstaunliche Fall von Kudrun,” Thalloris 1 (2016): 69–90. 35

McConnell, Epic of Kudrun, 89–98.

36

Millet, 249.

Heinrich Wittenwiler, Der Ring: Text—Übersetzung—Kommentar, nach der Münchener Handschrift, ed. and trans. into modern German by Werner Röcke with assistance from Annika Goldenbaum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012); see also Heinrich Wittenwiler, Der Ring: Frühneuhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch, nach dem Text von Edmund Wießner ins Neuhochdeutsche, trans. and ed. Horst Brunner (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1991). Brunner’s edition is particularly valuable because it contains extensive indices with names. See also Wittenwiler’s “Ring,” and the Anonymous Scots Poem “Colkelbie Sow”: Two Comic-Didactic Works from the Fifteenth Century, trans. George Fenwick Jones (New York: AMS Press, [1969]).

37

Eckart Conrad Lutz, Spiritualis Fornicatio: Heinrich Wittenwiler, seine Welt und sein “Ring” (Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1990); see also Corinna Laude, “Daz in swindelt in den sinnen . . .”: Die Poetik der Perspektive bei Heinrich Wittenwiler und Giovanni Boccaccio (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2002).

38

39

See the useful comments by Werner Röcke in his edition and translation of Wittenwiler’s Ring, 483–99.

40

See the explanations of the adjective “läppisch” in verse 44 and of “Lappenhausen” in verse 58 in Röcke’s commentary.

41

Aeschylus, Agamemnon (Dublin, NH: W. L. Bauhan, 1981).

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Diu Klage: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Einleitung, Übersetzung, Kommentar und Anmerkungen. Edited and translated into modern German by Albrecht Classen. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1997. Kudrun. According to the text by Karl Bartsch. Edited by Karl Stackmann. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000.

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Das Nibelungenlied: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Nach der Handschrift B. Edited by Ursula Schulze. Translated into modern German by Siegfried Grosse. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2010. Wittenwiler, Heinrich. Der Ring: Text—Übersetzung—Kommentar. Nach der Münchener Handschrift. Edited and translated into modern German by Werner Röcke with assistance from Annika Goldenbaum. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012.

Secondary Literature Baisch, Martin, Evamaria Freienhofer, and Eva Lieberich, eds. Rache—Zorn— Neid: Zur Faszination negativer Emotionen in der Kultur und Literatur des Mittelalters. Göttingen: V & R Unipress, 2014. Classen, Albrecht. Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2002. ———. “Why Do Their Words Fail? Communicative Strategies in the Hildebrandslied.” Modern Philology 93 (1995): 1–22. Classen, Albrecht, and Nadia Margolis, eds. War and Peace: Critical Issues in European Societies and Literature 800–1800. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011. Gentry, Francis G. Triuwe and Vriunt in the Nibelungenlied. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1975. Gephart, Irmgard. Der Zorn der Nibelungen: Rivalität und Rache im “Nibelungenlied.” Cologne: Böhlau, 2005. Haubrichs, Wolfgang. Die Anfänge volkssprachiger Schriftlichkeit im frühen Mittelalter (ca. 700–1050/60). Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1988. Heinzle, Joachim, Klaus Klein, and Ute Obhof, eds. Die Nibelungen: Sage— Epos—Mythos, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003. Lutz, Eckart Conrad. Spiritualis Fornicatio: Heinrich Wittenwiler, seine Welt und sein “Ring.” Sigmaringen: J. Thorbecke, 1990. McConnell, Winder, ed. A Companion to the Nibelungenlied. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998. ———. The Epic of Kudrun: A Critical Commentary. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988. McGuire, Brian Patrick, ed. War and Peace in the Middle Ages. Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 1987. Millet, Victor. Germanische Heldendichtung im Mittelalter: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008. Müller, Jan-Dirk. Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998. Smail, Daniel Lord, and Kelly Gibson, eds. Vengeance in Medieval Europe: A Reader. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Throop, Susanna A., and Paul R. Hyams, eds. Vengeance in the Middle Ages: Emotion, Religion and Feud. Farmham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2010.

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Wolfthal, Diane, ed. Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000.

5:

Beyond Good and Evil: Apocalyptic Vision without Judgment in the Nibelungenlied. An Essay

Winder McConnell

I

n ᴛhᴇ fifᴛᴇᴇnᴛh Âventiure of the post-Nibelungenlied epic, Kudrun, the heroine of the same name, daughter of the Hegeling monarchs Hetel and Hilde, is kidnapped by a jilted suitor, Hartmut of Ormanie, despite the fact that Kudrun has become engaged to Herwig of Seeland. Hetel and Herwig, supported by yet a third—albeit equally unsuccessful—suitor and hitherto adversary of Hetel, Siegfried von Morland, set off in pursuit of Kudrun. While Hetel tends to appear at this juncture as the somewhat hapless sovereign and father-protector, his old “Haudegen” (warhorse), Wate, emerges as the de facto leader of the Hegeling force. Wate knows “‘ir rehte wazzerstrâze’”1 (“the sea-route they [the Normans] will have to take”) and responds promptly to Hetel’s query, “‘wâ solte ich hie kiele hân?’” (837, 1; “Where can I find ships here?”): . . . “sîn mac wol werden rât. got tuot mit gewalte  † als ez umbe in stât. †2 jâ weiz ich hie vil nâhen  bî uns in dem lande wol sibenzic guoter kiele;  die stênt mit guoter spîse ûf einem sande. Die hânt pilgerîne  gefüeret ûf den sê. die müezen wir gewinnen,  swie ez uns dar nâch ergê. si suln gedulticlîchen  ûf dem sande erbîten, unz wir mit unsern vînden  uns versüenen oder . . . gestrîten.” (838–39) [“There may be a solution to this, for God acts in powerful ways, as is his nature. I know that seventy ships can be found in this country. They are on a beach not far from here and are full of provisions. They are being used by pilgrims in their journey across the sea. We must requisition them, regardless of the consequences. The pilgrims will just have to wait patiently on the beach until we have either made peace with our enemies or (defeated them) in battle.”]

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The Hegelings, particularly Wate (but he is not alone), display a remarkable degree of callousness toward the three thousand pilgrims, whose ships, along with more than five hundred of their number, are requisitioned. As Wate states, “‘swie ez uns dar nâch ergê’” (“whatever may subsequently befall us”/“regardless of the consequences”), they have to procure the ships. He appears to employ some deception when encountering the pilgrims, intimating that he (only) wishes to purchase any provisions they might be ready to sell (840, 3). Although Wate’s earlier remark in 838, 2 regarding God’s intervention creates the initial impression that the Almighty is “on their side,” the dark prediction contained in 840, 4, “des starb im [Wate] vil der mâge;  im selben kom ez ze unheile” (Many of his kinsmen and friends later paid with their lives for this, and Wate himself suffered great misfortune), calls into question any such assumption. “Des” (= the NHG adverb “deswegen,” for this reason) must refer not only to the misleading offer to purchase provisions but also to the intention to requisition the pilgrims’ vessels and, perhaps, Hetel’s later selection of five hundred or more of their stoutest to participate in the campaign against the Normans (844, 2b–3). From the outset, Wate’s strategy regarding the pilgrims and their ships stands under an unfavorable star. The entire episode underscores the uncompromising ruthlessness of the Hegelings, specifically of Wate and Hetel, toward the pilgrims: “Die pilgerîne klageten  und fluohten; des gieng in nôt. / swaz si im [Wate] ir dinges sageten,  er ahte ez niht ein brôt” (843, 1–2; The pilgrims objected bitterly and cursed [the Hegelings]; they were in a sorry state. But Wate could not have cared less how much they complained about their plight); “Hetele der enruochte,  ob si immer ûf daz mer / mit ir kriuze kœmen” (844, 1–2a; Hetel himself did not care at all whether they ever made it to sea under the sign of the cross). The narrator, anticipating the consequences of this violence toward the pilgrims, remarks rather ominously, “Ich weiz, ob des engulte  Hetele und sîne man, / daz ditze volc ellende  daz herzenleit gewan” (845, 1–2; I do not know whether Hetel and his men were made to do penance for the sorrow caused these people), but follows this up with the much more poignant comment, “ich wæne got   ræche dâ selbe sînen anden” (845, 4; I think that God himself avenged the wrongs done his people). The suffering the Hegelings cause the pilgrims is not confined to the latter; it extends to the Almighty himself through “sînen anden” (his people). God does, in fact, interfere in the affairs of humans, albeit in a very different manner from the way in which Wate imagined the Almighty’s intervention in 838, 2. The consequences, at least

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from Wate’s subsequently expressed perspective, are indeed catastrophic. The Hegeling force is wiped out by the Normans on the Wülpensand, and King Hetel is killed by Hartmut’s father, Ludwig, in the fighting. Wate’s devastating report to Hilde, “‘si sint alle erslagen’” (925, 2b; “They have all been killed”), is augmented by his belated revelation that the decimation of the Hegelings can be attributed to his own earlier actions against the pilgrims: “Er sprach: ‘mîn frou Hilde,  ez ist alsô komen: / ich hân bilgerînen  niun schif genomen’” (931, 1–2; He said: “Lady Hilde, it came about this way. I requisitioned nine ships from pilgrims”). This is a tacit admission on Wate’s part that he has committed a sin against God through his actions against the pilgrims, a point with which Hilde immediately concurs: “‘swer iht nimt pilgerînen,  der hât des sünde starke’” (932, 3; “Anyone who steals from pilgrims has committed a great sin”). The Wülpensand episode, while demanding high losses on both sides, is particularly devastating for the Hegelings, who now must wait until a new generation of warriors has matured before resuming their campaign against the Normans. This military defeat of the Hegelings may be viewed as the working of God, His judgment, and His revenge upon them for the travesties committed against the pilgrims and for how He Himself has had to suffer as a result. After having recognized that a dire sin has been committed, the Hegelings do penance, the ships are restored to the pilgrims, and the latter are compensated threefold for their losses (932, 4–933). In more than one respect, this “pilgrim” episode underscores a significant difference between the Nibelungenlied and the later Kudrun. A major sin against God has been committed, recognized as such, the injured parties indemnified, and, as a consequence, the possibility for restoration of the worldly order (of the Hegelings) at some point in the future assured. The irascible old warrior, Wate, draws a direct line between the unjust deed and divine judgment and condemnation. No such “otherworldly” judgment or condemnation is to be identified in the Nibelungenlied. The defeat of the Hegelings on the Wülpensand has been catastrophic but not apocalyptic. Time and continuity have not ceased for the Hegelings, as they appear to do for the Burgundians. For the former, it is simply a matter of having to bide their time, of waiting until a new generation has evolved to fill the ranks of the warrior class that has been decimated. Continuity may be disrupted, but it is not dissolved. There is no such consolation in the Nibelungenlied, however, a fact that was undoubtedly anathema to the poet of the later Nibelungenklage.3 While there are certainly episodes in Kudrun that underscore the

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presence of a pre-Christian ethos, both it and the Nibelungenklage contain unmistakable references to substantive elements of Christianity, including the aforementioned remark by Hilde pertaining to the sin incurred through the treatment of the pilgrims, and Brünhild’s praise of Sindolt in the Nibelungenklage: “‘nu müeze iu lônen Krist, / der aller dinge gewaltec ist’” (3765–66; “May Christ, who has power over all things, reward you”). This is not to suggest, however, that the primary “message” of either Kudrun or the Nibelungenklage is necessarily religious in nature; that neither the Christian religion nor its ethical code are far from the minds of the respective poets is, nonetheless, fairly apparent. The same cannot be said by any measure of the Nibelungenlied—a view hardly shared, however, by H. B. Willson, who, in his 1960 article “Blood and Wounds in the Nibelungenlied,” refers to the “Christian tone” of the poem, on which the poet imposed “a sacramental seal.”4 Willson’s views on the “religious background” (40) of elements of the Nibelungenlied had been preceded by those of Julius Schwietering, to whom Willson refers at the outset of his article; specifically, the scenes of Kriemhild’s lament, for Schwietering, are a “reflexion of the ‘Frömmigkeit des Herzens’ [piety of the heart] of Cistercian mysticism.”5 While it is not at all unreasonable to assume, with Willson, “that the poet’s way of thought was essentially Christian” (40), it does not necessarily follow that, even were he a cleric, trained in Christian schools, he intended to imbue the Nibelungenlied with imagery that was to be comprehended as Christian imagery. The scenes upon which Willson focuses—Siegfried’s death (“a ‘worldly’ analogy” [41] to Christ’s betrayal and Crucifixion), the bleeding wound of the dead Siegfried (which Willson, following Schwietering, views as “the concept of miraculous renewal fundamental to Christian mystical thought,” [41]), the opening of Siegfried’s coffin (a brief resurrection as Kriemhild takes final leave of her husband [42]), the blood-drinking in Etzel’s hall (a “‘worldly’ Eucharist” [43])—are viewed as legitimate comparisons with Christian religious imagery, but, as Willson himself points out, the context can be quite different, and (more often than not) “there is no exact correspondence” (41). Context, however, is essential. Is it reasonable to link Siegfried’s bleeding wound with any concept of “miraculous renewal,” given subsequent events in the Nibelungenlied? From the moment of Siegfried’s death, and perhaps even before that, the course has been set for the utter destruction of a people as a formidable military entity. Individual catastrophe will be complemented by collective decimation; at no time is there so much as a hint of “renewal,” rejuvenation, or any sort of salvation.

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To view the blood-drinking by the Burgundians in Etzel’s hall (Âventiure 36) as a “worldly Eucharist” might well be considered selfcontradictory. The Eucharist is not only a Christian sacrament; it is regarded as “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Lumen gentium, no. 11). The bread and wine that have become the body and blood of Christ constitute the Most Blessed Sacrament. Hagen’s recommendation to his companions in the burning hall to drink the blood of the fallen appears, however, to be motivated solely by the pragmatic concern to have them quench their thirst.6 This is not to deny that there may well have been the recognition or some association on the part of the poet (and, perhaps, the audience) that the consumption of blood can relieve fatigue, as modern-day medical sanguinarians are quick to point out, and the narrator himself underscores this additional benefit: “dô wart ir michel mêre,  die trunken ouch daz bluot. / dâ von gewan vil krefte  ir eteslîches lîp” (2117, 2–3; Many more of them joined in drinking the blood, and many a body gained new strength). Willson assumes a specific authorial intentionality—a deliberate, intended connection between said scenes in the epic and Christian imagery—for which the text of the Nibelungenlied provides no direct support. Neither by the narrator/poet, nor by any specific character within the work, is a connection made between those scenes selected by Willson and Christian ritual or tradition. This stands in contrast to the aforementioned remarks by Wate, Hilde, and the narrator in Kudrun regarding the sin committed against God’s pilgrims and the dire consequences visited upon the Hegeling forces on the Wülpensand as a result. Wate’s “requisition” of the pilgrims’ ships was evil, requiring recognition as a sin against God, with subsequent penance, contrition, and restitution to the injured party essential before ordo could be restored within the Hegeling community. If God and the substantive tenets of Christianity do not represent a significant presence in the Nibelungenlied, it also follows that the events in the epic do not lend themselves, in the final analysis, to a judgment based on an understanding of good and evil as embodied in the moral code propagated by Christianity. Consider the murder of Siegfried in the sixteenth Âventiure. True enough, the nefarious plan of Gunther and Hagen to organize a “hunt” is undertaken “mit untriuwen” (916, 2a; treacherously); the narrator subsequently refers to the Burgundians’ “sô valschen muot” (964, 3b; falsity), to the “schanden” (964, 4b; disgrace/ ignominy) from which they are not immune, to Gunther’s words spoken “in valsche” (966, 2b; falsely/deceitfully), and to the “meine” (970, 4a; deceit) behind Hagen’s suggestion, made in the absence of wine and clearly accepted by the other Burgundians, to quench their thirst

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at a nearby spring (969, 2–3). The actual murder is described by the narrator as the “grôze missewende” (981, 4a; greatest misdeed) ever perpetrated by a warrior. Siegfried’s death is further described as “de[r] ungetriuwe[ ] tôt” (988, 4b; death caused by disloyalty/treachery), and Gunther and Hagen are referred to by Siegfried as “‘ir vil bœsen zagen’” (989, 1a; “you wicked cowards”); the dying hero predicts—incorrectly— that the two, to whom he attributes “‘den mortlîchen sit’” (994, 2b; “a murderous bent”), will be ostracized “‘mit laster’” (990, 4a; “with contempt/dishonor”) by good warriors. Siegfried, in many ways remarkably naive, views the act perpetrated against him as one might expect not only by the victim but also by the scores of others associated with the Burgundian court who were not directly privy to the fiasco that had ensued between Brünhild and Kriemhild before the minster. On the surface, the murder of Siegfried appears to be purely and simply a heinous, treacherous act. Even those who witnessed the quarrel of the queens and who may have sympathized with the sentiments of Brünhild and understood Hagen’s desire to avenge the disgrace and dishonor visited upon the Burgundian royal family through Kriemhild’s (and, supposedly, Siegfried’s prior) indiscreet remarks, would have found it difficult to countenance the underhanded murder of a guest at court. Yet, apart from the various expressions of grief and outrage on the part of Kriemhild, Siegmund, and the narrator, as well as, one may assume, numerous Burgundians who have little insight into what has been transpiring behind the scenes, there is no evidence that, with the obvious exception of Kriemhild, a consistent condemnation of the crime is maintained for more than a relatively short space of time. Initial reactions to the murder of Siegfried are indeed diverse. The perpetrator, Hagen, does not view it in terms of good and evil but rather, as indicated in the Bartsch/de Boor note to stanza 993 (“Das uralte Motiv der Machtsteigerung durch Siegfrieds Tod,” 164): as a means to increase Burgundian power, but also as a way to remove his “sorge” and “leit” (cares and sorrows)—and those of the Burgundian king (who, in 992, 1, expresses regret over the death of Siegfried)—that have been engendered through Siegfried’s presence at Worms. Note also the reference to “Hagens wilder Jubel” (Hagen’s wild joy) in the same footnote. Hagen, in fact, takes pride in his action. He will never display remorse for the murder of Siegfried, nor will he ever regard it in any but pragmatic terms. In his eyes, he is not morally “guilty” of anything but is rather the one responsible for restoring the honor of the Burgundians and, in the process, augmenting their stature as a political-military entity. While he is sufficiently astute to recognize the connection

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between Siegfried’s murder (as well as the robbing of the Nibelungen treasure) and the conflagration that later ensues in Gran, he never considers this sequence of events from a spiritual perspective. Hagen may not even view Siegfried’s murder as a transgression against a worldly, courtly code, despite his having slain the hero from behind—how else could he defeat this virtually invulnerable adversary?—but certainly at no time does he see it as a transgression against God. If anything, has he not helped to restore a sense of “order” to a world threatened by the unpredictability of a hero who had become dangerously integrated into the world of the dragon and incorporated the latter’s penchant for unleashing chaos? The Burgundians who participated in the “hunt”—or, at least, some who have gathered around the slain hero and may have heard both Hagen’s self-vindication in stanza 993, as well as Siegfried’s final words (994–97)—deliberate on how best to “cover up” the act. Their proposal, that Siegfried was hunting alone when he was set upon and killed by robbers (1000, 2–4), is greeted with disdain by Hagen, who intimates that he is indifferent to Kriemhild’s possibly gaining knowledge that he is Siegfried’s killer. He exhibits no shame, which would be illogical, as the killing of Siegfried was for him not an evil but a good—and necessary—act. As intimated above, he takes pride, in fact, in what he has done. The narrator refers in 1003, 1–2 to Hagen’s “grôzer übermüete” (great arrogance) and his “eislîcher râche” (terrible revenge) in placing Siegfried’s corpse before Kriemhild’s chamber, but one notes the absence of any (Christian) moralizing or condemnation on his part. This also holds true for everyone else in the epic. Kriemhild, as well as Siegmund, Siegfried’s father, are interested solely in avenging the death of the hero (note 1024 and 1027–28)—a move rejected, however, by Kriemhild on purely strategic grounds (1031–35). Intriguing at this juncture is the attitude of the “common man” (“die edelen burgære,” 1036, 4a; the good townspeople) toward the death of Siegfried. The narrator makes it clear that the citizens of Worms are clueless with respect to Siegfried’s “schulde” (1037, 2a; guilt). The reader is thus left to ruminate on what they may have been told regarding the cause of Siegfried’s demise. Is the lie about a lone Siegfried attacked by robbers— a lie unequivocally rejected by his murderer, Hagen—actually in circulation? Gunther himself is depicted propagating it in stanza 1045, 4a. Anyone having contact with Hagen, on the other hand, could expect an honest response from the latter. It should be assumed, however, that it does not take long for the truth to become widely circulated. There were certainly numerous Burgundians within earshot of Siegfried’s last

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words. Even Gernot and Giselher, while not having participated in the hunt (926, 4), must have been informed of Siegfried’s bleeding wounds in Hagen’s presence; from this quarter, as well, no judgment is forthcoming, simply a promise to compensate (“ergetzen,” 1049, 3a) their sister as long as they might live. Apart from Kriemhild and Siegmund, Siegfried’s death does not unleash a consistent wave of indignation, nor does it evoke even moral, spiritual condemnation—now or later—from any source within or beyond Burgundy; the focus is squarely on lamentation over what is generally regarded as the passing of a great hero. Given the extent of the sorrow and suffering expressed, it is all the more surprising that there is not a single comment from anyone other than Kriemhild and Siegmund addressing the matter of guilt or the need to let justice take its course. Consider the widespread lack of condemnation of Hagen for Siegfried’s murder. The critical remarks on Hagen found in the sixteenth Âventiure remain consistent with only one figure in the Nibelungenlied— namely, Kriemhild. One notes the esteem in which Hagen is held by both Rüdiger and Dietrich, and even the Hunnish rank and file appear eager to catch a glimpse of the man who laid low the dragonslayer (1732, 3–1733). Throughout the second part of the Nibelungenlied, the narrative tone registers a discernible change, and Hagen, at least to the narrator the epitome of untriuwe (treachery) at the time of Siegfried’s murder, comes to be viewed as the embodiment of triuwe (loyalty) by the close of the epic. His slaying of Siegfried may not be grounds for praise, but it also does not prove to be grounds for sustained condemnation as an evil act. If the murder of Siegfried is not presented unequivocally as evil, does this suggest that morality plays no role within the Nibelungenlied? Not at all; but the morality of the epic is rooted in the warrior code of precourtly society. There is certainly a religious-philosophical dimension to the Nibelungenlied. It is not, however, rooted in Christianity, which receives, at best, a rather superficial nod, and which, paradoxically, contains nothing of the faith’s spirituality. On the whole, the epic appears devoid of any perspective involving the dichotomy between good and evil.7 The Nibelungenlied provides, from the outset, through both the narrator and various characters, through dreams and predictions, ominous auguries of dire times ahead for Siegfried (13–14, 921, 924) as well as for the Burgundians and others alike—specifically, in the latter instances, references to the loss of many lives in the years to come. The predictions regarding collective catastrophe, whether inserted as anonymous comments by the narrator (e.g., “dar umbe muosen degene  vil

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verliesen den lîp” [2, 4; As a consequence, many warriors had to lose their lives]8 and “durch sîn eines sterben  starp vil maneger muoter kint” [19, 4; Through the death of this one man, many a mother’s child would perish]), or encased, for example, in Ute’s dream “‘wie allez [my emphasis] daz gefügele  in disem lande wære tôt’” (1509, 4; “how all the birds in this land were dead”), or the water sprite’s remark that all those Burgundians who ride into Etzel’s land “‘die habent den tôt an der hant’” (1540, 4b; “they will meet their deaths”), are to be differentiated in terms of their “apocalyptic” tenor. The former two predictions limit the devastation; “many” warriors and “many” a mother’s child will lose his life; one might suggest that they reflect the older meaning of ἀποκάλυψις (apokalupsis) as an “uncovering,” a “revelation,” or a “disclosure” but certainly lack the Christian dimension of the end of a (sinful) age in which good triumphs over evil. They are, however, as yet devoid of a clear indication of the much more cataclysmic fate of peoples that awaits in Gran. The latter auguries, one in the form of a dream, the other in the form of an outright prophecy, expand the extent of devastation, particularly with respect to the Burgundian warrior class, the extermination of which reflects the idea of the apocalyptic in the sense of the end of an era—that is, the end of the Burgundian age but without the (Christian) consolation of a better age to follow. For Hagen, acceptance of a more limited, if by no means inconsequential, tragedy is understandable. He is something of a seer; he can fully understand the danger, emanating from Kriemhild, to both himself and the Burgundian kings associated with a visit to the court of Etzel. That is to say, he accepts the “limited” version of disaster; lives will likely be lost as a consequence of his having murdered Siegfried. He can also envision that his life and the lives of the Burgundian kings will be among them (note 1458, 3–1459; 1461). But that the entire Burgundian warrior class should be wiped out is to Hagen, initially at least, unfathomable. He resolutely rejects the apocalyptic vision first articulated by Ute in her “bird” dream, in which she refers to the death of “‘allez daz gefügele in disem lande’” (1509, 4; “all the birds in this land”). His initial, and negative, reaction to the Hunnish invitation to the Burgundians to visit Gran is understandably motivated by his justified belief that Gunther, and, very possibly, Gernot and Giselher, to say nothing of his own person, may never return from Hungary. His prime concern, however, has always been for the welfare of the Burgundian hierarchy, and he has never entertained any thought that the entire rank and file of the existing Burgundian warrior class could be wiped out. Hence his immediate rejection of Ute’s dream: “‘Swer sich an troume wendet,’ sprach dô Hagene, / ‘der enweiz der rehten mære  niht ze sagene /

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wenn’ ez im ze êren  volleclîchen stê’” (1510, 1–3; “Whoever puts his trust in dreams,” said Hagen, “does not know when his actions are fully in accord with his honor”). Yet, it is not at all clear that Hagen entirely means what he says. The ramifications of Ute’s dream are simply too dire; had Ute dreamt that four eagles of the land lay dead, one is inclined to believe that Hagen might readily have accepted this as a reasonable portent of what awaited him and the Burgundian kings in the land of the Huns. That Hagen does not simply cast aside all supernatural prophecies or auguries is evident from the encounter with the bathing water sprites in the twenty-fifth Âventiure. When Hadeburg offers to relate how the trip to the Huns will turn out, provided Hagen returns the garments she and Sigelint have left on shore, he readily complies with her wish, knowing full well that these “wîsiu wîp” (1533, 3b; wise women) are endowed with the powers of foresight. Yet, he remains skeptical when Sigelint, contradicting her aunt Hadeburg’s thoroughly positive prediction, informs him that (save one) all of the Burgundians will perish in Gran: “‘wand’ ir helde küene  alsô geladet sît, / daz ir sterben müezet  in Etzelen lant. / swelhe dar gerîtent,  die habent den tôt an der hant’” (1540, 2–4; “For you brave heroes have been invited so that you will die in Etzel’s land. Those who ride there are riding to their death”). Hagen’s initial reaction is similar to that demonstrated earlier by him when Ute related her “bird” dream: “‘wie möhtez sich gefüegen,  daz wir alle [my emphasis] tôt / solden dâ belîben  durh iemannes haz?’” (1541, 2–3; “How can it be that we will all be killed there as a result of someone’s animosity?”). Sigelint emphasizes once again the all-inclusiveness of her prophecy, excepting solely the king’s chaplain: “‘ez muoz alsô wesen, / daz iuwer deheiner  kan dâ niht genesen, / niwan des küneges kappelân’” (1542, 1b–3a; “It is inevitable that none of you will survive, other than the king’s chaplain”). While Hagen does not reject Sigelint’s prediction outright, as he had the clear ramifications of Ute’s dream, he does remark on how distressful it would be to have to relate to his lords “‘daz wir zen Hiunen solden  vliesen alle [my emphasis] den lîp’” (1543, 3; “that we will all lose our lives in the land of the Huns”). Once again, the significance of “alle” in this exchange should not be underestimated. While the poet points to Hagen’s concerned state of mind (“in grimmem muote” [1543, 1a; ill-tempered], “Dem ungemuoten recken” [1545, 1a; the surly warrior]), and certainly does not depict him disputing the forewarning of Sigelint, it is quite clear that he is not yet convinced of the apocalyptic destiny that awaits all of the Burgundian host in Hungary; hence his decision to “test” the veracity

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of the prophecy uttered by the water sprite by attempting to drown the king’s chaplain. While Gernot and Giselher register a verbal protest against the act—Gunther is nowhere mentioned throughout this scene—no one makes an effort to assist the hapless chaplain. At this juncture, the poet interjects an intriguing reference to the Almighty. Since the chaplain cannot swim, “im half diu gotes hant, / daz er wol kom gesunder  hin wider ûz an daz lant” (1579, 3b–4; With the aid of God’s hand, he safely made his way back to land). God is present, albeit unrecognized by anyone among the Burgundians (other than, one can assume, the chaplain himself). Hagen gives no indication that he recognizes the intervening and benevolent hand of God in the saving of the chaplain. He simply views the chaplain’s survival as proof that Sigelind was telling the truth, and, for the first time, he accepts the apocalyptic pronouncement: “er dâhte: ‘diese degene  müezen verliesen den lîp’” (1580, 4; He thought to himself: “These warriors will lose their lives”). The wise water sprite’s prophecy will be fulfilled, but Hagen does not formulate any connection between it and the workings of the Almighty. His words reflect more the older sentiment of the Hildebrandslied (“‘wewurt skihit’”; “dire fate will run its course”) with regard to the inevitability of what is to follow. There is also no suggestion that Hagen regards what is to befall the Burgundians as some sort of penance for past “sins”—that is, the murder of Siegfried; the theft of the Nibelungen treasure; the sorrow, in toto, inflicted upon Kriemhild; to say nothing of his futile attempt to murder God’s representative, the king’s chaplain. It is solely the narrator who provides the reference to God and his intervention; nor do we hear anything further from the Burgundian kings in this respect. Dancwart, Hagen’s brother, is, in fact, more concerned with Hagen’s destruction of the ferry and the problem of how to cross the Danube on their return to Worms from Hungary (1582, 1–3). At this juncture, Hagen is the only one among the Burgundian host who is aware of the fate that awaits them in Gran. His revealing of this information to his companions is relatively laconic (1587, 3–1589), and, while these revelations are met with some understandable blanching, there is no discussion whatsoever—at least, none reported in the text—as to how they have come to find themselves in this conundrum. Do they simply accept this state of affairs as fate and Hagen’s attempted drowning of the chaplain as an understandable, or even justifiable, means of testing the prophecy? There is certainly no condemnation of the latter. Several explanations offer themselves for what appears to be a rather passive acceptance on the part of the Burgundians of Hagen’s thoroughly apocalyptic proclamation. Given subsequent events at Rüdiger’s

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castle in Pöchlarn, specifically the betrothal of his daughter to Giselher, it might be suggested that, after their initial shock over the dire nature of the prediction, many of the Burgundians, including the kings, are not entirely convinced that they are all destined to perish in Hungary. Such a reaction would be rooted in a similar skepticism to that demonstrated by Hagen toward the implied symbolism of Ute’s dream and, subsequently, the prophecy of the water sprite—that is, a skepticism directed at the totality of the apocalyptic nature of said prophecy. That some, even many, of them would die in Hungary is an understandable, if not “acceptable,” forecast, but that no one will survive—effectively erasing Burgundy as a military power of any significance in their world—is not. The essential difference between Hagen’s attempted murder of the royal chaplain in the Nibelungenlied and Wate’s requisitioning of the pilgrims’ vessels in Kudrun is that Wate, despite his decidedly “nonChristian” bearing, recognizes that this was an offense against the Almighty, a sin, and that the catastrophe on the Wülpensand was a consequence of this transgression. Neither Hagen, nor, for that matter, the rest of the Burgundians—above all, the three kings—at any time associate the violence against the priest, to say nothing of the murder of Siegfried, with sin, a violation of God’s law. While the defeat visited upon the Hegelings on the Wülpensand may be justifiably viewed as a national catastrophe, it is no Armageddon, which the total destruction of the Burgundian warrior class in Gran represents. There is continuity in Kudrun but not even a semblance of the same in the Nibelungenlied, whether in this world or the next. As radical as such a statement may appear to be, it can be contended with considerable justification that, with respect to the plot, or the cause-effect relationship between actions and consequences, God plays no role whatsoever in the Nibelungenlied, despite the presence of His representatives and references to the Church and even to the soul. He pronounces no judgment on the Burgundians, the Huns, or anyone else, nor is He described as intervening at any time within the plot itself, other than to assist the king’s chaplain. The apocalyptic conclusion to the epic has no roots in divine intervention. There is, most assuredly, cause and effect, but it is not based on Christian premises. Can there, however, be an apocalyptic vision without some form of clear—or at least implied—judgment? The Nibelungenlied would appear to suggest that this is indeed the case. There is no reference to a better life to come, to compensation of any sort for the prolific bloodletting at Gran; there is equally not a hint of moral condemnation for the catastrophe in the Nibelungenlied, of either a secular or a spiritual nature.

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One might refer to 1855–56 and Hagen’s advice to his lords to go to church: “‘ir sult vil willeclîchen  zuo der kirchen gân, / unde klaget got dem rîchen  sorge und iuwer nôt’” (1855, 2–3; “You should readily go to church and lay before almighty God your trials and tribulations”). Stanza 1856, 1–2 is considered by the editors as an “Aufforderung zur Beichte” (292; call to confession). Is Hagen actually calling upon the Burgundians to confess? The two stanzas are remarkable in their own right. Hagen’s advice to the Burgundians to go “willeclîchen zuo der kirchen” (1855, 2), to lay their cares and sorrows before God and not to forget “swaz ir habet getân” (1856, 1)—that is, to confess what they, the Burgundians, have done—casts him in the role that would otherwise have been assumed by the king’s chaplain, had the latter’s journey to Hungary not been rudely interrupted. There is no reason to believe, however, that Hagen has specific sinful acts in mind when he admonishes the Burgundians. It is more likely meant in a general sense, a final confession of one’s sinful life prior to death. Whether or not Hagen follows his own advice is not at all clear from the text, but it is difficult enough to imagine his appearing before a father confessor, to say nothing of expressing contrition for his killing of Siegfried—a deed for which, in stanza 993, he not only takes full credit, but in which he also expresses pride—or, for that matter, for his theft of Kriemhild’s Nibelungen treasure. He may have entertained second thoughts about the wisdom of attempting to murder the king’s chaplain, but the text is notably silent on that point. While Hagen urges others to confess and make their peace with the Almighty, he seeks no expiation for his own sins. Neither here, nor at any point in the future, does Hagen demonstrate remorse for his own past acts. Unlike Wate in the Kudrun epic, Hagen does not recognize any direct correlation between a transgression against the spiritual order and the catastrophe that befalls him and the other Burgundians at Gran. This is true not only of Hagen, however, but also of every other member of the Burgundian party and, perhaps most significantly, of the narrator himself. This much appears to be clear regarding the poet’s point of view within the Nibelungenlied: he is determined to portray an apocalyptic disaster visited upon the Burgundians—one that might have been avoided had they put aside their “übermuot” (arrogance) and spoken candidly to Etzel about Kriemhild’s intentions.9 At least, that is the poet/narrator’s view; it is the sole condemnation of the Burgundians’ “lack of communication” in the Nibelungenlied. The latter is intimately connected to their views on honor and their acceptance of fate, whether they believe that fate to be determined by a somewhat nebulous, and primitive, understanding of a “Christian” God or a less defined concept rooted in a pre-Christian ethos.

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Compare, however, Nibelungenklage 542, where the grief experienced by those who remain alive at Etzel’s court is identified as having been inflicted upon them by God: “die swære het in got gegeben” (God had inflicted upon them this terrible grief). Yet, even the Klage poet himself stands between two worlds: regardless of Kriemhild’s role in bringing about the catastrophe, her loyalty (toward Siegfried) should assure her God’s favor and a place in heaven (Klage, 571–73). Werner Hoffmann has made a rather sharp distinction with respect to genre between the Nibelungenlied and the Klage, considering the latter to be more of “eine christlich-moralische Lehrdichtung als eine Heldendichtung” (a didactic poem on Christian morality than a heroic poem).10 Whereas both the Klage and Kudrun depict a causal relationship between the arousing of God’s anger and ensuing disaster, the Nibelungenlied poet makes no effort to suggest that such a motif lies at the basis of the apocalyptic outcome of the epic. In an era when associations between individual failing and divine punishment were not at all wanting—apart from the Klage and Kudrun, consider also Hartmann von Aue’s Armer Heinrich or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (to say nothing, outside the literary sphere, of the abundance of graphic representations in the Middle Ages of the Apocalypse in illustrated manuscripts)—it is noteworthy that the Nibelungenlied remains without any reference to the Almighty, self-revelations of guilt, or any sort of judgment that transcends the worldly. There is an acceptance of the way things are: namely, that joy is elusive and always gives way to sorrow in the end (2378, 4)—in itself the most decidedly non-Christian sentiment expressed in the entire work. Why did the Nibelungen poet avoid a “good-bad” approach, or one that would allow some room for divine intervention as a response to the “dark” events of the epic? Clearly, he had no interest in such a perspective (would that disqualify the authorship of the Nibelungenlied by a religious?). If we assume that the “final” cleric—and he must have been an individual trained in writing and reading by a religious institution, whether a Domschule (cathedral school) or a monastery—then one may certainly inquire why the desolate outlook at the conclusion of the Nibelungenlied remained intact, at least until the advent of the Klage. Several possibilities present themselves: 1) said cleric wished to remain loyal—as much as possible—to the original text, the latter conceived at a time when Christianity may have held less influence in western Europe; 2) said writer did not fully understand or, for that matter, believe that any form of reconciliation could be possible, given the extent of depravity and destruction at the conclusion of the epic; 3) while seemingly contradictory, it is not inconceivable that the scribe, even a religious scribe,

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harbored rather pessimistic, rather than optimistic, feelings regarding the ultimate fate of humanity and tended to concur with what he found stated by the poet in the penultimate stanza of the epic, as much as this would have placed him at odds with the basic tenets of Christianity. There are, in effect, two apocalyptic visions in the Nibelungenlied and on two very distinct levels. There is the more limited—as paradoxical as that may sound—“historical” dimension, namely, the demise of the Burgundians as a long-standing military and political entity in western Europe (perhaps the literary reflection of the defeat of the historical Burgundians by the Franks at the battle of Autun in 532). Strictly speaking, the definitive nature of the demise of the Burgundians/Nibelungs is open to question. Young Siegfried, son of Gunther and Brünhild, is, after all, alive and well with his mother in Worms. The Nibelungenlied poet, however, has made virtually no reference to him throughout the epic, and the symbolic, and real, significance that he now represents for the continuity of the Burgundian royal line is of no interest to the poet whatsoever. Moreover, as was the case with the Hegelings in Kudrun after the battle on the Wülpensand, the Burgundians are not completely wiped out physically. Not every Burgundian traveled to Hungary. It might well take a few decades, but what stands in the way of a rebuilding of the Burgundian warrior class over time? On both matters, the Nibelungenlied poet remains conspicuously silent, and it is left to the Klage poet to address the first point, the matter of Burgundian continuity, by urging the speedy coronation of Gunther’s heir in Worms. Secondly, the cataclysmic conclusion—the graphic physical destruction—so prevalent in the final scenes of the Nibelungenlied pales in comparison with the poet’s own philosophically (not religiously) apocalyptic vision as expressed so unequivocally and unforgivingly in stanza 2378. He has certainly not underestimated the extent of the “worldly” tragedy that has befallen the thousands slain at Gran, the allencompassing “jâmer unde nôt” (2378, 2b; misery and grief) suffered by participants on both sides, the utter sorrow in which Etzel’s festival has ended. As such, he has given appropriate recognition to the first of the aforementioned apocalyptic visions. But it is the fourth verse of this stanza that projects a vision much more devastating in nature, for it also defies the very essence of medieval—and not just medieval—Christianity by suggesting that there is no consolation for the trials and tribulations of this world, no ultimate joy in a hereafter. Whereas the joy of Etzel’s festival may have met its demise in the utter destruction of the Burgundian warrior class and a large number of the Hunnish and allied forces, this could, as intimated above, be viewed as a temporal phenomenon. Not so the destruction, or transitory nature, of joy in itself.

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The significance of 2378, 4 lies in the little word “ie” (NHG “immer,” always). It carries a weight similar to that carried by the allusion to “all” in the aforementioned references to the eradication of the Burgundian warrior class. There is no “limited” temporality in “ie,” no room at all for compromise. The note to 2378, 4 in the Bartsch/de Boor edition of the Nibelungenlied (1967), “Wiederholt fast wörtlich 17, 3/4. Anfang und Ende schließen sich in der herben Erkenntnis zusammen, daß alle Lust in Leid endet” (371; Repeats almost literally 17, 3/4. Beginning and ending are united in the bitter recognition that all joy ends in sorrow), is misleading. In 17, 3, Kriemhild has only “liebe” in the sense of “love” between a man and a woman in mind. The context is quite clear in this regard: “‘ez ist an manegen wîben  vil dicke worden scîn, / wie liebe mit leide  ze jungest lônen kan’” (17, 2–3: “It has often enough become clear for many a woman how love can lead to sorrow in the end”). Moreover, the tone of the Kriemhild’s words is much more ambivalent than what we find with the poet in 2738, 4; compare “‘lônen kan’” (my emphasis: “can lead to”) with “ie . . . gît” (always . . . produces). We note, as well, the exclusive nature of the phrase “‘an manegen wîben.’” The more limited context of the “liebe—leit” (love— sorrow) dichotomy in male-female relationships in stanza 17 can hardly be compared with the broad context that informs 2378, 4. Even here, “liebe” does not simply allude to the “joy” that had earlier prevailed at Etzel’s court. With the inclusion of the adverb “ie,” the poet has elevated his vision of the apocalyptic to encompass the end of all things. Humanity’s ultimate destiny is sorrow and suffering. Toward the conclusion of his article, H. B. Willson states, “Leidenstreue is . . . the basic factor in the unity and integrity of the Nibelungenlied. For the Austrian poet the leit of his poem is Christian leit—herzeleit. It is the suffering—passio—inflicted upon man by his fellows, and therefore on God, who became man. . . . It is also the sympathetic suffering of man with his fellows and therefore with Godin-Christ in his agony—compassion” (49). Based on our interpretation of 2378, 4, we believe that nothing could be further from the truth. There is not a trace of evidence within the Nibelungenlied—provided by either the poet/narrator or his protagonists—that the concept of leit has anything to do with passio or compassio. Leit is simply leit, whether it refers to the suffering inflicted upon a person (“angetanes Leid”) or that perceived by the individual regardless of the source. In 2378, 4, leit is elevated to an existential absolute. It is indeed “the final destiny of all men,” as Willson claims (49), but its function as an absolute serves not to unify, but rather to separate, the world of humans forever from the (Christian) spiritual sphere. In this world, liebe and leit do not form a

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unity, cannot do so, when liebe always “gives” (“gît”), “leads to,” “produces” leit. This is not to be compared to Tristan 58–62, as Siegfried Grosse suggests.11 In those verses, Gottfried commends the being who “samet [emphasis mine] in eime herzen treit / ir süeze sûr, ir liebez leit” (bears/carries in one heart [the world’s] sweet bitterness, its joyful sorrow).12 The Nibelungenlied poet has no interest in such oxymora, nor is it his intention to praise those (“noble hearts”) capable of encompassing both joy and sorrow within their breasts. Humanity’s leit, its ultimate destiny, is not regarded by the poet of the Nibelungenlied as punishment for sin; it is not a judgment of any sort. The hubris displayed by Siegfried and the Burgundians and, for that matter, even the machinations of Kriemhild, are not viewed in terms of good or evil, transgressions to be punished by the gods or by God, but as manifestations of human fate. In Wolfram’s Parzival, the protagonist homo viator can achieve, through his own process of individuation involving suffering and reflection, ultimate personal and spiritual happiness. In Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, noble hearts may realize wholeness, completeness, a “new” spirituality through an acceptance of liebe and leit. In the Nibelungenlied, a much darker vision prevails: joy can exist in the world, but always as the precursor to a sorrowful end for which no compensation is offered either in this world or the next. H. B. Willson remarks, “The conflict of Brünhilt and Kriemhilt sets in motion a chain reaction which ends in the almost total annihilation of all concerned” (50). In fact, the entire Burgundian warrior class, including the squires who have not yet been knighted, is wiped out, and the Nibelungenlied poet, unlike the author of the Nibelungenklage, leaves no room for dynastic continuity, despite the fact that an heir to the Burgundian throne, the young Siegfried, is alive and well in Worms—as intimated above, a point not lost on the Klage poet. From the perspective of the Burgundian dynasty, the outcome of the battle in Gran is nothing short of apocalyptic. Only partially correct, however, is Willson’s claim that “[n]one escape this universal sorrow, which reflects the sorrowful human condition, life in this ‘vale of tears,’ sin and the price paid for sin” (50). Strophe 2378, verse 4 (not cited by Willson) provides the basis for Willson’s claim, excluding the final seven words. Nowhere in the Nibelungenlied, despite all of its Christian “trappings,” is there an allusion to sin or the “wages of sin.” Nor should we infer from said “trappings” that the poet intended to depict such causality. His declaration in 2378, 4 that in the end joy always (my emphasis) turns to sorrow sums up his philosophy of life. It is a philosophy of life that leaves little, or no, room for Christian reconciliation or a happier life to come. “Salvation and damnation are not mentioned,” as Willson correctly states (50); the

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“Christian tone” and “sacramental seal” he ascribes to the Nibelungenlied are, in fact, totally lacking. In contrast, the Klage poet’s stance on Christianity, on guilt and judgment, is made abundantly clear in Etzel’s lamentations over the course events have taken. He attributes his misery to “gotes slac” (954; God’s wrath) that has been visited upon him and that is accountable for the heavy “schade” and “laster” (948; injuries, shame) that he now bears. The apocalyptic outcome at the court of Gran is attributable to the Almighty’s anger at Etzel for his having returned to the false gods Mahmet and Machazên (965), for having turned his back on Christianity (984) and the Christian God, whom he had served for five years. While Etzel appears ignorant of the ability of sinners to express sincere contrition in order to effect forgiveness, or even of the Almighty’s capacity for compassion, his revelations at this point in the Klage have no parallel in the Nibelungenlied, although they do have something in common with the Christian-influenced cause-effect motif associated with Wate and his transgression in Kudrun. Moreover, in the Klage, Hildebrand makes a direct connection between the “crimes” of the Burgundians—specifically, the murder of Siegfried (note 1265–82)—and the wrath of God. In a complete reversal of the attitude he exhibits toward Hagen in the Nibelungenlied, Hildebrand refers to him in verse 1250, employing the appellative most associated with Kriemhild in the epic: “‘vâlant’” (“devil”) as the one person “‘‘der ez allez riet’” (1251; “who caused it all”). Hagen is to blame for what has transpired at Gran, and the anonymous poet extends said blame to the Burgundian kings as a group: “ine kan mihs anders niht verstên, wan daz die helde ûz erkorn den vreislîchen gotes zorn nu lange her verdienet hân.” (1270–73)13 [“I find it hard to believe that these illustrious warriors have not deserved the wrath of God for a long time now.”]

It was the arrogance of the Burgundians that occasioned the latter (1276–77); they brought upon themselves the catastrophe at Gran (1282). The important point here is the connection between the Burgundians’ prior failings and the anger of, and punishment through, God, a motif that finds no parallel in the Nibelungenlied. Both the author of the Klage and the Kudrun poet depict accountability, in Christian terms, for one’s worldly actions, and this is a marked departure from the basic tenor of the Nibelungenlied, where spiritual

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judgment, condemnation, and punishment are conspicuously lacking. In the latter, when Hagen murders Siegfried, it is seen by some, but by no means all, as a dastardly act, a transgression against accepted custom—one does not kill one’s guest—but others may well have judged it quite differently: namely, as the understandable, if regrettable, means of restoring Burgundian honor. It is, in any event, not condemned by the world of warriors—note Rüdiger’s and Dietrich’s relationship to Hagen in the second part of the epic. Hagen’s “theft” of the Nibelungen treasure might well be viewed not as an evil act but rather as a preemptive strike aimed at staving off a potential civil war in Burgundy. There may be some initial self-righteous indignation expressed by Kriemhild’s brothers, but there are no consequences for the perpetrator. Nor is there remorse on the part of the latter, either for the theft of the treasure or the murder of Siegfried. The attempted murder of the king’s chaplain elicits a few gasps of consternation from the onlookers, but no real condemnation. At no time is any self-reflection on the part of Hagen or his companions evident in the Nibelungenlied, and no “moral” or “spiritual” judgment is passed by anyone of stature on the actions of the protagonists. Kriemhild’s beheading of a defenseless Hagen may be considered evil, even depraved, against the backdrop of courtly expectations, but not because it in any way represents a transgression against the laws of God. As Etzel makes clear, a warrior-hero of Hagen’s stature—even though he is responsible for the death of Etzel’s son, the Hunnish prince Ortlieb—does not deserve to suffer such a death at the hands of a woman. The act represents a transgression against the code of the warrior, and no other. “Good” and “evil” are not associated with the code of expected Christian behavior but are only relevant with respect to the warrior code. The Nibelungenlied moves beyond the categories of good and evil in a spiritual sense to embrace a view of the world that is beyond judgment, in which suffering is ultimately humanity’s destiny and with no prospect of redemption.

Notes Kudrun, ed. Karl Bartsch, 5th ed., revised and with a new introduction by Karl Stackmann, Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1965), 836, 4a. All references to Kudrun in this essay are to this edition.

1

2 The daggers signify that the editor of the primary text had to guess what the MS text was and placed a normalized word or phrase in MHG rather than leaving a fragmented line. 3 Hence his description of the concerted effort, initiated by remarks from Sindolt, cupbearer at the Burgundian court, and then by Rumolt, Master of the Kitchen in Worms, to have the young Siegfried, Gunther and Brünhild’s son, crowned as

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Gunther’s successor in Worms. See Diu Klage, mit den Lesarten sämtlicher Handschriften, ed. Karl Bartsch (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964), 3756–60, and 4080–99. References to the Nibelungenklage in my text are based on this edition. H. B. Willson, “Blood and Wounds in the Nibelungenlied,” Modern Language Review 55, no. 1 (January 1960): 50.

4

Quoted by Willson, 40. See Julius Schwietering, Der Tristan Gottfrieds von Strassburg und die Bernhardische Mystik, Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse 5 (Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1943), 25. 5

Das Nibelungenlied, according to the edition by Karl Bartsch, ed. Helmut de Boor, 19th ed. (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1967), 2114. Citations from the Nibelungenlied in my text are from this edition, unless otherwise noted.

6

7 This statement requires an important qualification. For the scribe of MS B, Kriemhild might well have been seen as the evil force within the work. She is associated on three occasions with the devil: once by the narrator (1394), who believes it may have been the devil that prompted her to take her leave of Gunther in (feigned) friendship; later by Dietrich, theoretically an “ally” of Etzel, who has granted him asylum, when he refers to his benefactor’s spouse in 1748, 4a as a “‘vâlandinne’” (“she-devil”); and the term is used again by a captured, but defiant, Hagen prior to being beheaded by Kriemhild (2371, 4a). These references, however, do not form the basis for a didactic “lesson” on the perpetual strife between good and evil. The narrator’s suggestion that Kriemhild’s deception was orchestrated by the devil does not lead to any definitive moral condemnation of Kriemhild’s much more drastic actions in Gran. Condemnation, if we may call it that, is expressed through Hildebrand’s veritable mutilation of Kriemhild for having transgressed against the warrior code by killing the defenseless Hagen and also in Etzel’s despair over the act committed by his spouse. Dietrich and Hagen use the appellative “vâlandinne” in much the same way that the modern slur “bitch” is employed. There are other allusions to the devil in the Nibelungenlied (Hagen’s reference to Brünhild in 438, 4b as the “‘tiuveles wîp’” [“devil’s woman”] and Hildebrand’s characterization of Hagen as “‘tiuvel’” [“devil”] in 2311, 4b), but these, along with an expression such as Hagen’s retort to Kriemhild in 1744, 1a, “‘Jâ bringe ich iu den tiuvel’” [“I haven’t brought you a [damn] thing”], are not to be taken literally but as indicators of the ferocity embodied by Brünhild and Hagen, respectively, and, in the latter instance, as a dysphemism for “I haven’t brought you anything.” 8 It should be noted that two possible interpretations offer themselves for 2, 4. Much depends on how one interprets “dar umbe” and its relationship to 2, 3b: “si wart ein scœne wîp” (She grew up to become a beautiful woman). We recall that Kriemhild refused to be wooed, following the revelations of her mother’s dream. It may well be that her brothers, and Hagen, had developed a reputation for ferocity, particularly toward unwanted suitors of their sister, and that this causes both Siegmund and Sieglind to become very concerned when they learn that Siegfried wishes to woo the beautiful Kriemhild (note stanzas 50–64 in particular, and 60, 2–3, in which Sieglind’s fear that she could lose her son in battle with “Guntheres man” reduces her to tears). This reflects the motif of the “dangerous wooing mission,” so

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common in medieval literature, but it may also be an indication that it is specifically Kriemhild’s beauty, referred to in 2, 3, that causes suitors to seek to marry her, costing many of them their lives at the hands of Gunther and the other Burgundians—something not lost on Siegmund and Sieglind. If, however, one extends the adverbial “dar umbe” to include 2, 1–3, then the “dar umbe muosen degene  vil verliesen den lîp” (Many a warrior would lose his life on her account) could well be understood as a reference to the catastrophic loss of life that later ensues at the court of Etzel. 9 Stanza 1865. Note also the Nibelungenklage, 944–47, where Etzel bemoans the fact that no one told him of the extent of the animosity Kriemhild harbored toward her brothers:

“ôwê daz niemen mir verjehen wolt der rehten mære, daz in sô vîent wære Kriemhilt ir swester.” [“Alas, that no one was prepared to tell me how things really stood, and that their sister Kriemhild was so ill-disposed toward them.”] See also verses 1214–15: “‘wær ez mir ê kunt getân, / si müesen alle sîn genesen’” (“Had I only been informed ahead of time, all of them would still be alive”). Werner Hoffmann, Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974), 94.

10

11 Das Nibelungenlied, according to the text by Karl Bartsch and Helmut de Boor, trans. and ed. Siegfried Grosse (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 1997), 935, commentary to 2378, 4, with reference to Gottfried’s Tristan, 58–62.

See Gottfried von Straßburg, Tristan: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch, according to the Text by Friedrich Ranke, ed. Rüdiger Krohn, 9th ed., vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam Jun., 2001), 59–60.

12

Note also the reference in Klage 196 to the Burgundians’ “alten sünde” (old sin) and in 227 to their “alten sculden” (old guilt). Of Gernot, the Klage poet declares, “got im niht engunde / belîben in der sculde” (490–91; God did not allow him to go on living in guilt).

13

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Sources Gottfried von Straßburg. Tristan: Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. According to the Text by Friedrich Ranke. Edited by Rüdiger Krohn. Vol. 1. 9th ed. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 2001. “Das Hildebrandslied.” In Kleines Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, edited by Werner Burkhard, 34–35. Bern: A. Francke Ag. Verlag, 1946.

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Diu Klage, mit den Lesarten sämtlicher Handschriften. Edited by Karl Bartsch. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964. Kudrun. Edited by Karl Bartsch. 5th ed., revised, with a new introduction by Karl Stackmann. Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1965. Das Nibelungenlied. According to the edition by Karl Bartsch. Edited by Helmut de Boor. 19th ed. Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelalters. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1967. Das Nibelungenlied. According to the text by Karl Bartsch and Helmut de Boor. Translated and edited by Siegfried Grosse. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1997.

Secondary Sources Hoffmann, Werner. Mittelhochdeutsche Heldendichtung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1974. Schwietering, Julius. Der Tristan Gottfrieds von Strassburg und die Bernhardische Mystik. Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse 5. Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1943. Willson, H. B. “Blood and Wounds in the Nibelungenlied.” Modern Language Review 55, no. 1 (January 1960): 40–50.

6:

End-Times in the Hall: The Modern Reception of the Apocalyptic Ending of the Nibelungenlied

Scott E. Pincikowski

A

ᴛ ᴛhᴇ ᴇnᴅ ᴏf Thea von Harbou’s sentimental Nibelungenbuch of 1924,1 stones speak. The tower and palace at Etzel’s court mourn the fiery downfall of their brother, the great hall. But appearances are deceiving. Out of the smoldering ruins emerges the voice of the hall, telling his brethren he is not to be mourned, but rather envied, for a young boy has taken up fallen Volker’s bow and fiddle and gone out into the world to sing of the burning building and all the heroic events that took place there (267–68). With this ending, von Harbou, who also wrote the screenplay for Fritz Lang’s two-part film, Die Nibelungen (1924),2 connects the violent end of the Nibelungenlied with memory-making and inverts the original intention behind the destruction of the hall. She glorifies the Germanic past and the heroes who died there, stressing that they will never be forgotten, an integral part of a well-known mythological narrative about German identity: out of the ashes of apocalyptic conflagration arise the German people, loyal and fire-tested. Indeed, von Harbou knew the importance of this particular memory location to making myths for the German people. It is the mnemonic nature and instrumental use of this space that the present paper investigates. Many studies consider related issues concerning the modern reception of the Nibelungenlied, such as the use of characters or events for political and ideological reasons during the tumultuous years of Wilhelmine, Weimar, and Nazi Germany.3 My approach builds on these studies but differs from them by adopting the methodology of recent cultural analysis that investigates the meaning of physical space in the cultural imagination, in this case the Germanic hall that is so central to the tragic, apocalyptic ending of the Nibelungenlied. There have been so many cultural reimaginings of this space, starting in the early Middle Ages and continuing through the postmodern era, that the destruction of the hall can be considered what Jan Assmann

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calls an Erinnerungsfigur: events, people, and locations that loom so large in the cultural memory that they are instrumental to creating cultural identity.4 Each use of the hall is such an Erinnerungsfigur, a shared memory space that draws upon the audience’s knowledge of this image to recall traces of a Germanic past to shape the identity of the present and envision an identity for the future. This helps to explain why the hall and its destruction are not static images. In fact, the more often the apocalyptic vision of the destruction of the hall is reimagined in the cultural memory, the more conflicted a memory space it represents; each use of the destruction of the hall, the embodiment of the end of a civilization, differs from the Nibelungenlied for ideological reasons that often contradict the message of the original medieval tale (see the front cover of this volume for an illustration of the destruction of the hall in the Hundeshagenscher Codex from the fifteenth century). The space of the hall contains competing narratives about the role that violence should play in German society and in the formation of German identity. Part of what makes the destruction of the hall such a contested memory space in the modern era is that it is already an unstable memory location in the Middle Ages.5 This is the case because the hall simultaneously embodies the heroic ideals so instrumental to noble identity and the difficulties of sustaining that ideal when violence is the main vehicle of social power. The Germanic hall, whether the historic place or the imagined space within epic literature, was the location in medieval society where the nobility fashioned its cultural identity. The nobility cultivated its identity in this space by performing rituals and ceremonies6 and by recalling cultural memories in the form of stories, often heroic and valorous deeds that promoted the cultural ideals of heroism, honor, and loyalty. At the same time, however, the hall was ultimately destined for destruction as it was the seat of power within a warlike society, a target for attack and annihilation. A case in point is the fiery fate of Heorot in Beowulf.7 The narrator describes its destruction even as he introduces this “healærna mǣst” (78; greatest of hall-buildings) to the text: “Sele hlīfade / hēah ond horngēap; heaðowylma bād, / lāðan līges” (81–83; The hall towered high, cliff-like, horn-gabled, awaited the warflames, malicious burning).8 With its destruction the hall became a contested memory space, sometimes embodying heroism and at other times societal crisis. This may help to explain why the meaning of the destruction of the hall changes over time, revealing the evolution of attitudes toward heroic ideals. Each use of the hall reflects and attempts to shape the social values of the audience for which the tale of destruction is intended. When tracing the meaning of the destroyed hall from the Norse-Icelandic Atlakviða and Volsunga Saga to the Middle High

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German Nibelungenlied and diu Klage, the hall becomes a memory location in which the Nibelungenlied and diu Klage poets attempt to counter a dominant cultural narrative that glorifies violence, calling instead for its restraint.9 In fact, there is a clear developmental arc from approval/ glorification to glorification/disapproval (didactic critique) to disapproval in these sources. In the Old Norse source material, the poet of the ninth-century Atlakviða glorifies the heroic ethos of blood revenge, approving of Gudrun’s fiery destruction of the hall and her exacting of revenge upon Atli and all of his followers: Eldi gaf hon þá alla, er inni vóro ok frá morði þeira Gunnars komnir vóro ór Myrkheimi. Forn timbr fello, fiarghús ruko, bœr Buðlunga, brunno ok skialdmeyiar inni, aldrstamar— hnigo í eld heitan. (43) [She gave to the fire all who were inside and had come from Gunnarr’s murder from Myrkheimr. The ancient rafters fell, smoke rose from the temples, the homestead of Buðli’s clan, and the shieldmaids were burnt in the hall, their flow of life staunched—they sank into the hot flames.]10

The twelfth-century Volsunga Saga expresses a similar sentiment. After carrying out revenge on Atli, Gudrun sets the hall on fire, killing all of his followers.11 In stark contrast to these earlier texts, the Nibelungenlied poet changes the memory of destruction, emphasizing instead the selfdestructive nature of blood revenge.12 As Kriemhild sets the hall on fire, the poet stresses the tragic limitations of the heroic ethos, for it is this very ethos that fans the flames that lead to the destruction of the hall, the demise of Etzel’s social power symbolized by this destruction,13 the tragic deaths of over twenty thousand warriors, and the downfall of the Burgundian people. And yet, even with this apocalyptic ending, the hall remains a contested memory space. This occurs because the Nibelungenlied poet cannot entirely eliminate those heroic ideals from the depiction of the hall that help comprise the epic narrative. As the flames consume the hall, remnants of the heroic ethos found in the earlier variants of the tale come to the foreground. The narrator praises the Burgundians’ bravery in battle and their endurance of the fiery inferno in the hall, highlighting

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Hagen’s heroic leadership as fire rains down on the Burgundians (2118– 19).14 This tension between heroic and tragic associations of the hall also appears in the thirteenth-century diu Klage,15 which acts as a cautionary tale against the brutal heroism found in the Nibelungenlied.16 No longer does the hall symbolize heroic valor; instead, the hall lies in ruins, spatially conveying the tragic loss of life and Etzel’s loss of social power, a message the narrator makes explicit with the collapse of the hall: “sîn hôhez lop und êre / wâren beide nider komen” (587–93; The high reputation and honor he had enjoyed had come down along with the hall). At the same time, however, even as the text repeatedly recalls the destruction of the hall, the Klage poet changes the memory of destruction. As Joachim Bumke has demonstrated, the messenger Swemmel shifts the blame from Kriemhild’s obsession for revenge to Hagen’s killing of Etzel’s and Kriemhild’s son for the tragic ending in his retellings (3811–14), leaving out the negative aspects of the event connected to Kriemhild, including the burning of Burgundians in the hall (3774–947).17 What this example shows is that memory is malleable, in this case for political purposes, a fact the audience of the text would not have failed to notice. This suggests that while the destruction of the hall in each of these sources is a conflicted memory, it is very much the conflicted nature that moves the reader to reflect upon the negative consequences of violence. Modern depictions of the hall are as much a contested memory space as medieval ones. The depiction of the hall varies greatly in its modern reception, each use, in the words of Werner Wunderlich, depending upon the “poetic, historical, political, or narrative” context (58). Moreover, the use of the hall exists on an ideological spectrum: Left ← Middle → Right Cautionary ← Apolitical Depictions → Nationalistic Given the large number of primary sources, and acknowledging that it would be impossible to discuss even a cross section of cases, this study will examine only representative examples. On the far right end of the spectrum, and the most common form of reception, the space of the hall is inscribed with traces of a Germanic past that is propagated as authentic, the embodiment of German virtues that center on so-called Nibelungentreue (Nibelungen loyalty), heroism and bravery in the face of death, self-sacrifice, and national unity. This political use coincides with periods in German history marked by the rise of patriotism, nationalism, militarism, and political instability, such as the Wilhelmine, Weimar, and Nazi eras. Characteristic of this reception is the tendency to remove

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the hall from its original literary context, isolating motifs found in the hall and reducing the complexity of the events in the hall to highlight the propagandistic message the particular author or artist wants to convey.18 Three examples suffice to demonstrate the instrumental use of the destruction of the hall. One of the earliest instances for the patriotic and militaristic use of the hall is Felix Dahn’s poem “Deutsche Lieder” of 1859,19 which he wrote in response to the rumor that Russia, France, and Italy were going to declare war on Germany: Wir stiegen auf in Kampfgewittern, der Heldentod, ist unser Recht: Die Erde soll im Kern erzittern, wann fällt ihr tapferes Geschlecht: Brach Etzels Haus in Glut zusammen, als er die Nibelungen zwang, So soll Europa stehn in Flammen bei der Germanen Untergang! [We rose in the storm of battles, the hero’s death is our right: / The earth shall shake at its core, when its brave dynasty falls: / Just as Etzel’s house collapsed in flames when he put the Nibelungs in chains, / So shall Europe stand in flames during the demise of the Germanic people!]

Dahn uses the destruction of the hall to express the sacrifice needed for Germany to secure its place in Europe. He connects the fiery collapse of Etzel’s hall to the concept of total war and the cult of heroic death. For just as the Burgundians show the fighting spirit of the German people through their heroic deaths in the flames of the hall, fire will consume all of Europe because every German will bitterly fight to the end.20 In a different use of the hall, Werner Jansen’s Das Buch der Treue (1916) represents a response to voices from the left in Germany calling for the end of senseless loss of life in World War I.21 With the destruction of the hall, Jansen “aspires to renew” the “fighting spirit” of the German people.22 Jansen expresses this hope in the introduction to his novel, stating that he found inspiration in the deaths of German soldiers in battle, their heroism and loyalty to country, connecting the soldiers to the virtues that “blaze forth” from the Nibelungenlied like a flame.23 Significantly, Jansen depicts this idea in the Buch der Treue with an architectural metaphor: Aber als die gelben Hunnenschädel aus der Dämmerung tauchen und sich spähend an die Pforte schieben, taumelen sie zurück vor der riesenhaften, regungslosen Gestalt Hagens, der einsam, eine ragende Säule, über ihren Toten steht. In dem Herzen dieses Mannes flammt ein Feuer, unbesieglicher Höllenglut. (332) [But as the yellow skulls of the Huns appear out of the twilight and push at the gates looking, they stagger back from the gigantic,

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motionless figure of Hagen, who stands, lonely, a towering column above their dead. A fire burns in the heart of this man, an unconquerable blaze from hell.]

In the battle in the hall, Jansen connects Hagen, looming like a giant above countless piles of dead Huns and the smoldering ruins that surround him, to a “ragende Säule” (towering column) and describes him a little later as a “steinerne Riese” (333; stone giant) who stands steadfast in the face of insurmountable odds. In essence, Jansen makes Hagen an inseparable part of the heroic and inspiring space of the hall, drawing on an architectural metaphor to aggrandize his heroic actions for future soldiers. In a move that prefigures the idea of mass ornament of fascism,24 Jansen makes the German soldiers into a monument through his depiction of Hagen. German soldiers, too, are “stone columns” who are all monumental and larger than life through their bravery and selfless sacrifice for the Fatherland. Similar to Jansen’s reception of the hall is Hermann Göring’s infamous speech on January 1, 1943, which was meant to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Machtergreifung (takeover by the Nazis) but actually addresses the disastrous defeat of the German army in Stalingrad. In his speech, Göring compares the battle in Stalingrad to the Nibelungen fighting to the bitter end in the hall: Wir kennen ein gewaltiges, heroisches Lied von einem Kampf ohnegleichen, das hieß Der Kampf der Nibelungen. Auch sie standen in einer Halle von Feuer und Brand und löschten den Durst mit eigenem Blut—aber kämpften und kämpften bis zum letzten. Ein solcher Kampf tobt heute dort, und jeder Deutsche noch in tausend Jahren muß mit heiligen Schaudern das Wort Stalingrad aussprechen und sich erinnern, daß dort Deutschland letzten Endes doch den Stempel zum Endsieg gesetzt hat.25 [We know a powerful, heroic song of a battle without compare, which was called Der Kampf der Nibelungen. They, too, stood in a hall of fire and flames and quenched their thirst with their own blood—but fought and fought until the last man. Such a battle is rampaging there today, and every German must say the word Stalingrad in a thousand years and remember that Germany did indeed seal the ultimate victory there.]

When Göring recalls the Nibelungen standing in “a hall of fire and flames,” he, like Jansen, wants to emphasize the bravery of the German soldier, hoping that Stalingrad would become a moment that showed the Germans’ resolve to fight on and be victorious. In essence, by

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connecting the space of the hall with Stalingrad, Göring is telling the German people that even in defeat Stalingrad should become an ideal memory of a crucial turning point in the war. Similar to Jansen, Göring highlights this message spatially, describing the battle of Stalingrad as a “monumentaler Bau” (monumental building) erected in honor of the greatest “Heroenkampf” (heroic battle) that the “Wehrmacht” (German armed forces) ever fought (395). These examples demonstrate how the destruction of the hall reverberated in the German consciousness and how extremists can exploit the power of the apocalyptic image to inspire the will to die for the Fatherland. Ironically, these examples invert the medieval understanding the hall. Gone is the fiery image of society coming apart at the seams, stressing the limitations of a civilization that uses violence to gain social power. In its place, architectonic destruction becomes a means to recall and perpetuate the German myth of heroic greatness. In the middle of the spectrum are apolitical depictions of the hall at the turn of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These examples belong to the growing cultural awareness of the Nibelungenlied at this time. The popularity of the Nibelungenlied resulted in part from its emphasis in the German school system, where Nibelungenpädagogik (Nibelungen pedagogy) was used to promote social order, norms, and values.26 Its wide reception also arose in part from the growing self-awareness of the bourgeoisie that wanted to demonstrate that its financial well-being was matched by its cultivation (Schulte-Wülwer, 162–63). What emerged from this new cultural milieu were uncritical editions and reductive retellings of the tale that emphasized the aesthetic appeal of the work over its content (Wunderlich, 45). Franz Keim’s well-known illustrated Nibelungen book for adolescents from 1908 is representative of this type of reception.27 The images accompanying the text that portray the battle and the destruction of the hall highlight how apolitical this reimagination is, embracing instead the decorative aesthetic of the Vienna Secession. The illustrator, Carl Otto Czeschka, removes the characters’ individuality, emotion, and pathos and reduces violence and destruction to mere decoration to be admired in the private sphere of the bourgeoisie,28 creating the early twentiethcentury version of a coffee-table book. Blood and fallen warriors adorn the floor of the hall (74–75), and the flames that consume the hall act as Jugendstil ornamentation whose flowing, organic beauty undermines the idea of suffering expressed in the last line of this retelling: “Mit Leid war beendet des Königs hohes Fest, wie stets die Freude Leiden zu allerletzten läßt” (79; The king’s high feast ended with suffering, just as joy turns to suffering in the end). Franz Keim’s text engages more in the

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ethical issues of the end of Nibelungenlied, such as Rüdiger’s dilemma in the thirty-seventh âventiure: the fact that Rüdiger is caught between two loyalties in the end, his oath to Kriemhild and Etzel and the bond of kinship through the betrothal of his daughter to Giselher. But Keim does this just barely; he compresses the last seven adventures of the original into four pages, oversimplifying the tale and eliminating the psychological depth of the characters, and maybe even giving the text an ideological leaning to the right and making the destruction of the hall safe to the bourgeois sensibility about violence, gender, and nationality: instead of Kriemhild ordering the hall to be set on fire, Keim portrays Attila, a barbarian man from the East, ordering the deed to be done (72). On the left end of the spectrum, there are examples of the fiery destruction of the hall being invoked as a warning. For example, following World War I, a number of artists depict the hall to express the experience of the tragic loss of life during war, including Josef Hegenbarth’s Der Saalbrand (1922; see figure 6.1) and Max Slevogt’s Kampfpause im brennenden Saal (1924).29 What is telling about these works of art is that they are similar to the Nibelungenlied in that they provide little to no architectonic detail of the great hall. This absence of detail helps lend the images a timelessness, deemphasizing the connection between the role of fate in Nibelungenlied and defeat of Germany in World War I and stressing the universal nature of human suffering, the dehumanization, and the loss of individuality that result from war (Schulte-Wülwer, 168). And much like the medieval reception of the destruction of the hall, these artists use the recognizable space of the hall and the signifiers for societal tragedy connected with it—the fire, the ruins of the hall, and the faceless corpses of the dead—to move the audience to reflect on violence. The direct reference to the events in the hall connects present violence with past violence, a tragic historical and mythological narrative that humankind is apparently doomed to repeat. If these artistic renditions act as a universal warning against war, Heiner Müller’s Germania Tod in Berlin (1977) is a direct warning to the German people.30 Müller’s play is representative of Nibelungenlied reception on the left that directly confronts the troubled reception history of the Nibelungenlied. After World War II, it was difficult to use the Nibelungenlied material because of its abuse by the Nazis, unless it was used to condemn the instrumentalization of the message of the text. In Müller’s case, he starkly criticizes how the Nazis made an Erinnerungsfigur out of the apocalyptic ending of the Nibelungenlied. In the scene Hommage a Stalin I (48–51) Müller reveals just how absurd and self-destructive the mythological narrative the Nazis drew upon to

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Figure 6.1. Josef Hegenbarth, Das Nibelungenlied: Der Saalbrand (36. Âventiure, Strophe 2118), 1922, watercolor, 370 × 525 mm. © Hegenbarth Sammlung Berlin, VG Bild Kunst, 2019.

help create German identity is.31 Likely in direct response to Göring’s use of the hall, Müller connects the battle in Stalingrad to the end battle in the hall in the Nibelungenlied not to praise the heroic self-sacrifice of the Wehrmacht in an unwinnable battle but rather to demonstrate the senselessness of “Nibelungentreue, loyalty to the last man that National Socialism demanded of its country.”32 In fact, Müller shows that Germans are doomed to repeat their tragic history if they allow ideologues to coerce them into total war through mythmaking.33 He opens the scene with four soldiers observing the repetition of the soldier’s hopeless plight in war at the hands of ruthless dictators throughout history: they first see Napoleon dragging one the soldiers of his great army behind him, and then Caesar gnawing on an arm the soldiers throw him. Müller then heightens the idea of senseless repetition at the level of German myth, depicting the undead Nibelungen Gunther, Hagen, Volker, and Gernot in the hall behind a wall of dead Huns. Each night the Nibelungen fight and die in a battle they no longer know why they are fighting: “Gernot: ‘Immer dasselbe. . . . Ich sage nicht, dass ich nicht mehr mitmachen will. Aber worum geht es eigentlich[?]’” (49; Gernot: “Always the same. . . . I am not saying that I no longer want to take part. But what is all this really about[?]”). Each night they hack each other

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into pieces, their bodies and chunks of metal from the battle eventually reconstituting into one monstrous being (51). Müller’s depiction of a monster is a sardonic take on the fascist idea of mass ornament as found in Werner Jansen’s depiction of Hagen as a towering giant. Müller criticizes the self-destructive nature of Nibelungentreue by creating not a Denkmal (memorial) commemorating German heroism as Jansen does, but rather a Mahnmal (memorial as a warning to future generations) of sorts against the monstrous acts the Nazis perpetrated in the name of the German people (Stoehr, 168). The fragmented nature of this monster undermines fascist ideology that requires a healthy and strong body to propagate a strong German identity and that claims that death and destruction lead to an ideal “Germanness.” Joachim Fernau’s Disteln für Hagen: Bestandaufnahme der deutschen Seele (1966; Thistles for Hagen: Taking Stock of the German Soul) also explores the issue of “Germanness.”34 As the title of Fernau’s work indicates, he uses the Nibelungenlied material to take an inventory of the German soul. It initially appears that Fernau criticizes the ideological use of the text. With the fiery destruction of the hall, he does expose the dangers of total war: “Das große Entweder-Oder des totalen Krieges riß jeden, den das Schicksal auch nur von weitem erspähte, hinein” (201; The great either-or of total war pulled everyone in, whom fate took note of, if only from afar). He also uses irony and sarcasm throughout the work to undermine the mythological weight the Nazis gave the material. When considering the tragic ending of the Nibelungenlied, Fernau evaluates the ideological use of the material negatively. He draws upon earlier, well-known, political uses of the text to make this point. He refers, for instance, to Reichskanzler Bernhard von Bülow’s famous speech on March 29, 1909, that called for Nibelungentreue within the German-Austrian Alliance. With biting irony, Fernau highlights how this idea hit the German people “mitten ins Herz” (in the middle of the heart) and became an integral part of their identity (195), even though the ideological interpreters of the time overlooked the fact “that this concept of loyalty . . . is linked . . . to the downfall of all the Nibelungs and almost everyone else involved.”35 Moreover, Fernau underscores the danger of this selective type of interpretation of Nibelungentreue. Similarly to Heiner Müller, Fernau emphasizes that Germans are doomed to repeat their mistakes if they embrace such ideology. He evokes Kaiser Wilhelm II’s use of the term in 1914 at the beginning of the “vier Jahre lange Saalschlacht” (four-year-long battle in the hall) of World War I to inspire soldiers to fight to the last man, underlining the fact that the Germans were inspired to do so again in World War II (195).

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Although there are critical moments within Fernau’s work, there are others that undercut his cautionary message. For instance, he connects the fiery end of the Nibelungen to eschatological fate. Fernau quotes Andreas Gryphius’s Baroque poem “Das Letzte Gerichte” (The Last Judgment) of 1658 as the Nibelungen begin their journey to Etzel’s court: “‘Auf, Toten! Auf! Die Welt verkracht im letzten Brande, der Sterne Heer vergeht, der Mond ist dunkelrot! Die Sonne ohne Schein. . . . Ihr, die ihr lebt, kommt an!’” (143; “Arise, dead! Arise! The world is failing in the final inferno, the army of stars is dying away, the moon is dark red! The sun is without shine. . . . You, who are living, come!”). With this quote, Fernau firmly places his interpretation of the ending of the Nibelungenlied within the apocalypse tradition, using Gryphius’s eschatological poem cycle to pronounce the Nibelungen’s inescapable fate. Four sonnets comprise this cycle and explore the possible trajectory of the soul after death: “Death,” “The Last Judgment,” “Hell,” and “Heavenly Bliss.” Within this cycle, the Nibelungen in Fernau’s work are already dead and are being called to their final judgment. And this is where Fernau runs into trouble: he leaves the Nibelungen’s judgment open-ended. Given the historical and fascist misappropriation of the Nibelungen’s heroic death in the battle in the hall, it is telling that Fernau remains silent on their fate. Maybe it is left up to the reader to determine whether the Nibelungen are heading off to hell or to heavenly bliss? Or is it that he does not want to connect his material too closely to fascist interpretations found in the not too distant past? Positive answers to both of these questions are unsatisfactory, especially when one considers that Fernau also connects the destruction of the hall to cultic celebration, describing its fiery end as “ein infernalisches Sonnwendfeuer” (200; an infernal celebration of the solstice). In doing so, he evokes a tradition rooted in the Germanic past, which was given Christian undertones during the Christianization of Europe, made popular during the Weimar period by the youth movement, and later co-opted by the Nazi regime. Under the Nazis what was originally a celebration of the summer solstice became a pseudoreligious celebration of Hitler and the German Volk. At a Sonnenwendfeier (solstice celebration) there was a lot of Nazi pageantry: with much fanfare a great bonfire was set ablaze, speeches were made, songs were sung, and remembrances to the dead were made as wreaths were thrown into the fire.36 This reference to a fascist ritual in Fernau’s depiction of the hall, albeit brief, is significant. Not only does it give a celebratory tone to this scene in Fernau’s work, it also supports claims made by literary critics such as Peter Wapnewski and Hans-Jürgen Bachorski that Fernau’s use of the Nibelungenlied material is tainted by his involvement in the

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Third Reich as a war correspondent writing propaganda for the SS and as a reporter for the weekly Das Reich.37 As with Joachim Fernau’s novel, other depictions of the destruction of the hall are difficult to place on the ideological spectrum. A case in point is director Fritz Lang and screenwriter Thea von Harbou’s popular two-part film Nibelungen (1924), which consists of Siegfried and Kriemhilds Rache (Kriemhild’s Revenge). Lang and von Harbou wanted to create a film that expressed a monumental “Germanness” in the turbulent years after World War I. In fact, Lang considered his use of the Nibelungenlied material as a means to help the German people remember “an ideal in her past even during the horrible time after the First World War”38—words echoed by Harbou, who described the Nibelungen film as a gift to the German people, a memory of “bedingungslose Treue” (unconditional loyalty).39 Moreover, as part of their media campaign, Lang and Harbou attempted to tap into the nationalistic fervor connected to the Nibelungenlied during this time, going so far as to dedicate the film “dem Deutschen Volk” (to the German people), mimicking the words on the Reichstag (Kaes, 132–33), and to lay a golden wreath at the grave of Frederick the Great the day the film premiered.40 But even with these strong gestures of nationalistic intention for the film, its mixed reception during the Weimar Republic and afterward reflects otherwise. The ambivalent response to the film is best evinced through how critics viewed the destruction of the hall. In the words of Anton Kaes, some nationalists found “the heroic apocalypse that was missing at the war’s end” (162). The educated and conservative class found that it did not do the mythological material justice. And voices on the left found the ending both good and bad, such as the expressionist Kurt Pinthus, who praised the destruction as “hinreißende Bewegung fürs Auge (gräßliche Bewegung fürs Gemüt)” (compelling movement for the eye [horrible movement for the soul]).41 The cultural critic Siegfried Kracauer rejected the fiery end as a cultic celebration of self-sacrifice. Kracauer viewed Lang’s film as a prefiguration of a fascist aesthetic that subordinated the individual through monumental architecture and ornamentation.42 Perhaps most surprising is the Nazis’ ambivalent response to the destruction of the hall in Lang’s film. The Nazis, who exploited aspects of the Nibelungen myth that expressed the strength of the Aryan race, and who admired Lang’s work, found the the fiery end of Kriemhilds Rache problematic. The images of chaotic and uncontrollable masses at Etzel’s court would have undermined the fascist principle of mass ornament, and the apocalyptic destruction of the hall would have called into question the idea of a thousand-year Reich (see figure 6.2).43

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Figure 6.2. Der Saalbrand in Fritz Lang’s film Kriemhilds Rache (1924). © Friedrich Murnau Stiftung.

What is it about Lang’s portrayal of the hall that elicited such varied responses? The ambivalent reactions to his depiction are partly due to the fact that the hall is always a conflicted memory space. The response to the destruction depends on how the recipient wants to interpret the scene, how invested the recipient is in that interpretation, and for what purposes. And because Lang’s film was in itself such an important cultural event, one that centered on an Erinnerungsfigur that was invested with a lot of cultural meaning for the German people, the interpretation of his depiction of the hall was also conflicted. This is not surprising, because Lang’s depiction is in itself ambivalent. Without a doubt, Lang draws on motifs that were present in the cultural consciousness at the time he made the film that would have resonated with his audience, including the Huns surrounding the Burgundians in the hall, a battle against all odds in a foreign country, and the ruins expressing a heroic defeat that reveals the superiority of the Germanic warriors over the masses of “Untermenschen” (subhumans) at Etzel’s court (Kiening and Herberichs, 221). At the same time, Lang heightens the use of one of the most important motifs in the scene to create ambiguity: fire. With smoke and flames, Lang intensifies the two forces in the Nibelungenlied that come

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together to cause the terrible destruction of civilization embodied in the hall: Kriemhild’s loyalty to Siegfried in death and the Burgundians’ loyalty to each other (Kiening and Herberichs, 217). In Kriemhilds Rache, Kriemhild, who often symbolized “the grieving home front” during World War I (Kaes, 166), now is an active participant and is associated with fire, a symbol of her consuming desire for revenge and a manifestation of her loyalty to Siegfried. For instance, when she arrives at Etzel’s court, Lang frames her entrance in the round arch of the gate of the hall with plumes of smoke and flame in the distance, an indicator of the lust for revenge that she brings with her and a foreshadowing of the destruction to come. And when Etzel views their child for the first time, Lang depicts Kriemhild standing in front of a fireplace. He cuts back and forth between Etzel and Kriemhild. He uses alternating shots of Etzel granting any wish she desires and shots of Kriemhild, framed by smoke and flames swirling around her shoulders, head, and face to highlight her agitated psychological state as she asks Etzel to invite her brothers to the court. In fact, Kriemhild becomes a demonic goddess of death, dressed ornately in black, always obsessively staring at the hall from different vantage points during the end battle (Gunning, 50): from a gate across the court, on top of a tower, in front of the horde of Huns as she orders them to set fire to the hall, and finally in front of the gate as the building burns and the roof collapses. Conversely, the flames that consume the hall symbolize the Burgundians’ indestructible loyalty for each other. In this scene Lang depicts Hagen and Gunther standing in the center of the hall with dark plumes of smoke behind them. Hagen offers his life so that Gunther may go free. In response, Gunther asks the Burgundians if they will take up this offer, something that none of them are willing to do. Gunther declares, “Loyalty which iron could not break will not melt in fire, Hagen!” In this very moment, Lang cuts to a shot of the roof collapsing in flames and Hagen shielding Gunther as a fiery inferno rains down. By connecting this image with Gunther’s words, Lang makes the Germanic virtues of loyalty into absolute values; they cannot and will not be undermined at any cost. And this is what connects the flames that “consume” Kriemhild and the fire that surrounds the Burgundians. Lang’s use of fire exposes the weakness of these absolute values, showing that there is little difference between Kriemhild’s death wish and the Burgundians’ version of self-destructive heroism (Kaes, 166). Each contributes to Armageddon and the complete annihilation of society in total war. If Lang could draw upon motifs of destruction in this shared memory space to help the German people come to terms with World War I,

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it is not surprising that Harald Reinl’s Nibelungen remake of 1966 and 1967 does so as well in the context of post-World War II Germany.44 But whereas Lang could safely use the Nibelungenlied material during the 1920s to invoke its mythic qualities, Reinl could not. Given the Nazi abuse of the tale during the Third Reich, Reinl had to distance his film from any associations with Nazi ideology. Reinl’s film has often been dismissed as an escapist costume drama, a weak remake of Lang’s monumental epic.45 While there is truth to this evaluation, Reinl’s Kriemhilds Rache depicts the destruction of the hall in an interesting manner. Although it would go too far to consider Reinl’s use of the hall as a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past), he uses architectural motifs to warn against key concepts of the Third Reich: revenge, blind loyalty, heroism, and total war. For example, Reinl evaluates Kriemhild’s all-consuming desire for revenge negatively,46 not by connecting her to fire as in Lang’s film but by connecting images of her face with demonic masks that make up ornamentation on columns at Etzel’s court. Reinl first uses this technique when Kriemhild demands that Rüdiger take revenge on the Burgundians. Later, during the battle, Reinl underscores Kriemhild’s never-ending drive for revenge by alternating between Rüdiger’s battle with Giselher and columns with demonic faces and then by blending the images of a monstrous mask and Kriemhild’s face (Kraft and Schriever, 132). Reinl criticizes the idea of heroic fate by depicting the Burgundians riding through the ruins of a medieval town as they approach the Rhine, a foreshadowing of the destruction to come and a not-so-veiled reminder to the audience of bombed-out cities in Germany during World War II. And Reinl quotes Lang’s film to clearly reject the idea of heroic Nibelungentreue. He depicts flame-engulfed columns falling on the Burgundians, not to underline their bravery as Lang does but to highlight their senseless suffering in the fire. The audience, however, is not to feel sympathy with the outnumbered Burgundians, which Reinl conveys by portraying them standing in the center of the smoldering hall at the very moment that Dietrich von Bern tells Hildebrand what he thinks of Burgundians’ fate: “So ergeht es Männern, die die Treue an einem Mörder halten” (“That is what happens to men who remain loyal to a murderer”). This stands in contrast to Lang’s film, in which Dietrich praises their loyalty even in the face of certain death when asking Etzel, “‘Don’t you know the loyal Germanic soul?’” In Reinl’s film, the Burgundians have a chance to leave the ruins of the hall but decide to tie their fate to a leader who is willing to sacrifice all and use any means to power: Hagen, who in this film kills not only Siegfried but also Kriemhild’s first and second children. Reinl’s Burgundians are willing to blindly stand by

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their leader all the way to their Untergang (downfall), just as Germans were expected to stand by Hitler at the end of World War II. What makes Reinl’s depiction most compelling, however, is how he reinforces the didactic warning of the Nibelungenlied. The film ends with Volker, who has been blinded in the fire in the hall and “into whose consciousness the terrible images of Etzel’s court has been burned” (Kraft and Schriever, 133), going out into the world to tell the horrible tale of the Nibelungen Not (Fate/Suffering of the Nibelungen) so that it is never forgotten. The destruction of the hall and memory are interconnected in German art, film, and literature. The uses of the apocalyptic ending of the Nibelungenlied in these different media inform and shape the image of German identity in the cultural memory. In the medieval context, the content of this memory location suggests that the portrayal of the hall is more prescriptive and less descriptive in nature, indicating that moments of destruction do not simply reflect military practices or glorify violence but instead explore the consequences of such practices to noble identity. When medieval poets depict destruction, they confront the nobility with an image of itself in the cultural memory that they hope will influence reality. It is the instrumental use of this memory location that connects the medieval and the modern. In the modern reception of this motif, artists, authors, and filmmakers also use the destruction of the hall in the attempt to influence the behavior of their audience. In some cases, the hall is used similarly to the way it was in the Middle Ages, as a warning against the violent and destructive forces of war and nationalism. In most cases, however, the hall is emptied of its original content; its destruction is not invoked to engage the audience in strategies of Gewaltvermeidung (avoiding violence). In these examples, the authors tell different lessons about violence. They do not move the audience to reflect upon human suffering but depict destruction for nationalistic purposes, using the associative power of this image to recall the mythical Germanic values of self-sacrifice, bravery, loyalty, and honor that are needed for a strong and unified Germany. The memory of destruction is used to create a cult of violence and to move and inspire the German people into action and battle. The critical reception of the Nibelungenlied has exposed these nationalistic narratives as dangerous and self-destructive. Indeed, authors on the left end of the political spectrum and Nibelungenlied scholars have raised cultural awareness regarding the problematic reception history of the text. It is for this reason—and with the passage of time since the end of the Third Reich—that contemporary reception has been able to attempt to take the Nibelungenlied material in an

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entirely new direction, recontextualizing the well-worn tale to tell new and nonideological stories about German identity. A case in point for this newer reception is Moritz Rinke’s Nibelungen play Die letzten Tage von Burgund (2007; The Last Days of Burgundy), a revised version of his Nibelungen play of 2002.47 At the heart of Rinke’s play is his desire to free the Nibelungenlied from its problematic reception history. Rinke distances his drama from not only the Nazi reception but also earlier critical reception that exposed the National Socialist glorification of violence as problematic. He uses humor, depicts characters who do not identify with being German, and changes key elements of the story such as Kriemhild’s death to demythify and denationalize his play.48 Most importantly, Rinke attempts to make the instrumental use of the fiery end of the hall an empty cultural gesture. This demythification occurs when Kriemhild orders the hall set on fire: “‘Das mag ich nicht an meinem Volk, mal ist es treu, mal nicht.’ Zu den Kriegern. ‘Egal. Feuer.— Feuer!’” (238; “This is what I do not like about my people. Sometimes they are loyal, sometimes not.” To the warriors. “It doesn’t matter. Fire.— Set the fire!”). With this ironic remark, Rinke acknowledges the recipient’s expectation of a fiery end. More importantly, he undermines any ideological associations with Nibelungentreue. He briefly interrupts the expected narrative flow toward destruction,49 which reveals that the use of the loyalty motif has been used so many times in connection with the hall in Nibelungenlied reception that it has become an irreparably unstable memory location for contemporary audiences. Rinke’s interpretation indicates that it is only after acknowledging that the ideological use of the hall is no longer a productive Erinnerungsfigur for German identity that new interpretations of the Nibelungenlied can occur.50 Perhaps this is why Rinke depicts Kriemhild walking into the burning hall at the end of his play (239). With the Nibelungen’s and Kriemhild’s fiery end, he hopes that the ideological use of the hall has come to an end, too. With the critical reception of the Nibelungenlied, one would think that nationalists would have a difficult time reviving the mythological narratives surrounding the apocalyptic ending of the text. It seems that whenever the winds of nationalism blow, however, nationalists will turn to the strategy of evoking a Germanness that relies on the power of myths found in Germany’s past. In fact, Björn Höcke, a leader of Der Flügel (The Wing), a far-right wing of the nationalistic Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany [AfD]) political party, exploited this strategy when he made reference to the mythological importance of the Nibelungenlied to German identity in a speech at the Kyffhäuser meeting of the party three weeks before German national elections in September 2017:51

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Es gibt drei großen Mythen, die unsere kulturelle Identität, unser Selbstbild als Deutsche besonders geprägt haben. Da ist erstens das Nibelungenlied, die große Sage von Liebe und Hass, von Treue und Verrat, und aufopferungsvollem Kampf. Da ist zweitens die Sage von dem Forscher und Magier Faust, den [sic] Inbegriff des—wie Oswald Spengler gesagt hat—faustischen Menschen, der immer auf der Suche nach Erkenntnissen ist. Ja, dieser Drang nach Erkenntnis ist einer unserer Wesensmerkmale als deutsches Volk in der Mitte Europas. Und da ist drittens die Sage von Kaiser im Berg, vom alten, gütigen, und gerechten Kaiser, der im Verborgenen ruht, und der einst wiederkehren wird, um des Reiches Herrlichkeit aufzurichten. [There are three great myths that have especially shaped our identity, our self-image as Germans. First, there is the Nibelungenlied, the great saga of love and hate, of loyalty and betrayal, and battle full of sacrifice. Second, there is the saga of the academic and magician, Faust, the embodiment of the—as Oswald Spengler said—Faustian person who is always searching for knowledge. Yes, this need for knowledge is one of our fundamental characteristics as German people in the middle of Europe. And third, there is the saga of the emperor in the mountain, of the old, good, and righteous emperor who rests in hiding, and who one day will return in order to bring glory back to the empire.]52

Although Höcke does not directly mention the destruction of the hall in his speech, his use of the phrase “aufopferungsvoller Kampf” (battle full of sacrifice) is significant. At the very least, it is a veiled reference to the end battle in the hall. Most certainly, however, it echoes the earlier nationalistic and patriotic speeches of Reichskanzler von Bülow and Kaiser Wilhelm II, who drew upon the idea of Nibelungentreue to appeal to the masses. The battle Höcke refers to here is not the battle of war but the Kulturkampf, the cultural battle for German identity that the nativist AfD claims to be waging against Chancellor Angela Merkel and others who support the thousands of refugees who have found safe haven in Germany. By drawing upon this mythology, Höcke wants to inspire the German people to act against the threat he perceives to German identity. But will Höcke’s and Alternative für Deutschland’s nationalistic appeal work? After the elections, the AfD did become the third most powerful political party in the Bundestag. Even with Höcke’s instrumental use of the Nibelungenlied (and the mythological figures of Faust and Kaiser Frederick Barbarossa), however, there is hope that the conflicted nature of an Erinnerungsfigur such as the end battle in the hall itself will undercut the very political and ideological message the AfD wants to convey. For just as it was difficult for the Nibelungenlied poet to remove those heroic ideals entirely from the image of the hall

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in his critique of violence, the reception of the hall will never totally be divorced from its negative use in the past by nationalists: the problematic ideology they tied to this memory space—the dangers of willing a people to engage in war, whether it be for Blut und Boden or for a Kulturkampf.

Notes 1

Thea von Harbou, Das Nibelungenbuch (Munich: Drei Masken, 1924).

Die Nibelungen, directed by Fritz Lang (1924; DVD, New York: Kino on Video, 2002).

2

3

Representative studies that provide a detailed overview of the modern reception of the Nibelungenlied include Werner Wunderlich, Der Schatz des Drachentödters: Materielien zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Nibelungenliedes (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1977); Otfrid Ehrismann, Nibelungenlied 1755–1920: Regesten und Kommentare zu Forschung und Rezeption (Giessen: Wilhelm Schmitz, 1986); Joachim Heinzle and Anneliese Waldschmidt, eds., Die Nibelungen: Ein deutscher Wahn, ein deutscher Alptraum. Studien und Dokumente zur Rezeption des Nibelungenstoffs im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: Surkamp, 1991); Joachim Heinzle, Klaus Klein, and Ute Obhof, eds., Die Nibelungen: Sage—Epos—Mythos (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003). Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), 37–42.

4

5 For a detailed discussion of the relationship between memory and the destruction of the hall in the Middle Ages, see Scott E. Pincikowski, “Conflicted Memory Spaces: The Destruction of Architecture in Medieval German Literature,” in Spatial Practices: Medieval/Modern, ed. Markus Stock and Nicola Vöhringer (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &Ruprecht, 2014), 123–41.

Elke Brüggen,“Räume und Begegnungen: Konturen höfischer Kultur im Nibelungenlied,” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 173.

6

Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. Friedrich Klaeber (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1950). 7

8 Translation in Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition, trans. Howell D. Chickering Jr. (New York: Anchor Books, 1977). 9 The anthropologists Setha M. Low and Denise Lawrence-Zúñiga describe the struggle to redefine the meaning of physical space in terms of “contested spaces,” emphasizing that these spaces “give material expression to and act as loci for creating and promulgating, countering, and negotiating dominant cultural themes.” Introduction to The Anthropology of Space and Place: Locating Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), 18.

Text and translation in The Poetic Edda, vol. 1: Heroic Poems, trans. and ed. Ursula Dronke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), 12. 10

The Saga of the Volsungs, trans. and ed. R. G. Finch (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965), 74. 11

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Das Nibelungenlied, according to the text by Karl Bartsch, ed. Helmut de Boor, 20th rev. ed. (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972).

12

13

Siegrid Schmidt, “Der Nibelungenstoff und seine ‘architektonischen Machtzentren,’” in Die imaginäre Burg, ed. Olaf Wagener et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), 149–50. Edward R. Haymes, “Heroic, Chivalric, and Aristocratic Ethos in the Nibelungenlied,” in A Companion to the Nibelungenlied, ed. Winder McConnell (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998), 103.

14

Die Nibelungenklage: Synoptische Ausgabe aller vier Fassungen, ed. Joachim Bumke (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1999).

15

16

Albrecht Classen, “The Bloody Battle Poem as Negative Examples: The Argument against Blood Feud and Images of Peaceful Political Negotiations in German Heroic Poetry,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 53 (2000): 123–43, here 138.

Joachim Bumke, “Die Erzählung vom Untergang der Burgunder in der Nibelungenklage: Ein Fall von variierender Überlieferung,” in Erzählungen in Erzählungen: Phänomene der Narration in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Harald Haferland and Michael Mecklenburg (Munich: Fink, 1996), 75–76. 17

18

Joachim Heinzle coined the term “isolierende Rezeption” in “Unsterblicher Heldengesang: Die Nibelungen als nationaler Mythos der Deutschen,” in Mythos und Mythologie, ed. Reinhard Brandt and Steffen Schmidt (Berlin: Akadamie, 2004), 185–202, here 196. See also Werner Hoffmann, “The Reception of the Nibelungenlied in the Twentieth Century,” in A Companion to the Nibelungenlied, ed. Winder McConnell (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998), 127–152, here 143. Felix Dahn, Gesammelte Werke: Erzählende und poetische Schriften. Neue wohlfeile Gesamtausgabe, series 2, vol. 7 (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900), 452–53. Translations of this and other primary sources used throughout this essay, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.

19

See Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer, Das Nibelungenlied in der deutschen Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Giessen: Anabas, 1980), 154–55; Wunderlich, 37–39; Klaus von See, “Das Nibelungenlied—ein Nationalepos?” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 334.

20

21 Anton Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 155; Werner Hoffmann, “Das Buch der Treue: Werner Jansens Nibelungenroman,” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 519.

Werner Wunderlich, “Werner Jansen,” in The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia, ed. Francis G. Gentry et al. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 248.

22

23 Werner Jansen, Das Buch der Treue: Nibelungenroman (Brunswick: Georg Westermann, 1916).

Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1947), 94–95, discusses how the Nazis used “ornamental inclinations” to organize the masses. 24

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25

See Peter Krüger, “Etzels Halle und Stalingrad: Die Rede Görings vom 30.1.1943,” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen; for the entire speech, 387–401, here 395–96.

Werner Wunderlich, “Nibelungenpädagogik,” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 345–73, here 346.

26

Die Nibelungen in der Wiedergabe von Franz Keim, illustrations by Carl Otto Czeschka, foreword and afterword by Helmut Brackert (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1972).

27

28

See Brackert, 11–12.

For a very similar sketch by Hegenbarth, Der Kampf in der Halle (1922), and for Slevogt’s Kampfpause im brennenden Saal, see Schulte-Wülwer, 173 and 171, respectively.

29

30

Heiner Müller, Germania Tod in Berlin (Berlin: Rotbuch, 1977).

See Herfried Münkler, Die Deutschen und ihre Mythen (Berlin: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2009) for a discussion of the oft contradictory use of the Nibelungen material by the Nazis, 103–7.

31

Ingo R. Stoehr, “(Post) Modern Rewritings of the Nibelungenlied—Der Nibelungen Roman and Armin Ayren as Meister Konrad,” in Medieval German Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function of Medieval German Studies for German Studies, ed. Albrecht Classen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 165–78, here 168. 32

33

Nathanael Busch, “‘Den ganzen Müll der Geschichte schleppen wir mit’: Wolfgang Engels Dresdner Inszenierung der Nibelungen Friedrich Hebbels (1984),” in Mittelalterrezeption in der DDR-Literatur, ed. Gesine Mierke and Michael Ostheimer (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2015), 169–79, here 176.

Joachim Fernau, Disteln für Hagen: Bestandaufnahme der deutschen Seele (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1994). 34

35

Hoffmann, “Reception of the Nibelungenlied,” 143.

Klaus Vondung, Magie und Manipulation: Ideologischer Kult und politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), 80–81, 186– 87; Miriam Sénécheau, “Living History, Archäologie und NS-Propaganda: Der ‘Germanenzug’ zur Sonnwendfeier im Berliner Grunewaldstadion 1933,” in Doing History: Performative Praktiken in der Geschichtskultur, ed. Sarah Willner, Georg Koch, and Stefanie Samida (Münster: Waxmann, 2016), 231–53, here 235–36.

36

Peter Wapnewski, “Joachim Fernau und die deutsche Seele,” Die Zeit: Wochenzeitung für Politik-Wirtschaft-Kultur, February 2, 1967; Hans-Jürgen Bachorski, “Alte Deutungen in neuem Gewande: J. Fernaus Disteln für Hagen und H. Reinls Nibelungen-Filme,” in Mittelalterrezeption III: Mittelalter—Massenmedien—Neue Mythen, ed. Jürgen Kühnel et al. (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), 346–47.

37

Gene D. Phillips, “Fritz Lang Remembers,” in Fritz Lang Interviews, ed. Barry Keith Grant (Jackson: University Press of Mississipi, 2003), 175–87, here 179.

38

39

Quoted in Ulrich Müller, “Die Nibelungen: Literatur, Musik und Film im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert,” in Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 407–44, here 428.

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Christian Kiening and Cornelia Herberichs, “Fritz Lang: Die Nibelungen (1924),” in Mittelalter im Film, ed. Christian Kiening and Heinrich Adolf (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 189–225, here 193–94.

40

Quoted in Klaus Kreimeier, “Fritz Langs Nibelungen und der Kampf um die Deutungshoheit in der Weimarer Republik,” in Deutsche Gründungsmythen, ed. Matteo Galli and Heinz-Peter Preusser (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008), 213–24, here 222–23.

41

Helmut Weihsmann, Gebaute Illusionen: Architektur im Film (Vienna: Promedia Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988), 125.

42

See Kreimeier, 220–21; Tom Gunning, The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity (London: BFI, 2000), 38; Rainer Schelkle, “Die Bilder, Die Massen: Zu Fritz Langs Die Nibelungen,” in Schattenbilder—Lichtgestalten: Das Kino von Fritz Lang und F. W. Murnau (Bielefeld: Transkript, 2009), 25–44, here 33; Schulte-Wülwer, 175.

43

Die Nibelungen, directed by Harald Reinl, part 1: Siegfried von Xanten, part 2: Kriemhilds Rache (1966–67; DVD, Munich: Universum Film GmbH, 2013).

44

45

See Monika G. Kraft and Jochen Schriever, “Eine Lanze für Reinl: Stoffadaption und Metaphorik in Harald Reinls Nibelungen,” in Forum: Materialien und Beiträge zur Mittelalter-Rezeption, ed. Rüdiger Krohn (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1992), 117– 36, here 117–18; Ulrich Müller, “Die Nibelungen,” 430.

46

Bachorski, “Alte Deutungen,” 349–52, sees the negative portrayal of Kriemhild as a part of Reinl’s overall “unpolitische Verarbeitung von Faschismus und Krieg” (351; unpolitical treatment of fascism and war), which includes his portrayal of contemporary ideological issues surrounding gender roles and relationships and East versus West Germany.

Moritz Rinke, Die Nibelungen: Siegfrieds Frauen. Die letzten Tagen von Burgund (Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007), 238. 47

48

Simone Schofer, “Mythos—Geschlecht—Medien: Die Nibelungen. Ein kulturhistorischer Vergleich,” PhD diss., Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 2009, 75, points out that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung criticized Rinke for his demythification and denationalization of the Nibelungenlied material.

Michaela Reinhardt, “‘Doch eure Welt, sie dient der Lüge!’ Zu Die Nibelungen,” in “Ich gründe eine Akademie für Selbstachtung”: Moritz-Rinke-Arbeitsbuch, ed. Kai Bremer (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010), 69–84, here 74, refers to this interruption as “eine ironische Brechung” (an ironic interruption). For a discussion of how Rinke plays with audience expectations and its knowledge of the text and reception history including Nibelungentreue, see 73–75. 49

See Nathanael Busch, “Die Nibelungen auf der Bühne der Gegenwart,” Eulenspiegeljahrbuch 46 (2006): 63–79, here 77, for a discussion of the attempt to find the cultural meaning behind the Nibelungenlied without the burden of its reception history.

50

51

The choice of this location is significant. The Kyffhäuser memorial to Kaiser Frederick Barbarossa, which is located here, is closely tied to German nationalism.

52

Björn Höcke (Kyffhausen castle, September 2, 2017), accessed January 4, 2018, https://gloria.tv/video/mN7AbfeeyNbg47W4WGM7UoVaM (my transcription

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and translation). For a discussion of this meeting and the nationalistic appeal that the AfD is making, see Julian Göpffarth, “How Alternative für Deutschland Is Trying to Resurrect German Nationalism,” New Statesman (September 28, 2017), accessed April 1, 2019, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2017/09/howalternative-f-r-deutschland-trying-resurrect-german-nationalism.

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Sources Dahn, Felix. Gesammelte Werke: Erzählende und poetische Schriften. Neue wohlfeile Gesamtausgabe, 2nd series, vol. 7. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1900. Fernau, Joachim. Disteln für Hagen: Bestandaufnahme der deutschen Seele. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1994. Jansen, Werner. Das Buch der Treue: Nibelungenroman. Brunswick: Georg Westermann, 1916. Müller, Heiner. Germania Tod in Berlin. Berlin: Rotbuch, 1977. Die Nibelungen. Directed by Fritz Lang, 1924. DVD. New York: Kino on Video, 2002. Die Nibelungen. Directed by Harald Reinl, 1966–1967. DVD. Munich: Universum Film GmbH, 2013. Die Nibelungen in der Wiedergabe von Franz Keim. Illustrations by Carl Otto Czeschka. Foreword and afterword by Helmut Brackert. Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1972. Die Nibelungenklage: Synoptische Ausgabe aller vier Fassungen. Edited by Joachim Bumke. Berlin Walter de Gruyter, 1999. Das Nibelungenlied. According to the edition by Karl Bartsch. Edited by Helmut de Boor. 20th rev. ed. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972. The Poetic Edda. Vol. 1: Heroic Poems. Translated and edited by Ursula Dronke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969. Rinke, Moritz. Die Nibelungen: Siegfrieds Frauen. Die letzten Tagen von Burgund. Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 2007. The Saga of the Volsungs. Translated and edited by R. G. Finch. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965.

Secondary Sources Bachorski, Hans-Jürgen. “Alte Deutungen in neuem Gewande: J. Fernaus Disteln für Hagen und H. Reinls Nibelungen-Filme.” In Mittelalterrezeption III: Mittelalter—Massenmedien—Neue Mythen, edited by Jürgen Kühnel, HansDieter Mück, and Ursula and Ulrich Müller, 339–58. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988.

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Gunning, Tom. The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision and Modernity. London: BFI, 2000. Heinzle, Joachim, Klaus Klein, and Ute Obhof, eds. Die Nibelungen: Sage— Epos—Mythos. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003. Hoffmann, Werner. “The Reception of the Nibelungenlied in the Twentieth Century.” In A Companion to the Nibelungenlied, edited by Winder McConnell, 127–52. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998. Kaes, Anton. Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Kiening, Christian, and Cornelia Herberichs. “Fritz Lang: Die Nibelungen (1924).” In Mittelalter im Film, edited by Christian Kiening and Heinrich Adolf, 189–225. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006. Kraft, Monika G., and Jochen Schriever. “Eine Lanze für Reinl: Stoffadaption und Metaphorik in Harald Reinl’s Nibelungen.” In Forum: Materialen und Beiträge zur Mittelalter-Rezeption, edited by Rüdiger Krohn, 117–36. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1992. Kreimeier, Klaus. “Fritz Langs Nibelungen und der Kampf um die Deutungshoheit in der Weimarer Republik.” In Deutsche Gründungsmythen, edited by Matteo Galli and Heinz-Peter Preusser, 213–25. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008. Krüger, Peter. “Etzels Halle und Stalingrad: Die Rede Görings vom 30.1. 1943.” In Heinzle, Klein, and Obhof, Die Nibelungen, 375–403. Schulte-Wülwer, Ulrich. Das Nibelungenlied in der deutschen Kunst des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Giessen: Anabas-Verlag Kämpf, 1980. Stoehr, Ingo R. “(Post) Modern Rewritings of the Nibelungenlied—Der Nibelungen Roman and Armin Ayren as Meister Konrad.” In Medieval German Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function of Medieval German Studies for German Studies, edited by Albrecht Classen, 165–78. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Wunderlich, Werner. Der Schatz des Drachentödters: Materialien zur Wirkungsgeschichte des Nibelungenliedes. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1977.

7:

Past Present, Future Present? Visualizing Arthurian Romance and the Beholder’s Share in a World That Refuses to End

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand

A

ᴡᴇᴀᴌᴛh ᴏf sᴄhᴏᴌᴀrshiᴘ has documented how much European medieval culture liked to surround itself with the imagined past of romance, whether in painted chambers or on wall murals, whether on jewelry caskets or on tapestries.1 The enthusiasm only increased over time; eventually, says Anne Dunlop, “romance tales covered acres of Italian walls.”2 These visualizations of romance translated narrative into three dimensions, allowing their patrons to live with the images and with the story. When we consider some of the earliest depictions of romance, like the Ywain murals at Rodenegg, we might recall Michael Camille’s description of how Gothic art encouraged the participation of its viewers in new ways of seeing and experiencing temporality and space. Camille describes Gothic art as a polyvalent mode of discourse “rooted in a plastic, three-dimensional attitude to space”3 that offered “a world of incredible intensity and color, constructing richly embellished three-dimensional objects into which people could enter psychologically” (180–83). The cathedral exemplifies this polyvalence, transmitting a sense of becoming in which past, present, and future form a continuum whose “contiguity, through the Gothic building, yields a higher synthesis.”4 Such a building seems to ensconce in stone the presentness of time expressed centuries before by Augustine in book 11 of his Confessions; musing on the nature of time, Augustine concludes that the categories of past, present, and future are insufficient: “What is now plain and clear is that neither future nor past things are in existence, and that it is not correct to say there are three periods of time: past, present and future. Perhaps it would be proper to say there are three periods of time: the present of things past, the present of things present, the present of things future.”5 In this essay I would like to reflect on two examples from the thirteenth century that I believe illustrate and exploit the

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elasticity of medieval time to make the past present: the Ywain murals at Rodenegg and the Stifterfiguren (donor portraits) of Naumburg cathedral. I argue that both of these examples bring an imagined past into the audience’s present by activating what art historian Ernst Gombrich terms the “beholder’s share.” The beholder’s share is “our” share “in the reading of the artist’s image.”6 Gombrich suggests that what we read into images, or even accidental shapes such as clouds, “depends on our capacity to recognize in them things or images we find stored in our minds.”7 More specifically, I am drawing on the “beholder’s share” here as Jacqueline E. Jung applies it to thirteenth-century sculpture.8 I wish to suggest that the allusively rich and visually saturated environment of the thirteenth century enhances the beholder’s share through the fluid interplay between religious and courtly iconography/imagery in both sacred and secular space.9 I want to suggest further that this allusive interplay is related to the creative process of “past presencing” we find in Arthurian romance.

The Arthurian Past Present The divide between a then and a now can seem very great indeed, as times change. Surveying the world around him, the late-thirteenthcentury German poet known as Der Pleier bemoans the change that seems to have led to the moral impoverishment he observes among the nobility; things have completely changed for the worse: “nun haut eß sich verkert gar” (but the situation now is quite different).10 To emphasize the current wretched state of affairs, the poet opens by recalling times past when good people lived: Hie bevor by den jaren, do die gefügen waren in allen kingrichen wert unnd do man rechter fůg gert, do schamten sich genůg. Wa man kain unfůg begieng, das was den werden laid. Gefůg, zuht unnd hubschhayt vlyssen sy sich alldo. (1–9) [In years past when good manners were prized and well-bred people were highly regarded in all kingdoms, many were concerned about their reputations, because those who were esteemed did not like any sort of crudeness. Courteous and happy, men and women practiced decorum, propriety and courtliness. (369)]

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In times past, when good people lived, everyone cultivated propriety, good manners, and courtliness. The poet goes on to admire how the whole world condemned “untruw” (disloyalty) and “valschhait” (falsity) as the worthy and noble strove ever for honor: Man sach nauch eren stritten die werden ze allen zitten. Untruw unnd valschhait was do aller wellt laid. (15–18) [worthy men were always striving for honor. All despised treachery and deceit. (369)]

Values like decorum, propriety, courtliness, bravery, and gentility clearly governed behavior of both men and women. Because “all despised treachery and deceit,” people could prosper and live well: “Da waren die lüt rich / unnd lepten frölich” (19–20; people were prosperous and lived joyously, 369). Those were times as pleasant as the people were good, the poet says: “Ouch waren da die iaur guot” (22; the years were good, too, 369). In the poet’s present, however, those good years are but a memory. He laments that the situation is quite different now and that times have increasingly worsened: Nun haut eß sich verkert gar: ye lenger, so böser jar. Die lüt vil grimeklichen lebent in allen richen. Es nimpt ab an gůten dingen. Die unns fröde söllten bringen, ich main die edelen richen, die lebent unfrölichen. (23–30) [But the situation now is quite different and gets worse year by year. Folks everywhere live in anger and there are always fewer good things. The noble and mighty, who should bring us joy, are themselves unhappy. (369)]

The poet complains that his contemporaries seem to have no manners; they live in anger, and those noble and mighty who should have joy and honor live unhappily. Disgraceful are those he sees around him who gain riches for no purpose, such that none will accord him honor: “Mit siner erg er sich erwert, / das im niemand eren gan” (84–85; His parsimony keeps anyone from respecting him, 370). Having expressed

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his frustration at the state of his world, in which parsimony and dishonor hold sway, the poet turns his attention to the remedy; we have the model of the upright man, “den biderben,” who understands talk “von eren unnd von frumkayt” (100; of honor and of excellence, 370). This is the man who uses wealth for good or for fame, eschewing evil. Perhaps hoping to inspire the audience further to follow this model, the poet offers an example from that more perfect time in years past when decorum, courtliness, bravery, and gentility prevailed. And this is why he, the poet, wishes to tell a story of King Arthur: Doch will ich üch ain mär sagen von Artus dem küng her. By sinnen ziten lebt er mit eren also schon, das nie hobet under cron in so grosen eren ward gesehen. (112–17) [Nevertheless I shall tell you a story of the great King Arthur, who in his day lived so honorably and in such an elegant manner that no other crowned head was as highly esteemed. (370)]

The poet continues of Arthur that, in truth, “Sin gelich der ward nye / gesehen inn allen lannden” (122–23; His like has never been seen anywhere, 370). As the poet says, those were certainly good years and pleasant times back then. For the Pleier, the present state of noble society compares poorly not only to its more honorable recent past but also to the illustrious yet distant Arthurian past of story found in “ain frömdeß mär” (101; a remarkable tale, 370). In this way, the poet draws the stark contrast between then and now, urging his audience to take the story he tells as a model for themselves. The Pleier places himself explicitly in the German Arthurian tradition, as he names himself and then acknowledges his debt to his predecessors Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach in the effort to tell a tale newly translated from French into German in the best verse he can muster: Nunn hörennd ain frömdeß mär. Das haut der Player von wälschem gedichte, in tutschen sin gerichte mit rymen, alsß er beste kan. Lebet noch her Harttman von Owe, der chunde baß gedichten, daß las ich on hasß, unnd von Eschenbach her Wolfferaß.

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Gen siner kunst bin ich lam, die er hett by sinen tagen. (101–11) [Now hear a remarkable tale. As best he can, the Pleier has rhymed this into German from a French poem. If he still lived, Sir Hartmann von Aue could have composed better, I allow this without malice. And so could Sir Wolfram von Eschenbach. Compared with the talent/art he showed in his day, mine is poor. (370)]

Having established his debt to Hartmann and Wolfram and having displayed appropriate humility, the Pleier forges ahead with his story, his word choice “mär” (tale) emphasizing once again the very difference between fact and fiction, between a real “now” and an imagined “then.” The Pleier says of Meleranz that his courtliness garnered him enduring honor: “Mit siner frumkait er gewan / söllichen pryß, der noch wern můß” (12816–17; he gained such renown for virtue that he is still remembered today, 489). Similarly, in telling his remarkable tale, the Pleier hopes to inspire his audience to keep that old distant time alive, or at the very least to preserve some of its practices.11 At the waning of the thirteenth century, the prologue to Meleranz offers a clear division between then and now, in contrast to one of the models that the Pleier mentions in his prologue: Hartmann von Aue.12 In his prologue to Iwein, Hartmann actually encourages his audience (us) to bring the Arthurian past into their (our) present. er hât den lop erworben, ist im der lîp erstorben, sô lebet doch iemer sîn name. er ist lasterlîcher schame iemer vil gar erwert, der noch nâch sînem site vert.13 [He has attained such fame that even though he has died, his name will live forever. Even now, whoever acts as Arthur did is completely protected from shame and dishonor.]14

King Arthur led such a beautiful and exemplary life that his good name endures: “daz er der êren krône / dô truoc und noch sîn name treit” (10–11; he wore the crown of honor in his time, and his name does so still, 237). For this reason his countrymen affirm his continuing presence among them; in fact, they say that he may still live today (14). Hartmann here seems to echo his source, Chrétien de Troyes’s Yvain, where Chrétien also tells us that the people of Britain say that Arthur’s name will live on: Arthur is the “good king of Brittany”

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whose “knighthood teaches us / To be courteous, to be true knights.”15 Chrétien, too, highlights the stark contrast between the past and the present. Nowadays, he says, people make a mockery of love: almost deserted, its followers have fallen away, and its worshippers are gone (20–22). Commenting that it is better to speak of dead courtiers than to bother with living peasants (29–32), Chrétien prefers to turn his attention to a tale worth hearing “of a king so famous / That men still speak of him, near / And far, for the Bretons have told / His story truly: asleep / Or awake, he is famous forever” (33–38). Hartmann goes further. Not only is King Arthur famous forever; it is his enduring good name that affirms for “sîne lantliute” (11; his countrymen, 237) “sî jehent er lebe noch hiute” (14; his continuing presence among them, 237). Both in the assertion that Arthur lives in the present and in the promise that honor will come to those who follow his example (20), Hartmann’s prologue seems to create a temporal elasticity that brings the audience into a kind of composite present that could encompass all three of Augustine’s time categories in a simultaneous present of things past, present, and future: King Arthur is no longer alive; nevertheless, he does live now and could yet live in the future. Hartmann’s composite also recalls the continuum of time we see represented in thirteenth-century cathedral architecture. I want to suggest another way of looking at Hartmann’s conflation of past and present, a perspective drawn from the work of British anthropologist Sharon Macdonald. In the context of her work on memory, heritage, and commemorative practice in modern Europe, Macdonald uses the term “past presencing” to describe a process that is “concerned with the ways in which people variously draw on, experience, negotiate, reconstruct, and perform the past in their ongoing lives.” Not only do people “grasp and articulate the past” in various ways, these “multiple forms” of articulation also enable us to recall various pasts “selectively,” to use those pasts “within the present,” where they are variously “performed and lived.”16 This process includes the present and the future as well as “questions of temporality more widely”—all are “almost invariably bound up in the presencing of the past” (235). The concept of “past presencing” can thus encompass “a longer-term, on-going process in which the past [is] continually reconfigured in the changing present” (244). Hartmann situates his contemporary listeners and readers in that ongoing process in his prologue to Iwein. The repetition of “iemer” (even now) amplifies the assertion that Arthur’s countrymen believe that he may live today, as Hartmann invites a solidarity of feeling, of aspiration, of imagined shared memory among his audience. The contrast between the splendid Arthurian past and the poet’s

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less inspiring present remains, of course.17 The present day cannot equal those earlier days, as the poet laments: mich jâmert wærlîchen, und hulfez iht, ich woldez clagen, daz nû bî unseren tagen selch vreude niemer werden mac der man ze den zîten pflac. (48–52) [It really bothers me—and if it would do any good I would complain about it—that in our present day there can never be joy equal to what was to be found in those days. (237)]

Arthur’s knights thrived in doing the actual deeds of which the stories tell, Hartmann declares, though those deeds are certainly long past. On the other hand, the present does have its advantages, precisely because the tales can enthrall and delight listeners now: “dâ uns noch mit ir mære / sô rehte wol wesen sol” (56–57; since we can enjoy the story of what those knights did, 237–238). Indeed, it is the tales themselves that will continue to make the past present, as the current audience lives with them.18 Bringing his audience into the remembered (albeit fictional) past of the Arthurian court, Hartmann navigates an ever-widening distance between the Arthurian “then” and the audience’s “now.” The Pleier describes an almost insurmountable distance between then and now; Iwein’s audience, on the other hand, is clearly encouraged to participate in Arthur’s exemplary world as the tale enfolds them and unfolds around them. Macdonald’s concept of past presencing, while drawn from modern anthropology, emphasizes an active engagement and negotiation with the past and provides an additional perspective on the visualizations of romance that proliferated so extensively in the thirteenth century. This active engagement with time and the presence of the past involves the beholder’s share. In this context, I wish to explore briefly the two thirteenth-century examples I mentioned at the outset: the distinctly secular space of the Ywain murals at Rodenegg and the sacred space of the donor portraits (Stifterfiguren) at Naumburg. I hope to show in the following how both examples demonstrate the way in which a fluid relationship between religious and courtly iconography provides a mechanism for the activation of the beholder’s share. Further, the process of bringing the past into the present allows for the imagining of the future “into” the present as well, offering beholders a share in the creation of continuous and continuing times. The genre of romance similarly demonstrates a polymorphic ability to survive media and paradigm

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shifts over time. It is a genre that steadfastly rejects finality. Arthurian romance, in particular, upholds a secular world that refuses to end.

Rodenegg and Iwein Hartmann’s Iwein itself, as the prologue illustrates, strives to bring the narrative into the audience’s present, seeking to cultivate a certain simultaneity of experience.19 Iwein’s story proved so captivating to medieval audiences that they wanted to live with the narrative, as the murals in the small chamber at Rodenegg Castle clearly demonstrate.20 Now believed to date from the first third of the thirteenth century, the unique picture program of the “Rodenegg Iwein” (borrowing Michael Curschmann’s term) draws from but does not replicate or merely illustrate Hartmann’s story.21 Although in somewhat fragmented condition, the murals continue to impress the viewer with their bold color, their dynamism, their intensity. In broad strokes, as we know, they tell the story of a knight (Ywain) who sets out on an adventure at a fountain, battles another knight (Ascalon), and wins his lady (Laudina) with the help of a resourceful maid (Luneta). Since they are identified by name, we know that these murals tell a version of Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein; the intertext is unmistakable.22 The religious interfigures are as unmistakable as the secular intertext is obvious.23 From the beginning, scholars have noted the echoes of religious iconography. This was evident in the stylistic similarities between the Ywain murals and other frescoes at the Frauenkirche in Brixen that led Nicolò Rasmo, who restored the Rodenegg murals, to posit that the same artist may have worked on both projects. One can also examine the churches in Brixen whose paintings are contemporary and possible models. Anne-Marie Bonnet posits an artist who belongs to a larger workshop that would have worked on the Johanneskirche or the Frauenkirche.24 Following Volker Schupp, Muriel Whitaker suggests that “the painter was using the ecclesiastical iconography which would have been familiar to him if he were the bishop’s artist” (125). Whitaker speculates on a number of similarities: Laudine resembles a Mater Dolorsa, her garment recalls a Byzantine style and Iwein’s beard a Byzantine saint, the castle retainers searching for Iwein evoke soldiers from scenes of the Crucifixion. Whitaker sees the Byzantine influence in the lines of the figures as well in as the vibrant colors (“burnt orange, gold, steel blue and dark green,” 125). Yet the murals show familiar images taking shape in a new context that is not religious and that is driven by a different narrative. James Rushing also notes that the artists in both contexts use the iconography and the topoi available to them to

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tell their stories, often needing shorthand in the visual medium because they have limited space and limited time to construct their narrative.25 While the artist of the Frauenkirche has a monumental biblical scene to depict, the artist at Rodenegg must continue the momentum that involves action and emotion (Bonnet, 62). Nevertheless, the Rodenegg artist produces scenes of originality and liveliness as he adapts ecclesiastical models for a secular subject (Whitaker, 125). One image in particular highlights this originality, as it also reveals intention and purpose behind the allusive choice. It is one of the images opposite the entry. This wall spans the width of the room, showing perhaps the most dramatic scenes of the narrative: the mourning Laudine with the dead or dying Ascalon in her arms. Reading the narrative from right to left, we see the conclusion of the duel between Ascalon and Iwein; the chase, strikingly depicted extending around the corner, ends with Iwein’s horse cut in two by the falling gate and Iwein himself trapped by the portcullis. The next scene depicts two almost disembodied faces, given the state of the murals, in a mass of deep red color. The faces are close together, their cheeks appear to be touching. Her body is turned toward the scene we have just viewed, as she cradles her husband in her lap; her head bent toward his, offering a moment as intense in its familiarity and intimacy as the preceding duel is powerful and dynamic in its expanse. Hartmann, of course, tells us of Laudine’s behavior at Ascalon’s bier and at his burial (1305–1413). In the poem, the scenes of mourning and lamentation (1305–30) are punctuated by reports of the search for the assailant (1258–95, 1370–80) as well as details of that knight’s growing desire for his opponent’s lady (1331–54, 1418–24). Hartmann’s text needs over one hundred lines to describe the depths of Laudine’s suffering. The single image, on the other hand, resonates with the emotional intensity of a deep sorrow felt by no other woman in the world (1312–13). Here the artist has chosen a familiar image to convey the emotion of the situation and to move the story forward efficiently. As Rushing points out, emphasizing the heavily symbolic value of the image, the Rodenegg scene alludes to the conventional medieval depictions of the Lamentation (55). Rushing actually singles out this scene as perhaps the most significant one at the center of the narrative. Indeed, the scene of Ascalon’s death seems to divide the narrative between two major sections: one of knightly adventure, and one of its serious and potentially serious consequences. The result of the hero’s adventures is thus “not glory or honor, but death and the profoundest sorrow” (73). The visual narrative makes clear that viewers will not equate Ascalon with Christ; rather, they can behold and understand the “profundity of the sorrow

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and mourning” that Ascalon’s death has brought (72). The familiar resonance of the image activates the beholder’s share. Indeed, in its use of religious imagery, we find a particular connection to the beholder in the depiction of Ascalon’s death and its aftermath. Laudine’s gestures of grief recall “a topos common in Christian iconography” that also has deep roots in classical art. This is the gesture of holding the head in one’s hand, “the most common nonviolent gesture of sorrow in classical, Byzantine and medieval art” (61). The pose is often encountered in depictions of David and Jeremiah, as Rushing points out. And the Rodenegg painter is not the first to use it in the context of grief. Rushing again points to the Deposition scene from Aquileia (63). And Lunete’s presentation of Iwein to Laudine has analogues in Christian imagery as well. The murals highlight the fluid relationship between Christian iconography and secular images, placing the visual narrative along the spectrum of orality and literacy that reveals a new dimension of active participation in the creative process.26 This new dimension, I would argue, involves the intentional activation of the beholder’s share.

Naumburg and the Beholder’s Share In the preceding, we can see how forms of religious iconography clearly appear in a secular context at Rodenegg. The reverse occurs, I contend, in the courtly resonances that encourage the beholder’s share in thirteenth-century sacred spaces.27 Recent work has addressed the secular courtly attributes displayed by thirteenth-century sculpture in sacred spaces. Jung discusses the way in which the beholder’s share functions to enhance our experience of the story of the wise and foolish virgins upon entry into the cathedral at Magdeburg. Features such as facial expression, posture, gesture, clothing (the folds that seem to reveal the movement of stone) compel the viewer’s gaze and insist on an active response. The beatific and confident smiles or the contorted grimaces of the figures underscore the parable that the wise virgins may partake in the wedding feast, while the foolish must remain outside, as well as the larger story of salvation that saturates the walls of the portal and the edifice around it. The unusual expressiveness of the figures enhances their portrayal of “active, sentient, feeling subjects with whom viewers of both sexes and various social statuses would easily identify” (138). The attire and posture of the Magdeburg virgins also mark them as undeniably familiar for a thirteenth-century beholder. Olga V. Trokhimenko describes the Magdeburg virgins as “models of aristocratic femininity”; in accordance with their apparent social class, they appear “young, beautiful, noble, rich and smiling,” as they prepare

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to welcome the bridegroom as well as those who enter the cathedral through their portal.28 The combination of courtly and religious iconography in this ensemble amplifies the parable’s message.29 In her research on French and German Gothic choir screens, Jung addresses the creation of community through this active participation with the images. As Jung puts it, the sculptures on the screen “played the role of the vernacular, making the sacred accessible, relatable to all.”30 In this example, the beholder’s share is enhanced as well as encouraged by the familiar courtly attributes the figures display, allowing narratives of the biblical “past,” physically and tangibly present, to become embodied through the viewer’s response to what is seen. The beholder’s share remains persistently enigmatic in perhaps the most stunning example of this iconographic fluidity in the thirteenth century: the sculpture portraits at Naumburg. The striking figures of Uta and Reglindis are designed with an irresistible vibrancy that enables them to transcend their stone form as they jointly compel the interaction of the visitor to the west choir of Naumburg Cathedral. The figures of Uta and Reglindis resonate allusively with secular and religious imagery. In her posture and gestures, and notably in her smile, Reglindis recalls both the wise virgins of Magdeburg and the foolish virgins of Strasbourg.31 As I have argued, the figures of Uta and Reglindis resonate with Gottfried’s portrayal of Isolde, establishing a spectrum on which we can imagine the literary image taking concrete shape.32 Uta shows us one material representation of Isolde in the nobility of Uta’s stature, the singular beauty of her left hand, the mystery of her gaze. Reglindis offers another representation as she engages the viewer with the tilt of her head, the grasp of her cloak, the movement enfolded in the drape of her garment.33 While both statues may seem to resonate with Gottfried’s portrayal of Isolde, which Assaf Pinkus terms the “Tristan response,” the sculpture portraits participate in entirely different narratives, unrelated to courtly romance in general or Tristan in particular. Representing the long-dead patrons of the cathedral, the figures are clearly meant to tell other stories: allegories of virtue and vice or sin and repentance, tales of ruling brothers tinged with discord and perhaps murder, the testimonies of pious and dedicated patrons who responded to the bishop of Merseburg’s request for donations in return for a memorial that would ensure a physical and spiritual legacy into eternity. The statues in Naumburg, however, powerfully elicit the dynamic interaction characteristic of Gothic art.34 The recent work of both Jung and Pinkus highlights the interactive nature of the figures in Naumburg’s west choir. Analyzing the group of nine sculptures based on the trajectory of

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their respective gazes, as well as on the movement implied through their gestures, Pinkus observes that the beholder is drawn into “a dramatic interactive performance” where viewers become “an integral part of the sculptural array.” The beholder must then make what he or she can of that performance and its story.35 The portal to the west choir functions similarly. As the visitor passes through the doorway, walking under the crucifix, the portal offers an opportunity for the viewer’s transformation through dynamic interaction with Christ’s gaze (Jung, Gothic Screen, 90). Pinkus notes that the sculpture figures also prompt such interactions from viewers, who inevitably react to the “imaginary reality generated by the sculptures” and whose own “speculations” are variously “incarnated and materialized in the Naumburg installations.”36 The figures’ story will vary with the viewer. Likewise, the story of the patrons remains unfixed and indeterminate. The indeterminacy of the Naumburg sculptures underscores, for Pinkus, their function as simulacra; persistently defying attempts at definition, they stand as representations of ideals that participate in multiple narratives that have overtones both in sacred space and in courtly culture. As sacred space, the Naumburg Cathedral encompasses a well-established narrative of salvation history in which the court, to say nothing of its literature, would seem to have no place. Nevertheless, the enigmatic Stifterfiguren seem to blur the boundary between the courtly world and sacred space, as the statues of Uta and Reglindis in particular evoke images of romance narrative, specifically that of Tristan and Isolde. The courtly references at Naumburg intensify the verisimilitude that enhances the beholder’s share; similarly, the religious iconography at Rodenegg conveys the intensity of a familiar underlying message framed in a new context for its beholders. Medieval texts drew images as lebende bilder (living images) to create dynamic connections with the living/listening audience. Horst Wenzel suggests that the images, whether we find them in text or in stone or in murals, become “Denkmäler der Vergegenwärtigung” (monuments to the process of realization), making present the actions and figures depicted by those images.37 As monuments (tributes or witnesses) to this process, these figures have an impact both in the spaces of the court and in the spaces of the church.38 Viewers of the Naumburg figures and the Iwein murals, like the readers of romance, are “invited to enter into a dialogue” with the figures they behold in “an intense interactive and interpersonal situation” that resists fixed meaning.39 The Naumburg sculpture portraits navigate narrative in ways that are similar to, yet obviously different from, the visual narratives of the murals at Rodenegg. Rodenegg’s hall and Naumburg’s west choir are

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stages, albeit of qualitatively different nature, on which courtly culture constructed itself in self-reflective and self-reflexive performances (Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, 316). As with romance, the art of the cathedral invites its beholder into the narrative of salvation made real in two- or three-dimensional images: color, posture, facial expression, the illusion of movement.40 In her work on saints’ shrines, Cynthia Hahn speaks of a visual rhetoric that enabled elements of the shrine to be “carefully orchestrated for their effect on the viewer.”41 In other words, the visual aspects are used to control the viewer’s response. These aspects are simultaneously private (for a single pair of eyes, for a single individual) and public (Hahn, 1090). One may extend this to include visual narratives such as those discussed here, especially in terms of inspiring a quasi-religious experience of these secular texts. Amanda Luyster makes this argument with respect to the Tristan murals at Saint-Floret near Avignon, where “the focus on the re-creation of actual lived experience is transferred to the secular realm” and the murals exploit the relationship between sacred and secular iconography, as well as the beholder’s familiarity with both.42 The Rodenegg murals offer a contemporary medieval interpretation in concrete visual form of Hartmann’s Iwein in the secular space of a castle hall—demonstrating that, and suggesting how, medieval audiences responded to the texts that were part of their cultural milieu. In the secular environments the community was encouraged to become part of these texts as they sat in the space where images of the narrative surrounded them. The murals demonstrate a mode of adaptation that does not merely show or tell; it enacts such that the story forms the experience of those who tell it in an act of self-conscious self-representation. Indeed, Wenzel describes the hall at Rodenegg as a showcase of courtly self-representation that is also a rare witness to knightly living and the literary influence on the imaginary world found at a ministerial’s fortress around 1200 (Hören und Sehen, 315–16). The stories and the pictures showed the beholders what and how they wanted to be. Haiko Wandhoff suggests that medieval spaces like these, particularly the Gesamtkunstwerk of the medieval church, closely resemble what we now call “virtual realities,” and that it is only with the advent of virtual media that we can approximate that environment where the visitor (user) can be fully immersed in the environment, can decide on which objects to focus, and can control individual experience. The iconographic resonances between the sacred and the secular further encourage this virtuality, enhancing the beholder’s share to facilitate the interactive connections with this world (Rodenegg) or the next one (Naumburg).43 This interactive environment does not only exist in Gothic cathedrals; this brings us back to the prologue to Iwein, where

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Hartmann has explicitly articulated a desire to make the Arthurian past present for his audience. The images of both spaces create kinesthetically dynamic environments, each of which conveys an unmistakable message. Uta and Reglindis draw us toward the courtly world in order to remind us that we are elsewhere. The smile of Reglindis feels authentic, and it demands our response, but not only because she resembles a courtly lady. Her posture and demeanor could evoke either the joyful anticipation of the wise virgin or the imprudence of her foolish counterpart, as other depictions of those figures at Magdeburg and Strasbourg (respectively) show. Across from her, the figure of Uta likewise assumes a place in the divine narrative, as do the other Stifterfiguren. The viewer should perhaps recall that folly and wisdom often dwell in close proximity, as we feel mortal transience juxtaposed with eternal life in the west choir. The message in Rodenegg is also clear to the beholder, then as now. The pursuit of adventure has potentially tragic consequences, which are literally played out on the walls of the chamber. Like life, adventure is a precarious endeavor. In Rodenegg, we see the reestablishment of manorial authority, as the grieving widow becomes judge and arbiter of Iwein’s fate in the last scene that we have. This scene of revelation, or potential reconciliation, is depicted in the chamber on the wall opposite the wild man; it is difficult to resist an echo of Hartmann’s verses, hearing the wild man ask, “aventiure, what is that?” (527). Emerging from narrative but not bound by text, thirteenth-century visualizations of romance reflect the desire of people, as beholders, to live with and be surrounded by these stories, too—to learn from them and with them. In other words, as Curschmann and others have suggested, the Arthurian murals give a kind of sacred purpose to secular space.

Past Present and Future Present In contemporary thirteenth-century spaces like Rodenegg and Schmalkalden, like Naumburg and Magdeburg and Bamberg, the crossover between sacred and secular imagery and space firmly takes authoritative shape in the affective bridges constructed to lead the beholder to Uta and Reglindis or to Laudine. Sacred and secular images are effectively deployed in what seem to be almost mutually exclusive contexts, distant and distinct from one another in function and in location, as well as in geography and artistic form. In this, the images reflect a syncretic multimodality that characterizes artistic activity in the thirteenth century.44 Courtly romance exploits this multimodality, drawing upon the interactive and allusive dynamism of Gothic art

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forms to support the “real” virtual reality created by visual displays in space meant to be inhabited. The images and spaces reveal the visual/ physical manifestation of the heterogeneity of time that inheres in romance and that steadfastly confronts the end-time with its refusal to end. Concluding his essay “Time out of Memory,” Jeffrey J. Cohen appeals to this multimodality as it continues to inform our interactions with older literatures. Cohen exhorts modern readers to “keep the distant past, the present moment, and the future—near and distant—alive, capable of plenitude, heterogeneity, change.”45 More recently, in How Soon Is Now?, Carolyn Dinshaw insists, “Time is lived; it is full of attachments and desires, histories and futures; it is not a hollow form . . . that is the same always.”46 Hartmann encourages a heterogeneity and simultaneity of time in the prologue to Iwein that we can experience as his audience. It is this simultaneity in which visualizations of Iwein particularly, but also courtly romance more generally, participate by presencing the past, then and now. These visualizations literally also offer the space to imagine, at least for a moment, a timeless nonapocalyptic future, a more accessible or perhaps familiar and comforting secular counterbalance to the horrifying tales and images of the end-times well known from religious narratives and iconography. The past becomes present so that the present can possibly become future, or certain futures can be avoided, if the listeners and viewers follow the models set by the romance exempla before them. Romance, itself, provides a model as well; for Jon Whitman, the genre exemplifies those phenomena that can “survive their own dissolution.”47 The genre offers a “far-reaching effort to imagine what is yet to come” and thus provides more than “a retrospective attempt to reconceive what is long past” (253). The genre of Arthurian romance cultivates a distinct heterogeneity and simultaneity of time by making the past present for its audiences, then and now. I want to suggest that the future also becomes present, as the audience has an opportunity to imagine another time and perhaps to change its own. This opportunity for imagining allows the genre of romance to resist a clear trajectory of beginnings and endings. Whereas scholars like Eugene Vinaver and Erich Auerbach may have sought to chart the rise and fall of romance,48 more-recent scholarship has revealed a broader understanding of courtly or romance elements in chronicles such as Wace or Geoffrey of Monmouth as well as in stories of Alexander or Aeneas.49 As the origins of romance have become more nuanced, it is also not as easy to identify an end of the genre as earlier scholarship imagined.50 We still tell these stories drawing upon a “carefully planned design” that “remains charged with echoes of the past and premonitions

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of the future.”51 And, while Auerbach disparages the fairy-tale-like escapism of romance, it is, he says, the beholder’s continued fascination with “distant legend and its figural interpretation” that seems to offer a persistent realism that transcends the real (158). Indeed, this is how romance generally functions as an enduring and creative mechanism for presencing the past. In the context of medieval visual culture, we return to Wenzel’s term “Vergegenwärtigung” (making present) in describing the intersection of text, image, and figure in the Middle Ages. As monuments—we could perhaps also call them tributes or witnesses—to this process, the visual representations at these intersections had an impact both in the spaces of the court and in the spaces of the church in the service of memoria. The desire to remember and to commemorate permeates medieval culture. Drawing from both Wenzel and Macdonald, in the desire to make an imagined past present, I suggest that we can observe a memorial impulse directly leading to the secular art that emerges to accompany the flourishing of courtly literature in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and beyond. As Arthurian romance changes and evolves over time, it draws the past into the present out of which audiences should also be inspired to imagine a possible future—at least as we continually tell, adapt, visualize, and re-create narratives that have constantly metamorphosed since they appeared in the late twelfth century. Literally surrounded by stories told in images and visualized in narrative, medieval courtly audiences could resoundingly affirm, as we still do today, that Arthur and his knights live with(in) them today, as an imagined past and a real present commingle. This world of Arthurian romance reinstantiates the imagined past in every present, traversing both secular and religious boundaries in its iconography, and brings at least the possibility of a differently imagined future into that present. In short, the genre creatively imagines timelines and subverts the apocalypse, offering solace and even hope for continued existence through an Arthurian world that steadfastly refuses to end.52

Notes 1 Muriel Whitaker generally discusses interior wall paintings in chapter 5 (“Painted Chambers”) of The Legends of King Arthur in Art (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), while James A. Rushing gives a comprehensive overview of medieval German pictorial examples in Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Wall murals include Rodenegg (Iwein/Tirol), Schmalkalden (Iwein/Thüringen), Runkelstein (Iwein/Tristan/Garel), and Haus zur Kunkel (Parzival/Konstanz); tapestries can be found in Freiburg (Malterer Teppich/ Iwein), Wienhausen (Tristan), Brunswick (Gawan), and Lüneburg (Tristan); ivories

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depict Tristan and Iwein. Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde, ed. Jutta Eming, Ann Marie Rasmussen, and Kathryn Starkey (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) offers an extensive overview of work on the Tristan legend across Europe, particularly in French- and German-speaking areas. See also the recent catalog of Tristan illustrations published by Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden, Tristan and Isolde: Medieval Illustrations of the Verse Romances (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016). Anne Dunlop, Painted Palaces: The Rise of Secular Art in Early Renaissance Italy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 139. See also Gloria Allaire, “Arthurian Art in Italy,” in The Arthur of the Italians: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture, ed. Gloria Allaire and F. Regina Psaki (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), 209–19.

2

Michael Camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions (New York: Prentice Hall, 1996), 167.

3

4 R. Howard Bloch describes here the cathedral of Saint-Denis: “From Romanesque Architecture to Romance,” in Rethinking the New Medievalism, ed. R. Howard Bloch et al. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 249–70, here 255.

Augustine, Confessions, trans. Vernon J. Bourke (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1966), 350.

5

E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), 182.

6

7

In other words, “the painter suggests and the public takes hints,” 195.

8

See Jacqueline E. Jung, “Dynamic Bodies and the Beholder’s Share: The Wise and Foolish Virgins of Magdeburg Cathedral,” in Bild und Körper im Mittelalter, ed. Kristin Marek et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2006), 135–65. 9 Horst Wenzel addresses aspects of both medieval court and church that reveal similarly significant practices of memory, despite all differences in environment: Hören und Sehen, Schrift und Bild: Kultur und Gedächtnis im Mittelalter (Munich: C.  H. Beck, 1995), 127.

“Melerantz von Frankreich”—Der Meleranz des Pleier (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2011), line 23. Further references to Meleranz will appear in the text. English translations are from J. W. Thomas, The Pleier’s Arthurian Romance: Garel of the Blooming Valley, Tandareis and Flordibel, Meleranz (New York: Garland, 1992), 369–490, here 369.

10

11

The Pleier may very well have understood himself to be writing at the end of an era, as Volker Mertens suggests: Der deutsche Artusroman (Reclam: Stuttgart, 1998), 234. Certainly, as Thomas points out, the Pleier’s audience had different expectations from Hartmann’s audience (xii–xiii). 12

Carsten Morsch, “Bewegte Betrachter: Kinästhetische Erfahrung im Schauraum mittelalterlicher Texte,” in Kunst der Bewegung: Kinästhetische Wahrnehmung und Probehandeln in virtuellen Welten, ed. Christina Lechtermann and Carsten Morsch (Bern: Peter Lang, 2004), 45–73, here 53. Morsch sees in the prologue a call to active response and to the internalizing of values that then translate into virtuous behavior.

13

Hartmann von Aue, Iwein (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 15–20.

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Frank Tobin, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson, eds., Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 237.

14

Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain: The Knight of the Lion, trans. Burton Raffel (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 3–4. 15

Sharon Macdonald, “Presencing Europe’s Pasts,” in Companion to the Anthropology of Europe, ed. Ulrich Kockel (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 233–34. Macdonald deals primarily with the memorialization and musealization of Europe’s twentieth-century past. Past presencing, however, draws “attention to the multiple ways in which the past may be (and be made to be) present” (235), whether one’s point of reference for the present or the past occurs in the twentieth century or the thirteenth; there is generally a sense of time before just as there is a sense of time after that point. 16

Walter Haug, Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German Tradition, 800–1300, in its European Context, trans. Joanna M. Catling, vol. 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 125. Haug suggests that Hartmann praises the superiority of literature here. For Mertens, too, Hartmann privileges aesthetic experience in the prologue to Iwein. See Mertens, “Imitatio Arthuri: Zum Prolog von Hartmanns Iwein,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 106, no. 4 (1977): 350–58, here 357. On the other hand, Hartmann seems inclusive, desiring a more homogeneous audience than his contemporary Gottfried. Mertens comments, “Es fehlt die Abgrenzung von den Unverständigen” (353; Missing is the separation from those who cannot comprehend).

17

18

Because we (his audience) can enjoy the stories told now, Hartmann actually asserts his preference to live in the present (now) and not in Arthur’s times (then): “ichn wolde dô niht sîn gewesen,  / daz ich nû niht enwære” (54–57; I wouldn’t want to have lived then and not now, 235).

19

Hartmann thereby reflects a tendency toward the kind of intermediality that Judith Neaman attributes to Gothic art and Romanesque thinking in “Romanticizing the Past: Stasis and Motion in Yvain and Vezelay,” Arthuriana 4, no. 3 (1994): 250–70. Further, as Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel make clear in their volume on visual culture, intermediality is a distinguishing feature of many medieval German texts. See Starkey and Wenzel, eds., Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillon, 2005), 5–6. 20

This is reinforced in the decoration of secular spaces with murals and tapestries in addition to the embellishment of weapons and other utilitarian objects with inscriptions, engraving, inlays, and miniatures (Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, 325). Michael Curschmann, Wort, Bild, Text: Studien zur Medialität des Literarischen in Hochmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (Baden-Baden: Koerner, 2007), 455.

21

Volker Schupp, “Die Ywain-Erzählung von Schloss Rodenegg,” in Literatur und Bildende Kunst im Tiroler Mittelalter: Die Iwein-Fresken von Rodenegg und andere Zeugnisse der Wechselwirkung von Literatur und bildender Kunst. Im Auftrag des Südtiroler Kulturinstitutes, ed. Egon Kühebacher (Innsbruck: Institut für Germanistik, 1982), 11. Rushing (Images) offers the most comprehensive treatment of the Rodenegg Iwein. The Rodenegg murals, like the slightly younger images at Schmalkalden, remain valuable for their visualizations of Iwein in the absence

22

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of manuscript illuminations, though Hartmann’s Iwein exists in a number of manuscripts. 23

Wolfgang Müller defines interfigures as “re-used figures” that occur when figures are absorbed by an author or artist “into the formal and ideological structure of his own product” and employed for purposes that might “range from parody and satire to a fundamental revaluation or re-exploration of the figure concerned.” See Müller, “Interfigurality,” in Intertextuality, ed. Heinrich Plett (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 107. Anne-Marie Bonnet, Rodenegg und Schmalkalden: Untersuchungen zur Illustration einer ritterlich-höfischen Erzählung und zur Entstehung profaner Epenillustration in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 13. Jahrhunderts (Munich: tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986), 61–62.

24

The Rodenegg painter “created very few scenes from scratch” (Rushing, Images, 63). While the relationship between Christian iconography and the images is not a one-to-one correspondence, the catalog of images would have been available to the artist. Norbert H. Ott places the Tristan’s Baumgartenszene in a similar context, like the ascension of Alexander; as such scenes share key elements with aspects of the biblical story (the Garden of Eden or the Ascension of Christ), the images would have been immediate for easy associations. Ott, “Literatur in Bildern: Eine Vorbemerkung und sieben Stichworte,” in Literatur und Wandmalerei: Freiburger Colloquium 1998, ed. Eckart Conrad Lutz, Johanna Thali, and René Wetzel (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002), 189.

25

26

Michael Curschmann sees in the Rodenegg Iwein a “neue Dimension aktiver Anteilnahme am Dichterischen” (a new dimension of active participation in the poetic endeavor). See Curschmann, Vom Wandel im bildlichen Umgang mit literarischen Gegenständen: Rodenegg, Wildenstein und das Flaarsche Haus in Stein am Rhein (Fribourg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1997), 584.

27

Such resonances have been noted, for example, by Karen Rose Mathews, “Tristan and Iseult at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela,” Gesta 39, no. 1 (2000): 3–12, as well as James A. Rushing, “Images at the Interface: Orality, Literacy, and the Pictorialization of the Roland Material,” in Starkey and Wenzel, Visual Culture, 115–34. Neaman posits, in her comparison of Yvain and the Vezelay tympanum, that romance and religious narratives were similarly shaped. Olga V. Trokhimenko, Constructing Virtue and Vice: Femininity and Laughter in Courtly Society, ca. 1150–1300 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 183.

28

29 Jung notes the “fierce adherence, across medieval Christian culture, to the materiality of images” (emphasis Jung’s). Tangibility is as much a key to representation as visibility. See Jung, “The Tactile and the Visionary,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, ed. Colum Hourihane, The Index of Christian Art, Princeton University (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press), 240.

Jacqueline E. Jung, The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 197. As the screens integrate elements of a familiar environment into biblical narratives, says Jung, they incorporated the viewers “into their story of salvation and wove sacred history into the world outside” (197). Morsch, “Bewegte

30

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Betrachter,” speaks similarly of how the observer is “moved” in both the emotional and the physical sense of movement, inspired both to enact with and to empathize the visual images (63–64). 31

C. Stephen Jaeger emphasizes the modeling function of Gothic cathedral art exemplified by the figures of the wise and foolish virgins at the Strasbourg Cathedral. See Jaeger, Enchantment: On Charisma and the Sublime in the Arts of the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 150–56.

32

Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, “Uta and Isolde: Designing the Perfect Woman,” in Essays in Medieval Studies, vol. 19 (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002), 79.

33

Gottfried describes Isolde’s dress in language that evokes the virgins as well as Reglindis in lines 10938–49. See Sterling-Hellenbrand, “Uta and Isolde,” 75–76. See also Assaf Pinkus, Sculpting Simulacra in Medieval Germany, 1250–1380 (Burlington VT: Ashgate, 2014), 38–43.

34

Gottfried’s portrait of Isolde also invites and encourages similar interaction. See Sterling-Hellenbrand, 75–77.

35

Pinkus, 61. I have suggested that this is the interpretive space where Gottfried’s portrayal of Isolde resonates most clearly, at least for modern beholders. The contrast between Reglindis and Uta across the space of the west choir “invites the viewer to engage in their dialogue.” See also Sterling-Hellenbrand, 74.

36 Pinkus, 50. Pinkus also places the perennially mysterious figure of the Bamberger “Reiter” in the context of his theory about Gothic simulacra (50–56). Like the Naumburg donors, the Bamberg rider “remains enigmatic and without fixed identity” (56).

Wenzel, Hören und Sehen, 322. Pinkus suggests further that viewers in Naumburg “not only conceive the figures as living statues but also turn themselves into a living image” as they react to the images (51).

37

38

Wenzel and Christina Lechtermann observe that the reader or listener becomes a witness of the narrated experience in courtly literature through the performative strategies that are manifested in the texts. See Wenzel and Lechtermann, “Repräsentation und Kinästhetik,” Theorien des Performativen, ed. Erika Fischer-Lichte, special issue, Paragrana 10, no. 1 (2001): 191–213, here 205.

39 Pinkus, 59. Pinkus draws on the work of Evelyn Vitz regarding the creation of interpretive communities through the shared experience of romance narrated and enacted. See Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999), 281–82. 40

Wenzel uses the example of the Stations of the Cross to discuss kinesthetic perception in the Middle Ages, emphasizing that medieval literature makes use of the audiovisual aspects very deeply ingrained in medieval culture. Wenzel, Spiegelungen: Zur Kultur der Visualität im Mittelalter (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2009).

41

Cynthia Hahn, “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in EarlyMedieval Saints’ Shrines,” Speculum 72, no. 4 (1997): 1080.

Amanda Luyster, “Time, Space, and Mind: Tristan in Three Dimensions in Fourteenth-Century France,” in Eming, Rasmussen, and Starkey, Visuality and Materiality, 148–77, here 150.

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43

Haiko Wandhoff, “Jenseits der Gutenberg-Galaxis: Das Mittelalter und die Medientheorie,” in Bilder vom Mittelalter: Eine Berliner Ringvorlesung, ed. Volker Mertens and Carmen Stange (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2007), 33. We have had to wait “for the advent of computer-imaging and virtual reality for images once again to have become as dynamic and interactive as they were in the glorious visions of Gothic art” (Camille, 183).

44

This results directly from developments in the twelfth century like those described by Bloch (“Romanesque Architecture”) using the Eneas narrative as an example. Bloch explores the emergence of romance as a literary form in the context of Gothic architecture. He suggests that “Gothic transmits a sense of becoming” (254) as past, present, and future form a continuum whose “contiguity, through the Gothic building, yields a higher synthesis” (255). He seems to be suggesting that the dynamism of the architecture translates eventually into the literature, the idea of becoming, the importance of the material.

Jeffrey J. Cohen, “Time out of Memory,” in The Post-Historical Middle Ages, ed. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), 57. 45

Carolyn Dinshaw, How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 4–5.

46

Jon Whitman, Romance and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 250.

47

48 See Eugene Vinaver, Rise of Romance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). See also Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953). 49

Elements of courtly literature, and romance in particular, have been noted in a number of precursors to the Arthurian romance that emerged with Chrétien de Troyes in the latter part of the twelfth century. I offer here only a few representative examples of this body of scholarship. R. Howard Bloch, cited earlier in this essay, discusses the French Roman d’Eneas in this context, contrasted to the epic world of the Chanson de Roland (256–70). In their contributions to The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, respectively, Ad Putter says of Geoffrey of Monmouth that “he did flirt with ‘romantic possibilities’” (41), while Jane H. M. Taylor uses the term “romance-history” to describe how Wace and the Roman d’Eneas display an “essential ambiguity between historiography and romance” (58). In “Fearful Histories: The Past Contained in the Romances of Antiquity,” in Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jon Whitman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 32, Christopher Baswell talks about the “standard triad of romances of antiquity,” which would include the Roman de Thébes, the Roman d’Eneas, and the Roman de Troie. 50

Vinaver suggests that the eventual decline of romance was “the penalty of its very excellence” (92). For Auerbach, romance had outlived its purpose as the “selfportrayal of feudal knighthood” (131) by the later Middle Ages. Its fantasy and escapism contributed to the decline in the popularity of the genre, as Auerbach sees literary and generic developments toward an increasing realism.

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51

Vinaver (92) finds in it, however, the inspiration that produced Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. I cannot resist the Star Trek subtext threaded through this essay. Captain James T. Kirk was the only cadet at Star Fleet Academy to beat the computer simulation test known as the Kobayashi Maru, which depicted a no-win situation. Refusing to fail or admit defeat, Kirk beat the test by reprogramming the computer. On the one hand, yes, he cheated. On the other hand, he resisted the system. Romance, in text and visualization, shows us how literature similarly enables us to adjust the present, to reprogram a future—to defy the apocalypse.

52

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Sources Augustine. Confessions. Translated by Vernon J. Bourke. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1966. Chrétien de Troyes. Yvain: The Knight of the Lion. Translated by Burton Raffel. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987. Hartmann von Aue. Iwein. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001. “Melerantz von Frankreich”—Der Meleranz des Pleier: Nach der Karlsruher Handschrift. Edition-Untersuchungen-Stellenkommentar. Edited by Markus Steffen. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2011. The Pleier’s Arthurian Romance: Garel of the Blooming Valley, Tandareis and Flordibel, Meleranz. Translated by J. W. Thomas. New York: Garland, 1992. Tobin, Frank, Kim Vivian, and Richard H. Lawson, eds. Arthurian Romances, Tales, and Lyric Poetry: The Complete Works of Hartmann von Aue. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Secondary Sources Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953. Baswell, Christopher. “Fearful Histories: The Past Contained in the Romances of Antiquity.” In Whitman, Romance and History, 23–29. Bonnet, Anne-Marie. Rodenegg und Schmalkalden: Untersuchungen zur Illustration einer ritterlich-höfischen Erzählung und zur Entstehung profaner Epenillustration in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 13. Jahrhunderts. Munich: tuduv-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1986. Camille, Michael. Gothic Art: Glorious Visions. New York: Prentice Hall, 1996. Cohen, Jeffery J. “Time out of Memory.” In The Post-Historical Middle Ages, edited by Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico, 37–61. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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Curschmann, Michael. Vom Wandel im bildlichen Umgang mit literarischen Gegenständen: Rodenegg, Wildenstein und das Flaarsche Haus in Stein am Rhein. Fribourg, Switzerland: Universitätsverlag Freiburg Schweiz, 1997. ———. Wort, Bild, Text: Studien zur Medialität des Literarischen in Hochmittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Baden-Baden: Koerner, 2007. Dinshaw, Carolyn. How Soon Is Now? Medieval Texts, Amateur Readers, and the Queerness of Time. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. Eming, Jutta, Ann Marie Rasmussen, and Kathryn Starkey, eds. Visuality and Materiality in the Story of Tristan and Isolde. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012. Hahn, Cynthia. “Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in EarlyMedieval Saints’ Shrines.” Speculum 72 (1997): 1079–1106. Jung, Jacqueline E. “Dynamic Bodies and the Beholder’s Share: The Wise and Foolish Virgins of Magdeburg Cathedral.” In Bild und Körper im Mittelalter, edited by Kristin Marek, Raphaéle Preisinger, Marius Rimmele, and Katrin Kärcher, 135–65. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2006. ———. The Gothic Screen: Space, Sculpture, and Community in the Cathedrals of France and Germany, ca. 1200–1400. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ———. “The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Sculpture in the Medieval Religious Imagination.” In Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art & History, edited by Colum Hourihane, 230–41. Index of Christian Art, Princeton University. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Macdonald, Sharon. “Presencing Europe’s Pasts.” In A Companion to the Anthropology of Europe, edited by Ulrich Kockel, 230–52. New York: WileyBlackwell, 2012. Müller, Wolfgang. “Interfigurality.” In Intertextuality, edited by Heinrich Plett, 101–21. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991. Ott, Norbert H. “Literatur in Bildern: Eine Vorbemerkung und sieben Stichworte.” In Literatur und Wandmalerei: Freiburger Colloquium 1998, edited by Eckart Conrad Lutz, 153–97. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2002. ———. “Word and Image as a Field of Research: Sound Methodologies or Just a Fashionable Trend? A Polemic from a European Perspective.” In Starkey and Wenzel, Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, 15–33. Pinkus, Assaf. Sculpting Simulacra in Medieval Germany, 1250–1380. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014. Rushing, James. Images of Adventure: Ywain in the Visual Arts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Schupp, Volker. “Die Ywain-Erzählung von Schloss Rodenegg.” In Literatur und Bildende Kunst im Tiroler Mittelalter: Die Iwein-Fresken von Rodenegg und andere Zeugnisse der Wechselwirkung von Literatur und bildender Kunst. Im Auftrag des Südtiroler Kulturinstitutes, edited by Egon Kühebacher, 1–29. Innsbruck: Institut für Germanistik, 1982. Starkey, Kathryn, and Horst Wenzel, eds. Visual Culture in the German Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

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Sterling-Hellenbrand, Alexandra. “Uta and Isolde: Designing the Perfect Woman.” In The Politics and Aesthetics of Gender in the Middle Ages: Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association. Essays in Medieval Studies, vol 19, 70–89. Morgantown: University of West Virginia Press, 2002. Trokhimenko, Olga V. Constructing Virtue and Vice: Femininity and Laughter in Courtly Society (ca. 1150–1300). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Van D’Elden, Stephanie Cain. Tristan and Isolde: Medieval Illustrations of the Verse Romances. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016. Wandhoff, Haiko. “Jenseits der Gutenberg-Galaxis: Das Mittelalter und die Medientheorie.” In Bilder vom Mittelalter: Eine Berliner Ringvorlesung, edited by Volker Mertens and Carmen Stange, 13–34. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Wenzel, Horst. Hören und Sehen: Schrift und Bild. Kultur und Gedächtnis im Mittelalter. Munich: C. H. Beck, 1995. Whitaker, Muriel. The Legends of King Arthur in Art. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990. Whitman, Jon, ed. Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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Ich diene und wirbe / biz ich gar verdirbe: Lovesickness, Apocalypse, and the End-Times in Mauritius von Craûn and Das Nibelungenlied

Marian E. Polhill

A

Lᴏs Angᴇᴌᴇs Tiᴍᴇs ᴄᴀrᴛᴏᴏn from February 5, 2016, depicts Ted Cruz, contestant for the US Republican presidential nomination in the 2016 campaign, with a jack-in-the-box full of puppets proclaiming “Obama is the Antichrist,” “Hellfire for Homos,” and “Oprah is Satan’s Harlot.” The picture illustrates an article with the headline announcing, “Ted Cruz Embraces Apocalyptic Preachers and Anti-Gay Militants.”1 One infers the outcry issuing from conservative sectors: “Men are marrying men! Miley Cyrus kisses her same-sex partner in public! Transgender bathrooms! The world is clearly coming to an end!” One aspect of the current rhetoric of end-times connects the demise of the world with reconfigured gendered relations breaking with the heterosexual familial model that has dominated Western institutional discourse in recent centuries.2 The current era is not the first to witness a fascination with references to the end-times, as well as tensions stemming from discourses that call into question normatively constructed gender roles. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, experienced a period of renegotiating gendered relationships and notions of masculinity in certain sectors among the Western European nobility, as scholars have noted in recent decades. James Schultz identifies an anxiety relating to the love service relationship as characteristic of many medieval German secular literary texts of the thirteenth century in response to constraints on masculine behavior imposed by models of courtly love and courtliness.3 These systems, Schultz suggests, challenged conceptions of masculinity that were based predominantly on fighting and the domination of women, along with extramarital access to them (173–79).4 The subservience of a man to a woman theorized in love service also contradicts, of course, one influential Christian view of the ideal relationship between the sexes, with woman subordinated to man as head of household, as

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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well as the gendered models of power expressed in much medieval medical and legal discourse. Schultz analyzes evidence of constraint and masculine anxiety in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and Willehalm, Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein and Erec, and the Nibelungenlied, among other late twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts composed in medieval German.5 Other recent studies consider literary evidence of an anxiety or tension regarding alternative manifestations of masculine gender, which do not conform to a dominant (or hegemonic, often violent) masculinity.6 What has not been fully and explicitly appreciated by scholarship, I believe, is the extent to which, in medieval German texts, depictions of love service and configurations of a subservient masculine role are often accompanied by images of illness and the apocalypse. Anxiety about the love service relationship, and its configurations of gender and masculinity, frequently appear to intersect in later medieval German courtly literature with medieval medical discourse characterizing love as a disease; and, notably, images of doom and the end-times abound. Although several studies of lovesickness as a medieval medical condition and its literary representations in medieval German literature exist,7 these have not been explicitly linked to manifestations of masculine anxiety, nor have depictions of lovesickness been considered in connection with apocalyptic imagery. This essay will analyze references to disease and apocalypse in two medieval German tales of love and suffering. These texts belong to different genres with varying tones. The Nibelungenlied is an epic with resonances of Germanic legend and courtly romance. Mauritius von Craûn is a verse narrative and could perhaps best be considered a protonovella.8 Whatever its proper generic designation, it almost certainly derives from a French fabliau, as Francis G. Gentry and others have argued,9 and treats issues ambiguously, if not outright humorously. Despite these generic differences, in both medieval verse narratives, the Nibelungenlied and Mauritius von Craûn, anxiety manifests about love and the love service relationship and other gendered configurations threatening to transgress the “natural order” expressed in, among other discourses, the biblical mandate that woman serve man as his subordinate (e.g., 1 Cor. 11:2–16). This tension is accompanied by the use of metaphors and literary images drawing from medical discourse on lovesickness, mythological constructs of demise, and religious imagery of the end-times.

Mauritius von Craûn References to disease and apocalypse are prevalent in the verse narrative Mauritius von Craûn. The story of a knight in the service of a lady, the

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Countess of Beaumont, it comprises 1,784 verses and is found in the Ambraser Heldenbuch, a collection of heroic and courtly tales from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries transcribed by Hans Ried for Emperor Maximilian I around 1510.10 As in the Nibelungenlied, MvC alludes to a series of downfalls,11 all linked in some way to transgressions of gender roles. The prologue begins by referencing Paris’s excessive and fateful love for Helen of Troy and the destruction of that legendary city. It goes on to recount Nero’s problematic reign, including his intention to become pregnant and to dissect his mother, presumably to discover the secrets of sex difference. Along with the burning of Rome, these acts make up Nero’s perversions, which the text links to the decline of the Roman Empire. Then begins the story proper of Mauritius, or Moriz, as scholarship has often called him, and the countess. Mauritius, of the Angevin house of Craûn, is an exemplary knight: he is an excellent fighter, handsome, and has won much knightly fame. He only has one problem: he is in love with the Countess of Beaumont, who, much to the consternation of Mauritius, continually defers the knight’s ultimate reward—presumably, the consummation of their (actually: his) love. Mauritius, tormented by love, decides to confront the countess and beg her to give him “ein ende”12 (an end or relief or cure)13 from this love torture. The remainder of the narrative recounts the knight’s deeds performed in the hope of receiving his due reward until he finally succeeds in an unexpected way. Mauritius, as a knight performing love service, which places him under the power of the countess, is described in terms of disease and Christian apocalypse. The dynamic of love in the verse narrative is constructed as a love service relationship, with a knight of lower social status serving a loftier lady. Love in the narrative lacks joy, the fundamental quality in representations of courtly love, according to James Schultz.14 The knight and the lady assume the roles of players in courtly love, but without the ennobling sentiment usually characteristic of the latter. Rather, descriptions of the knight’s state frequently recall medical discussions of lovesickness, as well as images from the Apocalypse described in the biblical Book of Revelation. As is well documented, lovesickness was considered a melancholic disease in medieval medical treatises. This discourse became prevalent in Western Europe especially after the translation of Arabic texts to Latin beginning in the eleventh century.15 It was described as a serious disease in the medical literature, affecting the rational capabilities of the afflicted person, with a potentially fatal outcome. While symptoms of the ailment vary from treatise to treatise, lovesickness is usually characterized by changes of color (due to blushing and growing pale), sighing,

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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loss of speech, mood swings, insomnia, worry, anxiety, and depression, among other symptoms. Suggested cures include fresh air, healthy food, wine, pleasant company, rest, bathing, music, activities (both business and leisure), as well as therapeutic intercourse.16 Many of the recommendations, especially diet, drink, and intercourse, aim at restoring a healthy humoral balance in the body.17 The description of love and its effects on Mauritius in MvC resonate with the pathology of lovesickness. This occurs in several passages: as the knight lies in bed suffering; when he implores the countess to reward him, and she names the disease; and in its effects on both the rational state of the knight, as well as on the perceived hierarchy of the world. Shortly after introducing the knight and his love service relationship with the Countess of Beaumont, MvC’s narrator describes the physiological effects of love: “Swer die minne rehte erkennet / der weiz wol daz si brennet / daz herze in dem bluote” (321–23; Whoever rightly knows love, knows well that it burns the heart in the blood).18 This description of the physiological consequences of love is similar to that found in Western European medical treatises on lovesickness, deriving from Arabic science. They explain how an overabundance of heat arising from unfulfilled love causes an overproduction of black bile, which disrupts the balanced humoral composition in the body. The pathologically dominant humor is then combusted in the liver or heart, causing poisonous vapors to attack the imaginative and reasoning centers of the brain.19 This burning of the humors results in the disease of lovesickness, characterized by excessive thinking about the object of desire, and with consequent psychological symptoms of worry and depression, as well as physiological effects, such as a racing pulse, changes of color, loss of appetite, and insomnia. When Mauritius lies alone in bed one night (“er lac eins nahtes eine” [424; he lay one night alone]), contemplating his unrequited and uncompensated situation with the countess, he demonstrates many of the classic symptoms of lovesickness: sleeplessness, unhappiness turning into depression and despair, uncertainty, worry, and anxiety. The knight is unable to sleep because he dwells on the fact that the lady is withholding his reward: “‘si lônet mir ze spâte’” (430; “She rewards me too late”). He focuses on his suffering: “‘ich muoz von wârheite jehen / daz mîn herze was ie umbe daz / sorgen ein wol gevüllet vaz / und mir leide nie gebrast. / fröude was mir ie ein gast / mîn herze ist fröude noch maget’” (480–85; “I must truly confess that my heart has, regarding that, always been a container filled with sorrow, and I have never lacked suffering; joy has always been a stranger to me. My heart is still a virgin when

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it comes to joy”). He contemplates destruction and death: “‘ich diene und wirbe / biz ich gar verdirbe’” (465–66; “I serve and woo until it is my ruin”); “‘gibt sie mir niht ein ende, / sô wil ich aber ir geben / umbe den tôt mîn leben’” (496–98; “if she doesn’t give me a resolution/ cure, I will yet give her my life in exchange for death”). Along with the health-related terms “genesen” and “siech” in his discourse (see quote below), Mauritius may also be using another phrase known in medical treatises when he describes his ailment: “gibt si mir niht ein ende.” Jörg Mildenberger lists “medical cure” as one of the possible meanings of “ende” in his dictionary to Anton Trutmanns “Arzneibuch.”20 Mauritius suggests a fatal outcome if the countess does not provide “ein ende,” assisting him in overcoming his state. The knowledge that the disease of love, if left untreated, could lead to death was well known from medical treatises and stories of lovesick lovers.21 The second part of the passage, “sô wil ich aber ir geben / umbe den tôt mîn leben,” not only recalls the disease of lovesickness with its potentially fatal outcome but could also suggest a false parallel with Christ, who gave his life to ransom sinners from death, as expressed, for example in the Gospel of Mark: “Dann auch des menschen Son nicht kommen ist, das er im dienen laß, sonder das er diene und gebe sein leben zur bezalung für vile” (Mark 10:45; For even the Son of Man has not come to be served, but rather that he serve, and give his life as ransom for many).22 As we will explore in more detail below, the verse narrative describes Mauritius ambiguously, at times evoking images of Christ, and at other moments more closely resembling biblical descriptions of the Antichrist.23 The passage further emphasizes the knight’s anxiety and doubt (“zwîvel”), typical psychological features of lovesickness according to both Salernitan and Parisian treatises on lovesickness.24 Doubt inaugurates the knight’s debate: “er zwîvels begunde” (422; He began to doubt). The passage also concludes with Mauritius’s psychological wavering, as he goes to meet the countess: “ûf disen zwîvel kam er dar” (524; Doubting thus, he arrived). “Love” for Mauritius involves pathological feelings of debilitating suffering, worry, and doubt; there are no positive affects in his debate. In these desperate straits, Mauritius recognizes that he is sick and seeks a cure: “‘si ist von der ich muoz genesen, / oder lônes siech belîben / âne sie von allen wîben’” (470–72; “She is the one from whom I must recover or remain sick without a reward, without her, from among all women”). Mauritius, in his necessity of a cure, ventures out to converse with the countess about his plight. We can note other physical symptoms of lovesickness in the description of Mauritius as he approaches the countess to seek alleviation from his affliction:

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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Als schiere er sie ane sach, vernemet, wie im dô geschach. an sîner varwe vorhte ûz bleiche rœte worhte, und vergienc aber diu gar. harte misselîche var wart er, ê er vunde dahein wort er kunde gesprechen kleine oder grôz, daz es die frouwen verdrôz. (525–34) [As soon as he looked upon her, witness, what happened to him there. Fear changed his color from pale to red, and then (his color) disappeared entirely. He became many different colors before he found that he was not able to speak a single word, either small or large, so that the lady became annoyed.]

Change of color and speechlessness are frequently cited effects of the disease of love, as is the insomnia that has plagued Mauritius in the days before he meets with the lady. The fear (“vorhte”) that causes him to change color is also associated with the psychological effects of lovesickness.25 In the ensuing humorous dialogue between Mauritius and the countess, the knight is barely able to speak, managing only to convey that he is unhappy and in pain. This prompts the countess to recommend that he seek medical help in Salerno: “. . . frouwe: mir ist wê.” “wâ?” “allenthalben.” “so sult ir iuch salben.” “ich enmac noch enkan.” “nu sît ir doch ein starker man.” “frouwe, mîn kraft ist zegân.” “welt ir mînen rât hân?” “jâ frouwe, gerne.” “so kêret ze Salerne. sal iuwer iemer werden rât, da ist sô maneger arzât, si nerent iuch, sult ir genesen. des muget ir wol sicher wesen.” (546–58) [(Mauritius:) “. . . lady: I hurt.” (Countess:) “Where?” (Mauritius:) “Everywhere.” (Countess:) “Then you should rub yourself with ointments.” (Mauritius:) “I cannot do that, nor do I know how.” (Countess:) “But you are a strong man.” (Mauritius:) “Lady, my strength is gone.” (Countess:) “Do you want my advice?” (Mauritius:) “Yes, lady, gladly.”

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(Countess:) “Then go to Salerno. If anyone can still help you, there are many doctors there; they will cure you, if you should recover. You can be sure of that.”]

Scholars have interpreted the representation of the countess as either not recognizing what Mauritius’s true problem is, taking the knight’s words too literally, or of simply offering unhelpful advice.26 Albeit often parodically and as a literary cliché, as Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden has argued,27 Salerno was associated with cutting-edge medical theory and medicinal practice in the Middle Ages. Therefore, the countess’s suggestion that Mauritius seek help in Salerno is in harmony with his representation as a lovesick knight. Perhaps the most noteworthy physical symptom of Mauritius’s lovesickness is its feminizing effect on the knight: “‘nu sît ir doch ein starker man.’ / ‘frouwe, mîn kraft ist zegân’” (550–51; “But you are a strong man” / “Lady, my strength is gone”). Mauritius has lost his strength; he has become weak. In her foundational study of lovesickness, Mary Frances Wack notes a contradiction inherent in the disease: while it typically only affects noble men, rather than women, it tends to emasculate men suffering from it. Symptoms of excessive love—the inability to think and speak clearly, a focus on affect—caused Isidore of Seville to term the phenomenon “womanly love.” These characteristics belong to a medieval image of the nature of women, but, as Wack points out, “in the male lover, this ‘feminine’ state signifies pathology.”28 Along with displaying difficulties in articulation and psychological disturbances, Mauritius has lost one of the most frequently cited signals of a dominant medieval masculinity: his strength. After receiving the countess’s advice to go to Salerno, Mauritius explicitly reveals that love has robbed him of his senses, and he expresses his ultimatum: either reward me or be the cause of my death: “Frouwe, lât disen strît, des ist mir nôt und an der zît. ir wizzet, daz ich bin von iuwern schulden âne sin, und roubet mich dar nâch an miner fröude, des ist ein slac den ich vil dicke schiuwe. mînes heiles frouwe, genâdet mir, des ist mir nôt, oder ich muoz kiesen den tôt. ich wil von iu ze lône hân den tôt oder gewissen wân. . . .” (559–70)

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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[“Lady, end this debate. I am in dire need of it, and it is high time. You know that I am, on account of you, without reason, and you rob me accordingly of my joy; this is a blow that I very much dread. Lady of my well-being, grant me mercy; I am in need of it; otherwise, I must choose death. I want to have from you as reward either death or a certain hope. . . .”]

In this summary of his condition, Mauritius reiterates his intolerable situation of despair and loss of reason and control. He expresses his need to repair his psychological capacities, or suffer death as a consequence of his lovesickness. Only the countess, the cause of his ailment, can provide the cure. It is not until the end of the narrative, when Mauritius has terminated the love service relationship, and traditional gender roles have been resumed, that the world is represented as having restored its order, with birds singing and other signals of nature’s approval, Mauritius pursuing his knightly activities once again, and the dominated countess lamenting her situation.29 At the same time as characterizations of love as disease abound in the narrative, so too are there multiple references to the apocalyptic imagery found in the Book of Revelation (BoR). Christian Clement has identified abundant allusions to the Apocalypse of John in MvC. He suggests, for example, that the “‘history of knighthood’ [in the prologue] corresponds with the ‘history of the church,’” as given in chapters 2 and 3 of the BoR, “both institutions narrowly prevailing despite being constantly in danger of moral corruption according to their respective narratives” (63). He further notes that in medieval eschatological discourse, the atrocities of Nero in Rome, recounted, for instance, in MvC’s prologue, often recalled the BoR’s corrupted Babylon and the coming of the Antichrist. Clement further highlights the parallels between the BoR’s beasts and animal symbolism in MvC and attributes apocalyptic meaning to the marvelous ship on wheels that Mauritius constructs to transport him to the tournament. Within the apocalyptic references, Mauritius assumes an ambiguous position: sometimes recalling Christ and at other times the Antichrist (Clement, 65–72). There are two direct references to the Apocalypse in MvC. Both are in conjunction with the countess’s assessment of Mauritius. When Mauritius appears at the Beaumont castle, sailing in his earthborn ship, the countess exclaims: “waz ist ênez, daz dort kumet? ez ist harte wol getân. ich wæne sant Brandân durch wunder her gevarn ist.

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sî ez aber der Antercrist so seht daz iemen verzage, ez nâhet dem suontage. fliehet sîne predigen umbe daz. wir suln an got gelouben baz.” (882–90) [“What is that over there that is coming? It is very impressive! I do believe Saint Brendan has miraculously traveled here. Though if it should be the Antichrist, see to it that no one loses courage. Judgment Day will soon be here. Run away from his teaching because of that. We should rather believe in God.”]

The countess is unsure of whether she sees a saint or the Antichrist in Mauritius when he arrives at the tournament suddenly and extravagantly in his horse-driven ship. Clement notes the ambiguity of symbols and figures in apocalyptic literature: “the powers of Evil have so much power because they appear like the powers of Good” (64–65). He notes that in MvC Mauritius is a particularly ambiguous figure. On the one hand, numerous parallels exist between the description of Christ during the final battle of Armageddon in the BoR and Mauritius during the tournament, both warriors appearing “white as snow” and “shining” and battling impressively while astride white horses (65). On the other hand, Mauritius is explicitly compared with negative and evil figures, including the Antichrist, as in the countess’s assessment quoted above (65–66). Confusion about the ambiguity of Mauritius as courtly lover/transgressor, framed in terms of Christ/Antichrist, also appears to motivate the countess’s remark when the knight climbs into bed with her after bursting into her marital chamber and frightening her husband into knocking himself unconscious: “Ir sît der küeneste man des ich ie kunde gewan, daz irz so tiure wâget. ir hat niht gefrâget ob ich ez wolde oder niht. ich wæne ein wunder hie geschiht, dâ man iemêr von saget biz der jungeste tac taget.” (1595–1602) [“You are the boldest man that I could ever imagine for risking so much. You have not asked whether I wanted it or not. I do believe that a miracle is occurring here that will be spoken of from now on until the dawning of Judgment Day.”]

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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In MvC, Mauritius is portrayed as diseased and resembling the Antichrist. These metaphors are connected with his situation in love service to the Countess of Beaumont, a service that subordinates the knight “unnaturally” to a woman, and that indeed upsets the world order, as the verse narrative suggests. The world is out of joint because of the inverted gender roles in the love service relationship. References to the end-times further enhance the impression that the rightful order of the world is ending.

Love: Destroyer of Social and Natural Order Love is not only dangerous to the physical body. It is also a threat to the social order.30 In medieval political, theological, and medical discourse, the male body represented metaphorically the universe; it existed as a microcosm of the greater macrocosm.31 As such, physical suffering could figuratively (and literally!) signal disorder on a larger scale.32 In MvC, not only is the main character ill because of love; the world, so the composition suggests, is upside down because of it. Love damages a man’s ability to reason by subordinating his mind to his body, and thus, it interferes with man’s ability to maintain his dominant position on earth and in relationship to nature, its creatures, and—especially relevant in the context of twelfth- and thirteenth-century literature of courtly love—women. From the first time the poem mentions the theme of love within the knight Mauritius’s narrative, it describes the phenomenon not only as a force that subverts an individual man’s dominance but, indeed, as one that disrupts basic social and “natural” hierarchies established by medieval theology and science. Love is the only power that calls into question man’s supremacy over nature: Nu sprichet maneger hie bî, swaz lebendez ûf der erde sî, ez sî wilde oder zam, daz müeze sîn gehôrsam dem man und sînem liste. daz meinde ouch ich ê ich wiste daz des niht wol sîn mac. Minne twinget sunder slac einen man noch baz an stæte danne ein keiser tæte. also twanc ouch disen man ein wân, daz er muose tuon und lân

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swaz im diu Minne gebôt, ez wære gemach oder nôt. (307–20) [Now many say that whatever lives on earth, whether it be wild or tame, must be obedient to man and to his capacities (his reason). I thought that too, before I found out that that cannot be. Love forces a man without a blow to steadfastness even better than an emperor could. In this way a thought also forced this man (to think) that he must do and allow whatever Love commanded him to do whether it be comfort or harm.]

Man’s dominance over nature, indicated by synecdoche in man’s rule over animals (“swaz lebendez ûf der erde sî, / ez sî wilde oder zam, / daz müeze sîn gehôrsam / dem man und sînem liste,” 308–11), is, as far as medieval theology is concerned, established in the first book of the Bible. According to Genesis—to which “many” allude, according to the narrator of MvC (“Nu sprichet maneger hie bî,” 307)—man was given dominion over all creatures by God: “benedixitque illis Deus et ait crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram et subicite eam et dominamini piscibus maris et volatilibus caeli et universis animantibus quae moventur super terram”33 (Gen. 1:28; And God blessed them, saying: Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth34). In Augustine’s exegesis of this chapter of the Bible, he notes that man’s dominance over animals corresponds to his power of judgment and reason, one of the principal differences between man and beast.35 Within classical and Christian discourses, man is different from (and indeed, superior to) animals because of his special capacities (what the passage above refers to as liste), above all 1) the ability to reason and also 2) the capacity for speech.36 Minne, or love—as lovesickness—interferes with both of these faculties and, in doing so, disrupts man’s place in the hierarchy of beings. The passage from MvC explains how love interferes with reason: “Minne” causes a “wân,” or an irrational hope, to arise in the knight: “In this way a thought also forced this man [to think] that he must do and allow whatever Love commanded him to do, whether it be comfort or harm.” This irrational thought, “wân,”37 which we can contrast with one of man’s “liste,” his natural capacities—namely, reason—motivates Mauritius to undertake whatever Love commands him to do, without regard to whether these actions may cause him benefit or harm. In other words, as the passage asserts, love causes Mauritius to lose his ability to reason and also the capacity to distinguish between good and evil (or between comfort and harm).

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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Furthermore, Mauritius’s “wân,” his irrational hope, causes him to do whatever the Countess of Beaumont wishes. Love has subordinated a man to a woman, both in social (Frauendienst, service to women) and physiological (Minnekrankheit, lovesickness) terms. Much in the same way in which love, by eroding his ability to reason, calls into question man’s—supposedly God-given—signals of humanity and his power to dominate, this subservience of man to woman also subverts the natural order constructed in Genesis when God punished Adam and Eve and thus established their gender roles based on hierarchy and production. In the biblical account, God punished Eve and womankind by increasing her pain in childbirth and placing her under man’s control.38 Indeed, medieval exegesis of the stories of the Temptation and Fall often foreground Eve’s—and by synecdoche woman’s—inferiority to Adam and thus her natural submission to him, even before God’s punishment.39 Man’s ability to reason and woman’s subservience to man are thus fundamental elements of the version of the Genesis narrative that predominated in official Christian discourse and were construed as the natural order of things both before and after the Fall. Man serving woman (instead of the other way around) not only contradicts scripture; it additionally defies medieval scientific and medical teaching. Similarly invoking the story of Creation, medieval encyclopedists assert that man’s elemental composition has always, from the beginning, been superior to woman’s. Interpreting Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s view of man in De proprietatibus rerum, D. Vance Smith writes, “Because the male’s sensus discretio is finer than the female’s and because his bodily complexion is superior, he is also given greater potestas and dominatio. The configurations of the male body are projected onto the larger world; mastery of the humors is translated into a mastery of human affairs” (6). In the view of medieval theologians and scientists, the superiority of man’s elemental constitution and his greater ability to reason, based on superior brain structure and composition, authorizes man’s dominance in social and political spheres. The feminine was, compared with the male norm, the imperfect, colder, moister counterpart, thus lacking in rational ability—because a cold and moist brain fails to capture and process sensorial impressions adequately40—and therefore less suitable (if not entirely unsuitable) for exercising dominion in government.41 The inversion of the gendered relationship, as a result of lovesickness, for example, has consequences for other social hierarchies. Man’s domination of woman served, as has often been noted, via synecdoche as the basis for many medieval institutions. Just as man was considered the head of the household, so also the king governed the state, the pope

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led the church, God ruled the world, and mind was superior to body. Man’s use of reason, understood as a gift from God, was construed as the basis of all these hierarchies. Therefore, if man’s reason and his dominant position over women are subverted, then all natural and social hierarchies are, by analogy, called into question. Theoretically, of course, courtly love subverts the “natural” order because it places man at the service of woman socially and economically through service to women (Frauendienst). The physiological effects of lovesickness (Minnekrankheit) were considered to be at least equally as grave as the results of the social convention of love service, physically altering a man’s ability to reason and thus interfering with his “natural” power to dominate. Mauritius’s lovesickness is not only a personal cause of suffering; it also calls into question the entire natural order within the poem: “Love forces a man without a blow to steadfastness even better than an emperor could” (314–16). Courtly love requires gender roles that are incompatible with definitions of man and woman according to biblical scripture, theological exegesis, and medieval medicine and science. Minne—particularly as Minnekrankheit—disrupts the natural order of things. It threatens man’s place in the world by causing him to lose his reason. Thus, Minne is portrayed not only as dangerous to a man’s physical health but also as a disease that threatens social, religious, and class codes of behavior. MvC is an excellent example of a medieval German text that reflects masculine anxiety ensuing from man’s intolerable subordination to the force of love, so frequently expressed in medieval German literature. The constraints imposed on man in his subordination to love’s command engender anxiety, as Schultz has argued, and this anxiety is then inscribed in the male body, manifesting itself as disease and resonating in the text through additional imagery of the end-times.

Das Nibelungenlied There is almost certainly no other medieval German text that links gender issues and images of disease and apocalypse as dramatically as does the story of Kriemhild, Siegfried, Brünhild, Gunther, and Hagen. Titles of monographs dealing with the text bear witness: Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women’s Epic42 and Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes (Rules for the Endgame: The World of the Nibelungenlied).43 As is amply evident, the Nibelungenlied dwells on doom and on women who in various ways threaten the structure of patriarchal rule. As in MvC, tales of destruction, such as the fall of Troy,44 form part of the mythological subtext of

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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the Nibelungenlied, which additionally preserves vestige resonances with the Norse Ragnarök. These end-time traditions combine in the structure and imagery of the epic that recounts the fall of the Burgundians owing to the fateful wooing of two women. As in MvC, Siegfried’s “love” for Kriemhild is described in terms of its physical effects as distress caused by viewing the object of love. Although Siegfried first “falls in love” with Kriemhild and desires to marry her after hearing about her beauty (44–47), his physical symptoms appear only after he gazes upon her for the first time: Nu gie diu minneclîche,  alsô der morgenrôt tuot ûz den trüeben wolken.  dâ sciet von maneger nôt, der si dâ truog in herzen  und lange het getân. er sach der minneclîchen  nu vil hêrlîchen stân. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sîvríde dem hérren  wart beide lieb unde leid. Er dâht’ in sînem muote:  “wie kunde daz ergân, daz ich dich minnen solde?  daz ist ein tumber wân. sol aber ich dich vremeden,  sô wære ich sanfter tôt.” er wart von den gedanken  vil dicke bleich unde rôt. (281, 1–4; 284, 4–285, 4)45 [Then the lovely maid walked forth like the rosy dawn emerges from dark clouds; then he who carried her in his heart, and had done so for some time, fell into a distressful state. He saw the lovely maid standing there in all her beauty. . . . Siegfried the lord felt both pleasure and pain. He thought to himself: “How can it possibly turn out that I should love you? That is a foolish illusion. If I were to avoid you, though, I would rather be dead.” The thoughts made him change colors frequently from white to red.]

Love produces physical changes in Siegfried, similar to the medical and literary symptoms of lovesickness discussed above: here these are particularly evident in Siegfried’s changes of color and the presence of mental torture and insecurity, expressed, as in MvC, as “wân,” a foolish conception, illusion, or irrational thought. Anxiety about the consequences of man’s potential subordination, whether to love or to women, is also prevalent in the Nibelungenlied. The text portrays men punishing women who take charge and threaten masculine precedence: When Siegfried struggles with Brünhild in order to secure her sexually for Gunther, he is spurred on by the thought of how dangerous it would be if women followed Brünhild’s example and likewise refused their husbands:

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“Owê,” dâht’ der recke,  “sol ich nu mînen lîp von einer magt verliesen,  sô mugen elliu wîp her nâch immer mêre  tragen gelpfen muot gegen ir manne,  diu ez sus nímmér getuot.” (673, 1–4) [“Alas,” thought the hero, “if I should now lose my life at the hands of a maid, so all women from now on might rise up arrogantly against their husbands, who would not do so otherwise.”]

Siegfried takes action to prevent further insurrection by women. Late in the epic, Kriemhild is physically punished by Siegfried for quarreling with Brünhild and thereby endangering the friendship between Gunther and Siegfried and the peace of the realm (862, 894). She is killed at the end of the epic by Hildebrand for having taken revenge against her brothers and decapitating Hagen (2376). The text explicitly portrays the assertion of masculine precedence in situations where women act independently of men or threaten their authority. Although the men are here not constrained by a love service relationship but rather consider themselves to be threatened by a woman’s discourse or actions, one sees a similar trajectory to that described by Schultz in his analysis of Parzival: the depiction first of masculine constraint and anxiety, and then the reestablishment of a masculine precedence.46 Love as a physically distressing state, and explicit statements revealing male anxiety, are accompanied in the Nibelungenlied, as in MvC, with images of end-times and destruction. Foreshadowing of doom prevails, of course, in the introduction of the epic and is recalled at various intermittent moments. The opening passages anticipate the fate of men who will die because of Kriemhild’s future actions: “Kriemhilt . . . wart ein scœne wîp. / dar umbe muosen degene  vil verliesen den lîp” (2, 3–4; Kriemhild became a beautiful woman. On her account many heroes had to die); “[die recken] sturben sît jæmerlîche  von zweier edelen frouwen nît” (6, 4; Knights later died miserably because of the animosity between two noblewomen); “wie sêre si daz rach / an ir næhsten mâgen, die in sluogen sint! / durch sîn eines sterben  starp vil maneger muoter kint” (19, 2–4; How bitterly she took revenge on her closest family members who later slew him! Because of his single death, many other a mother’s child died). The focus at the beginning of the Nibelungenlied is on men dying on account of a woman, much as occurs in Parzival with its emphasis on knights such as Isenhart and Schionatulander who perish in love service.47 This foreshadowing of doom on account of a woman at the beginning of the Nibelungenlied also recalls the Iliad and its war provoked by Paris’s love for Helen of Troy, culminating posterior to epic time with the

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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destruction of Troy. Additionally, various moments in the Nibelungenlied are infused with a subtext of Germanic legend and its fall of the gods in Ragnarök. Along with the references to Siegfried as dragon slayer and winner of an immense, legendary, and cursed treasure, Hagen emerges as a reluctantly Odinic figure, continually receiving—from Ute’s dream and from the merwomen in the Danube, for example—prophecies of inevitable doom, including his own, yet being compelled to continue on toward unavoidable destruction. The Nibelungenlied thus combines and reconfigures two well-known mythological constructs: Ragnarök and the fall of Troy, two potent mythologies of destruction. The focus of these references on destruction and the physical consequences for male bodies is enhanced by numerous scenes in the epic of the wounded and of caring for the injured (see, for example, stanzas 244, 248, 255, 269, 308). As in MvC, apocalyptic images and foreshadowing of doom are directly connected in the Nibelungenlied with love and its consequences. Classical (references to Helen as a cause of war), medical (woman as subordinate, inferior, weak), and theological (references to Eve as the cause of the Fall from paradise, as subordinate to Adam) discourse all converge to justify the domination of the countess, Brünhild, and Kriemhild. Disease and end-of-world imagery characterize men who are victims of love and its effects. In medieval Germany, as today, the end-times seemed close for those anxious about changing power constructions within gendered relationships.

Notes 1 David Horsey, “Ted Cruz Embraces Apocalyptic Preachers and Anti-Gay Militants,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 2016. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/ topoftheticket/la-na-tt-cruz-embraces-apocalyptic-preachers-20160205-story. html. 2

For an example of an analysis of the contemporary Christian Right’s invocation of apocalyptic discourse when condemning same-sex desire, see Michael Carden, “Getting to Know You: Reformation Marriage Ideologies and Contemporary Debates on Same-Sex Marriage,” in The One Who Reads May Run: Essays in Honour of Edgar W. Conrad, ed. Roland Boer, Michael Carden, and Julie Kelso (New York: T and T Clark International, 2012), 142–59, here 157. 3 James A. Schultz, Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 173–88. 4 To be sure, there was no single, monolithic conception of masculinity in the medieval period. See, for example, two foundational works on medieval masculinity: Clare A. Lees, ed., Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994) and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland, 1997).

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Jacqueline Murray recently confirmed the former as still “highly current” in her article “Masculinity and Male Sexuality in the Middle Ages,” Oxford Bibliographies Online, last modified April 26, 2018, DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780195396584-0251. See also Leann Stuber, “The Contradiction of Masculinity in the Middle Ages,” Delta 3, no. 1 (2008): 5–23. Schultz, Courtly Love, 175–83. See also James A. Schultz, “Love Service, Masculine Anxiety and the Consolations of Fiction in Wolfram’s Parzival,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 121 (2002): 342–64.

5

6 See, for example, Olga V. Trokhimenko, “‘Believing That Which Cannot Be’: (De)Constructing Medieval Clerical Masculinity in ‘Des münches not,’” German Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 121–36. 7 For previous studies on lovesickness in medieval German literature, see, for example, Katharina Philipowski, “Minne als Krankheit,” Neophilologus 87 (2003): 411– 33. Mary Frances Wack discusses select literary representations of lovesickness as part of her foundational study Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990). 8

Ruth Harvey, among others, discusses the narrative poem briefly in terms of the genre of the novella: Moriz von Craûn and the Chivalric World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 49. Francis G. Gentry, “A Tale from a City: Moriz von Craûn,” in Semper idem et novus: Festschrift for Frank Banta, ed. Francis G. Gentry (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), 193–207.

9

For further information on the text and manuscript, see Hubertus Fischer, Ritter, Schiff und Dame: Mauritius von Craûn. Text und Kontext (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006). 10

Mauritius von Craûn will be abbreviated MvC throughout the remainder of this paper. 11

Quotes follow Mauritius von Craûn, ed. Heimo Reinitzer (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000), unless otherwise noted. Passages are also compared with Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden’s diplomatic rendering of Hans Ried’s Bavarian, Moriz von Craûn (New York: Garland, 1990). Translations, except where noted, are mine. Also consulted in comparison with my translations were the following: Van D’Elden’s translation in Moriz von Craûn; Moriz von Craûn, The Best Novellas of Medieval Germany, trans. J. Wesley Thomas (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1984); Heimo Reinitzer, Mauritius von Craûn: Kommentar, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, ed. Joachim Heinzle, Beiheft 2 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999); Moriz von Craûn, trans. Albrecht Classen (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1992); and Mauricius von Craûn, trans. Dorothea Klein (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999). Here Reinitzer, verse 496. 12

13

For “medical cure” as one of the possible meanings of “ende,” see Jörg Mildenberger, Anton Trutmanns “Arzneibuch,” Teil II: Wörterbuch (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1997), 544–45. This passage is discussed in more detail below.

14

Schultz investigates a love that can “stand in for courtliness” and that is associated with joy (Courtly Love, 15). Stephen Jaeger discusses virtuous and ennobling love in

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 15

See, for example, Wack, 31–50; Philipowski, 414–15.

16

Therapeutic intercourse was widely advocated, for example by Rufus of Ephesus and al-Rāzī (“the cure for love is frequent coitus”); quoted in Wack, 11.

17

For more about medieval medical theories on the causes, symptoms, and cures of lovesickness, see, along with Wack and Philipowski, Donald Beecher, “The Lover’s Body: The Somatogenesis of Love in Renaissance Medical Treatises,” Renaissance and Reformation 12, no. 1 (1988): 1–11. In his commentary to MvC, Reinitzer mentions the possibility that this passage refers to the humoral-pathology of lovesickness, without elaborating on it (47).

18

See Karl Brunner, “geluste und gelange: Anmerkungen zur Sexualität im ersten Mittelalter,” in Ir sult sprechen willekomen: Grenzenlose Mediävistik. Festschrift für Helmut Birkhan zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Christa Tuczay, Ulrike Hirhage, and Karin Lichtblau (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998), 246. Beecher notes that, despite the differences among Renaissance statements on lovesickness, all of those he studied, including Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, agree that “melancholy love was a product of the humours burnt by the passions” (3–4).

19

20

Mildenberger, 544–45.

21

See, for example, Wack, 4–5; Beecher, 4; and Donald Allen Beecher, “Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron and the Received Idea: The Problematics of Lovesickness,” in International Colloquium Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of the Birth of Marguerite de Navarre, ed. Régine Reynolds-Cornell (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1995), 71–78, here 73.

Hieronymus Emser, trans., Das gantz neü testament, ed. Johann Dietenberger (Tübingen: Morhart, 1532), 86 XXXVv; electronic edition (Düsseldorf: Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, 2011), http://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/ content/pageview/1723425. 22

23 See Christian Clement, “uns ist der tiuvel nahen bi: Mauritius von Craûn and the Apocalypse,” in “Minne twinget sunder slac,” ed. Maurice Sprague, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik (Lorch: Kümmerle, n.d.), 61–76. The chapter was submitted, accepted, and prepared for publication with pagination, but the volume has not yet materialized. It is available in part at the weblink https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/257924382_Uns_ist_der_tiuvel_nahen_bi_-_Mauritius_von_Craun_ and_the_Apocalypse. I thank Dr. Christian Clement for providing me with the full text, which will be referenced in more detail below. My paper “Si brennet daz herze in dem bluote: Lovesickness and Medieval Medicine in Mauritius von Craûn” was also to be included in that volume. Portions of that unpublished paper are integrated into this article. A detailed analysis of lovesickness, in the version described specifically by Gerard of Berry’s commentary on the Viaticum, in Mauritius von Craûn is forthcoming. 24

Both Urso of Calabria and Andreas Capellanus focus on the suffering and anxiety due to unrequited love, according to Mary Frances Wack, “Imagination, Medicine, and Rhetoric in Andreas Capellanus’ De amore,” in Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske, ed. Arthur Groos (New York: Fordham University

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Press, 1986), 107. Gerard of Berry also emphasizes the psychological state of worry in lovesickness; quoted in Wack, Lovesickness, 200–201. 25

Wack, “Imagination,” 108; Beecher, “The Lover’s Body,” 5.

Waltraud Fritsch-Rössler, “Moriz von Craûn: Minnesang beim Wort genommen oder Es schläft immer der Falsche,” in Uf der mâze pfat: Festschrift für Werner Hoffmann zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Waltraud Fritsch-Rössler (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991), 248; Dorothea Klein, “Mauricius von Craûn oder die Destruktion der hohen Minne,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 127, no. 3 (1998): 277–78. Albrecht Classen believes that the countess feigns literal-mindedness, toying with and tormenting the knight as part of her game. See Classen, “Das Spiel mit der Liebe—Leben als Spiel: Versuch einer Neuinterpretation des Morîz von Craûn,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 40, no. 4 (1990): 375. 26

27

Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden, “The Salerno Effect: The Image of Salerno in Courtly Literature,” in L’Imaginaire courtois et son double, ed. Giovanna Angeli and Luciano Formisano (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992), 503–15. 28

Wack, Lovesickness, 65, 72–73, 150–76.

Fritsch-Rössler, 238–40, 254. See also Klein, “Mauricius von Craûn oder die Destruktion der hohen Minne,” 284–86. According to Klein, the poem dispels the illusion, constructed by courtly love, of woman’s supremacy. Hubertus Fischer, without making reference to the medical discourse of lovesickness, draws a related conclusion: that the verse narrative upholds a system dominated by men and seeks to maintain women in the object position (237–38).

29

30

Compare Alfred Karnein’s discussion of love represented as threatening man’s dominant position in the social hierarchy: “Krankheit, Sünde, Leidenschaft,” in Amor est passio: Untersuchungen zum nicht-höfischen Liebesdiskurs des Mittelalters, ed. Alfred Karnein and Friedrich Wolfzettel (Trieste: Parnaso, 1997), 57–72, here 58–59.

31

See, for example, D. Vance Smith, “Body Doubles: Producing the Masculine Corpus,” 3–19, and Michael Uebel, “On Becoming-Male,” 367–84, both in Cohen and Wheeler, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages; as well as the fundamental study by Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957).

32

Because man was considered to be made up of the four elements found in nature, a disturbance in the balance of elements in the body could literally signal an elemental chaos in cosmological terms, as well. As D. Vance Smith writes, “when Adam sinned . . . all matter was affected. . . . The male body’s four complexions do not just represent the four elements. They are the four elements” (“Body Doubles,” 5). Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionem, ed. Roger Gryson et al., 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007), http://www.academic-bible.com/en/ online-bibles/biblia-sacra-vulgata/read-the-bible-text/.

33

Translations of the Biblia Sacra Vulgata follow The Holy Bible: Douay-Rheims Version, CatholicBible.Online, 2016, http://catholicbible.online/douay_ rheims?bible_part_no=1&book_no=1&chapter_no=1.

34

Along with passages in De Civitate Dei (for example, 4.13, 16.8, and 19.7) see Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 332– 33 (13.23); see also 151 (7.17), 213 (10.6).

35

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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36

Philipowski notes that twelfth-century Western European philosophy frequently alluded to the differences between man and beast and emphasized man’s dominance of nature owing to his ability to reason (420–25).

37

Schultz notes that suffering poets in courtly literature frequently refer to their love that is the “plaything of the mind” as “wân,” “‘belief’ or ‘hope,’ in these contexts often ‘illusion’ or ‘illusory hope’” (Courtly Love, 112). It is a foolish or illogical hope caused by love.

38

“mulieri quoque dixit multiplicabo aerumnas tuas, et conceptus tuos in dolore paries filios et sub viri potestate eris et ipse dominabitur tui” (Gen. 3:16; To the woman also he said: I will multiply thy sorrows, and thy conceptions: in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children, and thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee). See, for example, Nona C. Flores, “Effigies amicitiae . . . veritas inimicitiae: Antifeminism in the Iconography of the Woman-Headed Serpent in Medieval and Renaissance Art and Literature,” in Animals in the Middle Ages, ed. Nona C. Flores (New York: Routledge, 1996), 167–95, esp. 177.

39

40

See, for example, Peter of Spain’s commentary on lovesickness, quoted and discussed in Wack, Lovesickness, 114–15, 223.

41

“The norm for medieval personhood was defined—needless to say—as masculine: femininity was construed as imperfection, incompleteness, passivity, childishness, failure” (Uebel, 370). Jerold C. Frakes, Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women’s Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994).

42

43 Jan-Dirk Müller, Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998); trans. William T. Whobrey as Rules for the Endgame: The World of the Nibelungenlied (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).

Taking into account that other medieval German texts, such as MvC, explicitly mention the story of Helen and the Trojan War, it is certainly possible, as I suggest here, that the medieval public for the Niebelungenlied would have recalled the Greek legend as an intertextual reference. 44

Quotes follow Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Karl Bartsch and Helmut de Boor, 20th ed. (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972). 45

Schultz, “Love Service.” See also Müller, Rules for the Endgame, 166–71 (“Frouwen ziehen”) and Frakes, Brides and Doom, 265.

46

47

Schultz, “Love Service,” 346–47.

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Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Augustine. Confessions. Translated by R. S. Pine-Coffin. New York: Penguin, 1961. Mauricius von Craûn. Translated by Dorothea Klein. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999. Mauritius von Craûn. Edited by Heimo Reinitzer. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000. Moriz von Craûn. Edited and translated by Stephanie Cain Van D’Elden. New York: Garland, 1990. Moriz von Craûn. Translated by Albrecht Classen. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1992. “Moriz von Craûn.” In The Best Novellas of Medieval Germany, edited by J. Wesley Thomas, 37–53. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1984. Das Nibelungenlied. Edited by Karl Bartsch and Helmut de Boor. 20th ed. Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972.

Secondary Literature Brunner, Karl. “geluste und gelange: Anmerkungen zur Sexualität im ersten Mittelalter.” In Ir sult sprechen willekomen: Grenzenlose Mediävistik. Festschrift für Helmut Birkhan zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Christa Tuczay, Ulrike Hirhage, and Karin Lichtblau, 245–62. Bern: Peter Lang, 1998. Classen, Albrecht. “Das Spiel mit der Liebe—Leben als Spiel: Versuch einer Neuinterpretation des Morîz von Craûn.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 40, no. 4 (1990): 369–98. Clement, Christian. “uns ist der tiuvel nahen bi: Mauritius von Craûn and the Apocalypse.ˮ In “Minne twinget sunder slac,” edited by Maurice Sprague, 61–76. Book partially prepared for the Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, but not published. Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages. New York: Garland, 1997. Fischer, Hubertus. Ritter, Schiff und Dame: Mauritius von Craûn: Text und Kontext. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006. Frakes, Jerold C. Brides and Doom: Gender, Property, and Power in Medieval German Women’s Epic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. Fritsch-Rössler, Waltraud. “Moriz von Craûn: Minnesang beim Wort genommen oder Es schläft immer der Falsche.” In Uf der mâze pfat: Festschrift für Werner Hoffmann zum 60. Geburtstag, edited by Waltraud Fritsch-Rössler, 227–54. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991. Gentry, Francis G. “A Tale from a City: Moriz von Craûn.” In Semper idem et novus: Festschrift for Frank Banta, edited by Francis G. Gentry, 193–207. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988.

Lᴏᴠᴇsiᴄᴋnᴇss, Aᴘᴏᴄᴀᴌyᴘsᴇ, ᴀnᴅ ᴛhᴇ Enᴅ-Tiᴍᴇs

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Jaeger, Stephen. Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. Klein, Dorothea. “Mauricius von Craûn oder die Destruktion der hohen Minne.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 127, no. 3 (1998): 271–94. Lees, Clare A. Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Müller, Jan-Dirk. Spielregeln für den Untergang: Die Welt des Nibelungenliedes. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1998. Translated by William T. Whobrey as Rules for the Endgame: The World of the Nibelungenlied. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Murray, Jacqueline. “Masculinity and Male Sexuality in the Middle Ages.” Oxford Bibliographies Online. Last modified April 26, 2018. DOI: 10.1093/ OBO/9780195396584-0251. Philipowski, Katharina. “Minne als Krankheit.” Neophilologus 87 (2003): 411–33. Reinitzer, Heimo. Mauritius von Craûn: Kommentar. Edited by Joachim Heinzle. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, Beiheft 2. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1999. Schultz, James A. Courtly Love, the Love of Courtliness, and the History of Sexuality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ———. “Love Service, Masculine Anxiety and the Consolations of Fiction in Wolfram’s Parzival.” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 121 (2002): 342–64. Smith, D. Vance. “Body Doubles: Producing the Masculine Corpus.” In Cohen and Wheeler, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, 3–19. Stuber, Leann. “The Contradiction of Masculinity in the Middle Ages.” Delta 3, no. 1 (2008): 5–23. Trokhimenko, Olga V. “‘Believing That Which Cannot Be’”: (De)Constructing Medieval Clerical Masculinity in ‘Des münches not.’” German Quarterly 85, no. 2 (2012): 121–36. Uebel, Michael. “On Becoming-Male.” In Cohen and Wheeler, Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, 367–84. Van D’Elden, Stephanie Cain. “The Salerno Effect: The Image of Salerno in Courtly Literature.” In L’Imaginaire courtois et son double, edited by Giovanna Angeli and Luciano Formisano, 503–15. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1992. Wack, Mary Frances. “Imagination, Medicine, and Rhetoric in Andreas Capellanus’ De amore.” In Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske, edited by Arthur Groos, 101–15. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. ———. Lovesickness in the Middle Ages: The Viaticum and Its Commentaries. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.

9:

The Slippery Concept of Evil in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec and Iwein

Evelyn Meyer Evil assumes various shapes in medieval epics. Each shape corresponds to its own form of conflict. —Kenneth L. Schmitz

V

iᴏᴌᴇnᴄᴇ ᴀnᴅ fighᴛing are dominant features in medieval narratives, and as we all know, much of the fighting, jousting, and knightly deeds serve to reveal “ideal, chivalrous forms of behavior both in combat and in non-combative social situations.”1 What is of interest to me in this article are the instances of violence that are excessive, which necessarily raises the question about intentio—that is, what motivated the aggressor to employ such forceful actions: is he simply overstepping social norms, is he acting in self-defense, or is he acting from a place of evil? It is the latter that I will investigate here in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec and Iwein to determine when a cruel act is perceived as being truly evil or “merely” violent, and if different standards are applied to figures based on their social status as well as the perceived difference of their actions. This will expose several cultural attitudes toward those whose acts are deemed evil and need to be punished severely and those who receive a figurative slap on the hand in spite of their use of excessive violence. The term “evil” covers a broad range of meanings. The Oxford English Dictionary lists the following as primary definitions: “the antithesis of good; a description of what is morally depraved, bad, wicked, vicious, mischievous, painful, hurtful, prejudicial or disastrous; that which is morally or physically evil; sin, wickedness; the act of doing or of tending to do harm; to cause discomfort, pain, or trouble; it is used to describe the Devil or evil spirits, or someone’s reputation or intention.”2 “Evil” and “good” are often conveyed in medieval texts by means of dark and light imagery, respectively. Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy makes frequent use of light and dark imagery in his analysis of good and evil, to name but one influential medieval person. God, the ultimate form of Good, is commonly rendered in the brightest light:

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“The natural cosmic symbol for God was the transforming radiance, the Divine Splendour (illustratio) of which Dionysos wrote.”3 Other literary texts that come to mind when contemplating the notion of evil are Beowulf and the Nibelungenlied. Grendel and his mother represent the dark evil in their formless yet raw power. Kriemhild, on the other hand, begins as a perfectly well-behaved young noble lady who in her grief is turned into a vâladinne (Nibelungenlied 1748, 4).4 As a she-devil, she cruelly and intentionally destroys her own family with the utmost brutality and is slain herself in the end for her evil deeds. Marcus G. Singer points out in “The Concept of Evil” that many things get conflated with the notion of evil: in common usage we apply the term “evil” to concepts or actions that are in actuality not evil but “merely” bad.5 He writes that “evil deeds must flow from evil motives, the volition to do something evil, by which I mean something horrendously bad. One cannot do something evil by accident or through thoughtlessness. Through accident or misadventure one can do something wrong or bad, even terrible, but not something evil” (190). Singer’s definition of evil will be my main criterion for distinguishing acts of violence as merely cruel versus purely evil in Hartmann’s Erec and Iwein. In particular, I will examine if there is volition or intentio, the term used in medieval Scholastic legal contexts, to do something evil or not. I will focus on the blurred line between the concepts of evil and cruelty as created in Hartmann’s poetic imagination,6 combined with the flexible interpretation and legal application surrounding a person’s intentionality to commit evil deeds.7 My analysis of several scenes will provide meaningful insights into notions of violence and evil in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but it will also be challenging them, as the boundaries of these concepts are slippery at best, thus exposing a complex understanding of chivalric violence. We need to consider another aspect: whether the act of violence was understood as justified or unjustified, or legitimate or illegitimate, as Scott E. Pincikowski defines them. He writes that the legitimacy of violence is dependent on what the ruling powers, in our discussion the social body of the court, deem to be acceptable forms of violence—those instances in which violence appears to possess a justifiable or just purpose. Conversely, illegitimate violence can be understood as violence that undermines the authority of the court or endangers its monopoly of violence—those cases that appear to possess no positive function for courtly society.8

Illegitimate forms of violence, especially when committed intentionally, will be located much closer to evil on the slippery boundary between

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“mere” violence and “pure” evil. They are at the center of this study, which poses the following questions: When are acts of violence or cruelty perceived to be evil? What role does volition or intentio play in the mind of the violent person? How are both portrayed in Hartmann’s Erec and Iwein? Furthermore, we must consider where a perpetrator or agent stands or is perceived to be located on the social and moral continuum. Gender, race, body, geography, and religion intersect and create a complex set of factors that determine who is located most closely to the “good”—that is, white, Western, Christian—end of the continuum, and who is most closely located at the “bad” or less good end. Kalokagathia is the belief that the καλóς [kalos (beautiful)] and the κάγαθός [kaːgatʰǒs (good)] are linked, and external beauty is a sign of inner goodness and virtuousness, and inner moral beauty is reflected in outer bodily beauty. It shaped much of medieval thinking and goes back to antiquity, where it appears, for example, in Plato’s Lysis.9 Medieval authors work with this concept as well, either by upholding it or, as Wolfram von Eschenbach most noticeably does in Parzival, challenging it. Conversely, external ugliness, which includes bodily deformity, was a sign of inner ugliness, moral corruption, and sinfulness. The darker a person’s skin, the darker, apparently, was also his or her soul.10 While it may sound as if this discourse is set up in explicitly binary terms, it is important to recognize that during the Middle Ages bodily and racial discourses were not constructed in a binary manner as they are in modern ones but were instead constructed as a continuum on which people were placed and could be moved about, as argued convincingly by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, who writes, “Within the medieval discourse of bodily diversity—in sharp opposition to modern racial discourse—corporeal difference is not an either/or, black/white dichotomy. Rather, it is a continuum, with the monstrous races found at the fringes of the ecumene located on one end, and the normative European body on the other.”11 Thus, simply because a figure has dark skin, a bodily deformity, or is a wild man, or a non-Christian, does not necessarily mean that such a figure is located at the negative end of this social and moral continuum; nor does it, conversely, mean that a knight, for example, because he is part of the white, Western Christian society is irrevocably found at the positive end of this continuum. Looking at selected scenes from Erec and Iwein and those figures’ actions that transgress social norms, I also discuss where they are located, or would have been perceived to be located, on the social and moral continuum; if this placement is relevant (or not) to whether their actions are understood to be evil or merely violent; and if intentio or lack thereof further influences their position on the continuum. Therefore, I have grouped

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Erec’s and Iwein’s encounters with robbers, dwarfs, and giants together, as these latter figures find themselves located closer to the negative end of this continuum, not only because of their bodily deformities but also because they do not conduct themselves in a courtly manner, do pose a threat to courtly authority and social stability, and additionally have been labeled as morally corrupt. This is the group where we are right to expect their actions to be perceived as being evil; but as we shall see, Hartmann did not create them uniformly, and even within this obvious group of contenders for evil actions he created nuances. Socially, these figures are set apart from Erec’s and Iwein’s encounters with several equally questionable knights—Guivreiz, Count Oringles, Iwein himself in his interactions with Ascalon, and Mabonagrin—who find themselves placed closer toward the positive end of the social and moral continuum, for they are members of what medieval courtly society understood to be the best of the best. They are knights of medieval courts and all in the prime of their masculinity; yet, all are portrayed as using excessive force and as subjecting their opponents to illegitimate acts of violence. Just as Hartmann did not create a uniform portrayal of the fate suffered by robbers, dwarfs, and giants, knights likewise suffer different fates. Those who have been knights for a long time and therefore can be expected to better control evil urges are fully exposed as being evil, morally corrupt, and irredeemable. Those who are young knights-in-training are given a second chance to prove themselves as valuable and morally good after an act of evil violence. Hartmann deploys a deflection-from-evil strategy to gloss over their morally corrupt and evil deeds by drawing our attention instead onto their moral goodness, their youth, and the fact that they are still knights-in-training. As not yet fully trained knights, they cannot be expected to have mastered all aspects of morally acceptable acts of violence in chivalry. Members of both groupings use excessive force, and while their actions are deemed evil, they suffer different fates, and Hartmann uses different strategies to expose or conceal their respective evil deeds: some committers of evil can be redeemed, whereas others must be killed.

Encounters with Dwarfs and Giants Hartmann’s Erec opens midscene and not at the exact beginning of the story,12 when Queen Guinevere, her maidens, and Erec encounter a trio of an unknown knight with a young lady and a dwarf. The queen sends one of her maidens to inquire after the identity of the knight and his lady. The dwarf refuses to answer her and blocks her way. When the maiden then attempts to ask the knight himself, the dwarf hits her with

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his whip, leaving marks on her head and hands (52–58).13 An unarmed Erec then rides over in defense of the maiden to obtain the information that the queen desires. Erec accuses the dwarf of having “sêre missetân” (78; acted very unjustly/badly) but ultimately suffers the same fate of being beaten by the dwarf. While Hartmann does not tell us anything explicit about the dwarf’s intentions or reasons for such irate behavior in response to a normal request, he leaves us nonetheless with no doubt that the dwarf will fiercely protect his lord and the lord’s identity. The dwarf violates courtly norms and expected behavior with his refusal to provide the information requested about his lord’s and lady’s identities by using cruel and unduly violent force against a woman and an unarmed knight, by denying them access to his knight, and by punishing them intentionally and cruelly when they attempt to step around him. Without further insights into the dwarf’s intentions, however, it is not possible to determine irrevocably and without doubt that his actions here are truly evil and go beyond being “merely” violent. Both Erec and the maiden will recover from their wounds, even though Erec perceives the dwarf’s actions as having caused him “grôzer schame” (110; great shame) and “eine schande alsô grôz” (116; such a great disgrace), especially because “ein sus wênic man / sô lasterlîchen hât geslagen” (119– 20; such a small/pitiable man beat [him] so ignominiously). The harm Erec suffered goes deeper than the skin: his reputation was damaged in the presence of women, and he cannot look the queen in the eye until he has avenged himself. This harm can be reversed, however, and the situation remedied, by means of knightly battle. The description of the dwarf as “ein sus wênic man” is both a physical description of his dwarfism and an assessment of his morality: he is a lesser man morally and thus corrupt, as can be seen in the shameful way in which he beat the maiden and Erec. Physical and moral inferiority are tightly interwoven in medieval culture: according to the notion of kalokagathia, inner moral corruption was believed to be manifested bodily on the outside. Hartmann provides us only a few details about the dwarf: namely, that he was “ein getwerc” (11; a dwarf) and that he is rude and uncourtly in his interactions with others both in manner and in speech. Unprovoked, he uses excessive force and punishment, which falls under unjustified use of violence, and Erec refers to him twice as a “weniger man” (76, 119; little/lesser man). He is “lasterlîchen” (120; full of vices, disgraceful) and acts without “zuht” (79; good breeding/manners). Though the information is sparse, there is enough for medieval audiences to perceive the dwarf as located far away from the positive end of the social and moral continuum and closer to the place where members of the monstrous race are found. He is bodily deformed,

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uncourtly, full of vices, and without good breeding. Therefore, it comes somewhat as a surprise that neither the queen, her maiden, nor Erec remotely anticipate such cruel behavior from the dwarf, as his inner cruelty and moral depravity are mapped visibly onto his dwarfish body. While Hartmann does not give the biblical explanation that links bodily deformity to sin and declares the deformed to be members of the monstrous race, Wolfram von Eschenbach does. A brief excursion into Wolfram’s Parzival and into Queen Secundille’s land, Tribalibot (India), illustrates how encounters with a member of the monstrous race permeated medieval thought. The people of Tribalibot “wahsent . . . alsus durch nôt” (517, 30; grow thus without a choice);14 that is, they all are members of this monstrous race marked by such bodily deformation as we know it for Cundrie and Malcreatiure.15 Wolfram explains the cause of this physical deformity in what follows: there are herbs and plants that, when taken during pregnancy, “die menschen vruht verkêrten / unt sîn geslähte unêrten” (518, 19–20; disfigure man’s fruit and dishonor his lineage [for the full, detailed explanation, see 518, 1–519, 1]). Many such physically deformed people (“liute . . . mit verkêrtem antlützes vil,” 519, 7–8) have long inhabited Queen Secundille’s kingdom, and “si truogen vremdiu wilden mâl” (519, 9; they bear strange and wild markings). While the explicit cause of their bodily deformity is attributed to the consumption of certain plants and herbs during pregnancy, it is also linked to disobedience to God’s will. Adam repeatedly instructed his children based on the knowledge he was granted by God to avoid such plants during pregnancy. Some women instead followed their hearts’ greediness in their female willfulness, however, and because of their inability to resist temptation. As Wolfram’s narrator tells us, monstrous humans were born as a result of this female willfulness and sinfulness (518, 25–30). These physically deformed human monsters, as they were perceived to be during the Middle Ages, bear the markings of transgression and disobedience to God’s commands on their bodies. They reside at the edges of the known world, farthest removed from the Christian center. Cundrie’s and Malcreatiure’s ugliness is “painfully apparent and at odds with courtly expectations,” and rendering any figure “‘ugly’ is one means of marginalizing them.”16 Cundrie’s and Malcreatiure’s bodily deformity may be more severe than that of Hartmann’s dwarf; Wolfram provides us with far more and very specific details about the siblings’ deformities, but nonetheless, we cannot exclude the dwarf from being considered a brutish creature. Despite all three being members of the monstrous human race, marginalized within Europe’s medieval aristocracy (fictional and real), these three figures do not occupy the same

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place on the social and moral continuum. Cundrie is created as a good person, who is courtly and well bred. Only her bodily deformity, which is not the result of sinful action on her part, moves her somewhat away from the idealized location at the positive end of the continuum. Malcreatiure and the dwarf find themselves farther away from Cundrie’s location, for both are depicted as foul-mouthed, uncourtly, and willfully cruel in their behavior toward others. Furthermore, Malcreatiure is most likely even farther removed from Cundrie’s location by comparison to the dwarf because of the greater extent of Malcreatiure’s bodily deformity. This perhaps serves as an indication of a greater sin, albeit not necessarily his own. Hartmann does not name the dwarf until he “exits” the story; his name is Maledicur (1078), which is derived from the Latin maledicere, to speak evil/ill/abuses.17 It is a fitting name, for Maledicur speaks evil and utters insulting abuses that seep into his actions. While the dwarf acts with cruel intentions and unjustified violence toward the queen’s maiden and Erec, he does so out of fierce loyalty to his lord, which is the dwarf’s redeeming quality. It is because of this loyalty that the dwarf’s actions have to be excluded from being labeled “evil,” even if his bodily deformity and his intentionality in harming his opponents would have raised audience expectations of his evilness. He is both fiercely protective of his lord, a quality that slides the dwarf closer to the positive end of the continuum; and he is prone to using unjustified and excessive force against anyone who comes too close to his lord, a behavior that slides him closer to the negative end of the continuum and closer to evil. It is difficult to pinpoint the dwarf’s exact position on the social and moral continuum, because Hartmann did not construct him in a two-dimensional manner but as a complex figure on which multiple moral qualities come to bear and interact with each other, causing the dwarf to slide across the continuum, while clearly staying overall closer to the negative end because he intentionally uses excessive and unjustified force to harm others physically, socially, and emotionally. As the dwarf Maledicur exhibits both positive and negative characteristics, and furthermore does not undermine the authority of a court, he is not killed, despite his association with evil deeds. Containing even an ounce of good protects him against death.18 Like dwarfs, giants are also members of the monstrous human race, and they appear in both Erec and Iwein. By comparison to dwarfs Hartmann increases the level of the negative depiction of giants, both by means of their more cruel nature and actions, but also by means of demonizing attributes with which he depicts them. As Scott E. Pincikowski argues in an article on giants in Hartmann’s courtly

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romances,19 however, the figure of the giant is not exclusively constructed as a negative one. Instead, the giant figure covers a broad range of literary purposes: even though they are social outsiders and are often perceived as, and are indeed, a threat to social order, their strength and fierceness can be refocused and repurposed to serving the nobility in battle, thus making them courtly beings. While the giant’s role changes from text to text, they almost always serve the purpose of being an intimidating “other” who ignores courtly customs that the knight tries to uphold. The fight between the giant and the knight serves the purpose of illustrating the knight’s function as protector of courtly society and representative of courtly values, of which we encounter several examples. In a fight between a giant and a knight both commit acts of excessive violence, but the two participants are judged differently based on the reason for, and the intended outcome of, their violent acts. Vicious cruelty combined with the intent to harm another falls under the realm of evil, whereas vicious cruelty in defense of self or another is deemed justified and therefore not evil. Erec encounters giants after he hears the voice of a crying woman in the wilderness, for two giants have taken off with her lord, and she fears they will kill him. Erec assures her that he will assist her and follows their tracks. They are huge brutes, and they carry no knightly accoutrements but scourges and long, heavy clubs which have staves lined with iron. They apply these viciously to the naked and seriously wounded Cadoc, whom they skin alive, and who is bleeding so profusely that he is barely living. The intention of these “unguoten” (5452; villains) is clear: to do the utmost harm in the cruelest of manners and to kill Cadoc. In so doing, si brâchen vaste ritters reht und handelten den guoten kneht, und wære er begangen, an diebes stat gevangen, selher zuht wære zuo vil. (5470–74) [they firmly broke with knightly law and (mis)treated the good knight and even if he had been caught in thievery, such punishment would have been too much.]

Upon Erec’s inquiry why they are applying such harsh punishment to a knight, they, like the dwarf, refuse to answer and instead insult and threaten him while continuing to beat Cadoc out of pure maliciousness, “zorn” (5551; anger), and “haz” (5553; hatred). The fight that ensues between Erec and these two giants is violent; but Erec’s violence is

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marked as justified and superior, for he fights to protect another person, courtly society, and courtly values at large by eliminating the uncontrollable violence of the giants (Pincikowski, “Riesen,” 119). Erec conducts himself as a knight, kills the giants “als ez der hövesche gebôt” (5575; as the courtly God commanded it), and fights in defense of proper knightliness and as a means to restore social order. His use of violent force is sanctioned by God because it is a tool to restore order and maintain authority as God had intended. The giants intend to disrupt this order, to cause harm, to inflict great pain, and to kill. There is nothing human about them, for Hartmann describes them most clearly as they die at the end as an “ungevüege knabe” (5611; monstrous youth) and a “vâlant” (5614; devil). They have stepped outside of their divinely assigned place and role on the social and moral continuum and into the realm of pure evil, and for that they must be killed. Iwein encounters the giant Harpin, who has attacked the lands and family of Gawan’s sister after his marriage quest was denied. In an effort to forcefully change the father’s mind, he turned their lands into a wasteland, seized the lord’s six sons, and has begun to kill them before the very eyes of their father and sister. “Mit selhem ungeverte” (4494; with such vile conduct),20 “der grôze rise” (4915; the great giant) treats his prisoners with “grôze unhövescheit” (4919; great uncourtliness): they are almost naked, bound at their hands and feet, and driven by a dwarf who beats them bloody with his scourge. It is this very mistreatment of these knightly and noble sons that causes Iwein to change his mind about departing the court in Lunete’s defense and to set things right for this court first. He says, got sol disen vellen: er ist ein unbescheiden man. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . sîn hôchvart, daz diu ie sô grôz wart. (4960–61, 4963–64) [God shall cut him down, for he is a heinous man . . . that his highmindedness/pride ever became this big.]

Iwein, like Erec, understands himself as a tool in God’s plan for maintaining proper social order, which legitimizes his use of violence and guarantees him God’s help. Harpin, on the other hand, must rely solely on his strength, manhood, and his unknightly weapon, a “stange” (5022; pole). He intends to kill Iwein and would have succeeded had Iwein’s lion not come to Iwein’s rescue. Harpin, like the giants in Erec, fights like a beast and with utmost brutality and the intention to kill. He

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is, however, not explicitly described as a devil, but, as Ulrich Hoffmann notes, he acts “konnotativ als Teufel” (by connotation like a devil).21 All the attributes given to Harpin are negative and associate him with evil. He uses “bœse rede” (5009; bad language/speech), is full of pride, and is overly confident because of his brutish physical strength, with which he has been able to force his will on others. A second example of giants in Iwein follows the same pattern: Iwein rescues the maidens of the Virgin Island by defeating two giants, who are first introduced as “des tiuvels knehten” (6338; the devil’s servants/knights). These “unsæligen risen” (6360; vicious/malicious giants) have a long history of killing their opponents. They are described as so strong that if an opponent had had the strength of six people, he still would not stand a chance against them. They are better armed than the other giants we have encountered so far; but they, too, use clubs as their weapons, and when they attack Iwein, they are so forceful that his armor crumbles under their clubbing as if it were made of straw. Their intention is to kill and to destroy, as they are well accustomed to doing. In these “giant” episodes we find true examples of monstrosity and evil, as the giants are described not only by means of their sheer size, their uncourtly weapons, and the excessive use of violence, which they apply “sam er wuote” (Erec, 5586; as he raged/as if berserk), but also by specific attributes that cement them as evil: “die unguoten” (Erec, 5452; the evil ones), “der ungevüege knabe” (5611; the giant/monstrous/evil youth) or “ungevüege man” (Iwein, 6717; giant/monstrous/evil man), the “vâlant” (Erec, 5614; devil) or “des tiuvels knehten” (Iwein, 6338, 6772; the devil’s servants/knights). All of them intend to inflict the greatest harm on their opponent as they kill him and to deprive those in his care of their livelihood and protection. The giants’ goal is to disrupt social order, to undermine courtly authority, and to inflict evil. There is little human about them. They are holistically evil and are monsters and devils. Erec and Iwein stand in sharp contrast to them, for in spite of their use of excessive violence when dealing with these giants, they act with courtliness and chivalry and with God on their side. They come to the aid of members of courtly society who are unable to defend themselves, and thus by living what they are called to do as knights, they restore the rights of those they aid and restore proper order at their courts. Excessive violence by virtuous knights has again become a tool to restore social order, which excludes them and their actions from the realm of evil. The giants are set up in sharp contrast to that which is courtly, knightly, and good. Their will to do evil, their absence of morality, and their maliciousness heighten Erec’s and Iwein’s inner goodness and moral superiority in every way.22 These giant-devils can

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only be located at the far end of the social and moral continuum where monsters reside. It is because they are located at the extreme negative endpoint of this continuum that we can clearly describe them and their actions as evil and determine that, where, and how Hartmann constructs evil in its “purest” form: in members of the monstrous race whose inner moral depravity manifests itself externally on the body for all to see, and furthermore in their evil actions and intent to kill and harm with the utmost cruelty and violence. In Erec and Iwein bodily deformity is linked to uncourtly behavior and to the use of excessive violence, as we have seen in the above examples of the dwarfs and giants. Hartmann is careful not to typecast every bodily deformed person as a devil, however, but instead presents us with nuances, with levels of evil intentions, some that are “merely” vicious, whereas others are purely evil. There are evil underpinnings to the dwarf Maledicur’s actions, but, as his name indicates, he mostly speaks evil, and he acts cruelly while loyally defending his lord. The giants’ driving force is pure evil. They do not simply chastise and punish; they are also blind with rage, inflict harm, and know no bounds to their cruelty and evil deeds. Pure evil does not mesh with courtliness and knightliness: it can only reside in those who find themselves at the opposite end on the social and moral continuum. Those willingly acting in an evil manner must be killed. Yet, violence that is intentionally used to maintain and restore social order and to eradicate evil must be judged as justified, in addition to being commanded by God. Such people, in these instances Erec and Iwein, are located at the positive end of the social and moral continuum, despite their intentional use of violence to kill others. The difference lies in the absence of an intention to disrupt social order, to commit heinous acts of evil, and to kill. The use of violence here results in the defense and restoration of social order that serves a greater good and purpose: to defend those in need.

Encounters with Questionable Knights It is not only dwarfs and giants who are clearly far removed from the idealized Western, Christian location on the social and moral continuum and who commit violent and evil acts. We also encounter examples of knights in Erec and Iwein who perform evil deeds. Yet, Hartmann deals differently with evil within courtly contexts than he does when giants and dwarfs unleash it. Killing in knightly combat obviously did happen, but again, it is the intentionality to kill and to harm that distinguishes an act as being evil or “merely” violent. Will Hasty writes that

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while it [violence] can be used to liberate castles from giants and dragons, and to save damsels in distress, gewalt in knighthood is also frequently used to defeat and sometimes to kill other knightly adversaries, to win their honor, and sometimes to take their wives and territories. The works provide no clear and consistent indications that the former uses are to be deemed “good” and the latter uses to be rejected as “bad.” There are indications that negative aspects of knightly gewalt (e.g., the possibility of death in combat), rather than indicating a moral or ethical criticism of knighthood or of the hero on the part of the author, seem to be accepted as natural and inevitable. (8)

Some negative aspects of knightly “gewalt” (force/violence) are indeed accepted as natural and inevitable, but not all of them. In the context of knights fighting with one another, evil acts are acknowledged as such; but by comparison to the appraisal of evil committed by members farther removed from the idealized position on the social and moral continuum, they can almost be glossed over. Evil acts committed by a knight are deflected by his good chivalry, or excuses are made for a knight’s excessive cruelty or evil action. Hartmann does not cast a uniform verdict on evil acts committed by knights, as we will see in the examples of Guivreiz “le Pitîz” (4478; the Little One), Count Oringles, and Mabonagrin in Erec and Iwein’s pursuit of Ascalon in Iwein. Guivreiz li Pitîz presents a special case, as he shares qualities with both dwarfs and knights. He is introduced as a vil kurzer man, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vil nâch getwerges genôz, wan das im vil grôz wâren arme unde bein. Dâ zuo den brüsten er schein kreftic unde dic genuoc. Dar under er ein herze truoc, volliclîche manhaft. (4282, 4284–90; emphasis mine) [a very short man . . . very much akin to a dwarf, except that his arms and legs were very large. Additionally, his chest appears to be strong and stout enough. Beneath that he bore a heart which was entirely valiant/manly.]

He is akin to a dwarf in size but not in character, for he is not a cowardly lord (4295–98). He is an accomplished knight and king who is a worthy and good lord, who possesses a noble mind and an undaunted spirit (4304–7); he has, however, gotten accustomed to always being

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successful in his knightly fights. Like the dwarf Maledicur, Guivreiz is arrogant toward someone who approaches him peacefully. He is rude to women and sure of himself that he will be victorious. Guivreiz immediately challenges Erec to fight after welcoming him to his land, and when Erec points out the insult therein and refuses to fight because he has done Guivreiz no wrong, Guivreiz thinks him a coward and tells him to defend himself for the sake of his beautiful wife, if he wants to stay alive. Although it is not as explicitly stated as in the case of Oringles, discussed below, Guivreiz expresses an interest in having Enite for himself, for she does not deserve to be tied to such a cowardly man. While both fight valiantly, Guivreiz attacks fiercely to expose Erec as the coward Guivreiz believes him to be; but Erec retaliates and strikes Guivreiz such a blow to the head that he falls down before Erec and begs for his life. From then on, Guivreiz conducts himself as a perfect courtly knight, admits defeat, and interacts with Erec in a courtly manner. Guivreiz’s moral fault lies in his arrogance, in his certainty that he will always win, and in his reliance on his superior physical strength. Because of these traits, he fights fiercely and seeks to expose another’s moral flaw of cowardice, even if in this instance it is only a perceived flaw. Hartmann constructs Guivreiz with a combination of very sound moral characteristics that firmly locate him on the positive end of the moral continuum; but his bodily deformity and arrogance associate him with a location closer to the other end, where monsters reside. His good moral conduct overall outweighs his bodily deformity, which has not fully corrupted his soul, as it has in the case of the giants. Guivreiz’s challenge to Erec is unprovoked and casts Guivreiz in a dubious light, but he does not enter the fight with the explicit intention to kill Erec. Both fight fiercely and follow chivalric rules, with the exception of that one blow with which Guivreiz almost kills Erec. The text does not make it clear whether Guivreiz intended to kill Erec with that blow or merely tried to force a victory over him. Hartmann uses this ambiguity as a tool, which allows for a more favorable interpretation of such questionable behavior of knights and for the opportunity to redeem some of them. Guivreiz’s dwarfish body evokes certain expectations about his behavior, and his unprovoked challenge of Erec and calling Erec a coward support this initial impression of Guivreiz’s moral corruption. Hartmann, however, constantly draws our attention away from these negative impressions of Guivreiz based on his bodily appearance by repeatedly reminding the audience that he is a good and valiant lord and knight. As Guivreiz has a strong moral foundation, he can be and is redeemed when he finds his match in Erec and places himself fully under Erec’s control, despite his one excessively violent blow

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with which he nearly killed Erec. Even though Erec deals Guivreiz an equally violent and strong blow to the head that ends the fight, Erec is depicted as fighting fair and according to chivalric rules at all times, but also as defending his right to Enite. Erec acts in self-defense, a form of violence deemed legitimate by comparison to Guivreiz’s unprovoked use of violence. Even though Guivreiz is still called “the little man” at the end, he is firmly and unquestionably placed among the morally sound and good knights who reside at the positive end of the social and moral continuum. It took a better knight to help restore Guivreiz’s full morality and end his slippery slide toward evil on the moral continuum. Count Oringles is introduced in a very positive manner, as Godsent (6175), as “ein edler herre” (6176; a noble lord) who stops Enite from killing herself when she fears Erec dead. He is instantly attracted to her on account of her beauty and wants to marry her, a plan his companions approve of. Enite is taken to his castle against her will, and Erec is laid out there for the vigil ahead of his planned burial. Oringles does not even want to wait the night to marry Enite. When faced with opposition from his advisers and from Enite, Oringles reveals his true nature: he strikes Enite so hard in his anger that she bleeds profusely. His actions are deemed by all present “ein michel ungevuoge” (6585; a great misconduct), and they reproach him for his maltreatment of Enite. He asserts his right to treat his wife any way he pleases, and he continues to beat her before their eyes with “manneskrefte” (6618; a man’s strength), which Enite hopes will kill her. Her cries of pain bring Erec back to consciousness, and he storms into the hall, seizes a sword, and slays the host and two others. The God-sent, noble knight reveals himself a villain. Oringles does not shy away from brutality when others do not comply with his wishes. He directs his anger against a woman, whom he is required to protect at all costs, and beats her with such force that the blows could have killed her. It may not have been his intent to kill her, but his actions turn ever more evil when the good counsel from his people challenges his authority. He is unable to listen to good counsel in his rage. Peter Meister has noted the parallels between the successive scenes in the narrative—Erec’s battle with the giants, in which he rescued Cadoc, and Erec’s need to rescue Enite from Count Oringles: “A count might be expected to be more decorous than a giant or a robber, but the same sexual intent . . . and physical abuse . . . are probably nonetheless a common denominator across the three different kinds (robber/giant/count) of women-in-the-wilderness episodes.”23 Oringles’s use of violence is clearly illegitimate, and with it he undermines the authority of Erec’s “court”24—that is, in this context, Erec’s right to his own wife. Oringles

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can only maintain courtly appearance so long as people act in accordance with his wishes. The moment they do not, this facade crumbles, and his true nature is exposed. He is an evil tyrant who will have his way by using brutish violence. Because of his moral corruption, Count Oringles is akin to the giants and dwarfs and ultimately suffers the same fate as they do. Count Oringles is killed for his evil act of forcing Enite to marry him against her will, thus exposing his willingness and true intentions—namely, to rape her—and for failing to conduct himself according to courtly-chivalric expectations by beating a woman nearly to death instead of protecting her as he ought to. While Hartmann does not refer to Oringles explicitly as a “vâlant” (devil) as he does with the giants and robbers, his actions nonetheless are deemed evil, as can be seen by the fact that he shares the same fate as other evildoers. As his actions become ever more violent and ultimately evil, he must be considered unredeemable despite being a member of the elite class of knights and courtly society, who ought to find themselves at the “good” end of the social and moral continuum. The case of Oringles clearly shows that Hartmann does not operate with a binary understanding of how medieval society is constructed but that many factors come into play that determine each individual’s position on the continuum, and that a person can be moved about, as Hartmann does here with Oringles. Hartmann depicts him initially as an ideal knight located at the coveted good end of the continuum, but he exposes Oringles by the end as falling short of these expectations and criteria. Oringles was moved over into close proximity to the morally corrupt giants, as he, like them, commits acts of evil fully intending to harm another in an effort to force compliance to his will. The situation in Iwein’s pursuit of Ascalon is somewhat different. Iwein’s motivation for this particular adventure is to defend and restore the honor of his kinsman Kalogrenant and to establish his own reputation as a knight. During their combat, both Iwein and Ascalon fight valiantly and according to knightly rules, until “der gast dem wirte sluoc / durch den helm einen slac / zetal unz dâ daz leben lac” (1048–50; the intruder struck the castle lord such a blow through his helmet all the way down to where the center of life is found). In this instance, it is unlikely that Iwein explicitly intended to deal Ascalon a mortal wound, so we can still classify his action as belonging to the realm of “gewalt” in knightly combat that is simply part of the nature of fighting and therefore unintentional. As Pincikowski has argued, the line between violence as a means to increase social status and as a means to control violence is a difficult and paradoxical one for knights to tread. Hartmann shows less concern for Iwein’s extreme use of violence here

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and instead focuses critically on Iwein’s lack of self-restraint as he pursues the mortally wounded Ascalon (Pincikowski, “Violence,” 106–7). The matter at hand changes quickly to one of “âne zuht” (1056; without proper conduct/discipline/display of knightly training; that is, in an unknightly manner).25 Instead of letting Ascalon go to die in peace, Iwein pursues him to secure evidence of his victory upon his return to Arthur’s court (1062–74). His only concern when trapped between the portcullises is “daz er im vor dan / alsô lebendec entran” (1133–34; that he [Ascalon] escaped before him alive). Iwein intends to harm and kill another purely for selfish reasons: to increase his own chivalric reputation and honor while failing to see that such a dishonorable and cruel act can also destroy his honor. Iwein shows no mercy and does not conduct himself according to proper knightly conduct. Throughout this encounter with Ascalon, Iwein conducts himself “âne zuht,” which costs another person’s life. Iwein ought to be condemned for excessive use of violence and especially for his intention to kill another as evidence of his success. Had he allowed Ascalon to escape and die in peace, we could “dismiss” Iwein’s actions as accidental and as a mishap of fighting. Yet, this is not what Hartmann imagines here. Instead, Hartmann explores the slippery boundaries between having to condemn evil actions and the need to redeem the main hero of his narrative. Iwein is different from Guivreiz and Oringles, for he is still a “knight-in-training.” Like Guivreiz, Iwein has a strong moral foundation, but he has yet to learn to bring all of that into the harmony that is expected of him in proper knightly conduct. In this instance, Iwein focuses excessively on his need to establish himself as a knight and to increase his honor by means of knightly deeds. He has not yet learned to show mercy toward his defeated opponent nor recognized the potential for dishonor when actions shift from knightly violence and force to evil deeds. It is Iwein’s undisciplined, immoral pursuit of Ascalon that makes this act evil on account of this unjustifiable and illegitimate use of violence. Additionally, we need to consider the importance of maintaining the stability of the court. Laudine’s court is certainly in turmoil after Ascalon’s murder. Ascalon’s people try to take revenge and hold Iwein accountable for his evil actions, but he is never brought to justice. Laudine’s court is in need of a strong defender of the lands, something Hartmann makes clear by means of the impending threat of the approaching Arthurian court. The need of a defender becomes an effective argument in Lunete’s strategy to protect Iwein’s life and to convince Laudine and her court to accept Iwein as their new lord. For despite his evil deed of having murdered Ascalon, Iwein has proven himself the superior knight. While Iwein’s deed clearly falls within the

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range of evil acts because of his pride, which leads him to kill a fleeing opponent, Hartmann deals with Iwein’s evil actions differently than he does with Oringles’s. Oringles is expendable to the story, whereas Iwein is not. Oringles is an experienced knight and therefore ought to know better how to conduct himself and how to rein in urges to evil deeds. Iwein is still a knight-in-training who has to pass through a crisis in order to redeem himself and learn proper balance. Oringles has had the opportunity to learn from a crisis and move away from evil, yet he continues to act with evil intent when he is challenged over his evil actions and for causing instability at his own court. Oringles is clearly constructed as a destabilizing force who chooses not to be refined by going through a crisis, and who continues to act in an evil manner. This is not the case with Iwein. He conducted himself in an evil manner during this single incident, but he still has the opportunity to change his ways, to turn away from evil toward doing good, to bring stability to his own life by applying proper “mâze” (measure, balance) to his actions and to Laudine’s court. While Hartmann exposes Ascalon’s murder as an evil act, he does not condemn Iwein for it, for doing so would undermine the didactic purpose of the narrative. Hartmann uses this narrative strategy to deflect our attention away from Iwein’s evil deed and focus our attention on the fact that “these uncourtly actions by a normally virtuous knight demonstrate the difficulty of remaining within the guidelines of courtly convention when using violence, especially when social status is based on victory and prowess in battle” (Pincikowski, “Violence,” 107). A knight-in-training is given the opportunity to learn from his actions and to amend his ways. Excessive use of violence, even such that must be deemed evil, is part of the process of becoming a proper knight. It is what follows after a crisis moment that matters regarding where a knight is located on the social and moral continuum. While exposing Iwein’s flawed morality that led him to commit an evil deed, Hartmann gives him the opportunity to learn and move back toward the positive end of the continuum as he matures over the course of the narrative. Iwein may slide back and forth on that continuum for a while, but he is never moved over to the negative end, despite this evil deed. On account of his youth Iwein can be redeemed and can erase the dark stain on his soul from Ascalon’s murder, because of his willingness to make amends and learn from his errors. Mabonagrin and the Joie de la Curt adventure in Erec will be my last example of Hartmann’s deflection-from-evil strategy for most members of courtly society. It is a fitting final adventure for the main hero, who overcomes a terrible opponent and turns matters to a happy ending by restoring joy to the court of Brandigan and especially to the eighty

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widows there. The episode is set up in negative terms, for all who come to Brandigan in pursuit of adventure have incurred “schaden zuo den schaden” (8019; loss in addition to harm), and they “alle hie sint erslagen” (8025; all are slain here). Mabonagrin is introduced as a knight who lives in an orchard with his ladylove. No other in the realm is like him in strength and manliness, and all those who rode against him have been slain. The townspeople, the ladies at court, and King Ivreins all grieve about that which awaits Erec, yet Hartmann immediately deflects our attention from the cruelty of the adventure in a striking difference from a similar scene in Iwein. There the townspeople mock, warn, and scorn Iwein as he approaches the castle with the younger daughter of Count Blackthorn ahead of his battle against the two giants. The audience senses ever more strongly the approaching evil as Iwein gets closer to the castle and the actual fight. This is not the case in Erec. The people here mourn, grieve, and are genuinely compassionate toward him in an effort to save his life. By not talking about the evil, they hope to turn Erec away from his plan. Compassion dominates in this episode and serves as a means to conceal evil. But Erec wants to know the truth, and only because of his insistence do they reveal information to him about Mabonagrin’s evil deeds. While Hartmann describes Mabonagrin repeatedly as a valorous knight who lives completely isolated with his ladylove in the orchard, he also describes him primarily in negative terms: he is “lanc unde groz, / vil nâch risen genôz” (9068–69; tall and big, very much akin to a giant), he has “eine stimme / stark und grimme” (9048–49; a strong and terrifying voice), he issues great threats and conducts himself like an “übelen man” (9082; evil man) who speaks “iuwern gewalt” (9089; with violence). “sô mordic was sîn hant” (9079; his hand was so murderous), as is his mind, for “sô gemuot ist der starke man, / swem er noch gesiget an, / deme sluoc er abe daz houbet” (8569–71; the strong man is of such a determination that he beheaded everyone whom he vanquished). He truly is a “vil michel vâlant / enkunde sich erbarmen” (9253–54; very great devil incapable of showing mercy). These descriptors are interspersed throughout the narrative and thus do not emerge so clearly as a collective assessment of Mabonagrin’s character as they do in this summary, and that is part of Hartmann’s intentional strategy to deflect our attention from just how violent and uncourtly Mabonagrin is while living in the orchard. Although a knight (i.e., a member of the courtly nobility), Mabonagrin is described as akin to members of the giant race.26 Like Oringles, he finds himself placed far away from the idealized Western Christian knights and in closer proximity to the location giants occupy on the social and moral continuum. Mabonagrin acts in an utmost

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uncourtly manner: he is arrogant and godless, as Erec points out to him (9103), and relies on his courage, strength, and extensive success in slaying his aggressors. He proudly displays these characteristics not only in his fight against Erec but especially in his display of trophies, the large circle of eighty poles on which he has stuck the head of each individual whom he had beheaded, in addition to the one empty pole reserved for the next aggressor (8825–32). Pincikowski has pointed out the importance of this display, for it highlights not only Mabonagrin’s lack of the good behavior expected of civilized knights but also his awareness of “the medieval belief that one of the locations for the soul was in the head . . . and the power it possesses” (Pincikowski, “Violence,” 108). Mabonagrin has accumulated the strength of eighty other knights and added theirs to his own, which intensifies his portrayal as giantlike and the viciousness of his actions. He ignores all courtly convention, especially that of showing mercy to his opponents. Instead, he kills them in a manner utterly unbecoming a knight: by beheading them. Mabonagrin displays his evilness publicly by means of the eighty poles with the skulls of his vanquished opponents. Such a method of killing was deemed acceptable, perhaps even appropriate, for members of the monstrous race, but it is not appropriate for valiant knights, which all of Mabonagrin’s opponents were.27 Mabonagrin and Erec’s fight is fierce, but it follows courtly and chivalric conventions. Erec is able to hold his own against Mabonagrin, who is accustomed to overcoming his opponent quickly but cannot do so with Erec. He immediately declares his intent to kill Erec: “Mir tuot zorn, daz dirre kleine man alsô vor mir lange wert.” Mit grimme begreif er daz swert und gedâht eht vellen sînen kamphgesellen. (9247–51) [“I am furious, that this little man defends himself against me for such a long time.” Fiercely he seized his sword and fully intended to kill his fellow-combatant.]

Mabonagrin is described in like manner to the giants previously discussed: he fights furiously with the sole intent of killing his opponent. His actions must be deemed purely evil. If the same treatment was allotted to Mabonagrin that the giants received, Erec would have had to kill him. But this is not the fate Hartmann has Mabonagrin suffer. Instead, he survives. Florian Kragl comments on Mabonagrin’s fate:

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Eines irritiert. Mabonagrin, der vermeintlich riesenhafte Teufel, der gegen Erec ein riesenhaft-schreckliches Gebrüll erschallen lässt, jener Mabonagrin, der—ganz unritterlich und mordic (v. 9023), also: “mordlustig”—die Köpfe der Gegner trophäenartig pfählt: dieser Mabonagrin überlebt. Zwar verliert ihn der Text gegen Schluss zu aus den Augen—er findet keinen Platz im sonst so allumfassenden Happy End—, aber spätestens ab dem Moment, an dem ihn Erec im Kampf besiegt, kann von einem gigantischen Bösewicht . . . keine Rede mehr sein.28 [One thing jars. Mabonagrin, the alleged, mammoth devil, who utters gigantic and horrifying roars against Erec, that same Mabonagrin, who—utterly unknightly and murderously (v. 9023)—displays the heads of his opponents on poles like trophies: that very same Mabonagrin survives. Though we lose sight of him toward the end of the text—he is not included in the otherwise all-encompassing happy ending—not after that moment, in which Erec is victorious over him in battle, can we refer to him any longer as a gigantic villain.]

The giantlike devil Mabonagrin survives and receives a different treatment from giants in the narrative, despite his blatantly bloodthirsty, evil actions. The differences between Mabonagrin and “true” giants are set up in three distinct areas, which Kragl also notes, and further expose Hartmann’s efforts to deflect our attention from Mabonagrin’s evilness: first, the ambiance of the orchard is not befitting the environment in which one normally encounters giants (Kragl, 45). It is described as “daz ander paradîse” (9598; a second paradise), as an almost perfect locus amoenus for Mabonagrin and his ladylove, and it is placed in close proximity to the very courtly castle of Brandigan. Second, despite his description as a giantlike, crude, and uncourtly devil, Mabonagrin is a knight, and he fights against Erec according to knightly conventions, by jousting with swords and in the end giving his “sicherheit” (9410; surrender) after Erec wins (Kragl, 45–46). Third, it is firmly established that both Erec and Mabonagrin are knights of equal rank and reputation who can put aside their hostility and instantly become friends and tell each other their life stories. It is precisely in Mabonagrin’s life story that Hartmann redeems him from his evil and revives his inner goodness and apparent true nature. Mabonagrin was temporarily led astray and acted evilly because of “minne” (love): his ladylove demanded that they withdraw from courtly society to this orchard of their “minne,” to avoid the dangers of knightly combat that he was expected to participate in as a member of the knightly class. This breaks with chivalric

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expectations and undermines the authority of the court, for Mabonagrin rejects fulfilling his duty as a knight to protect and serve others. Bound by his oath to his lady, Mabonagrin had to comply with her demands; but in an absolute turnabout from how he felt about his eighty-one battles, he now thanks Erec profusely for having set him free of this life he was forced to live for twelve years. The Mabonagrin of his own tale is a very different person from the one we encountered before. Because Mabonagrin was born a member of the Western knightly class, he can be redeemed from his giantlike evil monstrosity and be restored to his inherent good nature. In his own tale, he depicts himself as entitled to be counted among those located at the “good” end of the social and moral continuum, despite his many evil deeds during his twelve-year tenure in the orchard. Judging by the manner in which Erec and Mabonagrin interact with each other immediately after the end of their battle, Hartmann firmly moves Mabonagrin back to that idealized place on the continuum. As was the case with Guivreiz, the crucial transformative moment is the ability to accept defeat, to give security to Erec, and to submit himself fully to the victor according to chivalric rules. This was not the case with the giants, nor with Count Oringles, who proved that they were completely corrupted by evil morals and could not be redeemed, and consequently were killed by means of justified acts of violence. Mabonagrin’s evil acts can be and are dismissed as the result of “youthful foolishness” under the powerful influence of “minne” and are no longer talked about. As Hartmann also did in Iwein’s case, he dismisses these evil deeds as a mistake made by a young and improperly trained knight who has not learned to balance his responsibilities between serving his ladylove in “minnedienst” (courtly love service) and his social and moral responsibility to society as a knight, as indicated by the utterly uncourtly manner in which he killed his opponents. Like Iwein, Mabonagrin had to learn the difference between evil deeds and justified use of violence. And like Iwein, he is redeemable, because in essence he is a morally good knight. Mabonagrin’s evil actions are entirely erased by his restoration to a good knight: Der böse Riese ist—im Erzählverlauf der letzten Episode des Erec— zum höfischen Riesen . . . geworden. Mabonagrin ist vergönnt, wozu es die meisten Riesen der mittelalterlichen Literatur nicht bringen; sie sind nur Ausstaffierungen des Aventiurewegs der Artusritter und Helden. Doch Mabonagrin bekommt eine eigene Geschichte. (Kragl, 52)

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[The evil giant is turned into a courtly giant within the narrative course of the final episode of Erec. Mabonagrin is granted what most other giants in medieval literature cannot achieve; they are mere accoutrements on the path of adventure of Arthurian knights and heroes. Yet Mabonagrin is given his own story.]

Bodily, Mabonagrin will always be giantlike, but morally he is a giant representing a “höfische[s] Wesen” (courtly being; Pincikowski, “Riesen,” 99), redeemed and stripped of all evil and reintegrated as a full member into the courtly-chivalric society. During the Joie de la Curt episode Mabonagrin had slipped over to the negative end of the social and moral continuum on account of his evil deeds, but as he is still a knight-in-training like Iwein, he is redeemable and fully integrated into courtly society and moved back to the good end of the continuum. In conclusion, Hartmann definitely incorporates the concept of evil in Erec and Iwein, but the concept is a slippery one at best. The intention to commit evil does not exclusively appear with persons far removed from an idealized place on the social and moral continuum, such as we find in giants, dwarfs, and robbers, who are deemed members of the monstrous race. Evil actions do indeed surface in members of the knightly class as well, who are idealized as being morally superior. While knightly combat necessitates violent behavior, some of it is justified, some of it is not; some of it is legitimate, and some of it is not. There are instances, as we have seen, that go beyond being merely violent. Such instances can only be described as evil, because of the intention to kill or rape and to inflict the utmost harm without showing any mercy for the opponent, and for defying all courtly conventions of fair fighting. Despite the broad spectrum of people committing evil acts, who are located all over the social and moral continuum, Hartmann does not treat them alike. Giants are especially deemed irredeemable. They are killed for their evil deeds, and their evil acts are fully exposed in the narrative. When members of the knightly class commit evil acts, Hartmann makes every effort to draw our attention to the good in their nature, something he has to do given the nature of courtly romances. Hartmann does not treat each knight who commits evil acts the same way, however. In the case of Oringles, Hartmann introduces him as a God-sent lifesaver, a knight who comes to the aid of women in need, but one whose positive image is quickly destroyed as his evil nature surfaces. He can temporarily act as a good and proper knight, but only when not challenged. In the face of opposition and resistance to his will, as displayed by Enite, he abandons all proper knightly conduct and cruelly and evilly torments her bodily. While Oringles does not utter the

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same threat that the giants do before Gawan’s brother-in-law—namely, that when they finally get the girl into their hands, they will treat her with the utmost humiliation and cruelty—Oringles does precisely that which the giants uttered in that other situation. While initially promising Enite the best of life as his wife, in the end, utterly absorbed by his evilness, he brutally beats her bloody and almost kills her with the sheer force of his blows. Therefore, Erec’s slaying of Oringles must be deemed just. In Guivreiz’s case, Hartmann is quite ambiguous about the nature of his deed—whether it is to be deemed evil or merely excessively violent. Instead, Hartmann focuses on Guivreiz’s flawed morals as a tool to create the opportunity to redeem him and restore him to his proper place on the social and moral continuum. In the cases of Iwein and Mabonagrin, Hartmann deflects our attention away from their evil deeds. He identifies the actions as evil, but he does not dwell on them to quite the same extent as he does in the case of giants or even of Oringles. Iwein and Mabonagrin act evilly, but they themselves are not evil internally. It is almost as if Hartmann wishes that he could entirely do away with the evil acts of these otherwise perfect knights, and he is quick to explain away those acts: both of them committed the evil acts because of their youthfulness and incomplete knightly training. They have not fully formed their proper chivalric identity, and that is why they cannot be held fully accountable for their evil acts and only receive a figurative slap on their wrists for the murders they committed. In their case, evil acts are a stepping-stone, a mere moment in their development toward mature knighthood; underneath it all, they are morally good courtly beings. Both Iwein and Mabonagrin can be and are redeemed, and their evil acts are quickly forgotten in the story. In the context of knights, Hartmann makes the concept of evil a slippery one. He is intentionally ambiguous so that most knights can be quietly slipped back to their proper place on the social and moral continuum. Their acts of evil are thus declared a mere temporary lapse in good judgment and become a training tool whereby (young) knights learn to handle better the many responsibilities they have as knights in courtly society, or to eradicate their moral flaws.

Notes I would like to thank my colleague Arline Cravens for providing comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. Epigraph: Kenneth L. Schmitz, “Shapes of Evil in Medieval Epics: A Philosophical Analysis,” in The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values, ed. Harald Scholler (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1977), 37–63, here 37.

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Will Hasty, “Daz prîset in, und sleht er mich: Knighthood and Gewalt in the Arthurian Works of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach,” Monatshefte 86, no. 1 (1994): 7–21, here 7. 1

2

OED Online, accessed March 5, 2017, www.oed.com.

3

Schmitz, 46–47, gives two examples from medieval literature of how the light/ dark imagery is used to convey good and bad in the Cid and the Song of Roland (46–49). Das Nibelungenlied, according to the edition by Karl Bartsch, ed. Helmut de Boor, 22nd ed. (Mannheim: Brockhaus, 1988).

4

5 See Marcus G. Singer, “The Concept of Evil,” Philosophy 70, no. 308 (2004): 185– 214, here 185–89. 6

I am borrowing this term from Schmitz, and this is one of the main differences between his article and Singer’s: Schmitz focuses on literary texts (i.e., forms of evil imagined by poets), although influenced and shaped by medieval philosophical understandings of evil, whereas Singer focuses on modern, real-life acts of evil and modern philosophical thought on evil, though with a look at the historical development of them, i.e., going back to medieval philosophy as the foundation from which modern philosophical thought developed. 7

See Elizabeth Papp Kamali’s fascinating article on medieval English legal cases in which intentionality played a crucial role in determining whether a person committed a felony or not: “Felonia Felonice Facta: Felony and Intentionality in Medieval England,” Criminal Law and Philosophy 9, no. 3 (2015), 397–421. Online at https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11572-013-9273-2. 8 Scott E. Pincikowski, “Violence and Pain at the Court: Comparing Violence in German Heroic and Courtly Epics,” in Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature, ed. Albrecht Classen (New York: Routledge, 2004), 97–114, here 99.

See Plato’s Lysis, where Socrates confirms for Menexenus: “For I affirm that the good is the beautiful,” thus linking the kalos and the kagathos. Plato, Lysis, trans. Benjamin Jowett, published by The Project Gutenberg as an Ebook, released August 24, 2008, accessed November 12, 2017, http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/1579/1579-h/1579-h.htm.

9

See Heinz Sieburg, Literatur des Mittelalters (Berlin: Akademie, 2010), 184; Michael Dallapiazza, “Häßlichkeit und Individualität: Ansätze zur Überwindung der Idealität des Schönen in Wolframs von Eschenach Parzival,” Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 59, no. 3 (1985): 400–442, here 400.

10

11 Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), 160.

The beginning of Erec is “lost” in the only surviving complete manuscript in the Ambraser Heldenbuch, Cod. vindob. ser. nova. 2663, fol. 30r–50v, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, 1516/1517. The story begins midscene, which, when compared to Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide, gives us the context of a hunting episode in which Erec does not partake but follows with Queen Guinevere and her maidens.

12

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I am citing Hartmann von Aue’s Erec according to the following edition: Cyril Edwards, ed. and trans., German Romance, vol. 5 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). All translations are my own, unless otherwise noted. 13

All quotes from Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival are from the following edition: Studienausgabe, 2nd ed., Middle High German Text according to the 6th ed. by Karl Lachmann, trans. Peter Knecht, with an introduction to the text of the Lachmann edition and problems interpreting Parzival by Bernd Schirock (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003).

14

15

For Cundrie, see 312, 2–214, 10 and 778, 16–782, 30; for Malcreatiure, see 517, 20–27. Tina Marie Boyer, The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2016), both quotes 68. Boyer only discusses Cundrie and not Malcreatiure, as the focus of that section in her book is on giantesses.

16

17

Edwards has a similar footnote commentary on the name. He translates the Latin maledicus as “foul-mouthed, abusive” (55n2). There is another dwarflike figure in Erec: Guivreiz li Pitîz. As he is described as a king and a dwarflike lord, I will discuss him in the later section on questionable knights.

18

19

See Scott E. Pincikowski, “Die Riesen in den höfischen Romanen Hartmanns von Aue,” in Riesen und Zwerge, ed. Stiftung Bozner Schlösser (Bolzano, Italy: Athesia, 2016), 99–119. I am citing Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein according to the following edition: Hartmann von Aue, Iwein, ed. G. F. Benecke, K. Lachmann, and L. Wolff according to the 7th ed. of the text, trans. Thomas Cramer, 3rd ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981).

20

21 Ulrich Hoffmann, Arbeit an der Literatur: Zur Mythizität der Artusromane Hartmanns von Aue (Berlin: Akademie, 2012), 304. 22

As noted by Ian R. Campbell, “An Act of Mercy: The Cadoc Episode in Hartmann von Aue’s Erec,” Monatshefte 88, no. 1 (1996): 4–16, here 4, Erec’s moral superiority is marked by the fact “that it is the first adventure [when he rescues Cadoc], in fact the only adventure, that Erec undertakes with a view to aiding a stranger in distress, the first adventure in which his battle is not witnessed by Enite, and an adventure to which he is alerted without prompting from his wife.”

23

Peter Meister, “A Little Acknowledged Theme in the Courtly Romance: Rape,” Quondam et Futurus 1, no. 14 (1991): 23–35, here 28–29.

24

I am referencing Pincikowski’s idea in “Violence,” 99.

25

See my article “Gender Erasures, Knightly Maidens and (Un)knightly Knights in Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein,” Neophilologus 91, no. 4 (2007): 657–72. in which I discuss this scene from a different angle—namely, gender-biased interpretations and what new insights we can obtain when we strip them of a masculinist interpretation. For Iwein and “âne zuht,” see 664–65.

26

Pincikowski points out in his article on giants in courtly romances that, in addition to the more common associations of giants as fear-inducing and threatening

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outsiders, giants can also work in support of the nobility and even be “höfische Wesen” (courtly beings; “Riesen,” 99). 27

Erec earlier kills the giants who had tortured Cadoc in like manner by gouging out the eyes of and then decapitating one of them and chopping off the leg and then the head of the other. Pincikowski makes the same observation in “Violence” (108).

28

Florian Kragl, “Höfische Bösewichte? Antagonisten als produktive Systemfehler im mittelalterlichen Roman,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 141, no. 1 (2012): 45.

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Hartmann von Aue. Erec. Edited and translated by Cyril Edwards. German Romance, vol. 5. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014. ———. Iwein. Edited by G. F. Benecke, K. Lachmann and L. Wolff, according to the 7th edition of the text. Translated by Thomas Cramer. 3rd ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1981.

Secondary Literature Boyer, Tina Marie. The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Conklin Akbari, Suzanne. Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Hasty, Will. “Daz prîset in, und sleht er mich: Knighthood and Gewalt in the Arthurian Works of Hartmann von Aue and Wolfram von Eschenbach.” Monatshefte 86, no. 1 (1994): 7–21. Kragl, Florian. “Höfische Bösewichte? Antagonisten als produktive Systemfehler im mittelalterlichen Roman.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 141, no. 1 (2012): 37–60. Meyer, Evelyn. “Gender Erasures, Knightly Maidens and (Un)knightly Knights in Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein.” Neophilologus 91, no. 4 (2007): 657–72. Pincikowski, Scott E. “Violence and Pain at the Court: Comparing Violence in German Heroic and Courtly Epics.” In Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature, edited by Albrecht Classen, 97–114. New York: Routledge, 2004. Schmitz, Kenneth L. “Shapes of Evil in Medieval Epics: A Philosophical Analysis.” In The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values, edited by Harald Scholler, 37–63. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1977. Singer, Marcus G. “The Concept of Evil.” Philosophy 70, no. 308 (2004): 185–214.

10: Wigamur’s Lessons on the Complexity of Evil Joseph M. Sullivan

L

iᴋᴇ ᴛhᴇ ᴏᴛhᴇr Middle High German thirteenth-century Arthurian romances that followed the hugely influential Erec and Iwein by Hartmann von Aue and Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, the anonymously authored Wigamur long remained an object of little scholarly interest. In Wigamur’s case, such inattention certainly owed much to the rather convoluted way the text comes down to us. The only complete, and very late, manuscript—MS W (Cod. Guelf. 51.2. Aug. 4°) from the last three decades of the fifteenth century, maintained by the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel—is characterized by language that is far removed from the norms of classical Middle High German, that is laden with errors, and that often resists easy understanding. Additionally, there exist in the main manuscript a large number of inconsistencies in the storyline as well missing pages, gaps that the two fragments, MS S and MS M, only partially fill in and that might date from the earliest periods of the text’s transmission. When we consider also that for Wigamur, whose main manuscript was first edited as early as 1808 by Johann Gustav Büsching,1 neither a truly user-friendly edition nor a translation into a modern language existed until the last decade, then it is not difficult to understand why the romance has remained underappreciated.2 As with so many other so-called postclassical works that earlier scholars derided as unimaginatively derivative of first-generation Arthurian romances, there is, however, much that is innovative in the way that Wigamur is constructed.3 Among several rather original traits, for instance, and one that has not received sufficient attention from scholars, is the distinctive, rich complexity of the romance’s characters.4 Unlike typical characters from across the genre, who conventionally are almost entirely good or entirely bad, positive characters in Wigamur often display bad qualities and do bad things, and, conversely, negative characters frequently possess positive qualities, do worthy deeds, and emerge as sympathetic.5 It is the purpose of this essay to look at three

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characters from that latter category of negative figures in Wigamur— namely, the wild woman Lespia, the robber-knight Lord of Pontrafort, and King Lipondrigun of Gurgalet—and to show how the actions of these multisided, complex figures contribute to a unique message on the nature of evil: that evil, too, is complex, that it exists in gradations, and that those who perpetrate evil often have multiple motives for doing so. We can perhaps best appreciate the desirability for the author to include such a prominent message on evil in his Wigamur by considering how his text fits into the larger medieval European tradition of Arthurian romance. Wigamur is a prime example of that loose, panEuropean grouping of texts that scholars often term “Fair Unknown,” Arthurian romances and that include, for example, the Latin De ortu Waluuanii nepotis Arturi, Renaut de Bâgé’s Le Bel Inconnu, the Italian Cantari di Carduino, the Middle English Libeaus Desconus, the Middle Dutch Moriaen, the Yiddish Widwilt, and, from the German corpus, also Wirnt’s Wigalois and Ulrich’s Lanzelet. While many Fair Unknown texts share similar motifs, such as the hero’s search for a lost father and an exile in youth away from his homeland, and although the so-called cognate romances—that is, Le Bel Inconnu, Carduino, Libeaus Desconus, Widwilt, and Wigalois—even share a related plot, we can perhaps best understand the Fair Unknown grouping not by trying to identify which plot details and motifs the particular texts have in common but rather by acknowledging that all these texts address a similar set of issues. All Fair Unknown romances teach their audiences about what a young nobleman needs to know, what he needs to experience, and what qualities he needs to possess to become an honorable knight and effective military and political leader.6 Thus Wigamur’s lessons on the complexity of evil fit squarely into the characteristic Fair Unknown didactic agenda, as an understanding of evil was arguably of fundamental importance for the noble lord, among whose primary responsibilities in feudal society included serving as the highest judicial authority in the area he ruled, a role that ideally called for an impartial and thorough interrogation of crimes and a consideration of their perpetrators’ motives.7 We might observe, also, that the romance’s treatment of evil fits into what Ann G. Martin perceptively noted nearly three decades ago as a larger thematic program in Wigamur on reht, that is, on doing what is proper.8

Lespia Among those figures who carry out evil deeds and whom the author employs to question a straightforward interpretation of evil, none is

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more important than the first such figure the tale presents, the “mer frawe” (134; mermaid) Lespia. A “wildes weyb” (112; wild woman), Lespia would seem to belong generally to the type homo sylvaticus, that is, the wild person, which features frequently in vernacular literature and the visual arts, especially from the late twelfth century onward.9 In a cave by the sea the widowed Lespia has been raising her two preadolescent daughters. As the narrative opens, she perpetrates the first of a pair of ostensibly evil actions: she kidnaps Wigamur, the infant son and sole heir of King Paltriot of Lentrie, while the king and his wife are away attending a Pentecost festival at Arthur’s court (111–19).10 In contravention of her nonnoble status, Lespia’s “wan” (141; baseless hope) is that Wigamur will take one of her girls with him to court when the children have grown (138–41). The inability of Paltriot and his people subsequently to find the boy leads to the rise of an “unmůet” (123; malaise) at the Lentrie court, presumably not only because the child is beloved (23–25) but also because the loss of an heir fundamentally threatens the kingdom’s stability. And toward the end of the dozen years or so she holds Wigamur captive in her cave, Lespia carries out yet a second evil act when she captures “ain mer wunder” (170; a wondrous sea creature) who is swimming in the sea, ties him up in her cave (184–91), and plots to kill him with the aid of “ir prueder, zwen wild mann” (203; her two wild-man brothers).11 As is conventional across twelfth- and thirteenth-century Arthurian verse romance, Wigamur employs the final outcome, or ending, of an action as the primary narrative tool to signal to the audience the rightness or the wrongness of that action. And in Lespia’s case, the unfavorable outcome for the wild woman of her two evil deeds indicates an authorial intent to establish those acts as wrong. Thus, her kidnapping and holding of Wigamur eventually culminate in her own capture by Paltriot, who succeeds in getting her to divulge the boy’s location. Her capture of the sea creature likewise ends most unfavorably for the ambitious wild woman when he breaks free of his bonds, kills her daughters, and escapes with Wigamur, to raise him in the sea (300–320). While such outcomes might lead us to conclude that the author intended his audience to fully condemn both her acts and Lespia herself, a closer look at his presentation of those acts challenges us to adopt a more nuanced consideration of both crimes and perpetrator. Regarding her capture and planned killing of the sea creature, for instance, the text seems to be asking us both to look at Lespia’s motives and to think about the appropriateness of the punishment that she receives. And the punishment that the sea creature carries out on Lespia’s two daughters is conspicuously brutal: “es sy zu todt erschlůg” (317; he beat them to

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death); and when Paltriot’s men enter the cave, they find “des wilden weibes töchterlein” (303; the wild woman’s little daughters) lying piteously, “und das plůt also rott / was von innen gerunen” (305–6; and their blood, so red, had streamed out from them). Such unnecessary brutality and the lack of measure that characterizes the punishment that the sea creature metes out when “es ubet den seinen zorn / an den megtlin” (315–16; he took out his anger on the little girls)—who, after all, are utterly guiltless in the matter of his capture—becomes even more apparent when we consider what the daughters’ deaths drive Lespia to do. Overcome with maternal grief, she becomes delirious, breaks off a stone from a rock face, and “gab . . . ir selber ainen schlag” (332; gave herself a blow), taking her life (321–32). Although we might be tempted to view her suicidal ending as yet another authorial signal of the unambiguity of Lespia’s guilt in capturing the sea creature, clues that the author has left upon the way beg us to consider also Lespia’s motives for taking his freedom and for plotting his death. Lespia does not capture him on a whim, or as a result of her untamed, wild nature, but rather, and as Alfred Ebenauer observed in his important 1984 study on Wigamur, “Die Feindschaft des Meerweibes und des Meerwunders ist sorgfältig begründet” (the animosity of the merwoman and the sea creature is established with thoroughness).12 Lespia, as the narrator informs us, acts as she does “wan es vor mangen tagen / ir irn man het erschlagenn” (189–90; because a long time ago he [i.e., the sea creature] had killed her husband). And while the text is not explicit, it seems reasonable to assume from the context that her motivation for hurrying to her brothers soon after his capture for their help “dem mer wunder nemen den leib” (199; in taking the wondrous sea creature’s life) is the safety of her children and the recognition that the sea creature might be all too willing to take the lives of yet others of her kind. Conspicuously absent from the description of Lespia’s actions vis-à-vis the sea creature is that vocabulary of revenge and anger that both Wigamur and other contemporaneous Arthurian romances rely upon when narrating killings undertaken for less altruistic, more dubious purposes.13 The same complexity surrounding the degree of transgression in her taking of the sea creature similarly characterizes Lespia’s kidnapping and holding of Wigamur. As with her capture of the sea creature, the negative repercussions that she suffers as a result of her actions appear also, on close inspection, to be out of measure. It is certainly true that the death by hanging with which Wigamur’s father, King Paltriot, threatens Lespia (247–49) is appropriate given the facts that the kidnapping of a royal heir is such a serious crime and that Lespia is not

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a noble; hanging was the characteristic manner of execution in high and late medieval society for commoners and thieves.14 Nevertheless, the appropriateness of the manner in which Paltriot first takes Lespia into his custody is not nearly so clear. After he comes upon Lespia while he is out hunting game one day, Paltriot’s capture of her is nothing less than cruel. As if she were a wild beast, “er mant die hundt gar fraißlich / vil vaste auf die fart” (216–17; he urged the dogs most ferociously to bear down on the path). The dogs corner her, forcing her to turn about (220–22). This gives his hunters the opportunity to shoot her “mit ainem pogen durch ain pain” (224; with a bow through one of her legs), which pins her in place (225–26). And just as if she were a wild animal captured alive, her hands and feet are bound, and she is “von den hunden / vil sere und hart gepissen” (232–35; bitten by the dogs very painfully and hard), before Paltriot transports her back to his castle and throws her into a dungeon “tieff und an liecht” (257; deep and without light), with no food (258), and with her smarting wounds left unbandaged (298–99). A number of exculpatory details indicate the author’s intent to suggest that the evil that Lespia perpetrates in kidnapping Wigamur is not so cut and dried as it appears at first glance. For example, while Paltriot even goes so far as to erect a gallows from which to hang Lespia (262– 63), he is not set on executing her for her transgression. Instead, he negotiates with her: “. . . Wilt du dingen, so eÿl mir wider pringen meinen sůn, den du genomen hast mir. Fur war gehaiß ich dir, ledig wil ich dich lassen und wider haim dein strassenn.” (269–74) [“. . . If you want to settle this affair, then hasten to bring me back my son, whom you have taken from me. Indeed, I promise you, I’ll let you go free and upon your way back home.”]

Paltriot’s words here suggest both his magnanimity as a rex iustus (just king) and judge, and more importantly, that Lespia’s crime is perhaps not so grave as to be irredeemable. And when Lespia confronts the choice that Paltriot has delivered her and when she gazes with anxious trepidation upon the gallows, she agrees to reveal Wigamur’s whereabouts (280–88). While that confession should lead to Lespia’s freedom and what is, in essence, the forgiveness of her crime, by the time Paltriot’s people reach Lespia, the sea creature has already absconded with the

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boy and killed her daughters. And although we might be tempted to view Lespia’s subsequent suicide as a kind of punishment—albeit selfinflicted—for her kidnapping of Wigamur, we should not forget that her death is a direct consequence of her capture of the sea creature (and his grievous murder of her children) and is not a consequence of her kidnapping of Wigamur, whose father, after all, was ready to free her. The efforts of the romance to cloud a straightforward understanding of the inherent evil in Lespia’s kidnapping of Wigamur are not limited to Paltriot’s willingness to excuse that transgression but rather include also a number of significant exculpatory details that work to make the wild woman as offender more sympathetic. Thus, the author allows his narrator to observe that Lespia, during Wigamur’s captivity, relates to the boy in precisely those ways that a responsible parent should serve a child. The narrator notes that “mit fleÿsse sie in bewarte” (135; with zeal she looked after him), and he adds that she “pflag sein wol und zartte” (136; cared for him well and tenderly)—that is, she extends to him completely the emotional charity of warm motherly affection. In addition to giving him such heartfelt emotional support, Lespia also fully satisfies the boy’s material needs. The wild woman, whose natural food was “fische und wilde tier” (147; fish and wild animals), is tireless in nourishing the boy and her two girls and “het . . . vil schier / an den bergen vil gejaget” (148–49; also hunted very often in the mountains). So great is her success in realizing her desire to feed them well that the narrator can observe, “es was ir auch vil lieb betaget / so sie die kind so wol beriet” (150–51; it also pleased her greatly that she provided for the children so well). Moreover, Lespia cares for Wigamur’s safety by ensuring that her cave—which emerges in the narrator’s description much more as a secure place of refuge than as a location of imprisonment for Wigamur—is inaccessible to outside dangers. The narrator notes, Als sy aber von in schied, so trug sy ainen vil grossen stain fur die hol das ir kain mocht kamen auß und ein. Wigamur und die klainen töchterlin lagen auch da allain in dem felsen und holen stain biß das daz weyb wider kam. (152–59) [Whenever she left them, she placed a very large rock in front of the cave so that none of them could come out of it or into it. Wigamur and the little daughters thus stayed there alone in the cliff and the cave until the woman returned.]

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Although the narrator’s remarks here at the start of the romance addressing Lespia’s deep concern for, and thorough care of, Wigamur (and her daughters) go a long way to obfuscate a full acceptance of her guilt, a different authorial strategy begs the audience most emphatically for a more nuanced appreciation of her transgression and her moral character. The author allows Wigamur to speak positively about the mermaid long after Lespia’s death and at two later points in the romance: when Wigamur meets his father, Paltriot, for the first time as an adult and when he attends his first royal court. In the first instance, that is, when Wigamur addresses the court of King Yttra—a Gurnemanz-like figure and uncle to Arthur who takes a very naive Wigamur into his castle, teaches him chivalry, and knights him—the young hero not only reiterates the narrator’s earlier remarks about Lespia providing him ample food and safety (1284–85) but also adds that she provided him shelter as well, “‘das uns nie kain windt / noch frost an gewant, / noch kain regen ver schrannt’” (1287–89; “such that no wind nor frost ever touched us, nor any rain lacerated us”).15 While Wigamur’s remarks here serve the narrative desideratum of refreshing the auditors’ memories of important past actions, they are perhaps most significant, and certainly are most interesting, for how they urge the listener to reconsider those past actions. Although Lespia already has suffered her fate, which we might perhaps also understand as a kind of death sentence, Wigamur’s words force us to revisit what has happened to a figure who long ago had left the cast of active characters. We might also observe that the remarks about Lespia are this time in the first person, lending them the type of immediacy inherent in words uttered in an open court of law and thereby bestowing on them a cogency that more-impersonal narratorial third-person comments do not possess. We witness the unique, deliberative turn characterizing Wigamur in the strategies that the romance employs to cajole its readers into reevaluating Lespia’s crimes, motives, degree of guilt, and fate. Those strategies are fundamental to the narrative poetics of the text and also structure its last extended mention of Lespia.16 When an adult Wigamur first meets a man who, unbeknownst to him, is his father, Paltriot, he describes his time with the mermaid. Once again, he testifies in the first person, and again he does so before an assemblage of people, as if in an open court of law; specifically, father and son are about to enter a single combat against each other in front of the assembled leaders of two rival armies. In addition to stating remarks that are similar in their nature to earlier positive remarks about the quality of Lespia’s care for him (4059–61), Wigamur gives perhaps the most convincing testimony so far about

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the goodness, albeit misguided, of this alleinerziehende (single) mother’s care and recalls her with what seems intended to come across as fondness: “‘Zehen jar pflag sy mein / so sy beste kunde’” (4064–65; “For ten years, she cared for me as best she could”). In fact, so thorough, Wigamur avers, was her care that “‘die wonte ich mein muter sein’” (4063; “I believed her to be my mother”).17

Pontrafort The same complexity that surrounds the romance’s first negative figure, Lespia, and that begs auditors to interrogate the nature and extent of her evil, is operative also in the author’s construction of its next villainous personage, the Lord of Pontrafort.18 As a robber knight, about whom the text reports that “den wald und die strassenn / hat er beraubet mangen tag” (753–54; the forest and the streets he plundered for many a day), the Lord of Pontrafort belongs to one of the most frequent negative figure types in Arthurian romance.19 As Wigamur’s first armed opponent, the knight Glakoteles de Loir, explains, “Wer hie gyeng oder raÿtt, der het nie so güt haÿll, er müest den zway taill seines gůttes im ze zolle geben, oder er můest das leben zu pfande da lassen.” (747–52) [“Whoever walked here or rode never was so fortunate, that he wouldn’t have to give two-thirds of his property to him as a toll, or else he had to leave his life there as collateral.”]

Pontrafort eventually perpetrates so “manigen mort” (743; many murders) of innocent passersby “zu Daloyr in dem landt” (744; in the land of Doloyer) that its king—we might assume in recognition of the fundamental instability that Pontrafort’s terrorizing acts pose his realm— sees that Pontrafort “inn die aͤcht ward gethan” (757; was declared an outlaw). Once again, and as was the case with Lespia before Pontrafort, the author seizes upon the standard Arthurian narratological convention of allowing the resolution of an action to convey to the audience how it should understand that action. In the case of the highway banditry that Pontrafort exercises from his castle, and when he succeeds, after being outlawed, in escaping punishment for “noch zehen jar” (758; ten more years), the king of Doloyer’s soldiers capture him and

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turn him over to the king. The message is—or at least would seem to be—clear: namely, that Pontrafort’s actions are wrong and that he, himself, is a wholly evil man. Further, the punishment that Pontrafort is to receive—the king plans “in morgen hencken als ain tÿeb” (760; to hang him tomorrow as a thief)—would certainly seem appropriate: although Pontrafort’s noble rank normally would entitle him to an execution befitting an aristocrat, such as beheading, the property thefts and also the murders that he has committed arguably justify such an ignominious execution.20 And that, as Glakoteles reports, this punishment “‘ist den leütten allen lieb’” (761; “pleases all the people”) would indicate further that, at least in the minds of those whose security was directly violated by Pontrafort’s acts and who might now finally “wol mit gemach / wandeln und werben ir sach / baide wider und fůr” (762–64; quite comfortably both come and go and do their business), the punishment is fitting. While the text, on the one hand, provides this apparently clear assessment of Pontrafort’s guilt, it also simultaneously confounds a straightforward, unquestioning acceptance of the evil of Pontrafort’s person and the correctness of his fate. The text appears to suggest that his punishment is, in fact, excessive. Indeed, that punishment encompasses both Pontrafort’s ultimate hanging as well as the collateral damage to his court that occurs during his capture and that the audience experiences through Wigamur’s eyes. When Wigamur finally leaves the company of the sea creature, who had served as his mentor and provider since Lespia’s death, his first encounter with human beings and civilization occurs when he happens upon Pontrafort’s castle and witnesses the king of Doloyer’s soldiers attacking it. That assault is complete and merciless, hard fought on both sides and incredibly violent. As the narrator reports of the young man’s observations about Paltriot’s men in the battle’s aftermath, “Da fandt er verhauenn / mangen stolczen ritter da ligen / und des plůtes ersigen” (521–23; He found many proud knights lying there cut down and drained of blood). And Paltriot’s castle, as well, has been not merely subdued but utterly annihilated: “Die purg sach er prinnen / vil sere aussen und innenn” (524–25; He saw the castle burning violently, outside and inside). The author further suggests the excess of this destruction and, by extension, of Pontrafort’s fate by cleverly allowing us a view inside Wigamur’s thoughts. In a passage reminiscent of the report by the titular hero of Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1669) concerning the gruesome fate suffered by the household of his foster parents by marauding troops during the Thirty Years’ War, Wigamur’s hero, yet completely ignorant of the ways of the world, is

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able to deliver an unvarnished impression of the assault that he has witnessed from outside the castle:21 Wider sych selb er do sprach, “Sind das leüt, so ich wanen wil, so künnen sy ain schones spil; doch wän ich, es vil weetůt.” (507–10) [He said to himself in that instant, “If those are people, as I would believe, then they are capable of a fine game; however, I think it hurts pretty badly.”]

And Wigamur’s subsequent thoughts about this “fine game” reflect not only the existence in this future king of a kind of inner moral compass and an inherent ability to judge the actions of others but also the dubious nature of this take-no-prisoners-style assault on Pontrafort’s home. The narrator reports of Wigamur’s mental processing of the soldiers’ actions, Dicz kam im ser in den můt, und marckte ir gepärde und gedaucht in doch vil swere und auch gar gemelich. (511–14) [This pained his conscience and he considered their behavior, and it seemed to him really troubling and also thoroughly peculiar.]

The author builds upon such intimation of excess in the punishment of Pontrafort’s court when he has Wigamur proceed from the outside to the inside of the castle, where utter destruction awaits him. The attack has taken both the lives of its soldiers—the logical victims of armed action—and also those of the women who had made the castle their home. In contravention of the thematic norms of Arthurian romance, which condemn violence against women, those women have, in fact, suffered a most horrible death. As the assault’s sole survivor, the distraught maiden Pioles, laments to the hero, the castle’s women, ladies of the highest lineage, whose only transgression was to have lived under Pontrafort’s roof, have died by fire. She implores him, “Secht inn dem selben feür ligenn zwo junckfrauen tod: die herczogin von Libranot, die ander was von Grabalmontoÿs, der herczogin swester von Logroÿs die dises hauses frawe was.” (919–24)

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[“Look, in this same fire lie dead two damsels: (one was) the duchess of Libranot and the other was from Grabalmontois, the sister of the duchess of Logres, who was the lady of this castle.”]

As it had also with Lespia’s story and her lot, the text revisits the ladies’ story long after they have suffered their fate. Arguably in order to urge its audience to reconsider not just the ladies’ fate but also to redeliberate the Lord of Pontrafort’s punishment, the text near its conclusion reminds auditors of the singular gruesomeness of the ladies’ demise. More specifically, Pioles’s fiancé, King Harzir of Noredin, testifies to Wigamur that “‘da verprunnen junckfrawen und weybe / und alles das da was’” (5620–21; “damsels and women burned up, along with everything that was there”) as a result of the king of Doloyer’s “zorn” (5617; anger) at the Lord of Pontrafort.22 In addition to sowing doubts among auditors concerning the extent of the punishment that Pontrafort and his court members endure, the text also undermines a straightforward condemnation of Pontrafort by attributing to him not just crimes but also altruism. Pontrafort had shown Pioles, a defenseless maiden, great kindness in her time of need. As her fiancé, Harzir, explains to Wigamur, “‘dem wirt und seinem gesinde / empfalch ich sy mit treẅen’” (5608–9; “to the host [Pontrafort] and his household I entrusted her in good faith”), when Harzir had passed by Pontrafort’s castle and decided to go without Pioles to a tournament in a neighboring country.23 Pioles’s own words, however, emerge as most powerful in begging the audience to view Pontrafort in a more favorable light. She informs Wigamur, first, that “‘dur Sand Peter er mich behielt’” (907; “he held me in his protection in the name of Saint Peter”), that is, for the sake of the saint traditionally associated with locks, keys, and security and whose name in Arthurian romance is sometimes invoked by those responsible for guarding.24 And she notes that his soul is one to be lamented, thus suggesting, perhaps, that his fate has not been entirely just, when she admonishes Wigamur that a good person must, as she is, be sad about this generous man’s death: “‘Den sult ir clagenn mit mir / ob ir sind so geheür’” (917–18; “You should lament him with me if you are sufficiently decent”).

Lipondrigun Like the lord of Pontrafort and Lespia before him, the last evildoer in the romance likewise challenges auditors against accepting a simple and wholly condemnatory interpretation of his actions and moral character.25 Lipondrigun, the king of Gurgalet, enters the stage late in the

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romance (4866) as a combatant knight in Queen Dinifrogar’s tournament, the winner of which is entitled both to her hand and to control of her land. In the romance’s elaboration of King Lipondrigun’s moral character, crimes, and motives, he emerges as a complex, multisided presence—a rarity in Arthurian romance, where important figures tend to be mostly good or mostly bad. As a very ambiguous king, with both good and bad qualities, he has perhaps most in common with certainly the best-known ambiguous king of the medieval Arthurian tradition: the Prose Lancelot’s King Claudas of the Wasteland.26 Lipondrigun’s crimes in Wigamur are twofold. During the tournament the romance introduces the first of his crimes, a “groß mord” (5170; great murder) that he has perpetrated at some point in the past; and after the completion of the tournament, he abducts Wigamur’s bride, the maiden Dulciflur.27 The first transgression comes to light toward the end of the tournament, when of the three best knights remaining—Wigamur, Lipondrigun, and Gahmuret—only Lipondrigun emerges as a possible match for the queen. Gahmuret is, unfortunately, and as Queen Dinifrogar explains, “‘meiner pasen sůn’” (5037; “my father’s sister’s son”) and is, therefore, ineligible to marry her for reasons of consanguinity. Likewise, Wigamur, as a man already with a bride, is also ineligible: he reminds the crowd that “‘mein fraw sol mein dienst han’” (5097; “my own lady [Dulciflur] should have my service”). When Gahmuret, therefore, praises Lipondrigun as sent to Dinifrogar from God and enjoins the queen before the tournament participants and spectators that “‘den solt du nemen zu ainem man’” (5123; “you should take him as your husband”), she immediately counters that “‘one man wolt ich ymmer sein, / ee das ich wurd sein weyb’” (5130–31; “I’d rather be without a husband always before I would become his wife”). Wigamur’s father-inlaw, King Atroglas, then fully elucidates for the assembled nobility the baseness of the crime that has led Queen Dinifrogar to reject him out of hand. As Atroglas asserts, Lipondrigun had come upon Dinifrogar’s father, King Grason, in the forest while Grason was out hunting with his people. Accepting Grason’s wine and then his generous offer to spend the night in his camp, Lipondrigun had seized upon the opportunity to harm Grason in what the author would surely have intended to be understood as the most fundamental violation of the custom of noble hospitality and the responsibilities of guest to host. In an act reminiscent of Hagen’s stabbing Siegfried in the back in the Nibelungenlied, Lipondrigun waits until Grason and he are alone upon a heath—that is, until he may attack Grason without fear of challenge from his people. Atroglas testifies, “‘Lypondrigän fürt ain sper. / Den kunig er durch den

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leyb stach’” (5168–69; “Lipondrigun carried a spear, and he pierced the king through his body”). Once again, and as he had done earlier with the transgressions of the lord of Pontrafort and of Lespia before him, the author applies a standard narratological convention of Arthurian romance and allows the results of the action to signal the incorrectness of Lipondrigun’s deed. Wigamur, who declares that “‘ich wil euch weren hie zu stet / die kunigin und die mÿnn’” (5186–87; “I’ll defend the queen and love against you, right here”), defeats Lipondrigun in a bitterly contested single combat, driving him to his knees and forcing him to render ignominiously his guarantee of surrender (5236–62). In spite of the gravity of his treacherous deed and the embarrassing consequences that Lipondrigun reaps because of it, the author once again entices his auditors away from a simplistic understanding of the crime and an easy condemnation of its perpetrator. The text instead allows something of a maximum defense to Lipondrigun in the motives with which it furnishes him. Just as if he is testifying for himself in an open court of law, Lipondrigun calls out for the attention of “‘alle die hie sein’” (5139; “all who are here”) to lay out his case and to allege that Grason was not without responsibility in bringing about his own death. As Lipondrigun avows, Grason “‘tät mir grosses laÿd’” (5143; “did me great injury”), and Lipondrigun had little choice but to take his life, since “‘darzu zwang mich grosse not’” (5142; “extreme necessity drove me to it”). Lipondrigun would have his deed interpreted not as some random act of evil but instead as a reasonable response to Grason’s predations. Thus, he claims of Grason’s past behavior that “‘mit gwalt er mir in mein land rait, / mein leüt er mir schlůg, / meiner burge nam er mir gnůg’” (5144–46; “with force, he rode into my land, he slew my people, and he took many of my castles from me”). More importantly, however, Lipondrigun’s drastic deed was not merely a response to Grason’s past transgressions but rather a considered act aimed at preventing Grason’s future rapacity. When Lipondrigun pronounces, “‘ich schafft das er mich sein erlat / die weyl das die welt stat’” (5181–82; “I acted so that he would spare me of such deeds for as long as the world exists”), he places his decision to slay Grason solidly into the realm of self-defense. Lipondrigun’s second offense—the abduction of Wigamur’s bride, the maiden Dulciflur—follows directly upon his defeat at Queen Dinifrogar’s tournament. Departing Dinifrogar’s court without leave and “vor schanden” (5315; out of shame) for the loss that Wigamur has dealt him, Lipondrigun runs into Dulciflur and her lady-in-waiting as the two women are making their way alone upon the road to

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Dinifrogar’s tournament. Complaining to Dulciflur of the “‘spot und grosse schandt’” (5367; “scorn and great shame”) that he has suffered and that Wigamur “‘hat mich auch geleczet, / und mir mein er benommen’” (5372–73; “injured me, furthermore, and took from me my honor”), Lipondrigun seizes the girl “zu ainem pfandt” (5368; as a hostage), intending ultimately to wed her, and absconds with her back to his kingdom, Gurgalet. And once again, as we have seen so often before, the romance employs the outcome of this action to indicate also its incorrectness: Wigamur defeats Lipondrigun yet another time in yet another tournament, resulting in Lipondrigun’s public shaming and what is essentially his shunning by the community of his aristocratic peers. Thus, when Lipondrigun is carried in, grievously wounded, from the lists, an onlooking Dulciflur “hört sein nÿmant clagen; / wan sy wöneten alle” (6043–44; heard no one lament for him; rather, they were all happy).28 While there can be little doubt that the author here intends to send the audience the message that a good man should not harm women, let alone abduct them, he nevertheless has injected details into his description of Lipondrigun’s deed that beg the audience, yet again, to interrogate the extent and nature of the evil in this negative act. Although Lipondrigun is clearly an abductor, he is by no means the type of purely villainous abductor that is so common in Arthurian romance, such as, for instance, Meleagant, Guenevere’s kidnapper in Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot.29 For example, when Lipondrigun first encounters Dulciflur with her handmaid, unescorted upon the way, and before he knows who she is, his impulse is to help her. He altruistically announces, “‘meinen dienst sult ir haben darzů, / wo ir hin wollet reitten so frů’” (5339–40; “you will have my service for wherever you would ride to this early”). And after he has discovered her identity and seized her against her will, his conduct toward her is conspicuously, and perhaps even surprisingly, gentle. For example, as they are making their way back to his home country, “er hieß sy sanfte füren: / sy getorste nymant rüren” (5387– 88; he ordered that she be led [along the road] in peace: no one dared touch her).30 Additionally, although he is fixed upon having her as his wife, he employs no physical force to further his goal, as, for example, the second count does in Chrétien’s and Hartmann von Aue’s Erec romances in that count’s attempt to take Enite as wife.31 While “er war gern bey ir gelegen” (5398; he would have gladly lain down beside her), Lipondrigun’s efforts consist at first of simple entreaty. As the narrator explains, Er gedacht in seinem můt wie er die maget, mit gůt

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und mit listen, über kome das sy in vil gerne näme. (5569–72) [He considered how he might, with kindness and with cunning, prevail upon the maiden so that she would willingly accept him.]

And even after realizing that all these relatively passive measures, “es wär treütten oder pet” (5574; whether by affection or pleading), have failed to sway Dulciflur, Lipondrigun still refrains from physical, or any other untoward, means of coercion. Instead, and as one might expect of any upright nobleman in Arthurian romance who intends to win a woman, Lipondrigun seeks to impress her so greatly with his martial ability that she will accept him as husband. As such, he convenes and takes her “mit schal” (5856; with fanfare) to his tournament at Gundilar, where “er wil sy selbs sehen lan / seiner manhait kraft” (5860–61; he wishes to let her see for herself his manly strength).

The Poet as Innovator In providing his negative figures with rich backgrounds, compelling motives, and even positive personality traits, Wigamur’s author deftly challenges the Erwartungshorizont of an audience undoubtedly accustomed to the more one-sided, more fully evil negative characters frequently encountered in the genre of Arthurian romance. But perhaps even more importantly, by begging his audience to interrogate all sides of the evils that his characters perpetrate, the poet elevates the individual auditor’s role from mere listener to that of active judge, whom he calls upon repeatedly to deliberate multiple sides of an issue. The introduction of such a deliberative turn in Wigamur adds an additional and, arguably, unique layer of complexity to the generic model for Arthurian romance that Chrétien de Troyes had developed and firstgeneration practitioners of the genre in German-speaking areas so successfully emulated. In his multifaceted presentation of evil, we might, therefore, rightfully celebrate the Wigamur poet as an innovator and a prime example of those later, second-generation, thirteenth-century romanciers who, in Keith Busby’s words, approached their task as “an act of creative reception, using and modifying the framework provided by Chrétien [and, in the German-speaking areas, propagated by Hartmann and Wolfram] with a view of producing something to the taste of their particular audience or patrons.”32 Indeed, with his nuanced, unconventional presentation of evil, in his attempt to create something new and different, the Wigamur poet makes a worthy contribution to the project

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of thirteenth-century writers to refresh and reinvigorate the genre of Arthurian romance inherited from their predecessors.

Notes 1 Wigamur, ed. Johann Gustav Büsching, in Deutsche Gedichte des Mittelalters, ed. Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen and Johann Gustav Büsching, vol. 1 (Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808), iii–viii and 1–80. I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the editors of the present volume, Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski, and to my two external readers, whose thoughtful, careful comments were indispensable in the preparation of this essay.

Those two more user-friendly volumes are Wigamur: Kritische Edition  – Übersetzung – Kommentar, ed. and trans. Nathanael Busch (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), which gives a faithful rendition of the romance into modern German and which features as its centerpiece an edition of MS W that, in somewhat of a departure from current editing trends for medieval texts, normalizes the late medieval manuscript language into classical Middle High German, and Wigamur, ed. and trans. Joseph M. Sullivan (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), which presents a more diplomatic, conservative edition of MS W next to a modern English translation of that manuscript. All quotations and line number references in this essay from Wigamur are from my translation and edition. About previous Wigamur editions and about its manuscript history, see Sullivan, xi–xv, and esp. Busch, 14–17. About prior Wigamur scholarship, see Sullivan, xv–xxii. 2

3 Typical for the low estimation of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholars for Wigamur are, for example, the comments of Ferdinand Khull, “Zu Wigamur,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 24 (1880): 100, who characterized the tale transmitted in MS W as a “verworrene und läppische Erzählung” (convoluted and and foolish narrative). While falling far short of an enthusiastic embrace of Wigamur’s artistic merits, scholars started moving in the 1970s toward a more objective, more nuanced understanding of the romance. In this vein, see, for instance, Albrecht Classen, “Der komische Held Wigamur, Ironie oder Parodie: Strukturelle und thematische Untersuchungen zu einem spätmittelalterlichen Artus-Roman,” Euphorion: Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 87, no. 2–3 (1993): 200–224, esp. 223–24. More traditional attitudes to the text as a romance derivative of earlier Arthurian romances have, nevertheless, been slow to disappear. See, for example, Volker Mertens, Der deutsche Artusroman (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1998), 240–49, who views Wigamur “als ‘reécriture’ des Parzival” (249; as a rewrite of Parzival). 4

Although he is appreciative of many aspects of the romance, David Blamires, “The Sources and Literary Structure of Wigamur,” in Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. W. Rothwell et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), 40, epitomizes such lack of appreciation for Wigamur’s characters when he opines, “Nor is there an attempt at character portrayal in any depth.” 5

For reasons of space, this essay will not treat positive characters who do negative things. Most prominent among such figures are Wigamur’s father-in-law, King Atroglas of Rerat, and Wigamur’s father, King Paltriot of Lentrie. These two

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otherwise positive figures conduct a war against each other over their mutual, and arguably greedy, claims to a land after the death of its ruler, King Amilot of Deleferant. The war results in the needless deaths of countless warriors on both sides and reaches its conclusion only after the warring kings’ knights force Atroglas and Paltriot to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. See lines 3458–4237. 6 For more on the European and, also, Middle High German traditions of the Fair Unknown romance and how Wigamur fits into those contexts, see Sullivan, xvi–xxii. 7 Since the twelfth century, a consideration of motive had become increasingly important in medieval law. See, for example, Rüdiger Schnell, “Abaelards Gesinnungsethik und die Rechtsthematik in Hartmanns Iwein,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 65, no. 1 (1991): 15–69, here 15.

While Martin’s essay, “The Concept of reht in Wigamur,” Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 20, no.1 (1987): 1–14, is perhaps the most insightful piece of scholarship to date, its findings, unfortunately, have attained less traction in subsequent Wigamur research than they merit. Middle High German reht, in the sense that Martin and I understand it, includes such meanings as “right,” “legal,” “correct,” “appropriate,” and “fair.”

8

9 See, for example, Matthias Meyer, “Das defitzäre Wunder: Die Feejugend des Helden,” in Das Wunderbare in der arthurischen Literatur: Probleme und Perspektiven, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2003), 95–112, here 106 and 108. On the progression of ideas about wild people from classical antiquity and early Christianity through the Middle Ages, see Ernst Ralf Hintz, “Der Wilde Mann—ein Mythos vom Andersartigen,” and about wild women in medieval culture, Christa Habiger-Tuczay, “Wilde Frau,” both in Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich (St. Gallen: UVK, 1999), 617–26 and 603–15, respectively. The earliest influential example in high medieval European arts of such a figure occurs in Chrétien’s Yvain, where the knight Calogrenant comes across a wild, hideous herdsman tending a flock of wild bulls. See Chrétien de Troyes, The Knight with the Lion or Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion), ed. and trans. William W. Kibler (New York: Garland, 1985), lines 278–409, 708–13, and 793–99. 10

About Lespia’s kidnapping of the young hero within the larger contexts of theft in Wigamur and the Fair Unknown tradition, see John W. Love, “New Perspectives on Wigamur and Other Romances of the Fair Unknown Tradition” (master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2013), 28–33.

11

The text (1290 and 4064) gives both twelve and ten years as the period of Wigamur’s captivity.

Alfred Ebenauer, “Wigamur und die Familie,” in Artusrittertum im späten Mittelalter: Ethos und Ideologie, ed. Friedrich Wolfzettel (Giessen: Schmitz, 1984), 29. Ebenauer’s carefully supported study, which posits the hero’s absolute need to find his family and his integration into a noble lineage as the most important themes of what Ebenauer sees as a socially conservative and dynastically oriented romance, continues to be the most influential piece of criticism in modern Wigamur research. That influence, which arguably has stifled subsequent scholars from developing new insights into the text, is visible most recently in Carmen Stange, “Ein mittelalterlicher Kriminalfall und seine dynastischen Folgen: Der Wigamur,” in Vergessene Texte 12

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des Mittelalters, ed. Nathanael Busch and Björn Reich (Stuttgart: Herzel, 2014), 43–53. 13

About the language of anger and revenge across a variety of medieval narrative genres, see, for instance, Stephen D. White, “The Politics of Anger,” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. Barbara H. Rosenwein (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 127–52, esp. 141–42.

14

About hanging as a particularly humiliating form of execution usually reserved for common thieves, see, for instance, Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsaltertümer, 4th ed., vol. 2 (1899; repr., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), 257– 65, esp. 261 and 265.

15

Among the many scholars who have noted the affinity of Yttra to Gurnemanz is Ebenauer, 29.

As Ernst Ralf Hintz argues in “Legal Fiction and Ambiguity in the Nibelungenlied,” in Nu lôn ich iu der gâbe: Festschrift for Francis G. Gentry, ed. Ernst Ralf Hintz (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 2003), 25–41, here 26, such a deliberative turn is also operative in the Nibelungenlied, whose author “so constructs themes and arguments . . . as to compel his auditors to make sense of what they hear” about characters and to “pass judgment” on them. 16

17

For Lespia’s rearing of Wigamur, see also Meyer, 104–9.

18

The main manuscript, MS W, also once calls him “der kunig von Pontrafort” (742; the king of Pontrafort), although the larger context would appear to indicate that he is not a royal figure.

19

Within the Fair Unknown tradition, for example, other characters belonging to this class of figures include the robber knight who dispossesses his stepdaughter of her inheritance and the four lords of the castle Mauregaert in the Middle Dutch Knight with the Sleeve. See David F. Johnson and Geert H.  M. Classens, eds. and trans., “Die Riddere metter Mouwen,” in Five Interpolated Romances from the Lancelot Compilation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), lines 1644–1736 and 2342–837.

20

While we probably can assume that the author wants us to understand that the king of Doloyer eventually does hang the Lord of Pontrafort, the text never actually does state that the latter has been hanged. About beheading as the customary mode of execution for aristocrats, see Grimm, 265.

21 See Hans Jakob Christoph von Grimmelshausen, Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch, ed. Volker Meid (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1961), 53–59. 22

Within the larger Arthurian tradition, death by fire is also the famously awful end of the arch-traitor Vortigern in Geoffrey’s Historia regum Britanniae. See Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of the De gestis Britonum [Historia Regum Britanniae], ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2007), 162–63. Locked away in the tower that he has built for himself, Vortigern is torched along with his refuge by Aurelius Ambrosius, Arthur’s paternal uncle. And within the Middle High German literary tradition, death by fire is the horrible fate that Kriemhild plans for the Burgundians in Adventure 36 of the Nibelungenlied, when she has them driven into Etzel’s hall and has that hall set on fire. See Pincikowski’s essay in this volume on the modern reception of this motif.

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See also lines 897–905.

24

For example, by a porter who announces the hero’s arrival to his castle lord in the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd ed., rev. Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), line 813. In medieval iconography Peter’s association with locks and guarding is signaled by the large key that he often holds in his hand.

25

There have been several other evildoers between the Lord of Pontrafort and King Lipondrigun. These include, among others, King Marroch of Sarazin, a heathen who attempts to take a Christian queen as his wife (2749–3308); Lespurant, who kills his lord and holds that lord’s family captive (1078–109993); and a vulture who kidnaps and devours the young of an eagle whom Wigamur aids and who subsequently becomes his constant companion (1444–98). While the vulture and Lespurant are wholly negative figures, Marroch’s motives arguably render his evil deeds at least understandable, thereby placing him in a similar class as the ambiguous Lespia, Pontrafort, and Lipondrigun.

26

About Claudas as a supremely ambiguous royal figure, see, for example, Rudolf Voß, Der Prosa-Lancelot: Eine strukturanalytische und strukturvergleichende Studie auf der Grundlage des deutschen Textes (Meisenheim am Glam: Anton Hain, 1970), 50, and Matthias Meyer, “König und Verräter: Ambivalenzen, Fatalismus und Fatalität im mittelhochdeutschen Prosa-Lancelot,” in Lancelot—Lanzelet: Hier et aujourdhui, ed. Danielle Buschinger and Michel Zink (Greifswald: Reineke, 1995), 290–91. Although Voß and Meyer are writing specifically about the Middle High German translation of the Prose Lancelot, their remarks about Claudas are fully applicable also to the original Old French Prose Lancelot.

27

My use of the ambiguous word “bride” and neither the more specific “fiancée” nor “wife” is intentional and reflects the fact that Dulciflur at the time of her abduction is, apparently, not fully married. Although the couple have exchanged rings and, more importantly, given their vows of consent, or verba de praesenti, to marry (4628–41), and while the wedding celebration has begun (4645–57), the text still refers to her as a maiden at the time that Wigamur abruptly leaves the wedding festival to attend Dinifrogar’s tournament and during the period of Dulciflur’s abduction (e.g., 5328 and 5570). Noteworthy by its absence is mention of the marriage’s sexual consummation, which along with the verba de praesenti was increasingly accepted from the mid-twelfth century forward as one of the two elements required for a marriage to be complete. While I suspect that MS W originally included toward the end of the tale a mention of such sexual consummation, or at least of the sealing of the marriage by a priest, such mention, if it ever existed, has not come down to us in the manuscript’s preserved leaves. On Wigamur and Dulciflur’s confusing marital status, see also Sullivan, 316–17. About the seminal importance of the circa-1140 Decretum by the jurist Gratian for the notion that both verbal consent and sexual consummation are necessary for a valid marriage, see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 235–37.

28

About Lipondrigun’s abduction of Dulciflur within the larger contexts of theft in Wigamur and the Fair Unknown tradition, see Love, 37–40.

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29

This most infamous of all Arthurian abductors is, of course, also alluded to in the German tradition (as Meliakanz) by Hartmann von Aue, Iwein or the Knight with the Lion, ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), lines 4514–726 and 5673–81.

30

The author is calling upon a standard Arthurian motif: namely, that in earlier times women were left unmolested while traveling. As his narrator explains, “es was die gewonhait / das weder arm noch reich laÿd / an kainem weyb mÿsetat / dan was er er warb mit seiner bet” (5389–92; it was the custom that neither poor nor rich man commit an improper act against any woman except for what he attained by his asking). For the identical sentiment, see also 1566–68.

31

That second count—Oringles, in Hartmann’s version—forces Enite to undergo a wedding ceremony with him and also berates her and violently strikes her twice before his assembled nobles. See Hartmann von Aue, Erec, ed. and trans. Cyril Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), lines 6236–43. See Evelyn Meyer’s discussion of this scene in this volume. 32

This opinion, specifically about the successors to Chrétien de Troyes in the tradition of the thirteenth-century French Arthurian romance in verse, are, I believe, fully applicable to the thirteenth-century German Arthurian romanciers who followed Hartmann and Wolfram von Eschenbach. See Busby’s foreword to perhaps the most important study to date of Arthurian romance in the thirteenth century, Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart, trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), xi–xlvi, here xii.

Selected Bibliography Listed are the major editions and most important studies of the anonymous thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Wigamur. As it is a text for which there exists relatively little modern research, much of the more important recent criticism is to be found in the notes to the newest edition—translations by Busch and Sullivan. Primary Literature Wigamur. Translated and edited by Joseph M. Sullivan. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. “Wigamur.” Edited by Johann Gustav Büsching. In Deutsche Gedichte des Mittelalters, vol. 1, edited by Friedrich Heinrich von der Hagen and Johann Gustav Büsching, iii–viii and 1–80. Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808. Wigamur: Edité avec Introduction et Index. Edited by Danielle Buschinger. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1987. Wigamur: Kritische Edition – Übersetzung – Kommentar. Translated and edited by Nathanael Busch. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009.

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Secondary Literature Blamires, David. “The Sources and Literary Structure of Wigamur.” In Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, edited by W. Rothwell, W. J. Barron, David Blamires, and Lewis Thorpe, 27–46. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973. Busch, Nathanael. “so findt ich Wigamuren seins tichters nit auf all diser erden: Eine kurze Geschichte der Wigamur-Handschriften.” In Grundlagen: Forschungen, Editionen und Materialien zur deutschen Literatur und Sprache des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit, edited by Rudolf Bentzinger, UlrichDieter Oppitz, and Jürgen Wolf, 67–71. Stuttgart: Hirzel, 2013. Classen, Albrecht. “Der komische Held Wigamur—Ironie oder Parodie: Strukturelle und thematische Untersuchungen zu einem spätmittelalterlichen Artus-Roman.” Euphorion: Zeitschrift für Literaturgeschichte 87, no. 2–3 (1993): 200–224. Ebenauer, Alfred. “Wigamur und die Familie.” In Artusrittertum im späten Mittelalter: Ethos und Ideologie, edited by Friedrich Wolfzettel, 28–46. Giessen: Schmitz, 1984. Henderson, Ingeborg. “Illustrationsprogramm und Text der Wolfenbütteler Wigamur-Handschrift.” In In hôhem prîse: A Festschrift in Honor of Ernst S. Dick, Presented on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, April 7, 1989, edited by Winder McConnell, 163–89. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989. Jenisch, Erich. “Vorarbeiten zu einer kritischen Ausgabe des Wigamur.” PhD diss., University of Königsberg, 1918. Khull, Ferdinand. “Zu Wigamur.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum 24 (1880): 97–124. Linden, Walther. “Studien zum Wigamur: Überlieferung und Sprache.” PhD diss., University of Halle-Wittenberg, 1920. Love, John W. “New Perspectives on Wigamur and Other Romances of the Fair Unknown Tradition.” Master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma, 2013. Martin, Ann G. “The Concept of reht in Wigamur.” Colloquia Germanica: Internationale Zeitschrift für Germanistik 20, no. 1 (1987): 1–14. Mausser, Otto Ernst. Reimstudien zu Wigamur. Erlangen: K.b. Hof- und Univ.Buchdruckerei von Junge & Sohn, 1907. Meyer, Matthias. “Intertexuality in the Later Thirteenth Century: Wigamur, Gauriel, Lohengrin and the Fragments of Arthurian Romances.” In The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature, edited by W. H. Jackson and S. A. Ranawake, 98–114. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000. Obermeier, Sabine. “Löwe, Adler, Bock: Das Tierrittermotiv und seine Verwandlungen im späthöfischen Artusroman.” In Tierepik und Tierallegorese: Studien zur Poetologie und historischen Anthropologie vormoderner Literatur, edited by Bernhard Jand and Otto Neudeck, 121–39. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004. Sarrazin, G. Wigamur: Eine litterarhistorische Untersuchung. Strasbourg: Karl J. Trübner, 1879.

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Simek, Rudolf. “Wigamur.” In Artus-Lexikon: Mythos und Geschichte, Werke und Personen der europäischen Artusdichtung, edited by Rudolf Simek, 362–63. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam jun., 2012. Stange, Carmen. “Ein mittelalterlicher Kriminalfall und seine dynastischen Folgen: Der Wigamur.” In Vergessene Texte des Mittelalters, edited by Nathanael Busch and Björn Reich, 43–53. Stuttgart: Herzel, 2014. Thomas, Neil. “The Sources of Wigamur and the German Reception of the Fair Unknown Tradition.” Reading Medieval Studies 19 (1993): 97–111.

11: The Miracles of the Antichrist Tina Boyer

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hᴇ ᴠiᴠiᴅ iᴍᴀgᴇs of the Puch von dem Entkrist, their simplicity and starkness, are mesmerizing. The colors leap off the pages, and before even reading the text, one is drawn into the story that they tell. What must have been the emotional reaction of a fifteenth-century reader? Someone immersed in the religious background of the Final Enemy? The Puch von dem Entkrist is part of a series of German blockbooks that detail the life of the Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday. Along with it, there is the Frankfurt edition that is a full print and the earlier chiro-xylographic Antichrist.1 All three are fascinating, but they contain one particular set of images that puzzle scholars to this day. The German blockbooks detailed the life of the Antichrist and combined his legend with the popular countdown of the Fifteen Signs of Doomsday.2 In the first part, the Antichrist performs three miracles in front of an enthralled audience of followers. His goal is to blind and seduce them so that they believe his lies and deceit. But why would he conjure a giant from an egg, suspend a castle by a thread in the air, and draw a stag from a stone? They do not belong to the established eschatological tradition. Before and after this set of images, he performs other miracles as well; those miracles are drawn from eschatological tradition, but these are not. Their particularity must be explained in the cultural context of the fifteenth century. Therefore, the discussion has to turn to the question of how apocalyptic texts were used in the fifteenth century and how far the blockbooks reflect that culture. Christoph Peter Burger states in his introduction to the Frankfurter Blockbuch: Ein uns unbekannter Verfasser schrieb zu Beginn des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts (die ältesten Handschriften werden auf 1430 datiert) unter Benutzung verschiedener Quellen, besonders aber des Compendium der theologischen Wahrheit des Straßburger Dominikaners Hugo Ripelin (gest. 1268) und der Legenda Aurea des Genueser Dominikaners Jacobus de Voraigne (1228/30–1298), einen Bildertext, in dem er die beiden miteinander verwandten Legenden vom Antichrist und den fünfzehn Zeichen in deutscher Sprache erzählte.3

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[An unknown author wrote a picture text at the beginning of the fifteenth century (the oldest manuscript can be dated to 1430) using various sources, but especially the Compendium der theologischen Wahrheit of the Dominican Hugo Ripelin of Straßburg (decd. 1268) and the Legenda Aurea of the Genoese Dominican Jacobus de Voraigne (1228/30–1298), in which he combined and told the two related legends of the Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs in German.]

The search for the origins of the legend is simple enough, but to place the miracles in their cultural context is not. The audience of a fifteenthcentury blockbook is not so easy to determine. Considering the materials and the cost of manufacturing them, they must have been luxury articles—not unlike illuminated manuscripts, albeit less dear. Cornelia Schneider emphasizes that point when she states that readers were most likely noble, wealthy merchants, or those who needed books to pursue their professions, such as clerics or schoolmasters.4 Unlike other blockbooks, like the Biblia Pauperum, the Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs was written entirely in German. The choice of language could change the perception of who read the books and might have included a wider audience than other blockbooks that were written partially or entirely in Latin. Even though the Fifteen Signs is written in the vernacular, this audience must still have had a certain level of learning. In the fifteenth century, not just the nobility but merchants and artisans were attaining an education at universities;5 the Fifteen Signs could have very well been used in an educational environment—whether in a city or within a monastery setting. The conservative nature of the material indicates that a monastic milieu is more plausible, although the vernacular leads to the conclusion that the audience was a mix of learned and laypeople. Nigel Palmer states the importance of the social spheres for these blockbooks—their private and public use.6 Presumably, people shared these apocalyptic visions in a communal setting but also quietly perused the books in the privacy of their chambers. Cornelia Schneider posits in her conclusion to Der Alltag der Blockbücher that the place of the blockbooks was neither on the altar of a church nor the private library of the nobility. Instead, it had its place in the daily life of a reading audience—an urban and also a noble one.7 Anneliese Schmitt believes that the wealth of literature and the new means of manufacturing more of it—among them the blockbooks— led to a broader audience that used reading for instruction and edification, and more and more as a diversion.8 She is convinced that for the layperson the images acted as an aid to understanding the text. This, however, could only be accomplished if the narratives were already widely known, as in the case of the Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs and

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its manuscript sources (216). In fact, the narrative had been popular for several centuries. The underlying influence on the German blockbooks rests with Abbot Adso of Moutier-en-Der’s Epistola Adsonis ad Gerbergam reginam: De ortu et tempore Antichristi. This letter to Queen Gerberga of France was copied from when it was first written in the tenth century— sometimes falsely ascribed to other theologians—and became the bedrock of the Antichrist legend.9 Adso, as a compiler, referred to texts of the Old and New Testaments (the Book of Daniel, the Pauline epistles) and the doctrines of Latin and Greek church fathers—Hippolytus (second century), Tyconius (fourth century), Hieronymus, the Tiburtine Sibyl (middle of the fourth century), and the Pseudo-Methodius (end of the seventh century). Adso’s letter, therefore, does not represent an endpoint but rather a chain of apocalyptic texts that he compiled. Johannes Heil states, Adsos Traktat ist keine Episode geblieben, sondern steht zeitlich, wenngleich nicht überall inhaltlich leitend, am Ausgang einer ganzen Kette von Prophetien und Apokalypsen zu Fortgang und Ende von Kirche und weltlicher Herrschaft, die . . . bis in die Neuzeit hineinreicht, ja im Zeitalter von Glaubensspaltung und Konfessionalisierung noch neue Konjunkturen erlebten.10 [Adso’s treatise did not remain an episode. Instead, it stands at the beginning—though not always prominent regarding content—of a chain of prophecies and apocalypses concerning the progress and the end of the church and secular rule. This influence reaches into modern times and experienced new advances in an age of religious schism and confessionalization.]

Instead, it is a continuation of a process that started with the early church. H. T. Musper and other scholars, such as Bernard McGinn and Barbara Könneker, agree that Adso presented an influential view of the apocalypse and that the letter styled like a saint’s life added to the development of the Antichrist legend in succeeding centuries.11 The narrative was interpreted in many ways and assimilated into different cultural, political, and social contexts. The material had a range of applications. For example, the Ludus Antichristo (1160/65) combined the political situation of the Staufer imperial ideologies with the legend.12 In contrast to the innovative interpretation of the Ludus, the blockbooks of the fifteenth century are of a different nature. Bernard McGinn states, “They are the most detailed and among the most effective of all portrayals of the Final Enemy. Adhering to the standard Adsonian view (with a few

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embellishments), these books are difficult to tie to any applied uses of the Antichrist legend.”13 McGinn adds that one cannot be sure what kind of impact these books had on the reader—or in this case, the observer. In this spirit, Könneker also states that the “Bild, das sich eine Epoche vom Antichrist machte, sehr unterschiedlich aussehen konnte” (the image that any given era constructs of the Antichrist could differ),14 depending upon whether it was made by a repentance preacher, a theologian, or an antagonist or proponent of the church. The three blockbooks take their inspiration from the Compendium theologicae veritatis (1265; Compendium of Theological Truth) by the Dominican Hugh Ripelin of Strasbourg, who follows the Adsonian model.15 In chapters 7 through 14 Ripelin details the life of the Antichrist and includes his use of miracles to deceive his followers.16 That the blockbooks took Ripelin’s version without adding too much in way of social critique shows them to be of a fairly conservative bent. But what was the purpose of the blockbooks, and the Fifteen Signs in particular? One could say fairly optimistically that every century is in some way shaped by apocalyptic beliefs. A natural expectation of the end-times was as evident in the fifteenth century as in the ones before.17 These different historical trends have one commonality: in all instances, the Antichrist material is used to manipulate emotions. Control over emotions also means control over political, theological, and social systems—these strengthen when viewed through the lens of the apocalypse. This control over a person’s mind, or the minds of people in general, is a highly efficient way of channeling and directing cultural movements and expectations. Although there is no notable hint of antipapal rhetoric in the blockbooks—they follow the established model of the vita antichristi—there are signs of social uncertainty in the texts and images. One explanation for these was the increasing threat to northern Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the fifteenth century. This danger had increased with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453. McGinn states, Although some measure of peace and stability had been restored to Christendom by the end of the schism, the middle of the fifteenth century saw increased consciousness of an external danger, the growing threat of Turkish power made evident by the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and Turkish advances in central Europe. Evidence of this concern is found especially in Italy and Germany, where some thinkers began to investigate prophetic classics, like the Methodian Revelations, to discover the apocalyptic meaning of the Turkish threat. (Antichrist, 189)

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Several texts highlight the political and social insecurity much more than the blockbooks do. One, for example, was Eyn manung der cristenheit widder die durken (Mainz, 1454), which took its inspirations from the Pseudo-Methodius, Revelationes, and Tiburtine Sibyl.18 Although Michael Camille investigates the figure of John and the apocalypse in the late Middle Ages, his comment on the evolution of apocalyptic topics is pivotal and considers “the changing relationship of images to the text.”19 Rosemary Muir Wright states in Art and Antichrist in Medieval Europe that the artists developed a “visual parallel” between the Antichrist and Christ to show a more insidious picture of the Archenemy, and that by the fifteenth century certain other works had placed an added emphasis on the deceit of the Antichrist: In one sense it could be said that the development of the imagery suggests a humanization of the Antichrist. The evolution of a rich literary tradition embracing poetry and drama has to be taken into account in the shaping of what has been called “the apocalyptic imagination,” although we should never ignore the specificity of the context of each rendering of the human Antichrist by which the artist revealed to the percipient reader that this image was a lie.20

Deceit, instead of physical prowess and violence, marks the fifteenthcentury Antichrist, which is an interesting shift in focus that reflects the social uneasiness of the time. Caught between doctrinal expectations and antipapal critique, the lies of the Antichrist and his insidious behavior in the blockbooks exacerbate the tenuous perception of what is real and what is a lie. The seductive powers of the Final Enemy, therefore, are of such a nature that they and he cannot be differentiated from the truth. The warning to the reader is clear: the Antichrist, who looks and acts like Jesus, can very easily lead a true believer down the wrong path. If the emphasis shifts to lies and deceit, the miracles (castle, stag, and giant) are an additional layer of deception for the audience that the Antichrist tries to seduce. With this context in mind, one question can be posed: to what extent do the three false miracles represent an innovation? In a search of “The Index of Medieval Art,” no corresponding images appeared to corroborate their existence before their appearance in these blockbooks.21 Christoph Peter Burger observes, Die drei Mirakel, die auf dem Holzschnitt 10, 2 zusammengefasst und im zugehörigen Bildtext beschrieben sind, haben in Jesu Wundern keine Entsprechung und ließen sich auch in keiner Quelle nachweisen. In dieser Ausschmückung mag der Verfasser des Bildertextes originell gewesen sein.22

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[The three miracles that are combined on the woodcut 10, 2 and described in the associated captions have no correspondence to Jesus’s miracles. They were also not substantiated in any sources. The author might have been inventive (original) in his embellishment.]

But why do they have no corresponding source? McGinn also admits, “One, however, represents a peculiar still untraced popular view; it shows the supreme magician producing a stag from a rock and a giant from an egg and hanging a castle in the air” (Antichrist, 195). Several questions come to mind. Where did the miracles originate? How popular were they, and what do they mean? The answers, as Burger has already explained, are simultaneously unclear and unsatisfactory. The chiro-xylographic blockbook describes the pictures of the wonders that the Antichrist performs to seduce and charm his followers in this way: Je tut er aber zaichen. Er haist ein Rysen aus einem Ey sliffen vnd ein purck an einem Faden hangen vnd ein hirssen aus einem stain springen.23 [Here he performs wonders (signs). He calls for a giant to hatch from an egg, to suspend a castle by a thread, and a stag to jump from a stone.]

Besides Hugo von Ripelin, the sources for the miracles that the Antichrist performs derive from Thess. 2:8–11, where the miracles and deceptions of the Antichrist are mentioned in a general manner.24 Ripelin’s Compendium emphasizes the deceitful nature of the miracles. Burger states that the interpretation of Thessalonians worked in two ways: either the Antichrist performed signs that acted like miracles, or they were actual miracles that led to deception. The Compendium notes them as pseudomiracles because the Antichrist achieves them through magic.25 Ultimately, the Antichrist can rule all people of the world because of two things: lies and miracles. Miracles are, therefore, essential to creating the late medieval picture of the prophet of lies. Könneker agrees daß der Antichrist in der Endzeit erfolgreich in der Rolle Christi auftreten und seinen Anspruch auf Göttlichkeit mit Hilfe von Wundern bekräftigen konnte, war wohl das Unheimlichste an dem Bild, das man sich von ihm machte.26 [that during the end-times the Antichrist could appear in the role of Christ successfully and affirm his claim to divinity with the help of miracles is probably the most uncanny image one could visualize.]

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The miracles, however, are not accomplished through the grace of God, as in the case of Christ. Instead, the Antichrist uses magic and alchemy that he learned from evil magicians. In imitation of Christ—looking like him, as well—the Antichrist performs miracles that reflect those of the Bible. For example, he conjures, “like the Prophet Elijah (1 Kings 18:24–38; 2 Kings 1:10–14; cf. Apoc. [i.e., Rev.] 11:5), fiery rain from the sky (Apoc. 13:13), and imitates at the same time the fire of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3).”27 Furthermore, he raises the dead and prophesizes the future with the aid of a talking pillar. In the strictest sense, the other three miracles do not fit within the corpus of expected wonders that the Antichrist manufactures. The sequence of the miracles and their context within the work itself explains their importance to the narrative. The miracle located directly before the three in question shows the Antichrist making trees blossom and then wither. He also manages to reverse the flow of a stream from downhill to uphill. Through this “entert der den lufft natur” (he changes the air).28 All of these miracles lend themselves to be wonders of impossibility, fashioned in such a way as not only to impress the witnesses who stand with the Antichrist but also to let them fall away from the true faith. All miracles in this section of the work exist on two levels of meaning. The first level serves to seduce and blind the followers of the Antichrist. The second level serves as an intimidation tactic. Initially, his miracles seem to be beneficial. For example, he makes trees blossom. Each miracle, however, contains a subliminal and uncanny tendency— transforming something good into something bad. Despite their blossoms, the trees wither; the flow of the water changes; and he changes the very nature of the air so that natural conditions are affected negatively. The reversal of the natural order, and with it even the air, one of the most fundamental elements, is not a benevolent act. Transformation of the natural environment is inherently detrimental to people, fauna, and flora. He not only manages to impress and fascinate; he also frightens. This effect is only intensified and repeated in the successive three miracles. The castle that the Antichrist hangs by a thread in the air is a reversal of the focal point of society. The Antichrist plays with the concepts of ordo and inordinatio; he reverses the order of the world and stands it on its head. The castle, known as a place of safety and permanence, hangs in the air and becomes fragile and vulnerable.29 Of course, this is an imposing deed by the Antichrist—in all other circumstances a thing of impossibility—but the element of the uncanny cannot be denied. Here again, the Antichrist reverses the expected order. Whereas the previous

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miracle dealt with the natural world, here he turns the human environment upside down. The social aspects of castle and court, the center of power, so to speak, are suspended by the thinnest thread. The Antichrist shows his authority over this seat of earthly politics and influence. He has to convince his disciples of his authenticity, but to the observer, the audience outside of the work, the malevolence of his deeds is apparent. The last miracle, in which the Antichrist pulls a stag out of a stone, can be explained in the following way: the Physiologus states that stags pour water into stone crevices to kill snakes.30 Because the stag is a symbol for Christ, and the snakes represent Satan, it may well be that this is a simple reversal of traditional symbolism. Since the Antichrist pulls the stag out of the stone in front of witnesses, he sublimates his own existence and gains the trust of his audience. He shows that his power is the power of Christ. Wilhelm Molsdorf points to the fact that spiritual rebirth through baptism finds its symbolic interpretation in the figure of the stag.31 At the same time, the scene is ironic because the snakes usually live in the stone crevice and are destroyed by the stag. Mostly, the miracle is an antisymbol, a fitting reversal of the ideal Christ image. The two miracles—castle and stag—are easily understood with the help of illuminated images within the blockbook. The first miracle, however—the giant emerging from an egg—is easy neither to interpret nor to explain. In the chiro-xylographic blockbook a man hatches from an eggshaped object.32 Nothing in the images indicates that this is a giant. The printed blockbook shows a knight emerging wearing armor,33 an image that is replicated in the Puch von dem Endkrist.34 This change suggests that, here as well, the observer has to interpret the image as a giant with the help of the text. The difference in images hinges on the weapon that the giant bears. It is a lance, the traditional weapon of the giant. Moreover, in comparison, the two other blockbooks show a man in full armor. His weapon, however, has changed in the printed version. This time he bears a halberd that does not belong in the typical arsenal of a giant. The change in weapons and armor points to an evolution of the image independent of the text. One reason for this discrepancy is that the images are secondary to the text. It shows that the audience relied on the text for primary understanding and by extension that this audience had to be educated enough to read the text and not treat the blockbooks as merely “picture books.” The evolution of the image, however, shows artists playing with different creative nuances. Just as the image of the Antichrist has undergone an evolution, from monstrous adversary to cunning and charming deceiver, the giants change from more simplistic and primitive

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lance-bearing men to fully armed knights. The mid-fifteenth-century artistic expression is in flux on how to generate an accurate depiction of the Antichrist. The three miracles that have been inserted among the others portray an increased level of sophistication of his deceptive tactics. The change in image, especially the two versions that portray knights, reflects this new danger. The Antichrist is dangerous because his lies are not easily discovered—and so the choice of armored knight or lance-bearer reflects the artist’s interpretation of the Antichrist’s ability to deceive. The audience is able to identify with a known entity—such as an armored man—at the same time as they are also threatened by the idea of him being a giant. Just as in the other miracles, the dual nature of the image is clear. Miracle and threat coexist in the same image. The chiro-xylographic giant with his lance, on the other hand, relies on a traditional depiction and makes it somewhat easier for the audience to “read” the image, even though the text is essential for full comprehension. It is a matter of nuance. In all versions, the discrepancy between text and image remains. It is not immediately obvious that we are dealing with a mythological and biblical being. The subliminal malignance of the Antichrist comes to the forefront. The monstrosity of the giant cannot be determined from the image alone. Only in the interplay between text and context can the observer interpret the historic boundedness, the allegorical significance of biblical giants and their evil—this, along with the awareness of the fifteen signs overall or the life of the Antichrist, is general knowledge. Johannes Heil states that this common property and the knowledge of the Second Coming depicts the reality of the mindscape of the artists/ creator and the observers.35 Here, the giant is the symbol of superbia and inordinatio. In the biblical tradition, giants are most often portrayed as excessively prideful and as challenging God’s natural order. Of course, there are helpful giants in medieval literature, but malevolence, wildness, and brutality can even be seen in those individuals. In a biblical context, the uncanny element of the nonhuman is only strengthened in the figure of the giant. Although the giant in the blockbooks alternately looks like a man or an armored knight, by definition giants are seen as evil and aligned with the devil in the Old Testament. The Nephilim, the giants of Canaan, Goliath, and other biblical textual examples emphasize their size and brutality.36 Thus, the giant entered medieval exegesis as an opponent to the church and, along with other monstrous entities, as an antagonist in image and text. This trend continued into the later Middle Ages. One famous example is Dante’s depiction of the ninth circle of hell that is guarded by giants—and this particular circle is reserved for treachery.37

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The confluence of superbia, deceitful and treasonous behavior, and giants merge in the insidious miracle. To pull a giant from an egg, at first glance, is an impressive feat, but the fact that it is a giant shows the underlying threat. The secondary interpretation of the scene shows the inherent deceitful and evil nature of the Antichrist. This is a warning to the reader—a sign, so to speak: whereas the followers of the Antichrist are blinded by the impressive gesture, the reader is aware of the danger. The giant, an embodiment of pride and always closely affiliated with Lucifer, also represents hubris. The reader is aware on another level that the Antichrist will be defeated and meet his end. This choice of creature foreshadows the ultimate outcome, because excessive pride is punished. The three miracles enjoyed great popularity; they are used and reused in many blockbooks of the Fifteen Signs. But where they come from and why is still not certain and will probably always lead to some amount of speculation. The narratological and iconographic formation of the Antichrist figure, according to Heil, “stütze sich also auf komplementäre, oft widersprüchliche und keineswegs vollständige biblische und außerbiblische Traditionen” (was based on complementary, often contradictory and by no means complete biblical or apocryphal traditions).38 These contradictory and apocryphal combinations need a careful and measured approach. Solving the puzzle of their origin might never be possible, but why they were inserted is more readily apparent. The changing emphasis on the portrayal of the Antichrist in the fifteenth century affected how his actions and deeds were depicted. Giant, castle, and stag bear several layers of exegetical and social interpretation. The giant, as a sign of superbia, at the same time embodies the intimidating and overwhelming threat of the Antichrist himself. The castle hanging by a thread in the air shows the social upheaval that he can cause and at the same time declares his dominance over the human world. The stag, a symbol of Christ, ultimately signifies that the Antichrist disguises himself as the savior to his followers. It is the ultimate deception and the most dangerous of all. The focus on deception, in the face of fifteenth-century social and political upheaval, is one of the hallmarks of these blockbooks. They were made for an educated audience. Some scholars like to emphasize the importance of the images over the text, but the discrepancies between text and image, especially in regard to the giant, argue for a more synergistic relationship. The text is the primary conveyor of meaning, whereas the choice of image adds another layer of interpretation for the reader. This relationship forces the reader to identify with the Antichrist’s vita, and simultaneously uncover his deceit. In other words, the interactions between text and image open up a new

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world of meaning. This way of reading text and image simultaneously lends itself to private introspection, a quiet perusal of the ways of the Antichrist. At the same time, the images create their own narratives and function on a different level than the text. They add cultural signifiers, as in the giant’s armor, and show the culture-specific expectations of the audience. Fascinating as these images are, they also offer a glimpse into the symbolism and thought of the fifteenth century. Maybe even more than the text, the images convey social implications and signals that are easily understandable to a fifteenth-century reader. From Adso’s letter and Ripelin’s compendium to the blockbooks, the changing representation of the Final Enemy reflect cultural expectations and perceptions of the Antichrist figure. He is imbued with religious and existential fears and at the same time is a figure outside of historical specificity because each century generates a new image of him.

Notes 1 Das Puch von dem Entkrist: Faksimile des Originals der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, ed. Kurt Pfister (Leipzig: Insel, 1925); Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen: Faksimile Ausgabe des einzig erhaltenen chiroxylographischen Blockbuches, vol. 1, ed. Heinrich Theodor Musper (Munich: Prestel, 1970); Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem jüngsten Gericht: Faksimile der ersten typographischen Ausgabe. Inkunabel der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Inc. Fol. 116, vol. 1, ed. Karin Boveland, Christoph Peter Burger, and Ruth Steffen (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1979). 2

The Fifteen Signs are as follows, in abbreviated form: 1) the sea rises above the mountains; 2) the sea recedes, and the earth withers; 3) the fish in the sea lament to heaven; 4) the sea and all the waters burn up; 5) trees sweat blood; birds assemble on the fields and refuse food; 6) buildings collapse and trees fall down; 7) stones fly up and smash each other; people hide in caves; 8) earthquakes; 9) all mountains are leveled; 10) people return from the mountains and go about as if they are senseless and unwilling to speak to each other; 11) the dead rise; 12) the stars fall from heaven and emit fire; 13) the living die so that they can rise with the dead; 14) heaven and earth are consumed by fire; 15) but will be renewed, and all humankind shall rise together. For a more detailed account, see Manfred von Arnim, “The Chiroxylographic Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs: English Summary,” in Musper, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 2. 3

Christoph Peter Burger, “Endzeiterwartung im Späten Mittelalter,” in Boveland, Burger, and Steffen, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 18. The dating of the blockbooks is hotly debated. Manfred von Arnim states for the chiro-xylographic blockbook: “Of the four blockbook issues of the Antichrist Schreiber thought the chx. edition to be the oldest, an opinion confirmed in a manuscript by Dr. Peter Halm .  .  . and by Professor Musper’s essay. If the method of printing makes the Antichrist appear to have been produced as near the year 1467 as possible, there are

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other arguments in favour of a different conclusion. 1) The woodcuts were cut about 1450. 2) The watermarks induce us to assume a date not too much after 1450 for these prints from the blocks. 3) The binding. As we have seen, the Speculum, formerly bound with the Antichrist, was written in 1456 on Rieg’s behalf, and it seems very improbable that it should have remained unbound for up to ten years. These arguments appear to speak for a date around 1456 or even earlier for the chiroxylographic Antichrist, which brings us within the hailing distance of the very earliest period of illustrated printed books” (“The Chiro-xylographic Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs,” 2–6). Furthermore, Paul Needham, “Prints in the Early Printing Shops,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter Parshall (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 45–46, states that between the two schools of dating the texts, the early 1430s theory and the older 1450s dating, he thinks that “[i]n the past forty years, evidence for the dates of blockbooks, which only rarely contain indications of date, place, or maker, has become much firmer through the careful application of paper-stock analysis. . . . The earliest reliable dates for European blockbooks can now be taken back to the early to mid-1450s.  .  .  . A number of German blockbooks also belong to the 1450s: the Antichrist in the Bibliothek Otto Schäfer, Schweinfurt (or, more precisely, fragments of another copy divided between the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris and the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna).” For reference, see Musper’s chapter on blockbooks in Der Holzschnitt in Fünf Jahrhunderten (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964), 57–83. Cornelia Schneider, “Der Alltag der Blockbücher,” in Blockbücher des Mittelalters: Bilderfolgen als Lektüre, ed. Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and Gutenberg-Museum (Mainz: Gutenberg Museum, 1991), 35. Frederick van der Meer, Apocalypse: Visions from the Book of Revelation in Western Art (New York: Alpine Fine Arts Collection, 1978), observes, “From the moment the printing press was invented, at the end of the first quarter of the fifteenth century, however, it was possible to duplicate pictures engraved on blocks of wood together with a short text. A new kind of picture book was originated, available in many places at the same time, and not too expensive for the ordinary cleric or educated citizen. Thus, from 1420 onwards, an impressive output of xylographic products rapidly conquered the market” (273). The new technology, therefore, had to satisfy the voracious appetite of a wider educated audience. Within the medium of printing, blockbooks have to be delegated into a special category, as Paul Needham states: “Blockbooks were not a technological innovation as typography was, but only a chapter in the overall history of printmaking” (“Prints in the Early Printing Shops,” 48).

4

5 Schneider, “Alltag der Blockbücher”: “Wie Universitätsmatrikel zeigen, schickten im 15. Jahrhundert längst nicht mehr nur die Adeligen ihre Söhne zur Hochschule, sondern ebenso die Bürger der Städte. Daher gab es unter den Kaufleuten und Handwerkern vermutlich einen hohen Anteil von Lesekundigen” (39; As shown in university matriculation registries, not only nobles sent their sons to receive higher schooling in the fifteenth century, but also townspeople. As a result, there were probably a large proportion of merchants and artisans who were able to read). Anneliese Schmitt states in “Das Blockbuch—Ein Volksbuch? Versuch Einer Antwort,” in Blockbücher des Mittelalters, “Lesen ist im 15. Jahrhundert eine besondere Kunst und noch keineswegs allgemein verbreitet. Genaue Zahlen kennen wir nicht, und so bleibt viel Raum für Vermutungen, zumal die Möglichkeiten, lesen zu lernen durch

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eine Reihe von Schulformen gegeben war” (216; In the fifteenth century reading is a special art and by no means widespread. We do not know exact percentages and so there is a lot of room for speculation, especially since the possibilities to learn to read were available through a variety of school types). 6 Nigel F. Palmer, “Woodcuts for Reading: The Codicology of Fifteenth-Century Blockbooks and Woodcut Cycles,” in The Woodcut in Fifteenth-Century Europe, ed. Peter Parshall (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 93–117, states, “A blockbook is a book or booklet containing either a text printed in its entirety from woodblocks or an ensemble of texts and pictures comprising woodcut images and woodcut or manuscript text, without recourse to movable type. In all these cases, the disposition of images within the book and the mode of assembly are important indicators of use, not only in borderline cases, but also in the standard blockbooks such as the Apocalypse, the Biblia pauperum, the Ars moriendi, and the Canticum canticorum” (94). 7

Schneider, “Alltag der Blockbücher,” 57.

8

Schmitt, 216.

Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 82–87. 9

10

Johannes Heil, “Die ungeschriebene Bibel: Apokalypsen, Endzeit und das mittelalterliche Leben des Antichristen,” in Der Antichrist: Die Glasmalereien der Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder), ed. Ulrich Knefelkamp and Frank Martin (Leipzig: Seemann Henschel, 2008), 28–29. Bernard McGinn, trans., Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 88. And see Musper, Der Holzschnitt in Fünf Jahrhunderten.

11

12

McGinn, Visions of the End, 117–21.

Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), 193.

13

Barbara Könneker, “The Antichrist,” in Mittelalter Mythen: Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen, ed. Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, vol. 2 (St. Gallen: UVK Verlag, 1999), 535.

14

McGinn, Antichrist, states that the Compendium theologicae veritatis “was a simplified handbook that often circulated under the names of better-known teachers, like Albert the Great, Thomas [Aquinas], and even Bonaventure” (144).

15

Richard K. Emmerson, Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), explains, “That the standard exegetical interpretation of the Antichrist organized by Adso remained influential in the later Middle Ages is evident in two encyclopedic works, the Compendium theologicae veritatis (ca. 1265) of Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg (d. 1268) and the Tractatus de victoria Christi contra Antichristum (1319) of Hugh of Newcastle (1280–1322)” (77).

16

As Kurt Pfister states so eloquently in “Begleitwort,” in Das Puch von dem Endkrist, “Die Erwartung von Antichrist, Weltende und Weltgericht, die schon um das Jahr 1000 die gesamte Christenheit bedrängt hatte, erfüllte wiederum das späte Mittelalter, die Menschen des 15. Jahrhunderts, mit Furcht und Unruhe. Politische

17

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Bedrängnisse, die Bauernunruhen und der drohende Einbruch des türkischen Ostens, die religiöse Not der Zeit, die in den unablässigen Kämpfen zwischen Papst und Kaiser, mehrmaligem Schisma, in gescheiterten Konzilreformen sichtbar wird, ließen das Gefühl vom nahen Weltuntergang, dem nur die dünne Oberschicht der humanistisch Gebildeten mit ironischer Skepsis begegnete, in den breiten Massen des Volkes zur furchtbaren Gewissheit reifen” (1; The anticipation of the Antichrist, the end of the world, and Judgment Day that had already troubled all of Christendom around the year 1000, again filled the people of the fifteenth century with fear and anxiety. Political hardships, the peasant uprisings, and the Ottoman threat to the east, along with religious trouble—becoming obvious from the incessant fights between pope and emperor, multiple schisms, and failed council reforms—imbued the common people with the dreadful certainty of the imminent end of the world, despite the ironic skepticism of a few humanist scholars). Der Türkenkalender: “Eyn Manung der Cristenheit widder die Durken.” Mainz 1454. Das älteste vollständig erhaltene gedruckte Buch, Rar. 1 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, facsimile, ed. Ferdinand Geldner (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1975).

18

19

Michael Camille, “Visionary Perception and Images of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages,” in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992): “Theologically cruder and less attractive than their manuscript ancestors, these images nevertheless resonate with the political and spiritual movements of the late fifteenth century. Their dynamic representations of Antichrist and his hordes could, because of the possibility of multiple copies and editions, spread much further and be used to stimulate the imagination of orthodox believer and radical reformer alike” (277). Rosemary Muir Wright, Art and Antichrist in Medieval Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 3. 20

21

Princeton University, “The Index of Medieval Art,” Database, The Index of Medieval Art, 2018, https://theindex.princeton.edu/. I would like to thank Adam Oberlin for his help in tracing the images.

22

Burger, “Endzeiterwartung,” 41.

23

Georg Schübel, “Der Wortlaut des Blockbuches: Transkription und Übertragung,” in Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 10, Blatt 5v. The Frankfurter Blockbuch, in Boveland, Burger, and Steffen, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, states, “Der Endkrist tut hie aber zechen. Er heist einen risen us einem ey schliffen. Und ein burck an einem faden hangen. Und einen hirezen us einem stein springen” (10; Here, the Antichrist accomplishes wonders [signs]. He causes a giant to hatch from an egg. And he suspends a castle from a thread. And he has a stag jump out of a rock).

24

“Et tunc revelabitur ille iniquus, quem Dominus Jesus interficiet spiritu oris sui, et destruet illustratione adventus sui eum: cujus est adventus secundum operationem Satanæ in omni virtute, et signis, et prodigiis mendacibus, et in omni seductione iniquitatis iis qui pereunt: eo quod caritatem veritatis non receperunt ut salvi fierent. Ideo mittet illis Deus operationem erroris ut credant mendacio” (Vulgate, 2 Thess. 2:8–11; And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with the work of Satan displayed

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in all kinds of counterfeit miracles, signs, and wonders, and in every sort of evil that deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and to be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie). 25

Burger, “Endzeiterwartung im späten Mittelalter,” 41.

26

Könneker, “Antichrist,” 534.

“Antichrist,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1978), 23.

27

28

Musper, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 1:5v.

29

On the other hand, a castle can also be interpreted as the representation of hell itself. Wilhelm Molsdorf, Christliche Symbolik der Mittelalterlichen Kunst (Graz: Akademische Drucks- und Verlagsanstalt, 1968), states that hell, in some instances, can be explained as a castle-like structure (117). Furthermore, a connection between a castle and an abyss can be made as well.

Millstätter Physiologus: “Im Psalter lesen wir, dass der Hirsch heftig zum Wasser strebt. Zwei Naturen hat der Hirsch an sich. Wenn der Hirsch die Schlange in ihrer Höhle liegen sieht, dann bläst er hinein und jagt sie heraus. Auf den Hals tritt er ihr dann und verschlingt sie sogleich” (108; We can read in the psalter that the stag strives toward the water intensely. The stag is composed of two natures. When the stag sees the snake lying in its cave he bellows inside and chases it out. He steps on its neck and devours it immediately). Griechischer Physiologus: “Wenn die Schlange vor dem Hirsch in die Spalten der Erde flüchtet, kommt der Hirsch und füllt seinen Mund mit Quellwasser und speit es in die Erdritzen und schwemmt die Schlange heraus, zertritt sie und bringt sie um” (254; When the snake flees before the stag into a crevice in the earth, the stag comes and fills his mouth with well water and spits it into the earthen gap and washes the snake out of it, crushes and kills it). Both quotes in Der Millstätter Physiologus, ed. Christian Schröder (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005). Translations are mine. 30

31

Molsdorf, Christliche Symbolik der mittelalterlichen Kunst, 202.

32

Musper, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 10v.

33

Boveland, Burger, and Steffen, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, 9v.

34

Pfister, Das Puch von dem Entkrist, 16v.

35

Although Heil’s interpretation is based on church windows, the images in the blockbook are of an equal visual nature (“Die ungeschriebene Bibel,” 20).

36

“And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, ‘The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them’” (Num. 13:32–33). Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno, trans. Charles S. Singleton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

37

38

Heil, “Die ungeschriebene Bibel,” 24.

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Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen: Faksimile Ausgabe des einzig erhaltenen chiroxylographischen Blockbuches. Vol. 1. Edited by Heinrich Theodor Musper. Munich: Prestel, 1970. Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht: Faksimile der ersten typographischen Ausgabe. Inkunabel der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Inc. Fol. 116. Vol. 1. Edited by Karin Boveland, Christoph Peter Burger, and Ruth Steffen. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1979. Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-enDer, Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola. Translated by Bernard McGinn. New York: Paulist Press, 1979. Arnim, Manfred von. “The Chiro-xylographic Antichrist and the Fifteen Signs: English Summary.” In Musper, Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen, looseleaf insert. Der Millstätter Physiologus. Edited by Christian Schröder. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005. Das Puch von dem Entkrist: Faksimile des Originals der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Edited by Kurt Pfister. Leipzig: Insel, 1925. Der Türkenkalender: “Eyn Manung Der Cristenheit Widder Die Durken.” Mainz 1454. Das älteste vollständig erhaltene gedruckte Buch, Rar. 1 der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Facsimile. Edited by Ferdinand Geldner. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1975.

Secondary Litature Burger, Christoph Peter. “Endzeiterwartung im späten Mittelalter.” In Der Antichrist und die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht: Faksimile der ersten typographischen Ausgabe. Inkunabel der Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt am Main. Inc. Fol. 116, edited by Karin Boveland, Christoph Peter Burger, and Ruth Steffen, vol. 2, Kommentarband, 18–78. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 1979. Camille, Michael. “Visionary Perception and Images of the Apocalypse in the Later Middle Ages.” In The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, edited by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn, 276–89. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992. Heil, Johannes. “Die ungeschriebene Bibel: Apokalypsen, Endzeit und das mittelalterliche Leben des Antichristen.” In Der Antichrist: Die Glasmalereien

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der Marienkirche in Frankfurt (Oder), edited by Ulrich Knefelkamp and Frank Martin, 19–37. Leipzig: Seemann Henschel, 2008. Könneker, Barbara. “The Antichrist.” In Mittelalter Mythen: Dämonen, Monster, Fabelwesen, edited by Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, vol. 2, 531– 44. St. Gallen: UVK, 1999. McGinn, Bernard. Antichrist: Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil. San Francisco: Harper, 1994. ———. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Musper, H. Theodor. Der Holzschnitt in Fünf Jahrhunderten. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964. Schmitt, Anneliese. “Das Blockbuch—ein Volksbuch? Versuch einer Antwort.” In Blockbücher des Mittelalters: Bilderfolgen als Lektüre, edited by the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and Gutenberg-Museum, 215–20. Mainz: Gutenberg Museum, 1991.

12: Monsters and Monstrosities in the Pamphlet Wars of the Reformation Winfried Frey

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n ᴀ ᴡᴇᴌᴌ-ᴋnᴏᴡn sᴄᴇnᴇ in Goethe’s drama Torquato Tasso (act 2, scene 1),1 Tasso is put in his place by Princess Leonore von Este, the duke’s sister. To his impetuous words “Erlaubt ist, was gefällt” (994; Anything is permissible as long as it pleases), she coolly replies, “Erlaubt ist, was sich ziemt” (1006; Anything is permissible as long as it is proper). As one might expect with Goethe, the dilemma is to be seen not only in relation to the “disproportion between talent and life,” as Caroline Herder put it in a letter to her husband in March 1789 (Goethes Werke, 442); it is also an anthropological constant. Goethe has the poet Tasso speak of a golden era (979), a time of universal freedom (981) when nature is unfettered by custom and morality, which he claims is the freedom of poetry and thus of the artist himself. The princess, by contrast, points to rules of social life and of that which is seemly (1017), not only in the sense of courtly “etiquette” but with regard to human sociability, which is fundamental to humanity. To mark this contradistinction, Uwe Japp in 2007 used the terms “reguläre Verfasstheit” (generic constitution) und “Sonderkompetenz” (exceptional competence).2 We know, of course, how this conflict ends in the play: with the princess’s ardent, unseemly embrace by Tasso; with her horror-stricken, ambiguous exclamation “Hinweg!” (3284; Away!); with the fear (expressed by the duke) that Tasso might be “von Sinnen” (3285; out of his mind); and with the poet’s subjection to the “tyranny” of convention. In Weimar, Goethe himself smarted under this contradiction and constraint, and no doubt this was one reason for his escape to Italy. His return to Weimar, however, and the fact that he subsequently continued to work there for several decades, were made possible only by keeping the two principles in balance. Henceforth he combined art and administration, imagination and reality—he bore social responsibility and yet remained a free spirit. Satirists, too, claim exceptional competence, and in the Germanspeaking world Kurt Tucholsky’s famous dictum “Was darf die Satire? Alles” (What is satire allowed to do? Anything) is often quoted in this

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context. What is usually omitted is the fact that “Tucho” prefaces this by a qualifying remark. What he has in mind is “the satire of the wellintentioned artist fighting for a good cause,” and he warns the satirist that “he may be malicious but he should be honest.”3 What has all this to do with monsters and monstrosities? In the current debate about satire and its consequences, Tucholsky is invoked in a one-sided manner, and the dilemma is seen as follows: Caricatures convey criticism but they also serve to let off steam. To denounce them as malevolent defamation is to misunderstand their basically civilizing function. Anyone who reads [sic] a caricature is well aware that it is not actually to be taken at face value. Accordingly, it can hit the nail on the head but it can never hurt. Given this premise, a caricature—to use Tucholsky’s words—is allowed to do “anything.”

This is how Hans-Dieter Fronz, a literary and art critic who has for many years written for newspapers in southwest Germany,4 begins his review, published in the Südkurier,5 of the exhibition “Caricature— Press—Freedom: Honoré Daumier and French Pictorial Satire” in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,6 conceived as a reaction to the terror attack on the satirical Paris weekly Charlie Hebdo in January 2015. Similar statements can be found again and again: for instance, in a pronouncement from the German Constitutional Court that declares that freedom of expression applies to all statements of opinion, “no matter whether this statement is founded or unfounded, emotional or rational, whether it is regarded as valuable or worthless, dangerous or innocuous.”7 The court goes on to say that this also covers opinions “which aim at a fundamental change of the political order, irrespective of whether or to what degree they can assert themselves within the existing constitutional order.” It is historically understandable, if not quite logical, that the Constitutional Court condones restrictions on the freedom of expression, which aim to prohibit the propagandistic affirmation of the NationalSocialist tyranny and despotism between 1933 and 1945. The inhuman regime of that period, which brought immeasurable suffering, death and suppression to Europe and the world, is of unique significance for the identity of Germany in that it defines ex negativo the constitutional order of the Federal Republic, in a way that general legislation could not.

If one takes this to its logical conclusion, it could mean that opinions and the expression of opinions cannot be banned unless one knows

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from previous painful historical experience what they can be used for and lead to; otherwise, one has to wait and see (and endure?) what happens. And this brings us to the question of history and its lessons. For is it really true that a caricature can never “be taken at face value”? Can it be intended not to hurt but only to “hit” the mark metaphorically (what a subtle distinction!)? In extreme cases can it not lead to manslaughter, murder, and war? The linguist Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann recently published a long study of the Early Modern German language under the programmatic title Linguistic Exclusion in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era.8 The title itself suggests the possible consequences of hurtful verbal actions (which can easily include caricatures, etc.) that in her words aim “at the human being as a whole” (117) and simply cannot “really” mean anything else. It is not (exclusively) in the power of their authors to determine the effects that such “hitting” and hurting utterances and caricatures may have in specific cases where they may lead to the “social exclusion and frequently also the mental and physical destruction” (3) of their objects. Much depends “on the wider circumstances such as public response, contemporary sensibilities, penal codes, etc.” (118). To this we can even add the political constellations and intentions that aim to overturn all existing order. If we take the findings of this book (despite its limitations) as seriously as the princess’s dictum “Anything is permissible as long as it is proper,” then it should be possible to use examples of historical caricatures, satires, etc., to study the possible connections among intentions; the use of media such as drawings, paintings, and texts, and their intended as well as potential impact. In the early sixteenth century the universal (“Catholic”)9 Christian church began to disintegrate. It was an institution that—despite its many rifts, transformations, new departures, and merits,10 but also its institutional crimes11—was much more for the people of this time than a mere external set of rules. It was God’s tool and instrument that for centuries had regulated the relations between people as well as between people and God, in accordance with eternal, immutable laws. The membership of this institution determined the kind of life one led on earth and hereafter. As a consequence, an upheaval like the one that took place in the sixteenth century released religious and social energies of unprecedented proportions. In Germany, this has been recalled particularly strongly in the years since 2008, when the Evangelical Church initiated a “Luther decade,” focusing in 2016 on “The Reformation and One World.” The accompanying text12 concludes with the enthusiastic words:

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The themes may have changed but we are faced with new challenges. Whether it is our response to climate change, an improved migrant policy or the necessary dialogue between the religions, in the 21st century acting in the spirit of the Reformation means accepting the diversity of humanity and resisting intolerance, hatred and fundamentalism. And it is our obligation to work for this acceptance of the differences between languages, environments and cultural contexts, guided by the principles of the Reformation.

On the Catholic side one can doubtless find statements that are similarly devoid of historical awareness, and so we can now set out to put the rule to the test. The art of printing books with movable type was well established by the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the use of woodcuts and, a little later, copperplate engravings made it possible for images to reach the general public that were of an unprecedented quality and, by the standards of the time, in very large numbers. Given these technological means, which were soon complemented by new distributive channels, the energies and emotions mentioned above became influential far beyond the hitherto customarily restricted circle of the learned and the teaching and ruling elite. There are currently many exhibitions on this subject, their impact often reinforced by excellent catalogs; conferences are organized in large numbers, complemented by countless books leaving the printing presses. It may therefore seem somewhat presumptuous if I try to say and show something new about a particular form of dispute at the time of the Reformation. I will nevertheless make the attempt, using material that is perforce small in scale but by no means insignificant. In the catalog for the exhibition “Köpfe der Lutherzeit” (Eminent People in the Time of Luther),13 which was shown in Hamburg in 1983 on the occasion of Martin Luther’s five-hundredth anniversary, there is a portrait of Luther by Melchior Lorck (b. ca. 1527, d. after 1583),14 etched in copper15 by order of the Count Palatinate Otto Heinrich to make public the definitive introduction of the Reformation in the County Palatinate of the Rhine (capital Heidelberg). Using older pictures, Lorck—who probably never met Luther in person—creates a portrait that even at that point depicts Luther as a saint of the Reformation,16 and indeed calls him that in the Latin inscription: Jmprimit hæc formam viventis imago Lutherj. Mentem nulla potest pingere docta manus. At quanta fueris pietate, labore, fideque Cernitur ex scriptis, sancte luthere, tuis.

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[This picture shows a true-to-life image of Luther. Even the most skillful hand cannot depict his spirit. But the greatness of your piety, of your works, of your faith Can be seen in your writings, holy Luther.]

Lest anyone should be in doubt about who is the corresponding “unholy” or “antiholy” man, Lorck places in the upper right-hand corner next to Luther’s head his famous coat of arms17 and underneath it the words, which Luther is said to have chosen for his gravestone (where they were indeed engraved) and which have come down to us almost identically in many documents: Pestis eram uiuus, Moriens tua mors ero papa. [Living, I was a plague to you, oh pope; dying, I will be your death.]

What the catalog does not show is a satirical caricature of the pope by the same artist,18 dated 1545, which depicts him as a “wild man” in hell, to use the English term from Erik Fischer’s fundamental study:19 a rough-haired monster surrounded by hellfire (as well as other condemned men), wearing a tiara, with donkey’s ears and a dog’s head rising out of his shoulders. In his right hand he wields like a weapon a crude pontifical cross that is growing out of a tree trunk, and in his left he holds the broken key of Saint Peter; his long tail connects him with a monstrous figure, and underneath is an inscription bearing papal seals. The satanic monster is sitting on this seal, from whose mouth a bishop gazes imploringly at the papal wild man. The text on the papal bull reads, “Hebt euch Gott vnd Menschen fernen. / Ich vnd Teuffel sind die Herren” (Keep away God and men. It is I and the devil who are the masters). The caption that counters the “papal bull” is in monorhymes and reads, All ander Herschaft ist von Gott / Zur hülff dem Menschen in der not. On Satan vnd sein Bepstlich rot / Seind Herrn zu stifften Sünd vnd Todt. Der Bapst heist recht der Wilde Man / Der durch sein falsches schalkes Ban. All vnglück hat gerichtet an / Das Gott vnd Menschn nicht leiden kann. [All other authority is from God for the help of humankind in need. In Satan and his papal pack (be/are) lords inciting sin and death. The pope is rightly called the wild man, who through his false, foolhardy

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ban, brought only misfortune that God and humankind cannot endure.]

The legend under the picture reads “Mart. Luther Doc. M.D.XLV.” Thus the connection is established with Luther’s treatise “Against the Roman Popery, Endowed by Satan Himself” (LW 54, 206–99), published in the same year, 1545, in which the pope, Satan, and the “papal ass” are mentioned in the same context on almost every page. Cranach and Lorck probably both took their cues from the end of Luther’s treatise, where the pope is addressed directly: “HJe her nu, Bapstesel, mit deinen langen Esels ohren und verdampten luegen maul” (LW 54, 299; Hey now listen papal ass with your long ass’s ears and your damned lying mouth). The opposite camp was no less aggressive. By the same token, Luther could be turned into an instrument of the devil, as can be seen in three images: 1.

2.

3.

In his prayer book for the emperor Maximilian I (ca. 1515), Albrecht Dürer has a drawing in the margin next to Psalm 100 (“Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands”) which shows two men playing bagpipes. The context is a perfectly normal one: since bagpipes “were common in late medieval music, both courtly and popular,”20 the picture is neither ironic nor a caricature nor anything of that kind. It is a different matter in a broadsheet from 1520 that shows Luther and the devil together stirring a cauldron containing the great Reformer’s satanic “achievements.” In the upper right-hand corner sits a devil dressed up as a fool who, joyfully playing the bagpipe, “‘praises’ Luther’s falsehoods”: “Mit pfeyffen will ich mich fleyssen / Des Lothers falsch will ich preyssen / Und alle schrifft damit zu reyssen” (With scornful whistling I’ll persevere, and “praise” Luther’s falsehoods here, and so tear up all his writings).21 Things are different once again in this broadsheet, well known up to the present day, probably designed about 1530(–35) by Erhard Schön, an illustrator, woodcutter, and painter in Nuremberg. Here a most frightful devil who holds the airbag of a monk’s bagpipe might be Martin Luther, blowing his melody into the monk’s ear.

But this is where interpreters differ. According to the Gotha exhibition catalog of Cranach’s works, this is a Protestant caricature of the monkhood of old (which appears to be confirmed by the small text on the lower right),22 whereas according to other publications,23 including a textbook published by Klett,24 the picture shows “Martin Luther as

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a monk.” A creature representing the devil is, however, using Luther’s head as a bagpipe. This caricature suggests that Luther’s words are inspired by the devil, that he is the mouthpiece of evil (Gigl, 29). If one looks at the second, highly critical, stanza, this makes sense in the Nuremberg of the 1530s, where skepticism about the Reformation and its belief in the perfectibility of the world was growing. Similar tones of resignation can be found in Hans Sachs (and later in Israel Achatius).25 Returning to Cranach and Lorck, and Luther and the pope, how does one turn a human being into an ogre, a monster—for instance, into a wild man in the forest? In his Arthurian romance Iwein, based on Chrétien de Troyes’s Old French epic, Hartmann von Aue tells a story, well known to students of medieval German literature, of knights and their adventures. The romance begins:26 During a Whitsun celebration, the knight Kalogrenant gives an account of what happened to him ten years earlier. He rode out into the forest of Breziljân in search of “âventiure” (261; adventure), happened on a narrow, thorny path in the wilderness, and eventually reached a clearing where primeval, obviously dangerous animals were fighting with each other. Seated among these was a man who looked like a monster. This man, a “gebûre” (432; farmer or herdsman), with an enormous head like an aurochs, his hair matted and sooty, his face wrinkled, his ears overgrown with moss like those of a “walttôr” (440; translated by Lexer as “Waldmensch” [man of the woods] but actually a “fool of the woods,” i.e., an ignorant creature); his moustaches and eyebrows were long and shaggy, his nose as big as that of an ox, his eyes red with rage, his mouth enormous with fangs like those of a wild boar; and his head seemed to grow out of his chest. His back was deformed into a hump. The man’s clothes were made from the skins of recently killed animals. In one hand he carried a huge club. This “monster” turns out to be a herdsman tending wild beasts,27 uncouth, no doubt, but friendly. In his recent monograph Monster im Mittelalter (Monsters in the Middle Ages) Rudolf Simek has devoted a whole chapter (5.3) to the friendly “savage” as a “special case among the mythical peoples,” and Hartmann’s narrative plays an important role in this context. Elsewhere, Simek points out (especially in chapter 7.3) that, according to the dominant view in the Middle Ages, mythical peoples were an integral if exotic part of creation.28 What is clear at this point is that anyone living outside the civilized world is (almost) like a wild beast; he is an outsider, an outcast, possibly even a fool estranged from God,29 and potentially hostile and dangerous. This figure of the “wild man of the woods” or “fool of the woods” lends itself to further modification. About the middle of the thirteenth

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century the Dominican friar Stephen of Bourbon, also known as Stephanus de Bellavilla (b. ca. 1180 or 1190/95, d. ca. 1261 in Lyons)30 wrote his Tractatus de diversis materiis praedicabilibus, a handbook for preachers that provided them with hundreds of practical examples. This tract was altered in various ways, a common practice for sermons and model sermons, and German translations began to appear in the fifteenth century in collections in the Bavarian and Austrian language areas.31 Chapter 2, according to its heading, deals with hell: “daz ist ein schied von got vnd von allem gut das got ist” (that is a departure from God and from every good that is God). Subsection 2.3 enumerates details about the devils (I quote the editor’s headings): “their horrible appearance; their cruelty; their greed for the human soul; their strength and their power; their quickness; their many ruses; their deceitfulness” (164–66). Under the heading “ir schäuczleicher, vngenämer anplickh” (their horrible, unsettling appearance), Stephen or his (anonymous) German translator describes in the first section the appearance of a devil thus: Saint Bartholomew is preaching the Christian faith to the heathens, they are converted, and an angel marks a cross on their foreheads (an allusion to Ezek. 9:4 and 6 and Rev. 7:3):32 vnd zaigt in ain vngefúegen moren, swerczer dann ein cholàr, mit ainem gespiczten antlicz, mit ainem langen part vnd langem har auf dy erd. Fewerein stralen giengen iem aus seinen augen, fewer pliess er aus dem rússel vnd aus dem mund swebel vnd pech fúr. Sein henndt waren em gepunden hinder den ruckh. Den hetten sy angepettet fúr got. (164) [and points at an unfriendly Moor, darker than a charcoal burner, with a pointy face, a long beard and long hair to the ground. Beams of fire came out of his eyes, he blew fire out of his snout and out of his mouth streamed sulfur and pitch. His hands were bound behind his back. For they should have been used to pray to God.]

Leaving aside the fetters as a symbol of victory over the devil, this replicates, together with Hartmann’s description, fairly accurately the etching by Lorck (or Cranach the Younger), with the addition of “looks like a charcoal burner”—like a dishonorable man who is per se excluded from Christian society:33 There is a long tradition of images of satanic anti-Christian ogres. There are many examples of this that one could list here; for instance, the papal ass or the monk calf. Lawrence P. Buck has, however, written a very readable book on this matter,34 so I will confine myself to

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a brief sketch. The subject was introduced into the Reformation debates as early as 1523 by Philipp Melanchthon and Martin Luther in their treatise Deuttung der czwo grewlichen Figuren, Bapstesels czu Rom vnd Munchkalbs zu Freijberg ijnn Meijsszen funden (LW 11, 369–85). The “interpretation” of the papal ass fell to Melanchthon and that of the monk calf to Luther. In 1496 a dead creature was pulled from the river Tiber at Rome. Soon afterward, it was reported that it had the head of an ass, the torso of a woman, an ox’s hoof, an eagle’s claws for feet, and scaly skin. Decomposition, as well as a good deal of imagination, may well have played a part here. I found photos and a video on the internet that supposedly shows a misshapen buffalo calf born in Thailand in October, 2015, whose skin resembles that of a crocodile.35 The creature from the Tiber, which Melanchthon elevated to a “papal ass,” may have had a comparable appearance. Similarly, the birth of a deformed baby at Freiberg in Saxony in 1523 was turned into something “sensational” by Martin Luther. Much ingenuity had already been invested in making the poor creature into the caricature of a monk by the time both Luther and Melanchthon, in a manner that was common at the time (and, following their lead, remained so for many years), linked these “monsters” with the papacy and monkhood. I will give just a few more examples. According to Melanchthon, the ass’s head signified that the pope arrogated the right to be the visible, corporeal head of the church, which in reality was a spiritual body and a spiritual realm: Denn gleich wie sich ein esels kopff auff ein menschenleyb reymett, ßo reymett sich auch der Bapst zum heupt uber die kirche. So bedeut auch in der schrifft der Esel eußerlich fleischlich weßen. (375, 19–21)36 [For just as an ass’s head presides on a human’s body, so, too, does the pope over the church. Thus in the text, the ass means having the appearance of a carnal being.]

But Melanchthon does not leave it there. The human left hand of the monster, he says, signifies the pope’s secular power. This he had doch so vernunfftig durch den deuffel zu wegen bracht, das er nicht allein weltlich regiment hatt mehr dann kein konig, sondern ist auch datzu uber alles weltlich regiment der uberst, ein herr uber konig und fursten. (376, 18–21)

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[so very shrewdly achieved through the devil, that he does not rule alone on earth more than any king, but rather rules on earth as supreme above all else, a lord over kings and princes.]

On the subject of reusing such images I will say just a few words. In his tract of 1545, Wider das Bapstum zu Rom vom Teufel gestifft (LW 54, 206–99), Luther revels in ridiculing the pope, whom he declares to be the devil himself (LW 54, 216, 220, 233–34, 262): “UND hie kann man greiffen, das der Bapst muss besessen und voller Teufel sein, Das er so gar alle sinn und vernunfft verloren hat” (AND here one can comprehend that the pope must be obsessed and possessed by the devil, that he has lost all sense and reason). He also comes back in this late publication to the “papal ass”: “Esel, lecke nicht, Ah liebs Bapst Eselchen, lecke nicht, Aller liebstes Eselein, thus nicht!” (LW 221; Ass, don’t lick, oh dear, little papal ass, don’t lick, most dear ass, don’t do it).37 In the following years he mocks the pope whenever possible as an ass and the pope’s followers as asses’ heads. A random example is the preface to his 1532 sermon on Matt. 5–7, the Sermon on the Mount (LW 32, 299–302). Here he calls the pope from the start a “Teuffel” (LW 299, 13; devil) and a “hellische[n] Satan” (LW 299, 19; Satan from hell); he denounces the pope’s aides as “die groben sewe und esel, Juristen und Sophisten, des Bapst Esels rechte hand und seine Mammo Luchen” (LW 299, 24–26; crude pigs and asses, lawyers and sophists, the right hand of the papal ass and his Mamluks) who seek another coronation of their papal ass although he has been deposed; and he, Martin Luther, wants to contribute a few gems: “so sol der [Papst-] Esel ob Gott will recht gekrönet heissen” (LW 300, 26–28; So if God wills, the papal ass shall be truly crowned). This motif is repeated with the assistance of Cranach the Elder on the frontispiece to Luther’s pamphlet Widder das Bapstum of 1545.38 If you were to search all of Luther’s works and those of his followers for such images, quotations, and allusions, you would be amazed at the number. It may, however, be permissible for me to give one little example of the long-term effect of the idea of the papal ass. On July 19, 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Catholic Church published a document under the title Answers to Questions Regarding Some Aspects of the Teachings of the Church. This document caused a stir and led, especially in Germany, to dismayed protests which the then chairman of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, summarized under the title “Reflections on the Current State of the Ecumenical Movement” on August 25 of the same year. The position of the Catholic Church was essentially reduced,

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here as in the public debate, to the formula that “the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church of Jesus Christ,” which was met with resentment and was accordingly rejected as a provocation. It would lead too far and exceed my competence to discuss this in detail.39 What needs to be stressed at this point is simply that the position upheld in the Catholic paper of July 19 is merely a pointed repetition of identical statements made by the Second Vatican Council—which did not shock anyone at the time. The German sculptor and medal engraver Bernd Göbel (born 1942), best known for his designs for public fountains in Saxony, responded to this dispute in his own way in 2008–9 by creating a small sculpture on a triangular base (195 x 125 mm) as a comment on the controversy.40 It shows on one side a portrait of Martin Luther, to which a hand is pointing. In the background there is the figure of a pope throwing rods of lightning, with a caption that reads LEO X ENRAGED. On the other side, Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony is pointing at a model of the Wartburg and, to make things quite clear, a cage bearing the date May 4, 1521. The third side shows Emperor Charles V holding in one hand the “radiant” imperial orb, while the thumb of his left hand points downward in condemnation. On top of the small sculpture is a figure that, although seated, resembles the papal asses of Luther’s time; its satanic (!) wings bear the inscription THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ALONE IS THE TRUE CHURCH OF CHRIST—BENEDICT XVI 2007. To repeat: What are the means in these and other texts, from sermons as the exegesis of the word of God down to the nastiest pamphlets, by which theologians and protagonists of the other side are turned into monsters and devils?41 First, the opponents have to be turned into outcasts and ungodly beings who are then—at least verbally and in the imagination—delivered to worldly and eternal jurisdiction, with threats of punishment derived from the Bible (!). Next, the opponent, the enemy, the devil is identified with a well-known foe; for instance, the Jews.42 I have written about this at length in the Festschrift for Hans-Joachim Behr but would like to add here a further detail. Johannes Cochläus (actually Johannes Dobeneck; Cochläus after the parish of Wendelstein, where he was born; 1479–1552),43 who worked for a time (1518–26) in Frankfurt am Main, turned over the years from a supporter of Martin Luther and the Reformation into one of their staunchest opponents, and a large number of his publications, some highly polemical, are directed against them. For example, in 1529 he turned Luther, in allusion to Rev. 12:3–4, 13:1–8, and 17:1–18, into the seven-headed beast, the incarnation of the powers of darkness.

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This, of course, provoked a backlash; for instance, in a print by Lucas Cranach the Elder of 1530. Under the heading “Johannes Cochleus: Des heiligen Bebstlichen stuels geborner Apostel: Prophet: Merterer vnd Jungfraw” (Johannes Cochläus: The Papal Throne’s Born Apostle: Martyr and Virgin)44 there is an image of Cochläus surrounded by satanic monsters, several of which are reminiscent of the papal ass. Cochläus is swallowing the feces of a demon wearing spectacles (identifiable by the cook’s ladles as his alter ego)45 and then excreting them as his own letters and books, which are picked up by his awestruck acolytes. In the caption to this picture, Cochläus calls himself an adversary of Luther: “Auffrur / secten vnd alle schand / Hat er gebracht jnn Deudsche land” (Upheaval / cults and all disgrace / he brought to German lands). Cochläus maintains that Luther himself was so successful in claiming that his teachings were based on the Bible that even the emperor was unable to disregard them (stanzas 1 and 2). The next two stanzas are unpalatable, but the way in which they link coprolalia and the denunciation of the old church with the tertium comparationis, the hatred of Jews, is so revealing of the technique of defamation that I will quote them regardless: Das hat mich so verdrossen hart Das ich gar doll vnd töricht ward Mit lügen/neid/mord/bösen rat Der Teuffel mich vol geschissen hat Das ich nicht frölich werden mag Weil der Luther lebt einen tag Solch lügen/gifft vnd Teuffels dreck Wo sie nicht sollten von mir weg Zu bersten müste mir mein bauch Wie es geschach dem Judas auch Drümb mus ich dreckbücher scheissen Mit brieuen mein fürtze reissen Jch feisst mit zu viel gifftig wort Damit ich gern wolt stifften mord Ob viel den stanck nicht haben gern Vnd die nasen weck wenden fern Da ligt nicht an / ir ist noch viel Den mein arsloch ist freuden spil Jch will des Teuffels arsloch sein Lieber denn des Luthers mündlein [That annoyed me so / that I became completely mad and foolish / with lies/envy/evil advice / The devil shat me full / So that I did not

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care to become happy / Since Luther lives another day // I could not get rid of / Such lies/poison and devil’s filth / so that my stomach had to burst / just like it happened to Judas // For that reason I have to shit those filthy books / My farts rip with letters / I feasted on so many poisonous words / that I gladly wished to murder / though many do not like the stench / and turn their noses far away / it does no good / it is still too strong / For my asshole is all fun and games / I would rather be the devil’s shithole / than Luther’s little mouth.]

The picture uses an old motif, employed by Luther himself, but in a strange reduplication: that of the “Judensau” (Jewish sow). At this point it may suffice to say that in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this ancient motif is employed in pamphlets of anti-Jewish propaganda—for instance, in a fifteenth-century woodcut that was in circulation as late as the seventeenth century46—and fully two hundred years after Luther, an old image in the fourteenth-century town church of Wittenberg with its ornamental inscription establishes a connection between Luther’s hatred of Jews and the Jewish sow.47 Cranach reduplicates the “Jewish sow” by dividing Cochläus into a satanic monster and the “real” figure of the reformed Catholic who regurgitates the monster’s excrement in the shape of the “Dreckbücher” (dirty books) and “brieue” (letters) that are having such an effect. One can hardly think of a more effective way of bringing together the old and the new “enemies” and demonizing them. Hatred knows no bounds, however, and thus Martin Luther (as well as John Calvin) is eventually struck by the Catholics’ curse and sent to hell, where he is greeted by a host of devils as one of their own.48 I now return to the quotation that was my starting point, and my question is whether it is true that anyone who looks at and reads this print by Cranach or any other caricature or pamphlet of the period “is well aware that it is not actually to be taken at face value.” To answer this would require a lengthy disquisition for which there is no room here. I therefore underpin my skepticism by going back to the Reformer Kaspar Goldwurm Athesinus (1524–59).49 In 1552 Luther was already dead, but Goldwurm, still embroiled in the ongoing struggles between the confessions, wrote a voluminous allegorical interpretation of the first book of Moses50 to which Philipp Melanchthon, no less, contributed “Ein schöne vnd tröstliche Vorrede” (Aijr–Biv; a beautiful and consolatory preface). In this the great Reformer attests that the lesser one’s book is “die reine Christliche lehr / vnnd das gantze reich Christi sampt seinem heiligen Euangelio / recht vnd rein gefasset” (the pure Christian teaching / and the entire kingdom of Christ including his Holy Gospels / written correctly and

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purely), and therefore he, Melanchthon, asks his audience “dieses Werck zu Christlichem trost vnd erinnerung mit fleiß zu lesen” (Bir/v; to read this work of Christian consolation and memory carefully). Thus, Goldwurm’s work had the stamp of approval from the highest authority in Wittenberg as a correct exegesis of the Bible and was commended to its readers. Following the example of the early psalms, it abounds with godless people, sinners, persecutors, enemies of God and the true faith, who are all linked with the period of religious schism (and always with a good measure of Christian hatred of the Jews). I will cite as just one example Goldwurm’s résumé of the story of Joseph: Also vnnd auff die weiß gehet es auch zu mitt der waren Christlichen Kirchen / dieweil wir vnns . . . für die einige / warhafftige vnd gerechte vralte Christliche kirchen . . . berümen vnnd außgeben / so vnderstehen sich auch vnsere Juden / Pharisei / schrifftgelerten sampt andern Türcken vnnd Juden / die ware gerechte Kirchen . . . zuuerrhaten / vnterzudrucken/außzutilgen . . . damit sie ja bei jhrem vatter dem leidigen teuffel gunst behalten. (Qqir) [It also occurs to the true Christian church / as we . . . praise and spend for some / true and just ancient Christian churches . . . / thus our Jews / Pharisees / scribes including other Turks and Jews / oppress / eliminate just Churches / . . . so that they can win a favor from their lord father, the devil.]

In this construction the “others” are branded in accordance with John 8:44 as minions of Satan (like “the” Jews, like “the” Turks!) who wish to suppress and eliminate “us,” the faithful servants of the true church, and they can now in their turn be threatened with annihilation. This becomes one of the central themes in Goldwurm’s great Wunderwerck vnd Wunderzeichen Buch,51 in which he claims to list every miraculous act: divine, spiritual, heavenly, elemental, worldly, or diabolic miracles from the beginning of the world “biß auff vnser jetzige zeit” (until our current time). All the examples from history and the Bible that Goldwurm compiled are also set in relation to his own times. Whatever the Bible, especially the Hebrew version, has to say about godless forces, people, and deeds and about God’s punishments for them is read in Goldwurm’s time as a prefiguration of what will happen to godless people according to the nature of their deeds and, above all, misdeeds. At all times, he says, even in the days of Moses and Aaron, “die Teuffel vnd gottlosen Tyrannen grewlich” (139; the devil and godless, terrible tyrants)

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have revolted against the divine service, by which Goldwurm means, of course, the Protestant service (140); and God’s revenge is terrible, as described in Exod. 32:26–29 (not in the Book of Numbers, as Goldwurm wrongly claims) after the excesses around the Golden Calf.52 In this text, the natural inhibition against killing is suspended by God (!), and Goldwurm adds that this served God’s enemies right: “dann Gott habe durch solche ernstliche straff anzeigen wöllen / daß man in Göttlichen Sachen nicht leichtfertiger weiß / ausserhalb Gottes eigentlichem willen [handeln dürfe]” (143; for God wanted to show [us] through such serious punishments / that in lofty divine things one is not allowed to act thoughtlessly, contrary to His will). The long passages about King Jeroboam (1 Kings: 12–14) and about the fate of the priests of Baal (1 Kings: 18) are retold by Goldwurm as stories about the punishment of idolatrous worship. And once again he does not fail to show up parallels with his own time, especially the time of the Augsburg Interim (1548–55), which was particularly difficult for the Protestants. Regarding Jeroboam he concludes: Also bald und vnnd leichtlich wirdt der gemeine hauff durch gottlose Regenten von dem wahren Gottesdienst auff Abgötterei vnd falschen vermainten Gottesdienst / gewisen vnd geführet / Wie solches noch vnsere tägliche Exempel erweisen / Sonderlich zu der zeit da das grewliche Monstrum Jnterim publiciret / vnd jederman anzunemen ernstlich angebotten vnd beuohlen / vnd vnder betrüglicher gestallt dahin gebracht worden. (150) [Thus soon thereafter and with ease the common folk will be taught and led away by godless regents from true worship to idolatry and false, misleading worship / Such as our daily examples still show / Especially at this time since the horrible monster Interim appears / and everyone accepts seriously what is offered and demanded / and brought there in deceptive form.]

Now the monster is no longer a person or an institution that has to be eradicated. It is an imperial law that is not acceptable and that must be opposed without compunction, but no doubt every reader had at the back of his or her mind the images and narratives of monsters and monstrosities that had been circulated for decades in the struggle for Christian truth. But when it comes to the priests of Baal—and for him, the priests of the old faith are all priests of Baal53—Goldwurm goes one step further. He ignores the Peace of Augsburg, which was potentially the basis for a peaceful coexistence, and instead sides with those who regarded this

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settlement merely as a stage victory. In accordance with 1 Kings 18:40, he describes the victory of the prophet Elijah over the followers of Baal. In Goldwurm’s words: Elia sprach: So fahet nun alle Baals Pfaffen / lasset keinen lebendig bleiben / sondern füret sie an den Bach Cison vnnd erwürget sie alle. . . . Also ward durch den wunderbarlichen rath vnd willen Gottes / auch diese grewliche vnd schädliche abgötterey gestrafft vnd abgeschafft. (154) [Elijah spoke: “Thus one catches all of Baal’s followers / does not leave any one of them alive / but rather leads them to the stream Cison and chokes them all. . . . Thus, through God’s wondrous council and will, will all of this horrible and harmful idolization be punished and abolished.”]

One could, of course, object that, as in the case of Luther, who served (or did not serve, as the case may be) as the devil’s bagpipe, the mutual invocations of monsters and their monstrous descendants, the various imprecations, vituperations, and death threats, canceled each other out. And perhaps that is indeed the case, because, fortunately, the distribution of power in Germany at the time prevented a historic disaster. There was, however, a permanent vilification whereby the “others” and their beliefs and way of thinking were declared to be monstrous, and killing them was considered permissible and, indeed, God’s command, and this had consequences. In his book De regno Christi of 1550,54 Martin Bucer (1491–1551), another Reformer far better known than Goldwurm, described in great detail what a Christian-Protestant theocracy (in his case the Protestant kingdom of England) might look like. He compiles a list of crimes “die Got mit dem tode zuo straaffen befolhen hatt” (484; that God commanded be punished with death [I quote from the German translation by Israel Achatius, Strasbourg 1563]): Erstlich / so einer die wohr Religion verfälschet / entweder durch böse Gottlose lehr von Got / oder mit abfürung von dem wohren Gottesdienst / wie dann hieuon gebotten ist / im fünfften buoch Moysis / am13. vnd 17. Cap. [First / one shall falsify the true religion / either through evil, godless lessons from God / or through divergence from true worship / like it is held today / in the fifth book of Moses / footnote 13 and 17th chapter.]

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The poison of mutual demonization continued to be virulent, popularized and spread effectively through printed images of monsters and monstrosities. Only a few decades later, the Catholics and the various groups of Protestants in Germany and beyond were locked in a Thirty Years’ War between dogmatists who all felt that they were legitimized by God—and there were millions of victims.

Notes Quotations from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe, ed. Benno von Wiese et al., vol. 5, 5th ed. (Hamburg: Wegner, 1962). 1

2 Uwe Japp, “Leid und Verklärung: Torquato Tasso als repräsentativer Dichter nach Goethe—mit Ausblicken auf Byron und Leopardi,” in Kulturelle Leitfiguren–Figurationen und Refigurationen, ed. Bernd Engler and Isabell Klaiber (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007), 101–15. Cited by Goethezeitportal, page 3, accessed April 10, 2019, www.goethezeitportal.de/fileadmin/PDF/db/wiss/Goethe/japp_leid_tasso.pdf.

Ignaz Wrobel (Kurt Tucholsky), “Was darf Satire?,” Berliner Tageblatt 36, January 27, 1919; accessed January 25, 2017, http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/ buch/16-satiren-7810/12. 3

4

Badische Zeitung, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Südkurier, FAZ!

5

Fronz on the exhibition “Karikatur—Presse—Freiheit: Honoré Daumier und die französische Bildsatire,” in Südkurier, no. 40, June 22, 2015, 11. An almost identical review by Fronz appeared in FAZ, no. 184, August 11, 2015, 12. 6

May 31 to September 20, 2015.

7

I quote from the ruling of the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Constitutional Court) from November 4, 2009. BVerfG, Beschluss des Ersten Senats vom 04. November 2009–1 BvR 2150/08 – Rn. (1–110). Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann, Sprachliche Ausgrenzung im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013); see my review in Francia-Recensio, no. 2 (2015), http://www.perspectivia.net/publikationen/francia/ francia-recensio/2015-2/FN/lobenstein-reichmann_frey.

8

9

A reminder: Greek katholikos (universal, all-embracing).

10

Jacques Le Goff has repeatedly pointed this out in his works.

See Gerd Althoff, Selig sind, die Verfolgung ausüben: Päpste und Gewalt im Hochmittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2013); Bernd Schneidmüller et al., eds., Die Päpste: Amt und Herrschaft in Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2016); Stefan Weinfurter et al., eds., Die Päpste und ihr Amt zwischen Einheit und Vielheit der Kirche (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2017).

11

12

“Reformation und die Eine Welt,” accessed May 16, 2019, https://www. luther2017.de/de/jubilaeum/lutherdekade. An example of an embarrassingly gushing piece of work, lacking in historical understanding and almost devoid of any critical approach, is the recent Martin Luther—Lebensspuren (Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2017) by Jutta Krauß.

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Werner Hofmann, ed., Köpfe der Lutherzeit (Munich: Prestel, 1983), fig. 99, 227.

14

An image can be found at Artnet.com, accessed April 10, 2019, http://www.artnet.com/artists/melchior-lorck/martin-luther-Jo76t8LedjjGZHXaW-RUSA2. There is this brief note in the catalog by Werner Hofmann, Köpfe der Lutherzeit, 226: “Lorck was barely 22 years old and Luther had died two years previously when this portrait was made at the court of Heidelberg by order of the Count Palatinate Otto Heinrich (1502–1559). He was favourably disposed towards the Reformation so that since 1552 the reformed denominations including the Calvinist one were given support. In 1556 Otto Heinrich passed an edict which decreed the abolition of all ‘papist errors’ in favour of the ‘pure evangelical doctrine.’”

15

16

Cf. Winfried Frey, “SANCTVS LVTHERVS? Christian Junckers Ehren=Gedächtniß von 1706,” in Erinnerungskultur: Poetische, kulturelle und politische Erinnerungsphänomene in der deutschen Literatur, ed. Rainer Hillenbrand (Vienna: Praesens, 2015), 45–58. 17

On the history and function of the Luther Rose, see Claus Conermann, “Die Lutherrose,” in Luthermania: Ansichten einer Kultfigur, ed. Hole Rößler (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017), 257–82.

18

Apparently art historians do not agree whether the woodcut is attributable to Lorck alone or (also?) to Lucas Cranach the Younger—at least according to information on the internet: “Cranach in Anhalt—Vom alten zum neuen Glauben” (July 27, 2015), http://mdr.de/sachsen-anhalt/landesausstellung/cranach-in-anhalt102_ showImag. The image, Spottbild auf das Papsttum, can be found at http://www. museen-nord.de/Objekt/DE-MUS-045414/lido/18233. Eric Fischer, Melchior Lorck, vol. I: Biography and Primary Sources (Copenhagen: Vandkunsten, 2009), 71. In the same year, 1545, Martin Luther published his pamphlet Wider das Papsttum zu Rom vom Teufel gestiftet. For the full text, see Dr. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (= Weimarer Ausgabe), ed. Johann Schmidt and Thomas Lang, vol. 54 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1928), 206–99. Hereafter cited in the text as LW with volume and page numbers. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 2427, “wild man” here means “A man of savage, fierce, uncultured, or unruly nature or character.” The Deutsches Wörterbuch gives “waldmensch” as 1. “im walde lebender, wilder mensch,” “zurückgezogen im walde lebender mensch,” “überhaupt ‘einsiedler’”; 2. “im walde lebendes mythisches wesen, satyr, wilder mann,” “‘waldgottheit,’” then also different kinds of ape; accessed October 10, 2017, www.woerterbuchnetz.de/ DWB?lemma=waldmensch. 19

Gerd Unverfehrt, Wein statt Wasser: Essen und Trinken bei Jheronimus Bosch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 45, fig. 46. Unverfehrt has further references to relevant contexts. 20

21

Image in Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha und Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Bild und Botschaft: Cranach im Dienst von Hof und Reformation (Heidelberg: Morio, 2015), catalog no. 30b, 146; transcript of the texts, 342.

22

Image: Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Bild und Botschaft, 131, text:

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Vor zeytten pfiff ich hin vnd her Aus solchen Pfeiffen dicht vnd mer Vil Fabel Trewm vnd Fantasey Jst yetundt auß vnd gar entzwey Das ist mir leyd auch schwer vnd bang Doch hoff ich es wer auch nit lang Die weyl die welt so fürwitz ist Sündtlich dückisch vol arger list.

[Long ago I piped hard and heavily here and there / Many true fables and many lies / It’s over and in pieces now / It’s regretful to me, hard and scary / Though I hope it won’t be long / all the while the world’s so curious / so sinful, so conspiring, so full of hateful deceit.] The art historian Hans Belting, Das echte Bild: Bildfragen als Glaubensfragen, 2nd ed. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2006), 19–199, makes a similar argument, describing the picture as follows: “bläst der Teufel auf einer Sackpfeife, deren Bauch einen Mönchskopf wiedergibt. Mit dieser falschen Musik, so heißt es in der Beischrift, sei es ‘jetzt aus und vorbei,’ denn die Reformatoren schaffen dieses Spiel ab” (the devil blows on a bagpipe, whose stomach resembles a monk’s head. It is “now done and over,” states the addendum, with this false music, for the Reformers are putting an end to this tune). The second stanza, however, which Belting does not comment on, could be read differently: “Not much will change, men will remain the same.” 23

For example, Thomas W. Probst, “‘Nun auch das Herz sich Luft machen wollte’: Seneca als Satiriker,” Der Altsprachliche Unterricht Latein, Griechisch 55, no. 4+5, subject of this issue: Seneca (August 2012): 88–97. Using three caricatures (Hans Beham, Allegory of the Monkhood, 1521; Erhard Schoen, The Devil with a Bagpipe, ca. 1535; and Militärisches—Seine Majestät besichtigte auf der Saalburg vier römische Kaiser und fand Gefallen an ihrer vorzüglichen Haltung, from Kladderadatsch, 66, no. 16, Berlin, April 20, 1913), the students have to categorize them, determine their intentions, and, lastly, compare them with Seneca’s Apocolocyntosis and point out the similarities! 24

Claus Gigl, Geschichte lernen mit Methode (Stuttgart: Klett, 2010), 29.

See Winfried Frey, “Die Wittenbergisch Nachtigall. Ein brüchiges Ideal,” in Weg und Bewegung—Medieval and Modern Encounters: Festschrift in Honour of Timothy R. Jackson and Gilbert J. Carr, ed. Cordula Politis and Nicola Creighton (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre, 2008), 45–58. See also Martin Bucer, De regno Christi, trans. into German by Israel Achatius as Vom Reich Christi vnsers Herren und Heilands (Strasbourg, 1563), 69–72.

25

Quotations from Iwein: Eine Erzählung von Hartmann von Aue, ed. Georg Friedrich Benecke and Karl Lachmann, 6th ed. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966)—an edition that was probably the first one used by Francis G. Gentry, to whom the present volume is dedicated.

26

On animals as friends of humans in the Middle Ages, see the excellent Tiere als Freunde im Mittelalter: Eine Anthologie, ed. Gabriela Kompatscher, Albrecht Classen, and Peter Dinzelbacher (Badenweiler: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Bachmann, 2010). 27

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Rudolf Simek, Monster im Mittelalter: Die phantastische Welt der Wundervölker und Fabelwesen (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015).

28

On this large and complex field, see Dorothea Weltecke, Der Narr spricht: Es ist kein Gott. Atheismus, Unglauben und Glaubenszweifel vom 12. Jahrhundert bis zur Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2010).

29

See Christoph Daxelmüller, “Stephanus de Bellavilla,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters 7 (Munich: LexMA, 1995), 128–29.

30

31 Leaving aside further details, I will refer here to the edition by Susanne Baumgarte,

Summa bonorum: Eine deutsche Exempelsammlung aus dem 15. Jahrhundert nach Stephan von Bourbon. Edition und Untersuchung (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1999).

32

Ezek. 9:4 and 9:6 (following the standard German translation): “Geh mitten durch die Stadt Jerusalem und schreib ein T auf die Stirn aller Männer, die über die in der Stadt begangenen Greueltaten seufzen und stöhnen . . . von denen, die das T auf der Stirn haben, dürft ihr keinen anrühren” (Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a T on the foreheads of those men who grieve and lament . . . but do not touch anyone who has the T on their forehead); Rev. 7:3: “Fügt dem Land, dem Meer und den Bäumen keinen Schaden zu, bis wir den Knechten unseres Gottes das Siegel auf die Stirn gedrückt haben” (Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God).

33

The charcoal burner is not listed among the so-called dishonorable professions in chapter III.3 (“Die so genannten unehrlichen Berufe,” 300–305) of Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann, Sprachliche Ausgrenzung. See also Richard van Dülmen, Der ehrlose Mensch: Unehrlichkeit und soziale Ausgrenzung in der frühen Neuzeit (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999), 24–25. Lawrence P. Buck, The Roman Monster: An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2014).

34

35

“Mysterious Creature Which Appears to Be a Hybrid between a Crocodile and a Buffalo Terrifies Villagers in Thailand,” Daily Mail.com (October 6, 2015), https:// www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3260787/What-earth-creature-Bizarre-animalappears-hybrid-crocodile-buffalo-terrifies-villagers-Thailand.html.

36 W. Gunther Plaut, Die Tora in jüdischer Auslegung (Munich: Random House, Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008), 138, finds it was (and still is) the Jewish view that asses are not suited for sacrifice, “vielleicht, weil der Esel rituell unrein war” (perhaps because the donkey was ritually impure). Similarly, Melanchthon: papacy is “unclean!” 37

Lecken here in the sense of “become boisterous,” “frolic”; cf. Lexer I, 1850.

38

Illustration: Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Bild und Botschaft, 125.

39

I refer to the opening address of the then president of the Conference of German Bishops, Karl Cardinal Lehmann, at the Autumn Assembly of the Bishops’ Conference in Fulda on September 24, 2007 (press release of the Bishops’ Conference of September 28, 2007, 068—Attachment 2). Bernd Göbel, Papstesel, SKD Online Collection, https://skd-online-collection. skd.museum/Details/Index/1437711.

40

41

See also Winfried Frey, “Die Gottlosen: Antijüdische Tradition und innerchristlicher Wortkampf in der Zeit der Glaubensspaltung,” in Von Heiligen, Rittern und

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Narren: Festschrift für Hans-Joachim Behr zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ingrid Bennewitz and Wiebke Ohlendorf (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2014), 119–32. 42

Even an eminent Protestant could be thus denounced if he was perceived to have deviated from the “official” Protestant line—for instance, Melanchthon, who was declared to be the “Judas par excellence” by Justus Jonas. Winfried Frey, “Luthers Judas? Zum Gebrauch eines Namens in innerprotestantischer Polemik,” in Wanderer zwischen den Zeilen: Von Wörtern und Texten. Zu Ehren von Horst Dieter Schlosser, ed. Jörg Füllgrabe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011), 43–56. See Monique Samuel-Scheyder, Johannes Cochlaeus aus Wendelstein: Ein Humanistenleben in der Herausforderung seiner Zeit (Heimbach: Bernardus, 2009).

43

44

Illustrations of the seven-headed Luther and Cranach’s anti-Cochläus caricature in the catalog Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein, Bild und Botschaft, 78 and 81.

45

This can be interpreted as a symbol of false erudition but also as an indication of “Jewish” behavior! See Chiara Frugioni, Das Mittelalter auf der Nase: Brillen, Bücher, Bankgeschäfte und andere Erfindungen des Mittelalters (Munich: C.  H. Beck, 2005), 28–29. Illustration in Heinz Schreckenberg, Die Juden in der Kunst Europas: Ein historischer Bildatlas (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), 345. For a wider context see Winfried Frey, “‘. . . die gottverdammte Judensau, Zur Vorgeschichte eines Totschlagmotivs,” in De Christine de Pizan à Hans Robert Jaus: Etudes offertes à Earl Jeffrey Richards par ses collègues et amis à l’occasion de son soixante-cinquième anniversaire, ed. Danielle Buschinger et Roy Rosenstein, 194–205. Amiens: Presses du “Centre d’Études Mediévales de Picardie,” 2017. 46

Martin Luther, Vom Schem = Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi (1543), LW 53, 579–648. Here Luther writes, “Es ist hie zu Wittemberg an unser Pfarrkirchen eine Saw jnn stein gehawen, da ligen junge Ferckel und Juden untr, die saugen. Hinder der Saw stehet ein Rabin, der hebt der Saw das rechte bein empor, und mit seiner lincken hand zeucht er den pirtzel uber sich, bückt und kuckt mit grossem vleis der Saw unter dem pirtzel jnn den Thalmud hinein, als wollt er etwas scharffes und sonderliches lesen und ersehen. Daselbsher haben sie gewislich jr Schem Hamphoras” (600; There is a sow hewn into stone on our parish church here in Wittenberg, under which lie young piglets and Jews who suckle on it. Behind the sow stands a rabbi who lifts the sow’s right leg up, and with his left hand pulls her tail over himself, kneels down and eagerly looks into the Talmud under the sow’s tail, as if he could find something special and keen there. This is where you get your shame from Hamphoras).

47

48

Illustration (1700–1710) by Egbert van Heemskerck the Younger (1676– 1744), in the Museum of the Reformation in Geneva, accessed July 17, 2019, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/luther-in-hell-found-in-thecollection-of-international-news-photo/520723841.

49

Winfried Frey, “Kaspar Goldwurm, das Buch Genesis und die ‘Suppen vnnd bauch prediger,’” in Kaspar Goldwurm Athesinus (1524–1559): Zur 450. Wiederkehr seines Todesjahres, ed. Max Siller (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2011), 45–63. Kaspar Goldwurm, Die Fürnemsten: Schöne vnd Tröstliche Allegorie vnnd Geystliche Bedeutung des Ersten Buochs Moysi (Frankfurt am Main: Cyriaci Jacobi Erben, 1552); copy of the Bavarian State Library, Munich: 4 Exeg. 334 (PDF).

50

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Kaspar Goldwurm, Wunderwerck vnd Wunderzeichen Buch (Frankfurt am Main: Dauid Zephelius, 1557). I quote from the copy in the University Library of Innsbruck, Sign. 221.303, printed and with modern pagination by Wolfgang Morscher, 2008. On Protestant wonder books, see Philip M. Soergel, Miracles and the Protestant Imagination: The Evangelical Wonder Book in Reformation Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

51

52

“Mose trat an das Lagertor und sagte: ‘Wer für den Herrn ist, her zu mir!’ Da sammelten sich alle Leviten um ihn. Er sagte zu ihnen: ‘So spricht der Herr, der Gott Israels: Jeder lege sein Schwert an. Zieht durch das Lager von Tor zu Tor! Jeder erschlage seinen Bruder, seinen Freund, seinen Nächsten.’ Die Leviten taten, was Mose gesagt hatte. Vom Volk fielen an jenem Tag gegen dreitausend Mann. Dann sagte Mose: ‘Füllt heute eure Hände mit Gaben für den Herrn! Denn jeder von euch ist heute gegen seinen Sohn und seinen Bruder vorgegangen, und der Herr hat Segen auf euch gelegt’” (So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lᴏrᴅ, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, “This is what the Lᴏrᴅ, the God of Israel, says: ‘Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.’” The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, “You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.”).

53

Winfried Frey, “Der Kampf der Reformatoren gegen die baalistischen Pfaffen in der Grafschaft Nassau-Weilburg zur Zeit des Augsburger Interims (1548– 52/1555),” in Rules and Violence, Regeln und Gewalt: On the Cultural History of Collective Violence from Late Antiquity to the Confessional Age. Zur Kulturgeschichte der kollektiven Gewalt von der Spätantike bis zum konfessionellen Zeitalter, ed. Cora Dietl and Titus Knäpper (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 223–34.

On this subject see Winfried Frey, “Dein Reich komme: Martin Bucers Entwurf eines christlichen Nationalstaates,” in Études offertes à Danielle Buschinger par ses collègues, élèves et amis à l’occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire, ed. Florent Gabaude, Jürgen Kühnel, and Mathieu Olivier, vol. 2 (Amiens: Presse du “Centre d’Études Médiévales de Picardie,” 2016), 257–64.

54

Selected Bibliography This list includes only the main primary editions and secondary literature consulted. Primary Literature Baumgarte, Susanne. Summa bonorum: Eine deutsche Exempelsammlung aus dem 15. Jahrhundert nach Stephan von Bourbon. Edition und Untersuchung. Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1999. Bucer, Martin. De Regno Christi [1550]. Translated into German by Israel Achatius as Vom Reich Christi vnsers Herren vnd Heilands. Strasbourg,

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1563. (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Sign.: 4 Asc. 175 (VD 16 B 8907). Urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00021807-8. Fischer, Eric. Melchior Lorck. Vol. 1: Biography and Primary Sources. Copenhagen: Vandkunsten, 2009. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Goethes Werke: Hamburger Ausgabe. Vol. 5, 5th ed. Hamburg: Wegner, 1962. Goldwurm, Kaspar. Die Fürnemsten/schöne vnd Tröstliche Allegorie vnnd Geystliche Bedeutung/des Ersten Buochs Moysi. . . . Frankfurt am Main: Cyriaci Jacobi Erbenn, 1552. Copy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek: 4 Exeg. 334. PDF. Hartmann von Aue. Iwein. Edited by Georg Friedrich Benecke and Karl Lachmann. 6th ed. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966. Luther, Martin. Dr. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (= Weimarer Ausgabe). 136 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1883–2009. Tucholsky, Kurt (=Ignaz Wrobel). “Was darf Satire?” Berliner Tageblatt 36, January 27, 1919: http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/16-satiren-7810/12.

Secondary Literature Buck, Lawrence P. The Roman Monster: An Icon of the Papal Antichrist in Reformation Polemics. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2014. Frey, Winfried. “Dein Reich komme: Martin Bucers Entwurf eines christlichen Nationalstaates.” In Études offertes à Danielle Buschinger par ses collèguers, élèves et amis à l’occassion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire, edited by Florent Gabaude, Jürgen Kühnel, and Mathieu Olivier, 257–64. Amiens: Presses du “Centre d’Études Médiévales de Picardie,” 2016. ———. “Die Gottlosen: Antijüdische Tradition und innerchristlicher Wortkampf in der Zeit der Glaubensspaltung.” In Von Heiligen, Rittern und Narren: Festschrift für Hans-Joachim Behr zum 65. Geburtstag, edited by Ingrid Bennewitz and Wiebke Ohlendorf, 119–32. Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2014. ———. “Der Kampf der Reformatoren gegen die baalistischen Pfaffen in der Grafschaft Nassau-Weilburg zur Zeit des Augsburger Interims (1548– 52/1555).” In Rules and Violence, Regeln und Gewalt: On the Cultural History of Collective Violence from Late Antiquity to the Confessional Age. Zur Kulturgeschichte der kollektiven Gewalt von der Spätantike bis zum konfessionellen Zeitalter, edited by Cora Dietl and Titus Knäpper, 223–34. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014. ———. “Kaspar Goldwurm, das Buch Genesis und die ‘Suppen vnnd bauch prediger.’” In Kaspar Goldwurm Athesinus (1524–1559): Zur 450. Wiederkehr seines Todesjahres, edited by Max Siller, 45–63. Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2011. ———. “Luthers Judas? Zum Gebrauch eines Namens in innerprotestantischer Polemik.” In Wanderer zwischen den Zeilen: Von Wörtern und Texten: Zu Ehren von Horst Dieter Schlosser, edited by Jörg Füllgrabe, 43–55. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011.

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Japp, Uwe. “Leid und Verklärung: Torquato Tasso als repräsentativer Dichter nach Goethe—mit Ausblicken auf Byron und Leopardi.” In Kulturelle Leitfiguren—Figurationen und Refigurationen, edited by Bernd Engler und Isabell Klaiber, 101–15. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007. Quoted from the publication in Goethezeitportal. Accessed April 10, 2019. www.goethezeitportal.de/fileadmin/PDF/db/wiss/goethe/japp_leid_tasso.pdf, p. 3. Krauß, Jutta. Martin Luther—Lebensspuren. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2016. Lobenstein-Reichmann, Anja. Sprachliche Ausgrenzung im späten Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2013. Samuel-Scheyder, Monique. Johannes Cochlaeus aus Wendelstein: Ein Humanistenleben in der Herausforderung seiner Zeit. Heimbach, Eifel: Bernardus, 2009. Schneidmüller, Bernd, Stefan Weinfurter, Michael Matheus, and Alfried Wieczorek, eds. Die Päpste: Amt und Herrschaft in Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2016. Schreckenberg, Heinz. Die Juden in der Kunst Europas: Ein historischer Bildatlas. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996. Siemek, Rudolf. Monster im Mittelalter: Die phantastische Welt der Wundervölker und Fabelwesen. Cologne: Böhlau, 2015. Siller, Max, ed. Kaspar Goldwurm Athesinus (1524–1559): Zur 450. Wiederkehr seines Todesjahres. Akten des 6. Symposiums der Sterzinger Osterspiele (Sterzing, 6.–8. April 2009). Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 2011. Unverfehrt, Gerd. Wein statt Wasser: Essen und Trinken bei Jheronimus Bosch. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003. Weinfurter, Stefan, Volker Leppin, Christoph Strohm, Hubert Wolf, and Alfried Wieczorek, eds. Die Päpste und ihr Amt zwischen Einheit und Vielheit der Kirche: Theologische Fragen in historischer Perspektive. Regensburg: Schnell und Steiner, 2017. Weltecke, Dorothea. “Der Narr spricht: Es ist kein Gott”: Atheismus, Unglauben und Glaubenszweifel vom 12. Jahrhundert bis in die Neuzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2010.

Contributors Tinᴀ Bᴏyᴇr (PhD Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, University of California, Davis) is currently associate professor of German at Wake Forest University. Her publications include The Giant Hero in Medieval Literature (Brill, 2016) and articles on monstrous identity in bridal quest epics, antiSemitism, and the intersection of medieval literature and the internet. She has contributed chapters in Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination (Brill, 2012) and American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer (Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2016). Her specialization is medieval German literature, with a focus on monstrosity and hypermasculinity in epics and romances. Her secondary specialization is second-language acquisition and technology in the classroom. Aᴌbrᴇᴄhᴛ Cᴌᴀssᴇn is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona, where he teaches and researches medieval and early modern literature and culture. He has published well over ninety scholarly books and ca. 650 articles, most recently the monographs Water in Medieval Literature (2017) and Toleration and Tolerance in Medieval and Early Modern European Literature (2018). He is the editor of the journals Mediaevistik and Humanities Open Access. He has received numerous awards for his teaching, research, and service, and he is a Sterling Member of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. He has served as the president of the Arizona chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German and as the director of undergraduate studies in his home department for more than 25 years. In 2017 he was honored with the rank of Grand Knight Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Three Lions by the duke of Swabia. Winfriᴇᴅ Frᴇy has retired after many years as professor of German at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität. His publications include books and articles on Middle High German and Early New High German poetry and epic, didactic and travel literature, and especially the image of Jews in medieval and modern German literature. See his complete publications list at https://www.uni-frankfurt.de/42694192/frey. Wiᴌᴌ Hᴀsᴛy is Waldo W. Neikirk Professor of German Studies and codirector of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University

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of Florida. He has authored numerous articles and books, most recently The Medieval Risk-Reward Society: Courts, Adventure, and Love in the European Middle Ages (Ohio State University Press, 2016), and has edited collections of essays and literary encyclopedias. Ernsᴛ Rᴀᴌf Hinᴛᴢ is professor of German and Medieval Studies at Truman State University. He received his PhD in medieval German literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (1986). His research interests comprise medieval apocalyptic literature, gender and identity, as well as biblical and heroic epic. He is the author of Learning and Persuasion in the German Middle Ages (Garland, 1997) and has written articles such as “Paradox in Konrad of Würzburg’s Pantonopier und Meliûr,” “Judicial Fiction in the Nibelungenlied,” and “Gendered Attributes for Spiritual Combat in the Old Saxon Heliand.” He has also contributed the chapter “The Muspilli and Old German Judgment Day” for A Companion to the Premodern Apocalypse (Brill, 2016). He is currently president of the Society for Medieval Germanic Studies. Prᴏf. Eᴍᴇr. Winᴅᴇr MᴄCᴏnnᴇᴌᴌ retired in 2012 from the Department of German and Russian at the University of California, Davis, where he served as departmental chair for over eighteen years. His undergraduate studies were completed at McGill University (Montreal). He received his MA and PhD in medieval German literature from the University of Kansas (1969 and 1973, respectively), where he studied under the late Professor Ernst S. Dick. He recently completed the article “The Nibelungenlied, Kudrun, Biterolf und Dietleib: Some Observations on the Concept of the Heroic and the ‘Genre’ of Medieval German Heroic Epic,” to appear in Epic and Romance: New Essays on Medieval Literature, edited by Leonard Neidorf. Eᴠᴇᴌyn Mᴇyᴇr is associate professor of German and head of the German Program at Saint Louis University (SLU). She also holds affiliated faculty status in the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and in the Department of Women and Gender Studies at SLU, and in the Zentrum für Mittelalter Studien at the Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. She has published on gender constructions in a variety of medieval German narratives and on what can be gained by working with manuscript text vs. print culture editions, and she is currently writing a monograph about depicting gender, race, and otherness in text and illuminations in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. Sᴄᴏᴛᴛ E. Pinᴄiᴋᴏᴡsᴋi is professor of German at Hood College, where he teaches German language and literature classes and directs the study abroad office. His research interests focus on courtly culture and literature of the German Middle Ages and include the body and pain, space and architecture and cultural identity, reception studies, material culture, and memory.

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He is the author of Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue (Routledge, 2002) and numerous peer-reviewed articles, the most recent of which deal with giants in the courtly literature and lies and dissimulation in the heroic epic. Mᴀriᴀn E. Pᴏᴌhiᴌᴌ is professor of medieval studies and comparative literature at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras. Her research interests include medieval literature, bestiaries, and medicine. She is the author of Hans Minners ‘Tierbuch’ (1478): Edition—Kommentar—Wörterbuch (Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), and also has published on medieval pharmaceutical bestiaries in journals and book projects in Germany, the United States, and Mexico. She is currently researching medieval scientific and literary representations of melancholy and lovesickness. Recent administrative appointments include chair of the Comparative Literature Department and Academic Senator at UPR-RP. Aᴌᴇxᴀnᴅᴇr Sᴀgᴇr is associate professor of German at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Minne von maeren: On Wolfram’s Titurel (V&R Unipress, 2006) as well as articles on Albrecht von Scharfenberg’s Jüngerer Titurel, German courtly love poetry, the Carmina Burana, and Old Saxon biblical verse. In one way or another, all his work centers on the interaction between early vernacular literature and Latin learning, between secular and religious modes of literary and cultural experience. Currently he is working on a translation of the Jüngerer Titurel and contemplating a bold book on courtly love. Aᴌᴇxᴀnᴅrᴀ Sᴛᴇrᴌing-Hᴇᴌᴌᴇnbrᴀnᴅ received her PhD in German from the Pennsylvania State University. She is professor of German and global studies at Appalachian State University. Areas of research include medieval German literature, particularly Arthurian romance and the visualizations of text, as well as its reception in popular culture from murals to museums and television. She is currently finishing a monograph entitled Medieval Literature on Display: Heritage and Culture in Modern Germany that examines the museal reception of medieval German literature at the intersections of heritage and globalization. Jᴏsᴇᴘh M. Sᴜᴌᴌiᴠᴀn, associate professor of German at the University of Oklahoma, has published extensively on medieval courtly literature and the modern popular reception of the Middle Ages. His special focus is the tradition of King Arthur in Europe north of the romance countries. His most recent major publication is an edition with facing-page English language translation of the anonymous thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Wigamur (D. S. Brewer, 2015), and he is currently preparing a critical edition of Leiden Manuscript B with English translation of Wirnt of Gravenberg’s circa-1215 Wigalois.

Index Abel, 7, 9, 12, 15–18, 20, 74 Abelard, Peter, 68n8 Achatius, Israel, 261, 270 Acts of violence: illegitimate by Iwein, 205–6; illegitimate by Oringles, 191, 193, 203–4; legitimate by Erec, 191, 193, 203 Adam, 7–13, 15–18, 21–22, 37, 179, 183, 186n32, 195 Adorno, Theodor W., 73 Adso of Moutier-en-Der, works by: De ortu et tempore Antichristi, 240 Aeschylus, 90 affectus (affect), 28, 174 Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, 192 Alcuin, 28 Das alte Atlilied, 27 Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), 136–37 ambiguity, 175–76, 202, 212 Ambraser Heldenbuch, 83, 85–86, 170, 213n12 âne zuht (good breeding/manners), 194, 199, 202, 204–5, 207–8, 211 Angevin, 170 Anglicus, Bartholomaeus, 179 animals, 175; difference between man and beasts, 178 Anselm of Canterbury, 68n8, 69n12 Antichrist, 5–6, 19–20, 168, 172, 175– 77, 185n23, 238–48, 248n3, 251n17 anxiety (masculine), 168–69, 171–72, 181–82 Apocalypse, 1, 40, 111, 170, 175–76. See also Book of Revelation apocalypse, 1–3, 5–6, 49, 88, 130–31, 159, 165n52, 169–70, 180, 240–42 apocalyptic, 3–4, 7, 19–20, 83, 89, 98, 100, 106–15, 120–22, 126–27,

131, 135–36, 168–69, 175–76, 183, 238–42 Arabic (science), 170–71 Arendt, Hannah, 68n6 Armageddon, 1, 3–4, 72, 79, 81, 85, 90–91, 94n33, 109, 133, 176 Der arme Heinrich, 111. See also Hartmann von Aue arrogance, 199, 202, 205, 208 Ascalon, 193, 201; his murder, 204–6 ascenus, 30, 34–35, 40 Assmann, Jan, 120 Athesinus, Kasper Goldwurm, 6, 267–70 Atlakviða, 121–22 Atli, 122 Attila, 127. See also Atli; Etzel Auerbach, Erich, 158, 159, 164n50 Augsburg Interim, 269 Augustine, 6n2, 7, 9, 67–68n6, 149, 178; on simultaneous time categories, 144 Augustine, works by: City of God, 67n6, 186n35; Confessions, 6n2, 144 authority of the court, 203, 209–10 Bachorski, Hans-Jürgen, 130 Barbarossa, Kaiser Frederick, 137 Baroque, 75, 130 Bartholomew, Saint, 262 bathing and health, 171 Battle of Autun, 112 Battle of Maldon, 27 Beatitudes, 29, 35, 43 beauty, 32, 54–55, 58–60, 118, 126, 154, 181, 192, 203 beholder’s share, 145, 150, 153–55 Behr, Hans-Joachim, 265 Beowulf, 121, 191

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Bertschi Triefnas, 86–87, 89 Bible, 8–10, 20–21, 178, 244, 265–66, 268 Biblia Pauperum, 239 binary dynamics, 3, 50, 52, 55, 59, 61–62, 67, 69n10–11 Biterolf, 83, 85 black bile, 171 Bloch, Howard R., 164n44, 164n49 blockbook, 6, 238–43, 245, 247–48, 249n3, 252n35 Blutgericht von Verden, 34 bodily deformity, 194–96; in Guivreiz, 202; linked to uncourtly behavior, 200 Bonnet, Anne-Marie, 151, 152, 162n24 Book of Revelation (BoR), 1–2, 33, 111, 170, 175–76. See also Apocalypse Boyer, Tina, 5, 214n16 brain, 179 Brandigan, 206–7, 209 Brant, Sebastian, 89 Brendan, Saint, 176 Brixen, 151 Brünhild, 79–80, 82, 101, 103, 112, 116n3, 117n7, 180–83 brutishness, 195, 197 Bucer, Martin, 270 Buck, Lawrence P., 262 Bülow, Bernhard von, 129 Bumke, Joachim, 123 Burger, Christoph Peter, 238–39, 242–43 Burgundians, 79–80, 100, 102–10, 112–16, 118n8, 118n13, 122–24, 132–34, 181, 233n22 Busby, Keith, 230, 235n32 Büsching, Johann Gustav, 216 Cadoc, 197, 203 Cain, 3, 7, 9, 11–13, 15–22, 74 Camille, Michael, 160n3, 242, 251n19; polyvalent mode of discourse, 144 Carolingian(s), 8–11, 18, 20, 28, 34–35, 46n26, 47n35 Cathey, James E., 35, 46n28 chaos, 87, 104

chaplain, 107–10, 116 charitas, 28, 37, 47n35 Charles V, Emperor, 265 chiro-xylographic blockbook, 243, 245–46. See also blockbook chivalric violence, 190–91, 193; between Erec and Mabonagrin, 210 Chrétien de Troyes, 148, 149, 164n49, 229, 230, 235n32 Chrétien de Troyes, works by: Erec, 229, 232n9; Lancelot, 229; Yvain, 148, 261 Christ, 172, 176 Christ birth, 179 Christian, 3–4, 7–8, 10, 16, 19–20, 22, 28–36, 43, 55, 62–63, 74, 76, 78, 101–2, 104–6, 109–16, 130, 153, 168, 170, 175, 178–79, 192, 195, 200, 207, 234n25, 257, 262, 267–68, 270 Christianization, 33, 130 Classen, Albrecht, 3–4, 47n31, 70n19 Claudas, King (from the Prose Lancelot), 227, 234n26 Clement (Christian), 175–76 Climacus, John, works by: The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 32 Cochläus, Johannes, 6, 265–67 Cohen, Jeffrey J., 158 Compendium theologicae veritatis, 241, 243–44, 248 complementarity, 30–34, 41–43 conservative (sectors), 168 continuity, 100, 109, 112, 114 control over emotions, 241 Cooper, James Fennimore, 27 Corvey, 32 Council of Orange, 8, 11, 22 Count Oringles, 193, 201–7, 210–12 Countess of Beaumont, 170–71, 175, 177, 179, 183, 186n29 courtliness, 191, 193, 198–99, 202, 206 courtly love, 168, 170, 180. See also minne courtly romance, 2, 88, 154, 157–58, 169, 211, 214n26 Cranach, Lucas (the Elder), 264, 266–67

Inᴅᴇx Cranach, Lucas (the Younger), 6, 260– 62, 272n18 Creation (according to Genesis), 179 Crucifixion, 30, 39, 41–42, 101, 151 cruelty, 190–91, 94, 197; of giants, 196 Cruz, Ted, 168 cure (of disease), 171 172, 175 Curschmann, Michael, 151, 157, 162n26 Cyrus, Miley, 168 Czeschka, Carl Otto, 126 Dahn, Felix, works by: “Deutsche Lieder,” 124 Dancwart, 108 Dante, description of ninth circle of hell, 246 Danube, 81, 108, 183 De proprietatibus rerum, 179 death, 172, 174–75 deflection-from-evil strategy, 193, 201, 206–7, 209 Denkmäler der Vergegenwärtigung (monuments to the process of realization), 155 depression, 171 descensus, 30, 34, 40, 69n11 despair, 117, 171, 175 destabilizing force, 206 destiny, 76–77, 79, 81, 83–84, 94n33 107, 113–14, 116 devil, 6, 10, 37–38, 50–51, 55–58, 60, 69n12, 115, 117n7, 190, 198–200, 204, 207, 209, 246, 259–62, 264–68, 270, 273. See also Satan; vâlant Dietrich von Bern, 79–80, 105, 108, 117n7, 134 Dietrichs Flucht, 85 Dinshaw, Carolyn, 158 disease, 169–76; as minne, 180 disruption of order, 199 dissection, 170 Doane, Alger, 19–20, 23n14 domination (of women), 177 Domitian, emperor, 2 doom, 183; foreshadowing of, 180, 182; images of, 169 downfall, 170 dragon, 33, 82, 104–5, 183, 201

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dream, 10, 105–7, 109, 117n8, 183 drohtin diurie, 33, 42 Dunlop, Anne, 144 Dürer, Albrecht, 260 Dürer, Albrecht, works by: die vier apokalyptischen Reiter, 2 dwarf, 193–96, 198, 200, 204, 211 Ebenauer, Alfred, 219, 232n12 eleventh century, 170 encyclopedia (medieval), 179 end-times, 1–3, 5–6, 18, 168–69, 177, 180, 182–83, 241 Enoch, 18–20 epic, 169, 181–82 Erec, 190–94, 196, 198, 200–202, 204– 5, 207–12, 214n20, 214n22, 216, 229. See also Hartmann von Aue Erec (Hartmann’s character), 193–203, 207–10, 213n12, 214n22, 215n27 Erinnerungsfigur, 121, 127, 132, 136–37 eschatological, 1–2, 6, 50, 130, 175, 238 Etzel, 79–81, 88, 101–2, 106–7, 110– 13, 115–16, 117n7, 118n8, 118n9, 120, 123–24, 127, 130–35, 233n22 Eucharist, 101–2 Eve, 7, 9–13, 15–18, 21–22, 37, 179, 183 evil, 176, 191; complexity of, 210–11; evil vs. violent, 190, 196, 197, 200; examples of, 196, 199; by Lespia, 217, 219; by Lipondrigun, 224, 226–30; by Pontrafort, 220–23; pure evil, 200, 208 evolution of image, 245, 246 excessive force, 190, 197–99, 202, 205, 206–7 expectation of end-times, 241, 251n17 fabliau, 169 Fair Unknown, 217–18 the Fall, 9, 11, 55, 57, 59, 67n2, 69n11, 179, 180, 183; spiritual fall, 30, 32, 36, 39, 41–42 fate, 13, 40, 53, 106–8, 110, 112–14, 116, 121, 127, 129–30, 134–35, 157, 170, 182, 193–94, 204, 208, 222, 224, 236, 269. See also destiny

286



Inᴅᴇx

Fatherland, 125–26 Faust, 137 fear, 173 feminine, 31–33, 36, 38, 41, 43, 174, 179 femininity, 153, 187n41 Fernau, Joachim, works by: Disteln für Hagen: Bestandaufnahme der deutschen Seele, 129–31 Fifteen Signs of Doomsday, 238–39, 248n2 fifteenth century, 2, 6, 81, 216, 238–39, 240–41, 246–48, 267 Fischer, Erik, 259 fortitudo, 31, 37, 42 fratres conversi, 22, 29, 32 Frauendienst (service to women), 179–80 Frederick the Great, 131 Frederick the Wise, King, 265 Frey, Winfried, 6 Fronz, Hans-Dieter, 256 Fulda, 32, 76 Gahmuret, 227 Galatians 3:28 and 4:19, 31 Gantert, Klaus, 22, 29 Garden of Eden, 9, 162n25 Garden of Gethsemane, 16, 30, 39–40 gaze, 181 gender, 168–70, 175, 177, 179, 183 Genesis (Book of), 178–79 Genesis B, 3, 7, 9–14, 21, 23n7 genocide, 73–74 Gentry, Francis G., 169, 184n9 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 158 Gerlint, 84, 89 German-Austrian Alliance, 129 Germanization, 28, 32 Gernot, 105–6, 108, 118n13, 128 giant(s), 5–6, 87, 125, 129, 193, 196– 204, 207–12, 214n26, 215n27, 238, 242–43, 245–48 giantlike, 207, 208–10. See also Mabonagrin Giselher, 105–6, 108–9, 127, 134 Göbel, Bernd, 265

God, 2, 8–9, 11–18, 21, 30, 34–35, 37–43, 57, 59, 65–66, 67n6, 69n15, 70n18, 70n19, 72, 78, 87, 98–100, 102, 104, 108–11, 113–16, 176, 178–80, 190–91, 195, 198–200, 203, 211, 227, 244, 257, 259–62, 264–65, 268–71 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 255 Gombrich, Ernst, 145n6, 145n7 good (moral goodness), 192–93 good breeding/manners. See âne zuht Göring, Hermann, 125–26, 128 Gothic building, 144, 160n3, 160n4 Gottfried von Strassburg, works by: Tristan, 114, 154, 163n34 Gran, 104, 106–10, 112, 114–15, 117n7 Gregorius, 3, 50, 52, 56, 59, 62, 69n15 Gregorius (abbot, Gregorius’s namesake), 60, 63 Gregorius (Hartmann’s character), 59–61, 63–66, 67n2, 68n9, 69n10, 69n17, 70n19 Gregorius’s mother, 50, 59–61, 64–66, 68n9 Grendel (dark evil), 191 Grimmelshausen, Hans Jakob Christoffel von, works by: Simplicius Simplicissimus, 75, 224 Grosse, Siegfried, 114 Gryphius, Andreas, 75 Gryphius, Andreas, works by: “Das Letzte Gericht,” 130 Gudrun, 122 Guinevere, 193 Guivreiz, 193, 201–3, 205, 210, 212 Gunther, 79–82, 102–4, 106, 108, 112, 116n3, 117n7, 117n8, 128, 133, 180–82 guot, 58 Gyburg (Queen Arabel), 74, 91n6 Hadeburg, 107 Hadubrand, 77–78 Haferland, Harald, 20–21, 27–28, 45n11 Hagen, 79–83, 89–90, 94n33, 102–10, 115–16, 117n7, 117n8, 123–25, 128–29, 133–34, 180, 182–83, 227

Inᴅᴇx Hahn, Cynthia, 156 hanging, as means of execution, 219– 20, 233n14 Harbou, Thea von, 120, 131 Harbou, Thea von, works by: Nibelungen, 120; Nibelungenbuch, 120 Harpin, attributes, 198–99 Hartmann von Aue, 5, 70n18, 147–48, 149, 169, 191, 193–96, 200, 211–21, 216, 230, 235n32, 261 Hartmann von Aue, works by: Der arme Heinrich, 111; Erec, 190, 194, 196, 198, 200–202, 204–6, 207–12, 214n20, 214n22, 216, 229; Gregorius, 3, 50, 52, 56, 59, 62, 69n15; Iwein, 4, 148–50, 151–52, 157–58, 161n17, 161n18, 161n19, 190, 196, 200–201, 204, 206–7, 210–11, 216, 261 Hartmut of Ormanie (Hartmuot), 84, 98, 100 Hasty, Will, 3, 200–201 Haubrichs, Wolfgang, 77 heart, 171 heaven, 1, 35, 37, 50–52, 55, 62, 66, 111, 130, 248, 268 Hegelings, 98–100, 102, 109, 112 Hegenbarth, Josef, works by: Der Kampf in der Halle, 140n29; Der Saalbrand, 127–28 Heil, Johannes, 240, 246 Helen of Troy, 170, 182–83, 187n44 Heliand, 3, 16–17, 20–22, 27–36, 38–39, 41–43, 47n36 hell, 1, 38, 40, 45n16, 50, 57, 62, 130, 168, 246, 252n29, 259, 262, 264, 267 Herder, Caroline, 255 Herwig of Seeland (Herwic of Sealand), 84, 98 Hetel, 84, 98–100 heterosexuality, 168, 183n2 Hilde, 84, 98, 100–102 Hildebrand, 77–81, 90, 115, 117n7, 134, 182 Hildebrandslied, 4, 75–78, 81, 83, 88, 108 Hildegard von Bingen, 45n17

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Hintz, Ernst Ralf, 3, 45n12, 45n14, 69n11, 232n9, 233n16 Hitler, Adolf, 130, 135 Höcke, Björn, 136–37 Hoffmann, Werner, 111 Holocaust, 72–73 Homer, 72 homo sylvaticus, 218, 232n9 Huber, Wolfgang (bishop), 264 humilitas (humility), 35–36, 39–43, 45n14, 46n28, 47n35, 148 humoral theory, 171; balance, 179 Hundeshagen or Hundeshagenscher Codex, 81, 121 Hungary, 106–10, 112 Huns, 80, 99, 105–7, 109, 125, 128, 132–33 Hutcheon, Linda, 30, 44n10 iconography, 145, 150, 153–56, 158–59 Iliad, 182 illness, 169, 177 imaginative (region of brain), 171 imago Christi, 30–33, 39, 43 initiative, 50, 52, 55, 63–64, 67n4, 69n13 insomnia, 171 intent to kill, 208, 211–12; Cadoc, 197; Iwein, 198, 205; Oringles, 199–200, 203 intentio (intentionality), 190–91, 196– 97, 200, 206 intercourse (therapeutic), 171, 185n17 interfigure, 151, 162n23 intertext, 151 Isenhart, 182 Isidore of Seville, 174 ISIS, 75 ius talionis, 28, 34 Iwein, 4, 148, 151–52, 157–58, 161n17, 161n18, 161n19, 190, 196, 200–201, 204, 206–7, 210–11, 216, 261. See also Hartmann von Aue Iwein (Hartmann’s character), 193, 198–200, 204–7, 210–12 Iwein/Ywain murals, 4, 144–45, 150– 55, 155

288

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Inᴅᴇx

Jaeger, Stephen C., 154, 163n31 Jansen, Werner, works by: Das Buch der Treue, 124–25 Japp, Uwe, 255 Jesus Christ, 3, 15–16, 19, 27–43, 61, 101–2, 113, 152, 155, 162n25, 172, 176, 242–45, 247, 265, 267 John, Saint (the apostle), 2, 39, 41–43 Joie de la Curt, 206, 211 joy, 1, 52, 55–56, 85, 103, 111–14, 126, 146, 170–72, 206 Judas, 40–41, 266–67, 275n42 Judgment Day, 176 Jung, Jacqueline E., 145, 153–55, 160n8 Jüngeres Hildebrandslied, 77 just vs. unjust, 191 Kaes, Anton, 131 Kalogrenant, 204, 261 kalokagathia, 192, 194 Keim, Franz, works by: Die Nibelungen, 126–27 Khmer Rouge, 75 King Arthur, 147, 149, 222 Diu Klage, 4, 75, 79–81, 83, 85, 122– 23. See also Nibelungenklage knight-in-training, 193, 205–6, 210–12 knights, 169, 170–71, 174–75, 176–77, 182 Könneker, Barbara, 241, 243 Kracauer, Siegfried, 131, 139n24 Kragl, Florian, 208–10 Kriemhild, 79–82, 85, 88–90, 94n33, 101, 103–6, 108, 110–11, 113–16, 117n7, 117n8, 118n9, 122–23, 127, 133–34, 136, 180–83, 191, 233n22 Kudrun, 84–85, 88–90, 98. See also Kudrun Kudrun, 4, 75, 83–86, 88–90, 98, 100– 102, 109–12, 115 Lang, Fritz, 120, 131–32 Lang, Fritz, works by: Kriemhilds Rache, 131–33; Nibelungen, 27, 51, 120, 131; Siegfried, 131 Last Judgment, 3, 130

Latin, 2, 22, 29, 67n5, 170, 196, 217, 239–40, 258 Laudine, 152–53, 157; her court, 205–6 lebende bilder (living images), 155 legitimate acts of violence, 191, 197– 98, 200, 210 Leibniz, Gottfried, 68n8 leit, 99, 103, 113–14. See also suffering Lipondrigun, 226–28 liver, 171 Llull, Ramon, 68n8 Lobenstein-Reichmann, Anja, 257 Lorck, Melchior, 6, 258–62, 272n15 Lord of Aquitaine (Gregorius’s paternal and maternal grandfather), 54–55 love, 28, 56, 58, 72, 74, 76, 83, 85, 89, 113, 149, 175, 181; courtly love, 2, 5, 54, 168–75, 177, 180, 182–83, 187n37, 209–10; divine love, 33, 39, 41, 43, 61, 87; love of neighbor, 37, 68n6; lovesickness, 3, 58, 168–75, 178–81. See also minne loyalty, 3, 38, 40, 43, 46n28, 58, 105, 111, 121, 123–24, 128–29, 131, 133–37, 196 Ludus Antichristo, 240 Ludwig of Normandy, 100 Lunete, 198, 205 Luther, Martin, 6, 257–61, 263–67, 270, 272n15, 275n47 Luyster, Amanda, 156 Mabonagrin, 193, 201, 206–12 Macdonald, Sharon, 149–50, 159, 161n16 Machazên, 115 Machtergreifung, 125 Magdalene, Mary, 42 Magdeburg, 153–54, 157 magic and alchemy, 244 Mahmet, 115 Maledicur, 196 Mark, Gospel of, 172 marriage, 227, 229–30 Martin, Ann G., 217, 232n8. See also reht masculinity, 5, 31–33, 36, 41, 43, 168– 69, 174, 180–82, 183n3, 184n6, 193

Inᴅᴇx Mater Dolorsa, 151 Mauritius (Moriz), 170–80 Mauritius von Craûn (MvC), 5, 168–69, 170–83, 185n18, 187n44 Maximilian I, 170 McConnell, Winder, 4 McGinn, Bernard, 240–41, 243 McNamara, Jo Ann, 46n19 medicine, 170–71, 174, 180–81, 183 melancholic, 170 Melanchthon, Philipp, 6, 263, 267–68, 275n42 memento mori, 53 memoria, 159 memory, 2, 4, 27–28, 120–22, 23, 126, 131–33, 135–36, 138, 138n5, 146, 149, 158, 160n9, 268 Mertens, Volker, 160n11 merwomen (mermaid), 183; absence of language of revenge and anger, 219, 220–23, 228; Lespia, 217–18 metaphor, 177 Metzli Rüerenzumpf, 86, 89 Meyer, Evelyn, 5 microcosm and macrocosm, 177, 186n31 Middle High German, 74–75, 216 Mildenberger, Jörg, 172 miles Christi, 46n23 Millet, Victor, 86 minne, 58, 171, 178, 180, 209–10. See also love miracle: castle in the air, 242–43, 244; false miracles, 238; marvelous ship on wheels, 175–76; stag out of a stone, 245; as a threat, 246 Molsdorf, Wilhelm, 244–45, 252n29, 252n30 monster, 200, 202 monstrous humans, 195–96, 198, 199 monstrous race, 193, 195, 199, 200, 211, 214n26, 215n27 moral corruption, 202 morality, 80, 105, 111, 190, 194, 199, 203, 206, 255 Müller, Heiner, works by: Germania Tod in Berlin, 127–29 multimodality, 157–58

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289

Murphy, Ronald G., 33, 47n39 music, 171. See also cure Muslim, 74 Muspilli, 19, 47n35 mythology, 183; constructs of demise, 169; subtext, 180 Naumburg Cathedral, 150, 153–58, 163n35, 163n36, 163n37, 163n38; donor portraits, 4, 145 Nazi Germany, 120, 123, 130 Nazi ideology, 130, 134, 136 Nazis (Nationalsozialisten), 75, 125, 127, 129–31 negative figures (with positive qualities), 216–17, 231n5 Nero, 170, 175 Nibelungen, 124–25, 128, 130–31, 135, 191 Nibelungenklage, 4, 100–101, 111, 114–15, 118n9, 118n13. See also Diu Klage Nibelungenlied, 94n33, 98, 100, 101–2, 105, 109, 110–16, 122; echoes of legend and courtly romance, 169; gender and disease, 180–82, 191; modern reception, 4, 120, 123, 125–27, 131, 135–36; nationalism, 123, 135–36, 141n51; Nibelungen treasure, 104, 108, 110, 116 Nibelungentreue, 123, 128–29, 134, 136–37, 141n49 ninth century, 9–10, 22, 43, 122 nobility, 168 Normans, 98–100 novella, 169 Nuremberg, 260–61 Obama, 168 Odinic, 183 ôdmôdi, 35–36 Oedipus, 61–63, 69n17 Old English, 3, 7, 10, 34, 121 Old High German, 47n29, 75–76 Old Norse, 93n21, 122 Old Saxon, 3, 7–10, 16, 18, 20–21, 30, 34 order (natural and divine), 177, 180

290

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Inᴅᴇx

ordo and inordinatio, 244–45 original sin, 3, 7–12, 16–19, 21–22 Ortlieb, 116 Ortnit, 85 Ortwin, 84–85 Otfrid von Weißenburg, 9 the other, 197 Ott, Norbert H., 162n25 Otto Heinrich (Count Palatinate of the Rhine), 258, 278n15 Ottoman threat, 24 pain, 173 Palmer, Nigel, 239, 250n6 papacy, 66, 70n20, 263, 274n36. See also pope Paris (in Iliad), 170, 182 Parzival, 111, 114, 169, 182, 192, 195, 216. See also Wolfram von Eschenbach patientia, 31, 47n35 Paul, Saint (the apostle), 31 Peace of Augsburg, 269 Peter, Saint (the apostle), 16, 39–43, 47n36, 226, 259 Physiologus, 245, 252n30 pilgrims, 98–102, 109 Pincikowski, Scott E., 4, 191, 196, 198, 204–5, 208, 214n26, 215n27 Pinkus, Assaf, 154, 155, 163n35 Pinthus, Kurt, 131 Plato, works by: Lysis, 192 Der Pleier, works by: Meleranz, 4, 145, 147–48, 150, 160n10, 160n11 Pöchlarn, 109 Polhill, Marian E., 5 political and social insecurity, 242 polymorphic, 150–51 Pontrafort, 223–26 pope, 50, 59, 64–66, 179, 251, 259–61, 263–65. See also papacy postclassical romance, 2, 5, 216, 278 power, 169, 183 prophecy, 183 psychology, 173, 175; effects of love, 171. See also love Puch von dem Entkrist, 6, 238, 248n1 punishment, 179, 181–82, 197

Queen Gerberga, 240 Die Rabenschlacht, 85 racial discourse, 195 Ragnarök (demise of the gods), 181, 183 Rasmo, Nicoló, 151 reason, 178–80 redemption, 196; for Mabonagrin, 210 Reformation, 2, 6, 255, 257–58, 261, 263, 265, 272n15 Reglindis, 155, 157; sculpture portrait at Naumburg, 154 reht, 217, 232n8 Reinl, Harald, works by: Die Nibelungen, 134 relationships, same sex, 168; gendered, 183 Remarque, Erich Marie, works by: All Quiet on the Western Front, 75 restoration, 199; of Mabonagrin in courtly society, 210; of social order, 197 rex iustus, 220 Ried, Hans, 170 Rinke, Moritz, works by: Die Nibelungen. Siegfrieds Frauen. Die letzten Tage von Burgund, 136, 141n49 Ripelin, Hugh of Strasbourg, 241, 243, 248 robbers, 211 Rodenegg, 4, 144–45, 150–53, 155–57, 161n22, 162n25 Rome, 50, 64–65, 170, 175, 263 Rüdiger, 79–81, 105, 108, 116, 127, 134 Rumolt, 116n3 Rushing, James, 151, 152, 153, 162n25 Russell, James C., 29, 46n28 Sachs, Hans, 261 Sager, Alexander, 3 Salerno, 173–74 Satan, 2, 37–38, 47n31, 245, 259–60, 264, 268. See also devil; vâlant Saxons, 28–29, 34–35, 45n11 Saxony, 11, 22, 29, 34, 263, 265

Inᴅᴇx Schionatulander, 182 Schmitt, Anneliese, 239 Schneider, Cornelia, 239 Schulte-Wülwer, Ulrich, 126–27 Schulz, James, 168–69, 180, 182, 183n3, 183n4 Schupp, Volker, 151 Schwietering, Julius, 101 Scott, Joan W., 45n15 Sea creature, 219–22, 224, 233n16; captured by Lespia, 218 secularization, 51–52, 67n5 See, Klaus von, 44n1 self-defense, 190, 197 sensus discretio, 179 Sermon on the Mount, 16, 24n18, 29, 34, 39, 264 Seth, 14–15 she-devil, 79, 191. See also vâlandinne Siegfried, 79–80, 82–83, 89, 101–6, 108–12, 114–16, 116n3, 117n8, 133–34, 180–83, 223 Siegfried von Morland, 98 Sieglind (Siegfried’s mother), 117n8 Siegmund, 103–5, 117n8 Sigelint (water sprite), 107–9 Simek, Rudolf, 261 simultaneity, 151, 158 sin, 3, 6, 7–19, 21–22, 37, 50, 59, 64, 100–102, 109–10, 114–15, 118n13, 154, 190, 195–96 Sindolt, 101, 116n3 Singer, Marcus G., 191, 213n6 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 226, 234n24 sixteenth century, 6, 83, 170, 257–58 Slevogt, Max, works by: Kampfpause im brennenden Saal, 127, 140n29 slippery concept of evil, 191, 203, 205, 211–12 Smith, Vance D., 179 social and moral continuum, monstrous figures, 192–95; Guivreiz, 201–2; Oringles, Iwein, Mabonagrin, 203–4, 206–7, 210–12; pure evil, 196, 198, 200 social norms, 190 social order, 177, 186n30

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291

social outsider, 197. See also giant(s) social status, knightly class, 210 Sodom, 3, 7 Sophocles, works by: Oedpidus Rex, 62 spiritual transgendering, 3, 27, 30–32 Stalingrad, 125–26, 128 Star Trek, 165n52 Stephen of Bourbon (Stephanus de Bellavilla), 262 Sterling-Hellenbrand, Alexandra, 4–5, 163n32, 163n33, 163n34 Strasbourg, 154, 157 strength, 174 subordination, 169, 179–81; of man, 177 subservience, 175, 183, 186n29; of woman to man, 168–69 suffering, 1, 27, 39, 41–42, 73, 76, 79, 81, 84, 88–90, 99, 105, 113–14, 116, 126–27, 134–35, 152, 169, 171–72, 174, 177, 180 Sullivan, Joseph, 5, 231n2, 235 Sullivan, Robert G., 47n29 superbia (pride), 27, 30, 32, 35–36, 45n11, 56, 103–4, 110, 198–99, 206, 246–47 Swemmel, 123 Temptation of Eve, 179 tenth century, 240 text and image, 248; synergistic, 247 Theory of Adaptation, 30, 44n10 Third Reich, 131, 134–35 thirteenth century, 83, 150, 169, 177; literary texts, 168 Thirty Years’ War, 6, 75, 224, 271 threat: to courtly authority, 199; to courtly culture, 197 timor Dei, 38 transfiguration, 38–40 transgender, 168 triuwe, 105 Trokhimenko, Olga V., 153–54 Troy, 180, 182–83, 187n44 Trutmann, Anton, 172 Tucholsky, Kurt, 255–56 twelfth century, 169, 177; literary texts, 168

292

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Inᴅᴇx

ugliness, 195, 214n16 uncourtliness: bodily deformity, 200; of Harpin, 198; Malcreatiure and the dwarf, 194–95 unjust, 194 unjustified violence, 197 untriuwe, 105 Uta (sculpture portrait at Naumburg), 154–55, 157 Ute, 106–7 vâlandinne, 79, 115, 117n7, 191. See also she-devil vâlant, 115, 190, 204, 207; disobedience to God, 198–99. See also devil Van d’Elden, Stephanie Cain, 174, 186n27 verba de praesenti (as a requirement for marriage), 234n27 Vergangenheitsbewältigung, 134 Vergegenwärtigung (making present), 159 Vickrey, John, 7, 10 Vienna Secession, 126 Vinaver, Eugene, 158, 164n50 violence against women, 211–12, 219, 220–21, 225–26 Virgin Mary, 41–42 visualization, 144, 157, 158; of romance, 150 Volker, 27, 120, 128, 135 Volsunga Saga, 121–22 Wace, 158 Wack, Mary Francis, 174 Walter, Christopher, 33–34 Wandhoff, Heiko, 156 Wapnewski, Peter, 130 Wartburg, 265 Wate, 84–85, 88, 98–100, 102, 109–10, 115 Wehrmacht, 126, 128 Weimar, 255; Weimar period, 120, 123, 130; Weimar Republic, 131

Werden, 32 Whitaker, Muriel, 151, 152 Whitman, Jon, 158 Widukind, 25n29, 34 Wigamur, 218–30, 234n27 Wigamur, 5, 216–30, 232n12, 234n25; critical editions, 231n1, 231n2 wild women, 218, 224; Lespia, 221–22 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 129, 137 Wilhelmine Germany, 120, 123 Willehalm, 74, 91n6, 169. See also Wolfram von Eschenbach Willehalm (Wolfram’s depiction), 74, 91n6 Willson, H. B., 101–2, 113–14 wine (and health), 171 Winfrey, Oprah, 168 Wittenberg, 267–68 Wittenwiler, Heinrich, works by: Der Ring, 4, 75, 86, 88–90 Wolfdietrich A, 85 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 147–48, 235n32 Wolfram von Eschenbach, works by: Parzival, 111, 114, 169, 182, 192, 195, 216; Willehalm, 74, 91n6, 169 World War I, 124, 127, 129, 131, 133 World War II, 67n2, 127, 129, 134–35 Worms, 80, 103–4, 108, 112, 114, 116n3 Wright, Rosemary Muir, 242 Wülpensand, 84, 100, 102, 109, 112 Wunderlich, Werner, 123, 126 xylographica, 2. See also blockbook Young Siegfried, 112, 114, 116n3 youth, 2, 52–55, 57–59, 130, 206, 210, 212, 217 zwîvel, 50, 62, 172