Friday, February 22, 2013

Digital facsimile of the week: Augsburg UB Hss Cod.I.3.2.3

Earlier this week, the Augsburg UB released a facsimile of Hss Cod. I. 3. 2. 3 (formerly Oettingen-Wallersteinsche Bibliothek; Karin Schneider's description in the UB Augsburg catalog here). The facsimile of the entire manuscript is a 249 MB PDF file, but pages can also be downloaded as single PDF files. What caught my attention is that this facsimile adds to the short but growing list of digitalized manuscripts of the Sibyllenweissagung, about which the fundamental bibliography includes
  • Neske, Ingeborg. Die spätmittelalterliche deutsche Sibyllenweissagung: Untersuchung und Edition. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1985.
  • Schanze, Frieder. “Wieder einmal das ‘Fragment vom Weltgericht’ - Bermerkungen und Materialien zur‘Sybillenweissagung’.” Gutenberg-Jahrbuch 75 (2000): 42–63.

Schanze provides a list of 44 Sibyllenweissagung manuscripts (handschriftencensus.de now lists 45), of which the Augsburg manuscript is #2. Taking a quick look, it appears that the list of online facsimiles now includes the following (using Schanze's numbering):

2. Augsburg UB Cod. I. 3. 2o 3 (link)
8. Dresden SLUB M 209 (link)
21. München BSB Cgm 746 (link)
23.  München BSB Cgm 5249/41 (link)

The Handschriftencensus records don't list any additional facsimiles, and the records for 2 and 21 above haven't yet been updated to reflect the availability of online images.

Friday, February 15, 2013

Paul Grebner bibliography 0.50

Update 0.50 This update starts filling in Grebner's appearances in England,the last empty category in the bibliography, with entries drawn from the ESTC. I haven't started listing the English works that mention Grebner in passing or give short excerpts but do not mention him on the title page. A problem yet to be addressed is how the English broadsides and pamphlets are related to the excerpts that appear in compilations.

I've also reordered the categories to something that makes a bit more sense based on what I've found so far: Early printed works, manuscripts, German editions, Dutch editions, British editions, other European editions, and secondary literature.

Update 0.43. The early Dutch editions now include the hybrids of Grebner's second prophecy and "Friess II," and I've simplified the early Dutch pamphlets, now that I see that the later pamphlets use different titles for what is in most respects the same work. The relationship between the Dutch pamphlets of ca. 1590 and those of 1599-1610 needs some work. I've also added an unattested early English and French edition, and the manuscripts listed by Carlos Gilly in the footnotes of his recent article.

Update 0.40. This update adds the following:
  • Three encyclopedic entries on Grebner from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
  • Six German pamphlets from the early seventeenth century indexed under "Paul Gräbner."
  • One more Dutch pamphlet from 1599.
  • The entries IV-VII have been renumbered as V-VIII.
I'm adding a break to this entry here because it's becoming rather long. Click below for more.

Friday, February 8, 2013

Abstract: "Rupescissa in the Reformation: Fluid Texts and the Boundaries of the Middle Ages"

This is the abstract I submitted for the paper I'll present in Kalamazoo in May. One of the significant things about "Wilhelm Friess" is that the first Friess prophecy was actually an abridgment of Rupescissa's Vademecum, so that Rupescissa's work turns out to have been far more accessible to a broad spectrum of readers in the sixteenth century than previously known. What I find particularly interesting, however, is the sheer variability of the text. The different versions appear in quick succession and change rapidly in a way we usually associate more with manuscript transmission than with printing.
Abstract: “Rupescissa in the Reformation: Fluid Texts and the Boundaries of the Middle Ages”
In a 1996 article (republished in English translation as “The Fluid Text” in 2005), Joachim Bumke observed that the textual histories of medieval courtly epics do not correspond to the model of classical Lachmannian textual criticism. It is the oldest manuscripts that are most variable and resistant to analysis as descendants of a single archetype. Bumke attributes the unwieldy stemmata of courtly epics to the function of the written word in the thirteenth centuries, which he contrasts with its radically different use in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even in the second half of the sixteenth century, however, the same kind of convoluted, irresolvable textual history can be found in the case of the “Prophecies of Wilhelm Friess,” the most popular German prophetic pamphlet of the second half of the sixteenth century. The text of these pamphlets is in fact an abridgement of the Vademecum of Johannes de Rupescissa, and these pamphlets represented the most significant route for the distribution of Rupescissa’s apocalypticism into Reformation Germany. Knowing the Latin source and the French redaction upon which “Wilhelm Friess” was based allows us reconstruct the text’s history and to see with unusual clarity how it changed within the space of a few years. In the decade following its translation from a French exemplar in 1557, “Wilhelm Friess” exhibited all the textual fluidity that Bumke observed in the centuries-long textual histories of medieval courtly epics. Is Bumke’s appeal to the different functions of the written word between 1200 and 1500 untenable? I propose that textual fluidity is a marker for medieval modes of thought that is determined not only by time but also my such non-chronological criteria as genre.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Even more Zengg (updated)

Update 3 May 2013: I've added Melchior Amerbach's Vom Ende der Welt to the list of printed attestations of "Zengg" in print,

Update 1 February 2013: I've now seen images of one additional Zengg edition, which I have added as number 14 to the list of editions below, along with another edition of 1563 under the same title, which I haven't yet seen. On the title page of the Leiden copy of the 1562 edition, there is a manuscript note "1562," but I don't actually see any obvious reasons for dating this edition to that year. Also, Leiden UB has one of the easiest and most efficient systems for ordering facsimiles that I've seen.

 * * *

In a comment, Klaus Graf points to his compilation of manuscripts, prints, and editions of Dietrich von Zengg/Theodericus Croata, with links to digital facsimiles. His list of manuscripts includes two (Graz UB and Harvard UL) not found in Wolfram Schmitt's brief Verfasserlexikon article, now over 30 years old.

The complete list of printed editions (as of 3 May 2013) includes the following:
  1. [Augsburg: Johann Froschauer, 1503]. ISTC it00146420 (BSB facsimile)
  2. [Munich: Hans Schobser, 1512]. VD16 T 732 (BSB facsimile)
  3. [Augsburg: Erhard Oeglin, 1520]. VD16 T 735
  4. [Cologne: Hermann Bungart, 1520]. VD16 T 733
  5. [Munich: Hans Schobser, 1520]. VD16 T 734
  6. [Strasbourg: Johann Grüninger, 1520]. VD16 ZV 21002
  7. [Augsburg: Heinrich Steiner, 1530]. VD16 T 736 (BSB facsimile)
  8. [Nuremberg: Hieronymus Andreae], 1536. VD16 T 737
  9. [n.p.: n.p.], 1542. VD16 T 738
  10. [Nuremberg: Hans Guldenmund, 1546]. VD16 C 953 (with "Hidden Prophecy" of Johann Carion)
  11. Frankfurt am Main: Hermann Gülfferich, [ca. 1545; 1548 (my dating)]. VD16 A 2161. (BSB facsimile)
As Ain Practice / Oder Weyssagung ains gelerten mans mit namen Jeremias von Pariß..., with text apparently following the "Zengg" rather than the "462" version (noted in Talkenberger, Sintflut, 468).
  1. [Straßburg: Johann Knobloch d.Ä. um 1525]. VD16 J 231
As Prophecy ... funden worden in Osterreich uff einem Schloß das heißt Altenburg. Ist gemacht von einem Münich Carmeliten ordens von Prag. Da man zalt nach der geburt Christi Vierhundert Zweyundsechtzig Jare
  1. Freiburg/Breisgau: [Johann Wörlin, 1522]. VD16 D 1458 (HAB facsimile)
  2. [Speyer: Jakob Schmidt, 1523]. VD16 D 1457
  3. [N.p.: n.p., 1562]. Not in VD16. Leiden UB (Thyspf 9).
  4. [N.p.: n.p.], 1563. Not in VD16. (PDF catalog description of a microfilm here; BSB OPAC link here)

As Vaticinia postremi seculi Duo: Das ist Zwo wundersame unnd verborgene Weissagung von veränderung und zufälligen Glück der Höchsten Potentaten deß H. Römischen Reichs (with "Hidden Prophecy" of Johann Carion):
  1. Darmstadt : Balthasar Hoffmann, 1612. VD17 23:327852S
  2. Darmstadt : Balthasar Hoffmann, 1619. VD17 7:707451Q
  3. [n.p.: n.p., ca. 1621]. VD17 1:063153A
Courtney Kneupper's dissertation might help clear up the origin of Dietrich von Zengg and the relationship between the various versions, but I don't know what direction she ultimately ended up taking with Zengg.