Christoph Egger-Herwig Weigl (Hg.)
Text - Schrift - Codex
Quellenkundliche Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung
Maximilian Diesenberger, Wahrnehmung und Aneignung der Natur in der Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium
Helmuth Reimitz, Ein karolingisches Geschichtsbuch aus Saint-Amand. Der Codex Vindobonensis palat. 473
Alexander Hecht, Überlegungen zu einem hochmittelalterlichten Traditionsbuch. Der Liber delegacionum aus Reichersberg am Inn
Paul Herold, Ein Urkundenfund aus dem verschollenen Archiv des aufgehobenen Benediktinerklosters (Klein-)Mariazell. Texte zur Beziehung der Pfarre Kaumberg und der Herren von Arberg zum Kloster Mariazell in Österreich
Andrea Sommerlechner, Innozenz III. und die oberitalienischen Kommunen
Brigitte Pohl-Resl, Ein Passauer Historikerstreit im 13. Jahrhundert. Ein Versuch, die Geschichte stillzulegen.
Karl Ubl und Lars Vinx, Kirche, Arbeit und Eigentum bei Johannes von Paris, O.P. (1306)
Karel Hruza, Audite et cum speciali diligentia attendite verba literae huius. Hussitische Manifeste: Objekt - Methode - Definition.
Maximilian Diesenberger
Wahrnehmung und Aneignung der Natur in den Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium / Perception and appropriation of Nature in the Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium
The presentation of the landscape around Fontanelle in the Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium is based on a wide range of quotes and allusions from various texts. Thus the author describes the use of the land, the political conditions, the social space of the monastery, the ideal of the desert landscape, a biblical topography, but he also addresses sense perceptions and every day experiences. The sources for this representation were charters, bible commentaries, texts from the desert fathers, the tractates of Bede, the lives of saints from his own monastery, church histories, etc. These sources were not randomly thrown together, but consciously selected. These selection processes can be reconstructed in the sources from Fontanelle which figure prominently in the Gesta. On one hand, as many levels of experience as possible were to be addressed; on the other, one tried to escape the conventional associations that came with them. The representation of the landscape around Fontanelle serves as a means of reading forth the monastery's history from a description of its lands; by raising the landscape into several levels of experience, one lifted it out of the conventional. For this one needed an image which had never been used before: that of the tides. This motif was not associated with the idea of a founder-saint, but was useful precisely because of the diversity of interpretations: this ranged from the real experience of the sea's flow into the Seine to the allusion to a river of paradise in the Frankish kingdom.
Helmut Reimitz
Ein karolingisches Geschichtsbuch aus Saint-Amand. Der Codex Vindobonensis palat. 473 / A carolingian history-book from Saint-Amand: Codex Vindobonensis palat. 473
The Codex Vindobonensis pal. 473, written at Saint Amand around 870, contains a number of texts on Frankish history: in addition to the Liber Pontificalis, it includes excerpts from the Liber Historiae Francorum, the continuator of Fredegar, the Annales Regni Francorum, a part of Einhard's Vita Karoli, a genealogy of the Carolingians and a catalogue of Frankish kings from Priamus to Louis the Pious. Many of these texts appear in a very specific form, but they have generally been neglected by modern editors or treated, in isolation from one another, merely as variants of the works in question. But the key to understanding the peculiarity of the forms of the different texts collected in the codex lies in seeing them not as variants or derivatives, but as carefully-selected works offering an integrated, and highly specific, vision of Frankish history up to the time of Louis the Pious. Although incipits, explicits, and page breaks mark the various texts as distinct (and to some degree independent) sections of the codex, we must work from the assumption that the entire volume was conceived as a whole, and that the idiosyncracies reflected in the indidvidual texts spring from this conception. A peculiarity of this vision is its attempt to reconcile the legitimation of West-Frankish lordship in the reign of Charles the Bald with a Neustro-Burgundian tradition, which can be seen especially clearly in Cvp 473's appropriation of Merovingian history. More precisely, links to other texts produced in the circle of Charles the Bald in order to legitimize his rule in Lotharingia, especially with Hincmar of Reims' historical argumentation on the occasion of Charles' coronation in Metz, 869, establish a convincing context for the conception of history in Cvp 473.
Alexander Hecht
Überlegungen zu einem mittelalterlichen Traditonsbuch. Der Liber delegacionum aus Reichersberg am Inn / Considerations on a Traditionsbuch of the High Middle Ages: The Liber delegacionum from Reichersberg am Inn
The Liber delegacionum of the Reichersberg monastery, situated on the shore of the river Inn, is one of the several examples of Traditionsbücher composed in medieval Bavaria. Donations made to the monasteries were entered into the Traditionsbücher along with the names of the donors in question - in the case of Reichersberg these entries date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Important charters were sometimes copied into these codices, and in the Liber delegacionum the monks even recorded a detailed report of a quarrel between the monastery and the descendants of its founder concerning properties at Münsteuer. This controversy lasted for many years and threatened the existence of the young community.
Studying the examples of the Liber delegacionum and three other codices traditionum (of Gars am Inn, Rohr and Neustift near Brixen) I suggest that although research on this group of sources has focused almost exclusively on the administrative function of the Traditionsbücher, they should be understood as evidence of a memorial and historiographical project on the part of their authors.
Christoph Sonnlechner
Landschaft und Tradition. Aspekte einer Umweltgeschichte des Mittelalters / Landscape and Tradition. Aspects of an environmental history of the Middle Ages
"Landscapes" are an appropriate focus for studying the interactions between human society and its environment. They may be read as texts or be decoded as a visual representation to discover fundamental aspects of social and economic relations. Analyzing how landscapes are formed and transformed can help to explain these interactions and how they change over time.
The landscape dealt with in this paper is situated in the Waldviertel, a stretch of Lower Austria between the Danube and Bohemia. Attention is focussed on a region well documented by the sources from the Benedictine monastery of Göttweig, which make it possible to give an outline of the genesis of the landscape in the 11th and 12th and its transformation in the 13th and 14th centuries. Necessary basic information is given on the seigneurial system within whose frame environmental developments are to be investigated. The sources and their making are discussed in the context of the seigneurial administration, the scriptorium, space, landscape and time. A closer look is then taken on the interactions between man and the natural environment.
Written sources can fulfil several functions at the same time or sequential functions in subsequent contexts. In analyzing the sources attention has to be paid to their actual function in every instance of communication. Only then it is possible to evaluate their contents. This paper tries to cross the borders of traditional historical interpretation: a model of description derived from the science of ecology is applied to the sources of the 13th and 14th centuries, shedding new light on the landscape elements they describe. To achieve this a common language between biologists and historians has to be found, just as has to be done when applying political concepts of management to the common or individual exploitation of resources in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period.
Thus it becomes possible to make various observations on the late medieval use of landscape ressources and its infrastructure on a securely localized basis, which consequently makes it possible to evaluate ecological structural elements of landscape. On the other hand one may derive information on the changing of cultural landscapes from observing the desertion of villages and the subsequent reorganization of specialized rents.
Paul Herold
Ein Urkundenfund aus dem verschollenen Archiv des aufgehobenen Benediktinerklosters (Klein-)Mariazell. Texte zur Beziehung der Pfarre Kaumberg und der Herren von Arberg zum Kloster Mariazell in Österreich / Recently found charters from the lost archive of the dissolved Benedictine monastery of (Klein-)Mariazell. Sources for the relations of the parish of Kaumberg (Lower Austria) and the lords of Arberg to the monastery Mariazell in Austria
The archival holdings of the Benedictine monastery of (Klein-)Mariazell (in present-day Lower Austria), which was dissolved in 1782, have been considered as lost since 1826 at least. By an inventory of the archive from the 18th century, probably compiled by the monastery's last archivist, Christoph Sporer, we know that there must have been rich holdings of medieval charters. The order of the inventory shows that they were deposited in different drawers according to parishes and lay estates. Until now almost none of the charters' complete texts were known, and the 18th century calendar in the inventory has been regarded with mistrust by researchers.
A discovery in 1997 has altered this picture dramatically: Codex 752 (rot) of the monastery library of Göttweig (Lower Austria) contains 40 complete 17th century copies of charters from Mariazell's archive. It has proved a very fortunate coincidence that these holdings of the äAmt Kaumberg" include some of the monastery's earliest charters. Apart from charters concerning the parish of Kaumberg there are others connected with the neighbouring noble family of Arberg (Araburg) regarding whose history little information hitherto has been available.
Five of the newly found texts date from the 13th century. The majority of the copies, however, are texts from the Later Middle Ages, namely 28 from the 14th and seven from the 15th century. This paper contains a complete edition of all the texts, thus providing researchers with a collection of sources hitherto thought to be lost. An index lists all personal and topographic names.
Andrea Sommerlechner
Papst Innocenz III. und die oberitalienischen Kommunen / Pope Innocent III and the North Italian communes
The relationship between Pope Innocent III and the North Italian communes was characterized by conflicts caused by different attitudes towards the claimants in the German election dispute, by the polity of the city leagues, the pope's claim to pacify Italy, and the communes' measures against the juridical and fiscal immunity of the clergy. Three kinds of sources document the situation: the chronicles of popes and emperors, the annals and chronicles of the Italian cities, and the papal registers. --- Neither papal nor communal chronicles describe a confrontation between pope and communes. Chronicles depict either the pope, who never meets with opposition, or the commune, busy with interior and exterior problems but rarely interacting with the pope. The letters of Innocent III, on the other hand, show an impressive display of rhetoric and a variety of sanctions and reflect the pope's search for a point of attack and his efforts to get a grip on the problem.
Ein Passauer Historikerstreit im 13. Jahrhundert: Ein Versuch, die Geschichte stillzulegen / A historians' controversy in 13th century Passau
Under the authority of Bishop Otto of Passau (1254-1265) a series of manuscripts was compiled containing various administrative texts as well as copies of charters from the early middle ages onwards. Frequently, these copies are the only or at least the earliest form in which these texts are transmitted. So far, the single documents have been used in historical research without any reference to their position in the manuscripts, and the manuscripts have been treated as entities which were created as such. The role of the compiler has never been been questioned. This article shows that the manuscripts actually consist of a set of independent files of quires, each of which has been created for different reasons. This holds true not only for obviously distinct parts like lists of income or properties on the one hand and copies of charters on the other; even the charters themselves have been copied into separate files for different reasons. Bishop Otto's prime objective in doing this was to spin a deliberate and dense literary web to consolidate Passau's constructed past and tradition. The assembly and arrangement of charter material was only one facet of this process, but one which distinguishes Otto's efforts from those of all his predecessors. His use of episcopal lists shows how after he had sorted out the charter material Otto also went back and reworked historiographical fragments created by archdeacon Albert Behaim among others.
Karl Ubl and Lars Vinx
Kirche, Arbeit und Eigentum bei Johannes Quidort von Paris, O.P. (gest. 1306) / Church, labour and property in John of Paris, O.P. (d. 1306)
The contemporary fame of the political theory of the Dominican friar John of Paris derives mainly from the assumption that he had anticipated John Locke's labour theory of property and on this basis develloped a liberalistic concept of state, an interpretation which is evaluated critically in this paper. To accomplish this a hitherto unpublished text by John of Paris showing the canon law background of his property theory is discussed in chapter 1 and edited in the appendix. Starting from this, chapter 2 attempts to reconstruct the rhetorical context of the property theory in his De regia potestate. It can be shown that John's arguments regarding property rights are rather an expression of typically medieval constitutionalism than a modern theory of individual natural rights.
Karel Hruza
Audite et cum speciali diligencia attendite verba litere huius. Hussitische Manifeste: Objekt - Methode - Definition / Audite et cum speciali diligencia attendite verba litere huius. Hussite Manifestos: Object - Methods - Definition
Hussite Manifestos are literary documents of propaganda activities during the Hussite Revolution in Bohemia. They appeared in early forms in 1415, appeared increasingly with the beginning of the revolution in the summer of 1419 (with two peaks in 1420/21 and 1430/31) and were used only sporadically after 1434. They were designed to propagate subjective political and religious thoughts and ideas and to influence both the opinions and the actions of their intended public. Hitherto about 30 Hussite manifestos are known. They were written at various literary levels in Latin, German and Czech. Most of the authors remain anonymous, while the senders and the audiences are often evident or can be identified. Hussite Manifestos made their way to England, France, Spain, Poland and the Empire, but were also meant to be read by Hussite and non-Hussite inhabitants of Bohemia. Though we are missing an extensive study of Hussite Manifestos as well as a definition of "manifesto", the author proposes a series of methods for analysing manifestos, taking into account aspects of communication, literacy, the historical context of text production, linguistics and historical Hilfswissenschaften. As a result the definiton of a (medieval) manifesto is introduced at the end of the study, while the edition of a manifesto from 1417 is included to illustrate the issues in question.