Wikipedia

Liber Vagatorum

Liber Vagatorum (Latin for 'Book of Vagabonds')[a] is an anonymously published book first printed in Pforzheim, southwestern Germany, probably in 1509 or 1510. It comprises three parts: the first features a catalogue of character types of wandering beggars, the second describes tricks of deception they allegedly use, and the third provides a list of words in their cant known as Rotwelsch. Except for the Rotwelsch glossary, Liber Vagatorum is entirely written in German despite its Latin title, thereby appealed to a broader audience rather than the learned class of the era. A well-known hypothesis as to its authorship is that Matthias Hütlin [de], a 16th-century Spitalmeister (lit. 'hospital master') of Pforzheim, was the anonymous author; however, this theory remains contested.

Liber Vagatorum
Title page of a 1510 edition; the image of a travelling beggar and his family was shared with little to no alteration by most of its earliest editions.[1]
EditorMartin Luther (1528 edition)
TranslatorJohn Camden Hotten
LanguageGerman
Subject
Publication date
c. 1509/1510[2][3]
Publication placeGermany
Published in English
1860
Media typePrint
Pages64 (English edition)
OCLC3080033
LC ClassPF5995 .L88 (1528 edition)
HV4485 .L6 (English edition)
Original text
Liber Vagatorum at Center for Retrospective Digitization
TranslationLiber Vagatorum at Project Gutenberg

Liber Vagatorum became a bestseller soon after the initial print and was reprinted many times over under several different titles during the 16th to the 18th century. Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, edited a few of its editions beginning in 1528 and added his own preface to them, which was in part a polemic against the Jews and warned the reader not to give the wandering beggars alms as it was, in Luther's religious conviction, to forsake the truly poor.

Contents

edit

Liber Vagatorum comprises three parts.[4] The first part is organised in twenty-eight chapters that describe the "secrets" of various types of beggars; one of the types is Dützbetterin—women who claim that they have given birth to a toad, a story first documented in 1509.[5][b] The second instructs the reader on how to avoid their traps and trickery.[4] The third provides a glossary of Rotwelsch words.[4] Liber Vagatorum is, despite its Latin title, entirely written in German except for the Rotwelsch words, thereby appealed to a broader audience rather than the learned class of the era.[4]

Most of the earliest editions were adorned on the title page with a woodcut of a beggar leading his wife and child on their journey on foot.[1] A woodcut of a fool on horseback holding a hand mirror—created by Hans Dorn, a printer who was active in Brunswick—was used as the title illustration of a later edition.[6]

Sources and authorship

edit

John Camden Hotten, who translated Liber Vagatorum into English in 1860, stated that it had been compiled from Johannes Knebel [de]'s reports of trials held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1475, when "a great number of vagabonds, strollers, blind men, and mendicants of all orders were arrested and examined".[7] These trials were later described in a manuscript of Nuremberg diplomat and scholar Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner von Eschenbach (1673–1752), which was printed in Johann Heumann von Teutschenbrunn [de]'s 1749 text Heumanni Exercitationes iuris universi, Volume One, Chapter XIII "Observatio de lingua occulta ('An observation of a secret language')". Knebel's account is nearly identical with Ebner's.[7] According to German philologist Friedrich Kluge (1856–1926), Liber Vagatorum was, in part, based on the text Basler Rathsmandat wider die Gilen und Lamen ('Basel Council's Mandate against the Gilen and Lamen') published around 1450, which included a short list of Rotwelsch words.[8] Since the three sections of Liber Vagatorum are not coordinated well—for example, the glossary in the third does not list some of the Rotwelsch words used in the first—Kluge concluded that the author likely had combined three different sources.[8]

A well-known hypothesis as to the book's authorship is that Matthias Hütlin [de], the Spitalmeister (lit. 'hospital master') of Pforzheim, was the anonymous author.[5] Hütlin belonged to the Order of the Holy Ghost, a Roman Catholic religious order devoted to the care of the ill, the poor and the orphaned; the order ran hospitals throughout Europe. He was initially provisor hospitalis (lit. 'hospital provider') and, at the suggestion of Christopher I, Margrave of Baden, was elected Spitalmeister of Pforzheim by the general chapter of the order in Strasbourg in 1500.[9]

Publication history

edit

The four earliest editions of Liber Vagatorum were printed probably in 1509 or 1510; the first among them was printed in Pforzheim and in High German.[2] The book was met with immediate popularity, getting at least 14 more editions printed in 1511.[10] Some of them were in Low German or Low Rhenish,[3] and one had its Rotwelsch glossary expanded to list 280 words.[10]

 
Martin Luther's preface in Von der falschen Betler Büberey ('On the Deceitful Deeds of Beggars'), with his name Latinised as "Martini Lutheri"

About 20 more editions were published in the remainder of the 16th century and some of them had altogether different titles.[10] Beginning from 1528, a few editions titled Von der falschen Betler Büberey ('On the Deceitful Deeds of Beggars') were edited by Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, who rewrote some of the book's passages and added his own preface to it.[1][10] Those who read only the 1528 or a later edition with Luther's preface sometimes mistakenly ascribed the book's authorship to him.[5] In the preface, Luther regretted that he had been deceived by some of the types of the wandering beggars Liber Vagatorum disclosed and confessed his belief that such deceit signified the devil's reign over the world. Luther warned the reader not to give the beggars alms because, he argued, it was to forsake the truly poor, and declared that the Jews had contributed Hebrew words as a main basis of Rotwelsch.[5] Hotten partially agreed to Luther's linguistic opinion, saying that the Hebrew seemed to be "a principal element [of Rotwelsch]".[11] English historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth surmised that the Hebrew words had entered Rotwelsch via Yiddish.[12]

From around 1540, some editions were titled inaccurately Die Rotwelsch Grammatic (lit. 'The Rotwelsch Grammar').[10] A 1580 reprint of Von der falschen Betler Büberey was titled Ein Büchlein von den Bettlern genant Expertus in truphis (lit. 'A Little Book about Beggars, or, Expert in Frauds').[10] Around six more editions were printed in the 17th century and at least two more in the 18th century.[10]

See also

edit

Notes

edit

a. ^ For the variations of its title, see Publication history.

b. ^ The book's earliest known edition bears the typeface of Thomas Anshelm [de], whose printing work apparently ended in 1511.[5] These clues narrow the date of the first edition.[5]

References

edit

Citations

edit
  1. ^ a b c Hotten 1860, p. xvii.
  2. ^ a b Considine 2017, p. 36.
  3. ^ a b Bosworth 1976, p. 8.
  4. ^ a b c d Rosenfeld 1988, p. 100.
  5. ^ a b c d e f Rosenfeld 1988, p. 99.
  6. ^ Hill-Zenk 2010, p. 331
  7. ^ a b Hotten 1860, p. xiii.
  8. ^ a b Kluge 1901, p. 35.
  9. ^ Achnitz 2015, p. 1687.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g Considine 2017, p. 37.
  11. ^ Hotten 1860, p. xxxvii.
  12. ^ Bosworth 1976, p. 9.

Works cited

edit
  • Achnitz, Wolfgang, ed. (2015). "Hütlin". Deutsches Literatur-Lexikon: Das Mittelalter – Autoren und Werke nach Themenkreisen und Gattungen [German Literature Encyclopaedia: The Middle Ages – Authors and Works by Subject and Genre] (in German). Vol. 7. Das wissensvermittelnde Schrifttum im 15. Jahrhundert [The literature conveying knowledge in the 15th century]. De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110367454. ISBN 9783110367454.
  • Hill-Zenk, Anja (2010). "Der Drucker Johannes Dorn in Braunschweig" [The Printer Johannes Dorn in Braunschweig]. Der englische Eulenspiegel: Die Eulenspiegel-Rezeption als Beispiel des englisch-kontinentalen Buchhandels im 16. Jahrhundert [The English Eulenspiegel: The Eulenspiegel Reception as an Example of the English-Continental Book Trade in the 16th Century] (in German). Walter de Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110253856. ISBN 9783110253856.
Retrieved from "https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Liber_Vagatorum&oldid=1243772741"