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The Origins of the Medieval Humility Formula
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Middle high german poetry, which begins in the last decades of the eleventh century, was in the hands of clerics for nearly a century. Clerics treat religious material in the sense of their priestly office. Some of those who identify themselves add to their name the word “priest.” As they indicate in the prayers with which they begin and end their poems, they stand before God as authors of their poems, together with their audience, in order to honor Him and to instruct their hearers. For who can praise God without knowing Him? “Sed quis te invocat nesciens te?” says Saint Augustine, the great model of medieval piety, at the beginning of his Confessions.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1954
References
1 Die Entstehung des Kreuzzugsgedankens, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte, vi (1935).
2 R. Ritter, Die Einleitungen der altdeutschen Epen (diss. Bonn, 1908).
3 R. Stroppel, Liturgie und geistliche Dichtung zwischen 1050-1300, Deutsche Forschungen, No. 17 (1927) has unfortunately missed the significance of the liturgical attitude of the poet in the prayers which enclose the poem. This would have been the most fruitful approach.
4 Abh. der Gesellschaft der Wiss. zu Göttingen, phil. hist. Klasse, n.F., xvii, 3 (1921).
5 Cf. G. Misch, Geschichte der Autobiographie, 3rd ed. (Bern: Francke, 1950), p. 650
6 Th. Frings and G. Schieb, Heinrich von Veldeke: Grundlegung einer Veldekekritik, Vol. ii: Der Prolog und die Epiloge des Servatius (Halle: Niemeyer, 1948), p. 178.
7 Drei Veldekestudien, Abh. der dt. Akademie der Wiss. zu Berlin, phil. hist. Klasse (1947), No. 6, pp. 34 ff.
8 In referring to the title “meister” in Veldeke's poem, I pointed out that Lamprecht could not have called himself “der gute phaffe Lamprecht” at the end of his Alexander. I should have added that the mention of his name at the beginning of the poem immediately after the verse: “Sîn [i.e., des liedes] gevûge ist vil reht” cannot be attributed to Lamprecht himself.
9 Curtius' view of the relationship of medieval literature to classical antiquity and especially of the relationship between vernacular and Latin literature reminds one of the way Wilhelm Meyer used to discuss the German strophes attached to some of the love poems in the Carmina Burana half a century ago. Curtius met the same positivistic approach in his teacher Gröber. Leo Spitzer strongly emphasizes in his review (AJP, lxx, 425 ff.) the way in which Curtius has gone back to this phase of research although 50 profitable years of medieval study have passed since then.
10 In 1927 I wrote in Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum, xl, 29, that Zahlenmystik in medieval poets should be treated seriously; I am just as anxious now that its significance should not be over-emphasized, because more people are able to count than to weigh.