Book/Printed Material Gospel Book of Otfrid von Weissenburg. Otfrids von Weissenburg Evangelienbuch, Codex Frisingensis
About this Item
Title
- Gospel Book of Otfrid von Weissenburg.
Other Title
- Otfrids von Weissenburg Evangelienbuch, Codex Frisingensis
Summary
- Otfried, a learned monk of the second half of the ninth century at Weissenburg (present-day Wissembourg) in Alsace and pupil of Rabanus Maurus (circa 780--856), an early abbot of Fulda, introduced the use of end rhyme into Old High German poetry. Between 863 and 871 he produced a metrical version of the Gospels or, rather, a Gospel harmony. His work is a "harmonizing" assemblage of selected texts from all four Gospels that tells the story of the life of Christ in southern Rhine Franconian dialect. It is divided in five books with a prologue and is thus a counterpart to the Old Saxon Heliand (an epic poem written down in the early to mid-ninth century that recounts the life of Jesus). The manuscript presented here, consisting of 125 parchment leaves, was copied in 902-5 in Freising by order of Bishop Waldo of Freising (in office circa 884-circa 906) from a codex borrowed from Weissenburg. It shows the transition from Carolingian minuscule to the 10th-century script. The first half of each line is in the left-hand column, the second half in the right-hand column, and the odd-numbered lines begin with red initials. In 1803, when Freising Cathedral Library was secularized, the manuscript was untraceable. It took another year to detect it in the cathedral archives, from where it was transferred to the Munich Court Library, predecessor of today's Bavarian State Library.
Names
- Otfrid, von Weissenburg, active 9th century Author.
- Waldo von Freising, approximately 852 or 853-906 Patron.
Created / Published
- Freising, Germany : [publisher not identified], [902 to 905]
Headings
- - France--Bas-Rhin--Wissembourg
- - Germany--Bavaria--Freising
- - 863 to 871
- - Bible
- - Bible. New Testament
- - German poetry
Notes
- - Title devised, in English, by Library staff.
- - "BSB shelfmark: Cgm 14"--Note extracted from World Digital Library.
- - Original resource extent: 125 folios, parchment ; 31.75 x 22 centimeters.
- - Original resource at: Bavarian State Library.
- - Content in Old High German (ca. 750-1050).
- - Description based on data extracted from World Digital Library, which may be extracted from partner institutions.
Medium
- 1 online resource.
Digital Id
Library of Congress Control Number
- 2021668213
Online Format
- compressed data
- image