Illustrated fragment of Der Welsche Gast by Thomasin of Zerklaere, on vellum, in Middle High German, c.1300–50 (Southern? Germany)

Illustrated fragment of Der Welsche Gast by Thomasin of Zerklaere

on vellum, in Middle High German, c.1300–50 (Southern? Germany), 288 × 207 mm; written in Littera pre-gothica in brown ink in two columns of 40 lines, ruled; first letter of each line highlighted in red, with two Lombard initials four-lines-high, one in red, one in blue with pen-work flourishes in contrasting colour; decorated with three illustrations depicting: 1. A knight being undressed by the vices Malice, Lie, and Inconstancy; 2. A circle showing the intricate connection of the three personified virtues of Law, Nobility, and Courtliness; 3. Two knights jousting; the fragment is cut in a very distinct dust-jacket shape, with two repairs to the head of the leaf, colours smudged, a few minor holes along fold lines where the fragment fitted around the spine of a book and experienced the most stress, text rubbed and smudged, in places illegible, dark spotting and running of ink where glue might have been applied to affix the fragment to the book it was meant to protect.

A NEWLY DISCOVERED FRAGMENT OF THE POPULAR MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN TEXT ‘DER WELSCHE GAST’ BY THOMASIN OF ZERKLAERE

PROVENANCE

1. Written between 1300–1350 in (Southern?) Germany in an Upper German dialect.
2. Used as a book binding, likely after the 15^th century, similarly to the Grimm fragment described by Kries 1984. The Grimm fragment offers parallels not only in appearance but also in its later use as a binding. The fragment at hand was cleverly cut to shape to fit neatly around a book.
3. Private collection, USA.

The fragment is not recorded in the Handschriftencensus, the Schoenberg Database of Medieval Manuscripts, or on Rare Book Hub.

COMMENTARY

One of the most intriguing works of the German Middle Ages, Thomasin of Zerklaere’s Der Welsche Gast was dedicated to the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire. Written during a period of great unrest, Thomasin’s work provided, for the first time in Middle High German, a comprehensive moral compendium on how to lead a virtuous life; covering topics from table manners to instructions on how to be a just ruler.

Coined “a linguistic phenomenon without comparison within the corpus of German literature of the Hohenstaufen period” (Gibbs/McConnell 2009 quoting Neumann), we are delighted to present this hitherto unknown fragment of a cornerstone of medieval German literature.

Written in 1215/16 by the cleric Thomasin of Zercleare (c.1186–1238), the Welsche Gast was the first medieval German treatise that offered guidelines on how to lead a virtuous life. It is currently the only known extant work of this author. Thomasin, a native of Friuli, a border region of the Holy Roman Empire, dedicated his work to the German-speaking nobility, who were caught in enduring power struggles between the two ruling houses of Staufen and Guelph since 1198. The date of the work’s creation is contained in a reference to the loss of Jerusalem in July 1187 to the forces of Saladin (v.11717–22) — 28 years before the writing of Der Welsche Gast.

Not much is known with certainty about Thomasin aside from the few general pieces of information contained within the Welsche Gast. The author states that he had not reached thirty when he finished the work (v.2445 ich bin niht alt drîzec jâr), and enjoyed a certain amount of education (v.12256 ze schuole wære). The Necrologium Aquilense, dated c.1300, mentions the death of a certain Thomasinus de Cerclara as a Canonicus; however, it is unclear when he held this post. Thomasin’s exact role and status are highly tenuous; he travelled — likely in his capacity as a cleric — to the court of Otto IV in the retinue of Wolfger, bishop of Passau. It is further suspected that Wolfger might have acted as patron to Thomasin; however, the lack of any form of dedication of Der Welsche Gast to the presumed patron calls this into question.

In his moral-didactical poem Thomasin calls himself a welihischen gast, a stranger from Italy. Writing in German rather than Italian was a deliberate choice, as his work is dedicated to the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire, who often possessed estates in Northern Italy. Based on his work, Thomasin was no stranger to politics and courtly intrigues. Thomasin was an astute observer of the moral decline of society in the Germanic realms and offered a remedy in the form of an extensive moral-didactical poem.

Arranged in ten books, his poem strives to impart courtly and religious values, drawing on a plethora of sources including Boethius, Cicero, Seneca, John of Salisbury, Gregory the Great, but also Wolfram of Eschenbach and his works of Arthurian epic, to create a multilayered text that continues to fascinate and challenge scholarship. His work reveals his extensive clerical as well as classical education that did not eschew worldly literature dealing with the moral failures and redemption of courtly heroes and heroines.

His text deviates from other literary genres popular at the time, as he completely forgoes a narrative framework and focuses purely on the ethical-didactical purpose of the text — nothing should distract the reader or dilute the message he tried to impart. The intention of the work was to instruct the nobility of the Holy Roman Empire; while doing so, the text moves effortlessly from the banal to the most central concerns of humanity, from serving as a primer for his younger readership to offering a meticulous guide to an ethical code for established nobility.

MANUSCRIPTS AND SISTER LEAVES

There are currently 15 known manuscripts and 10 fragments dating from 1256 to 1474, with 14 being illustrated. The number of extant manuscripts suggests that the work was popular, with copies being made more than 200 years after the text was first conceived. Due to their large format and poignant illustrations, it seems that Der Welsche Gast was a popular choice in bookbinding workshops, as both the Grimm fragment and our fragment encountered the same fate.

Our fragment offers similarities to the Grimm fragment in its script and style of decoration; yet it was not made by the same scribe or illuminator, as the faces of our figures are more rounded, while the heads and bodies of the vices and virtues in the Grimm fragment are more elongated. There are also scribal differences between the two fragments, e.g. the execution of the letter ‘z’ is markedly different. The visual and palaeographical similarities lead to the conclusion that our text fragment might have originated in the same region as the Grimm fragment and around a similar time.

The extant manuscripts can be grouped into two text traditions, which currently understand manuscripts A (Heidelberg cpg 389) and F (Schlierbach cod. 28), and a fragment, as closest to the original. The second strand encompasses the Gotha manuscript (G) and some fragments, which present a moderately revised version of A. However, the relationship between the various manuscript traditions is still enigmatic.

A list of all known manuscripts of Der Welsche Gast can be found here on the Handschriftencensus.

TEXT

Written in an Upper German dialect, our fragment provides the text beginning with verse 3813 until 3938. This section is part of Book III, which deals with the ideas of fame, gifts, and acting in an upstanding fashion, not in order to gain worldly fame, but for its inherent goodness. It also lays bare the vices and follies of men’s nature in a very direct fashion that recognises the fallacies of humanity:

“Now that I have spoken about nobility, my heart longs, if you think it a good idea, to say how it is with desire. Every man has his own desire: one loves gambling, the other tends to be a gourmand, the third enjoys falconing, the fourth lies around in an inn, the fifth spends all his time hunting, the sixth whiles away his time with women.” v.3926–3938.

DECORATION

15 of the 25 surviving text witnesses are illustrated. Thomasin’s work encompasses an extensive cycle of motifs that often portray vices and virtues personified. While there are naturally marked differences between the individual illustrations of the text (Schmidt 2022), the illustration cycle has remained overall stable and offers a strong basis for comparison. The relationship between image and text is intriguing; while in other early manuscripts images are often a standalone feature or are used to summarise text, in Der Welsche Gast images extend and complement textual meaning and construct their own visual narration.

The oldest extant manuscript already contains illustrations with some scholars arguing that Thomasin might have been responsible for the original illustration cycle. Welscher Gast Digital, a project undertaken by Heidelberg University, identifies around 120 distinct motifs. Our fragment contains motifs 68, 69, and 70 according to their overview. Following the Heidelberg list, motif 68 shows a jousting scene, a man dreaming of success as a knight. With motif 69 depicting a noble man being undressed by the vices Malice, Lie, and Inconstancy accompanied with titles while motif 70 shows the personifications of Law, Nobility, and Courtliness (Middle High German hoeveschkeit) surrounded by two circles with titles.

The style of the illumination, and particularly the manner of dress, is high medieval. The vices undressing the knight wear long garments that are fitted closely to the lower arms and are cinched with a belt at the waist to fall in almost statuesque folds to the ground. Faces tend to be more rounded with very few lines used to create the angelic looking features that are surrounded by curling locks of hair. A touch of red colour is used to accentuate lips and cheeks, creating idealised figures that represent the courtly and ideal of its time. While the illustration of the jousting knights is rubbed, it still reveals a dynamic composition in which red is used as a highlight to create the bridles of the rearing horses shortly before the impact of the lances.

The surviving manuscripts bear witness to the material changes that the work underwent; initially the text was conceived as a small-format manuscript, but over the course of the 14^th and 15^th centuries the work was transmitted in larger and more impressively decorated codices. The two-column format in use between 1256 and 1340 (Starkey 2022) is a layout traditionally used in vernacular verse-novels (Frank 1993a and b) and gives the fragment its distinct layout and size.

This is an extraordinary fragment which might help inform further research on this text, which was central to the identity of the Germanic nobility of the Holy Roman Empire in the 13^th century and beyond.

LITERATURE

Frank, Barbara. Die Textgestalt als Zeichen: Lateinische Handschriftentradition und die Verschriftlichung der romanischen Sprachen. ScriptOralia 67. Tübingen: Narr, 1993.

Frank, Barbara. “Zur Entwicklung der graphischen Präsentation mittelalterlicher Texte.” Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 47 (1993): 60–81.

Gibbs, Marion, and Winder McConnell. Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest). Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009.

Handschriftencensus. “Welscher Gast.” https://handschriftencensus.de/2254.

Katalog der deutschsprachigen illustrierten Handschriften des Mittelalters. Begonnen von Hella Frühmorgen-Voss und Norbert H. Ott. Herausgegeben von Kristina Freienhagen-Baumgardt, Alisa Neumann, Pia Rudolph und Nicola Zotz. Vol. 12,1: Tugend- und Lastertraktate – Thomasin von Zerklaere, Der Welsche Gast. Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2026.

Kries, Friedrich Wilhelm von. Textkritische Studien zum Welschen Gast Thomasins von Zerclaere.

Schmidt, Peter. “Anfang und Ende des Welschen Gastes: Fragen zur Struktur und zu den Vorbildern des Bilderzyklus.” In Der Welsche Gast des Thomasin von Zerklaere: Neue Perspektiven auf eine alte Verhaltenslehre in Text und Bild, edited by Christian Schneider, Peter Schmidt, Jakub Šimek, and Lisa Horstmann, 93–125. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Universitätsverlag, 2022.

Starkey, Kathryn. “Die Entstehung eines Nachschlagwerks.” In Der Welsche Gast des Thomasin von Zerklaere: Neue Perspektiven auf eine alte Verhaltenslehre in Text und Bild, edited by Christian Schneider, Peter Schmidt, Jakub Šimek, and Lisa Horstmann, 151–177. Heidelberg: Heidelberger Universitätsverlag, 2022.

Welscher Gast Digital. https://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/wgd/.