Friday, August 29, 2008

Codex Manesse

medieval knight and horse
Herr Ulrich von Liechtenstein
[now where have I heard that name before?]



medieval musicians play for the king
Meister Heinrich Frauenlob



medieval man winched up castle wall
Herr Kristan von Hamle



jousting medieval knights
Herr Walther von Klingen



man reading scroll
Graf Rudolf von Neuenburg



tournament champion receiving tribute
Herzog Heinrich von Breslau



medieval falconry
Konradin von Hohenstaufen



male and female playing chess
Markgraf Otto IV. von Brandenburg



gathering in tent pavilion
Meister Gottfried von Straßburg



illuminated manuscript - male and coats of arms
Der Tannhäuser



backgammon game in medieval manuscript
Herr Goeli



knights in combat outside castle
Kristan von Luppin



medieval sailing ship
Herr Friedrich von Hausen


Codex Manesse may well be the quintessential medieval manuscript. The parade of miniatures - gallant knights and comely maidens, chess, backgammon and falconry, jousting tournaments and heraldry, castles and court musicians - feature the types of (near) cliché imagery we all immediately identify with the period.

The manuscript was compiled in the early 1300s at the request of the Manesse family in an attempt to record the major figures of the minnesang - the German tradition of composing and performing love songs, similar to the provincial troubadours of France.

The 137 manuscript illustrations depict 12th and 13th century poets (minnesänger) in scenes reflective of their names or themes from their songs. They mostly came from the nobility - Dukes, Kings and Counts - but sometimes the minnesang included educated members of the middle and lower classes.

The Manesse brothers observed that the bourgeois classes of their time were gaining in power, partly as a result of the 13th century interregnum that had seen much of the authority of the Holy Roman Empire ceded to territorial rulers. New forms of literature - particularly the fables - were replacing the minnesang as the dominant oral and written tradition, so the motivating force behind the production of Codex Manesse was as a means to preserve the history of the declining Germanic troubadour culture. Codex Manesse remains, therefore, the most important primary source document for love songs of the middle ages in middle high German.

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