the emergence of the concept "medieval" in central european humanism

The Emergence of the Concept "Medieval" in Central European HumanismAuthor(s): Peter SchaefferSource: The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2 (Oct., 1976), pp. 21-30Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539557 .

Accessed: 24/08/2013 13:44

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The Sixteenth Century Journal is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to TheSixteenth Century Journal.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 192.236.36.29 on Sat, 24 Aug 2013 13:44:45 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=scj

http://www.jstor.org/stable/2539557?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Sixteenth Century Journal VII, 2 (October 1976)

The Emergence of the Concept "Medieval" in Central European Humanism

Peter Schaeffer University of California at Davis

A SPAN OF TIME can be understood as an historical period only when a later age discerns this period as possessing specific characteristics which set it apart from some preceding epoch and also render it historic to the contem- porary understanding. By this preliminary definition something more is in- tended than either a merely chronological entity or a period in a predominant- ly negative sense constituting an interim between two positively evaluated periods. From the earliest designations of any span of time as "medieval" as a point of departure, the present inquiry seeks to establish precisely how this designation once applied was in fact understood by the authors who devised it.

Until the early part of this century the assumption had gone unchal- lenged that the expression "Middle Ages" (medium aevum) was first used by a German professor in Leyden, Georg Horn, in his Orbis politicos of 1667 and that it was popularized by the historical textbooks of Christoph Cellarius, such as his Historia medii aevi of 1688.' In 1910 Paul Joachimsen called attention to the rather startling fact that a century and a half earlier the terms "media aetas" and "media antiquitas" occur in two works published within a few years of one another by the Swiss humanist Joachim Vadianus and the Alsacian Beatus Rhenanus respectively,2 and in the following year he added his modestly expressed assessment, "I observe in passing that in the concept

'Paul Lehmann, Vom Mittelalter und von der lateinischen Philologie des Mittel- alters (Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lateinischen Philologie des Mittelalters, 5:1:1; Munich: C. H. Beck, 1914), p. 2.

2Paul Joachimsen, Geschichtsauffassung und Geschichtschreibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluss des Humanismus (Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Renaissance 6; Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1910), p. 257, n. 103: "Dies [media antiquitas] ist bei Beatus Rhenanus bereits technischer Ausdruck ... Daraus hat sich dann der Begriff media aetas=Mittelalter entwickelt, den ich zuerst bei Vadian finde, und zwar schon im Kommentar zum Pomponius Mela von 1518: Walafridus mediae aetatis autor non ignobilis." The date was an error on Joachimsen's part since the phrase in question does not appear in the first edition of 15.18 but only in the second of 1522. The full passage in this later edition reads: "Oppida [i.e. those on Lake Constance] Brigantium vetustissimum cum amne et arce comitum de Monteforti, de oppido sic Vualaphridus mediae aetatis author non ignobilis, Locus, inquit, est antiquae structurae, servans inter ruinas vestigia, ubi terra pinguis, et fructuariis proventibus apta, montes per gyrum excelsi: eremus vasta et imminens, oppido planicies copiosa. Et infra paulo, Nomen, inquit eius Brigantium." (Pomponii Melae Hispani Libri de situ orbis tres, adiectis Ioachimi Vadiani Helvetii in eosdem scholiis, Basel, 1522, p. 168) The corresponding



22 The Sixteenth Century Journal

of media antiquitas in Rhenanus and that of media aetas, which occurs almost at the same time in the Swiss Vadian, we have the first conscious demarcation of Antiquity against the Middle Ages and the apprehension of these Middle Ages as a concluded period."3 Paul Lehmann recognized this find as a significant discovery4 but turned his own inquiry to verifying that Vadian and Rhenanus were indeed the originators of the terms, secondarily on establishing links between them and Horn-Cellarius, while for the rest the question remains prefatory to his principal concern for the Latin philology of the Middle Ages. Huizinga goes so far as to understand Rhenanus' "media antiquitas" in the sense of our "Middle Ages;"' George Gordon6 and after him Nathan Edel- man7 are almost exclusively concerned with tracing the terminology on the basis of its chronological content into the vernaculars, English and French.8

passage in the first edition (Vienna, 1518, fol. 93b) breaks off after "Monteforti." In itself this would seem to be no more than one of those self-perpetuating errors which result from all subsequent critics' acceptance of the first quotation without verifying it at the source (Lehmann, Huizinga, Gordon and Edelman all derive directly or indirectly from Joachimsen), and Joachimsen, possibly quoting from memory (n.b. the divergence from the peculiar orthography of the Basel edition), erred only as far as the edition and hence the date was concerned. However, the correct date does make a mutual depen- dence between Beatus Rhenanus and Vadian at least possible since Rhenanus in his Commentariolus (1519) refers to Vadian's Mela Scholia (1518), while Vadian's "media aetas" does not appear until 1522. In addition, the disparity between the two editions, for the details of which we must await a future critical edition of the Scholia and especially a comparison of the two editions, points to a development in his historical method within the modest possibilities given at the time. One example, drawn from the introductory "Catechesis in geographiam" as it appears in both editions, may illustrate this development: "POSTREMO Theologis nostris historiae sunt de sanctis passim et beatis, quas barbaro nomine legendas adpellare solent, et apud divum Hieronymum illustrium in religione et fide nostra virorum Catalogus est. Quibus nisi illam amplissimorum itinerum ducem Geographiam adhibeas, nunquam iuxta Melam, ut aiunt, intelliges." (ed. 1518, fol. b4v & cr); "Postremo theologis nostris historiae sunt de sanctis passim et beatis, quas barbaro nomine Legendas appellant. In quibus cum sint multa nec apte admodum, nec historice relata, sunt tamen praecipue obscura, quae regna, urbes, oppida, terras, utcunque legenti offerunt." (ed. 1522, fol. cr).

3"Ich bemerke beilaufig, dass wir in dem Begriff der media antiquitas bei Rhenanus und dem fast gleichzeitig bei dem Schweizer Vadian auftretenden media aetas die erste bewusste Abgrenzung des Altertums gegen das Mittelalter und die erste Erfassung dieses Mittelalters als einer abgeschlossenen Periode haben." Paul Joachimsen, "Tacitus im deutschen Humanismus," Neue Jahrbiucher far das klassische Altertum, Geschichte und deutsche Literatur 14 (1911) 697-717, p. 710.

4Lehmann, p. 3: "Einen nennenswerten Fortschritt in der zeitlichen Verfolgung des Namens 'Mittelalter' hat also nur Joachimsen gebracht."

5J. Huizinga, "Een schakel in de ontwikkeling van de term Middeleeuwen?" Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, Deel 53, Serie A, no. 5, (Amsterdam, 1921), p. 135-145; reprinted in Verzamelde Werken IV, (Haarlem: Tjeenk Willink, 1949), p. 433440, p. 434.

6George Gordon, Medium Aevum and the Middle Age (S. P. E. Tract no. XIX, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1925).

'Nathan Edelman, "The Early Uses of Medium Aevum, Moyen Age, Middle Ages," Romanic Review 29 (1938), 3-25.

8According to the professed purpose of the preceding two authors German fails outside the scope of their inquiries.



The Emergence of the Concept "Medieval" 23

Joachimsen's discovery of the terms thus led to a preoccupation with their descent to the neglect of the context to which they owe their origin and from which they necessarily derive their meaning. It is to this essential context that we shall address ourselves in the following.

Humanistic historiography in Central Europe was not in a position favor- able to discerning the Middle Ages as a specific period defined by a complex of unique characteristics. Despite an increasing admixture of classical learning, which could loosely be called humanistic, such a representative world history as Hartmann Schedel's Liber Chronicarum (1493) is still structurally, even iconographically dominated by the heteronomous division of history into the Seven Ages, of which the Sixth comprises the single period - the great Now - between the First and Second Coming of Christ, between the Incarnation and the Last Judgment. This scheme continues unbroken through the works of, e.g., Nauclerus and Sleidanus into the historiography of the Reformers and for at least the balance of the sixteenth century. Akin to it is the application of the Dream of Daniel of the Four Empires, of which the fourth, the Roman, marks the last great epoch of world history, with the understanding, of course, of ancient Rome and the Holy Roman Empire as a single entity, with a few names borrowed from Byzantium for the intervening period to assure the unbroken line of succession. We can only hint here at the dimensions of what might be called the imperial mystique in German humanism; even Wimpfeling's professedly national history was indebted to it, the imperial histories of Peutinger and Cuspinian attest to it, and it found popular expression in Hans Sachs' engaging verses on the succession of Roman Emperors from Julius Caesar to Charles V, no less than in Caspar Ursinus' curious Monosticha,9 which elicited Erasmus' probably mock indignation that so many famous men had been crowded into such a narrow space.

The belated discovery of Vadian's articulation of a "media aetas" might thus well provoke a still more belated inquiry into what exactly he understood by the term. Its isolated occurrence within an honorific epithet for Walahfrid Strabo in the Mela Scholia gives little indication of its significance. For this one must turn to his De Poetica, 1 0 his lectures on the nature, history and study of literature, which had occupied him for a good many more years earlier but finally appeared one month after the first edition of the Scholia

'The works touched in the foregoing six lines are: Jacob Wimpfeling, Epitome rerum germanicarum (Strassburg, 1505); Peutinger's Kaiserbuch, which remains unpub- lished; Johannes Cuspinianus, De Caesaribus atque Imperatoribus Romanis (Basel, 1561); Hans Sachs, "All romisch kayser nach ordnung . . . ," in Hans Sachs, [Werke], ed. Adalbert v. Keller, 2. Bd. (Bibl. d. litt. Vereins CIII), pp. 353-372 (Stuttgart, 1870); Caspar Ursinus, Monosticha Regum Italiae, Albanorum, Romanorum et virorum illustrium tum Caesarum usque ad nostram aetatem (Vienna, 1528).

1 ? loachimi Vadiani Helvetii De Poetica et Carminis Ratione Liber (Vienna, 1518); [also of the same:] Kritische Ausgabe mit deutscher UJbersetzung und Kommentar von Peter Schaffer, 3. Bde. (Humanistische Bibliothek, Reihe II: Texte, Band 21, 1/3, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973- ).




according to the demands of the publisher. Here he had not explicitly men- tioned a "media aetas," but he had laid the groundwork for an understanding of the term. At the beginning of the chapter devoted to the history of Latin literature,1 1 "De poetarum Latinorum successione," with the significant addition, "et temporum varietate et iactura," Vadian raises the question why Latin literature, or indeed scholarship as a whole (artes et doctrinae), once having reached its apex, was exposed to the ravages of time (molestia temporum), to decline and fall (iactura). He replies with the analogy that as crops are exposed to inclement weather, so here barbarian invasions, warfare and its attendant destructiveness constituted the negative influence, as indeed the arts depend for their existence on the general character of any given age no less than the harvest does on the climate. The succession of Latin poets, he goes on to say, might well be described in the same way that L. Florus compared the course of the Roman Empire to the states of infancy, youth, maturity and old age in a human life, but with the reservation that after this old age there existed the possibility and indeed the fact of a second spring (succrescente iterum re Latina). Still, despite the inauspicious character of those times, there were learned and praiseworthy works (erudita et digna laude opera) produced, among which Vadian, in the distinctly personal and frequently autobiograph- ical turn of his writing, mentions the Hortulus of Walahfrid, his gardening poem, which Vadian himself had discovered in the library of St. Gallen and published in its editio princeps in Vienna in 1510.12

The enigmatic and perhaps over-interpreted epithet in the Scholia reveals itself against this background as a tribute to a kind of literary friend asso- ciated with his own scholarly beginnings, and in the designation "autor non ignobilis"1 3 there is reflected the singular ambivalence particularly of Gerran humanists towards the Middle Ages: committed to "elegantia," to classical Latinity, they had to look upon this age with misgivings ranging from mild condescension to outright scorn; but also committed to a patriotic concern for the Germanic past, they had to extol whatever would in any way advance its glory. A classical expression of this ambivalence is contained in Conrad Celtis'

' Vol. I of the critical edition (above) p. 43-62. ' 2The title Hortulus was given to the poem by Vadian. Cf. also Walahfrid Strabo,

Hortulus: Vom Gartenbau, ed. Werner Naf and Matthias Gabathuler, 2. ed. (St. Gallen: H. Tschudi, 1957).

1 3For once this appears not to be the conventional litotes of which Vadian along with so many of his humanist contemporaries made such abundant use. This is supported by a similar occurrence in the Scholia, where he mentions "Galeottus autem Narniensis multae lectionis homo et Philosophus non sane ignobilis" (ed. 15.18, fol. 6a). Vadian was strongly though not uncritically drawn to Galeotto (Marzi da Narni), whose orthodoxy was, to say the least, highly suspect. Despite this Vadian apostrophizes him as "non sane ignobilis" just as Walahfrid is for him an "author non ignobilis," contrary to the expecta- tion one would have of the times in which he lived.




prefatory letter to his edition of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim (1501),14 and it is no coincidence that Celtis introduced Vadian to literary studies. "Media aetas," though indeed, as Joachimsen stated, for Vadian a period distinct from antiquity and viewed as historic relative to his own time, is nevertheless a period precisely in the history of literature, not in history as such. As a parallel example Romanticism may or may not be a useful designation for an epoch in the history of German (or French or English) literature; no one would pretend that it is a period of world history.

Vadian's later uses of the term "media aetas" and the kindred "media antiquitas" (presently to be examined more closely in connection with Beatus Rhenanus) underscore this essentially philological application as well as the apologetic undertone. Each of the two occurs twice in his treatise De Collegiis Monasteriisque Germaniae veteribus. 1 5 The preface pays tribute to scholarly activity in the monasteries though it rarely resulted in genuine accomplish- ment, as was indeed small wonder during the "media antiquitas," over- burdened and left intellectually destitute by so many adverse conditions.1 6

The examples of documents of bequest and institution (exempla donationum

I4 Most readily accessible in Der Briefwechsel des Konrad Celtis, ed. Hans Rup- prich (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1934), p. 46 1-467, particularly: "Quodsi aliquibus orationis compositio in carmine et oratione eius nasum contraxerit, dent quaeso veniam non sibi, sed illis suis temporibus, quibus nulla alia eloquentia, propter barbarorum diluvium, parens litterarum Italia usa est" (p. 464). Vadian repeats the idea with explicit reference to Celtis (De Poetica I, 54). No such apology was necessary for the Ligurinus, which with its conspicuously superior Latinity and its programmatic glorification of the Barbarossa Empire seemed made to order for the humanistic cause. That it was in fact "made to order" was an impression which gained currency in the eighteenth century with the result that most of the recent critical literature has been concerned with the authenticity and the authorship questions. The reception .of the Ligurinus in the sixteenth century and its conjunction with the Austrias of Richardus Bartholinus under the aegis of the extensive scholia provided both works by Jacob Spiegel in the Vienna edition of 1531 (they remained thus linked in the Reuberiana of 1584) entails a whole complex of questions, all of which await scholarly investigation. The result might shed considerable light not only on the humanist reception of medieval literature, but in particular on the perpetua- tion of the imperial mystique, as shown by the association of the twelfth century epic on Friedrich Barbarossa with the sixteenth century epic on Maximilian I. The tenacious existence of this imperial mystique is expressed in the final words of the introduction to a German translation of the Ligurinus (trans. Theodor Vulpinus, Strassburg, s.d., but apparently from the late nineteenth century), the more curious as they are uttered totally without irony: "Alle guten Deutschen aber, denen dies Buch in die Hand kommt, werden, auch wenn sie es nicht zu Ende lesen, gewiss in den Heilruf einstimmen, mit dem Gunther (X, 634) die Hohenstaufen segnet, indem sie dabei der Hohenzollern gedenken" (p. xiv).

' 5This work was probably completed by 1537 but not published until 1605. It is here quoted from Alamannicarum Rerum Scriptores aliquot Recentiores cumprimis foachimi Vadiani Antiquitates, Tomus tertius et ultimus, ex bibl. Melchioris Haiminsfeldii Goldasti (Frankfurt, 1661.).

' 6" [Monasteria ... ] in quibus licet multi sint, qui ingenuis artibus et disciplinis navant operam, tamen rari sunt interim et pauci, qui doctrinae et eruditionis palmam ferunt, quod quidem et ipsum mediae illi antiquitati, tot incommodis abrutae et desti- tutae, accidisse quis miretur?" (p. 4).




et chartarum mediae antiquitatis) are preceded by a profuse apology to the reader for their inferior Latinity."7 There is a note of condescension in the observation that even the "mediae aetatis temporum periti" knew that the Breisgau was Alemannic.' 8 Only once, in the last of the four instances, is there the faintest hint of a more generally cultural implication beyond the limited philological sense, where Vadian points out that the "mediae aetatis Chronica" around the time of Henry III give constant evidence of rampant avarice and clerical ambition.19

Beatus Rhenanus derives his notion of "media antiquitas" from rather different premises. In his case we can more readily trace a terminological antecedent in the at least kindred expression "media tempestas," which must also be examined in its context. It occurs as early as 1469 in the letter prefaced by loannes Andreae to the Roman edition of Apuleius, in which he pays tribute to his late friend Nicolaus of Cusa: "This man, unexpectedly versed in Latin eloquence to the extent that one rarely encounters among Germans, knew by heart all the histories not only of ancient times but of the intervening period, the older as well as the more recent, down to our present age."20 Passing over the characteristic innuendo of "quod rarum est in Ger- manis," we find in opposition to "historias... priscas" those "medie tempestatis," and these further subdivided into "veteres" and "recentiores" as the inclusive dimensions of Cusanus' literary mastery. The context hardly specifies the phrase beyond its vague reference to chronology,2 1 while the terminus ad quem, "usque ad nostra tempora," seems to exclude the notion of a period viewed as historic, so that in the end one may wonder whether "media tem-

' 7"Chartae ipsae Latine scribebantur, aut certe semilatino sermone scriptas dicere malim. Non potest enim negari barbaries, atque ea quidem crassissima, quam redolent" (p. 33). Finally: "Sed iam ad exempla donationum et chartarum mediae antiquitatis veniendum. Quae tametsi parum lectori probatum iri praesertim delicato viderem, non stylo modo incultissimo, sed vili etiam materia conscripta, tamen digna duxi quae adponerem, quod in illis ceu in speculo quodam illorum temporum turn simplicitatem, turn etiam barbariem et ignorantiam intueri licet" (p. 34). Once again patriotic concern for the Germanic past supersedes humanistic misgivings about the quality of its Latin.

' 8 "Scripta enim erat charta illa donationis in Bublinisuvilare. Neque ignorant vel mediae aetatis temporum periti, pagum Brisgovicum ad Allamaniam attinuisse" (p. 62).

1 9"Atque hactenus quidem de Collegiorum et Monasteriorum statu diximus. Superest, ut de disciplinae casu et temporum inclinatione (quamvis id magna ex parte in operis transcursu a nobis factum sit) pauca quaedam subiciamus. Constanter autem produnt mediae aetatis Chronica nostratia circiter excessum Imp. Hainrici Tertii, saturata iam quadamtenus avaritia, cleri ambitionem longe maxime incruduisse . . ." (p. 68).

2?"Vir ipse, quod rarum est in Germanis, supra opinionem eloquens et latinus, historias idem omnis non priscas modo sed medie tempestatis, tum veteres, tum recen- siores, usque ad nostra tempora memoria retinebat." Apuleius, Opera (Rome, 1469), p. [8].

2 1perhaps in the same way as Biondo had referred to the time from 410 to 1440, with which he was concerned, as "annorum mille et triginta, quot ab capta a Gothis urbe Roma in praesens tempus numerantur"; ed. 1484, fol. A ii, quoted by Gordon, p. 5.




pestas" really means very much more than intermediate period.2 2 Still, it is an early occurrence especially of the suggestive adjective "media," and as far as can be established, an isolated use, though not altogether without echo. Schedel quotes the encomium in his Liber chronicarum, as does Faber Stapulensis in his 1514 Paris edition of the works of Cusanus, a copy of which he sent as a gift to his former student Beatus Rhenanus.23 The terminological line is thus, for what it may be worth, clearly traceable.

But Rhenanus' use of "media antiquitas" again stands in its own context within the process of the reception of Tacitus, specifically in his commentary on the Germania appended to Froben's separatum of 1519.24 It may be said of Rhenanus that he was really the first to read and attempt to explain the Germania in its entirety, rather than exploit it for useful quotations and celebrate it for a monument, as the earlier generations down to Bebel, Peutinger and Nauclerus had done. The goal of the commentary is modest enough, since it seeks to establish only the identity and the location in con- temporary terms of the ancient Germanic tribes, in other words, to give a satisfactory account of the names of places and peoples contained in the Germania. To attain clarity on this point, it is necessary, Rhenanus ad- monishes, to revise the data furnished by the writers of the "prisca antiquitas" by drawing upon those of the "media antiquitas," since otherwise, as he offers by way of example, one might readily fall into the error of attributing what Tacitus says of the Suevi to those whom we call Suabians today.25 He im- presses upon the reader to approach every document with the question in mind, "at what time that which you are reading was written, by whom and about what; then [to] compare the new texts with the old or vice versa, always keeping in mind the changes which have taken place."26 The general

2 2The second occurrence of the expression in the same letter, this time with reference to the universal renown enjoyed by Plato, "quem prisci omnes: quem veteres: quem medie tempestatis homines: quem nostre etatis maximi: quem greci: quem barbari: quem christiani: omnes eruditissimi: oraculi vice colant, observant et predicent" (p. [9]), really yields little more.

2 3Schedel (fol. CCLIIr) understandably omits the slur, "quod rarum est in Ger- manis," and reads "recensebat" for "retinebat"; Faber (fol. aa fir) has: "Historias omneis/non priscas modo/sed mediae tempestatis/tum veteres tum recentiores memoria retinebat;" Rhenanus' copy bears the notation in his own hand: "Dono mihi misit Jacobus Faber Stapulensis. Ex Lutetia Parisiorum. MDXV."

24P. Cornelii Taciti De moribus et populis Germaniae libellus cum commentariolo vetera Germaniae populorum vocabula paucis explicante (Basel, 1519). The commentary, which appeared anonymously, begins p. 43. For the attribution to Beatus Rhenanus s. Joachimsen, Geschichtsauffassung, p. 256, n. 102; for the introductory letter ("Rhenanus durch den Mund Frobens") ibid., p. 127.

2 5 si quae de Suevis in hoc libello scribit Tacitus, velit quispiam istis tribuere, quos hodie Suevos dicimus" (p. 45); it is, of course, the same proper noun in Latin.

26"quo tempore scriptum fuerit, quod legis, a quo et de quibus, deinde confer nova cum veteribus aut e converso, mutationum semper memor." Commentariolus, p. 46; there is an interesting verbal parallel to this admonition in Vadian (De Poetica, I, 70), "nam multae prudentiae est excipere diligenter quo quisque animo et tempore hoc vel illud senserit."




idea of revising older information by the use of newer is clear enough and represents a distinct advance over the scholastic accumulation of "timeless" verities as still practised by Peutinger, but if we try to define the exact range of "media antiquitas," the contents of the term become curiously elusive.

For in the prefatory letter the authors of the "prisca antiquitas" are represented by Julius Caesar,2 while those of the "media antiquitas" run from the Scriptores Historiae Augustae (e.g., Spartianus, Vopiscus) through Ammianus to Eutropius in the fourth and Procopius in the sixth century. In this opposition the terms could probably be rendered accurately by speaking of earlier and later antiquity. But in the beginning of the commentary itself the lines are drawn quite differently, "media antiquitas" is not even men- tioned there, but according to the principle just quoted of comparing the new with the old and vice versa there is a catalogue of "[autores] antiqui" and "recentiores." However, now the names of the second list recur in the first, that of the "antiqui," the Scriptores Historiae Augustae along with Ammianus, Eutropius, Procopius, Agathias and others, while the "recentiores" range from Regino (+915) to Sigebert of Gembloux (+1112). Yet "recentiores," as used later in the same commentary, includes in juxtaposition Paul the Deacon and Georgio Merula.28 It is a very generously appointed term which can accom- modate within its confines both the Carolingian historian and the Italian humanist who died in Rhenanus' own lifetime, in 1494. "Media antiquitas" recurs in the commentary without further clarification, where Rhenanus points to the difficulties entailed in its study and again where he corrects Alciati's impression that the Swiss were subject to German kings, though Alciati is otherwise commended for his familiarity with the writers of the "media antiquitas."2 9

Joachimsen's statement that "media antiquitas" is for Beatus Rhenanus a technical term30 is difficult to sustain, especially on comparison with the later uses he made of it. It occurs in a letter to Aventin3 1 as a word of caution that the "mediae antiquitatis homines," for the most part monks and

2 I The entire passage (p. 43) reads: "Equidem mihi sic videtur, eos qui priscae illius antiquitatis Scriptores duntaxat legunt, praeteritis iis, qui mediam antiquitatem scriptis suis complexi sunt, in multis rebus necessario labi. Nam quantas tu rerum muta- tiones a morte Iuii Caesaris factas arbitraris? Ut concedere cogamur non tam illius corn- mentariorum, qui certe et fide et stylo summam laudem merentur, quam Spartiani, Vopisci, Trebellii Pollionis, Ammiani Marcellini, Eutropii, Procopiique lectionem esse necessariam." Accordingly, the word "illius" preceding "commentariorum" could have as its antecedent either "prisca antiquitas" or "Lulius Caesar."

28 Commentariolus, p. 54: "Coctias autem existimaverim, qua a Sugesio oppido per Centronas itur, tametsi recentiores, ut Paulus Diaconus et Georgius Merula, Coctias esse existiment, in quibus Bobium urbs est, quod antiquis autoribus non est probabile."

29Ibid., p. 59f. 30 Cf. note 2 above for the entire quotation. 3 1 under date of October 4, 1525, in Beatus Rhenanus, Briefwechsel, ed. Adalbert

Horawitz and Karl Hartfelder (Leipzig, 1886), p. 340, n. 243.




sometimes foreigners (puta Scotos), are notoriously unreliable (saepissime labi) in the histories they have written of our provinces. This idea is repeated in the Res germanicae: "The commentaries written by men, for the most part monks, in the media antiquitas are just as unreliable as were the common people who were their principal source of information. Coming as strangers they drew on the knowledge of strangers for what somehow or other they committed to writing after such momentous upheavals in the location of peoples and the circumstances of their life. These writers were Scotsmen and Irishmen."3 2 "Media antiquitas" emerges as a wide-ranging designation for a time when historiography was corrupted by ignorant monks, hardly as a period in the sense in which Joachimsen would have it, and least of all, as Huizinga quite astonishingly believes, "in the meaning of our Middle Ages."3 3

The historical method enunciated and initially practised by Beatus Rhenanus in the Germania Commentary and later in his own Res germanicae resulted from the inner workings of philology, remains confined to the restoration of texts, but does not enter into his concept of history or historiography. It would not even have occurred to Rhenanus to advert to the historical categories of the philological method as a contradiction of the ahistoric character of historiography.34 "Media antiquitas" is in this context an epoch related to philological, or more precisely, to textual criticism, not an historical period. The epistle dedicatory to his Tacitus edition of 1533,35 which would be well worth a closer analysis than is possible here, reaffirms his full commit- ment to the ethical-rhetorical function and hence a fundamentally ahistoric concept of historiography, especially when he concludes his encomium of Tacitus as one whose "exempla multum conferant ad legentis pectus prudentiae monumentis instruendum."

A final word on the appearance of these terms in German or the first use of the word "Mittelalter." There is as yet no entry under this word in Zedler's Lexicon, and modern standard reference works3 6 assert that it does not occur before the middle of the eighteenth century, gradually replacing the older phrases "mittlere Zeiten" or "Mittelzeit." Actually there is in evidence a much earlier example, though one which has apparently up to now escaped critical detection, emanating from the immediate circle of both Vadian and Beatus Rhenanus in the person of Gilg (Aegidius) Tschudi of Glarus. We have in him, to mention this in passing, the rare case of a young scholar not only

32 Beatus Rhenanus, Rerum germanicarum libri tres (Basel, 1531), p. 160. 3I3"in den zin van ons Middeleeuwen." Cf. note 5 above; reference is to the 1949

edition. 34This is the conclusion reached by Ulrich Muhlack in: Ada Hentschke and Ulrich

Muhlack, Einfuihrung in die Geschichte der klassichen Philologie (Darmstadt: Wissen- schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), p. 45f.

3 Beatus Rhenanus, Briefwechsel, p. 411-414, n. 288; the quotation following is on p. 414.

3 6thus Deutsche Wortgeschichte, ed. Friedrich Maurer and Friedrich Stroh, 2. ed. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1959), II, 252.




not trying to publish his first work but actively though unsuccessfully trying to prevent its publication.37 Near the beginning of his book he sets down the names of the authors who served as his sources, and it is there that we find after "Plinius/der zu Vespasiani zyten gelebt hat" and "Tacitus/zu Traiani zyten gewesen" the annotation, "Paulus Diaconus Aquileiensis/mittel alters." In his Latin translation Sebastian Miunster left out a Latin equivalent for the designation "mittel alters" after Paulus Diaconus, perhaps - and it is admit- tedly sheer speculation - because he failed to understand it.

To return to the beginning and to sum up: Joachimsen's discovery of "media aetas" in Vadian and "media antiquitas" in Beatus Rhenanus was no doubt significant, but his generous assessment that we have here "die erste bewusste Abgrenzung des Altertums gegen das Mittelalter und die erste Erfassung dieses Mittelalters als einer abgeschlossenen Periode" has proved misleading without further clarification, to the effect that neither Vadian's nor Rhenanus' understanding of the terms they employed go further than the philological context in which they were conceived. For Vadian "media aetas" was the time during which "elegantia" was in abeyance, though despite the disfavor of these times, he went further than most sixteenth century critics in seeking to win recognition for the value of individual literary works, even those in the vernacular. For Beatus Rhenanus "media antiquitas" was the age from which authors were to be consulted for the clarification and the proper understanding of Tacitus as well as other ancient writers, and also the age of ignorant and unreliable monastic scribes. That and no more. It would be an unconscionable strain on their vocabulary to see in it anything like the first stirrings of historicism in historiography despite their clearly discernible historical method in the restoration of texts. But the terms once coined were available for further disposition and were in fact filled with new contents according to the historical understanding of subsequent authors and their times. The Northern Renaissance and the school of Erasmus in particular were well acquainted with the reciprocal causality of words on the one side and the ideas they express on the other. For the rest it was too early to see the Middle Ages in their entirety as an historic period, perhaps because the humanists of the sixteenth century as well as a number of generations still to come were too deeply immersed in surviving medieval forms and institutions, social structures and literary conventions, customs of life and habits of thought, to see the Middle Ages in our understanding of the word as defini- tively and irrevocably past. After all, Leopold von Ranke was already a schoolboy when the Holy Roman Empire was finally dissolved.

" Gilg Tschudi, Die uralt warhafftig Alpisch Rhetia (Basell [!], 1538); the places quoted occur fol. B ivr. For a detailed account of Tschudi's reluctance to publish this work and its publication against his will by Sebastian MUnster together with MUnster's Latin translation, cf. Aegidii Tschudii Chronicon helveticum, ed. Johann Rudolff Iselin (Basel, 1734), I, 3f.



the emergence of the concept "medieval" in central european humanism

Documents