Liber Vagatorum
.jpg) Title page of an early edition (c. 1510); the image of a travelling beggar and his family is shared with little to no alteration by most of the early editions.[1] | |
| Editor | Martin Luther (1528 edition) |
|---|---|
| Author | Anonymous |
| Translator | John Camden Hotten |
| Language | German |
| Subject | Social history Language |
Publication date | c. 1509[2] |
| Publication place | Germany |
Published in English | 1860 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 64 (1860 translation) |
| OCLC | 3080033 |
| LC Class | PF5995 .L88 1528 HV4485 .L6 1932 (1860 translation) |
Original text | Liber Vagatorum at Center for Retrospective Digitization |
| Translation | Liber Vagatorum at Project Gutenberg |
Liber Vagatorum, also known as The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars with a Vocabulary of Their Language[a], is an anonymously written book first printed circa 1509 in Pforzheim.[2] Its Latinised title aside, the book was entirely written in German, thereby aimed at the layperson than an academic readership.[3] Soon after the initial print, it became a bestseller that was reprinted many times over under a variety of titles throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.[3] Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, edited a few of its editions beginning from 1528 and wrote an admonitory preface for them,[4] which was in part a polemic against the Jews, wandering beggars and their likes, and warned Christians not to give them alms as it was, in his view, to forsake the truly poor.
The book itself does not mention the Jews, but lists a catalogue of character types of beggars and their alleged techniques of deceit. It also provides a list of more than 250 words in a cant that Luther called "Rotwelsch".
History
According to John Camden Hotten, who translated Liber Vagatorum into English in 1860, it was compiled from Johann Knebel's reports of trials in Basel, Switzerland, in 1475, when "a great number of vagabonds, strollers, blind men, and mendicants of all orders were arrested and examined".[5][b] A well-known hypothesis is that it was compiled by Mattias Hütlin,[6] who was the Spitalmeister (hospital supervisor) of Pforzheim, but this theory remains contested.[7]
The four initial editions of the book were published circa 1509,[c] the first of which was printed in Pforzheim and in High German.[2] The book was met with almost immediate popularity, getting at least fourteen more editions printed the next year.[4] Some of them were written in Low German and one had its vocabulary section expanded to contain 280 words.[4] Most of these early editions were adorned on the title page with a woodcut of a beggar leading his wife and child on their journey on foot.[1]
About twenty more editions were published afterward in the sixteenth century and some of them had altogether different titles.[4] Beginning from 1528, a few editions titled Von der falschen Betler Büberey (On the Deceitful Deeds of Beggars) were edited by Martin Luther who wrote a preface for and rewrote some of the passages in those editions.[1][4] Those who saw only the 1528 or a later edition with his preface sometimes mistakenly ascribed the book's authorship to him.[6] Luther, in his preface, lamented that he had suffered at the hands of wandering beggars and their likes, whose alleged deceit he claimed was a sign of the devil's mighty rule over the world, and declared that the Jews had contributed Hebrew words as a main basis of Rotwelsch.[6][d]
From around 1540, some editions were titled, rather inaccurately, Die Rotwelsch Grammatic (The Rotwelsch Grammar).[4] A 1580 reprint of Von der falschen Betler Büberey was titled Ein Büchlein von den Bettlern genant Expertus in truphis (A Little Book about Beggars, or, Expert in Frauds).[4] Around six more editions were printed in the seventeenth century and at least two others in the eighteenth.[4]
Notes
a. ^ The title of the first English translation by John Camden Hotten (1860)
b. ^ These trials are also recorded in Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner von Eschenbach's Heumanni Exercitationes iuris universi, vol. I. (1749), "XIII. Observatio de lingua occulta (An observation of a secret language)". Knebel's and Ebner's accounts differ only in style and dialect.[5]
c. ^ One of the types of beggars the book describes is Dützbetterin who claims to have given birth to a toad, a story first documented in 1509.[6] And the book's earliest known edition bears the typeface of Thomas Anshelm, whose printing work apparently ended in 1511.[6] These clues narrow the date of the first edition.[6]
d. ^ Hotten partially agrees to this linguistic opinion, saying "the Hebrew appears to be a principal element. Occasionally a term from a neighbouring country, or from a dead language may be observed";[8] however he does not go on to say which dead language he suspects it is.
References
Citations
- ^ a b c Hotten 1860, p. xvii.
- ^ a b c Considine 2017, p. 36.
- ^ a b Rosenfeld 1988, p. 100.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Considine 2017, p. 37.
- ^ a b Hotten 1860, p. xiii.
- ^ a b c d e f Rosenfeld 1988, p. 99.
- ^ Modestin 2020, p. 64.
- ^ Hotten 1860, p. xxxvii.
Works cited
- Considine, John P. (2017). "Chapter 5. first curiosity-driven wordlists: Rotwelsch". Small Dictionaries and Curiosity: Lexicography and Fieldwork in Post-medieval Europe. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198785019.001.0001. ISBN 9780198785019. OCLC 955312844. Retrieved November 5, 2022 – via Google Books.
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- Hotten, John C. (1860). Introduction. The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars with a Vocabulary of Their Language. By Anonymous. London: J.C. Hotten. OCLC 3080033. Archived from the original on October 26, 2022. Retrieved November 2, 2022 at Project Gutenberg.
This article incorporates text from the source, which is in the public domain.
- Modestin, Georg (2020). "Chapter 2. The Metamorphoses of the Anti-Witchcraft Treatise Errores Gazariorum (15th Century)". In Goodare, Julian; Voltmer, Rita; Willumsen, Liv Helene (eds.). Demonology and Witch-Hunting in Early Modern Europe. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781003007296. ISBN 9780367440527. OCLC 1141029272. S2CID 225420498. Retrieved November 5, 2022 – via Google Books.
- Rosenfeld, Moshe N. (1988). "Chapter 9. Early Yiddish in Non-Jewish Books". In Katz, Dovid (ed.). Dialects of the Yiddish Language: Winter Studies in Yiddish, Volume 2. Papers from the Second Annual Oxford Winter Symposium in Yiddish Language and Literature, 14-16 December 1986. Pergamon Press. ISBN 9780080365640. OCLC 17727332. Retrieved November 5, 2022 – via Google Books.
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