7 - Charlemagne as Saint. The Religious Transmutation of the Early Medieval Myth: the Zürcher Buch vom Heiligen Karl (Fifteenth Century)

Summary

Religious and Political Perspectives on Charlemagne

WHILE SOME fifteenth-century authors (e.g., Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbrücken) present a most negative image of Charlemagne, the opposite is the case in the Zürcher Buch vom heiligen Karl (prior to 1471), which to some extent represents, at first, an early modern German prose version of Konrad Fleck's Flore und Blanscheflur, then combines that with The Stricker's Karl der Grosse, and concludes with parts drawn from the text by Pseudo-Turpin and poetic versions from the tradition of earlier literary treatments of this mythical figure. The text about Saint Charlemagne is contained in three surviving manuscripts, Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, Ms. Cat. C 28, 1r–47v, composed somewhere in southern Germany and first copied in Zürich in 1475, then Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Cod. Gen. 16, 1ra–69va, from 1483, and Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, Ms. A 121, containing excerpts. The scribe identifies himself as Georg Hochmuot.

Specifically from 1233 onwards the city of Zürich observed a cult of Charlemagne as a saint, who had been regarded from the middle of the twelfth century as the founder of the Großmünster. This cathedral's treasury housed relics, liturgical texts and the Aachen Vita of the Frankish emperor, and in the crypt there is a massive sculpture of the emperor from the fifteenth century. The cult that focused on Charlemagne exclusively intensified in the fifteenth century, and the present text was certainly an illustration of this new trend. The account consists of four parts of disparate length. At first, we encounter a compressed prose retelling of Fleck's Flore und Blancheflure, one of the most famous pan-European romantic couples, who are allowed finally to marry after many trials and tribulations, even overcoming strong cultural and religious barriers. They name their daughter, who will later be Char-lemagne's mother, Berthe. The second part contains a short selection of reports about Charlemagne's birth and youth and a description of some of his major deeds, which could have been inspired by the text of The Stricker's verse narrative. This is followed by other narrative elements borrowed from the fourteenth-century account known as Karl Meinet (see my chapter above), with a focus, for instance, on the appearance of an angel and Charlemagne's crusade to the Holy Land, and the erection of the royal palace in Aachen, the bridge over the Rhine in Mainz and twenty-four churches in the empire.