Liber Vagatorum

c. 1509/1510^[2][3]1860Media typePrintPages64 (English edition)OCLC3080033LC ClassPF5995 .L88 (1528 edition)
HV4485 .L6 (English edition)Liber Vagatorum at Center for Retrospective DigitizationTranslationLiber Vagatorum at Project Gutenberg

Liber Vagatorum (Latin for 'Book of Vagabonds'), also known as The Book of Vagabonds and Beggars with a Vocabulary of Their Language in English,^[a] is an anonymously written book first printed in Pforzheim, southwestern Germany, probably either in 1509 or 1510. Its Latin title aside, the book was entirely written in German, thereby appealed to a broader audience rather than the learned class of the era. A well-known hypothesis regarding its authorship is that Matthias Hütlin [de], the Spitalmeister (lit. 'hospital master') of Pforzheim, was the author; however, this theory remains contested.

The book became a bestseller soon after the initial print and was reprinted many times over under different titles throughout the 16th and 17th centuries. Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, edited a few of its editions beginning from 1528 and wrote a preface for them, which was in part a polemic against the Jews, wandering beggars, and their likes, and warned the reader not to give them alms as he believed that it was to forsake the truly poor. The book's main text does not mention the Jews, but features a catalogue of character types of beggars and their alleged techniques of deceit, and a list of more than 250 words in a cant known as Rotwelsch.

Contents

Liber Vagatorum is organised in three parts.^[4] The first part comprises twenty-eight chapters that describe the "secrets" of various types of beggars; one of the types is Dützbetterin—women who claim that they have given birth to a toad, a story first documented in 1509.^[5][b] The second part instructs the reader on how to avoid their traps and trickery.^[4] The third part is a glossary of Rotwelsch words.^[4]

Most of the earliest editions were adorned on the title page with a woodcut of a beggar leading his wife and child on their journey on foot.^[1] A woodcut of a fool on horseback holding a hand mirror—created by Hans Dorn, a printer who was active in Brunswick—was used as the title illustration of a later edition.^[6]

Sources and authorship

According to philologist Friedrich Kluge, Liber Vagatorum was partly based on the text Basler Rathsmandat wider die Gilen und Lamen (transl. 'Basel Council's Mandate against the Gilen and Lamen') published around 1450, which had a short list of Rotwelsch words.^[7] Since the three parts of Liber Vagatorum are not coordinated well—for example, the glossary in the third part does not list some of the Rotwelsch words used in the first—Kluge concluded that the author likely had combined three different sources.^[7] John Camden Hotten, who translated Liber Vagatorum into English in 1860, stated that it had been compiled from Johannes Knebel [de]'s reports of trials held in Basel, Switzerland, in 1475, when "a great number of vagabonds, strollers, blind men, and mendicants of all orders were arrested and examined".^[8] These trials were later described in an 18th-century manuscript of historian Hieronymus Wilhelm Ebner von Eschenbach, which was printed in Johann Heumann von Teutschenbrunn [de]'s 1749 work Heumanni Exercitationes iuris universi, Volume One, Chapter XIII "Observatio de lingua occulta (transl. 'An observation of a secret language')"; Knebel's account is nearly identical with Ebner's, differing only in style and dialect.^[8]

A well-known hypothesis regarding the anonymous author is that Matthias Hütlin [de], the Spitalmeister (lit. 'hospital master') of Pforzheim, authored Liber Vagatorum.^[5] Hütlin belonged to the Order of the Holy Ghost, a Roman Catholic religious order devoted to the care of the ill, the poor and the orphaned; the order ran hospitals throughout Europe. He was initially provisor hospitalis (lit. 'hospital provider') and, at the suggestion of Christopher I, Margrave of Baden, was elected Spitalmeister of Pforzheim by the general chapter of the order in Strasbourg in 1500.^[9]

Publication history

Liber Vagatorum was, despite its Latin title, entirely written in German—thereby appealed to a broader audience rather than the learned class of the era.^[4] The four earliest editions of the book were published probably either in 1509 or 1510; the first among them was printed in Pforzheim and in High German.^[2] The book was met with immediate popularity, getting at least 14 more editions printed in 1511.^[10] Some of them were in Low German or Low Rhenish,^[3] and one had its glossary section expanded to list 280 words.^[10]

About 20 more editions were published in the remainder of the 16th century and some of them had altogether different titles.^[10] Beginning from 1528, a few editions titled Von der falschen Betler Büberey (transl. 'On the Deceitful Deeds of Beggars') were edited by Martin Luther, the seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation, who rewrote some of the book's passages and authored an admonitory preface.^[1][10] Those who saw only the 1528 or a later edition with his preface sometimes mistakenly ascribed the book's authorship to him.^[5] 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 rule over the world. He warned the reader not to give them alms as it was, in his view, to forsake the truly poor, and declared that the Jews had contributed Hebrew words as a main basis of Rotwelsch.^[5] Hotten partially agreed 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."^[11] English historian Clifford Edmund Bosworth surmised that the Hebrew words had entered Rotwelsch via Yiddish.^[12]

From around 1540, some editions were titled inaccurately Die Rotwelsch Grammatic (lit. 'The Rotwelsch Grammar').^[10] A 1580 reprint of Von der falschen Betler Büberey was titled Ein Büchlein von den Bettlern genant Expertus in truphis (lit. 'A Little Book about Beggars, or, Expert in Frauds').^[10] Around six more editions were printed in the 17th century and at least two more in the 18th century.^[10]

See also

• Martin Luther § Anti-Jewish polemics and antisemitism

Notes

References

Citations

Works cited