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An Early XIVth Century Depiction of the Transylvanian Saxon Hospites in the Heidelberger and Dresdener Sachsenspiegel ?

An Early XIVth Century Depiction of the Transylvanian Saxon Hospites in the Heidelberger and Dresdener Sachsenspiegel ?

Agrigoroaei, Vladimir and Gruia, Ana-Maria

Studia Patzinaka, 4/2007, pp. 123-144

Abstract

When picking up Beryl Smalley’s 1974 “Historians in the Middle Ages”, one may carelessly look only at its illustrations. Still, when enjoying not only the fruits of the eye, but also those of the mind, the very same person should also take a closer look and see that a particular illustration is labelled: “German colonists in eastern Europe clear wasteland and build a village”…It is taken from the Cod. Pal. germ. 164, folio 26 verso, second scene from the bottom, register d. The manuscript, located in the Heidelberg University Library, is better known as the Heidelberger Bilderhandschrift des Sachsenspiegels. It contains a copy of the “Saxon Mirror”, a compilation of Saxon laws put together by Eike von Repgow, enclosing a wide variety of legal topics, including administration of the law, laws concerning inheritance, dowries and marriage, penal law, laws concerning the hunting of animals, and property law. The text of the Heidelberg manuscript is written in an East Middle German / Southern Thuringian dialect.

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