New Wine in Old Wineskins:
The Rewriting of History in
the Weltchronik of Jans der Enikel
Graeme Dunphy
Regensburg
(A paper presented at the conference "The Medieval Chronicle", Utrecht 1996, and corrected in 2003. Although this piece has not appeared in print, much of the material co-incides with the fourth chapter of my book Daz was ein michel wunder.)
Among the German verse chronicles which make up the rich Weltchronik tradition of the 13th and 14th centuries, that by the Viennese patrician Jans der Enikel has a unique position (text: Strauch 1891; commentary: Dunphy, 1996). In the first place, it alone can be described as a complete literary entity, conceived, planned, written and published by a single author as an integrated whole; its predecessors, Rudolf von Ems's Weltchronik and the Christherre-Chronik, were both left unfinished, and its successors, the chronicles of Heinrich von München and others, are compilations rather than original works in the strictest sense. More importantly however, Jans's chronicle stands out from the rest because of its patrician politics, its secularising approach to Holy Writ, its lively narrative technique, its interest both in the courtly and in the libidinous side of love, its often grotesque and earthy sense of humour, and its tendency to sensationalize human situations. Taken together, these features make Jans a very interesting and original story-teller, a fact which is only now beginning to be acknowledged in the scholarly literature.
It may be something of a truism to say that medieval writers had a very high view of the source document. Particularly in the case of biblical narratives, where chronicle writing and the exegetical tradition overlap, we typically find that the integrity of narrative detail is carefully preserved. When a new variant appears in a story, it can generally be explained in terms of a linguistic confusion, a manuscript corruption, a memory failure. The blatant fictionality - we may use the word here in full awareness of the problems it presents - which we find in Jans's narrative is not unique, but is relatively unusual. Here, story-lines are restructured, protagonists re-evaluated, details altered freely, and motifs are merged from the most diverse sources. The resulting plots are often very different from those of their biblical precursors. To illustrate this, I should like to look in some detail at Jans's account of Noah's discovery of wine.
The Bible records briefly that after the flood Noah plants a vineyard. His subsequent drunkenness and exposure in his tent lead to the curse of Ham. In Genesis, the entire pericope is dispensed with in just eight verses, six of which are concerned with Ham. Likewise in the exegetical tradition, little attention is paid to the actual vineyard. At most there may be a Eucharistic interpretation, or a note to the effect that as Noah was the first to discover wine he was ignorant of its qualities and therefore innocent in his drunkenness (Lewis 1968, 177). In popular tradition a number of legends developed, such as the French tale of the donkey which nibbled at the leaves of the vine and thus gave Noah the idea of pruning (Dähnhardt 1907, I 307), or the originally Jewish story, found for example in the Gesta Romanorum, that Noah sprinkled the blood of a lamb, a lion, a pig and an ape around the roots of the vine, as a result of which wine imparts the characteristics of the four to the human imbiber. Prior to Jans, however, there is nothing quite comparable to what we find in his account.
Noah is out walking in the woods, and for reasons not explained he has a goat with him. They happen across a wild vine, and the goat eats the grapes and becomes drunk. With a masterly touch of irony, Jans suggests that the goat's inebriation is one of the great "firsts" of primeval history:
daz was zwâr der êrst boc,
der den wîn vant bî dem
stoc. (2811f)
This is a strange new discovery, and Noah at once fetches his wine-making kit and prepares some must. He begins to drink it, becomes tired and lies down drunk beside a stream. Note the relish with which Jans describes the effects of alcohol:
im begund diu zung hinken,
so er in begund trinken.
des muost er vallen an den nac,
wan er dô unversunnen lac
von
dem most den er tranc.
diu müed vast mit im ranc. (2827-32)
In those days, Jans explains, cloaks were made with open seams, with the result that Noah's falls open and exposes him. Of Noah's three sons Ham is the tümbist (2853), the youngest, or possibly the most stupid. He discovers his father naked and reports the matter to his brothers, commenting:
schou wie wir geschant sîn
an unserm vater der hie
lît... (2860f)
Shem scolds him. In the subsequent conversation it is at times unclear who is speaking, but the thrust of their words is that the two brothers anticipate Ham's curse. They speak of their father's krancheit (2929; cf. 2904), and Japheth covers him. Ham now runs away, lamenting what he has done, but after a time decides to return to his father, presumably to seek forgiveness (2959ff). Noah, however, is waiting for him, angrily asking after his whereabouts, and when he appears the curse is pronounced without more ado. Shem and Japheth are blessed, as a result of which Japheth becomes the first knight; in the miniature depicting the blessing he already bears sword and shield (MS 1 fol. 12vb; MS 2 fol. 19ra; MS 13 fol. 27ra; MS 14 fol. 16va). Almost as an afterthought, we are now told that Noah, far from being sobered by his experience, proceeds to plant a vineyard. Daz was niht ein kranker sin (3039)!
The creative process which lies behind this account is demonstrative of a number of typical features of Jans's composition. One of the most interesting of these is the technique of merging elements from other narrative complexes, a process which can hardly be other than intentional, and which can in fact be observed at two points in this relatively short piece of text.
The first and most striking of these is the rôle which is given to the goat, a motif which is not to be found in any account of the Noah story prior to the composition of this chronicle. Inspired, no doubt, by the general desire to exonerate Noah, a number of Jewish and Christian writers had hinted that the initial discovery was accidental. Building on this, Jans introduces the goat to explain how this discovery took place. Although this is the earliest text to associate a goat with Noah, an obviously similar legend of the discovery of wine is to be found in classical myth. In the scholia on Virgil (Servius, Commentarius in Vergilii Georgica I.9, the anonymous Brevis exposition Vergilii Georgicorum I.9, and Ps-Probus, In Vergilii Georgica I.9, all edited in Thilo & Hagen 1887) we read how Staphylos, in some traditions a son of Dionysos (Bacchus), but here a shepherd of King Oineus, sees a goat eating grapes. Although there is no mention of the goat becoming drunk, its pleasure in the fruit obviously makes an impact on Staphylos, for he extracts the juice and brings it to Oineus, who names it after himself and soon discovers the power it gains when fermented. He in turn gives it to Dionysos, who thus becomes the god of wine. This story is found in manuscripts from the 10th century, but its origins are certainly not later than the 4th or 5th century AD, and it may be very much older. I should like to propose - and here I think I am on reasonably safe ground - that Noah's goat is derived more or less directly from the bacchanalian goat.
The interesting question is how this transmission has taken place. The idea of a popular tradition surviving from the time when there was a living Bacchus cult is unlikely. This would require the detail to have survived for at least nine centuries in the oral tradition without any support from the ecclesiastical establishment, and the trend among folklorists is to treat such claims with scepticism. Far more probable is that the transfer took place in learned circles in the 13th century. Virgil was a basic schoolroom text in the late Middle Ages and the standard education for the literate classes in Viennese society would certainly have included familiarity with some kind of scholia (Bolgar 1954, esp. 220, 423). While it is perfectly possible that our author has the idea from a contemporary, there is every reason to imagine that it may have been Jans himself who read the scholia and conceived the incorporation of the classical motif into the Noah story. This method of deliberate creative borrowing is extremely unusual in medieval biblical narrative, but it is a technique which Jans is known to have used on other occasions. This in itself suggests that the linking of Noah and the goat is more likely to be his work than that of an unknown predecessor. Besides, the style, the humour and the attention to detail are all Jans's own, and there are none of the ambiguities which are frequently to be observed elsewhere when he follows a source inattentively.
My thesis, then, is that we here observe Jans der Enikel incorporate into the Noah story a motif which he himself knew from a Bacchus legend, a deliberate and highly effective attempt to make an old story appear fresh and exciting to an audience who must have heard the biblical version so often that it had lost its power to surprise. In doing so, incidentally, he becomes the father of quite a substantial tradition. Only a few years later, the illustrator of an early Flemish manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant's Rijmbijbel placed in the margin beside the Noah story a framed miniature (reproduced in Randall 1966, plate XLIII, illustration 213) showing Noah exposed, with Shem and Japheth bringing a blanket and Ham pointing. Underneath this, in a separate but clearly related drawing, a goat stands on its hind legs to feed from a tree. Though there is no reference to the goat in the text, it is clear that the artist has Jans's story in mind; indeed, Jans's own miniature is very similar. The manuscript of Jacob, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale, MS 15001, fol. 9r., appears to have been produced in the years 1280-1300; as current thinking places Jans's Weltchronik around 1272, this clearly represents a very early example of the reception of the motif. In the Cologne Bible of Heinrich Quentell (c.1479) there is a woodcut depicting Noah in the foreground with a goat to the right, reaching up to take grapes from a vine (Schramm 1924, illustration 326; Allen 1963, fig.23). This illustration is copied in the Koberger Bible of 1483 and the theme re-appears in the illustrated Bibles of the 16th century (Allen 1963, 172). In the 16th century the story also appears both in Christian theological writings and in Jewish literature (Allen 1963, 116 nt.14, 172f; Ginzberg 1913-38, V 190). There is a German poem printed in the early 16th century by Pamphilius Gengenbach, an ode to wine in which the story is told in similar terms to Jans's (Goedeke 1857, 519-21; the poem is entitled Der zehend Segen, and is part of Rebhänszlin), and half a century later, a Middle Dutch version was composed, which forms the opening of a longer poem about Bacchus and wine (Priebsch 1906, 318-22). The story appears to lose popularity in the 17th century, but is still found in oral tradition at the beginning of the 20th (Eder 1909). It seems that the ripples circling out from Jans's Weltchronik sometimes spread further than we might imagine.
Only a few lines after the goat narrative, a second example of merging is to be observed. Ham's flight is unknown in the exegetical tradition and is certainly Jans's own work. In terms of the drama of the situation, it is extremely effective. Seized by a fit of guilt and fear, Ham runs away from home, but after a while he rethinks his situation and decides to return to seek a reconciliation with his father. The similarity with the parable of the prodigal son can hardly be mistaken. There are even direct verbal echoes: compare Ham's ich wil zuo mînem vater gân (2961) with the ibo ad patrem meum of Luke 15.18. But the motif has been reversed. Whereas the prodigal was welcomed with a fatted calf, Ham is met with a terrible curse; where the prodigal was ready to be treated as one of the hired servants, Ham really is to be made a servant. Jans apparently senses that a slight delay would increase the suspense before the resolution of the story, and he achieves this delay very effectively by drawing in an element from an entirely different source. The prodigal son is so well known that we can hardly imagine Jans has accidentally confused his sources. On the contrary, I would suggest that he actually intends his readers to recognise the allusion. As the Ham story draws to an end, we, the readers, are awaiting the curse which we know should come next, but instead we are surprised to find ourselves in a different familiar story. We now have mixed expectations. On the one hand, we know that Noah must ultimately reject Ham, but on the other we are being cued by the overtones of the prodigal to anticipate a happy ending. Which way will it go? When the curse does come therefore, it has acquired an element of the unexpected, quite an achievement for an author relating such a very well-known tale.
These are by no means the only examples in the chronicle of this technique of merging motifs. Other scholars have observed it in Jans's account of Ham's nocturnal adventure on the ark (Utley 1941), in the story of the Russian princess who is set afloat in a barrel (Berkov 1969), and in the material on Charles the Great and Frederick II (Geith 1977 esp. 239f; Hellmuth, 1988; Dunphy 1994). In the case of Charles, motifs associated in older chronicles with other kings are transferred to fill out his biography. For the princess it is folk tradition which provides usable material, while even Islamic motifs find their way into the life of Frederick II. We may expect that future research on Jans will uncover many more examples.
This process is so calculating that it cannot be that Jans was unaware of the originality - and that means, of the fictionality - of his narrative. It is, however, only one of a range of methods by which he takes the old stories and makes from them something new. In this same passage, we also find evidence of a technique employed regularly by Jans which has been described as the rationalisation of the awkward situation. Wherever the narrative is weak or implausible or simply dull, he expands it with freely invented material which improves the plot. If Noah planted the vineyard, for example, how does this tally with the rôle of the goat? The whole story has to be restructured, so that the discovery takes place away from home; hence the wood replaces the vineyard and the stream replaces Noah's tent as the respective venues. The planting of the vineyard proper is left to the end, as though to effect a last-minute harmonisation with the authoritative version of the story. Again, if Noah simply drinks too much and falls in a stupor, why should this result in nakedness? Contemporary medieval dress would protect a man's modesty. Jans feels it necessary to explain that in Noah's day people wore gowns with open seams, so that the garment would naturally fall open if the wearer were not in a fit state to guard against it. This is not a case of a special insight into historical fashions, but rather of the intelligent invention of suitable data through which a story can appear more plausible. Or again, if Ham merely happened to see his father - all that the Bible accuses him of - why did he deserve such a devastating curse? This question occupied commentators from Josephus onwards, and usually they concluded that it was Ham's scorn, mockery or laughter which resulted in his culpability. Jans's approach is novel, for in the Weltchronik Ham takes what he himself regards as a high moral stance, but is in fact disrespectful. The subtlety of this is that the self-righteous young man can cherish the illusion that he alone is behaving properly when in fact he is scoring points at his father's expense. Only when his brothers call the sin by name does he realise the implications of his words and begin to regret them. The characterisation here shows Jans to be capable of a very shrewd assessment of human behaviour. Suddenly Ham is a credible protagonist.
In each of these examples, the thrust is slightly different; in one it is the structural rearrangement of a plot, in another the explanation of an obscure chain of events, in a third it is the re-evaluation of the motives behind a character's behaviour. For each of these, many parallel examples could be produced from other parts of the chronicle. What they all reveal is a lively imagination, a careful attention to detail, and a willingness to alter received accounts freely. Together they contribute significantly to the creation not only of a convincing but also of a highly original account.
Philipp Strauch, Jans's 19th-century editor, had scant regard for the quality of the chronicler's work. In footnotes to the edition he frequently implies, often with more than a touch of sarcasm, that Jans is careless, thoughtless, and ignorant of the tradition, a poor poet and a poor historian. The reputation which the Weltchronik has had to bear through much of the 20th century has largely been shaped by these remarks. If we dig a little deeper, however, we unearth evidence of a competent and confident author manipulating his material with great proficiency. What Strauch found hard to accept was that a historical writer should feel free to operate like a composer of fiction. But Jans's historiography is not hemmed in by any such dogma. He was an entertainer, a story-teller, but was not thereby any less a historian. His understanding of history however was not as the attempt to provide an accurate account of the ancient world - an objectivity which for the 13th century was unattainable anyway. Rather, historical writing was about creating a version of the past which was politically effective in the present. Jans's aim was to provide the urban classes of society for the first time with a history which did them justice. It has often been pointed out how their interests are frequently represented in the chronicle. This is particularly the case with the passage we have been examining, for after all the frivolity of the goat and of Ham's frustrated remorse Jans turns to a serious discussion of the sociological implications (3043ff). Rejecting the dogma that Japheth's blessing makes the nobility naturally superior to the patrician class, he suggests instead that such social distinctions are arbitrary. Thus the liveliness and good humour which he draws into the accounts are not merely ends in themselves. They also serve to create a platform from which he can communicate, for they win the reader's sympathy for the writer's perspectives. In terms of pure narrative technique, the elements of fictionality in Jans's work are extremely effective. In terms of his conception of the purpose of chronicle writing, they are entirely appropriate.
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