It seems to be a universal need for human beings to remember and to be remembered, which provides, ultimately, some, if not the ultimate meaning of all existence. Even though a vast number of people throughout time have simply disappeared with their death, not leaving behind names, documents, records, or words, the desire to survive in perpetuity, at least spiritually, can be identified as a fundamental force in all of human culture. Cave drawings from the stone age, Roman tombs, Egyptian pyramids, medieval cathedrals, or Renaissance palaces serve memory; ; they all speak the same language; in fact, they are all signals of the same human need for material memory and representation in stone or other materials.¹ There would not really be any need for cemeteries if people did not live by the basic hope for an afterlife and hence a bridge between their own death and the future. Funeral culture intimately mirrors life culture, and vice versa, so studying the art of death allows us, wherever we look throughout world history, to comprehend human culture more intimately.

Curiously, however, throughout the Middle Ages, most artworks, poems, architecture, or scholarly treatises have been left behind without the name of the creator, or without much biographical information. Many of the major heroic epics, for instance, courtly romances, or love poetry have survived simply as anonymous texts; and if the poet shared his/her name, then we know virtually nothing about him/her in personal terms. Of course, things changed in the course of time, and since the late twelfth century or so, poets increasingly included references to themselves, talked about their own situation in ironic terms (Wolfram von Eschenbach), reflected on their writing process (Marie de France), or commented on their sources and on other role models (Gottfried von Straßburg).² Medieval art, by contrast, continued to leave out references to the individual creators; most Gothic paintings, sculptures, stained glass windows, or tapestry have survived only as anonymous works.

The situation began to change, however, in the fourteenth century, when individual architects, for instance, began to make sure that they would be remembered by posterity by means of their own busts, such as Peter Parler in the St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague (since 1352), Hanns von Burghausen in St. Martin in Landshut (since 1389), and Conrad von Einbeck in St. Maurice in Halle a. d. S. (since ca. 1410).³ We are also much more informed about the lives of late medieval poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Christine de Pizan, or Giovanni Boccaccio. In parallel, a growing number of individuals, both aristocrats and urban citizens, left so-called ‘ego-documents’ in which they reflected on their own lives, their families, their businesses, their experiences, and worldviews.⁴ The same applies to the history of music, medicine, fencing, craftsmanship, etc.⁵

Already a long time ago, Danielle Régnier-Bohler examined the growing paradigm shift regarding the projection of the self in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.⁶ This was then complemented by Georges Duby and Philippe Braunstein with their study of the emergence of the individual in the late Middle Ages.⁷ Mary J. Carruthers and Janet Coleman have, each on her own, examined the phenomenon of memory as it was explored in the Middle Ages by philosophers and theologians, focusing on the actual mental process of memorization.⁸ Already in 1491, Petrus Ravenna elaborated on the art of memoria when he published his treatise Phoenix seu artificiosa memoria in Venice, which was later translated into various European languages.⁹ However, this treatise was focused on the mental capacity of memorizing and not on the public representation of an individual, which alerts us again to the slippery definition of both concepts so closely interrelated and yet being of different nature.

Other scholars have considered the role of death and the attitudes of the living, certainly a significant aspect of memory in the active materialization of this process.¹⁰ Most recently, a group of researchers has probed the relationship between memory and identity,¹¹ whereas others have discussed the written records in archives and cartularies as significant documents of self-representation, or forms of memory.¹²

Very similar to modern times, in the Middle Ages people took considerable care to create last wills and thus to be remembered by the next generation, as Joel T. Rosenthal has highlighted.¹³ It comes as no surprise that people have regularly resorted to epitaphs and monuments to inscribe their names or self-references, as the contributors to a recent volume with conference proceedings have unearthed.¹⁴ Medieval bishops are well known as patrons of the art, particularly if the artists could contribute to their own effort to leave something about themselves behind as part of their memoria.¹⁵ And funerary art during antiquity already promoted memoria to a large extent, which continued throughout the following centuries, if not until the present.¹⁶

Memory and memoria, to be sure, are not exactly the same, especially because the latter represents an individual’s effort to leave a legacy behind and to be remembered for his/her deeds, works, activities, accomplishments, or words. Memory as such, by contrast, constitutes the operation of remembering itself. Memoria could thus be defined as the result of the former, being the physical, spiritual, and artistic manifestation of the psychological process of memory. Memoria, in other words, is primarily concerned with social, historical, and political aspects since an individual desires to be remembered beyond his/her death in order to establish meaning of the own existence beyond one’s life here on earth. Funerary art, as already mentioned, has always constituted a major aspect of all art history, and this for good reasons because the survivors need concrete objects to commemorate the deceased person and hence to translate the transcendental experience into material forms.¹⁷ It might be impossible to identify any culture throughout time that would not have placed great value on memorialization and relevant sites where it could be practiced.¹⁸

Medieval Manuscript Culture as a Form of Memoria

The entire world of aristocratic culture, above all, was deeply concerned with memoria, and this both in the Middle Ages and well beyond, if not until today.¹⁹ This can be particularly well demonstrated through a study of the Ambraser Heldenbuch, a major late medieval manuscript containing a large number of important Middle High German verse narratives, courtly romances, and heroic epics. It was commissioned by Emperor Maximilian I and compiled on his behalf by the South Tyrolean toll collector Hans Ried (Bozen) from ca. 1504 to ca. 1516 –he probably worked for him in Innsbruck to create this anthology. This unique manuscript appeared at a time when the printing press seemed to have taken over the public media and when medieval literature was almost completely dismissed or forgotten, as we have traditionally assumed.²⁰ However, for Maximilian, both the handwritten literary text and the collection of medieval literary narratives in one manuscript seem to have encapsulated the apogee of the world of courtly culture and chivalry, and hence as the best medium for his own purposes to create memoria of himself as the last major representative of past aristocratic ideals.

We have known already for a long time that Maximilian I worked hard and through many different media to create a memory of himself after his death, most triumphantly in the huge cenotaph in the Hofkirche (Court Church) in Innsbruck. Jan-Dirk Müller has called this cumulative effort, combining printing of his own texts with splendid woodcuts, the creation of a literary anthology of medieval texts, architectural and artistic, and scientific and humanistic endeavors, “Gedechtnus,” which proves to be a rather significant cultural-historical phenomenon shedding more light on late medieval culture at large.²¹ The term itself was frequently used by the emperor himself who obviously understood well that he was already oddly positioned at the juncture between the late Middle Ages and the early modern age and could barely hold on to his own ideals in a radically changing world. Through literary works, sculptures, and especially a monumental operation to memorialise himself as the so-called ‘last knight,’ Maximilian strove to secure his memory by posterity, so he can serve exceedingly well as a case study of how the highest representative of late medieval aristocracy endeavored to draw from a wide range of strategies to achieve the best effect concerning himself to be remembered.

However, he was not at all the only individual deeply interested in establishing memoria of himself; instead, many other contemporary mighty, wealthy, and influential individuals aimed for more or less the same goal, as is perhaps best represented by buildings and paintings, often self-portraits, as we have them, for instance, from Oswald von Wolkenstein (1376/77–1445; poet) and Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528; artist and author),²² not to speak of countless portraits of early modern rulers, such as the English King Henry VIII (1491–1547) or Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603).²³

Emperor Maximilian I and the Ambraser Heldenbuch

Maximilian was born in Wiener Neustadt in 1459 as the long-awaited heir to Emperor Frederick III and his wife Eleonore. In 1476, Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy promised Maximilian his daughter Maria as wife, so Maximilian embarked on a bridal quest in May 1477, arriving in Ghent in 1478, where the wedding took place. But his wife died already from a hunting accident in 1482, which caused her husband not only deep personal grief, but also created a host of major economic, political, and military conflicts, including a five-month imprisonment in 1489, after which he could return to his father in Innsbruck. Having been crowned king already in 1486, he ascended to the throne after his father’s death in 1493. In 1508, he was proclaimed as emperor in Trento (not in Rome!).

In 1494, he married Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, which widely opened his court to Italian administrators and courtiers, and Maximilian himself worked hard as a promoter of humanist studies, literature, and the arts. All this allowed him to strive personally for the goal of being remembered after his death. As he formulated it himself at the end of his autobiographical romance, Weisskunig (1505–1516): “Wer ime in seinem Leben kain gedechtnus macht, der hat nach seinem tod kain gedächtnus und denselben Menschen wird mit dem glockendon vergessen, und darumb so wird das gelt, so ich auf die gedechtnus ausgib, nit verloren” (He who does not create a memory of himself during his lifetime, will not be remembered after his death, and he will be forgotten as soon as the bell has rung [during the funeral]. For that reason, the money that I am spending on my memorialization will not be wasted).²⁴ As Maximilian then continued, reflecting on practical approaches to the creation of memoria, “aber das gelt, das erspart wird in meinem gedachtnus, das ist ein undertruckung meine kunftigen gedächtnus, und was ich in meinem leben in meiner gedächtnus nit volbing, das wird nach meinem tod weder durch dich oder ander nit erstat” (but the money that is saved in the name of my memoria is a repression of my future memoria, and what I do not accomplish during my life on behalf of my memoria, will not be achieved through you or anyone else after my death). Indeed, he spent a lot of money for this literary masterpiece, and achieved a lot as well, creating a wide range of artistic and literary monuments to glorify himself, drawing in that process, of course, on many aides and supporters at his court.

Maximilian “referred to these projects as Gedechtnus (‘memorial’), which included a series of stylised autobiographical works: the epic poems Theuerdank and Freydal, and the chivalric novel Weisskunig, both published in editions lavishly illustrated with woodcuts. In this vein, he commissioned a series of three monumental woodblock prints: The Triumphal Arch (1512–18, 192 woodcut panels, 295 cm wide and 357 cm high – approximately 9’8” by 11’8½”); and a Triumphal Procession (1516–18, 137 woodcut panels, 54 m long), which is led by a Large Triumphal Carriage (1522, 8 woodcut panels, 1½’ high and 8’ long), created by artists including Albrecht Dürer, Albrecht Altdorfer and Hans Burgkmair . . . . His goals extended far beyond the emperor’s own glorification too: commemoration also included the documentation in details of the presence and the restoration of source materials and precious artifacts.”²⁵ Maximilian also embarked on practical treatises dealing with hunting, forest animals, fishing, and the like, such as his Tiroler Jagdbuch (1500, Tyrolean Book of Hunting), the Gemeine Jagdbuch (ca. 1502, General Book of Hunting), the Tiroler Fischereibuch (1504, Tyrolean Book of Fishing), and the Zeugbücher (ca. 1507, Books on Arms). As a result of his extensive efforts to serve as patrons of the arts and humanities at large, many poets supported by him and others composed dazzling panegyrics on Maximilian, praising him as the ideal ruler of all times.²⁶ However we might evaluate Maximilian’s efforts and also failures, he certainly established an aura around his entire court, and thus achieved a unique charisma hardly paralleled by other medieval and early modern rulers.²⁷ The emperor died in 1519, but the memory of him and his accomplishments did not fade quickly, if at all.

Although Maximilian’s cenotaph in the Hofkirche in Innsbruck was completed only long after his death, he himself had designed it and saw to the realization of the first steps. The church was built in 1553 by Emperor Ferdinand I (1503–1564) as a memorial to his grandfather Emperor Maximilian I. “The sarcophagus itself was completed in 1572, and the final embellishments – the kneeling emperor, the four virtues, and the iron grille – were added in 1584.” It contains 24 reliefs depicting scenes in Maximilian’s life from 1477 (first marriage) to 1516 (defense of Verona, 1516). “The cenotaph is surrounded by 28 large bronze statues (200–250 cm) of ancestors, relatives and heroes. Their creation took place between 1502 and 1555, and occupied a number of artists including Christian Amberger, Albrecht Dürer, Jörg Kölderer, Jörg Polhamer the elder, Gilg Sesselschreiber, Ulrich Tiefenbrunn, and sculptors Peter Vischer the Elder, Hans Leinberger, G. Löffler, Leonhart Magt, and Veit Stoß. Three of the statues are based on designs by Dürer.”²⁸

Most significantly, the Ambraser Heldenbuch attracts our attention as a masterpiece of medieval memoria although the emperor as the patron does not even appear anywhere either in a reference to him by name or through a prologue or epilogue. At a time when the printing press and the use of paper had become already standard on the early modern book market, here we face a resolute counter-effort to stay loyal to the principle values and traditions of the high Middle Ages. Hans Ried used only parchment to write down the many medieval literary texts (a total of twenty-five), and he compiled a collection which could not have been more anachronistic at that time, assembling primarily narratives or poems from the late twelfth through the late thirteenth centuries. While his Theuerdank and Weisskunig were already produced with the help of the printing press, the Ambraser Heldenbuch resorted to the traditional technique of copying texts by hand.²⁹

However, Ried did not put together chronicles or other types of historical material; instead, he resorted almost exclusively to literary texts, as diverse as they prove to be in terms of genre, content, or volume. Although the cover illustration shows two knights in full armor, the remainder of the ca. 500 pages in the Ambraser Heldenbuch are illustrated with flowers, angels, young women and men, insects, and the like, so none of them mirroring anything that might smack of the heroic element.

We face here, in other words, a fascinating literary enterprise carried out by Hans Ried for the emperor in which we find an odd collection of major or marginal literary texts from the high and late Middle Ages, which, as a collective, served in one way or the other to aggrandize Maximilian’s memoria. Subsequently, I will focus on the first contribution, the anonymous verse narrative of Mauritius von Craûn (ca. 1220–1240), in which we face a most curious reflection on the nature of courtly love, courtliness at large, and knighthood as values that are still appreciated but that seem to have failed under the new circumstance.

Mauritius von Craûn as a Literary Means of Memoria

The Ambraser Heldenbuch represents such an intriguing challenge for us today because Maximilian had commissioned its production with the explicit desire to have it serve for his gedechtnus, although the key concept was perhaps supposed to be the heroic element (“Heldenbuch,” Book of heroes). With Dietrichs Flucht, Rabenschlacht, the Nibelungenlied, Kudrun, Biterolf und Dietleib, Ortnit, and Wolfdietrich A, there are included, indeed, major heroic epics justifying the general title as “Heldenbuch,” but this impression is immediately undermined by the presence of a variety of other types of texts, all of them entertaining and also didactic, such as Wernher der Gartenaere’s Meier Helmbrecht and The Stricker’s Pfaffe Amís. We cannot easily determine what justified or motivated Maximilian or his scribe Ried to select those specific works, but Mario Klarer suggests at least that the driving force was, after all, to have texts available that reflect knighthood, heroism, and global government by means of the translatio imperii.³⁰ In Mauritius von Craûn, the prologue, above all, might support this view, but the verse narrative itself casts considerable doubt on this perspective.

Only recently, the entire Ambraser Heldenbuch has been republished both as a facsimile and as diplomatic edition of the early modern German text, along with the parallel diplomatic edition of the medieval versions.³¹ This provides us now with the best possible access to this famous manuscript, perhaps one of the best literary representations of Maximilian’s efforts at creating gedechtnus of himself, that is, as a patron of the arts and literature. However, in this specific case, a literary analysis is required to gain a better understanding of the verse narrative, Mauritius von Craûn, taking us beyond generic comments about the references to Troy and the origin of knighthood there.

Hans Ried copied this verse novella as the third text in his manuscript, which has survived quite curiously only in this manuscript. It has come down to us anonymously, and we cannot tell whether any other medieval German poet might have ever referred to it or engaged with it. This is surprisingly not an unusual phenomenon for the entire collection since fifteen of the twenty-five works contained in it are uniquely preserved here, which forces us to reflect on the ultimate purpose of this anthology. Ten other texts, however, constitute major contributions to Middle High German literature, such as the Nibelungenlied (ca. 1200) or Hartmann von Aue’s Arthurian romance, Iwein (ca. 1190/1200), which are here recorded once again, but now very late.

Apart from a relatively short verse narrative by The Stricker (ca. 1220–1240), his Frauenehre (1ra–2rb), Mauritius von Craûn really represents the introductory piece and thus enjoyed a high profile (2va–5vc).³² But the initial verses describing the subsequent text do not focus on the actual story, but on the history of the Roman Emperor Nero: “Von Künig Nero ainem Wüettrich der auch wie ein Fraw Swanger wolt sein Vnd sein Mueter aufschneiden liesse von seins fürbitz” (title lines; On Emperor Nero who was a rabid and violent man who wanted to be pregnant like a woman and had his mother cut open to learn about the location of his origin).

The prologue actually pursues a much larger issue than Emperor Nero, who is identified as an insane individual. The poet explores, instead, the origin and history of knighthood which had developed first in Greece, especially during the Trojan war. After having dropped a number of famous names, the narrator refers to the earliest chronicler, Dâres, as his major source, and then reflects on the rapid decline of knighthood once Troy had fallen. Relying on an allegorizing strategy, the speaker then describes how both knighthood and honor had to turn their back to Greece and to look for a refuge, which they found in Rome, at least under Julius Cesar (115–17). However, as we already know from the title lines, as soon as Nero had assumed the throne, all values were quickly lost again, and escape was necessary one more time. The narrator narrows the focus and talks only about knighthood, which was well received in the Carolingian empire under Charlemagne. We are told a little about the emperor’s paladins, Oliver and Roland (242), and then learn that knighthood had bloomed there well until the present time when the actual narrative about the knight Mauritius von Craûn sets in:

Ez stêt dehein lant baz

ze fröuden dâ ie man gesaz

danne Karlingen tuot.

wan diu ir ritterschaft ist guot.

siu ist da wert und bekant . . . .

si dienent harte schône

den frouwen dâ nâch lône,

wan man lônet in da

baz dan iender anderswâ. (251–62)

[There is no other country better off filled with joys, wherever people have existed, than where the Carolingians live. Their knighthood is good, it is valued and well-known. They serve with all their might the ladies in hope of being rewarded,
better than anywhere else.]

However, there are no references to Maximilian, to the Habsburgian court, to any contemporary events, and the like. Instead, the anonymous poet only projects general historiographical comments and outlines a historical process of progress and decline, which other authors had also dealt with, such as the chronicler Otto von Freising (1112–1158).³³ However, the outcome of the story about the protagonist is everything but hopeful because Mauritius basically misunderstands the principles of courtly love, confuses the traditional wooing process with a mercantile contract which his lady at the end does not observe and actually breaks because he himself had failed in a slight matter. In order to secure his reward, Mauritius then breaks into the marital bedroom, scares the husband out of his wits, and lies down in the bed next to his lady, who then is basically forced to accept him as her sexual partner, certainly a form of rape.³⁴

After Mauritius has slept with his lady, he returns her ring and thus terminates their erotic relationship, abandoning her altogether and leaving the country, never to return. The narrator only emphasizes that he subsequently gained much fame and honor in distant lands, but the closure of the verse novella is reserved for the lady, the Countess of Beamunt, who bemoans her own failures, her stubbornness, her ungratefulness, and hence her loss of this lover.

This does not mean, however, that blame falls entirely on her shoulders, as research has often observed since she had no real freedom to choose, was not protected enough from his violent sexual conquest, has a miserable husband who simply faints when he thinks that a ghost has come to take him down to hell, and is confronted by a pompous knight who does not take a ‘no’ for an answer and pursues his goal with extreme measures and pomp. We might call the final scene a form of domestic rape, although there are also good reasons to chastise her for a number of shortcomings in her relationship with Mauritius. The male protagonist constantly seems to overdo everything he undertakes, whether the artificial ship with which he arrives at his lady’s castle, or the exorbitant tournament at which he wins every joust, as if the entire event had been orchestrated to make him shine forth as the best knight of them all.³⁵

Could we perhaps identify Mauritius as a new Nero? Does knighthood in its traditional sense even survive the fracas of his ridiculous and violent behavior and performance? The narrator only comments curtly: “er koufte lop und êre. / do gerou ez sie vil sêre” (1643–44; he purchased praise and honor; she regretted it very much). The outcome thus proves to be catastrophic for her since she is no longer enjoying Mauritius’s love and yet is stuck in an unhappy marriage, as far as we can tell, considering her husband’s unworthy role that he has played both publicly and privately.³⁶

What would this verse novella hence contribute to Maximilian’s efforts to work at his memoria? In a way, we might even argue that all of the ideals of knighthood and courtly love are deconstructed here and exposed as dubious, if not fake concepts that can easily be dismantled. However, there are references both to the ancient Greeks and Trojans, then to Cesar, and finally to Charlemagne, all worthy figures to whom Maximilian would have looked up or regarded as his role models.³⁷ The glory of knighthood appears consistently as a dream which comes true at times and then disappears again because of human failure. The danger of the downfall and collapse of all courtly values is described as very real and imminent, so the individual has to realise its contingency, which was also the critical experience by Theuerdank in Maximilian’s own eponymous novel.³⁸

However, it is also possible that the introductory lines regarding the high value of knighthood both in the past and in the future (3–4) might have satisfied the patron, Maximilian, and his scribe, Ried, to accept this short verse narrative as a representative piece in this miscellany. The narrator emphasizes, after all: “wir hœren an den buochen lesen / wâ man ir von erste began / und war si sider bekam” (6–8; we hear how the books tell us where knighthood originated and where it developed later).

For a long time, the narrator seems to depict a worthy male protagonist, a marvel of a knightly wooer, and the poet might have intended to project a negative image of unreliable and untrustworthy courtly ladies who do not submit easily to their wooers’ desires. Modern scholarship has, however, gained a very different impression, with many scholars voicing extensive criticism of the knightly figure who is ultimately not worth his own rank and appears to commit even rape after having faked tremendous successes at the tournament. But when we want to assess “Mauritius von Craûn” in the context of Maximilian’s effort to establish his own “gedechtnus” for posterity, then we might have to take a different approach and acknowledge primarily the emperor’s desire to collect literary antiquities, so to speak, and to embellish his own reputation as a patron of literature, apart from his own role as a poet, with this famous Ambraser Heldenbuch.

Ironically, despite the rather dark sides in Mauritius’s character and his dubious performance as a lover, there is no doubt about the value of this verse novella as a representative literary work reflecting on a knight’s struggles to win his lady’s love, which can easily fail, and this without the man’s fault, as the narrator wants to insinuate. We tend to see this quite differently today, as modern research has amply demonstrated,³⁹ but this would not undermine the public function of this verse novella as a worthy contribution to Maximilian’s fame as an expert in matters of knighthood and connoisseur of the erotic discourse.

The emphasis on Nero as a monster of a ruler could not be taken as an indicator of Maximilian’s self-doubts and criticism. By contrast, the verse novella appears to serve as a complex literary mirror of the high value of knighthood and courtly love which could easily get lost. Since the emperor obviously knew only too well of the delicate situation he lived in, with the times changing rapidly also in his world, the precarious nature of Mauritius von Craûn underscored the tenuous nature of memoria and the great need to work hard and diligently to preserve one’s respect and honor at court. The implied self-criticism strongly suggests Maximilian’s awareness of the grave dangers he faced as the ‘last knight’ and as a patron of medieval art and literature. As disturbing as the verse novella easily proves to be, it certainly expressed in multiple fashions the vagaries of life and hence the particular need to work hard at establishing memory, or gedechtnus.

Acknowledgment

The author would like to thank the University of Arizona for its support of this research project.

Conflict of Interest

There is no conflict of interest.

Funding Sources

No funding source.

References

1. For the most seminal study on this phenomenon at large, see Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen. 8th ed. (1992; Munich: C. H. Beck, 2018); cf. the contributions to Memoria in der Gesellschaft des Mittelalters, ed. Dieter Geuenich and Otto Gerhard Oexle. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 111 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); see now the contributions to Narrativas de la Memoria: Aproximaciones desde el campo de los archivos y los lugares de la memoria, ed.  Luis Carlos Toro Tamayo. Hispano-Americana, 53 (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2017); and to Bildnis – Memoria – Repräsentation: Beiträge zur Erinnerungskultur im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Wolfgang Augustyn and Ulrich Söding (Passau: Dietmar Klinger Verlag, 2021).
2. Dichter über Dichter in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur, ed. Günther Schweikle. Deutsche Texte, 12 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1970). See now also the contributions to Approaches to the Medieval Self: Representations and Conceptualizations of the Self in the Textual and Material Culture of Western Scandinaiva, c. 800–1500, ed. Stefka G. Eriksen, Karen Langsholt Holmquist, and Bjørn Bandlien (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020). For the poetic self-conception, see Douglas Kelly, The Art of Medieval French Romance (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 306–20.
3. For the Parlers, see Die Parler und der Schöne Stil 1350–1400: Europäische Kunst unter den Luxemburgern, ed. Anton Legner, vol. 3 (Cologne: Schnütgen-Museum Köln, 1978); for Hanns von Bugenhagen, see Friedrich Kobler, “Hanns von Burghausen, Steinmetz – Über den gegenwärtigen Forschungsstand zu Leben und Werk des Baumeisters,” Alte und moderne Kunst 30.198/199 (1985): 7–16; for Conrad von Einbeck, see Ingrid Schulze, “Die Bildhauerwerkstatt des Conrad von Einbeck in Halle und ihre Auswirkungen auf die mitteldeutsche Plastik in der ersten Hälfte des 15. Jahrhunderts,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg 10.4 (1961), 1131–44; eadem, “Die Skulpturen des Conrad von Einbeck in der Moritzkirche zu Halle,” eadem, Von der Gotik bis zum Historismus: Beiträge zur Kunstentwicklung im Bereich von Saale und mittlerer Elbe (Bucha bei Jena: quartus-Verlag, 2009), 90–101; cf. also https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conrad_von_Einbeck; (last accessed on Sept. 12, 2022).
4. Ionu? Epurescu-Pascovici, Human Agency in Medieval Society, 1100–1450 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2021). The term ‘agency,’ however, is rather problematic; see now my review in Le Moyen Âge (forthcoming).
   CrossRef
5. Regarding music as a medium for memory, see Lena Nieper and Julian Schmitz, Musik als Medium der Erinnerung: Gedächtnis – Geschichte – Gegenwart. Musik und Klangkultur, 17 (Bielefeld: transcript-Verlag, 2016).
6. Danielle Régnier-Bohler, “Imagining the Self,” A History of Private Life. Vol. II: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1985; Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), 311–94.
7. Georges Duby and Philippe Braunstein, “The Emergence of the Individual,” A History of Private Life. Vol. II: Revelations of the Medieval World, ed. Georges Duby, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1985; Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1988), 507–630.
8. Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Janet Coleman, Ancient and Medieval Memories: Studies in the Reconstruction of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For a critical overview of the relevant research, see Kisha G. Tracy, “Memory, Recollection, and Forgetting,” Handbook of Medieval Culture: Fundamental Aspects and Conditions of the European Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen. 3 vol. (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), vol. 2, 1020–38.
9. An English translation appeared in 1545: The art of memory, that otherwyse is called the Phenix: A boke very behouefull and profytable to all professours of scyences. Grammaryens, rethoryciens dialectyke, legystes, phylosophres [and] theologiens, trans. Robert Copeland ([London: In Fletestrete at the sygne of the George by Wyllyam Myddylton, 1545). For a digital version of the Latin text, in the edition from 1533, see https://archive.org/details/ita-bnc-in2-00001198-001/page/n6/mode/2up, and in the 1567 edition, https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_Nbzib2WbClwC; for a digital version of the French translation from 1545, see https://archive.org/details/BIUSante_41488x04;
10. Romedio Schmitz-Esser, Der Leichnam im Mittelalter: Einbalsamierung, Verbrennund und die kulturelle Konstruktion des toten Körpers, as The Corpse in the Middle Ages: Embalming, Cremation, and the Cultural Construction of the Dead Body, trans. Albrecht Classen and Carolin Radtke (2014; Turnhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, Brepols, 2020); Nancy Mandeville Caciola, Afterlives: The Return of the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2016).
11. Memory and Identity in the Medieval and Early Modern World, ed. Roman Bleier, Brian Coleman, and Clare Fletcher. Court Cultures of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 8 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2022).
12. From Charters to Codex: Studies on Cartularies and Archival Memory in the Middle Ages, Rodrigo Furtado and Marcello Moscone. Textes et études du Moyen-Age, 93 (Basel: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2019).
13. Joel T. Rosenthal, Testimony and Memory in Medieval Lives, 1377–1447. The New Middle Ages (Cham: Springer International Publishing – Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).
14. Writing Matters: Presenting and Perceiving Monumental Inscriptions in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Irene Berti, Katharina Bolle, Fanny Opdenhoff, and Fabian Stroth. Materiale Textkulturen, 14 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2017); see also Sebastian Scholz and Gerald Schwedler, Creative Selection between Emending and Forming Medieval Memory (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2021); cf. also the contributions to A Cultural History of Memory in the Middle Ages, ed. Gerald Schwedler. A Cultural History of Memory, 2 (London, New York, et al.: Bloomsbury Academy, 2021).
15. Marie-Luise Laudage, Caritas und Memoria mittelalterlicher Bischöfe. Münstersche historische Forschungen, 3 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna: Böhlau, 1993); Christine Sauer, Fundatio und Memoria: Stifter und Klostergründer im Bild 1100 bis 1350. Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 109 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).
16. Erinnerte Macht: antike Herrschergräber in transkultureller Perspektive, ed. Dietrich Boschung, Alfred Schäfer, and Marcus Trier. Morphomata, 50 (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2021).
17. Jens Lieven, Adel, Herrschaft und Memoria. Studien zur Erinnerungskultur der Grafen von Kleve und Geldern im Hochmittelalter (1020–1250) (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 2008)
18. Memorias y lugares de memoria de Europa/ Mémoires et lieux de mémoire en Europe/ / Memories and Places of Memory in Europe, ed. Éric Bussière and Enrique Moradiellos. Cuadernos de Yuste, 6 (Brussels, Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2012).
19. Der Tod der bayerischen Herzöge im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit 1347–1579. Vorbereitung – Sterben – Trauerfeierlichkeiten – Grablegen – Memoria, ed. Thomas Meier and Winfried Schenk. Arbeitskreis für Historische Kulturlandschaftsforschung in Mitteleuropa. Jahrestagung (Heidelberg: Selbstverlag Arkum e.V., 2016). For a variety of perspectives dealing with death and the afterlife, see the contributions to Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death, ed. Albrecht Classen. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 16 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016).
20. For a contrastive view regarding the relationship between print and manuscript, see now Albrecht Classen, “The Continuation of the Middle Ages in the Early Modern Print Period. With an Emphasis on Melusine and Till Eulenspiegel,” Publishing Research Quarterly (August 22. 2–22); DOI.10.1007/s12109-022-09910-4.
21. Jan-Dirk Müller, Gedechtnus: Literatur und Hofgesellschaft um Maximilian I. Forschungen zur Geschichte der älteren deutschen Literatur, 2 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1982). See now Maximilians Welt: Kaiser Maximilian I. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Innovation und Tradition, ed. Johannes Helmrath, Ursula Kocher, and Andrea Sieber. Berliner Mittelalter- und Frühneuzeitforschung: BMFF 22 (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2018).
22. Benjamin Scheller, Memoria an der Zeitenwende. Die Stiftungen Jakob Fuggers des Reichen vor und während der Reformation (ca. 1505–1555). Veröffentlichungen der Schwäbischen Forschungsgemeinschaft, 4/Stiftungsgeschichten, 3 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004). Cf. also Hermann Kamp, Memoria und Selbstdarstellung: die Stiftungen des burgundischen Kanzlers Rolin. Francia / Beihefte, 30 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke, 1993); Care for the Here and the Hereafter: Memoria, Art and Ritual in the Middle Ages, ed. Truus van Bueren and Andrea van Leerdam (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
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23. See, for instance, Lisa Mansfield, Representations of Renaissance Monarchy: Francis I and the Image-Makers (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016).
24. Quoted from Stephan Füssel, “Maximilian I.,” Deutsche Dichter der frühen Neuzeit (1450–1600): Ihr Leben und Werk, ed. Stephan Füssel (Munich: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1993); 200–16. here 203. For the full text, and the following quote, see Alwin Schultz, ed., “Der Weisskunig: Nach den Dictaten und eigenhändigen Aufzeichnungen Kauser Maximilians I. zusammengestellt von Marx Treitzsaurwein von Ehrentreitz,” Jahrbuch der kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 6 (1888; Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlags-Anstalt, 1966), ch. 24, 66.
25. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor#Cultural_patronage,_reforms_and_image_building (last accessed on Sept. 10, 2022). These biographical data are so well known that we can rely on this online reference work, among many others.
26. Füssel, “Maximilian I” (see note 24), 211.
27. Müller, Gedechtnus (see note 21), 280.
28. Both quotes taken from the respectable online article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_Church (last accessed on Sept. 10, 2022).
29. Mario Klarer, “Einleitung: Das Ambraser Heldenbuch: Paradoxien und Anachronismen eines außergewöhnlichen Kunstwerks,” Kaiser Maximilian I. und das Ambraser Heldenbuch, ed. id. (Vienna, Cologne, and Weimar: Böhlau, 2019), 11–24.
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30. Mario Klarer, “Vom Umgang mit der Gedachtnus: Translatio imperii und mittelalterliche Gehirnanatomie im Ambraser Heldenbuch,” Kaiser Maximilian I. und das Ambraser Heldenbuch, ed. id. (see note 29), 189–210; here 190. The present article tries to go beyond Klarer’s initial attempts since he leaves us primarily with vague suggestions and does not engage in close readings of the various texts, especially not Mauritius von Craûn.,
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31. Ambraser Heldenbuch: Gesamttranskription mit Manuskriptbild ed. Mario Klarer. 11 Vols. (Berlin und Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022). This is also available through a free access online at: https://www.degruyter.com/serial/ahg-b/html?lang=en#volumes (last accessed on Sept. 11, 2022).
32. For the critical edition, see Mauritius von Craûn, ed. Heimo Reinitzer. Altdeutsche Textbibliothek, 113 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2000); see also Morîz von Craûn. Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der Ausgabe von Ulrich Pretzel. Übersetzung, Kommentar und Nachwort von Albrecht Classen. Universal-Bibliothek, 8796 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1992); reissued with some corrections and an English introduction (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000); published online at http://www.gened.arizona.edu/aclassen/morizcomplete.pdf (2004). For a comprehensive analysis, see Hubertus Fischer, Ritter, Schiff und Dame: Mauritius von Craûn. Beiträge zur älteren Literaturgeschichte (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2006).
33.  Albrecht Classen, “Mauritius von Craûn and Otto von Freising’s The Two Cities: 12th- and 13th-Century Scepticism about Historical Progress and the Metaphor of the Ship,” German Quarterly 79.1 (2006): 28–49.
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34. Albrecht Classen, “Contracting Love Versus Courtly Love: Jans Enikel’s ‘Friedrich von Auchenfurt,’ the Anonymous Mauritius von Craûn, and Dietrich von der Gletze’s ‘Der Borte’,” Neohelicon 46.1 (2019): 159–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-019-00476-3; or: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11059-019-00476-3?wt_mc=alerts.TOCjournals&utm_source=toc&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=toc_11059_46_1.
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35. I have examined both sides in this relationship through a critical lens in Sexual Violence and Rape in the Middle Ages: A Critical Discourse in Premodern German and European Literature. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 7 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), ch. 2, 33–52.
36. For the emergence of mercantile thinking in medieval German literature, see Adrian Meyer, Merkantiles Erzählen – Von Kauf und Verkauf in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur. Literatur - Theorie - Geschichte, 25 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2022), esp. 131–32.
37.  Albrecht Classen, Charlemagne in Medieval German and Dutch Literature. Bristol Studies in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2021), 1–13.
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38. Kaiser Maximilian I., Theuerdank, 1517. With an epilogue by Horst Appuhn (Dortmund: Harenberg Kommunikation, 1979); see now also the English translation, Theuerdank: The Epic of the Last Knight, ed. Stephan Füssel (Cologne: Taschen, 2018).
39. See, for instance, Marian E. Polhill, “Ich diene und wirbe / biz ich gar verdirbe: Lovesickness, Apocalypse, and the End-Times in Mauritius von Craûn and Das Nibelungenlied,” The End-Times in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse, ed. Ernst Ralf Hintz and Scott E. Pincikowski. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), 168–87. There are, however, no new perspectives, and her research review is rather outdated.
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