Project description

The aim of the project is to present a new critical edition of the two works by Nikolaus von Jeroschin, the Legend of Adalbert (fragment) and the Chronicle of Prussia, both of which were created in Prussia in the twenties and thirties of the 14th century. In addition to the respective text and its transmission, the main focus is on the manuscripts themselves: their arrangement, the material, their distribution and the presentation of the text.

Therefore, the first step is to document and present the inventory, i.e. the manuscripts in the form of digital copies and the text in the form of enclosed machine-readable transcriptions.

For the chronicle there are manuscripts that were produced in close temporal proximity to the creation of the text (between 1335 and 1341), i.e. around the middle of the 14th century, as well as those that were created in the 15th century. Unfortunately, an important witness of the late phase - the Hs. D - is considered lost today. However, text reproduction as well as presen-tation can be traced over almost one and a half centuries. Apart from the statutes of the Teu-tonic Order, which are a special case, this is a singular example, because the number of survi-ving manuscripts of texts from the Teutonic Order is otherwise very small; often only one or two manuscripts are known. Only those texts deviate from this rule that also have their own tradition outside the order. A conclusive explanation for this phenomenon has not yet been found.

The Adalbert fragment, which is only present in two sheets, dates from the 14th century; how-ever, the proximity of the manuscript to the time of origin of the text (between 1326 and 1329) is not as close as in some of the chronicle manuscripts. And since the Adalbert transmission has survived solely in unical form, we can only speculate about text tradition and distribution. At least the fragment could provide additional clues to the chronicle‘s tradition.

The second step (as a new project) is the compilation of the critical edition, which takes into account the entire manuscript material; in the present case, this means in particular to include the numerous newly discovered fragments in the textual criticism. In addition, the numerous names of persons and places in the chronicle are to be identified, and the dates and historical events are to be explained.

It is planned to present the edition in hybrid form, i.e. both as an online edition and in book form (as print-on-demand).