Tauler Reception in Religious Lyric the (Pseudo)-Tauler Cantilenae
ALMUT SUERBAUM Tauler reception in religious lyric The (pseudo)-Tauler cantilenae Views on authorship differ with each historical period: modern editions collect works under the name of an author, yet for medieval collections of sermons, authorship is often not an important category.1 Even where medieval manus- cripts transmit groups of sermons under the name of an author, these texts rarely contain self-referential statements, and Tauler, unlike Eckhart, never refers to himself in his sermons by name.2 For modern editions, one of the principal tasks is therefore to separate authentic Tauler from texts travelling under his name, and decisions of modern editors and scholars about what is authentic differ considerably from those of earlier periods. Every century, or so it seems, has had its own Tauler. For modern readers, Tauler is the author of sermons whose thoughts influenced a wide range of people from different social spheres, both within convents and amongst lay people. For earlier peri- ods, his oeuvre also comprised other literary genres; the early Tauler print of Petrus Canisius (Cologne 1543), for example, includes not just sermons, but also letters, tracts, legends, and songs.3 The latter group of texts is of particular interest for this paper, which will address the so-called Tauler cantilenae. These consist of a group of religious songs, often containing elements of mystical theology. Where they have been studied at all, the only question asked is usu- ally whether they are genuine Tauler texts; and since there are good reasons for doubting that,4 they have usually been dismissed as both inauthentic and 1 On genre conventions of medieval sermon collections, see Regina D.
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