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Tauler Reception in Religious Lyric the (Pseudo)-Tauler Cantilenae

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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. Schiewer and Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Predigt im Spätmittelalter’, in: Textsorten und Textallianzen um 1500, Teil I: Lite- rarische und religiöse Textallianzen um 1500, ed. by Alexander Schwarz, Franz Simmler, and Claudia Wich-Reif, Berlin 2009 (Berliner Sprachwissenschaftliche Studien 20), pp. 727-771. 2 Eckhart is unusual in referring to himself and the circumstances under which he composes his sermons; cf Burghard Mojsisch, ‘‘ce moi’. La conception du moi de maître Eckhart. Une contribution aux ‘Lumières’ du Moyen-Age’, in: Revue des sciences religieuses 70 (1996), pp. 18-30. Only the X-group of Berthold of Regensburg’s German sermons contains comparable self-references, though it is possible that these are in fact part of a complex literary construction of authority rather than self-referential statements by the author; cf Almut Suerbaum, ‘Formen der Publikumsansprache bei Berthold von Regensburg und ihr literarischer Kontext’, in: Predigt im Kontext, ed. Volker Mertens et al. (in press, Berlin); Schiewer and Schiewer (n. 1), p. 741f., and the contribution by R. Schiewer and Weigand in this volume. 3 On the significance of the Cologne print within he transmission of Tauler’s works, see Markus Polzer in this volume. Whether the Petrus Noviomagus mentioned in the print can be identified with Petrus Canisius has been disputed; see most recently Rob van de Schoor, ‘Canisius als Herausgeber’, in: Ons Geestelijk Erf 82.2 (2011), pp. 161-186. 4 Judith Theben, Die mystische Lyrik des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Untersuchungen – Texte – Repertorium, Berlin 2010 (Kulturtopographie des alemannischen Raums, vol. 2), p. 62, notes the Ons Geestelijk Erf 84(1), 41-54. doi: 10.2143/OGE.84.1.2975522 © Ons Geestelijk Erf. All rights reserved. 996240_OGE_2013/1_036240_OGE_2013/1_03 Suerbaum.inddSuerbaum.indd 4141 118/04/138/04/13 009:329:32 42 ALMUT SUERBAUM derivative, and therefore of no intrinsic literary interest. Nevertheless, some were clearly popular and are widely transmitted, not just in the late Middle Ages, but also well into the contemporary period. This is true in particular of the best-known of the songs attributed to Tauler, ‘Es kommt ein schiff, gela- den’ (A ship draws near, well laden), which Daniel Sudermann first ascribed to Tauler in his collection of religious songs from Strasbourg manuscripts published in 1620, and which modern hymn books usually list as a Christmas carol.5 The song is an example of the seamless transition of medieval material into early modern and modern devotional practice, crossing the post-reforma- tion boundaries and remaining part of Catholic as well as Protestant traditions. As is evident from their manuscript transmission, the so-called Tauler can- tilenae are part of a wider cultural phenomenon: during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, religious songs became an increasingly popular vehicle for religious contemplation, especially in the vernacular, and especially, though by no means exclusively, for women.6 The existence of multiple versions more- over suggests that these songs remained popular well into the early modern period, yet they have never been studied in any detail.7 While a comprehensive literary assessment is beyond the scope of this article, the cantilenae merit fact that manuscripts transmitting religious songs as well as Tauler sermons do not contain the so-called Tauler cantilenae; conversely, none of the cantilenae are attributed to Tauler before the Cologne print. Both factors together suggest strongly that the attribution to Tauler is secondary. Daniel Sudermann’s collection Schöne auserlesene Sinnreiche Figuren II. Teil, Straßburg 1620, adds ‘Ich muoz die creaturen fliehen’ and ‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen’ to the group of songs attributed to Tauler. 5 Evangelisches Gesangbuch der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland (EKD) und ihrer Glied- kirchen, der Evangelischen Kirche Augsburgischen und Helvetischen Bekenntnisses in Österreich sowie der Kirche Augsburgischer Konfession und der Reformierten Kirche im Elsass und in Lothringen (Frankreich), regional editions by province, 1993-1996, no 8; Gotteslob. Herausgege- ben von den Bischöfen Deutschlands und Österreichs und der Bistümer Bozen-Brixen, Lüttich und Luxemburg, regional versions by diocese, revised 1996, no 114; cf Liederdatenbank (http://www. liederdatenbank.de) for electronic versions of both hymn books. On the early transmission of ‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen‘, see Almut Suerbaum, ‘‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen.’ Mouvance in mystischen Liedern aus Straßburg’, in: Der Literaturbetrieb im spätmittelalterlichen Straßburg, ed. by Nigel F. Palmer and Stephen Mossmann, Göttingen 2012, pp. 99-116. 6 Johannes Janota, Studien zu Funktion und Typus des deutschen geistlichen Liedes im Mittelalter, Munich 1968 (Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen 23), is still the most comprehensive account for medieval German literature; Theben (n. 4) documents the widespread transmission of anony- mous songs in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Medieval Dutch songs are recorded in the ‘liederenbank’ database (http://www.liederenbank.nl), cf Thom Mertens, “Die Gheestelicke Melody: A Program for the Spiritual Life in a Middle Dutch Song Cycle”, in: Women and Expe- rience in Later Medieval Writing: Reading in the Book of Life, ed. by Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker and Liz Herbert McAvoy, Hampshire 2009 (The New Middle Ages), pp. 123-147. 7 The only studies of note are Albert Ampe, ‘Een kritisch onderzoek von de ‘Institutiones Taulerianae’’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 40 (1966), pp. 167-240, esp. pp. 216-220, S. Eucharis Becker, ‘Untersuchungen zu dem Tauler zugeschriebenen Lied ‘Es kommt ein schiff geladen’’, in: Johannes Tauler. Ein deutscher Mystiker- Gedenkschrift zum 600. Todestag, ed. by Ephrem Filthaut, Essen 1961, pp. 77-92, and Kurt Ruh, ‘Mystische Spekulation in Reimversen des 14. Jahrhunderts’, in: Beiträge zur weltlichen und geistlichen Lyrik des 13. bis 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Kurt Ruh and Werner Schröder, Berlin 1973, pp. 205-230. 996240_OGE_2013/1_036240_OGE_2013/1_03 Suerbaum.inddSuerbaum.indd 4242 118/04/138/04/13 009:329:32 TAULER RECEPTION IN RELIGIOUS LYRIC 43 consideration on their own terms, as well as in the context of Tauler reception, and that is what the current paper proposes to do. In the context of this volume on Tauler, the small group of songs raises three issues in particular which merit further consideration: the nature of the texts and their transmission; the reasons for attributing them to Tauler, and finally, the ways in which they shed light on late medieval and early modern Tauler reception. I. ORIGINS AND TRANSMISSION The title ‘Tauler-Cantilenen’ goes back to the 1543 Cologne print of Tauler’s works, whose redactor groups six texts under the rubric ‘Des erleuchten D. Joannis Tauleri etlige geistlige Cantilenen’ (Some religious songs by the illustrious Father JohannesTauler).8 All are believed by modern scholars to have their origins in the fourteenth century, although three of the songs are so far known only in the form of the Cologne print, while more recent studies have demonstrated that some of these songs are also transmitted in a number of manuscript variants.9 It is possible that they are the work of several writers using a similar theological and literary diction, though Ruh, the only scholar so far to have studied them as a group in any detail, considers the similarities such as to make a single author more plausible; nevertheless, the transmission suggests that the Cologne print is the first to group them together as a coherent collection.10 These six songs share certain simliarities with two further songs, ‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen’ and ‘Ich muoz die creaturen fliehen’ (I have to flee the creatures of the world) which Sudermann transcribed from Strasbourg manuscripts and attributed to Tauler. This suggests that the redactor of the Cologne Tauler print selected from a range of material, some of which we can trace back to fourteenth century sources. The origin of this material is more difficult to establish. For two of the most widely transmitted songs, Cantilena 6 ‘Von rechter armut” (On spiritual poverty) and ‘Es kommt ein schiff, geladen’, we know at least six manuscript 8 Kölner Tauler-Druck v. J. 1543, Mm1vb-Mm2vb; songs 1-5 are editied in: Das deutsche Kir- chenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Philipp Wackernagel, vol. II, Leipzig 1867, pp.
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