Pet Ownership in Medieval Europe, the 13th Century, a Rare, Surviving Manuscript Leaf from a Great Holy Roman Legal Treatise Showing the Law Around the Keeping of Pets, Including Dogs, Some Exotic

Only two copies are preserved outside Europe: The Library of Congress, Washington DC, Ms 12, and Philadelphia, Free Library, MS Lewis E69.

 

“Anyone who keeps an aggressive dog or a tame wolf or a dear or bears or apes, must compensate for the damages that they cause”

 

This manuscript survives because of its later use to bind a Renaissance-era book, which comes with it

The Sachenspeigel was the first comprehensive law code in German, and among the most important medieval works in that language. It was composed in the 1220s in Saxony by Eike von Repgow for his master, Count Hoyer of Falkenstein. It became the model for almost all following German law codes, and it remained the principal common law in Prussia until 1794 and in Anhalt and Thuringia until 1900.

It was also one of the most important law books compiled during the Holy Roman Empire and had a lasting effect on later German and Dutch law. In fact, some of the legal principles put forth in the book can be traced to current laws throughout Europe. The book was also an early example of written prose in a Low German language, which developed from the Old Saxon language in the Middle Ages. While there were existing law books in Latin, the Sachsenspiegel was the first comprehensive law book in Middle Low German. A Latin edition was also produced, of which only fragments remain.

In the mid-fourteenth century parts of it began to be clarified by German legal specialists in an effort to harmonize it with imperial and Canon law, with the first block of these glosses attributed to the Bologna-trained jurist, Johann von Buch (fl. 1325-1356), and another named Nikolaus Worm adding others a few decades later, among numerous other anonymous contributors. The glosses fundamentally reflect the legal practices of the Saxon court and wider society.

Substantial fragment from a leaf from an early manuscript of the Glosses to the Sachsenspeigel-Landsrecht attributed to the jurist Johann von Buch (ca. 1290-1356), the Busch’sche Glosse, on penalties for the injury of aristocratic pets including dogs, bears, tame wolves and monkeys, in Middle Low German with a few titles of law codes in Latin, on parchment in Middle Low German, middle of 14th century.

Large rectangular cutting, almost an entire leaf but wanting a few lines at top and about half of the outer column vertically, that remaining with double column of 29 lines of a rounded Germanic gothic bookhand, capitals in ornamental penstrokes and touched in red, dark blue paraphs, quotations underlined in red, recovered from reuse in a binding and so with obverse with small holes, folds, stains, small scuffs and remnants of paper, reverse scuffed (perhaps intentionally to remove text there) and now with red initials and underlining easily legible, a few words discernable at once turned-down edges and spine, 245 by 173mm; with the printed book these leaves once bound (see below), without boards but held together at spine by sewing structures, two small strips from same parent manuscript forming endbands at head and foot.

The legible side of the present leaf includes parts of book II, ch. 60-62 (opening words only of latter; for edition see F.M. Kaufmann, Glossen zum Sachsenspiegel-Landrecht. Buch’sche Glosse, MGH Fontes iuris N. S., 7/1, 2002, vol. 7.2, pp. 872-76), and these are within the section usually attributed to Johann von Buch himself. The text here is fundamentally secular and to do with the punishments for the killing or maiming of various aristocratic domestic animals, beginning with a dog (“glumenden hund”), and increasing in value and rarity to a deer (“hert”), a tame wolf (“thamen wulff”), a bear (“beren”) and finally an ape or monkey (“apen”), citing Justinian’s Institutiones and a Lex Cornelia (this text cited from its extracts in the Digest).

Translation from medieval Low German: “Anyone who keeps an aggressive dog or a tame wolf or a dear or bears or apes, must compensate for the damages that they cause. If he wants to distance himself from them (the animals) after the damage was made, he will not be declared innocent, as long as the plaintive can prove with a third man that he has kept these animals at the time when the damage was caused. If anyone kills a dog or a bear or another animal when this attacks him, he will be found guiltless as long as he swears on the holy saints that he acted in self defense. Anyone who will keep wild animals outside of a reserved hunting forest [Bannforst] must keep them within the boundaries of his own property. About this confer Response about Guilt article xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, Dog article ii, iii.

“’Anyone who keeps an aggressive dog’, What good is this article if it is used in a trial? See article xl responses xxii, xxiii, where, the one who is judged differently according to xlv, you must judge leniently. And it is because he must not claim that the court has made unjustified interpretations. Confer Chapter li about laws and constitutions, and about relations, the aforementioned article xl article vi about damages caused by animals that are not harmful by nature, such as horses, cows etcetera.”

Reused as a binding, aiding its survival:

The manuscript was written in northern Germany in the second half of the fourteenth century, and the near-contemporary addition of a ‘z’ to the end of ‘hert’ at the end of the second line of the first column, suggests it was early in use in a southern German center. It was then reused for bookbinding in the seventeenth century (this copy surviving as the binding of a printed book: Cornelius Martini, Metaphysica, brevibus quidem, sed methodice conscripta, Jena: Johannis Bethmanni, 1622, with small fragments of the same manuscripts used as endbands and remaining in situ; this printed book kept with this fragment).

On rarity:

The importance and practicality of the text ensured its popularity, and some 204 manuscripts are now recorded (see Kaufmann, vol. 7.3, pp. 1523-1551; not including the present example), of which only seven are in private hands (ibid, nos. 92, 105, 154, 155, 160, 161 and 188; all fragments of a leaf or so) and none of those outside of Germany. To that must be added a fifteenth-century paper codex privately owned by Philipp, Fürst zu StolbergWernigerode of Hirzenhain (Cod. Zb 36) as recorded by the ‘Handschriftencensus’ online database for the text. Additionally, six 14th century leaves were donated by Esaias Tegnér the Younger to Uppsala University Library in 1945 (KB B 716a). In fact, the only manuscripts of the text outside of Germany and its immediate neighbors who were under its sway during the Middle Ages, are those in Uppsala, Sweden (C 803), Oslo, Norway (Universitätsbibliotek, MS 4o 755), Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen (NKS 1479 and Add. 262 2o), with two final copies outside of Europe: the Library of Congress in Washington DC. (MS. 12) and Free Library in Philadelphia. Apart from a single fifteenth-century codex offered by Wild and Altheer of Utrecht in 1800, and a scuffed and battered late fifteenth-century leaf of a related text sold in Bloomsbury Auctions in London, 8 July 2015, lot 33 (with text on dowries), we found none having appeared on the market.

A note on dating

The present fragment can be related, with regard to the script and layout, to among others, Oxford Bodleian Libr. Ms Laud. Misc. 741, although with single column and a more square character of the script, dated to the late 14th century, and to the rather more elaborately decorated Oschatzer Sachsenspiegel dated 1382. The close resemblances to the likewise rounded script found in the oldest preserved manuscript of the Sachsenspiegel, Halle, Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen Anhalt, Qu. Cod. 81. dated to around 1300, (https://opendata.uni-halle.de//handle/1981185920/36235) proposes a date for the present fragment at the middle of the 14th century, possibly even during the lifetime of Johann von Buch, while the Gloss was still under development, which could explain the deviations in relation to the standard editions.