1910 Articles

The Scribe of the Oaths of Strassburg: What was his Nationality?

Burnam, John

It is the purpose of this paper to suggest an answer, based on reasons chiefly paleographical, to the query serving as its title. The writer has had at his disposal the plates in G. Paris: Les plus anciens Monuments de la Langue Française, 1875, planche I; M. Ennecerus: Die ältesten deutschen Sprachdenkmäler, Frankfurt am Main, 1897, Tafeln 34-36; and Steffens: Lateinische Paläographie, Supplement zur zweiten Auflage, Freiburg in der Schweitz, 1908, Tafel 31. The latter two collections have been of especial service in this inquiry, for the Ennecerus plates, for example, furnish six whole columns of the complete manuscript; i. e., not only the text of the Oaths in the Romance and German versions, but also, what is extremely important for our investigation, the Latin context in which the Romance and German texts are embedded.