Trial by Fire and Battle in Medieval German Literature (Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture)

"This book analyzes the dramatic treason trial in late medieval Charlemagne epics, where the great emperor presides over the judicial combat that convicts his nephew Roland's killer. The two epics chosen, Stricker's Karl der Grasse and the Karlmeinet, from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, treat trial by battle as the living legal reality that it was in those times, yet display very different attitudes toward feud and punishment in their respective societies. Gottfried's Tristan contains an ordeal by battle, of which the author approves, and an ordeal by fire of which he does not, reflecting a common position of the intelligentsia around 1210, the probable time of its writing. This study shows how the two ordeals reference each other, providing for a more nuanced understanding of the position of the ordeal in Gottfried's work. Well after the condemnation of ordeals by the Fourth Lateran Council, the Kunigunde legend preserves the ordeal by fire in a sort of hagiographic amber, much as it was portrayed in the mid-twelfth-century Richardis legend, while Stricker's short secular burlesque "The Hot Iron," written in the mid-thirteenth century, makes sport of this formerly serious legal proceeding, reflecting the almost immediate abandonment of trial by fire as a legal proof in many areas after the council's decision." "This interdisciplinary study brings extensive background material in legal and cultural history to bear on literary texts, enabling both medievalists and general readers to reach a broader and more informed understanding of the function of the ordeal and related legal issues in the texts as well as in the larger society for which these works were written."--BOOK JACKET.