[In the following essay, Wailes attributes the omission of an episode from the “Vulgata” manuscript of der Stricker's Die Schwänke des Pfaffen Amîs to its representation of the clergyman Amîs's cupidity.]

The most conspicuous difference between the two principal versions of Der Pfaffe Amîs, the first German Schwankroman, is the omission from the “Vulgata” of the tenth episode in the Rieddeger text, in which Amîs plays the role of an illiterate peasant, is welcomed into a monastery by the provost and set in charge of its financial affairs, pretends to inspiration by the Holy Spirit, and then makes off with donations brought from far and wide by the gullible laity.¹ This adventure, and the matter of its inclusion or exclusion, is important for the work as a whole. Because it involves a social group not otherwise represented, the cloistered religious, it has implications for the structuring of Amîs in terms of various medieval Stände and for the interpretive concept of a broad satire; its omission from the “Vulgata” has long been explained as squeamishness in the face of an apparently irreverent treatment of holy matters—the foolishness of the monastery's provost, and the mass celebrated by the “inspired” trickster—which implies an audience for the tale sensitive to such irreverence; and the coherence of the two principal versions of Amîs, and priority of one vis-à-vis the other, depends in large part on the relationships of this episode in context, for if it is simply one element in a serial narration that could be shortened or lengthened at will, then whatever meaning the text as a whole may offer does not depend on its presence or absence.²

The audience first encounters the central motif of “Der Probst,” that of miraculous learning, in the climax of the contest between Amîs and his bishop, when the bishop requires him to teach an ass to read in order to validate his answers to the bishop's questions. In a strict sense the ass's apparent literacy—it has been trained to turn the pages of a volume with its muzzle because Amîs normally places oats between them—is not a miracle, an event outside natural law, as is the sudden acquisition of “alle wîsheit” (1448) by the peasant through the agency of the Holy Spirit. An ass might be taught to read by a uniquely gifted teacher, and so Amîs does not stand in quite the same relation to the animal as in his later deceit the Holy Spirit purportedly does to him, but the distinction is not important and can be understood as a straightforward Steigerung in the repetition of a motif. In both cases, when word of the amazing development gets abroad, people flock to the site in droves: in the first adventure, to visit the wonder-worker (Amîs) and his protegé, and in the later adventure, to visit the beneficiary of the wonder (Amîs). The result of the first visitation is an economic crisis for the priest, as the visitors must be treated as guests and lavishly hosted; the second visitation proves to be a solution (albeit transient) to precisely such a problem, as the visitors leave donations of money which the priest appropriates to cover the costs of his hospitality. The two episodes of miraculous learning are the only ones in which the dupe is a churchman, and they frame the account of Amîs's travels in western Europe before he seeks out a new sphere of action and goes to Constantinople for the eleventh and twelfth tales. Another connection between the episodes is the testing of Amîs by educated and well-placed pfaffen. The bishop agrees to examine the parish priest to decide his fitness for office, and asks a series of questions to which Amîs gives shrewd answers.³ This precedes the teaching of the ass, while the later examination of the inspired peasant by clergymen (“si begunden in von den buochen / starker mære vrâgen,” 1492-93) follows his miraculous illumination. In the earlier episode Amîs gives patently false answers which cannot be proven false, and in the later he gives correct answers known to be such. The several symmetries between the first and tenth episodes of the Riedegger text are so clear that they can hardly be accidental.

When Amîs enters the monastery and is placed in charge of its finances, he anticipates his disavowal of worldly honor in old age and his entry into another monastery, to which he brings material benefit and over which he subsequently presides as abbot. The statement he makes to the provost in the earlier episode, when asked “war stüende sîn gemuot” (1335), is a statement on wealth, cupidity, sin, and salvation that is richly ironic at the time and frames the crucial question about his change of life later:

“ich bin ein man âne guot”,
sprach der phaffe Amîs,
“ouch stêt mîn muot zuo solher wîs
daz ich niht wil nâch guote streben,
wand ich wil âne sünde leben
und wil unz an mîn ende
mîn herze und mîn hende
gegen got bieten swenne ich mac,
daz mir der ängestlîche tac
ze sælden müeze erschînen. …”

(1336-45)

Although only the first clause of this statement is sincere, the whole statement is true in terms of medieval Christian moral theology. Striving for wealth is sinful; serving God with heart and hands is effective preparation for Judgment. The fact that Amîs can utter these truths as a complete hypocrite, one who strives for wealth with every fiber of his being, whose heart and hands are as far from God's service as one can imagine, and who gives not a thought to the dreadful day to come, is certainly an important moment of characterization. It also raises the question of the two monasteries and their wealth, which Amîs administers. Is the concern of the provost in the tenth episode, that “‘ditz arm klôster … / gebezzert [wirt] ein michel teil’” (1362-63), proper and harmless? Of course a religious house needs a secure financial foundation, for which certain members must take care, but the narrator has already told us that the provost oversees “ein vil michel guot” (1321), which this character himself alludes to as income-generating external properties (e.g., mills and villages: see 1380-82) as well as silver coin (1386-87). Is there a hint of avarice in his desire to bezzern the cloister's finances, or does he just want fully competent oversight? Similarly, when the elderly Amîs joins the Cistercians, bringing his wealth with him, and uses this guot to bezzern the monastery (2493, 2498-99), is his behavior to be understood as a form of God's service? And is the favorable response of the monks (2500), which culminates in their electing him abbot, an expression of piety? Or is the hint of avarice in monastic concern with guot which one may find in “Der Probst” taken up and developed in the ambiguous “epilog”? Whatever opinion one holds on this point, the interlocking of the tenth episode and the conclusion to the tale is further evidence that this episode belongs to an authorial design.

When in 1872 Hans Lambel explained the omission of “Der Probst” from the “Vulgata” version of Der Pfaffe Amîs, he relied on his own taste and assumptions about what a medieval audience would or would not accept in the way of humor based on Christian institutions, but his explanation does not hold up to scrutiny.⁴ Monasteries and monks are well represented in medieval and early modern comic literature. In the mære, monks may be naïve and innocent players in erotic intrigues, comic initiates into sexual pleasure, or unprincipled lechers who suffer the anger of narrators and audiences.⁵ Fifteenth-century audiences for Shrovetide plays laughed at monks (even abbots) in such pieces as “Ein spil von einem Keiser und eim apt” and “Vasnachtspil vom münch Berchtolt,” and Johannes Pauli, himself a Franciscan, included in Schimpf und Ernst stories about cloistered religious to help illustrate the failings of pride, drunkenness, and sloth.⁶ No likely audience for literature of amusement by Der Stricker would have raised an eyebrow at his setting of one episode among monks in a monastery.

Then one must ask: just what in the content of “Der Probst” might have been offensive? The monastic community is treated humorously, and shown to be human in its flaws—all the members, “beidiu bruoder unde knehte” (1525), drink themselves unconscious at Amîs's instigation, which is hardly remarkable in humorous literature. The provost behaves imprudently but is a devout and virtuous man, as far as we know (reserving judgment on his motives for increasing the cloister's wealth). He is disgraced because of his credulity and his pride in the “holiness” of his chosen steward, but this venial sin marks the fictive individual and constitutes no criticism of the faith or of its institutions. The pivotal moment in the episode, the celebration of a mass in full vestment by the “peasant” Amîs, might seem blasphemous, but on reflection it is unremarkable. In the first place, Amîs is a consecrated priest, one who has sung many masses as parish priest and who is fully qualified to sing another in the monastery with the provost as congregation. To be sure, there is a moral issue in the purpose for which the mass is celebrated. Where the motivation was venal, the celebrating priest could be accused of “selling Christ's body,” and this is a well-established theme of moral-satirical writing in the twelfth century.⁷ Although Amîs cannot he held blameless when he sings mass as part of a plan to acquire money, the degree to which this might have offended an audience for literature is best evaluated in terms of Der Pfaffe Amîs as a whole, because this is not the first mass that the trickster has sung in furtherance of his acquisitive schemes. In the earlier episode “Der auferstandene Hahn,” he works a false miracle by substituting a purchased rooster for one he has eaten and claiming that God restored the dead one to life, and then celebrates a mass for the peasant woman (his hostess), her husband, and her kin. This celebration, described in detail, culminates in an extraordinary conferring of indulgence:

Einen tisch hiez er dar suochen.
mit sînen guoten altertuochen
wart er bedecket alsô wol,
sam ein alter beste sol.
dar ûf sazt er sîn kefsen gar,
die wâren schône goltvar.
dâ stuonden inne steine,
die wâren alle gemeine
kristallen lûter als ein îs.
sô sazt der phaffe Amîs
wol drîzec lieht umbe sich
und macht ein amt hêrlich.
sîn metîn sang er vruo
und ein messe dar zuo
und tet der vrouwen danne
ir mâgen und ir manne
alsô grôzen antlâz,
der gotes rîches wær ein vrâz,
er müese in genuoget hân.
waz si übels heten getân
und noch tuon solten,
swie vils sünden wolten
immer allez ir leben,
daz wart in allez vergeben.

(995-1018, emphasis added)

The travesty goes beyond vaudevillian staging, with fake relics and thirty candles, to a gross theological deceit, one which—if religious matters are to be taken at all seriously in this Schwankroman—would have pernicious effects on the congregants, for the priest promises them forgiveness of all future sins. In other words, he gives them a license for sinning. What a perversion of his office, and what a perversion of the mass! Yet “Der auferstandene Hahn” is transmitted by both versions of Der Pfaffe Amîs and by all manuscripts. To judge from the transmission, no audience took offense at the mass in the farmhouse that leads to every sinner's dream of indulgence, and this being so, how can one propose that the mass sung by Amîs later in the monastery, to which no spurious indulgences or other abuses are attached, was an insuperable hurdle for public acceptance of the work? Some other explanation for its absence from the “Vulgata” will have to be found.

On the question of the relationship of the two versions of Der Pfaffe Amîs, and hence of the tenth episode in the Riedegger manuscript as an integral part of the authorial design, three positions have been taken. The most recent editor, Michael Schilling, seems to suggest the priority of the “Vulgata” when he states that Riedegger “[hat] einen zusätzlichen Schwank (‘Die Messe’) zwischen Episoden 9 und 10 eingefügt.”⁸ Hanns Fischer, as noted, regards the “Vulgata” as a purposeful redaction of the Riedegger version, and believes that it was made by Der Stricker himself.⁹ Hansjürgen Linke, on the other hand, believes that the original structure of Der Pfaffe Amîs is preserved only by Riedegger (“Beobachtungen,” p. 308, n. 3). In a recent essay he argues that “Der satirische Roman wurde [in the “Vulgata”] zur Schwankserie verharmlost” and doubts that this version can be attributed to Der Stricker, unless as an early draft of the work: “Die Fassung letzter Hand wird gewiß durch die Fassung R[iedegger] vertreten.”¹⁰ This view is related to Schilling's, but differs in its negative evaluation of the “Vulgata.”

Of these positions the most persuasive is Linke's. The connections of the tenth episode in Riedegger both backwards and forwards in the story as a whole which have been discussed above—backwards to the conflict with the bishop, and forwards to the happy end with Amîs as Cistercian abbot—would hardly have come about if the tale were merely zugefügt, added to an existing narrative. They indicate that the tale arose in the same creative process that formed the start of the story and its conclusion. Other tales could be regarded as Zusatzschwänke, for example, those swiftly told of Amîs as soothsayer, of the miraculous fishes in the farmyard spring (a witty allusion to the miraculous catch in Luke 5:4-6), and of the healing of the blind and lame, but not the leisurely and well-integrated deception of the provost. Furthermore, Der Stricker does seem to have been concerned to represent different social groups in Der Pfaffe Amîs. The range of characters who are fooled by Amîs is very wide, from the king of France through ritter both at court and at home, on to townspeople and peasants, and further down the social scale to the illiterate, stupid mason who thinks he can become a bishop. The secular clergy is represented in both versions by Amîs's bishop and by the parish priest who gives Amîs access to the pulpit in the tale of the church fair (“Die Kirchweihpredigt”)—this priest, incidentally, is not a victim of his fellow priest but an accomplice, taking half the money Amîs raises (see 356-57). Only in the Riedegger version, however, is the cloistered clergy represented as a social group, one which is as foolish and gullible as the others. Given the great importance of monastic culture in the thirteenth century, not to mention Der Stricker's possible close ties to one or another order,¹¹ it is unlikely that he would have omitted monastics from his critical overview of human groups.¹² And finally, by virtue of elementary number symbolism, a story composed of twelve episodes is more likely to express the structural intention of a medieval author than one composed of eleven.

I therefore regard “Der Probst” as an essential part of Der Pfaffe Amîs as it was conceived and crafted by its author, and I agree with Linke that the “Vulgata” is only with difficulty attributable to Der Stricker except as a preliminary casting of the final literary work represented in the Riedegger manuscript. At present there appears to be no way to be sure whether the “Vulgata” is indeed such a draft, which for one reason or another was more widely distributed than the final work, or whether it is a redaction of the author's work carried out by a later writer. When in his highly influential article published some forty years ago Hanns Fischer found evidence in the “Vulgata” of an “erzähltechnisch geschulte Persönlichkeit,” and reasoned that it had to be the author, he knew much less about the creative activities of scribes and performers in the later Middle Ages than we do today.¹³ There is no reason to doubt that an intelligent and schooled person working after Der Stricker promulgated Der Pfaffe Amîs as we have it in the Riedegger text could have modified his story in such ways as to produce the “Vulgata.” If this happened—and I believe it did—the motivation was to make the story less problematic, in line with the redactor's general interest in tempering or eliminating the narrator's criticisms of the hero,¹⁴ and possibly to make it shorter. Some audiences may have been uncomfortable with the character of Amîs himself in “Der Probst.” His completely unprincipled hypocrisy, his cavalier mendacity and fraud in sacred precincts, may have made people squirm. Such squirming—not any squeamishness about religious matters appearing in literature of entertainment—might explain the deletion of “Der Probst” from the “Vulgata.” Some audiences, perhaps most, preferred a harmless trickster to a vicious one (Amîs's viciousness in the Constantinople stories was acceptable because directed at the despised koufman). Dropping the tale, and thus cutting over 200 lines from the story, would have been important for rendering Amîs himself blander and more agreeable, and his history swifter. If, on the other hand, the Riedegger version is (as Linke surmises) the “Fassung letzter Hand,” then Der Stricker's motivation for revising the “Vulgata” was to make it more bluntly problematic and to include a study of the cloistered in his survey of the interplay of human types with the arch-evil cupidity (1 Tim. 6:10). This interplay, it seems to me, is the theme of Der Pfaffe Amîs.¹⁵

Notes

1. Unless otherwise indicated, I cite by line K. Kamihara's edition of the Riedegger text, Des Strickers “Pfaffe Amîs”, 2d ed., Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 233 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1990). Kamihara's italics in the text are ignored. The transmission of the episode by Ms. Z is without significance for this article. See also Michael Schilling's edition of the “Vulgata,” Der Pfaffe Amis. Mittelhochdeutsch/Neuhochdeutsch. Nach der Heidelberger Handschrift cpg 341 herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert, Universal-Bibliothek, 658 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994). I use Schilling's titles for individual episodes (adapted from Hans Lambel, see n. 3, below) except for that under discussion: the usual title, “Die Messe,” is too narrow, and I prefer “Der Probst.” The term “Schwankroman” was coined to identify “Der Paffe Amîs” generically by Hanns Fischer, “Zur Gattungsform des Pfaffen Amîs,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 88 (1957-58), 291-99, and is generally accepted (as, for example, by Werner Röcke, Die Freude am Bösen. Studien zu einer Poetik des deutschen Schwankromans im Spätmittelalter [München: Fink, 1987]).

2. Among the readings that posit a social narrative structure: Hansjürgen Linke, “Beobachtungen zur Form des ‘Pfaffen Amis’,” in Sprache in Gegenwart und Geschichte. Festschrift für Heinrich Matthias Heinrichs zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Dietrich Hartmann et al. (Köln, Wien: Böhlau, 1978), pp. 301-19, here 317; Hedda Ragotzky, Gattungserneuerung und Laienunterweisung in Texten des Strickers (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981), p. 159: “dieser Gang durch die Ständepyramide …”; and Röcke, Die Freude am Bösen, esp. p. 58: “der Stricker [verfährt] nach einem bestimmten Aufbauschema. … Amis … gliedert seine Reise … nach dem ständischen Aufbau der Gesellschaft.” On squeamishness about irreverence, see n. 4, below. Despite its importance, “Der Probst” has received little attention. See, however, Irmgard Meiners, Schelm und Dümmling in Erzählungen des deutschen Mittelalters, Münchner Texte und Untersuchungen, 20 (München: Beck, 1967), pp. 47-54; Rupert Kalkofen, Der Priesterbetrug als Weltklugheit. Eine philologisch-hermeneutische Interpretation des “Pfaffen Amis” (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1987), pp. 203-11; and Guido Schneider, er nam den spiegel in die hant, als in sîn wîsheit lêrte. Zum Einfluß klerikaler Hofkritiken und Herrschaftslehren auf den Wandel höfischer Epik in groß- und kleinepischen Dichtungen des Stricker (Essen: Item, 1994), pp. 75-86. None of these addresses the questions that interest me.

3. This testing has been much discussed, as by Hans Lambel, Erzählungen und Schwänke (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1872), pp. 10-13; Meiners, Schelm und Dümmling, pp. 147-59, 180-89; and Herbert Kolb, “Auf der Suche nach dem Pfaffen Amis,” in Strukturen und Interpretationen. Studien zur deutschen Philologie gewidmet Blanka Horacek zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. A. Ebenbauer et al. (Wien, Stuttgart: Braunmüller, 1974), pp. 189-211, passim. In fact, it is completely inappropriate to the problem and demonstrates the bishop's stupidity not so much in the individual conundra as in his agreeing to such a manner of evaluating Amîs's fitness to retain his prebend: see Wolfgang W. Moelleken, “Der Pfaffe Amîs und sein Bischof,” in: in hôhem prîse. A Festschrift in Honor of Ernst A. Dick, ed. Winder McConnell, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 480 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1989), pp. 279-93.

4. Lambel, Erzählungen und Schwänke, p. 15: “Nur eine Geschichte, Nr. X, erschien den Zeitgenossen anstößig, hier schien der Spaß doch gar zu gottlos und traf überdies einen Provost. Das veranlaßte eine Umarbeitung des Gedichts … wobei die anstößige Geschichte wegblieb … “Lambel has been followed uncritically: see Fischer, “Gattungsform,” p. 298: “Ihre [der ‘Vulgata’] Hauptmerkmale sind einmal das Fehlen des Messeschwankes (10), was nach einer wohlüberlegten Streichung des vielleicht doch von manchen (bei aller Liberalität, die man bei den Hörern des ‘Pfaffen Amîs’ voraussetzen muß) als anstößig empfundenen Stücks aussieht. …” Schilling thinks that the monastic audience which is plausibly inferred from the nature of Der Stricker's prayers and other devotional poems might explain why the tenth episode was omitted from the “Vulgata”: “Denkbar wäre daher wohl auch, daß der Schwank von der Messe mit Rücksicht auf ein solches [klösterliches] Publikum gestrichen worden ist” (Der Pfaffe Amis, p. 185, n. 23). I find it impossible to regard “Der Pfaffe Amîs,” with or without the tenth episode, as literature that would have been received in a monastery.

5. See in order the three versions of “Der Mönch als Liebesbote,” “Des Mönches Not,” the fragmentary “Der geile Mönch,” “Die drei Mönche zu Kolmar,” and “Der Guardian.” In Hanns Fischer's Studien zur deutschen Märendichtung, 2d ed. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1983), these stories are nrs. 127-129, 130, 219, 126, and 71 of the “Gesamtverzeichnis.”

6. In Adelbert von Keller, Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, 4 vols., Bibliothek des literarischen Vereins, 28-30, 46 (Stuttgart, 1853-58), the carnival plays are nrs. 22 and 66. For Pauli's stories see Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Johannes Bolte, 2 vols. (Berlin: Stubenrauch, 1924; repr. 1972), nrs. 163, 243, 260.

7. In the Carmina Burana, it is one of several themes in the first group of poems. Judas was damned for selling Christ once—what punishment awaits you priests “qui septies cottidie / corpus uenditis dominum” (9:1, 4-5)? Personified money celebrates mass and preaches (“Vidi cantantem nummum missam celebrantem … Vidi, quod, flebat, dum sermonem faciebat,” 11, 29-31; quotations from the edition of B. K. Vollmann [Frankfurt a.M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1987]). See Röcke, Die Freude am Bösen, p. 308, n. 165, on the moral issue and “Der Pfaffe Amîs.”

8. Der Pfaffe Amis, p. 184. On this page Schilling refers again to the “Zusatzschwank” and then writes “Der zusätzlich eingefügte Schwank vom leichtgläubigen Probst läßt die Klostergeistlichkeit zum Opfer des Pfaffen Amis werden. …” See also n. 20 there, in which Schilling once more calls the episode zusätzlich.

9. Fischer, “Gattungsform,” 298: compositional characteristics show “Daß diese Vulgatafassung nicht das Product eines Schreibers oder einer Überlieferungsstörung gewesen sein kann, sondern auf eine erzähltechnisch geschulte Persönlichkeit … wohl auf niemand anderen als den Dichter selbst zurückgeht.”

10. “Strukturvarianten der ‘Amis’-Uberlieferung,” in Festschrift für Heinz Engels zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gerhard Augst et al., Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 561 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1991), pp. 23-45, here 38.

11. See Helmut de Boor, Die deutsche Literatur im Spätmittelalter. Zerfall und Neubeginn. Erster Teil (München: Beck, 1967), p. 232: it is possible “daß sich die Franziskaner mit ihren Bestrebungen der Laienlehre der raschen und gewandten Feder des bekannten Dichters bedient haben.” Röcke speculates that Der Stricker may have stood close to the Cistercian order, notably to the conversi (Die Freude am Bösen, p. 65).

12. Although I believe an intent to survey different social groups is evident in “Der Pfaffe Amîs,” I am not persuaded that this intent led to a deliberate literary structure. The arguments often adduced for such structure are highly vulnerable: in Riedegger, the first tale of Amîs as itinerant (“Die Kirchweihpredigt”) plays in a mixed urban society, the second at the highest social level, the royal court of France; the third takes place at a ducal court, the fourth among peasants, but the fifth features a ritter (whom Schilling calls a Landadliger, p. 185) and the sixth and seventh peasants. There is no social Systematik here. Because the “Vulgata” orders three internal episodes differently from Riedegger, Röcke believes it better preserves “den ständischen Aufbau des Texts” (p. 58) and Schilling finds that it offers “eine striktere Anordnung der Schwänke nach sozialen Gruppen” (p. 185). Neither addresses the fact that narrative movement in “Der Pfaffe Amîs” from a town for the church fair, to royal and ducal courts, then to the peasantry, then back to a ritter for the burning cloth, then back to a town for the healing of the blind and lame, simply contradicts the idea of ständischer Aufbau.

13. A decade after his article appeared, Fischer's much more sophisticated understanding of the transmission and revision of mæren was shown in his Studien zur deutschen Märendichtung (his statements apply fully to “Der Pfaffe Amîs,” which is intimately related to the genre mære): “In der Märendichtung hat sich … zwischen Autor und Publikum eine Mittlerschicht eingeschaltet; es ist dies die Schicht der berufsmäßigen Deklamatoren, der ‘Sprecher’ … Diese Sprecher sind mit ihren Texten oft recht großzügig umgegangen, haben sie gekürzt, erweitert, umerzählt”; there are cases “wo Sprecher ihre Vorlagen von Grund auf umgestaltet haben”; between the author and the mere reciter “muß man wohl noch einen ‘semi-auteur’ ansiedeln, dessen schöpferische Intentionen und Fähigkeiten nur bis zur redaktionellen Veränderung (einschließlich kleinerer Verszusätze) reichen” (2nd ed. rev. by Johannes Janota [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1983], pp. 215-16, 260). I would attribute the “Vulgata” version of “Der Pfaffe Amîs” to such a semi-auteur.

14. Cf. Schilling, p. 190, n. 33: “Es fällt auf, daß die Vulgata-Fassung die Erzählerkritik am Protagonisten gegenüber der Version der Riedegger Handschrift reduziert hat.”

15. At the risk of seeming ineducable, I admit that I still understand the message of the work as in my Studien zur Kleindichtung des Stricker (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1981), Chap. 6 (“Zum Thema des ‘Pfaffen Amîs’”).