Love story from 1230

Medieval bestseller discovered in St. Florian

Friedrich Buchmayr with the newly discovered 'Iwein' fragment(Bild: FRANZ GEORG REISCHL)

A sensational manuscript has been found in the St. Florian Abbey Library. A snippet of text from the chivalric novel "Iwein", which was a bestseller in the Middle Ages, lay dormant in a book cover for many centuries. It describes a love scene.

A strip of text, which had been removed from a book binding in 1987, had been slumbering unrecognized in the library at St. Florian's Abbey ever since.

During re-cataloging, Abbey librarian Friedrich Buchmayr has now succeeded in proving that the six lines come from the famous verse novel 'Iwein' by Hartmann von Aue.

King Arthur and the Round Table
The Swabian author was a contemporary of Walther von der Vogelweide and the poet of the Nibelungenlied. With his verse novels 'Erec' and 'Iwein', Hartmann introduced the legendary Celtic knight-king Arthur and his Round Table to German-language literature at the end of the 12th century. He was already revered as a classic during his lifetime.

The St. Florian fragment is part of a key scene in which Iwein falls in love with his future wife Laudine.

Excerpt from the newly discovered manuscript: Words, written in 1230.(Bild: Franz Georg Reischl)

In 'Iwein', Hartmann described the adventures of the knight of the same name, whose trademark was the tame lion at his side. The novel became one of the most popular works of the entire Middle Ages.

"Comparative studies with the 33 surviving sources revealed that our fragment comes from an as yet unknown manuscript," reports Friedrich Buchmayr. This result is considered a sensation in international 'Iwein' research.

Manuscript makes St. Florian even more famous
According to Buchmayr, the fine early Gothic minuscule script dates back to around 1230. "This means that St. Florian's now has one of the oldest textual witnesses of 'Iwein' in existence," says the abbey librarian happily. His scholarly edition will soon be published in the renowned "Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum".