Die Mittelfränkische Prosafassung der Legende der Heligen Dorothea

Abstract

The Latin Legend of Saint Dorothy describing her life and martyrdom, unknown to the Greek tradition, has been exceedingly popular in the West, where the saint has been venerated in the Late Middle Ages as one of the “quattuor Virgines Capitales”, along with Saints Barbara, Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch. Evidence of her historical existence is regrettably very scarce, as the first complete account of her life seems not to have committed to parchment until the eleventh century. Three separate Latin redactions of this legend have been identified as underlying sources for the subsequent vernacular versions. Vernacular renderings in verse and prose appear to have enjoyed a large circulation in Germany between the fourteenth and the sixteenth century.
While the poetic versions of the Legend have been studied in detail, the prose texts have received no scholarly attention. Among these prose versions, the Middle Franconian redaction, which is preserved by eight manuscripts, all dated to the fifteenth century, was first published by Joseph Strohschneider in 1892, who based his edition exclusively on a now lost manuscript from Prague. In his introduction to the edition, Strohschneider identified two Latin source-texts; however, a close analysis of the vernacular text shows how much can still be done on the Latin sources of this vernacular Legend.
Along this line, the aim of the present paper is to check the readings of the Middle Franconian version against all known Latin accounts of Dorothea’s Vita and to identify the Latin source-text.