Die Begegnung der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten. Eine Edition nach der maasländischen und ripuarischen Textüberlieferung (review)

Terrible things might happen after death, or so we are told by many sources. In "Die Begegnung der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten," the potential grimness of the afterlife is expressed in vivid terms, and it is likely for this reason that the story captured the imagination of so many illustrators during the later Middle Ages. This brief and minatory tale, which is an extension of the De Contemptu Mundi and Vado Mori traditions and a precursor to the Totentanz, became popular throughout much of Europe during the later thirteenth century. Its plot is simple: Three kings (or noblemen) lose their way on a hunt and encounter what could be their future selves, namely three dead men who had once enjoyed worldly riches. A portentous dialogue and the sight of the ghastly deceased, who have snakes crawling through their orifices and animals devouring their entrails, provide enough motivation for the living men to abandon their secular ways and liquidate their possessions for pious ends, that is, for the construction of monasteries.

Whereas the English and French versions of this story have received a respectable amount of attention, the seven extant German or Dutch renditions have received relatively little. These are: 1) "Twee conincgen deen leuende ende dander was doot" (ca. 1400), a Middle Dutch version in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in Brussels; 2) "Do der lebnde co rych" (ca. 1400), a Middle Low German version that survives only in a travel report by Conrad Borschling (1899) and as part of an incunabulum at the University of Münster; 3) "Dis ist der welte lon" (late 14th c.), a South Rhenish Franconian text preserved in a manuscript at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel; 4) "Von dren konyngen" (ca. 1471-1486), a Middle Low German text included in the so-called "Hartebok" at the State and University Library of Hamburg; 5) "Van drie doden konyngen ende van drie leuendigen konynghen" (late 13th c.; siglum K), a Middle Franconian (Ripuarian) version preserved in a manuscript at the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart; 6) "Did is van den doden koningen jnd van den levenden koyngen" (1406-1436; siglum G), a rendition housed in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin that was written in the "Meuse-Rhenish" (rheinmaasländisch) dialect of Middle Dutch; and 7) a direct copy of the latter, designated N (ca. 1445), which is part of the holdings of the Gemeentearchief in Nijmegen.

In Die Begegnung der drei Lebenden und der drei Toten, Helmut Tervooren and Johannes Spicker have made each of these texts available, but their focus is on versions K and G (the variant readings of N, the copy of G, are recorded in an apparatus). The first main chapter of the book offers an introduction to the iconographic and textual traditions of the story (pp. 13-33). The illustrations associated with the narrative—which survive in large-scale frescoes, miniatures, wood engravings, and drawings—exist in two principal types, namely the "French" and the "Italian." Variations aside, the defining feature of the French type is that the dead counterparts of the living men are depicted as being upright and mobile, whereas in the Italian type they appear in their graves. The story and its visual representation often come together in what the authors call "textlich-bildliche Mischformen," in which manuscript illuminations are accompanied by captions (tituli), often in verse. These were quite common; in fact, as the authors point out, the Italian textual tradition consists almost entirely of such tituli. In France, on the contrary, the "Légende des trois vifs et des trois morts" survives in five different complete versions and a fragmentary sixth; these were produced between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and are represented in twenty manuscripts. The English tradition...