The Book of Emperors: A Translation of the Middle High German Kaiserchronik

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments This translation intends to provide a useful source of intellectual history . The Book of Emperors is a primary source without equal for an account of the ideology of the Holy Roman Empire in medieval Germany. Intended to be chanted or read in verse form to an audience without much education, it tells the story of Roman, Byzantine, and German emperors with a great admixture of fiction to make them interesting to twelfth-century hearers. It is a uniquely early work of popular history. I am indebted to many people in the United States, Austria, and Germany for encouragement and support in this project, beginning with Edgar Nathaniel Johnson, my advisor at Brandeis University, whose own dissertation published as a book, the Secular Activities of the German Episcopate, 919–10241 has stood the test of time. He encouraged me to “do something worth doing” for my dissertation. The “something” turned out to be the modification of basic concepts of government and politics by medieval historians from Saint Augustine and Orosius in the fifth century to the Book of Emperors in the mid-twelfth century. The final work for that project—I will attempt to show in my “Introduction” that the Book of Emperors is the best English name for it—seemed worth translating then in 1961, and—since scholarly debate has picked up concerning it in the intervening decades—even more so now. In 1966–1967, I had a sabbatical year from Lowell Technological Institute , where I was teaching German, to pursue medieval-language, paleographical , and editing studies at the Institute for Austrian Historical Research in Vienna. Both the director, Professor Heinrich Fichtenau, and his assistant, Herwig Wolfram, who joined me in a number of scholarly undertakings in the 1970s, gave me every encouragement in my project of preparing an annotated English translation of Die Kaiserchronik. 1. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1932 x Acknowledgments Beginning in 1969, I taught a variety of history and political-theory courses full time at Madison College, which became James Madison University in 1977, and work on the project proceeded a bit slowly. After two drafts, the third and what was intended to be the final version of the translation underwent constant revision for two decades until, with a summer grant from James Madison University’s College of Arts and Sciences, it neared completion in 1995, with the general introduction, chapter introductions , and notes following in 2003. I am obliged to my wife, Nancy, for proofreading the first version, typing it in 1967, and for proofreading subsequent versions and revisions as they emerged. Mrs. Belinda Babb of the Madison College Political Science Department typed the second version and introduction in 1971–1972, and a succession of conscientious and dedicated student assistants, working under the direction of JMU History Department secretary Paula D. See, typed revisions until what had been the typescript entered the computer age. I would like to acknowledge the sometimes quite considerable logistical support from past Political Science Department heads Paul Cline and the late William R. Nelson, and History Department heads, the late Raymond C. Dingledine, Jr., and above all its present head, Michael J. Galgano, who has offered me assistance with this project in every way imaginable. Particularly for materials to support the introductions and notes, I am indebted to the Interlibrary Loan Program both at Lowell Technological Institute in the 1960s and at James Madison University since then. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the patient, decades-long and efficient efforts to procure books and copies of articles by Janis Pivarnik , the late Tom McLaughlin, Anna Lee Newman, Debra Ryman and Susan Huffman. I am indebted to Carrier Library’s Gordon Miller for instruction and guidance in tracking down elusive sources since the earliest days of computer searches. Somewhat unusual incidents of encouragement and support have been legion. In June 1967, I was made to feel very welcome at the library of the monastery in Vorau, Austria, which houses the oldest (ca. 1185–1190) surviving manuscript of the work, and kindly left alone with that parchment treasure for as long as I cared to stay. Later that same year, the University of Munich Library sent me a The Book of Emperors xi microfilm of the typescript of an important 1958 dissertation on the actual German history in the Book of Emperors. Unfortunately, it could not be read with the lenses normally used in American microfilm...