The first thing you are likely seeing here is a recipe. I try to translate one recipe from a historical source every day, and here is where I post them. When I have time to experiment, I also post reports on actually trying out the dishes or short articles on other historical questions I find interesting. But mostly, it is recipes. I hope you enjoy them.
Carp from the Felix Platter collection, courtesy of wikimedia commons
195 Carp in a yellow sauce
Take a carp, scale it, and make pieces of it. Boil them in good white wine, and when it is skimmed and properly salted, crumble in rye bread (the crumbs being) the size of rice. Colour it yellow, add sugar, ginger, and pepper until you think it is right, and let it boil well. When you serve it, sprinkle (or stick?) it with cinnamon and cloves.
As a recipe, this is not unusual. Fish cooked in wine and served in a bread-thickened sauce with plenty of expensive spices is fairly standard. One interesting point, though, is the observation that the bread is to be crumbled “the size of rice”. I assume that describes the individual crumbs being the size of rice grains (most likely round grain rice, at that time), not resemble rice flour or cooked rice. That suggests that, though made of rye, the bread used is neither coarse nor heavy.
An open question is how to read the instruction to se (literally to sow, usually meaning to sprinkle) cloves and cinnamon on the fish before serving. I could imagine this meaning a sprinkling of powdered spices, but both cloves and cinnamon are well suited to sticking them into the pieces. That may actually be what is meant here.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
Just a short recipe from the collection of Philippine Welser today:
188 If you want to cook an eel in sauce
Take an eel and remove its skin. Rub your hands with salt so it comes off easier. Then make pieces of it and cleanly take out the vein (ederlin = digestive tract). Put it in fresh water and let it lie in that for a good while, and salt the water. Then take it out and wash it cleanly with fresh water. Then take good wine, put in the fish, and use a lot of wine because it must boil thoroughly. When it is half done, add saffron, ginger, cinnamon, sugar, and a little cloves and let it boil nicely again so it is fully cooked. Then serve it with its broth.
This recipe is, of course, thoroughly uninspired. Boiling fish in wine with spices is about as predictable as you can be in sixteenth-century Germany. One wonders why recipe writers bothered to repeat these instructions for every species so religiously. Perhaps there is something widely understood, but unmentioned that set the cooking methods apart.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
As we are finally leaving the section on pikes behind, here is a very tempting and interesting recipe from Philippine Welser’s collection:
189 To make a filled eel (gefilte al)
Item take the eel, undress (skin) it, and wash it nicely in vinegar and water. Let it lie in there for a while, then wash one piece after another (ain stuck nach dem andern her auser) and let it dry on a clean board. Then take three walnuts and juniper berries, pound them together, and add pepper, a little bit of good herbs, ginger, and mace. Fill the eel with that where it is open and tie it shut with bast or a thread so the filling cannot fall out. Then stick the eel on a wooden skewer or roasting spit and roast it very quickly. When it is almost roasted, drizzle it with hot fat. When it is fully roasted, take bitter oranges and press out their juice. And when you want to take it off the spit, cut off the string, lay it in a bowl, and pour the orange juice over it.
This recipe, while fashionable and luxurious, sounds much more interesting in culinary terms than the endless iterations of fish cooked in wine. A filling of walnuts, juniper, and sharp spices makes an interesting addition to eel and the fruity tartness of the juice sounds like a lovely contrast. I wonder how necessary it is to add fat to the eel – they are usually quite oily – but if it is roasted over a strong fire, it may simply be to prevent the skin from charring or drying out too much. Bitter oranges imported from Italy came into fashion in Germany from the late 15th century on and were quite popular in upper-class cuisine.
It is not quite clear what the phrase ain stuck nach dem andern her auser means, since the recipe does not mention cutting the eel into pieces. I think it could be instructions to wash the eel carefully, bit by bit, but that is really just speculation. Perhaps everybody just knew the dish was made in portion-sized pieces so it did not need pointing out. However, missing out on the potential for spectacle of serving an entire filled eel would be out of character for Renaissance cooks.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
Yes, it is yet another pike recipe from Philippine Welser’s collection, but the technique is interestingly different.
185 A small pike roasted over coals (kol hechtlin)
Open up the pike in the back, spread it out and take out the innards except for the liver. Leave that lying on top. Salt and spice it well and lay it on a griddle (struck out: and drizzle) or into fat. If you lay it on a griddle, drizzle it with this sauce: Take hot fat and vinegar and spices, and lay a bundle of rosemary or of sage into it. Brush the fish with this often, that way it will be good. When you serve the fish, pour the remaining sauce over it and serve it hot.
This is an interesting approach to roasting fish, and brushing it with a mixture of vinegar and fat should keep it moist and tender. Using bundles of herbs to brush it will add to the falvour if the spicing is done carefully, as is most likely intended. I don’t think I can replicate this fuilly because all the fish I can buy are already opened along the belly, but the technique sounds like it should work on halved fish laid skin-down just as well as on spatchcocked ones.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
Yes, I’m afraid it’s more pike yet. Philippine Welser was very much for fashionable dining, it seems.
178 A pike cooked with lemons
Boil the pike as usual, with wine and vinegar. Then take good wine, saffron, ginger, cinnamon, sugar, and cut lemons and boil that together. Pour off the cooking liquid from the fish and pour on the above broth, and let it boil up once with the fish, thus it is proper.
179 A pike cooked with lemons
Scale the pike and wash it cleanly. Make pieces of it and put them into a pan. Add cold water, as much as you think will give the fish enough broth to boil with, and add a querttlin of vinegar. When it has boiled together, add a little saffron, pepper, and sugar and cut lemon and let it boil together for a time. Also salt it.
Lemon was a newly fashionable ingredient in German sixteenth-century cuisine, and this is one way it was commonly used. Pike, boiled (or more likely simmered – the culinary vocabulary of the time is not very granular) in wine and vinegar, is served with lemons, spices, and sugar. The main difference between the two versions is that in one case, the seasoning is added to the original cooking liquid while in the other, the fish is transferred to a separately prepared cooking sauce. Both approaches are common. We do not know how much sugar would be added, but I can certainly imagine this as a sweet-sour dish.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
It is late, but here is yet another pike recipe from Philippine Welser’s collection:
177 If you want to make a pike cooked in an onion sauce (ein mach jn ain zwifel)
Take 10 onions for a pike of 2 pounds and boil the onions in 3 seytla of water for 2 hours. Then pass them through a soup sieve (suben seylenn) with their cooking liquid and season it with ginger, pepper, and saffron so it is hot (resch). Then scale the pike and make pieces of it. Boil it in water and salt it, and when it is boiled as it should be, pour off the broth and pour on the onion sauce and also let it boil with that so the sauce boils down properly. Serve it with the sauce.
Onion-based sauces and purees have a tradition in the German corpus and outside it, so the technique is hardly surprising. By the 1550s, this is a little oldfashioned, but it seems that it was still appreciated. The recipe also gives us an idea of the size of fish the author envisions, and they are quite average. A pike of two pounds is substantial, but far from exceptional.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
Another fish recipe from the collection of Philippine Welser:
175 If you want to make a Polish pike (hecht is repeated, probably accidentally)
Take the pike, scale it, and wash it cleanly. Then put it into a bowl and salt it, and let it lie in that (the salt) for half an hour. Meanwhile (lacuna: take?) onions cut in rounds, and take wine and one large apple, also cut into rounds, and laid into the wine and a spoonful of vinegar. This is boiled for a good long time. Then take the pike and lay it into the cooking liquid and let it boil. Season it with saffron, pepper, and a little ginger and sugar. Try it to see it is neither too sweet nor too sour. If you do it justice, it is good. I have tried it.
Pike cooked in what was then called the Polish manner was a fashionable dish in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germany if we can trust the cookbooks. Whether it actually owes its inspiration to Polish practice is uncertain, but seems likely. Dishes from countries to the east generally seem to have carried some cachet, and contacts between the German and Polish upper classes were close.
This recipe is unsurprising for sixteenth-century upper-class cuisine. It is unclear how thick the eventual cooking liquid is meant to be – wine, just flavoured with apple and onion, or a mash of apples and onions (a sauce otherwise known as a ziseindel) cooked in wine – but the overall flavour profile is clear: fruity, slightly sweet, with a strong spice aroma. That is the truffle oil of the 1500s, the taste you expect in a certain price range. It is still liable to be quite good because this works with fish.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
I apologise for the long time I left you without recipes, I was quite miserably sick for the last week or so. Today, I feel well enough to give you another recipe from Philippine Welser’s collection:
174 If you want to cook pike in a sauce with parsley
Take a handful of parsley roots and the herb, but if you have enough of the roots, you need not use the herb. Boil that in a pot with water or wine, about 3 seytla (a Seidel is somewhere between 0.35 and 0.7 litres), depending on how large the pike is. Then take the pike and scale it well, cut it into pieces, wash them well, put them in a bowl and salt them. Let them lie in it (the salt) for half an hour, then take the broth with roots and all and pour it on the fish. Boil it well, and when it is half boiled, try it for salt. It must be salted lightly (len gesaltzen). Then take a good pierce of butter and cut it into (the cooking liquid), and add as much pepper as for a dish of crawfish, but do not make it too hot (resch). Put it back over the fire and let it boil fully. See that there is not much broth in it. Then toast slices of semel bread and serve the fish on them. If you have too much broth, do not pour it all over the dish, only enough to moisten the bread slices.
This is not a very exciting recipe, but potentially quite an attractive one. Of course it is a high-status dish – fresh fish were not cheap, and pike among the most costly. But it is neither overly complex nor overloaded with luxury ingredients.
In principle, it is a simple dish. A broth is prepared with parsley roots, lightly salted fish cooked in it and further seasoned with pepper and enriched with butter. The fish, once fully cooked, is served on toasted slices of fine, white bread with its cooking liquid. It is entirely credible that there are steps left out that would be obvious to the writer; perhaps the sauce was slightly thickened or other spices added to the parsley at the beginning. But the basic approach is clear.
What is striking about it and sets it apart from much of the other material in this collection is the care with which the unknown author approaches the dish: Care not to oversalt, not to overcook the fish, not to use too much pepper, not to end up with too much liquid. It is, in a way, a very modern instruction and suggests that these things, though often unmentioned, were very much part of a culinary education and familiar to a competent cook.
Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.
The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).
I haven’t had anything by the König vom Odenwald out in a while, so being stuck at home sick gave me the opportunity to revisit the translation and finish it up for posting. This is a very interesting poem:
XIII Of Household GoodsMy songs and my poems
Have all come to nought
Before, I had in mind only
Joy and lovemaking
But householding has converted me
And taught me truly
That I must leave behind love
I have entered another live
That is certainly true:
My beard grows and my hair is turning grey
I am getting quite old
But not (too old) for a householder
Now I think of salt
And I fret over lard (smalz).
And pots and casks
You will find few with me.
Of buckets and pitchers
I do not have enough.
Vats and ladles
I need not pay dues on (i.e. I have too few).
Both bowls and spoons
You will rarely hear clattering
Around my hearth
I feel this lack acutely.
Spit and griddle
I have long done without
Stone(ware) pots (Havenstein) and poker
I have none to show
Kettlehook and firedogs
Have left me.
Pepper mill and stone mortar
I have none anywhere.
Bellows, trivet and iron grater,
I have to beg for those.
Vinegar crock and saltcellar -
I need to recollect what that even is.
Benches, chairs, seats,
Harps (rotten, harpfen) and fiddles
You hear little of from me.
I do without these things.
Of earthen pots and pitchers
Washbowl and ewer
Small pitchers, small pots (kruoselin) and glasses
You see few in my house
Because they have all fled it.
Neither table nor trestle1
Do I have anywhere.
From good towels and tablecloths,
I am quite safe.
If I could make blankets and bedsheets
By myself
I would make enough of them
And put the ell
Over linen cloth.
But my shirt and breeches
Are torn everywhere
I am often shamed for that.
Mattresses, pillows and beds,
If I had many of them
That would make a fine bedroom.
Though I never gained any worldly good
From any friend (female form: fründinne)
I will be silent about this.
But first I will tell you my sorrow
And tell you another thing
Of the great suffering
That has entered my home:
I tell you that the sheep
Do not rob me of my sleep
Neither goats nor cows
Require my effort
Ducks, chickens, or geese
Don’t cause me trouble
Neither piglets nor young pigs
Squeal in my home.
That is why under my roof
You rarely see meat hanging.
Chickpeas and peas,
however much I struggled,
I could not acquire
For I had nothing to buy them with.
Oats, spelt, groats,
Would be very useful to me
If I had them in my house.
Nothing will remain in it.
That I had figs, almonds, or rice
That would be quite unknown to me.
(Even) Chard and cabbage
Have fled from my home.
Parsley and leeks,
The cuckoo has cried over (i.e. have grown prematurely)
So now I have none.
Thus it is with me:
Root vegetables and onions
I have no plenty of.
And nobody can ask me
For dried pears or for lentils.
Fruit from the garden
I can expect little
I have already lost it
The worms have eaten it.
The good food of the Künig (i.e. that this poet usually writes about)
Is quite unknown to me
Though I would like to enjoy it
I am ruled by poverty.
It is also quite rare
That my cat lies by the fire.
Where my fire should be
Lies my dog who is called Grin (‘barker’)
My cat is called Zise (‘siskin’)
My kitchen boy Wise (‘clever’)
My horse is called Kern (‘breadgrain’)
It does not like to fight.
If I am called on to go to battle
It does not like to go there at all.
My kitchen maid is called Metze (referring to a woman of low status and moral standing)
She always fusses with a rag
And has a very old skin (i.e. is old).
She would rather take care of porridge flour
Than take care of beans
Because she wants to spare her teeth.
She has less than the chaff
Two cats and two mice
Could not live on it
Unless they were very economical indeed.
It is to my dishonour
I must furrow my brow greatly
When guests come to my home
It is no good to me.
Though I would like to feed them well
If poverty let go of me.
Fish, meat, bread, and wine,
I must mourn all of them.
I am always worn down by worry
As soon as day begins in my house
I feel great sorrow.
It is the same in heaven:
If you bring something with you, you fare better
For there is neither this nor that (i.e. nothing) there.
Whatever is suited for household goods,
Flees from my house soon.
You should also know certainly:
It is smoky in my house
As though two men were forging a pickaxe
This can well displease me
And I am sad about it.
The clothes on the stand (gericke)
Sadly are very thin
My joy and all my pleasure
Are in the hands of a beloved maiden
What I mourned sorrowfully
She can give me if she wants to
So that I may live joyfully.
She soon gives me possessions
Soon gives me tender hope
Of love and of desire
Open and concealed.
The more she gives this to me
The more I think of her
Because a joyful hope guides me
That I may expect good (material) things (from her).
With her looks, she can
Liberate and unbind me.
What good does it do me to always complain?
I will tell you a different story now:
Nothing but the powerful faith
in my beloved nourishes me
Without it, I would surely die.
Oh Lord God, protect me
And guard me in this sinful life
Until I pass into another
But love that makes a man die
Is good for nothing.
Here ends the tale of household goods
Of which a rich man has enough.
It truly ends here,
May God send us better gear
Than the poor man had in his life
Who is described above
So that we improve so much
That we need not have complained
Whether man nor woman nor child.
Now fill the cups and let us drink!
And let the lame stumble along (i.e. walk at all)
And the blind see.
To this end, may the poem help me. Amen.
First of all, this is a satirical inversion of the tropes of courtly love. Instead of dedicating himself selflessly to the pursuit of an idealised noblewoman, the author openly declares his material interest: He wants a rich female patron, a woman he can woo in the hope of generous gifts. It is hard to know how common this kind of arrangement was, but it certainly cannot have been unknown if it gets such literary treatment.
The topic of the poem, too, is interesting. Rhyming lists of household goods, usually describing an idealised urban home, are common in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century, but they are very much a product of cities, produced and consumed by burghers, not nobles. That this poem could be written in a courtly context in the fourteenth century suggests the genre was already familiar enough to subvert.
What the author describes here is, of course, a very genteel kind of poverty. He has a change of clothes and a rack to hang them, a house, servants, furniture, and even a horse. No peassant living in such circumstances would be accounted poor, but by the lights of the class the work is addressed at, this was abject destitution. Typically, the later household poems are aspirational, describing a comfortable level of material wealth that most people could never hope to achieve. The things that the author here laments missing are very much what they lovingly describe. This is an excerpt from a poem by Hans Folz of Nuremberg dating to about 1500 (quoted after Bach: The Kitchen, Food and Cooking in Reformation Germany, 2016):
“…Everyone must consider that to have a quiet marriage, he must have what is needful of household equipment. Chairs and benches for the living room, remember this well, tables, tablecloths, towels and handwashing pitcher, washbasin, sideboard, beer glasses, köpf (smooth and round) and kraüs (knobbed), to drink from, that is well found. Pitchers and bottles, a cooler, bowl stands, dishwashing brush and dishrag, candleholders, snuffer and extinguisher, spoons and saltcellar, an Engster glass and Kuttrolf bottle with a funnel for it. […]
When you then go into the kitchen, this kind of equipment is very fitting: Pots, pitchers, kettles and pans, trivet and spit you must also have, bellows and griddle are also common, a baking pan and oven pipe. […] a pitcher of vinegar, pure and clear, mortar, pestle, fire fork, chopping board and chopping knife. A skimmer, seething pan and poker to push together the embers, a broom must be in a corner, a panczer fleck (piece of mail) with which you scrub away the dirt. Stirring spoons and a saltcellar, serving bowls and plates large and small, chopping board and scraper must not be missing. Firestriker and sulfur quickly make a fire with some dry wood to go along.
[…]
As I go into the wine cellar, wine, beer, sauerkraut, apple puree, according to whether one is rich or poor, pay good heed and strive well that you do not lack these things. A basket of eggs must also be to hand,a basket for bread, one for cheese, a hanger for pots, root vegetables as one is accustomed, good electuaries, and you must also have in your care all manner of spices.
[…]
What else we find in the chest [in the master bedroom] of gingerbread, electuaries and confits and things that one enjoys eating, and silver tableware, unless I am wrong, stands alongside them freely.
[…]
In the pantry you must have bread, salt, cheese and lard above all, fish, meat, peas, lentils and beans, rice, millet, barley, too, oats for porridge and wheaten flour, lime, chives, garlic and onions, chickens, ducks, geese and pigeons, bacon and radish so that one may have the best when it is custom.”
I know of no similar piece from the fourteenth century, but this is clearly what the König is mocking here.
Der König vom Odenwald (literally king of the Odenwald, a mountain chain in southern Germany) is an otherwise unknown poet whose work is tentatively dated to the 1340s. His title may refer to a senior rank among musicians or entertainers, a Spielmannskönig, but that is speculative. Many of his poems are humorous and deal with aspects of everyday life which makes them valuable sources to us today.
The identity of this poet has been subject to much speculation. He is clearly associated with the episcopal court at Würzburg and likely specifically with Michael de Leone (c. 1300-1355), a lawyer and scholar. Most of his work is known only through the Hausbuch of the same Michael de Leone, a collection of verse and practical prose that also includes the first known instance of the Buoch von guoter Spise, a recipe collection. This and the evident relish with which he describes food have led scholars to consider him a professional cook and the author of the Buoch von Guoter Spise, but that is unlikely. Going by the content of his poetry, the author is clearly familiar with the lives of the lower nobility and even his image of poverty is genteel. This need not mean he belonged to this class, but he clearly moved in these circles to some degree. Michael de Leone, a secular cleric and canon on the Würzburg chapter, was of that class and may have been a patron of the poet. Reinhardt Olt whose edition I am basing my translation on assumes that the author was a fellow canon, Johann II von Erbach.
