For the first time, the critical edition of the Austrian Bible Translator’s works makes texts accessible that are essential for understanding and interpreting the Late Middle Ages, providing an essential contribution to European self-perception.

So far we are acquainted with comprehensive translations of the Old Testament (Alttestamentliches Werk, formerly known as Schlierbacher Altes Testament) as well as of the New Testament Gospel Works (formerly known as Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk). Connected to these manuscripts are among others German-language prefaces and a Latin apologia as well as several treatises, among them in particular two Adversus Judaeos treatises, a small book on the Antichrist and another one on the Last Judgement.

There are numerous manuscripts and fragments of individual parts of the œuvre handed down, some of them also art-historically relevant. Of the Psalm Commentaries alone, so far 65 textual witnesses are known, of the Gospel Works 27 complete manuscripts and fragments. There are also early parallel versions of some Gospel Work writings, origin and authorship of which still need to be determined.

Complex Conditions of Tradition

In recent decades the unity of these German texts as an œuvre as well as their significance for intellectual history has been recognized. That, in spite of their great significance, they have not been edited so far, can be attributed to the peculiarities of the authorship and the complex conditions of tradition. After the unity of various works had become evident during the 1930s, only latest research was able to reconstruct the complete work. While being copied, the comprehensive and intensively received texts differentiated into versions, excerpts and secondary alterations. Their editorial representation presents a particular challenge that can be met by a group of editors only.  The first question arising relates to the author and his complete work.

During a research period of about six years the Austrian Bible Translator’s Gospel Work is being made available and commented.

So far it has been known as the Klosterneuburger Evangelienwerk, named after the place both complete manuscripts were found in.

The prose translation of the canonical gospels, created around 1330, also includes the apocryphal, yet for the Middle Ages very important Gospel of Nicodemus as well as numerous other vernacular legends and Apocrypha.

The Austrian Bible Translator not only translates and comments on the different sources, if necessary, he also harmonises and arranges them in a new order.

This way the stations in the life of Jesus, told in the respective gospels and Apocrypha are merged into one text. The resulting harmony follows the chronology of the life of Jesus but is also structured in accordance with the pericopes and can therefore also be read in individual parts.

Soon after the Gospel Work was written the text was distributed in an edited version. edited. Whether this can be attributed to the Austrian Bible Translator himself as well or to another Anonymous, can not be determined (yet) but the first assumption seems quite probable. Researching these stages of textual tradition is one of the special editorial challenges: the necessity to develop version synopses and to make the Gospel Work’s interesting as well as complex conditions of tradition transparent and available to research.

The interacademic project now searches for other textual witnesses such as manuscripts and fragments which pass on the Gospel Work, then identifying, publishing and annotating the texts. The 27 textual witnesses known so far are more closely defined, the reference manuscripts of both editorial stages transcribed. All in all, the text to be critically edited and commented comprises about 1600 manuscript pages (800 folios).