Valentine Pakis: Line One of “Christus und die Samariterin” (ÖNB 515)

• Valentine Pakis

The Old High German poem known as “Christus und die Samariterin”, a paraphrase of John 4.6-20, is preserved in the space that remains after the last entry of the Carolingian “Annales Laureshamenses” in Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 515, fol. 5r (with a brief emendation on the preceding folio), and it is written in a different hand than that responsible for the Latin chronicle preceding it. Like all remnants of Old High German verse, it has been edited and reproduced many times without significant variation. According to more than three centuries of editorial paradosis, the first line of this poem reads: Les4n uuir, thaz fuori ther heilant fartmuodi “We read that the savior traveled wearily”. This longstanding reading, however, was abandoned by the latest editor of the poem to have reexamined the manuscript, Karl A. Wipf, whose “Althochdeutsche poetische Texte” appeared in 1992. Wipf’s interpretation of the line is striking because it includes an additional word, namely diccuun: Lesen vuir thaz fuori. ther heilant diccuun fartmuodi “Wir können lesen, daß der Heiland sehr wegmüde einherzog”.

Seiten 441 - 448