Vernacular literature, the German world

The Middle Ages are also characterized by the emergence of a vernacular body of prose and poetry, works written in the living languages of Europe. In the French-speaking world, for example, these texts belong to the literary register, forming the beginnings of French literature. Yet it is in the realm of law and jurisprudence that we find the first prose texts written in Middle High German. The cleric Eike von Repgow was in fact the first to write out a collection of German common law in German, which had been part of the oral tradition until then. Law only existed through a number of statutes, charters, and spoken judgments, as well as various precedents. Written between 1220 and 1235, the Sachsenspiegel, meaning “the mirror of the Saxons,” deals with private and penal law, public law, and procedural law, with the aim of unifying the Germanic legal tradition. Its title places the work in the “mirror” literary tradition. Sachsenspiegel proved such a success and exercised such an influence, that it remained a fundamental legal text in the Saxon and beyond into the modern era. Witness this Flemish manuscript, written on parchment in the early 15th century.