Tabernes historie: Franciskanernes Uddrivelseskrønike: forfattere, datering, formål

Resumé

The Losers’ Story -
The Franciscan Chronicle of Expulsion: authorship, dating, and purpose

Since the publication in 1850 of the Cronica seu breuis processus in causa expulsionisfratrum Minoritarum, survived in the manuscript NKS 276 8vo in The Royal Library of Copenhagen, the narrative of the friars’ sufferings and expulsions during the Reformation Era has fascinated the historians. It is so rare to read the losers’ own story. The chronicle consists of sixteen chapters, each devoted to the suppression of one friary (only fourteen, actually, since despite their headings two of the chapters were never written). Up to now several scholars have dealt with the authorship, dating and purpose of the chronicle. The reason for re-examining these problems is the observation that the manuscript has only been rather superficial analysed by previous scholars, that the determination of the authorship has been tied down by old dogmas, and that the chronicle has not been sufficiently evaluated in a Franciscan context. First the present author analyses the manuscript palaeographically and codicologically. Survived with lacunae as it is, information about the form and content, given in the oldest apograph from the 1680s, has been included in the analysis. The conclusions are that the manuscript originally consisted of 78 or 82 pages (only 60 have survived), that it is a fair copy, and that the individual chapters have been entered in a discontinuous process. After that the article deals with the authorship. In two of the chapters the name of an author is mentioned. It is in the Viborg chapter, where Friar Jacobus gives the information that his knowledge goes back to the Guardian Niels, and in the Ystad chapter, where Friar Erasmus tells that his informer is the Guardian Anders. Thus, on the basis of verbal and linguistic analyses several scholars have tried to determine whether the two friars could have written other chapters in the chronicle. First Friar Erasmus, then Friar Jacobus have been regarded as the main and principal author of the chronicle. The present author raises serious objections to the linguistic analyses made so far and then carries out a new analysis of the language. It is done without regard for old dogmas. On the basis of similarities and dissimilarities he concludes that each chapter has its own individual author. Consequently, Friar Jacobus and Friar Erasmus are only the authors of the chapters in which they are named. The article rejects the existence of an editor. The scriptor seems to have copied without any changes what has been written locally in the still existing friaries and submitted to the provincial administration at Roskilde. Therefore, as a collection of these reports the manuscript NKS 276 8vo can be regarded as an original manuscript, not a copy, as hitherto asserted. Next come the problems of the production, dating and purpose of the chronicle. In opposition to previous scholars who have dated the composition of the original reports to 1528-1533 and the collection of these into a chronicle to the autumn of 1534 or later, the article argues for a composition and collection in the late spring or early summer of 1533 (after the death of King Frederick I April 10, 1533). It rejects not that the purpose was to get back the lost friaries, but that it should be achieved by legal action. The chronicle itself makes no claims for a restitution and has no formal legal structure. Therefore it seems more likely that it was intented to be handed over to the bishops, so that the reading could persuade them and the other chancellors of the realm to re-establish the friaries. As a conclusion the article reflects on the destiny of the friars. The Lutheran suppression is compared with the persecution of the Conventuals by the Observants twenty to forty years earlier. The argumentation against the Conventuals was exactly the same as those against the Observants during the Reformation. Identical were also the persecution and the friars’ reaction. So History seems to have repeated itself. The article is followed by four appendices: a codicological survey of the manuscript NKS 276 8vo, a list of words and expressions of biblical origin, a list of Franciscan words and expressions, and a survey of the use of conjunctions and other significant particles in the different chapters of the chronicle.