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Book of a Hundred Chapters is the title given to a late medieval/early modern German manuscript from the sixteenth century. Written in German by an unknown author, a layman from the Upper Alsace or Breisgau whom posterity has named "the Revolutionary of the Upper Rhine" ("Oberrheinische Revolutionär"), the apocalyptic reform text purports to relay a message from the archangel Michael. It calls for the assassination of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and the mass slaughter of Christian clergy in the German lands and indeed all over Europe.

Textual history and editions

Its first, Hermann Haupt (then head librarian at the University of Giessen), found the manuscript, containing 400 densely-written folios, in the Bibliothèque municipale de Colmar, and published extracts from it in 1893. In the introduction, he expresses his regret at having to publish an extract, rather than the full text with commentary. The text, he said, was too long, too full of repetition, completely lacking structure or systematicity, and necessitated the construction of the author's reform program out of bits and pieces of the text, severely testing the editor's patience.

Haupt commented that the manuscript was inconsistently written, especially in its use of consonants; Haupt edited the extracts considerably for consistent and readable consonant usage, and left out many dots, lines, and hooks, even when they might try to signal an umlaut. Dates and numbers were converted to Arabic numerals. Punctuation in the extracts is Haupt's; obvious errors were silently corrected.

A full edition was published in 1967 by Annelore Franke, for the series Leipziger Übersetzungen und Abhandlungen zum Mittelalter. In 2007, K. Lauterbach published an edition for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Editions

• Haupt, Herman (1893). "Ein oberrheinischen Revolutionär aus dem Zeitalter Kaiser Maximilians I". Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst. 8: 79–228.
• Franke, Annelore, ed. (1967). Das Buch der hundert Kapitel und der vierzig Statuten des sogenannten Oberrheinischen Revolutionärs. Leipziger Übersetzungen und Abhandlungen zum Mittelalter (in German). Vol. A, 4. Berlin. pp. 181–529.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Lauterbach, K. (2009). Der Oberrheinische Revolutionär. Das buchli der hundert capiteln mit xxxx statuten. Staatsschriften (in German). Vol. 7. Monumenta Germaniae Historica. pp. 73–597.

Manuscript

The German title is Buchli der hundert capiteln, and it is dated between 1490 and 1509, that is, it was started in 1490 and was worked on until 1509; the work is unfinished. It consists of two parts: 90 chapters (one hundred were planned) and 40 statutes. The chapters offer a reformist program embedded in a historical and philosophical structure; the chapters discuss rules for living from divine and secular law. Its introduction claims a revelation by the Archangel Michael. It also has a Latin introduction and a table of contents. A poem, "Ad lectorem Ryënburg", in Latin couplets, concludes the tract.

The codex containing the One Hundred Chapters is Hs. Colmar, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 50, a miscellany containing 4 texts:

1. Lucidarius, in an undated printing, from 1480-81; the text was thought to be one of the earliest products from the press of Martin Schott, founded in 1480.
2. A manuscript from just before 1500, ten pages long, on astrology.
3. The Fasciculus temporum by Werner Rolevinck, undated but printed in 1493 by Joh. Prüss the Elder in Strasbourg.
4. The Book of One Hundred Chapters.

Content and importance

One of the text's interesting functions, besides providing evidence of the oppositional movements in Germany at the end of the Middle Ages, is to counter the view of historians such as Johannes Janssen, who suggested that the time period was one of general growth and a strong position of German farmers, where various population groups lived in balance, all overseen by a benevolent and harmonious (Catholic) church; the writer, on the contrary, sees nothing of the sort, and thus the account denies the claim by Janssen and others that unrest in Germany started with Luther's first public activities in 1525, a decade or so after the text was written.

The text precedes the modern beginnings of German racism, which scholars like Alan T. Davies date with the rediscovery by German humanists of Tacitus's Germania; Davies referred to the text as displaying "a German ethnocentrism with racial overtones". The author calls for a renewal of Christian teaching, beginning with the "rejection of the Old Testament, the Mosaic Law, and the teachings of Jesus", to come to a new, purely German Christianity. It makes only passing references to Jews, and when it does, it is to establish the superiority of a supposed pure German race; it certainly shares, with Nazi literature, "a belief in the unparalleled excellence of German hereditary traits". The origin of this German race lies with Adam, who was the first German, and whose descendants thus deserve to achieve world domination. The Germans are, the author maintains, unpolluted by original sin; Christ came to earth to save the Jews.

Legacy

British historian Norman Cohn treats the One Hundred Chapters extensively in his The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957), an extensive study of millennial movements in Europe from the 11th to the 16th century.

References

Reference bibliography

• Cohn, Norman (1970). The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780198020028.
• Davies, Alan T. (1988). Infected Christianity: A Study of Modern Racism. McGill-Queen's Press. ISBN 9780773506510.
• Haupt, Herman (1893). "Ein oberrheinischen Revolutionär aus dem Zeitalter Kaiser Maximilians I". Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst. 8: 79–228.
• James, Pierre (2001). The Murderous Paradise: German Nationalism and the Holocaust. Greenwood. ISBN 9780275972424.