lag ein kind (In a little crib lay a child) is representa-
tive in its straightforward narration, plain diction, and
heartfelt religious devotion. Especially pronounced
is Laufenberg’s veneration of the Virgin Mary; few
medieval poets command his breadth of Mariological
symbols and tropes. The culmination of his Mariology
is the Buck der Figuren (1441), a massive versifi ed
catalogue and interpretative commentary on more than
100 prefi gurations of the Virgin in the Old Testament.
Another lengthy work from his pen is the Regimen
sanitatis (1429), a combination cosmology and medical
reference tool of more than 6,000 German verses based
on many source texts, Avicenna among them. The Regi-
men, besides treating health concerns, pregnancy, and
child-care, examines the solar system, the elements, and
natural phenomena—including pestilence. Very popu-
lar, Laufenberg’s Regimen was an early printed book.
Rounding out his longer works is a 1437 translation,
in 15,000 verses, of a fourteenth-century discourse on
salvation, Speculum humanae salvationis.
The prolifi c author, who had regular ecclesiastical
duties as pastor, curate, and dean, evinces broad learn-
ing, theological sophistication, and mastery of a wide
range of vernacular and Latin literary forms. At home
in verse and prose, Laufenberg translated Latin church
hymns and sequences and composed “mixed” poetry,
that is, songs in alternating Latin and German verses.
Musical composer and self-aware author in one person
(Laufenberg liked to sign and date his compositions),
he infl uenced hymn writing in the Reformation and
beyond. As Martin Luther was to do, Heinrich Laufen-
berg penned many pointed contrafactura, appropriating
secular texts and melodies for the Christian sphere. His
most famous example—and his most famous song—is
Ich wölt, daz ich doheime wer (I wished I were at home).
The “home” of which the singer speaks is heaven; he
longs for a home far from earth where he can gaze
eternally upon God. In like vein, Laufenberg wrote
Christian dawn songs and adapted secular love songs
for worship of the Virgin Mary. She appears typically
in his verse as the mülnerin (the miller’s wife/female
operator of a mill), a fi gure who threshes, grinds, and
bakes the biblical “corn of wheat” (John 12:24) that is
Jesus Christ. Evident everywhere in Laufenberg’s work
is the desire to increase piety in his broad audience, be
these nuns, religious societies, or laymen. That his texts
were read silently by individual readers for meditation
and private devotion is very probable.
Scholarly research on Heinrich Laufenberg has la-
bored under the loss of unique versions of most of his
creations, the result of destruction of manuscripts in
Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. A
critical edition of his works has not yet appeared and
would necessarily contain presumed transcriptions.
Further Reading
Schiendorfer, Max. “Der Wächter und die Müllerin ‘verkert,’
‘geistlich.’ Fußnoten zur Liedkontrafaktur bei Heinrich
Laufenberg.” In Contemplata aliis tradere, Studien zum Ver-
hältnis von Literatur und Spiritualität. Festschrift für Alois
Haas zum 60. Geburtstag, eds. Claudia Brinker, et al. Bern:
Lang, 1995, pp. 273–316.
Wachinger, Burghart. “Notizen zu den Liedern Heinrich Laufen-
bergs.” In Medium aevum deutsch, Beiträge zur deutschen
Literatur des hohen und späten Mittelalters. Festschrift für
Kurt Ruh zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Dietrich Huschenbett, et
al. Tübingen; Niemeyer, 1979, pp. 349–385.
William C. McDonaldLAЗAMON OR LAYAMON
(fl. ca. 1200-25?)
Author of the Brut, a major poem of the early ME
period that contains, among other items of interest,
the fi rst account in English of the Arthurian legend.
La3amon identifi es himself in the opening lines of his
poem as a priest residing in Ernle3e (Areley Kings,
Worcestershire). Having resolved to write a history
of England, he says, he consulted as source material
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, a Latin book written by
Sts. Albin and Augustine, and Wace’s Roman de Brut. In
fact La3amon appears to have made little use of Bede’s
history (tentatively identifi ed by scholars as the OE
translation of Bede) or the untitled Latin text (identifi ed
still more tentatively as a book containing selections by
Albin and Augustine of Canterbury, the Latin text of
Bede, or a mere fi ction invented by the poet to display
his erudition). Thus, with some signifi cant modifi cations
and additions, La3amon’s poem is essentially an English
paraphrase of Wace’s Brut rendered into alliterative long
lines, some 16,000 in number. Because of an allusion
in the opening lines of the poem to Eleanor, “who was
Henry’s queen,” it is generally accepted that the Brut was
written some time after the death of Henry II in 1189
and possibly even after the death of Eleanor herself in
1204; but scholarly opinion relating to the precise date
of composition ranges from the late 12th century to the
second half of the 13th.
The Brut survives in two manuscripts dating from
1250–1350. Although both are thought to derive from
a common archetype, BL Cotton Caligula A.ix is com-
monly held to be closer to its exemplar—and hence
to La3amon’s original text—than is BL Cotton Otho
C.xiii. The latter is considered an inferior text because
its scribe apparently attempted to modernize his original
by eliminating many of the rhetorical embellishments
intended to give it what has been called an “antique
colouring” (Stanley). These embellishments include
lengthy repetitions of detail and incident and archaisms
of the type that survive in and characterize the CaligulaLAUFENBERG, HEINRICH