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Flavio Boggi
STAINREUTER, LEOPOLD
(ca. 1340–ca. 1400)
An Austrian by birth, the cleric Leopold Stainreuter
studied at the Universities of Paris and Vienna, becom-
ing court chaplain to Duke Albrecht III of Austria (d.
1395). Stainreuter was a prominent translator of Latin
theological tracts, having rendered the Rationale divi-
norum offi ciorum of Guilelmus Durandus (d. 1296) for
the ducal court. Apparently at the behest of the duke’s
steward, Hans von Liechtenstein, Stainreuter translated
Latin books on pilgrimage (called Pilgerbüchlein).
Stainreuter, as translator and popular theologian, joins
the so-called Wiener Schule (Viennese School), formed
from authors with close ties both to the Habsburg court
and the University of Vienna: Heinrich von Langenstein,
Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl, Thomas Peuntner, Nikolaus
Kempf, and Nikolaus von Astau. (Johannes von Geln-
hausen, Rudolf Wintuawer, Friedrich der Karmeliter,
and Ulrich von Pottenstein are also associated, however
tangentially, with the Viennese School.)
Central concerns of the authors named were reli-
gious instruction and edifi cation, to which ends they
translated Latin writings into the vernacular. Believing
that literature should offer practical instruction for daily
living and should promote the conversion of souls, they
aimed their catechetical literature at a broad audience,
embracing clerics, the laity, common people, and the
nobility. Augustinianism was the theological direction
of the school, Stainreuter having been active in the
monastery of the Augustinian Hermits in Vienna.
Stainreuter also found his voice as historian, trans-
lating and composing dynastic history. For his 1385
translation of the Historia tripartita, the three-part
church history by Cassiodorus, he wrote, as a type of
introduction, a panegyric poem to Duke Albrecht III,
labeled an “Epistel in daz lob des furstleihen herren
herczog Albrechten czw Österreich” (Epistle of praise
of his princely duke Albrecht of Austria). In the work
Stainreuter identifi es himself both as chapplan, prueder
Lewpoltz (Brother Leopold, chaplain) and lesmaister
(lector). Noteworthy is his employment of genealogy, a
topic carried to fullness in his Österreichische Chronik
von den 95 Herrschaften (begun in the late 1380s), an
infl uential compendium of Austrian history borrowing
the frame of world history, and commissioned by Duke
Albrecht III. The Chronik, sometimes called the Chron-
ica patrie, is a detailed, annalist prose history—based
in part on the religious chronicle Flores temporum
focusing on Austria from its earliest times through the
rule of Duke Albrecht. (The concluding events are the
death of the duke in 1395 and the pilgrimage of Duke
Albrecht IV in 1398.) Stainreuter’s Chronik is nour-
ished by its vivid historical awareness, as indicated by
its opening references to Seneca as helmsman, of the
value of memory (gedechtnüs), and of history writing
itself. There follows a fabulous pseudo-history, insis-
tent in its efforts to legitimate Habsburg rule, placing
Austria in a historical context that is both inventive and
tendentious. As valuable as any of the Austrian historical
events reported by Stainreuter is his allusion to a very
early German Bible. He reports (in paragraph 388) that
Queen Agnes of Hungary (d. 1364), het ain bibel, die
waz ze deütsche gemachet (possessed a Bible written
in the German tongue).
By the 1980s scholarship on Leopold Stainreuter
seemed stable and serene. For all the vague remarks in
the critical literature of the type that works were “as-
cribed” to him, a consensus had emerged that he was a
translator and historian of note. Now that consensus has
been shattered. Paul Uiblein recently shook Stainreuter
research to its foundations, claiming Stainreuter was
in fact the benefi ciary of a kind of mistaken identity.
Uiblein identifi es our author, instead, as a certain Leop-
old of Vienna (Leupoldus de Wienna), a cleric of similar
background who studied theology in Paris and taught
the same in the theological faculty of the University of
Vienna, established in 1384. At some point before this,
Leopold had become court chaplain of Duke Albrecht III
of Austria. Among his ducal duties was the preparation
of translations; for these, as well as for his teaching at
the university, he was recognized in 1385. In that year
Duke Albrecht interceded on Leopold’s behalf with
Pope Urban VI, so that the chaplain might receive a
benefi ce. That Leopold of Vienna already enjoyed the
favor of the pope is shown by the bestowal of the title
“papal honorary chaplain” in 1385.
Suffi ce it here to say that scholarship on Leopold
Stainreuter is in fl ux; it is not yet certain when, or how,
researchers might sort through the claims and counter-
claims, and make a cogent case for the achievements of
either “Leopold.” Until that time, the literary patronage
of the Habsburg dukes, primarily Albrecht III, will be
more opaque than once believed. What is clear is that in
late-fourteenth-century Austria a court historiography
arose animated by nobles and confected of genealogy,
historical fact, and fable.STAINREUTER, LEOPOLD