GERMANY AND THE GERMAN LANDS IN THE MIRROR OF A LATIN COLLECTION CLAIM

The Vatican codex Borgh. 200 contains the earliest medieval collection of proverbs and sentences systematically dealing with German regions and territories. The compiler, an anonymous writer of the thirteenth century, is arranging and organizing the descriptions of each German countryside as a circle. Clockwise he is explaining moral characteristics and behavioural qualities of the inhabitants. As a consequence of such a mental cartography, he is drawing a profile of the slowly emerging German nation composed by different regional cultures.The article presents a critical edition and a literary evaluation of the poem.