Runes, Gods and Heroes in Vienna. Michael Denis and the Reception of Germanic Antiquities

The Jesuit Michael Denis (1729–1800), certainly not a leading figure in the eighteenth-century literary landscape, has nonetheless received some attention for his German translation of Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian (Die Gedichte Ossians, 1769), and much less for his other original works. Among these is the poetic collection Die Lieder Sineds des Barden (1772), which, under the pseudonym Sined, contains lyrics inspired by the medieval Nordic tradition, preceded by a Vorbericht von der alten vaterländischen Dichtkunst, in which the author reflects on Germanic antiquities. Denis’s interest in this type of material also emerges in an unexpected work, namely the inventory he compiled of the theological manuscripts of the Viennese Palatine Library (Codices Manuscripti Theologici Bibliothecae Palatinae Vindobonensis Latini Aliarumque Occidentis Linguarum, 1793): he does not fail to note the presence of runica manuscripta and discusses them in his volume. The aim of this paper is therefore to present Denis’s Germanic interests, attempting to reconstruct his working milieu and the cultural context in which he operated.