Disclosing Secrets: Virgil in Middle High German Poems

The role and reception of the Latin poet Virgil in the literary production in Middle High German during the thirteenth century are the core point of this essay. In particular, it is stressed the idea of obscurity connected with Virgil, which is mainly associated to a so-called Liber Maronis. In that work, Virgil would have cryptically transmitted forbidden arts and – specifically – ars notoria, stimulating the curiosity of many intellectuals during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Virgilian representation as a magician and / or necromancer probably appeared in the cultural area of Naples but thanks to British and German intellectuals like Gervase of Tilbury and Konrad von Querfurt, it was rapidly widespread throughout Western Europe, and Germany in particular. When the stories about Virgil reached Germany, they were used in some poems, Zabulons Buch and Reinfried von Braunschweig at first, which must be considered the mainstream through which the obscurity preserved and kept in books is popularized to a courtly public.