Jacob Königshofen (more properly Jakob Twinger von Königshofen) (1346 – 27 December 1420) was a German chronicler.
Biography
Jacob was born at Königshofen, then a village near, and now a district of,
Strasburg, in
Alsace
Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...
, but only a few details of his life are known. He became a priest in 1382, and for a time he held the parish of
Drusenheim. In 1394 he became
notary Apostolic and in 1395 a canon of
St. Thomas at Strasburg, where he was placed in charge of the archives and kept the stock books and registers.
Early in life, he had devoted himself to historical studies, and a Latin "Chronicle" is extant, written by him before he became a priest (edited by
Louis Duchesne
Louis Marie Olivier Duchesne (; 13 September 1843 – 21 April 1922) was a French priest, philology, philologist, teacher and a critical historian of Christianity and Roman Catholic liturgy and institutions.
Life
Descended from a family of Bri ...
in , second series, IV). This work only contains extracts from different authors and is in consequence a mere collection of historical matter.
His principal work is the . He began it in 1382; he twice revised it and brought it down to the year 1415. One of the first universal histories in German prose, it includes also a territorial history of Alsace and a local history of Strasbourg. Recognizing the needs of his time, he wrote it for the Klugen, that is, cultivated, laymen, "who read such things as eagerly as learned parsons". His narrative is therefore popular and enlivened by legends, jokes, and details concerning the lives of the people. He possessed a good knowledge and availed himself freely of the sources of medieval prose and poetry (particularly
Ekkehard, but also
Eusebius
Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...
,
Bede
Bede (; ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, Bede of Jarrow, the Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable (), was an English monk, author and scholar. He was one of the most known writers during the Early Middle Ages, and his most f ...
,
Hermannus Contractus,
Martinus Polonus, and others).
In politics, he was an adherent of
Louis the Bavarian
Louis IV (; 1 April 1282 – 11 October 1347), called the Bavarian (, ), was King of the Romans from 1314, King of Italy from 1327, and Holy Roman Emperor from 1328 until his death in 1347.
Louis' election as king of Germany in 1314 was cont ...
, an imperialist and German nationalist. Influenced by the Alsatian chronicler
Fritsche Closener, he has himself been in many cases the authority for later historians. The last chapter of the contains an alphabetical list of historical events with dates, and forms thus a kind of compendium of history, and was often copied separately. The was printed as early as 1474, and later at Strasbourg in 1698. A scholarly edition is that of Hegel in , VIII-IX (Leipzig, 1870-1871). Jacob died at Strasbourg, in his seventies.
Königshofen also authored a Latin-German glossary, which may, however, in its essential details be traced to Closener.
References
;Attribution
* The entry cites:
**
J. F. Oberlin, (Strasburg, 1789);
**, (Strasburg, 1842);
**
August Potthast, , II, 1076-88.
**Concerning Königshofen as a choralist see , Phototypische Wiedergabe des Königshofenschen Tonarius (Graz, 1903).
{{DEFAULTSORT:Konigshofen, Jakob Twinger von
1346 births
1420 deaths
Chroniclers from the Holy Roman Empire
15th-century German historians
15th-century writers in Latin
Writers from Strasbourg
People from the Imperial City of Strasburg