Jans der Enikel

[7] Elsewhere he mentions that a Herrn Jansen sun, presumably his father, was honoured by the duke in 1239, and that as a child he had seen the army marching off to the Battle of the Leitha River, which means he could not have been born much after 1240.

[4] From other sources we know that he was a member of one of the highest patrician families of Vienna, and his name appears in Viennese council records for the years 1271–1302.

[10] The Weltchronik tells the history of the world in around 30,000 lines of verse, starting even before the six-day creation by telling of Satan's rebellion, and relating the Biblical stories of the Old Testament,[12] then continuing with Alexander the Great[13] and other classical Greek and Roman material, and on down the list of emperors through Charles the Great[14] to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.

[15] Jans is known for the free-and-easy approach he takes to his material, altering details casually for their entertainment value and incorporating motifs from the most diverse sources, for which reason 19th century writers were extremely disparaging about him: Strauch, for example, wrote him off as a "Reimschmied" (lit.

For example, the reign of Frederick II is interrupted to tell an entirely fictional story of a nobleman named Friedrich von Antfurt.

This Friedrich subjects a duchess to what we today could only call sexual harassment, to the point where she thinks up a ruse to get rid of him.

She promises to give him what he wants (the poet makes no bones about the fact that he only wants her lîp, her body) provided he takes part in a joust wearing her chemise (underdress) instead of his armour.

She is of course counting on him being killed, but he survives, and there has to be a reckoning: when the duchess still refuses to submit to him, he vindictively exacts a humiliating revenge by forcing her to wear the torn and bloody chemise to church.

[18] Other scurrilous tales include a story of Noah's son visiting his wife's bedroom on the ark in violation of a strict prohibition;[19] of Noah discovering wine when his goat became drunk;[19] of how the Emperor Nero gave birth to a toad;[20] and of the enchantment that led Charles the Great to commit necrophilia.

[25] It is shorter than the Weltchronik and has received far less scholarly attention, but it is an important historical source for the development of patrician society.

Jans tells how Richard, travelling incognito, seeks shelter in Duke Leopold's kitchen, where he is put to work turning a goose on a spit over a fire.