ABSTRACT
The lyrical works of Tannhauser, a thirteenth-century traveling singer and composer, are preserved in the famous Zurich Manesse family and Jena manuscripts of courtly love poetry known as Minnesang. Tannhauser was held in particular esteem in ensuing centuries, his love poetry being celebrated by the Meister-sanger, who named a melody after him and cast him as the thirteenth member at the gathering of the "12 old masters." By contrast, a pious rejection of sexuality underlies the late medieval Tannhauser legend, in which the poet endangers his soul by his service to Venus but turns to Mary in the end. The best-studied medieval book of instructions on how to do various crafts is the De diversis artibus, whose authorship is given on the title pages of the earliest texts to Theophilus Presbyter, possibly a pseudonymn for the renowned metalworker Roger of Helmarshausen. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries represent the great age of urban expansion in medieval Germany.
