ABSTRACT

The European literary production on vagabonds, rogues and false beggars constitutes a comparatively homogeneous corpus of texts. There are precedents (non-literary as well as literary) which seem to mark the beginning of the tradition of beggar books. The most important documents come from Basel where various papers produced at different times during the fifteenth century were eventually inserted in the Basel Kronik by Johann Knebel. The document is an ordinance where thirty categories of beggars are described under the title. it is well known that the repression of false mendicity was one of the cornerstones of what may be called 'real' Lutheranism and that one of the targets against which Luther had launched his offensive was that of the mendicant orders; indeed, even in the two short pages which he wrote as a viaticum to the Liber vagatorum, Luther again kindled that polemic.