followed—conceived as a single, coherent story, or is it based on a number of separate stories, popular ballads akin to the Eddas, which the original author of the Nibelungenlied merely collected and strung together? The answer to these questions has been sought by a succession of scholars in a critical comparison of the medieval MSS. of the poem still surviving. Of these 33 are now known, of which 10 are complete, the rest being more or less fragmentary. The most important are those first discovered, viz. the MSS. lettered C (Hohenems, 1755). B (Schloss Werdenberg, 1769), A (Hohenems, 1779); and round these the others more or less group themselves. They exhibit many differences: put briefly, C is the most perfectly finished in language and rhythm; A is rough, in places barbarous; B stands half-way between the two. Which is nearest to the original? Karl Lachmann (Zu den Nibelungen und zur Klage, Anmerkungen, 1836) decided in favour of A. He applied to the Nibelungenlied the method which Friedrich August Wolf had used to resolve the Iliad and Odyssey into their elements. The poem, according to Lachmann, was based on some twenty popular ballads, originally handed down orally, but written down about 1190 or 1200. This original is lost, and A—as its roughness of form shows—is nearest to it; all other MSS., including B and C, are expansions of A. The great authority of Lachmann made this opinion the prevalent one, and it still has its champions. It was first seriously assailed by Adolf Holtzmann (Untersuchungen über das Nib., Stuttgart, 1854), who argued that the original could not have been strophic in form—the fourth lines of the strophes are certainly often of the nature of “padding” that it was written by Konrad (Kuonrât of the Klage), writer to Bishop Pilgrim of Passau about 970–984, and that of existing MSS. C is nearest to this original, B the copy of a MS. closely akin to C, and A an abbreviated, corrupt copy of B. This view was adopted by Friedrich Zarncke, who made C the basis of his edition of the Nibelungenlied (Leipzig, 1856). A new hypothesis was developed by Karl Bartsch in his Untersuchungen über das Nibelungenlied (Leipzig, 1865). According to this the original was an assonance poem of the 12th century, which was changed between 1190 and 1200 by two separate poets into two versions, in which pure rhymes were substituted for the earlier assonances: the originals of the Nibelungenlied and Der Nibelunge Nôt respectively. Bartsch’s subsequent edition of the Nibelunge Nôt (1st ed., Leipzig, 1870) was founded on B, as the nearest to the original. To this view Zarncke was so far converted that in the 1887 edition of his Nibelungenlied he admitted that C shows signs of recension and that the B group is purer in certain details.
As a result of all this critical study Herr Abeling comes to the following conclusions. The poem was first written down by a wandering minstrel about 971 to 991, was remodelled about 1140 by Konrad,[1] who introduced interpolations in the spirit of chivalry and was perhaps responsible for the metre; during the wars and miseries of the next fifty years manners and taste became barbarized and the fine traditions of the old popular poetry were obscured, and it was under this influence that, about 1190, a jongleur (Spielmann) revised the poem, this recension being represented by group B. After 1190, during the Golden Age of the art poetry (Kunstdichtung) of the Minnesingers (q.v.), a professional poet (Rudolf von Ems?) again remodelled the poem, introducing further interpolations, and changing the title from Der Nibelunge Nôt into Das Nibelungenliet, this version being the basis of the group C. The MS. A, as proved by its partial excellence, is based directly on Konrad’s work, with additions borrowed from B.
Theodor Abeling (Das Nibelungenlied und seine Literatur (Leipzig, 1907) gives a full bibliography, embracing 1272 references from 1756 to 1905. There are English translations of the poem by A. G. Foster-Barham (1887), Margaret Armour (prose, 1897) and Alice Horton (1898). (W. A. P.)
NICAEA, or Nice [mod. Isnick, i.e. εἰς Νικαίαν] an ancient town of Asia Minor, in Bithynia, on the Lake Ascania. Antigonus
built the city (316 B.C.?) on an old deserted site, and soon afterwards
Lysimachus changed its name from Antigonia to Nicaea,
calling it after his wife. Under the Roman empire Nicaea and
Nicomedia disputed the title of metropolis of Bithynia. Strabo
describes the ancient Nicaea as built regularly, in the form of
a square, with a gate in the middle of each side. From a monument
in the centre of the city all the four gates were visible
at the extremities of great cross-streets. After Constantinople
became the capital of the empire Nicaea grew in importance,
and after the conquest of Constantinople by the Crusaders
became the temporary seat of the Byzantine emperor; the double
line of walls with the Roman gates is still well preserved. The
possession of the city was long disputed between the Greeks
and the Turks. It remained an important city for some time
after its final incorporation in the Ottoman empire; but became
subsequently an insignificant village.
NICAEA, COUNCIL OF. The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) is an event of the highest importance in the history of Christianity.
Its convocation and its course illustrate the radical revolution
which the position of this religion, within the confines of the
Roman empire, had undergone in consequence of the Edict of
Milan. Further, it was the first oecumenical council, and this
fact invested it with a peculiar halo in the eyes of subsequent
ages; while among its resolutions may be found a series of
decisions which acquired a lasting significance for the Christian
Church. This applies more especially to the reception of the
doctrine of the Trinity; for though, immediately after the close
of the synod, it was exposed to a powerful opposition, it gained
the day, and, in the form which it received at Nicaea and at
the council of Constantinople (381), still enjoys official validity
in the principal churches of Christendom. Finally, the council
marks an epoch in the history of the conception of the Christian
religion, in that it was the first attempt to fix the criteria of
Christian orthodoxy by means of definitely formulated pronouncements
on the content of Christian belief—the acceptance
of these criteria being made a sine qua non of membership of the
Church. Moreover, it admitted the principle that the state
might employ the secular arm to bring the Christian subjects
of the Roman world-empire under the newly codified faith.
Thus the Nicene Council is an important stage in the development
of the state-church, though the completion of that edifice
was delayed till the reign of Theodosius the Great. The relation
of the emperor Constantine to the assembly was in itself a step
in the direction of that independent treatment of ecclesiastical
affairs, which, in the following centuries, created the peculiar
type of the Byzantine state-church.
From his accession Constantine had shown himself the friend of the Christians; and, when his victory over Licinius (A.D. 323) gave him undisputed possession of the crown, he adhered to this religious policy, distinguishing and fortifying the Christian cause by gratuities and grants of privilege. This propitiatory attitude originated in the fact that he recognized Christianity—which had successfully braved so many persecutions—as the most vital and vigorous of religions, and as the power of the future. Consequently he directed his energies toward the establishment of a positive relationship between it and the Roman state. But the Church could only maintain its great value for the politician by remaining the same compact organism which it had proved itself to be under the stormy reign of Diocletian. Scarcely, however, did it find itself in the enjoyment of external peace, when violent feuds broke out in its midst, whose extent, and the virulence with which they were waged, threatened to dismember the whole religious body. Donatism in the West was followed by the Arian struggle in the East. The former movement had been successfully arrested, though it survived in North Africa till the 5th century. The conflict kindled by the
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Bartsch and others ascribe its authorship, with much plausibility,
to an Austrian knight of the race of Kürenberg, the earliest
of the courtly lyric poets, whose lyrics are written in the Nibelung
strophe. Thus compare Kürenberg’s lyric (Lachmann and Haupt,
Des Minnesangs Frühling, 4th ed., F. Vogt, Leipzig, 1888)—
“Ich zôch mir einen valken mêre danne ein jâr”
with the Nibelungen Nôt (Bartsch) Av. i. 13—
“troumte Kriemhilde.
Wie sie züge einen valken, starc scoen’ und wilde.”
