Max Manitius (23 March 1858 - 21 September 1933) was a noted German medievalist and Latin scholar.

Life and work

Max Manitius, son of the Court Councillor and secretary in the Saxon Ministry of Justice Wilhelm Manitius (1808-1885), attended the Gymnasium in Leipzig and then studied history and antiquities at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

from 1877. In 1881 he received his doctorate from

Wilhelm Arndt Wilhelm Ferdinand Arndt (27 September 1838, Lobsens, Posen, Prussia – 10 January 1895) was a German historian. Biography He graduated from the University of Göttingen (PhD 1861) and became connected with the University of Leipzig (privat ...

with a thesis on the Carolingian imperial annals, which dealt with the

Annales Bertiniani ''Annales Bertiniani'' (''Annals of Saint Bertin'') are late Carolingian, Frankish annals that were found in the Abbey of Saint Bertin, Saint-Omer, France, after which they are named. Their account is taken to cover the period 830-82, thus conti ...

, the

Annales Laurissenses minores {{italic title ''Annales Laurissenses minores'' (german: Kleine Lorscher Annalen) or ALM is the Latin name of a medieval, historiographic text from the abbey at Lorsch near Worms in Germany. In many German texts, they are also called the ''Kleine ...

and the

Annales Fuldenses The ''Annales Fuldenses'' or ''Annals of Fulda'' are East Frankish chronicles that cover independently the period from the last years of Louis the Pious (died 840) to shortly after the end of effective Carolingian rule in East Francia with the ...

. From 1883 to 1884 he was for a short time an "unskilled worker" (at that time a common term for scientific staff) at the

Monumenta Germaniae Historica The ''Monumenta Germaniae Historica'' (''MGH'') is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of Northwestern and Central European history from the end of the Roman Empir ...

(MGH), where he supported

Ernst Dümmler Ernst Ludwig Dümmler (2 January 183011 September 1902) was a German historian. Biography Ernst Ludwig was born in Berlin, the son of (1777–1846), a Berlin bookseller. He studied law, classical philology and history, among other things, at B ...

in the edition of the second MGH Poetae volume. In 1884 he started working as a teacher at the Noldensian Higher School for Girls in Dresden, which gave him enough time for further medieval research, with which he soon made a living. Still in 1884 he published a critical edition of an anonymous 9th century geographical writing, ''De situ orbis''. In 1889 Manitius published a complete representation of the 10th and 11th centuries under the title ''German History under the Saxon and Salian Emperors (911-1125)''. His special interest in the Christian-Latin poetry of the early Middle Ages culminated in 1891 in his literary-historical ''History of Christian-Latin poetry up to the middle of the 8th century''. Manitius also published annotated translations of selected Latin poems, such as

Archipoeta The Archpoet ( 1130 – c. 1165), or (in Latin and German), Jeep 2001: 21. is the name given to an anonymous 12th-century author of ten medieval Latin poems, the most famous being his "Confession" found in the manuscript (under CB 191). Along ...

(1913), and in 1925 published a wide-ranging study of ''education, science and literature in the Occident from 800 to 1100''. Manitius owes its special and lasting significance in

Medieval Studies Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. Institutional development The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening decades of the twentieth century, initially in the titles of books ...

and Medieval Latin Philology to its more than 2,800-page ''history of medieval Latin literature'', which was published in three volumes in 1911, 1923 and 1931 as part of Section IX of the Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft (Handbook of Classical Studies) and is the only volume of the company not to have been revised since then. The Munich philologist and MGH central director Ludwig Traube († 1907) had originally been engaged to prepare this volume, but he had allowed himself to be released from his contract and instead recommended Manitius to private scholars. The lasting value of Manitius' detailed and detailed presentation is based on his ability to describe even complicated facts in a way that can be understood by all. His last major work Manuscripts of ancient authors in medieval library catalogues was published posthumously in 1935 by his son Karl Manitius (1899-1979), who was also a medieval historian and philologist and worked as a freelancer for the MGH after 1949. The estate of Max Manitius is now in the archives of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

References

External links

Regina Mahlke: ''Das Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft – Hinweise zum Erscheinungsverlauf eines Standardwerkes.''

Max Manitius
in MGH Archive 1858 births 1933 deaths German medievalists German Latinists Writers from Dresden Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America {{Germany-academic-bio-stub