Talk:Bruno of Cologne

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Was there a Misidentification?

Legend of the Damnation of the Doctor of Paris

Did Jacob Bidermann properly identify Bruno - in this case, St. Bruno - as one of the many friends of the Doctor of Paris, assembled in the cathedral for his last rites, and unusually privileged for something most of us would have a hard time believing ever happened.

The book's frontispiece (Edinburgh Press edition) to Jacob Bidermann's treatment of the Damnation of the Doctor of Paris happens to carry a full page rhetorical caveat that, if the legend is not properly to be laid at the feet of St. Bruno, then to whose feet should it be laid? In any case, Bidermann's play merely recounts the fate of some other man, we are told. Well, it's certainly nice to have a caveat like that, 500 years after the fact, where the dusts of time tend to make any more accurate of an identification almost impossible.

Nevertheless, it implies that Jacob Bidermann was working on materials commonly available to researchers of the time, and regardless of the materials at hand, he knew that he was relying on arguable foundations hundreds of years old when he put his version of the story together in 1602.