Haslinger Breviary.TAFF

The Haslinger Breviary Fishing Tract Part I: An Austrian Manuscript Holds the Oldest Collection of Fly-Tying Patterns Now Known by Richard C. Hoffmann and Peter Kidd Figure . The Haslinger Breviary codex. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. T    of fly fishing has just been further deepened. Manuscripts, printed books, and paintings brought to light over the most recent thirty years have exploded the myth of the technique’s peculiar English origins in the anonymous Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the second Boke of Saint Albans of , and established the practice of fishing with feathered imitations of insects in late medieval Germany, England, Italy, and Spain. To the dozen fly patterns of the Treatyse have been added the several score traditional ties of vederangln in the Tegernsee codex of circa  and more from alpine lands       in following generations; explicit doctrines of imitation were independently articulated in the mid-fifteenth-century English Medicina piscium of Oxford Bodleian Library . Rawl. C. , by Fernando Basurto in , and in Conrad Gessner’s  Latin translation from an older vernacular text, which is lost. And now there is a newly surfaced tract on fishing written into an Austrian devotional book in about  (Figure ). What we will here call the Haslinger Breviary fishing tract presents no less than twenty hitherto unknown instructions as to “how one should bind hooks” (fol. r). These combinations of specific feathers and silks predate the patterns of both Tegernsee and the Treatyse by at least thirty years. Creative twenty-firstcentury tiers will likely soon construct soft-hackle flies after these models more than five centuries old. The tract and its association with identifiable individuals and north-flowing tributaries of the Danube in Upper and Lower Austria expand understanding of the place of fly fishing and its tactics in alpine regions of Europe at the end of the Middle Ages. As of January , the breviary is owned by the antiquarian booksellers Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London, and the following discussion, transcript, and translation into English is published with the permission of the owner. As here presented, this article has three major parts: () The codex (This provides a technical and physical description of the manuscript volume, which is a particular kind of late medieval liturgical book with subsequently added contents. Various features indicate that the volume dates to –/ and originated in southern Germanspeaking lands of central Austria. Its original owner and potential scribe was a cleric from the region named Leonhard Haslinger. In modern times, the volume can be tracked from Vienna in the s to North America and recently from there to London.) () Transcriptions of the fishing texts, both the extended fishing tract (fols. r–v) and some partially illegible marginal comments about fishing on both sides of the front flyleaf; in parallel is an annotated translation of the fishing tract into English ()Discussion of the fly patterns and other information in the Haslinger Breviary fishing tract as evidence of the place held by fly fishing in late medieval Austria For ease of reference and clarity, it will sometimes be necessary to mention or name in passing people or institutions whose relevant identity will not be confirmed until some point further into the article. T HE H AS L I NG E R C OD E X The medieval manuscript volume (codex) in which a hitherto unknown tract on fishing has recently been noticed is a type of devotional book called a breviary. In simple terms, the main liturgical practice of a medieval monk or someone training for the priesthood, apart from attending Mass (which could only be performed by an ordained priest), was performing a series of daily devotions at certain roughly three-hour intervals from the middle of the night until about sunset. The texts for these devotions, the so-called Divine Office, were written down in a breviary. Features of this book help to identify its origins. Each breviary contains so-called ordinary texts, which would be used on many different days, and so-called proper texts, which were used only on specific feast days. Feast days in the church year are of two main types: there are movable feasts, such as Easter (which depends on a solunar cycle and can fall on any date from March  to April ), Figure . The Haslinger Breviary codex: spine and front cover. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. and there are feasts that fall on the same date every year, such as the feast day of St. Valentine (always February ) and Christmas (December ). These two types of feast are usually arranged in separate series in liturgical manuscripts: the feasts without fixed dates—starting with Advent, continuing through Lent to Eastertide and the Sundays that follow Easter—form the so-called Temporale; the fixed-date feasts, primarily saints’ days, form the Sanctorale. Unlike some other kinds of medieval liturgical manuscripts—such as a missal (which, placed on the altar, the priest had to be able to read from a short distance) or a choir book (from which, placed on a lectern, several monks might sing the chant at once)—breviaries were typically made to be handheld and were thus often roughly the dimensions of a thick modern hardback novel. The  leaves of the Haslinger Breviary measure about  by  millimeters (½ by ¾ inches; Figure ). Because the texts for the entire year would result in an awkwardly thick and heavy book, it was common for breviaries to be divided into two roughly equal parts: one for use from Advent until Easter (the winter part) and the other for the rest of the year (the summer part). The surviving Haslinger Breviary as originally written consists of the summer portion of the year—its Sanctorale runs from the feast of St. Petronella (May ) to the eve of the feast of St. Andrew (November ). It is about  millimeters (½ inches) thick, including the leather-covered wood boards of the binding.    The Temporale can rarely help locate the origin of a codex because the movable feasts are celebrated throughout Christendom. The Sanctorale, however, often holds clues: some saints were venerated across the whole of Europe, whereas others were regional or even very narrowly local. A town would venerate highly a saint whose relics lay in the local church; a city a hundred miles away might pay no attention to that particular saint. Thus, the particular contingent included in a liturgical manuscript can offer a good indication of where it was meant to be used. The saints appearing in the Sanctorale of the Haslinger Breviary show that it was meant for use within south-central Europe, a zone encompassing Poland, Austria, Switzerland, and the adjacent part of southern Germany, and, more particularly, the medieval dioceses of Salzburg and Passau, more or less the Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. r: first page of calendrical table. Note the blanks in the first column of the top five rows. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London.      area of present-day southeastern Germany (eastern Bavaria) and north-central Austria (provinces of Salzburg and Upper and Lower Austria). In addition to the fact of the inclusion of any feast, its relative importance is indicated by its grading. In the monastic Divine Office, a feast can have a maximum of twelve readings (lectiones, or lessons); feasts in the Haslinger Breviary have no more than nine lessons, indicating that it is secular—that is, not for use in a monastery but in a parish church or a collegiate or other chapel. Although it has not yet been possible to identify precisely where the Haslinger Breviary was made, we can be confident that it was written with a particular place in mind (or, at least, that the textual exemplar from which it was copied was written for a specific place). In the Sanctorale, placed between the feasts of St. Martin (July ) and St. Willibald (July ), there is the feast of the dedication of a church. Such dedication feasts can either refer to the dedication date of a specific local church, such as a parish church, or of the main church (typically the cathedral) of a diocese. Thus, for example, liturgical manuscripts written for use in the diocese of Cologne might include the feast of the dedication of Cologne cathedral. None of the places known to have been associated with the breviary’s owner (discussed below), nor Passau or Salzburg cathedrals, celebrated their dedication on July , , or . Several criteria serve to provide an approximate date for the Haslinger Breviary. The style of handwriting is typical of the fifteenth century, probably of the middle decades of the century, but it is difficult to be more precise. Internal textual evidence (described below), however, strongly suggests that the original book itself was written before , and probably before . On some pages originally left blank when the main text of the breviary was copied out and bound has been added a table of calendrical data covering the years –. The table is in seven columns, each with a caption at the bottom. What is significant for our purposes is that the first column is labeled as the Anni incarnationis domini (the year of the incarnation of the Lord), which is the same as Anno domini (the year ..). The first five rows of the table (i.e., for the years –, inclusive) do not have this column filled in, but from the sixth row onward the date is entered: , , , and so on (Figure ). This strongly suggests that when the table was entered into the manuscript, the years before  were in the past, and therefore the data relating to these years were omitted because they were obsolete; in other words, the table was being copied no earlier than . This is strongly corroborated by the date  written at the top of the page. We can safely say that because the writing of the table can be dated to  or , and because the table is an addition to the existing manuscript, that the codex as a whole must have been written before /. Texts about catching fish were added to the book of religious devotions in two places. A few recipes for fish baits are written into the margins of a flyleaf at the beginning, but the great majority of the new text occupies pages that had originally been left blank at the end. These four pages about fishing fall between two other added texts (see herein pages – and Figures –). Immediately preceding the fishing material is a copy of a document that is surely datable to between  and  and most likely earlier than . Immediately after the fishing material is a copy of a document that is dated  June  (both are discussed below). Of course, a document written in, say,  can be copied at any subsequent date, but these documents and the fishing text appear to be contemporary with one another: there are some obvious changes in the darkness of the ink and some slight changes in the handwriting, but nothing to suggest that they were written at significantly different dates. The likelihood, therefore, is that the original breviary was written and bound before  and that the fishing material and its adjacent documents were added to the volume between  and . The additions to the manuscript were presumably all made while in one individual’s possession; thus, it seems likely that they were written by him. The relevant contents of the volume may thus be summarized as follows: • Temporale, from Pentecost until a maximum of twenty-seven weeks later (fols. r–r) Addition: —The calendrical table datable to ca.  (fols. r–v) • Sanctorale, from May  to November  (fols. r–v) Additions: —A document datable to –/ (fol. v) —The fishing material (fols. r–v) —A document dated  (fol. r) T HE O WNE R OF T HE C OD E X The mid-fifteenth-century possessor of the codex can most likely be identified as Leonhard Haslinger, a thinly documented churchman from a family then based in Gmunden (Figure ), the small town where the Traun River (see Figures , , , , and ) leaves the Traunsee to flow some hundred river kilometers northeast to join the Danube just below Linz. As will emerge below, nearly all the places connected with the Haslingers are located in eastern Upper Austria or as much farther east in Lower Austria as Vienna. Only Leonhard had good reason to copy onto a blank page (fol. r) in the breviary a precisely dated and localized document issued at the monastery of Admont on  June . The then–Abbot Andreas [von Stettheim (abbot –)], Prior Ludwig (–), Cellarer Wolfgang, Warden Sigismund, “and the entire convent of the Benedictine monastery in the diocese of Salzburg” (fol. r) there formally confirm the status of Leonhard Haslinger, “clericus” of Passau diocese, as a “commensalis” in Admont. By the fifteenth century, the term clericus identified a churchman below the rank of deacon— neither monk nor priest, but no ordinary layman either. Such an individual could Figure . A postcard image from the turn of the twentieth century shows the baroque monastery of Lambach, which replaced the medieval structure on its site overlooking the river Traun, at low-water conditions. Albert Pesendorfer photo. Figure . Gmunden, seen from the Calvarienberg, Upper Austria, ca. –. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Views of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Photochrom print collection, LC-DIG-ppmsc-.    not, however, be ordained a priest without the bishop providing him with an endowed appointment (a benefice or prebend). Indeed, the document explicitly states that Leonhard is “desirous of proceeding to holy orders and does not have anything which might impede his progress to the priestly order” (fol. r). Hence, the community of Admont provides Leonhard with charitable living support there “until such time as he obtains some benefice in the church either through us or through some other person” (fol. r). Leonhard was not then nor in any later record a monk. Leonhard also features in a second document copied on an originally blank page of the breviary (fol. v; Figure ). He, now described as priest (presbiter) of Passau diocese; his brother, Johannes Haslinger; and their parents, Johannes and Margaretha, together petition Pope Pius II to allow them to choose their own confessor and some other religious privileges. Such a petition is called in German a Beichtbrief, literally a “confession letter.” The only direct clue to the date of this document is the pontificate of Pius II: humanist and diplomat Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was elected pope on  August  and died on  August . But the career of Leonhard’s betterdocumented brother Johannes helps narrow down the dating and fills out Leonhard’s background. Without going into irrelevant detail, the Beichtbrief identifies Johannes as “a clericus of Gmunden” and a papal “familiaris” and “commensalis”—in other words, a member of the papal court (fol. v). Piccolomini had frequented Austria since the mid-s, served Emperor Frederick III (–) as an advisor and diplomat, and, having been elected pope, remained actively engaged in Austrian and general central European Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. v: a copy of the Haslinger family’s undated affairs at least into . Austrians in his Beichtbrief to Pope Pius II. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. entourage should arouse no surprise. Elsewhere in the surviving historical record, Pope Pius II granted Johannes delay his entry into the priesthood on ments are not in the breviary, but rather Haslinger “of Gmunden” in  a papal grounds of his papal service, even preserved in Vienna’s city archive “familiaris,” expectancy (the next future though the latter papal charter privileged (Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv), as vacancy) for two benefices—one under him to retain all the rights of a papal they involved a position in the patronage the patronage of Kremsmünster and the courtier even if not at the curia and all of the city council. First, on  October other of St. Florian—as of  “as if he the incomes from Pfarrkirchen even if , Johannes, holder of the parish of were then already a papal familiaris.” not in residence there. It may be rea- Pfarrkirchen and the benefice of a perThis puts the Beichtbrief after  and sonable to think that the Beichtbrief thus petual mass in St. Mary Magdalen confurther confirms the hometown of the dates between  and , which vent outside Vienna, appeared before a Haslingers as Gmunden. In the ensuing would approximate the years by which notary in Thalheim (a market town on three years, Johannes did obtain the his brother Leonhard had been ordained the Traun about  kilometers northwest parish of Pfarrkirchen under patronage a priest. We still lack any indication, of Pfarrkirchen) to appoint the abbot of of Kremsmünster, traded his claim on St. however, of where Leonhard received or the Schotten monastery in Vienna as his attorney to resign on his behalf the posiFlorian for one elsewhere, and received held a benefice. The last records now known of tion in St. Mary Magdalen to the some religious benefits (indulgences) for visitors to Pfarrkirchen. In  and Leonhard Haslinger also place him in the patrons, the city council of Vienna. The again in May , he was allowed to circle of his brother. These two docu- council in turn was to bestow it on      Johannes’s brother Leonhard, priest in the diocese of Passau, and nobody else. Then, a few weeks later (November ), Leonhard appeared before the city council in Vienna to swear to do his duties and thus be installed in the post at St. Mary Magdalen as resigned by his brother Johannes, also a priest. But when Johannes himself died in summer , still in possession of Pfarrkirchen and the owner of a house in Kremsmünster, only some kinsfolk living in Steyr handled his bequests. In sum, Leonhard Haslinger, from a family in Gmunden, obtained enough schooling in the years before  to enter minor ecclesiastical orders in the diocese of Passau and to have use for an appropriate breviary. Thanks in part to some years of support from the monastery of Admont, he was by / in position to accept a benefice somewhere in that diocese and be ordained a priest. Unknown, however, is where precisely Leonhard served before , when his more prominent brother passed on the suburban Viennese appointment. Even that memorial mass was not likely a lucrative post. Although Leonhard was literate and able to sustain a modest living during the s and s, he belonged to the host of clerics who inhabited the fringes of the late medieval ecclesiastical establishment. During those years he might have thought fishing a useful pastime, but not in all likelihood a very lucrative one. However, he might have used his literate skills to help some lordship in need of a manager or clerk to administer its fishing and other economic rights. The main handwriting of the breviary is in what might be described as a standard cursive book hand: it is neither especially untidy nor especially neat. It is akin to the handwriting of formal business documents: neater than personal memoranda, but not as carefully written as one would expect to find in an illuminated manuscript, for example. It is precisely the sort of handwriting, in other words, of which Leonhard Haslinger should have been capable. Although there is no way to be sure, it is possible that Leonhard wrote out the breviary for his own use. Alternatively, by the mid-fifteenth century it would have been possible in any town of any size to commission a specialist scribe to copy such a book, and Leonhard would almost certainly have had to go to a professional to get the volume bound. In all likelihood, Leonhard himself subsequently copied onto blank spaces of his breviary all the additional texts, most surely including the two legal documents and the fishing tract plus additional glosses. As earlier remarked, whether writing in Latin or German, the hand, pen, and ink point to the same scribe, although surely not writing at the same time. Several scholars familiar with late medieval middle European paleography have seen no marks of a distinctively different hand. It is most tempting to think Leonhard wrote these things down between or after –, when those documents most likely mattered to him, but the last dated element is the calendrical material filled in from . Pending any further evidence, the best (only?) working hypothesis is that Leonhard Haslinger—son of Gmunden, priest of the Passau diocese, later chaplain in Vienna—possessed the breviary and at times during the late s and/or early s copied into it documents of interest to himself, including a tract and isolated recipes on how to catch fish. This is a more close personal connection than is now known for any other surviving early fly-fishing or general fishcatching tract. But where the book went next is entirely unknown. T HE M OD E RN P ROVE NANC E After the mid-fifteenth century, the next fixed point in the book’s history is supplied by the circular blue ink stamp of . . ,  on the final flyleaf, below which is added the date Juni  in pencil. This is presumably the stamp and annotation of Joseph Maria Wagner (–), Viennese linguist and librarian. If June  was when he acquired the codex, he owned it for less than a year, because he died on  May . He might even have acquired the manuscript specifically for its fishing treatise because of his interest in fifteenth-century German dialects. Wagner’s library is recorded as having been sold on  October , but we have been unable to locate a copy of the catalogue to see whether the breviary can be identified therein. The book doubtless next had an Austrian or German owner, very possibly a book dealer, but at some point in the following century, it found its way to the United States. It does not feature in the great Census of medieval manuscripts in the United States and Canada compiled by de Ricci, nor in its Supplement, but first appears in modern records when it was sold in New York by Parke-Bernet ( January , lot ). We do not know who consigned it for sale or who bought it. Its importance unrecognized, it sold for $. It was acquired in the United States in  by Maggs Bros. Ltd., London, who are still the owners at the time of this writing.  Transcript, translation, and historical analysis copyright © Richard C. Hoffmann . Special thanks are due throughout to the irreplaceable assistance of Dr. Herwig Weigl, Institut für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Vienna; Dr. Gertrud Haidvogl, Institute of Hydrobiology and Aquatic Ecosystem Management, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna; Dr. Christoph Sonnlechner, Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv, Vienna; and Helmut Irle, Hatzfeld am Eder, Germany.     . This is not to ignore the passing mention by second-century Roman author Ælian (Claudius Ælianus, On the Characteristics of Animals, tr. A. E. Schofield,  vols. [Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library, –], XV:) of fishers in a Macedonian river using a hook wrapped with red wool and a waxcolored feather to take speckled fish as they fed on a particular flying insect. No links are known to connect that isolated tale with European or any other practice a millennium and more later. . Willi L. Braekman, The Treatise on Angling in the Boke of St. Albans (): Background, Context and Text of “The treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle,” Scripta: Mediaeval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, no.  (Brussels: Scripta, published under the auspices of the Universitaire Faculteiten St.-Aloysius [UFSAL], ), notably pages – and – (although Braekman mistakenly divides in two the essential text Medicina piscium, which despite a probably missing leaf occupies all of Oxford Bodleian Library . Rawl. C. , fols. r–v); Richard C. Hoffmann “A New Treatise on the Treatyse,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Summer ), –; Richard C. Hoffmann and T. V. Cohen, trans., “El Tratadico de la Pesca: The Little Treatise on Fishing” [by Fernando Basurto from his Dialogo (Zaragoza: George Coci, )], The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Summer ), –; Richard C. Hoffmann, “The Evidence for Early European Angling, I: Basurto’s Dialogo of ,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Fall ), –; Richard C. Hoffmann, “The Evidence for Early European Angling, III: Conrad Gessner’s Artificial Flies, ,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Spring ), –, with an addendum (vol. , no. , Summer ), ; Richard C. Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), notably –, –, –, –, –, –, and –; Alvaro Masseini, “Fly Fishing in Early Renaissance Italy? A Few Revealing Documents,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Fall ), –; Andrew Herd, The Fly (Ellesmere: Medlar Press, ), – and    –; Andrew Herd, The History of Fly Fishing, Volume I: The History (Ellesmere: Medlar Press, ), –, –, and –, and Volume II: Trout Fly Patterns, – (Ellesmere: Medlar Press, ), –. . For further information, see Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London (www.maggs.com) or contact Jonathan Reilly at Jonathan@Maggs.com. . Mass could only be performed by an ordained priest; monks, unordained clergy, and laypeople would attend Mass, but could not perform it. . Indicative feasts include Achatius and his , companions (June ), venerated at Passau; Kylian (July ), “the Apostle of Franconia”; Heinrich (July ), i.e., Henry II, King and Holy Roman Emperor, principal patron of Bamberg; Oswald (August ), especially popular in southern Germany, and patron of Zug, Switzerland; Hermes (August ), some of whose relics were at Salzburg; the translation (i.e., the moving of the relics to a new shrine) of Cunigundis (September ), wife of Henry II; Emmeram (September ), patron of Regensburg; the translation of Rupert (September ), founder and first bishop of Salzburg; Wenceslas (September ), principal patron of Bohemia and Moravia; Maximilian (October ), principal patron of Linz and Passau; Coloman (October ), a minor patron of Austria; Hedwig (October ), principal patroness of Silesia; Gall (October ), principal patron of St. Gallen; Othmar (November ), first abbot of St. Gallen; and Virgilius (November ), bishop of Salzburg and principal copatron (with Rupert) of Salzburg. . This is quite normal in medieval manuscripts: the color of different batches of ink can vary considerably. One can also often observe the ink starting very dark at the beginning of a passage, becoming gradually lighter over the course of a few lines, and then becoming suddenly dark again when the scribe re-dips his quill in the inkpot. . Comparisons are made more difficult by the fact that text on a page looks different depending on its language, as different languages use the letters of the alphabet in different proportions; a passage of German will look different from a passage of Latin, for example, even if written by the same scribe at the same date. A scribe might also deliberately alter his writing depending on the content of the text; some materials warranted a more formal style of script than others. . The number of weeks from Pentecost to Advent is variable, depending on the religious calendar and dates of both these movable feasts. . Jakob Wichner, Geschichte des Benediktiner-Stiftes Admont, Band , Von der Zeit des Abtes Engelbert bis zum Tode des Abtes Andreas v. Stettheim (–) (Graz: Selbstverlag des Verfassers; Vereins-Buchdruckerei, ), . . The medieval diocese of Passau, a subdivision of the archdiocese of Salzburg, extended throughout this period across all of Upper and Lower Austria. At the time, however, it was not unusual for long-established monasteries such as Admont to be exempt from the authority of the diocesan bishop. In , Emperor Frederick arranged for the city of Vienna and a handful of nearby villages to become a tiny new bishopric of Vienna. . Commensalis is literally a “table companion.” . Repertorium Germanicum : Pius II. Nr.  Johannes Haslinger. . The family must have been well enough off to have two sons schooled but was not important enough to appear in lists of officeholders in Gmunden. Persons of that name are documented there in the early sixteenth century (Ferdinand Krackowizer, Figure . An early-nineteenth-century representation of the Traun Falls below Gmunden, still as the Haslingers may have known it. Twentieth-century hydroelectric constructions subsequently transformed the river, although it remains a destination for fly fishers. Albert Pesendorfer photo.      Geschichte der Stadt Gmunden in Ober-Österreich, vol.  [Gmunden: Mänhardt, ], ). Summaries of original charters from Gmunden’s municipal archive are now in the Oberösterreichisches Landesarchiv (www .landesarchiv-ooe.at/xbcr/SID-DBAF -DCCDAC/Gmunden.pdf) but give no Haslingers. . Repertorium Germanicum : Pius II. Nr.  Johannes Haslinger. . Johannes had received this benefice in . Medieval lore associated Mary Magdalen with repentance from sexual sin, and religious houses dedicated to her commonly aimed to help former prostitutes. Vienna’s Magdalena convent had been founded in the s just outside the city’s Schottentor (gate) at the northwest corner of the walls. Its affairs were subjected to a joint municipal and ecclesiastical review and correction in , and in  it was placed under supervision of Augustinian canonesses (women), then later the canons (men) of St. Dorothea. A Vienna citizen had endowed the chaplaincy held by the Haslinger brothers under patronage of the city council. The Magdalena convent was destroyed during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in . See www.wien.gv.at/wki/index.php /Maria-Magdalena-Kloster (accessed  June ). . This document is available online at http://monasterium.net/mom/AT-WStLA /HAUrk//charter (accessed  January ). . Ibid. . All other central European texts with artificial flies are anonymous. Identification of William Samuel as the author on the missing flyleaf of The Arte of Angling,  (which does not include fly fishing) depends on (quite convincing) inference from internal references (Gerald E. Bentley, ed. The Arte of Angling,  [Princeton: Princeton University Press, ]; Thomas P. Harrison, “The Author of ‘The Arte of Angling, ,’” Notes and Queries (n.s. , October ), –). Fernando Basurto, however, clearly self-identifies as author of the Dialogo (Zaragoza: George Coci, ) and is well known from other contemporary sources (see Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –). . For more on Wagner, see Karl Glossy, “Wagner, Joseph Maria” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie  (), –; online at www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz.html and www.deutsche-biographie.de/ppn .html?anchor=adb (accessed  January ). . There are some pencil numbers on the inside of the front board and on the final flyleaf that look like booksellers’ inventory and catalogue numbers, written in continental European hands. . Seymour de Ricci and W. J. Wilson, Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada,  vols. (New York: H. W. Wilson,  and ). . C. U. Faye and W. H. Bond, Supplement to the Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada (New York: The Bibliographical Society of America, ). The Haslinger Breviary Fishing Tract Part II: Transcription and English Translation by Richard C. Hoffmann [Underline indicates difficult, dubious, or conjectural reading; strikethroughs are as in manuscript. The acute accent mark ´ indicates the presence of a diacritical mark, which is not to be read as equivalent to the modern German umlaut.] T HE H AS L I NG E R B REVI ARY F I S HI NG T RAC T : T RANS LAT I ON T HE H AS L I NG E R B REVI ARY F I S HI NG T RAC T : T RANS C RI P T I ON .   .   (see Figure ) Item note how one should bind hook[s] for the whole year and according to each month Item in the first May thus take a dark feather and black light brown under that so it gives a good shine underneath. Item and what you may have of black feather, that you should lay on top and golden and black silk under that and a red hook with red feather and gold and red [silk] under it. Therefore you have quite enough for first May. Should the water be turbid or swollen, then make your hook or the feather so much larger. Item in June [“second May”] take a light brown feather and black and red [silk] under that and take a white feather and gold and black [silk] under that and take a reddish brown feather and white and red [silk] under that and for a black hook tied with it and a red hook also always on the line as I have written before and make that well tied and large and adjust yourself according to the water [conditions] as I have written before. Item in the first August you should bind a red tuft of red feathers with red and with brown [silk] and a golden breast under that. After that you should bind dark gray feather and bind silver and red silk under that and take white partridge feather and bind white and a red silk under that. Take a red stingel  feather and bind red and yellow [silk] under that and for always a black hook and a red [one] on the line and adjust yourself always according to the water [conditions]. Item in September [“second August”] thus take ash-colored feather and bind under that gray and light blue [silk] and take yellow feather and bind red and yellow [silk] under that with a golden breast and take wryneck feather and bind gray and white [silk] under that and take the white [feathers] of the woodpecker which he has beneath the crop and mix them among another feather that is light gray and bind red and white [silk] under that and bind the two hooks as before and adjust yourself according to the water. Item in October [“first autumn”] thus take pale mousey brown feather with white and with red [silk] and a golden breast under that and take a gray feather from a heron and take gold and gray [silk] under that and take dark glass-colored [feather] and bind red and white under that and a yellow hook as I have previously written and work hard so that the smaller the water is, so the smaller you should tie and black and red [hooks on the line] as before. Item nota wie man ángel vassen schol auf das gancz iar und nach yegleichen monátt Item In dem ersten may so nym vinsters gefider und swarcz liechtprawn daruntter das es gueten schein darunder geb Item und was du swarcz gefider magst gehaben das scholtu auf legen und gold und swarcz seyden darunder und ain rotten angel mit rotten gefider und gold und rott darunder Also hastu den ersten may gar genueg es sey das wasser sal oder geswollen so mach dy ángel oder dass ge[-] fider dester grosser Item auf den anderen may so nym liechtprawn gefider und swarcz und rott darunder und nym weis gefider und gold und swarcz darunder und nym rotprawn gefider und weis und rott darunder und fuer ain swarczen angel mit dem gefást und ain rotten angel auch albeg an der snuer als ich vor geschriben hab und mach das gefást wol tan und gross und richt dich nach dem wasser als ich vorgeschriben hab. Item zu dem ersten augst scholtu vassen ain rotten wipfel rotter federen mit rott und mit prawn und ain guldein prústel darunder darnach scholtu vassen tunkchel grabs gefider und vass silber und rott seyden darunder und nym weiss rephuner federen und vass weiss und rott seyden darunder nym stingel rots gefider und vass rott und gelib darunder und fuer albeg ain swarczen angel und ain rotten an der snuer und richt dich albeg nach dem wasser Item zu dem anderen augst so nymb aschen faribs gefider und vass darunder grab und liechtplabs und nymb gelibs gefider und vass rott und gelib daruntter mit ainem geliben guldein prústlein und nym naterwint gefider und vass grab und weis darunder und nymb der weissen pámhákchl dy er hat under dem chroph und misch sy under ander gefider das liechtgrab sey und vass rott und weis darunder und vass dy zwen ángel als vor und richt dich nach dem wasser Item zu dem ersten heribst so nymb mawsfalibs gefider mit weis und mit rott und ain guldein prústl darunder und nymb ain grabe federen von ainem raiger und nymb gold und grab darunder und nym tunkchel glasvarib und vass rott und weis darunder und ain geliben angel als ich vor ge[-] schriben hab und fleiss dich so das wasser ye klainer sey so du ye chlainer scholt vassen und swarcz und rott als vor    .   .   (see Figure ) Item in November [“other autumn”] you should bind really small and should lay down a light gray feather and light blue and white [silk] under that and take green woodpecker feathers and wind green and yellow [silk] under that and take light ash-colored feather and wind gold and white [silk] under that. What you take thus of pale feathers, that is all good, and take red and white [silk] as before. So you have the entire art/craft [chunst] of the tying and what you would make as a breast for every month and on all hooks, which you should do in the color as this is tied. Item zu dem andern heribst scholtu vassen gar chlain und scholt auf legen liecht grabb gefider und liecht plab und weis darunder und nym gruenspachen federn und wint grúen und gelib darunder und nym liecht aschen varib feder und wint gold und weis darunder was du sunst liechts gefiders nymbst das ist alles guet und nym rott und weis als vor so hastu dy gantzen chunst auf dem vassen und was du von prústlein wellest machen auf alle monád und auff all angel das scholtu tuen in der varib als das gefast sey [Ink is now much paler than above. Next recipes are for angling baits, not feathers.] Item [if] you wish to catch fish in May with bait: chub, grayling, trout So boil an egg really hard and chop it really small and give it to the nightcrawlers to eat in a little box and let them lie there for a day and take them out then and lay them in a clean moss and let them stretch themselves through that so they will gleam like gold. Item [if] a good trout or grayling escapes from the hook [and] you wish to catch it again, put water crickets or regular crickets on the hook or take “stone bait” or ant eggs [i.e., pupae] or take white fat and cut it as small as the ant eggs and bind a grape [?] with another gray feather and bait it on there and weight it well to the bottom. So you may catch grayling when the water is turbid whether in woodland brooks or on broad waters and use no other bait up to St. Martin’s day. Item [if] you wish to catch winter grayling, then take water crickets or regular crickets and push two on a “twitched hook” which is well leaded. But no trout lets itself be caught in the wintertime with any hook except a night line. Item if the chub will not take your feather bait in May, then take a black turd beetle [kotkeffer] and break its upper wings off or take June beetles and put two on the hook that he takes very eagerly or take nightcrawlers and put them in honey and let them lie in it for a while and put them on the hook. Item in June thus change the bait with cherries or with sour cherries [Weichseln]. Item in autumn time thus take blue plums or grapes or take earth crickets or cut a small fish into little bits and put that on the hook. That he takes very gladly. Item swallow meat. Weasel meat is also very good on the hook. Item wildu visch vahen in dem ersten may mit dem kóder alten / ásch / vorchen So sewd ain ay gar hert und hakch es gar chlain und gib es dem regen wúrmlen zu essen in das truchel und lass sew ain tag da ligen und tue sew dan daraus und leg sew in ain lawtteren myess und lass das sew sich da durich zihen so werden sew schein als das gold Item enprist dir ain guete vórchen oder ain asch ab dem angel woldestu in dan wider vahen So nym wasser grillen oder recht grillen an den angl oder nym stain koder oder amays ayr oder nym weissen spekch und zu sneyd in chlain als dy amays ayr und vass ain zepher mit ainer grabem federen und kóder es daran und pley in wol zu dem grunt also magstu asch geuahen wan das wasser sall ist es sey in wald pecheren oder auf weitten wasser und nymbt anders kóder nicht unczt hin auff sand Merten tag Item wildu des winters ásch vahen So nym wasser grillen oder recht grillen der stóss zwen an ainen zukch angl der wol pleyt sey aber chain vórchen lást sich des winters vahen mit chainem angl dan mit nacht ángel Item wil dir der alt das feder koder nicht nemen in dem ersten may so nym ain swarczen kotkeffer und prich im dy oberen flúg ab oder nym prach kefferen der stóss zwen an den angl das nimbt er gar gern oder nymb regen wúrmel und tue sew in hónig und lass sew ain weil dar in ligen und stóss sew an den angel Item in dem ander may so veránder das kóder mit kerssen oder mit weixeln Item zu heribst zeitten so nymb plab chrichen oder weinper oder nymb erd grillen oder zu sneid ain chlains vischl zu pislein und stóss das an den angel das nymbt er gar gern Item swalymb fleisch wisel fleisch ist auch gar guet an dy angel .   [continues hook baits as from v] .   (see Figure ) [has no heading, title, etc., so continues from v] Item to catch another fish take beetles or a wether’s bowels and lay them in honey. That is good on the hook so long as you may have them. Item the frogs which fall in the rain are good in the month September. Item orholden are good through the entire year for trout, grayling, and barbel on the hook. Item ein ander visch vahen nymb cheffern oder chastrawen gederm und leg dy in das hónig das ist guet an dy angel dy weil du sew gehaben magst Item dy frósch dy in dem regen vallent sein guet in dem manet September Item orholden sein guet durch das gancz iar zu vorchen aschen und permem an den angel      Item the caterpillars are good while the cabbage grows and they are cabbage worms. Item the big flies are good while one may have them. Item the mayflies are good when the winter lets up and the waters flow heavily. Item the blue flying little “worms” are good while they are present. Item a thick piece of oxen meat [offal?] which is there placed in a shoe for a day is good on the hook [?in?] October. Item take barley meal with goat’s “sweat” and mix with a little honey and make it so that it will be right for the hook. Or take a liver from a goat which has not been well roasted. Those are good on the hook. Item take chicken entrails which have been roasted a little in a pan and then laid in honey. This is good the whole winter. Item green peas are good while one may get them. Item small gudgeon are good the whole winter in clear ice. Item [if] you wish to catch fish, then take in May the may beetle which is smooth and not the rough [one] and take the nightcrawlers which lie in the manure pile, the white small and the long [ones] and not the fat ones and take  lot of candy sugar and  lot of pure salt and  lot of honey and take the top wheat flour [or meal] and the best flour that is above all [other] wheat flour and press the pieces through one another and let them stand for  days or three weeks. Then strain it through a sieve and put it in a little box and keep it so long until that you want to fish. Then rub the hands or feet with it and go in the water. So you will catch as many as you wish. Item dy rappen, sein guet dy weil das chrawtt wáchst und sein chrawt wúrmer Item dy grossen mucken sein guet dy weil man sew gehaben mag Item dy may fliegen sein guet wan der wintter abnymbt und dy wasser ser fliessen Item dy plaben fliegunden wúr[m]lein sein guet dy weil sew werdent. Item ain dikch stukch ain ochsen fleks der da gelegt wirt in einen schuech ein tag der ist guet zu dem angel october Item nymb gersten mel mit ainem púkchen swais und gemischt mit ainem wenigen hónig und mach das es gerecht werd czu dem angel oder nymb ein leber ains pokchs dy nicht wol gepratten sey dy ist guet an dem angel Item nym huner darm dy ain wenig geróst sein in ainer phan und darnach gelegt in ein hónig die sein guet den ganczen wintter Item grúen arbais sein guet dy weil man sew gehaben mag Item chlain grundel sein guet den ganczen wintter in lautter eyss Item wildu visch vachen so nym in dem may dy may kéffer dy glat sein und nicht dy Rauchen und nym dy regen wúrmer dy in den misthawffen ligent dy weissen smallen und dy langen und nicht dy dikchen und nym j lott candwla czucker und ain lott lawtter salcz und j lott hónig und nym das óbrist semel mel ist und das peste mel das úber all semel mel ist und stóss dy stukch duri[ch] einander und lass sew sten ein xiiij tag oder drey wochen darnach seich es durich ein sib und tue es in ein púxel und pehalt es so lang unczt das du wild vischen So salb dy hentt oder dy fuess da mit und gee in das wasser so váchstu als wil du wild .   .   (see Figure ) Item Note the bait for the traps [pot gear] Item take tree frogs with the skin removed and place them in the traps. Item take leeches and put them in some milk until it becomes full and put it in the sun so that it will dry. Afterward rub or press them and put it in a little bag and make holes in that bag with a stylus and put it then into the trap. Item do the same with laurel that is also well dried or becomes so and press it. Item take goat liver and soak it in honey and mix with water and let it lie in the same honey and thus it is good for crayfish and for fish in the traps. Item in the month July or in the month August thus take the liver and the lungs and the heart of a goat and press with its blood and lay [this] in the earth of a warm manure [pile] for seven days and dry this and prepare it for the hook or for the traps. Item take calves meat and lay it in honey together for a whole month and prepare it for the hook or for the traps and it then works wondrously. Item mark a general rule of fish. Item in the month August the fish go to the very top of the water and in the month of September they go one ell down under the water and in the month of October they go under the water an ell and a half and the whole [rest of] the year they go on the bottom. Item Nota das kóder in dy Reischen Item nym pawm frósch den dy hawt ist abgeczogen und leg sew in dy Reischen Item nym egel und leg sew in ein milich piz das vol werden und legs an dy sunn das also trukchen werden darnach so reib sew oder stóss und legs in ein sákchlein und zu lócher  das selbig sakel mit ainem stil und legs dan in dy Reischen Item mit lorber tue des gleichen das sew auch wol getrukchet sein oder werden und zu stóssen Item nym púkchen leber und sewd sey in einen hónig und misch mit wasser und lass den in dem selbing hónig ligen und so ist sy den guet zu dem chrewssen und zu den vischen in dy Reischen Item in dem manad Julio oder in dem manad augusto so dy nym dy leber und dy lungel und das hertz des pokchs und zu stóss mit seinem pluet und legs in dy erden an ainen warmen mist syben tag und trukchen sew den und peraits zu dem angel oder zu der Reischen Item nym chelbrein fleisch und legs in hónig sam ain gancz manat und peraits zu dem angel oder zu der Reischen und es wúricht dan wunderleich Item merkch ain gmaine Regel der visch Item in dem manad augusto so gent dy visch zu allerhochist in dem wasser und in dem manat septembri so gent sew ain elln tewff under dem wasser und in dem manat Octobri so gent sew under dem wasser anderthalbe ellen und das gancz iar den gent sew an dem grunt    [blank space of one or two lines, followed by a slightly different hand, pen, or ink] Item take a swallow and put it in honey and as often as you wish take a piece of the swallow for the hook. So you will catch fish Item take a heron’s foot or leg and burn it to powder and that same powder and the heron’s fat and when you will go to fish, smear your hand with it. Item nymb ain swalimb und legs in ain hónig und als oft du wild so nym der swalimb ain tail an den angel so vágst du visch Item nymb Raiger fuess oder pain und prenns zu pulv[er] und das selbig pulver und das Raiger smaltz und so du vischen wild gen so smier dy hendt da mit [blank space of one or two lines, followed by a slightly paler and finer pen or ink] Item [if] you wish to catch chub, then take a grasshopper and bait it on a “twitched hook,” so you will catch them without measure—and break the wings off. Item wildu vahen alten so nym haber schrekh und chóders an ain zukch angl so vákst du ir an mass und prich in dy flúg ab     Glosses about fishing appear in upper, left, and lower margins of the fly leaf recto and in upper and lower of the fly leaf verso (Figures  and ). The upper margin of the leaf is broken and heavily stained on both sides, as is the left margin of the recto. The top and left margin gloss is in Latin but effectively fragmentary due to stains and broken edges. In consequence, much is illegible or conjectural. Although these recipes plainly constitute unordered memoranda, not an organized tract, there is no way of telling whether they were written down before or after the tract on fols. r–v.       Upper and left margins Upper margin _ _ o_ recipe _ _ _ ____ {vellum broken away} __Ganifore ex ______________________ube -p_ _ _ _ _ post hec recipe caseum extractum de caseto re & eum _ extende in latum quantum potis illum tum put_ _ _bus valeria alie fortiter & _________ The recipe can be seen to use camphor (?), cheese, and valerian allowed to rot together in a bladder. Then remove a piece of the cheese “and place it on the hook in the style of fishers and you will take all the fish in that water.” Left margin [| indicates line breaks in this marginal gloss, which continues text from upper] _ _ odum | _illarum _ _ | huius de | frustra | pone ad | vesicam | ubi habes | _astiorum | _ _ Ganifo|ra & per- | mitte | sic | sX{or sil/ for simul }iacere| per diem & | noctem | donec sapor | illorum duorum | penetravit | frustra casei postquam | accipe | vesica | frustra | casei aliis | duabus ma- |ne[n]tibus | in vesica | & pone | frustra | illa ad | hamum | ad modum | piscatori | & recipis | omnes pisces | illius aque Lower margin Lower margin Another method Item take caterpillars [? tapen, perhaps capen] and bait it on the hook and lay it in honey and let it die there and then take it out of your honey and lay it in the sun so it becomes dry and lay it then where you wish. That is proven. alium modum Item nym tapen vnd choders an der angel und legs in ain honig und lass darin sterben darnach nyms aus dem honig und legs an ain sunn das sy durr [werd]en und hole legs darnach wo du wild das ist pewar[t] Item for the grayling Item take bacon which is not rancid [and] bait it on. So you will catch. Item czu dey Aschen Item nym ain spekch der nicht smierkel den choder an so vachst du        Upper margin Upper margin [Five lines but heavily stained and with parts of the top edge and left edge broken away. The last line had only two or three words but now only the last is still present (and dubiously legible). Some of the right margin may be hidden under binding.] [Top is too illegible for any sense. Possibly involves worms and rotten wood.] Item wild du visch vahen oder _____{broken edge} an dem zu Left margin is broken away Edge broken or covered by binding -gl stt _____ wurig {or wurm?} fawlen holcz vnd t h _ _ _ und _ _ gewss ain peschayt _ lass du _ _ _ _ _ scrayben ain tag und nacht es ______ Lower margin Item [if] you wish to catch crayfish So take a roasted liver on to a spit and stick it in the water and as many spits as you have in the water, so many crayfish will you find hole on there. Item [if] you wish to catch carp So take hen’s intestine and roast it and bait it on a hook so you catch right away. Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, front fly leaf recto. Note fragmentary and sometimes illegible glosses of bait recipes in upper, left, and bottom margins. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. Lower margin Item wildu chrewssen vahen So ah nym ain prattne leber ain an ain spiss vnd stekcs in das wasser vnd als vil du der spissel hast ges[telc hole ht in das wasser als vil vindczt du chrewssen daran Item wildu chárphen vahen So nym húner gederm vnd prútt das vnd choders an ain angel so vachst du czu handt. Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, front fly leaf verso. Note fragmentary and sometimes illegible glosses of bait recipes in upper and bottom margins. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London.    Figure . Low water in a gorge of the river Traun. Andi Melcher photo.     . Wipfel—literally a treetop that swings in the breeze. . Rock partridge (Alectoris graeca), native to central Alps. . See Richard C. Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), , note  for discussion of this cryptic term. . Jynx torquilla, German Wendehals—a ground-loving bird of the woodpecker family breeding across most of continental Europe. Feathers are gray and brown speckled with creamy throat and dirty white belly. . Pámhákchl is literally “tree hacker.” The most common species of the region is the great spotted woodpecker, Dendrocopos major (in modern German Buntspecht), which has a white throat and breast. . Gray heron (Ardea cinerea) is found throughout temperate Europe. . Green woodpecker (Picus viridis, German Grünspecht), native across temperate Europe, has dull olive green upper parts and pale gray-green beneath. . Leuciscus cephalus, called Döbel in standard German and Alten in alpine dialects, are carnivorous cold-water cyprinids common to moving waters across continental Europe. . Thymallus thymallus prefer clear swift waters throughout northern Europe as far east as the Urals. . Salmo trutta (“brown” trout) are native to northern Europe, including alpine rivers. . Perhaps cased caddis larvae. See Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, , note . . Reading “zepher” as Middle High German zepfe, which can refer to a grape, head of grain, or flower cluster.      . Martinmas, November . . The zukch angl is discussed at length in Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, , note . . Literally a “night hook,” probably meaning a hook and line left out overnight. . Brachmonat = June. . Austrian dialect: Krieche = a subspecies of plum (Prunus domesticus insititia), Wein-Beeren = grapes. . Swalimb, a sort of swallow, Middle High German swalwe, swalbe, s(ch)walmb. Both Hirundo rustica (English “swallow,” German Rauchschwalbe, North American “barn swallow”) and Delichon urbica (English “house martin,” German Mehlschwalbe) are common in the region. The unfledged young might easily be taken from the nests both species frequently build in barns or under the eaves of other human structures. . “Permen” for Middle High German parben = barbel, Barbus barbus, a torpedoshaped cyprinid which favors strong currents. . A similar bait is in the “Tegernsee Fishing Advice,” Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –. . Middle High German sweiz can also mean “blood,”’ which might be more likely here. . Gobio gobio. . A measure of weight, roughly  grams or ½ ounces. . I.e., coarsely crystallized sugar (“rock candy”). . Namely, that which is for sacramental bread. . A measure of length, anywhere from a half-meter to something more than a meter (½ to  feet?). . See note  above. . The wondrously attractive effects of heron-based salves are promoted in a midfifteenth-century tract from the western Bodensee (Gerhard Hoffmeister, “Fischerund Tauchertexte vom Bodensee,” in Guldolf Keil, ed., Fachliteratur des Mittelalters: Festschrift fur Gerhard Eis [Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, ]), so roughly contemporary with the present text, and in several later sources, most notably twice in the “Tract in  Chapters” first printed at Heidelberg in  and also both copied from that source and in independent recipes in the Tegernsee advice (Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –, –, –, and –). . Cyprinus carpio, native in Europe until the Middle Ages only in the lower Danube and other Black Sea drainages, had by the mid-fifteenth century expanded its range to most of the continent north of the Alps and Pyrenees and also to at least southeastern Britain. Carp were by then well known in pond culture and also as feral populations. Findings in Richard C. Hoffmann, “Remains and Verbal Evidence of Carp (Cyprinus carpio) in Medieval Europe,” in Wim Van Neer, ed., Fish Exploitation in the Past: Proceedings of the th Meeting of the I.C.A.Z. Fish Remains Working Group, Annales du Musée Royal de l’Afrique Central, Sciences Zoologiques, vol.  (Tervuren, Belgium: Musée Royal de l’Afrique Central, ), –, are undisputed by knowledgeable archaeozoologists and historians. . Ink changes. . Ink changes. . The scribe fumbled a bit here. He wants to say “make holes into it,” which would be better in German as zerlöchere es, but he does not write zer-, but zu- (and repeats this). Hence, the wiser reading is zu lócher. The Haslinger Breviary Fishing Tract Part III: Fly Fishing in Late Medieval Austria by Richard C. Hoffmann Figure . The homeland of the Haslingers, between the Alps and the Danube, Passau to Vienna. Gertrud Haidvogl map. Produced using Copernicus data and information funded by the European Union–EU-DEM layers. W    of the late medieval German Empire rolled down from the Alps to the Danube (Figure ), a multiplicity of lay and ecclesiastical princes (as well as urban communities of various scale) struggled to assert authority over peasant farmers and diverse natural resources. Under often rival sibling Wittelsbach dukes in Bavaria and Hapsburgs in Austria (including Tirol and Carnolia [see Figure ]), landholders and communities wrestled for local power, autonomy, and access to woodlands, minerals, and many waters. The region sustained not only some degree of wealth and a vibrant culture, but also a deep historical record of freshwater fisheries in general monastic community) and then allowed and the feathered hook in particular. to peddle their surplus catch in local vilAlong the late medieval Traun (see lages or nearby market towns. Specific Figures , , , , and ) and other rivers small areas were consigned to lesser artiand lakes in the central Danube catchment sanal fishers; in most waterside communi(e.g., Enns, Ybbs, Pielach [see Figure ], ties, ordinary householders exercised a and Mondsee), fishing rights in well- limited customary right to fish for their delimited areas belonged to old monastic family’s direct consumption (not sale). lordships (such as Lambach [see Figure ], In this setting, use of the feathered Kremsmünster, St. Florian, and lesser hook was by the fourteenth century well foundations), the episcopal estates of documented as one available capture Salzburg and Passau, and less-well-docu- technique. For example, in , Lambach mented lay landholders. Lords assigned or conceded to a married couple named leased major fisheries to subject or free Pernau unlimited and exclusive exploitamaster fishers (called on the Traun fertfis- tion of a Traun fishery called Steckweide, cher) who were obliged to supply the lord’s but also free fishing access alongside the household (which might be an entire abbey fishers to a local Traun feeder    “which we can use with the fóderangl wherever we wish.” The oldest surviving Austrian fisheries ordinance—declared in  by thirty-two master fishers for eleven lords with fisheries on the Traun between the falls (just downstream of Gmunden; see Figures  and ) and the Danube—tried to confine legal use of ain vedersnuer (“one feathered line”) to tenures with full fishing rights and forbid it to the less privileged. Much later (but still in a wholly premodern setting), a sixteenth-century codex from St. Florian contains a section titled “Fisch Buoch ,” including six pages with fifty-three patterns “to bind hooks” (die Ánngl vassen) with feathers and silk. In this context, only the combined early date and special prescriptive content make the Haslinger Breviary tract stand out. The fish-catching text inscribed on blank pages of the Haslinger Breviary is a good example of what has elsewhere been classified as a “tract,” as distinct from isolated recipes and unordered memoranda on the one hand and a fully structured treatise on the other. The text in the breviary has three well-differentiated parts: binding hooks with feathers, hook baits, and baits for traps. Each part contains a number of recipes or prescriptions and some plainly instructional passages. The “craft” or “art” (chunst, fol. v) of tying is to choose patterns for particular months and to adjust the size of the hook and feather to the volume and clarity of the water. Angling baits are designated for particular fish varieties, seasons, and water conditions. Recommendations for trap baits also have some tactical corre- lates, although that last section seems less thoughtful overall—until it observes a “general rule” (fol. v) of fish holding near the surface in late summer and ever deeper in the water column as autumn gradually sets in. Characteristic seasonal changes are, of course, easily observed in clear alpine waters. The entire tract uses what might be called the medical prescription mode of address common among late medieval instructional manuals, cookery and fish catching among them. Each entry begins with Item (Latin “also,” “likewise”) and orders the reader to “take” (German nym) certain ingredients and carry out certain tasks. Often a conditional purpose is provided, addressing the reader in the second person: “Likewise, [if] you wish to catch fish . . .” (Item wildu visch Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. r: “How one should bind hooks.” Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. v: more fly patterns, followed by hook baits. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London.      Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. r: more hook baits. Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. vahen . . .) (fol. r, and compare similar wording on fols. v and v). The first part on how to “bind hooks” (fol. r) is perhaps distinguished by a more oral diction, with repeated injunctions to adjust the hook size and orientation to the water, but also twice refers to “as I have written before” (fol. r). That phrase—and the occasional cross outs in a remarkably error-free manuscript— may hint that the scribe was copying from an older written source. That the text and the techniques of binding hooks were not here freshly contrived is the more plain in the cursory form of the prescriptions themselves: the scribe expected the reader to know the form and method of attaching the materials to the hook. If rightly dated to the s–s, the tract as a whole does represent a rhetorical advance over such earlier fish-catching suggestions as more or less randomly appear in surviving thirteenth- through Figure . The Haslinger Breviary, fol. v: “Note the bait for the traps.” Photo courtesy of Maggs Bros. Ltd., London. early-fifteenth-century Latin and German medical or household collections and in the British Library  Sloane , and even over the six recipes glossed into margins of the front flyleaf in the breviary itself (see pages – herein and Figures  and ). In this regard, what appears on fols. r–v more closely resembles the other known organized works that appeared in both German and English by about : examples might include those on dyeing horsehair lines (Farberei in a codex from Heilsbronn and a “Dyeing Tract” in William Worcester’s memorandum book, now   Sloane ) or those that address certain capture techniques as two others—one on angling and one on nets—in the same two manuscripts. Despite the Haslinger tract’s intriguing tactical advice, its principal claim to fame at the present state of knowledge is its numerous and comparatively precise patterns for tying what would now be called artificial flies. These instructions are a human generation older than the scores of such recipes in the German “Tegernsee Fishing Advice” of about  or the dozen in the English Treatyse as printed in . No older patterns in English or other languages are so far known, although the principle of imitation was articulated in the English Medicina piscium of Oxford Bodleian Library . Rawl. C. , which Willi L. Braekman’s dating would make essentially synchronous with the Austrian text. “H OW ONE S HOU L D B I ND HO OK S ...” So what may be said regarding the Haslinger tract’s patterns for “how one should bind hooks”? Apart from eschewing the otherwise common medieval German terms vedern or vederangel to refer to the objects in question, this text presents a consistent technical vocabulary    and form of discourse: for each month, it calls for a specific feather “on top” of the hook with specified colors of silk “under that”; each monthly entry continues with a sequence of two to five further hooks dressed in the same style but different color combinations “on the line.” The result appears to be a cast of several flies like those nowadays favored by some fishers of wet flies and especially associated with the loch style of fly fishing familiar in the British Isles. Instructions to use larger flies in the high water of early season and smaller in the lower levels of fall can be read to imply fishing in running water, although the manuals compiled a generation later at Tegernsee and another century later at St. Florian also explicitly advise similar multifly rigs for use on a lake. Leonhard Haslinger’s feathered hooks and lines remain anonymous, not named after anything at all. This leaves their imitative purpose entirely inferential, supported mainly by the monthly calendar, which other early texts (e.g., Tegernsee, Conrad Gessner) do associate with representing the insects being eaten by trout and grayling. The vocabulary and materials used in the Haslinger tract also have much in common with those of Tegernsee and subsequent sixteenth-century listings from the same general region. Several designs feature a prüstl (“breast”), one has a wipfel (“tuft”), and another uses the obscure stingel feather often prescribed in the Tegernsee advice. Especially the first thirty patterns in the St. Florian collection consistently parallel the feather-silk-prüstl formula found in Haslinger, but never replicate any specific combination of colors and feathers from the older listing. Most feathers the Haslinger tract describes only in terms of color (e.g., light brown, dark gray, white), so their avian origin (barnyard fowl?) remains undetermined. Others come from five varieties of wild birds: partridge, wryneck, heron, and the green and great white woodpeckers were and are common natives to the central European continent. All but the last are also used in such later fly patterns as appear in the advice from Tegernsee. Exotic animals are absent. In contrast with the early English tradition, in which wool or fur bodies were the norm and silk rare, but in accord with other German and Spanish writings, the second material is always silk in a remarkable diversity of colors (black, T HE A RT I FI C I AL F L I E S (“B OU ND H O OK S ”) OF T HE H AS L I NG E R B REVI ARY F I S HI NG T RAC T Feather Silk Other May (1) dark (2) black (3) red black/light brown gold and black gold and red June (1) light brown (2) white (3) reddish brown black and red gold and black white and red August (1) red (2) dark gray (3) white partridge (4) red stingel red and brown silver and red white and red red and yellow September (1) ash (2) yellow (3) wryneck (4) white from woodpecker breast mixed with light gray gray and light blue red and yellow gray and white red and white October (1) pale “mousey colored” (2) gray heron (3) dark “glass-colored” white and red gold and gray red and white November (1) light gray (2) green woodpecker (3) light ash (4) pale light blue and white green and yellow gold and white red and white gold breast, red wipfel gold breast gold breast Comparative note: Although some color combinations of silk and the term gulden prüstel anticipate those in “Tegernsee Fishing Advice” and in the unpublished Saint Florian “Fisch Buoch ,” no fly patterns in the breviary tract are replicated in the two later texts.      Figure . High water on a quasinatural reach of the river Traun. Andi Melcher photo. Figure . The Pielach is a smaller Danube tributary with some reaches, as here at Prinzersdorf in Lower Austria, now more affected by agricultural uses but remaining a viable habitat for coldwater fishes. Clemens Ratschan photo. light brown, red, gold, silver, gray, blue, yellow). Austria’s proximity and lively trading connections to the booming silk industry of fifteenth-century northern Italy may be a partial explanation. Might some personal access to ecclesiastical vestments also have played a role? While these earliest fly patterns now known from the European tradition thus call to mind slightly later representatives from their alpine region, an admittedly less-than-exhaustive review of the extant texts turns up few reasonably close duplicates. Haslinger’s second hook for November, with its green woodpecker over green and yellow silk, is very like hook  in the second series from Tegernsee. The third hook here prescribed for May calls for a red feather with gold and red silk under it; Gessner’s recommendation to take trout in May, which the Zürich physician says he copied from a vernacular booklet [now lost], was a body (“belly”) of red silk ribbed with gold thread and wings of red capon feather. Gessner understood that artificial flies were made to imitate insects on which trout and grayling feed, and Hans Nischkauer has identified the particular natural in question as the mayfly Ephemera vulgata. Indeed, the Haslinger tract elsewhere associates the natural mayfly with the high waters expected during May (compare Figure ). On the other hand, the spatially near but temporally more distant St. Florian compilation provides no really convincing matches. Overall, the well-documented late medieval practice of fishing with feathered hooks along the alpine rivers of central Europe shows little sign of being based on authoritative texts or recipes but rather a shared regional culture with widespread local diversity of detail. U ND E RS TAND I NG F I S HE S AND WAYS TO C ATC H T HE M To grasp correctly the sociocultural place of fishing with probably imitative artificial flies in the mid-fifteenth-century eastern Alps, one needs clear awareness of the breviary’s whole fish-catching tract in which treatment of this technique was embedded. Its first part on “binding hooks” mentions no particular fish varieties. They are, however, named in the next section, which offers bait recipes to angle for chub, grayling, and trout, the predominant varieties in the fast-flowing streams and smaller rivers of the middle Danube basin. Specific methods for taking each come up repeatedly in what follows. Otherwise, the prospective fisher is thought to have interest only in the little gudgeon as a    bait and the crayfish as a quarry. Overall, the Haslinger text envisages a limited range of aquatic habitats and species, far fewer than in other slightly later listings. Both hook and line and various kinds of basket traps (whether wicker or made of twine as a modern hoop net) are welldocumented medieval methods for individuals or families to catch fish occasionally for their own subsistence or more frequently to supply their lord or a local market. About seventy percent of the Haslinger tract treats such techniques. Whereas baits for a hook must induce a fish to bite and those for traps need only draw the quarry into an enclosure, the materials used have some generic similarities. Preparations may differ or local tradition favor one object or another. Leonhard Haslinger or his scribe mentions earthworms, insects both aquatic and terrestrial, ant eggs, frogs, leeches, small birds or mammals (whole or in parts), some fruits and vegetables, and preparations of or with dough and meats. Another class of baits aimed to use scent—or, perhaps, the occult power of that superb fishing bird, the heron, or of the flour used for sacramental bread— to create an ointment to draw fishes to the catcher’s hands. Little in the twentynine actual recipes on folios v–v (or the half dozen glossed into margins of the flyleaf) differs in more than superficial particulars or regional details from what is recommended in literally dozens of surviving fish-catching texts originating in Italy, Spain, France, England, and the German-speaking lands between the s and s. Plainly for Leonhard Haslinger and other contemporary writers, the technique of the “feathered hook,” though as distinctive as angling with bait or fishing with a small trap, was one of several means of catching fish. None of these methods are presented as having any special recreational orientation. Indeed, as already remarked, professional fishers on the fifteenth-century Traun used flies. On the other hand, the inventory of fisheries that Tirolian officials prepared in  for self-advertised outdoorsman Emperor Maximilian, Grand Duke of Austria and Count of Tirol, depicts him and his courtiers angling, using nets, and perhaps fishing the fly “for fun” (German lust). We do not yet witness separation of capture techniques into those associated with work and those for play (sport). Tactical advice about the behavior of fish and ways to lure them appears in all parts of the tract, sometimes in a fairly obvious context and elsewhere almost randomly, thus reinforcing this text’s distance from a planned treatise. The fly fisher is reminded to adjust the size of the feathered hooks to the water level and clarity, going larger in the high water of early May and smaller in the low and clear flows of October and November. Fish behavior is seasonal, too, observed as a “general rule” of surface orientation in late summer and early fall and moving deeper through the autumn and winter. By that time, the Figure . The tract calls for small flies in low, clear water conditions, as here visible on the river Traun. Andi Melcher photo.      grayling are holding deep, so a weighted line is needed up to and after Martinmas (November ), the traditional medieval marker for late autumn. Likewise, trout stay deep in winter and must be taken with a set line left out overnight, perhaps even laid under ice with the gudgeon as bait. The fisher further observes the abundance of insects, such as mayflies and beetles, in the warming but heavy flows of May. The seasons of the alpine lands resemble but are not identical to those of lowland maritime regions of Europe. Continual awareness and accurate observations of seasonal phenomena and events characterize traditional ecological knowledge: the orally transmitted cultural understandings of people who have multigenerational experience of their familiar environment. So do the traces of occult explanations that seep through many such transcriptions of popular knowledge. In this text, they come out in the notion of frogs falling with the rain and the powers of both sacramental flour and distillations of heron to draw fish to a person. Early writings on how to catch fish belong to a hybrid zone between the oral culture of illiterate practitioners of this craft or skill and such members of a literate elite as Leonhard Haslinger, who, for whatever often quite obscure reasons, decided to write them down. Together with regulations for the Traun, the tract in Haslinger’s breviary provides a glimpse of fish-catching practice in the eastern Alps at the middle of the fifteenth century. As such, the tract is, at least for now, the earliest known European catalog of patterns for feathered hooks—what would by a century later be openly called artificial flies. It confirms the artificial fly as one of several kinds of fish-catching methods available to ordinary medieval people in the alpine region. For readers who wish to hypothesize a transmission from Ælian’s fly fishers in second-century Roman Macedonia to the rest of Europe, this historical record may incrementally close a still-yawning evidentiary gap. For those who are charmed by the idea of functional fly patterns more than  years old, it provides an opportunity to attempt and test present-day replicas. The historically curious might be motivated to investigate local library, museum, and archival collections for comparable early records hitherto left in uninterested oblivion. For this purpose, northern Italy, eastern and central France, and the Spanish Pyrenees are still the least-explored and likeliest frontiers for further discoveries of medieval fly fishing.     . As cited by Hermann Heimpel, “Die Federschnur: Wasserrecht und Fischrecht in der ‘Reformation Kaiser Siegmunds,’” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters (vol. , ), –. . Artur M. Scheiber, Zur Geschichte der Fischerei in Oberösterreich, insbesondere der Traunfischerei (Linz: Verlag R. Pirngruber, ), – and , published and discussed the  text from a copy then in the Oberösterreichische Landesarchiv. The subsequent governmental ordinance of  likewise allowed only tenants of full fisheries “mit der feder schnuer annglen” in their own designated reach of the river (Scheiber, ). . Stiftsbibliothek St. Florian Hs. , fols. r–v, has not to my knowledge ever been published. Its fly patterns appear on fols. v–v. . Richard C. Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), –. . Ibid., –; Willi L. Braekman, The Treatise on Angling in the Boke of St. Albans (): Background, Context and Text of “The treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle,” Scripta: Mediaeval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, no.  (Brussels: Scripta, published under the auspices of the Universitaire Faculteiten St.Aloysius [UFSAL], ), –. . On the former, see Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, , and works there cited in note ; for the latter, Braekman, The Treatise on Angling, – and –. . Braekman, The Treatise on Angling, – and –; see also   Harley  as edited in Braekman, –. . Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –, some of which is replicated in St. Florian Hs. , fol. v. . Ibid., –. But the Haslinger text never uses stingel to refer to a location or structural element of the fly. . St. Florian, Hs. , fols. v–r. The  text eschews the prescriptive language (Nym . . .) of its collateral antecedent and also its reference to silk, plainly expecting those later readers to know how to get from a list of ingredients to a finished feathered hook. . Richard C. Hoffmann, “The Oldest Use of Silk in Fly Fishing,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Winter ), –, which now needs revision in light of the Haslinger tract itself. . Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –. . Richard C. Hoffmann, “The Evidence for Early European Angling, III: Conrad Gessner’s Artificial Flies, ,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Spring ), –. . Hans E. Nischkauer, “Die Fliegen des Doctor Konrad Gesner,” Der Fliegenfischer (December –March ), –. For an English summary, see Richard C. Hoffmann, “More on Gessner’s Flies,” The American Fly Fisher (vol. , no. , Summer ), . . Angling for carp (Cyprinus carpio) with roasted chicken entrails is mentioned in one of the several random contemporary glosses on Figure . Austria as represented by Abraham Ortelius, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, between  and . The Traunsee and other areas familiar to the Haslingers are in the far left of the map, the area shaded as Upper Austria. Image in the public domain from KB, National Library of the Netherlands, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:Atlas_Ortelius_KB_PPN-av-br.jpg. Accessed  December . the front flyleaf of the breviary (see page  and Figure ). . Richard C. Hoffmann, “Medieval Fishing,” in Paolo Squatriti, ed., Working with Water in Medieval Europe: Technology and Resource Use (Leiden: Brill, ), –. . Bait angling and basket traps also occupy similar proportions of the Tegernsee and St. Florian texts and, with large fixed weirs, take up all but one line of the  Traun regulations. . See published examples in Charles Estienne, L’Agriculture et Maison rustique (Paris: Iaques du Puis, ), fols. r–v (book , chapters –); Gerhard Hoffmeister, “Fischer- und Tauchertexte vom Bodensee,” in Guldolf Keil, ed., Fachliteratur des Mittelalters: Festschrift fur Gerhard Eis (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, ), –; Braekman, The Treatise on Angling, passim; Petrus de Crescentiis, Ruralia commoda: Das Wissen des vollkommenen Landwirts um , Dritter Teil: Buch VII–XII, ed. Will Richter, Editiones Heidelbergenses  (Heidelberg: C. Winter, ), – (book , chapters –); Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, – and –. . Franz Unterkircher, ed., Das Tiroler Fischereibuch Maximilians I,  vols. (Wien, Graz: Verlag Styria, ). Another illustration of Maximilian angling appeared as a woodcut in his personal copy of his ghost-written Weisskunig memoir; see Maxmiliam I, Weisskunig: In Lichtdruck-Faksimiles nach Frühdrücken mit Hilfe der Max-KodeFoundation, Inc. New York, H. T. Musper et al., eds.,  vols. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, ), vol. , plate , titled “Die schicklihait und pesserung aller furstlichen lust und nutz der vischerey.” See also Richard C. Hoffmann, “Fishing for Sport in Medieval Europe: New Evidence,” Speculum (vol. , ), –. . I explore the emerging distinction more fully in Richard C. Hoffmann, “Trout and Fly, Work and Play, in Medieval Europe,” in Samuel Snyder, Bryon Borgelt, and Elizabeth Tobey, eds., Backcasts: Historical and Global Perspectives in Fly Fishing and Conservation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming in ). . A useful, though historically unaware, introduction to the concept is Fikret Berkes, Sacred Ecology, nd ed. (New York and London: Routledge, ). . Andrew Herd, The History of Fly Fishing, Volume I: The History (Ellesmere: Medlar Press, ),  and –. Other readers may recall the curious lead sentence of the most elaborate but confusing passage in “Tegernsee Fishing Advice”: “Here a master from Greece teaches his son to fish” (Hie lert ain maister von kriechen landen sein sun vischen); see Hoffmann, Fishers’ Craft and Lettered Art, –.   