Vom Rechte

Vom Rechte, title given to an Early Middle High German poem of moderate length (549 ll.), written c.1150 probably by a country parish priest in Austria. It is in the form of a sermon and the ‘Recht’ with which it deals is understood in the medieval sense of ‘duties’. Its subject is the order of society established by God, and the mutual responsibilities of master and man, husband and wife, parents and children. Its tone is homely, its construction desultory. It was written away from the main stream of intellectual life and is an interesting document of rural social conditions. It occurs in the Milstätter Handschrift, immediately before Die Hochzeit.