Edlerawer's life

Born in the last decade of the fourteenth century, Hermann Edlerawer was an ordained clerk (in minor orders) of the diocese of Mainz, and matriculated at the University of Vienna in the winter of 1413/14, though there is no record that he took a degree. From 1427 he was in the service, in an unknown capacity, of Sigismund, King of the Romans (Holy Roman Emperor 1433), when he was awarded a coat of arms, and from 1434 of Duke Albrecht V of Austria, who was elected Sigismund’s successor as King of the Romans in 1438. On 27 January 1436 Edlerawer sealed a charter as administrator of the Schottenstift (Scottish monastery) in Vienna. Between about 1439 and about 1444[1] he was cantor at the collegiate school of St. Stephen in Vienna (named “Bürgerschule”, ”civic school”: » E. Musik im Gottesdienst, » H. Schule, Musik, Kantorei), and thus in charge of the Kantorey. In this capacity, he was an employee of the city of Vienna, which supervised the school. [2] It is in those same years that the Kantorey was substantially rebuilt and repaired at the corner of the churchyard precinct, above the chapel of St. Mary Magdalene. Edlerawer may also have been involved with the institution of an important endowment made by King Friedrich III in 1445 for the sacrament to be taken out by the priests of St. Stephen’s and St. Michael’s churches on the feast of Corpus Christi to the sick of the town and its suburbs in an elaborate procession involving specified vestments, a bell, flags and lanterns; as many as 32 boys of the choir were trained to sing the prescribed chants.[3]

Edlerawer clearly commanded considerable civic respect, and was called upon both as a jury member in court cases and as a witness of legal documents. In 1445 he dictated (pronunctiavit) to a scribe the response of the important statesman, humanist and poet Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) at a disputation at the University of Vienna, which had been held in the presence of King Friedrich III and Sigismund, duke of Tyrol, as well as Piccolomini himself.[4] From 1445 Edlerawer worked as a representative or ambassador of the city of Vienna, and in 1447 he acted as procurator at the tribunal of the imperial court, where he represented (in the legal sense) the Hanseatic city of Lübeck. At least in 1449, but probably also earlier, he received a full annual salary (jarsold) from the city (52 guilders).[5] By 1450 he had married and was in the service of Count Ulrich II of Celje (guardian of the under-age Ladislaus Postumus, king of Bohemia and Hungary, and duke of Austria). Ulrich died in 1456 at the hands of László Hunyadi, and in the same year Edlerawer presented a gold ring to the city of Vienna in lieu of tax. On 26 November 1457 he is documented as supervisor of the watch on one of the city gates, the Kärntner Tor.