Scholars have posited a dichotomy between minnesingers and singers of didactic songs and strophes, with the former group having greater prestige; Walther, more than any other German singer, belonged, on the evidence of the diversity of his oeuvre, to both groups. Internal evidence of a clerical education suggests that he identified himself and was identified by others with the secular clergy (there is no reason to assume that he had taken orders), and highly educated clerics, serving as administrators and messengers, traveled as widely as did lords and minstrels. A second contemporary document identifies one such cleric as
dominus Walterus; he may be the poet. In terming himself "von der Vogelweide" (of the bird meadow) Walther may be referring to a family landholding; there are "bird meadows" (hunting reserves) scattered from South Tirol to Franconia. On the other hand, the equation of singers with birds was commonplace. The familiar manner Walther uses with his audience of courtiers would speak for his having a status not all that disparate from theirs; in any case, the audience for
Minnesang was probably restricted to a coterie of cognoscenti in relatively few courts (most important for Walther was the Viennese court).
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