Bavarian Geographer



The Bavarian Geographer (Geographus Bavarus) is a conventional name given by Jan Potocki in 1796 to the author of an anonymous medieval document Descriptio civitatum et regionum ad septentrionalem plagam Danubii ("Description of Cities and Lands North of the Danube").

The short document was discovered in 1772 in the Bavarian State Library, Munich by Louis XV's ambassador to the Saxon court, Comte Louis-Gabriel Du Buat-Nançay. It had been acquired by the Wittelsbachs with the collection of the antiquarian Hermann Schädel (1410-85) in 1571. The document was much discussed in the early 19th-century historiography, notably by Nikolai Karamzin and Joachim Lelewel.

The document contains a list of the tribes in Central-Eastern Europe east of the Elbe and north of the Danube to the Wolga rivers to the Black and Caspian Sea (most of them of Slavonic origin, with Ruzzi, and others such as Vulgarii, etc). Absent on the list are Polans, Pomeranians and Masovians, tribes that developed about 200 years later.

There is also some information about the number of strongholds (civitates) possessed by some of the tribes and other information. Henryk Łowmiański demonstrated that the list consists of two parts, which may be datable to different periods and attributed to distinct authors.

The provenance of the document is disputed. Although early commentators suggested that it could have been compiled in Regensburg, the list seems to have been taken from Codex Reginbertinus II, recorded in the 9th century in the library of the Reichenau Abbey and named after a local librarian. Based on these findings, Bischoff attributes it to a monk active at Reichenau from the 830s to 850s.

Nazarenko finds it more probable that the list was composed in the 870s, when Saint Methodius is believed to have resided at Reichenau. The document may have been connected with his missions in the Slavic lands.