Around 1500, in Franconia, the knight Ludwig von Eyb the Younger composed a singular and imposing work: the Kriegsbuch, or Book of War. The manuscript is a military treatise, a technical compendium of the practice of arms, and a richly illustrated collection bringing together cavalry, hand-to-hand combat, artillery, siege engines, clothing, bodily disciplines, aristocratic memory, and symbolism. War appears here as a complete body of knowledge: an art requiring technique, experience, discipline, political order, and the ability to interpret the world.
Ludwig von Eyb the Younger, born in 1450 at Sommersdorf near Ansbach and deceased in 1521, belonged to a Franconian noble family deeply embedded in the political and cultural life of southern Germany. Biographical sources remember him as a pilgrim to the Holy Land, Vizedom of the Upper Palatinate, and chronicler: three roles that already outline a personality far removed from the reductive image of the mere fighter. He belonged to that courtly nobility capable of combining political service, military experience, territorial administration, religious travel, and literary production. His youth was also marked by the journey to the Holy Land in 1476, of which an account attributed to him survives. This experience should be regarded as an integral part of his chivalric formation: pilgrimage could be a source of noble prestige, a means of shaping personal identity, and an encounter with the geography of Christendom.
The Kriegsbuch is now preserved at the Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg under the shelfmark H62/MS.B 26. It is a large German-language paper manuscript of 310 folios, measuring 42.5 × 29.5 centimetres, and originating from the library of Ansbach Castle. Its reddish-brown leather binding over oak boards, with metal fittings at the corners, reveals the prestigious status of the volume. Ludwig von Eyb compiled the manuscript for Philip, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, drawing together materials from different sources. Its most important source was the Bellifortis of Konrad Kyeser, the celebrated treatise on the art of war composed in 1405 and regarded as one of the foremost German works on war machines and siege techniques. Yet the Kriegsbuch is not a mere copy: its author reorganised, expanded, and transformed his sources, most probably incorporating knowledge acquired through his own military and courtly experience. The predominance of images is one of the work’s most fascinating features. Almost every folio contains a large watercolour illustration: knights, armour, weapons, military devices, fighting techniques, siege scenes, and depictions of costume. The manuscript does not explain war through text alone; it shows it. The reader is invited to observe postures, movements, weapons, and the relationships between the human body, horse, machine, and space. In this sense, the Kriegsbuch is also a visual archive of late medieval military culture.
Among the most unusual images in the codex is a short astrological sequence, identified in the manuscript catalogue as “Five Planets in the Form of Equestrian Images.” The series begins in the later part of the volume, on page 537 of the digitised copy, and presents Mars, Venus, Mercury, the Sun, and the Moon as armed knights on horseback. Jupiter and Saturn, although belonging to the classical series of the seven planets, are absent. The five figures are not merely decorative allegories. Each celestial body appears as a knight bearing its own banner, upon which are displayed the zodiacal signs corresponding to its principal dignities. At the base of the image, near the horse, appears instead the sign of the planet’s fall. The illustration thus transforms the technical language of astrology into a chivalric language: the planet possesses its own territories, places in which it is elevated, and places in which its virtue is diminished. The absence of Jupiter and Saturn remains one of the most enigmatic aspects of the series and is still not fully understood by scholars.
The Kriegsbuch nevertheless demonstrates how closely intertwined, around 1500, were bodies of knowledge that we now tend to separate rigidly. Astronomy and astrology, military technique, iconography, heraldry, religion, aristocratic memory, and court politics could coexist within the same manuscript. The planets become knights, the zodiac becomes a field of dignities and falls, and the sky becomes a symbolic order through which the forces of war may be understood.
What follows are the iconographies, or drawings, created by Knight Eyb in his representation of the Planets of War, or of those planets considered relevant to a knight.
Essential Sources
Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, Kriegsbuch, H62/MS.B 26, Bavarikon portal.
Deutsche Biographie, entry on Ludwig von Eyb the Younger.
Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters, entries on Ludwig von Eyb the Younger and the Kriegsbuch.
Cover Images and In-Article Images
By Philipp Mönch – Philipp Mönch, Kriegsbuch. Papier, 44 Bl., 41×28,5 cm, Heidelberg 1496. Cod. Pal. germ. 126, Universtiätsbibliothek Heidelberg (LINK), Public Domain, (LINK).
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