Twice ToldHans Knebel's diary, 4 August 1474: the cock that laid an egg (Basler Chroniken II, 1880, p. 102)
- Language
- Latin
- Reading
- transcribed from the page image
- Translation
- ours
- Retrieved
- 18 October 2026
The entry is seven printed lines in Knebel’s Latin diary, between a note dated 31 July 1474 about the Duke of Burgundy’s army and a note about the siege of Neuss around 15 August. The edition prints the heading “De gallo qui ovavit” in spaced type and marks the manuscript’s own page break as “[105]”. Italic letters in the edition (“Basiliensi”) mark the editors’ expansion of an abbreviation; they are given here in plain type. The margin gives the date “Aug. 4”. Footnote 2 to “monte Carbonum” reads “Vgl. Ed. Osenbrüggen, Studien zur deutschen und schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte (1868), S. 147.”
De gallo qui ovavit. Anno domini 1474 die jovis quarta mensis augusti in civitate Basiliensi fuit quidam gallus 11 annorum, qui ovavit et produxit ovum longum. qui quidem gallus traditus fuit lictori cum ovo et amputato capite primo, deinde excentratus, in eo fuerunt reperta alia duo ova, que simul omnia fuerunt combusta prope domum lictoris in monte Carbonum, multis viris et mulieribus presentibus.
Translation
About the cock that laid an egg. In the year of the Lord 1474, on Thursday the fourth of August, there was in the city of Basel a cock eleven years old that laid an egg, a long one. The cock was handed over to the executioner together with the egg. Its head was cut off first, then it was gutted, and two more eggs were found in it. All of these were burned together near the executioner’s house on the Kohlenberg, with many men and women there.
Notes
Hans Knebel was a chaplain at Basel’s cathedral and notary of the university; the editors describe the diary as a record of what he saw or heard in the last few days, and say it survives in his own hand. “Ovavit” is not classical Latin; it is a verb made from “ovum” and means that the bird laid an egg. “Excentratus” is printed so in the edition; it is probably a slip for “exenteratus”, gutted, and is rendered “gutted”. “Lictor” is the executioner. “Mons Carbonum” is the Kohlenberg (“coal hill”), the hill where Knebel puts the executioner’s house.
In “que simul omnia fuerunt combusta” the neuter “que” and “omnia” grammatically point at the eggs, but the bird has just been handed over, beheaded and gutted; we read “omnia” as covering the cock too, which is also what Gross says happened. The entry has no judge, charge, sentence, court or council. It does not mention a basilisk or a worm, and it does not say why the bird was burned. The count of two further eggs differs from Gross’s three (documents/gross-1624-p120.md).