lines of verse, starting even before the six-day creation by telling of Satan's rebellion, and relating the Biblical stories of the Old Testament, then continuing with Alexander the Great and other classical Greek and Roman material, and on down the list of Emperors through Charles the Great to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. Jans is known for the free-and-easy approach he takes to his material, altering details casually for their entertainment value and incorporating motifs from the most diverse sources, for which reason 19th century writers were extremely disparaging about him: Strauch, for example, wrote him off as a "Reimschmied" (). One interesting feature is the unusually large amount of Jewish material he borrows. Jans is the first writer in the German language to recount the legend of Pope Joan. The style is anecdotal, with many fun tales inserted into what might otherwise be sober history. For example, the reign of Frederick II is interrupted to tell an entirely fictional story of a nobleman named Friedrich von Antfurt. This Friedrich subjects a duchess to what we today could only call sexual harassment, to the point where she thinks up a ruse to get rid of him. She promises to give him what he wants (the poet makes no bones about the fact that he only wants her lîp, her body) provided he takes part in a joust wearing her chemise (underdress) instead of his armour. She is of course counting on him being killed, but he survives, and there has to be a reckoning: when the duchess still refuses to submit to him, he vindictively exacts a humiliating revenge by forcing her to wear the torn and bloody chemise to church. Other scurrilous tales include a story of Noah's son visiting his wife's bedroom on the ark in violation of a strict prohibition; of Noah discovering wine when his goat became drunk; of how the Emperor Nero gave birth to a toad; and of the enchantment that led Charles the Great to commit necrophilia. From the 14th century, the text of the Weltchronik was reused in compilation manuscripts, which have a very complicated history. The earliest are combinations with the Christherre-Chronik known as the Enikel-Christherre-Mischtext, which in turn was developed into the so-called Erweiterte Christherr-Chronik. There are also compilation manuscripts that combine parts of Jans' Weltchronik with excerpts from Rudolf von Ems and Heinrich von München. In all, some 50