stringtranslate.com

Epistola ad Acircium

The late 10th-century or early 11th-century London, British Library, Royal MA 12 c xxiii, folio 83r, showing the beginning of Aldhelm's acrostic preface

The Epistola ad Acircium, sive Liber de septenario, et de metris, aenigmatibus ac pedum regulis ('letter to Acircius, or the book on sevens, and on metres, riddles, and the regulation of poetic feet') is a Latin treatise by the West-Saxon scholar Aldhelm (d. 709). It is dedicated to one Acircius, understood to be King Aldfrith of Northumbria (r. 685-704/5). It was a seminal text in the development of riddles as a literary form in medieval England.

Origins

Aldhelm records that his riddles, which appear in this collection, were composed early in his career "as scholarly illustrations of the principles of Latin versification"; they may have been the work where he established his poetic skill in Latin.[1] Aldhelm's chief source was Priscian's Institutiones Grammaticae.[citation needed]

Contents

The treatise opens with a verse praefatio ("preface") addressing 'Acircius', which is remarkably contrived, incorporating both an acrostic and a telestich: the first letters of each line in the left-hand margin spell out a phrase which is paralleled by the same letters on the right-hand margin of the poem, forming a double acrostic. This 36-line message reads "Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas" ("Aldhelm composed a thousand lines in verse").[2][3]

After the preface, the letter consists of three treatises:

The Enigmata

The Epistola is best known today for including one hundred hexametrical riddles, which Aldhelm included for purposes of illustration of metrical principles. Among the more famous are the riddle entitled Lorica, and the last and longest riddle, Creatura.[4]

Aldhelm's model was the collection known as Symposii Aenigmata ("The Riddles of Symphosius"),[5] and many of his riddles were directly inspired by Symphosius's. But overall, Aldhelm's collection is quite different in tone and purpose: as well as being an exposition of Latin poetic metres, diction, and techniques, it seems to be intended as an exploration of the wonders of God's creation.[6] The riddles generally become more metrically and linguistically complex as the collection proceeds. The first eight riddles deal with cosmology. Riddles 9-82 are more heterogeneous, covering a wide variety of animals, plants, artefacts, materials and phenomena, but can be seen to establish purposeful contrasts (for example between the light of a candle in Enigma 52 and that of the Great Bear in 53) or sequences (for example the animals of Enigmata 34-39: locust, screech-owl, midge, crab, pond-skater, lion). Riddles 81-99 seem all to concern monsters and wonders. Finally, the long hundredth riddle is "Creatura", the whole of Creation.[7] The Latin enigmata of Aldhelm and his Anglo-Latin successor are presented in manuscripts with their solutions as their title, and seldom close with a challenge to the reader to guess their solution.[1]

Example

An example of an enigma by Aldhelm is his Elleborus, by which word Aldhelm understood not the hellebore, but woody nightshade.[8] It is number 98 in his collection:

List of riddles

London, British Library, Royal MA 12 c xxiii folio 93r, showing Aldhelm's riddles on the pen and the unicorn

The subjects of Aldhelm's riddles are as follows.[12]

Influence

Aldhelm's riddles were almost certainly the key inspiration for the forty riddles of Tatwine, an early eighth-century Mercian priest and Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the probably slightly later riddles of Eusebius and of Boniface.[13][14][15] Two appear in Old English translation in the tenth-century Old English Exeter Book riddles, and Aldhelm's riddles in general may have been an inspiration for that collection.[16]

Editions and translations

The Enigmata only

References

  1. ^ a b Andy Orchard, 'Enigmata', in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg, 2nd edn (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), s.v.
  2. ^ Juster, A M (2015). Saint Aldhelm's Riddles. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. pp. 2–3, 77–78. ISBN 978-1-4426-2892-2.
  3. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Aldhelm". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 535–536.
  4. ^ Sebo, Erin (2018). In enigmate : the history of a riddle, 400-1500. Dublin, Ireland. ISBN 978-1-84682-773-0. OCLC 1055160490.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ Sebo, Erin (2018). In enigmate : the history of a riddle, 400-1500. Dublin, Ireland. ISBN 978-1-84682-773-0. OCLC 1055160490.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  6. ^ F. H. Whitman, 'Medieval Riddling: Factors Underlying Its Development', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 71 (1970), 177–85.
  7. ^ Mercedes Salvador-Bello, 'Patterns of Compilation in Anglo-Latin Enigmata and the Evidence of A Source-Collection in Riddles 1-40 of the Exeter Book, Viator, 43 (2012), 339–374 (pp. 341-46). 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.102554.
  8. ^ Cameron, M. L. 1985. ‘Aldhelm as naturalist: a re-examination of some of his Enigmata’, Peritia 4: 117–33 (pp. 131–33).
  9. ^ Ehwald, Rvdolfvs (ed.), Aldhelmi Opera, Monumenta Germanicae Historica, Auctorum Antiquissorum, 15, 3 vols (Berlin, 1919), i 144. Accessed from
  10. ^ Alaric Hall, 'Madness, Medication — and Self-Induced Hallucination? Elleborus (and Woody Nightshade) in Anglo-Saxon England, 700–900', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 44 (2013), 43-69 (pp. 45-46).
  11. ^ Lapidge, Michael and James L. Rosier (trans.), Aldhelm: The Poetic Works (Cambridge, 1985), p. 93.
  12. ^ Saint Aldhelm's "Riddles", ed. and trans. by A.M. Juster (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015), pp. 69-71.
  13. ^ Lapidge, Michael; Rosier, James (2009). Aldhelm: The Poetic Works. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer. p. 66. ISBN 9781843841982.
  14. ^ Orchard, Andy (1994). The Poetic Art of Aldhelm. CAmbridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 242. ISBN 9780521034579.
  15. ^ Salvador-Bello. Isidorean Perceptions of Order. pp. 222–4.
  16. ^ Andy Orchard, "Enigma Variations: The Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Tradition," in Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, ed. by Andy Orchard and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, 2 vols (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), I 284-304.