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Old English literature refers to poetry and prose written in Old English in early medieval England, from the 7th century to the decades after the Norman Conquest of 1066, a period often termed Anglo-Saxon England. The 7th-century work Cædmon's Hymn is often considered as the oldest surviving poem in English, as it appears in an 8th-century copy of Bede's text, the Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Poetry written in the mid 12th century represents some of the latest post-Norman examples of Old English. Adherence to the grammatical rules of Old English is largely inconsistent in 12th-century work, and by the 13th century the grammar and syntax of Old English had almost completely deteriorated, giving way to the much larger Middle English corpus of literature.
The Physiologus is a didactic Christian text written or compiled in Greek by an unknown author in Alexandria. Its composition has been traditionally dated to the 2nd century AD by readers who saw parallels with writings of Clement of Alexandria, who is asserted to have known the text, though Alan Scott has made a case for a date at the end of the 3rd or in the 4th century. The Physiologus consists of descriptions of animals, birds, and fantastic creatures, sometimes stones and plants, provided with moral content. Each animal is described, and an anecdote follows, from which the moral and symbolic qualities of the animal are derived. Manuscripts are often, but not always, given illustrations, often lavish.
The Salic law, also called the Salian law, was the ancient Frankish civil law code compiled around AD 500 by the first Frankish King, Clovis. The written text is in Latin and contains some of the earliest known instances of Old Dutch. It remained the basis of Frankish law throughout the early Medieval period, and influenced future European legal systems. The best-known tenet of the old law is the principle of exclusion of women from inheritance of thrones, fiefs, and other property. The Salic laws were arbitrated by a committee appointed and empowered by the King of the Franks. Dozens of manuscripts dating from the sixth to eighth centuries and three emendations as late as the ninth century have survived.
Gaius Julius Phaedrus, or Phaeder was a 1st-century AD Roman fabulist and the first versifier of a collection of Aesop's fables into Latin. Nothing is recorded of his life except for what can be inferred from his poems, and there was little mention of his work during late antiquity. It was not until the discovery of a few imperfect manuscripts during and following the Renaissance that his importance emerged, both as an author and in the transmission of the fables.
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principle ornamental device to help indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.
Gregory Bar Hebraeus, known by his Syriac ancestral surname as Barebraya or Barebroyo, in Arabic sources by his kunya Abu'l-Faraj, and his Latinized name Abulpharagius in the Latin West, was a Maphrian of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 1264 to 1286. He was a prominent writer, who created various works in the fields of Christian theology, philosophy, history, linguistics, and poetry. For his contributions to the development of Syriac literature, has been praised as one of the most learned and versatile writers among Syriac Orthodox Christians.
The Digest, also known as the Pandects, was a compendium or digest of juristic writings on Roman law compiled by order of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I in 530–533 AD. It is divided into 50 books.
A metrical psalter is a kind of Bible translation: a book containing a verse translation of all or part of the Book of Psalms in vernacular poetry, meant to be sung as hymns in a church. Some metrical psalters include melodies or harmonisations. The composition of metrical psalters was a large enterprise of the Protestant Reformation, especially in its Calvinist manifestation.
The Ormulum or Orrmulum is a twelfth-century work of biblical exegesis, written by an Augustinian canon named Orm and consisting of just under 19,000 lines of early Middle English verse. Because of the unique phonemic orthography adopted by its author, the work preserves many details of English pronunciation existing at a time when the language was in flux after the Norman conquest of England. Consequently, it is invaluable to philologists and historical linguists in tracing the development of the language.
Geoffrey Gaimar, also written Geffrei or Geoffroy, was an Anglo-Norman chronicler. His contribution to medieval literature and history was as a translator from Old English to Anglo-Norman. His L'Estoire des Engleis, or History of the English People, written about 1136–1140, was a chronicle in eight-syllable rhyming couplets, running to 6,526 lines.
The Seven Wise Masters is a cycle of stories of Sanskrit, Persian or Hebrew origins.
"O come, O come, Emmanuel" is a Christian hymn for Advent, which is also often published in books of Christmas carols. The text was originally written in Latin. It is a metrical paraphrase of the O Antiphons, a series of plainchant antiphons attached to the Magnificat at Vespers over the final days before Christmas. The hymn has its origins over 1,200 years ago in monastic life in the 8th or 9th century. Seven days before Christmas Eve monasteries would sing the “O antiphons” in anticipation of Christmas Eve when the eighth antiphon, “O Virgo virginum” would be sung before and after Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. The Latin metrical form of the hymn was composed as early as the 12th century.
Psalm 95 is the 95th psalm of the Book of Psalms, beginning in English in the King James Version: "O come, let us sing unto the LORD: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation". The Book of Psalms starts the third section of the Hebrew Bible, and, as such, is a book of the Christian Old Testament. In the slightly different numbering system in the Greek Septuagint version of the Bible, and in the Latin Vulgate, this psalm is Psalm 94. In Latin, it is known as "Venite exultemus" or simply "Venite". The psalm is a hymn psalm, one of the Royal psalms, praising God as the King of His people. Psalm 95 identifies no author, but Hebrews 4:7 attributes it to David. The Vulgate also names David as the author.
A hymn tune is the melody of a musical composition to which a hymn text is sung. Musically speaking, a hymn is generally understood to have four-part harmony, a fast harmonic rhythm, with or without refrain or chorus.
Querolus or Aulularia is an anonymous Latin comedy from late antiquity, the only Latin drama to survive from this period and the only ancient Latin comedy outside the works of Plautus and Terence.
Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was an English classicist and medievalist who held the senior chairs of Latin at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. A textual critic, he was an expert in the study of manuscripts and their role in the reconstruction of classical texts.
The Squire of Low Degree, also known as The Squyr of Lowe Degre, The Sqyr of Lowe Degre or The Sqyr of Lowe Degree, is an anonymous late Middle English or early Modern English verse romance. There is little doubt that it was intended to be enjoyed by the masses rather than the wealthy or aristocratic sections of society, and, perhaps in consequence of this, it was one of the better-known of the English romances during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, and again in the 19th century. There are three texts of the poem: it was printed by Wynkyn de Worde c. 1520 under the title Undo Youre Dore, though only fragments totalling 180 lines survive of this book; around 1555 or 1560 another edition in 1132 lines was produced by William Copland; and a much shorter version, thought to have been orally transmitted, was copied into Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript around the middle of the 17th century. The precise date of the poem is unknown, estimates varying from 1440 to 1520, but Henry Bradley's date of c. 1475 has been quite widely adopted. Standing as it does at the very end of the English Middle Ages it has been called "a swan song of the romance".
Germanic law is a scholarly term used to describe a series of commonalities between the various law codes of the early Germanic peoples. These were compared with statements in Tacitus and Caesar as well as with high and late medieval law codes from Germany and Scandinavia. Until the 1950s, these commonalities were held to be the result of a distinct Germanic legal culture. Scholarship since then has questioned this premise and argued that many "Germanic" features instead derive from provincial Roman law. Although most scholars no longer hold that Germanic law was a distinct legal system, some still argue for the retention of the term and for the potential that some aspects of the Leges in particular derive from a Germanic culture.
The Rigveda or Rig Veda is an ancient Indian collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns (sūktas). It is one of the four sacred canonical Hindu texts (śruti) known as the Vedas. Only one Shakha of the many survive today, namely the Śakalya Shakha. Much of the contents contained in the remaining Shakhas are now lost or are not available in the public forum.
Sulpicia was an ancient Roman poet who was active during the reign of the emperor Domitian. She is mostly known through two poems of Martial; she is also mentioned by Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, and Fulgentius. A seventy-line hexameter poem and two lines of iambic trimeter attributed to her survive; the hexameters are now generally thought to have been a fourth- or fifth-century imitation of Sulpicia. Judging by the ancient references to her and the single surviving couplet of her poetry, Sulpicia wrote love poetry discussing her desire for her husband, and was known for her frank sexuality.
References
- Peiper, R. Aulularia sive Querolus (Leipzig: Teubner) 1875, p. 59, 12–60, 24.
- Buecheler, F. Petronii Saturae et Liber Priapeorum (Berlin) ed. 6, rev. Heraeus, 1922, p. 267.
