The Lorsch riddles, also known as the Aenigmata Anglica, [1] are a collection of twelve hexametrical, early medieval Latin riddles that were anonymously written in the ninth century.
The absence of line breaks separating individual verses (among other things) [2] show that they are possibly of English origin. [3] The poems were heavily influenced by Aldhelm's Enigmata. [4] None of the poems have a written solution, which has caused much debate over the answers to some of them; the solutions as given in Glore's edition are: 1. de homine/person; 2. de anima/soul; 3. de aqua/water; 4. de glacie/ice; 5. de cupa uinaria/wine-cup; 6. de niue/snow; 7. de castanea/chestnut; 8. de fetu/foetus; 9. de penna/feather; 10. de luminari/eternal light; 11. de tauro/bull; 12. de atramento/ink. [5]
The riddles are preserved in only one manuscript (Vatican, Pal. Lat. 1753). [6] The manuscript was written c. 800 in the Carolingian scriptorium of Lorsch Abbey, where it was rediscovered in 1753. [7] It contains among a variety of grammatical texts the Aenigmata of Symphosius, the Enigmata of Aldhelm and a variety of prose and metrical texts by Boniface. [8]
The Lorsch riddles have also been edited twice by Ernst Dümmler--once in 1879 and again in 1881. [9]
Saint Boniface, born Winfrid in the Devon town of Crediton in Anglo-Saxon England, was a leading figure in the Anglo-Saxon mission to the Germanic parts of the Frankish Empire during the 8th century. He organised significant foundations of the church in Germany and was made archbishop of Mainz by Pope Gregory III. He was martyred in Frisia in 754, along with 52 others, and his remains were returned to Fulda, where they rest in a sarcophagus which became a site of pilgrimage. Boniface's life and death as well as his work became widely known, there being a wealth of material available—a number of vitae, especially the near-contemporary Vita Bonifatii auctore Willibaldi, legal documents, possibly some sermons, and above all his correspondence. He became the patron saint of Germania, known as the "Apostle of the Germans".
Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, Latin poet and scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the son of Kenten, who was of the royal house of Wessex. He was certainly not, as his early biographer Faritius asserts, the brother of King Ine. After his death he was venerated as a saint, his feast day being the day of his death, 25 May.
De Dubiis Nominibus, or Dubiis Nominibus, is a 7th-century document, possibly from Bordeaux, by an anonymous author. It is an alphabetically sorted list of words whose gender, plural form or spelling was in question by the author. The author attempted to resolve the questions through citations from classical and Christian authors with notes next to each word.
Tatwine was the tenth Archbishop of Canterbury from 731 to 734. Prior to becoming archbishop, he was a monk and abbot of a Benedictine monastery. Besides his ecclesiastical career, Tatwine was a writer, and riddles he composed survive. Another work he composed was on the grammar of the Latin language, which was aimed at advanced students of that language. He was subsequently considered a saint.
Before the spread of writing, oral literature did not always survive well, though some texts and fragments have persisted. August Nitschke sees some fairy tales as literary survivals dating back to Ice Age and Stone Age narrators.
Faltonia Betitia Proba was a Latin Roman Christian poet, perhaps the earliest female Christian poet whose work survives. A member of one of the most influential aristocratic families, she composed the Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi, a cento composed with verses by Virgil re-ordered to form an epic poem centred on the life of Jesus.
Symphosius was the author of the Aenigmata, an influential collection of 100 Latin riddles, probably from the late antique period. They have been transmitted along with their solutions.
This article presents a list of notable historical references to the name Palestine as a place name in the Middle East throughout the history of the region, including its cognates such as "Filastin" and "Palaestina".
Anglo-Saxon riddles are part of Anglo-Saxon literature. The riddle was a major, prestigious literary genre in Anglo-Saxon England, and riddles were written both in Latin and Old English verse. The most famous Anglo-Saxon riddles are in Old English and found in the tenth-century Exeter Book, while the pre-eminent Anglo-Saxon composer of Latin riddles was the seventh- to eighth-century scholar Aldhelm.
The "Leiden Riddle" is an Old English riddle. It is noteworthy for being one of the earliest attested pieces of English poetry; one of only a small number of representatives of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English; one of only a relatively small number of Old English poems to survive in multiple manuscripts; and evidence for the translation of the Latin poetry of Aldhelm into Old English.
The Bern Riddles, also known as Aenigmata Bernensia, Aenigmata Hexasticha or Riddles of Tullius, are a collection of 63 metrical Latin riddles, named after the location of their earliest surviving manuscript, held in Bern: the early eighth-century Codex Bernensis 611. Although it has been suggested that they were composed in late antiquity, most scholars consider that they are inspired by the c. fourth-century collection of riddles attributed to Symphosius, and date to around the seventh century. The author of the Bern Riddles is not known but they might have been written by "a Lombard familiar with Mediterranean flora and food"; perhaps in the monastery of Bobbio. According to Archer Taylor, "The Berne Riddles are especially interesting for the author's familiarity with the North Italian landscape and its plants. Whoever he was, we may safely call him the first medieval riddle-master in Italy". However, some scholars see the origin of the Bern Riddles in Anglo-Saxon England, where several early medieval collections of metrical riddles originated, such as the Enigmata of Aldhelm.
Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi is a Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba after her conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the work of Virgil to tell stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of the work focuses on the story of Jesus Christ.
Exeter Book Riddle 60 is one of the Old English riddles found in the later tenth-century Exeter Book. The riddle is usually solved as 'reed pen', although such pens were not in use in Anglo-Saxon times, rather being Roman technology; but it can also be understood as 'reed pipe'.
The main Ancient Greek terms for riddle are αἴνιγμα and γρῖφος. The two terms are often used interchangeably, though some ancient commentators tried to distinguish between them.
The writing-riddle is an international riddle type, attested across Europe and Asia. Its most basic form was defined by Antti Aarne as 'white field, black seeds', where the field is a page and the seeds are letters. However, this form admits of variations very diverse in length and degree of detail. For example, a version from Astrakhan translates as "the enclosure is white, the sheep are black", while one from the Don Kalmyks appears as "a black dog runs on white snow", and literary riddlers especially have produced long variations on the theme, often overlapping with riddles on pens and other writing equipment.
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