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cit--http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01280b.htm
Abbot of Malmesbury and Bishop of Sherborne, Latin poet and ecclesiastical writer (c. 639-709). Aldhelm, also written Ealdhelm, Ældhelm, Adelelmus, Althelmus, and Adelme, was a kinsman of Ine, King of Wessex, and apparently received his early education at Malmesbury, in Wiltshire, under an Irish Christian teacher named Maildubh. It is curious that Malmesbury, in early documents, is styled both Maildulfsburgh and Ealdhelmsbyrig, so that it is disputed whether the present name is commemorative of Maildubh or Ealdhelm, or, by "contamination," possibly of both (Plummer's "Bede," II, 310). Aldhelm himself attributes his progress in letters to the famous Adrian, a native of Roman Africa, but formerly a monk of Monte Cassino, who came to England in the train of Archbishop Theodore and was made Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. Seeing, however, that Theodore came to England only in 671, Aldhelm must then have been thirty or forty years of age. The Saxon scholar's turgid style and his partiality for Greek and extravagant terms have been traced with some probability to Adrian's influence (Hahn, "Bonifaz und Lul," p. 14). On returning to settle in Malmesbury our Saint, probably already a monk, seems to have succeeded his former teacher Maildubh, both in the direction of the Malmesbury School, and also as Abbot of the Monastery; but the exact dates given by some of the Saint's biographers cannot be trusted, since they depend upon charters of very doubtful authenticity. As abbot his life was most austere, and it is particularly recorded of him that he was wont to recite the entire Psalter standing up to his neck in ice-cold water. Under his rule the Abbey of Malmesbury prospered greatly, other monasteries were founded from it, and a chapel (ecclesiola), dedicated to St. Lawrence, built by Aldhelm in the village of Bradford-on-Avon, is standing to this day. (A. Freeman, "Academy," 1886, XXX, 154.) During the pontificate of Pope Sergius (687-701), the Saint visited Rome, and is said to have brought back from the Pope a privilege of exemption for his monastery. Unfortunately, however, the document which in the twelfth century passed for the Bull of Pope Sergius is undoubtedly spurious. At the request of a synod, held in Wessex, Aldhelm wrote a letter to the Britons of Devon and Cornwall upon the Paschal question, by which many of them are said to have been brought back to unity. In the year 705 Hedda, Bishop of the West Saxons, died, and, his diocese being divided, the western portion was assigned to Aldhelm, who reluctantly became the first Bishop of Sherborne. His episcopate was short in duration. Some of the stone-work of a church he built at Sherborne still remains. He died at Doulting (Somerset), in 709. His body was conveyed to Malmesbury, a distance of fifty miles, and crosses were erected along the way at each halting place where his remains rested for the night. Many miracles were attributed to the Saint both before and after his death. His feast was on May the 25th, and in 857 King Ethelwulf erected a magnificent silver shrine at Malmesbury in his honour.
"Aldhelm was the first Englishman who cultivated classical learning with any success, and the first of whom any literary remains are preserved" (Stubbs). Both from Ireland and from the Continent men wrote to ask him questions on points of learning. His chief prose work is a treatise, "De laude virginitatis" ("In praise of virginity"), preserved to us in a large number of manuscripts, some as early as the eighth century. This treatise, in imitation of Sedulius, Aldhelm afterwards versified. The metrical version is also still extant, and Ehwald has recently shown that it forms one piece with another poem, "De octo principalibus vitiis" (On the eight deadly sins"). The prose treatise on virginity was dedicated to the Abbess and nuns of Barking, a community which seems to have included more than one of the Saint's own relatives. Besides the tractate on the Paschal controversy already mentioned, several other letters of Aldhelm are preserved. One of these, addressed to Acircius, i.e. Ealdfrith, King of Northumbria, is a work of importance on the laws of prosody. To illustrate the rules laid down, the writer incorporates in his treatise a large collection of metrical Latin riddles. A few shorter extant poems are interesting, like all Aldhelm's writings, for the light which they throw upon religious thought in England at the close of the seventh century. We are struck by the writer's earnest devotion to the Mother of God, by the veneration paid to the saints, and notably to St. Peter, "the key-bearer," by the importance attached to the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and to prayer for the dead, and by the esteem in which he held the monastic profession. Aldhelm's vocabulary is very extravagant, and his style artificial and involved. His latinity might perhaps appear to more advantage if it were critically edited. An authoritative edition of his works is much needed. To this day, on account of the misinterpretation of two lines which really refer to Our Blessed Lady, his poem on virginity is still printed as if it were dedicated to a certain Abbess Maxima. Aldhelm also composed poetry in his native tongue, but of this no specimen survives. The best edition of Aldhelm's works, though very unsatisfactory, is that of Dr. Giles (Oxford, 1844). It has been reprinted in Migne (P.L., LXXXIX, 83 sqq.). Some of his letters have been edited among those of St. Boniface in the "Monumenta Germaniae" (Epist. Aevi Merovingici, I).
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Aldhelm
Bishop
Description 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. Wikipedia
Born: 639 AD, Wessex
Died: May 25, 709 AD, Doulting, United Kingdom
Feast day: 25 May
Shrines: Malmesbury Abbey, now destroyed
Diocese: Sherborne
Organization founded: Sherborne School
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Aldhelm's ti Enigmata
"Enigma 65, Muriceps" Muriceps= mouse catcher
riddle: "But I am a cat and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer
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https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/9781526133724/9781526133724.00014.xml
Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Words, ideas, interactions
Editors: Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville[344 pp]
Megan Cavell
Domesticating the devil
The early medieval contexts of Aldhelm’s cat riddle
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526133724.00014Online Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020
Infamous for an ambivalence that riles some and charms others, the domestic cat’s relationship with humans is now the subject of extensive zooarchaeological study. The point at which domestication took place is the subject of a debate that is complicated by the interbreeding of domestic and wild cats. The complexity of the cat’s domestication goes some way toward explaining the sparse literary and linguistic evidence for this animal in early medieval England, where they seem to have existed largely without human interference. Despite this lack, Aldhelm’s fascinating Anglo-Latin riddle, Enigma 65, Muriceps, explores the role of the mouser in vivid detail. This chapter provides a close reading of Aldhelm’s riddle, after discussing the cat’s pathway to domestication and surveying comparative evidence from early medieval sources. It argues that the semi-domesticated nature of early medieval cats shines through in Aldhelm’s poem, which employs both positive imagery of the mouser’s domestic role (faithfulness, vigilance and guardianship), and negative imagery drawn from the biblical tradition (secretiveness, snare-laying and tribal enmity). Aldhelm’s cat is both a welcome cohabiter and diabolical presence in the human household, an ambiguity that is juxtaposed with the more thoroughly domesticated dog with whom the riddle-cat refuses to cooperate.
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Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Abstract only
Words, ideas, interactions
Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture
Editors: Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville
Riddles at work is the first volume to bring together multiple scholarly voices to explore the vibrant, poetic riddle tradition of early medieval England and its neighbours. The chapters in this book present a wide range of traditional and experimental methodologies. They treat the riddles both as individual poems and as parts of a tradition, but, most importantly, they address Latin and Old English riddles side-by-side, bringing together texts that originally developed in conversation with each other but have often been separated in scholarship. The ‘General... Show More
Type: BookOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020Subjects: Literature and TheatreeISBN: 9781526133724
Monstrous healing
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Aldhelm’s leech riddle – Peter Buchanan
Peter Buchanan
mihi composuit nomen fortuna cruentem [fortune has made for me a bloody name] (2). 1 So begins, and ends, modern critical attention to Aldhelm’s enigma of the leech or sanguisuga , which has been classified by Nicholas Howe as a standard exemplum of Isidorian etymologising wordplay, 2 and which has generally suffered the same neglect that others of Aldhelm’s Enigmata have endured, except in those rare instances where Anglo-Latin is relevant to the interpretation of the Old English riddles. 3 However, Aldhelm’s riddle of the
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Domesticating the devil
Abstract only
The early medieval contexts of Aldhelm’s cat riddle
Megan Cavell
place-names. 4 There is, however, one fascinating Anglo-Latin poetic riddle that explores the role of this animal in vivid detail: Aldhelm’s Enigma 65, Muriceps (‘mouse-catcher)’. After placing Aldhelm’s cat in her wider historical and comparative contexts, I provide a close reading of this unique riddle—an exciting case study, given the limited depictions of cats that survive from the early medieval period. I argue that the semi-domesticated nature of early medieval English cats is evident in Aldhelm’s poem, which employs imagery of the mouser’s role as a domestic
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
The nursemaid, the mother, and the prostitute
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Tracing an insular riddle topos on both sides of the English Channel
Mercedes Salvador-Bello
It is well known that riddling was particularly conspicuous as a literary genre in the British Isles. Indeed, riddles were much appreciated in monastic circles because their compact format conveniently favoured the teaching of Latin vocabulary, rhetoric, syntax, and metrics. Dating from about 686, Aldhelm’sEnigmata constitute the earliest riddle collection produced in England that has come down to us. Following in Aldhelm’s steps, Tatwine and Eusebius, both contemporary with Bede, took up the composition of a collection each. 2 In turn, an anonymous author
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
General Introduction
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Megan Cavell, Jennifer Neville and Victoria Symons
The riddling tradition of early medieval England was a vibrant one: numerically speaking, riddles outnumber all other types of poetry that survive from this period. The earliest extant collection of riddles composed in England is Aldhelm’sEnigmata : a round hundred of mostly brief poems wrought in Aldhelm’scharacteristic, alliterative-flavoured Latin verse on topics ranging from the celestial to the mythical, from the exotic to the emphatically prosaic. Aldhelmbegins his collection with a verse preface that serves as a literary manifesto, laying out both
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Sound, voice, and articulation in the Exeter Book riddles
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Robert Stanton
. Ultimately, on a broader and more ambitious scale that I can only gesture towards, I want to follow the lead of Maurizio Bettini in the subtitle of his 2008 book Voci to ponder the possibilities of a ‘sound anthropology’ of early medieval England. 2 Certain fundamental concepts of sound and voice going back to Aristotle reached early medieval England via the grammarians Priscian and Donatus, the encyclopaedist Isidore of Seville, and the early medieval scholar and writer Aldhelm, whose work on poetic theory and his own Latin riddle collection make him a vital bridge
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Introduction to Part III
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Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville
medieval world. At the same time, however, the chapters in this section also remind us that the riddles continue to interact with us now. Note 1 See, for example, Greg Delanty, Seamus Heaney, and Michael Matto, eds, The Word Exchange: Anglo-Saxon Poems in Translation (New York: Norton, 2010); A. M. Juster, trans., Saint Aldhelm’s Riddles (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015); Miller Oberman, The Unstill Ones: Poems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Afterword
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Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville
Let us return to the beginning. In bringing together a hundred riddles about a multitude of topics, from a variety of perspectives, and imbued with echoes of a wide range of sources, Aldhelm’s verse collection presents us with a clear literary manifesto. We have a manifesto of our own. Unlike Aldhelm, we do not position ourselves as sole progenitors. Rather, we celebrate the communal practice that is riddling—whether composing, solving, interpreting, or editing. We aim to draw together the individual voices of the riddles and of the chapters of this
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Mind, mood, and meteorology in Þrymful Þeow (R.1–3)
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James Paz
interpretation of it as ‘the atmosphere’. 12 Her answer, she makes clear, is not ‘atmosphere’ in the modern sense but rather the Graeco-Roman conception of the sublunar air. In this cosmological model, the outer atmosphere communicates with the atmosphere in the interior of the earth, where the earth is thought of as highly porous body with caverns and veins in its interior and with openings leading to its surface. The corporeality of the earth is recognised by Aldhelm in his Enigma 73, Fons . Here, the ‘spring’ says, Per cava telluris clam serpo celerrimus antra / Flexos
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
The moon and stars in the Bern and Eusebius riddles
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Neville Mogford
chapter. Three major riddle collections—or four, if we count the Exeter Book riddles—take great delight in describing various astronomical objects related to time-reckoning and chronometry, such as the moon, stars, and planets: the Enigmata of Aldhelm and Eusebius, and the Bern riddles. All three were written between the beginning of the seventh century and the first half of the eighth, a period in which Irish-authored computistica proliferated widely across early medieval England and the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms. The Bern collection includes sixty
Type: Chapter
in Riddles at work in the early medieval tradition
Edited by: Megan Cavell and Jennifer NevilleOnline Publication Date: 23 Mar 2020ISBN: 9781526133724Subjects: Literature and Theatre
Enigmatic knowing and the Vercelli Book
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Britt Mize
. We would not say that the Ruthwell Cross poem in its material context is a riddle, but I do think we can say that it riddles . The same is true of Wulf and Eadwacer or The Wife’s Lament —they riddle, though they may not be riddles—as well as The Riming Poem, Aldhelm , and any number of other Old English texts that seem designed to impel speculation or decipherment. At the smallest scale of diction, kennings and compound words also riddle when they describe a sword as a ‘battle-light’ or the ‘leavings of hammers’. 26 Some concepts riddle, too, and they are
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