Autophory, Saint Martin, and the old cathedral of Salamanca

 

A few years ago, I coined the term 'autophorous' to describe words that carry their own meaning in themselves. The word comes from the Greek 'auto', self, and 'foros', carry. There are relatively few such words, but enough to comprise a category distinct from other words. The idea was mainly inspired by the Norwegian word for typo, which is 'skrivefeil' (literally: writing error). In contemporary Norwegian parlance, it is common to render this word as 'skriveleif', which is a misspelling of the actual word, and therefore a demonstration of what the original word signifies. The word 'skriveleif' - but not 'skrivefeil' - is therefore autophorous. The same goes for the English word 'short', as it is both monosyllabic and made up of few letters.  

I am also tempted to extend the idea of the autophorous to certain concepts, objects, or even spaces. This idea is based on a picture I took last year, when visiting the old cathedral of Salamanca, where there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Martin, with a thirteenth-century mural showing Martin cutting his cape in half to give it to a beggar. The event depicted here is the point of origin for the word chapel. With the establishment of the Merovingian dynasty in the sixth and seventh centuries, the cape of Saint Martin became an important relic and symbol for the ruling dynasty. The relic was kept in a room called the capella - the cape room - a name which was based on the cape, and which we today use for a part of church architecture. In this way, the chapel of Saint Martin in Salamanca is autophorous, since it carries in itself a representation of the very event which gave the space its name. 

Celebrating Nynorsk, celebrating Jon Fosse

 


Today it was announced that the recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature 2023 is the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse, and the most likely and anticipated Norwegian candidate to receive the prize. The choice of Jon Fosse was therefore not a surprise, but it was great and very welcome news, and it has made me very happy. My excitement about the prize does not have much to do with Jon Fosse himself. I have so far only read one of his plays - Nokon kjem til å komme (Somebody is going to come) - which is also arguably his best known work, at least in Norway. I appreciate this play more than I can claim to like it, and my satisfaction about having read it stems more from its cultural significance than my personal enjoyment. This is a convoluted way of saying that I do not have a strong personal attachment to Jon Fosse's oeuvre. Nor does my excitement stem from the fact that the recipient is from Norway, as there are numerous Norwegian writers I do not care about - and one that I actively dislike to the point that I would have become genuinely angry if he were to have been chosen by the Nobel committee.

Rather, the excitement I feel today is because Jon Fosse is the first Nobel laureate in literature who writes in Nynorsk, the minority form of the two official forms of written Norwegian. (We have no official spoken form.) Nynorsk is my own primary written language, and one that constitutes a massive part of my own identity as a rural Norwegian, a Western Norwegian, and a speaker of a certain dialect which is most closely aligned with Nynorsk. Moreover, since Nynorsk is a minority form, it is also a form that is constantly struggling against neglect or even overt antagonism from various agents in Norwegian society, such as certain political parties or youth organizations of political parties who wish to remove Nynorsk as a compulsory part of the syllabus in Norwegian schools. Most of the national media in Norway is written in Bokmål rather than Nynorsk - Bokmål being the dominant form and more closely aligned with urban and Eastern Norwegian dialects - and the vast majority of books printed in Norway are in Bokmål. Foreigners coming to Norway have typically been most likely to receive study materials in Bokmål, even if they live in a municipality where Nynorsk is the official form of Norwegian. In short, Nynorsk is under constant pressure. 

Due to the pressure against Nynorsk as a written language and its use within Norwegian society, the choice of a Nynorsk-writing author for the Nobel Prize is to provide a globally accessible recognition of the merits of Nynorsk as a literary language. The choice of Jon Fosse signals to the world, and to us Nynorsk-writing and Nynorsk-promoting Norwegians that we are not alone in acknowledging the value and potential of our language. And while I do not, in my excitement, endorse the Nobel Prize as a cultural phenomenon, or any form of institutionally driven, non-organic type of canon-formation which we see at play in such awards, I very much appreciate how such a prize can provide a much-needed recognition of a language that struggles in the face of an often hostile majority, and how Nynorsk as a language can benefit from the kind of visibility and reference point provided by the Nobel Prize. 

To celebrate today's good news, I bought three bars of 'eventyrsjokolade' (fairy-tale chocolate), a small bar of milk chocolate where the inside of the wrapper contains a short version of a Norwegian fairy tale. One of these was the story of the fox widow, a story to which I feel a personal attachment since I performed in a puppet show version of the fairy tale when I was in kindergarten. While these condensed versions of fairy tales are written in Bokmål rather than Nynorsk, the choice still felt appropriate since it is the only literary sweet we have available. And, as always, they tasted delicious. 

What the walrus tells us - language, translation and identity-construction in Historia Norwegie

Today, August 30, I conducted a seminar in a half-term course for first-year students that I have designed myself. The course focusses on the cult of saints and history-writing in twelfth-century Norway, and one of the main intended outcomes is that the students will have an understanding of how Norwegian clerics formulated a Christian identity through the writing of chronicles.

In today’s seminar, we were examining aspects of the chronicle Historia Norwegie, an account of Norway’s geography and history which was composed in Oslo by an unknown chronicler sometime close to 1170. The work only survives in incomplete late-medieval transmissions. A good overview of its history can be found here, while an Open Access edition with translation and critical commentary can be found here.  

For the seminar, I had selected a handful of passages that could help to demonstrate how the anonymous chronicler shaped this book so that it both served a domestic and a foreign audience, in order for Norway to both adhere to the hallmarks of a Christian country, as well as stand out as something unique. This balance of conformity and uniqueness is a key element in identity formation. This was perhaps especially true within an intellectual culture as that of medieval Latin Christendom, where there was a divinely woven pattern in history, and where that pattern could be discerned by elements in new places – such as peripheral Norway – that resembled in well-established, central places – such as the Holy Land, Italy or France.  

Perhaps my favourite passage that highlights this balance between an interior and an exterior audience can be seen in the chronicler’s overview of the dangers of the Greenland Sea in Chapter 2. Here, the chronicler includes a list of sea creatures that inhabit these waters. Among these is the ‘pistrix’, a whale-like creature, perhaps a sawfish, that can be found together with the baleen whale in the Indian Ocean, according to Pliny’s Natural History (book 9, chapter 3). Here we see, in other words, how the anonymous chronicler has used a name familiar to the exterior audience, who are likely to – or at least expected to – have read Pliny. 

Following the pistrix, the anonymous chronicler mentions the ‘hafstramb’, a creature with neither head nor tail, and which dips up and down like the trunk of a tree. This is the earliest known reference to this beast, and to this day there is no consensus about what it is meant to signify. Shortly after, the reader is also presented with two other creatures, the ‘hafguva’ and the ‘hafkitta’, and these two are likewise not identified with any certainty. It is worth noting that the name ‘hafkitta’ can be understood as ‘sea-cat’ (from ‘haf’ meaning ‘sea’ and ‘kitta’ meaning ‘cat’ or ‘she-cat’), and that this is a common Norwegian name for the wolf fish or sea-wolf. It is unclear whether the anonymous chronicler had this particular fish in mind when referring to the ‘hafkitta’, and it is possible that reports such as that in Historia Norwegie has influenced the later appellation of this name to this particular fish.

What is notable in this passage, however, is that all these three beasts are referred to by their Norse names, whereas the pistrix is referred to by its Latin name. We see here, in other words, that some beasts are common to several places, e.g., the pistrix, whereas others are unique to Norway and its maritime zone. In other words, the chronicler balanced known and unknown, domestic and foreign, local and universal, Norse and Latin, in a way that served to cement the identity of Norway as a place with unique things and typical things.  

But then there is the walrus. And the walrus shows us the borderland between the known and the unknown for readers outside of Norway, at least according to the expectations of the chronicler. The walrus is presented as ‘equinus cetus monoculus’, the one-eyed horse-whale. This is a literal translation of the Norse ‘hrosshvalr’, which is the basis for the Modern English ‘walrus’ and the Modern Norwegian ‘kvalross’. The walrus is undoubtedly a beast typical of the Northern waters and well suited to demonstrate the unique aspects of Norway and its historical identity – in this case represented by natural history. But the name is not given in the vernacular, but is instead rendered as a literal translation, just as the name of its native haunt, Greenland, or ‘Virida Terra’. 

When the chronicler found it useful to employ vernacular terms for beasts typical of the Greenland Sea, why did he not do so in the case of the walrus? Or, for that matter, why did he translate Greenland? The answer is, most likely, that unlike the three other beasts, the walrus was not an unknown entity to exterior readers. By 1170, the walrus was the main source of ivory for the craftspeople of Northern Europe, and although the animal itself had not been observed by men and women who never ventured into the Arctic waters, they knew very well where the ivory came from. Consequently, the walrus was a point of reference that would register in the minds of the foreign readers of Historia Norwegie, and it would be something familiar, unlike the obscure and terrifying beasts such as the ‘hafstramb’. Through the walrus, in other words, the chronicler managed to showcase a unique aspect of Norwegian natural history that could resonate with readers who did not speak Norse. It was therefore useful to render the name of this beast in Latin. In this way, the walrus aided the chronicler in shaping a Norwegian identity.     

The joys of aimless learning

 
As January draws to a close, I'm looking back on three-four weeks of very intense end-of-term work. In the Swedish university system - in which I am employed until the end of the month - the autumn term ends in the second week of January, while the spring term begins in the third week. Consequently, January is a month in which everything intensifies, because the grades of the latest exams need to be out of the way quicker than usual, and dissertations that I have supervised throughout the autumn are now being evaluated and graded, with all the extra admin and preparation work that this entails.

As January draws to a close, I'm looking back on the modules I have taught or to which I have contributed, I'm looking back on the dissertations I have supervised or evaluated, and I'm looking back on all the things I have learned as part of my preparation for my modules. I have learned a lot this term, also about myself, and almost everything I have learned has been for a specific purpose, be it a lecture, a conference, or for administrative reasons. On the one hand, this is of course a great boon - I know more going out of the term than I did going into it, and this is a good progress. 

However, when learning is as intense as it is in the Swedish system - each module runs for only five weeks, so the preparation time is mercilessly short - there comes a point when this learning starts to feel forced, like finishing a meal out of ingrained courtesy even though you are on the verge of sending it all back again. At this point, reading becomes a chore, and this in turn creates a strange emptiness to someone whose favourite pastime is reading. Since the second half of December, I have only finished reading one single book, and while I have started reading others, I have been unable to finish them, mostly because I have had very little mental energy left for these books, but also because these books are medieval texts and therefore pertain to my professional life. In this way, reading these texts bears some resemblance to the kind of chore work that I have been doing for large parts of the term. It is a mood that I have struggled to get out of. Fortunately, it seems that the tide is slowly turning. 

This week, as a greater part of the items on my physical to-do-list have been crossed off and I have slowly sunk into a state of what is either relaxation or carelessness, I have found a way to resume learning but without a specific aim for the learning in question. Before my return to Norway, I had ordered a booklet from the project Ancient European Languages And Writings (AELAW), hosted by the University of Zaragoza. These booklets provide introductions to now-extinct languages that survive in small corpora of inscriptions, and that - at least for the most part - are not yet understood in full. This is a subject that I find fascinating, but which I will never be able to employ in my own research, as this is well beyond my topic, and well beyond the period of my expertise. Moreover, since I am not teaching ancient history again anytime soon, this is not something that I am reading with the aim of incorporating it into a syllabus. I have therefore started learning again.       

Booklet 1 in the Ancient European Languages And Writings (AELAW) series
Published by the University of Zaragoza

This weekend, I'm drawn into the fascinating fragmentary world of the Celtiberian language, one of the several languages used in Iberia in the centuries before the birth of Christ, and one which survives in a range of fascinating sources. The booklet on Celtiberian has opened up a window into a world of tantalising little windows into a past not unknown but not as well known as it could have been, had we only possessed greater knowledge of its languages. It is the kind of reading that stokes the imagination, and that helps to give an even greater depth to the knowledge I have already accumulated about the period in question. It is the kind of learning that does not help my own professional life, but which gives my reading life so much more weight and pleasure, and that allows me to disentangle myself from the various chores and tasks presided over by looming deadlines and concerns about future employment. It is a learning that is aimless because it does not serve an immediate purpose, and it is exactly that characteristic that means that this is a joyful and pleasant learning, which might be aimless but in no way pointless.     

Working with liturgical manuscripts, part 12 – Many layers, many languages

One of the great joys of working with liturgical fragments in book bindings is that there is always room for surprise. To be sure, it need not be a big surprise, neither does it have to be all that uncommon, but sometimes you do encounter surprises that adjust your understanding of what you are working on, and remind you that history is a bit more complex than you had realised. In the following blogpost, I wish to present you with one such little surprise which I came across while trying my best to identify the texts of a liturgical fragment that was in a rather poor state, namely Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek, RARA K 284, a book whose cover I have written about here.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

The fragment was used as the binding for Zacharias Theobald’s Hussiten Krieg, an account in German about the Hussites in Bohemia and the life and death of Johannes Huss. This edition was printed in Nürnberg in 1621 by Simon Halbmayer. (I am grateful to Jakob Povl Holck at the University Library of University of Southern Denmark for these details.) In the prologue, we see the mixture of German and Latin and the mix of corresponding types that have been used in the printing.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

This blend of Latin and vernacular is something that is typical to encounter when working with these fragments. In this case, there is a blend of languages not only in the typeset and the text, but also in the content of the book versus the binding of the book, containing, as it does, the Latin of liturgical books.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

Across the spine: Herlufsholm, the name of the library where this book was last kept

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

As stated, the cover fragment – and indeed the binding itself – was in a poor state, and in these pictures the poor degree of legibility is not only a matter of the camera’s focus or the light in the room – although these also play a part – but predominantly a matter of how worn the letters and the colours of the manuscript fragment itself are. As we see, even the cover itself is coming apart. Consequently, I had to be very careful, but at the same time I needed to turn and open this book to catch any possible angle in order to uncover even the tiniest strip that could assist me in the identification of the text. Sometimes, one tiny strip showing only one single letter can be the defining factor that allows me just enough to go on when trying to transcribe the text.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

As I was examining the book, however, I became aware of the many layers of the binding itself. It is easy to forget that the fragment(s) used for the cover of the book is only the most visible, and that there are several other fragments that have been used inside the cover, along the spine, or in any other of the many nooks and crannies of a book. There was, however, one reminder of this multi-layered nature of book-bindings, namely a small flap covered in residual glue and torn paper, peeping out on between the cover and the page, protruding from the bottom of the spine.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

On the other end of the page, however, I discovered something I had not anticipated, my little surprise that added a significant amount of excitement to my examination, and one that – in hindsight – quite probably made my eyes bulge in astonishment. I found a little scrap of what looked like paper, containing Hebrew script.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

At first I was dumbfounded, as this was the first time I had encountered Hebrew letters in any of the fragments and bindings I had been examining. As I gathered my wits, however, I realised that this was not as unusual as I at first had thought. After all, early modern printers used a wide array of materials when binding their books, and not only medieval vellum. The vellum seems to have been favoured for the spine and the cover, as vellum is quite strong and can better withstand the pressures and the general wear to which the book is exposed. However, for the inside of the cover, used as a thickener, as it were, it was more common to use paper. This paper often originated from books that had been discarded, such as test printings, botched printings, or books that simply were not selling. The latter is a point to which John Dryden draws our attention when, in the satirical poem “Mack Flecknoe”, he describes the unsold books of what he calls neglected authors as being “Martyrs of pies, and relics of the bum”, referring to how paper was reused as wrapping paper for food, and toilet paper. In short, it is not surprising to find printed paper tucked into the binding to strengthen it. 

What did surprise me, however, was the Hebrew script, and I contacted by colleague Martin Borysek who was then at University of York as a member of the Centre for Medieval Literature. Martin has worked on Hebrew texts, and I turned to him hoping that he could translate what little text I had found. He was very kind welcoming, and told me to send him whatever I had. In the next few days, however, I decided to go back to the book and see if I could unearth a bit more of the text.              

I decided to be a bit less careful in my handling of the book, and I tried to see how the paper covering the inside of the book cover actually was. It turned out to be quite loose.

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

RARA K 284
Syddansk Universitetsbibliotek

 Fortunately, the text available was sufficient to provide something tangible, and Martin wrote back to me, saying that that this was some kind of register, list or index. The combination of Latin and Hebrew, along with numerals and references to tomes and folios, suggested to Martin that this was an example of Christian Hebraism, a text in Hebrew intended for a Christian audience, most likely for educational purposes.  

As it stands now, the multi-layered, multi-lingual binding of RARA K 284 has not been fully transcribed, translated or even identified, but it serves as a good reminder of how these treasure troves can yield a relatively wide variety of languages as well as content. It is also a good reminder of how necessary it is to have colleagues expert in fields relatively far removed from your own expertise, and how necessary it is that those colleagues are kind and welcoming.

The tooth of time - a little nugget from Ribe

As mentioned in the previous blogpost, the beginning of last week was spent in the southwestern Danish town of Ribe, an important medieval bishopric and now a quaint, lovely, old-fashioned, seemingly timelocked settlement near the Jutland coast. There are several gems to be found around the town, some of which are big and striking like the medieval cathedral, some of which are small and easy to overlook like the many beautifully and creatively painted doors.

One such little gem is a bronze sculpture situated outside Ribe Viking Museum. The sculpture was created by the Danish artist John Olesen (b. 1938) in 1995, and now welcomes visitors who seek to get closer to ages past by exploring the many treasures of the museum. The idea of "the tooth of time", which is "tidens tand" in Danish and "tidens tann/tidas tann" in Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk respectively), is a Scandinavian expression to denote the passing of time left visibly on objects. We say that something has been marked by the tooth of time, an image of quiet nibbling that I find very pleasing and immensely poetic. A very fitting concept to be reminded of before stepping into a museum to behold items that have been gnawed away by the tooth of time.

Detours of academic research - Saint Edmund and his reintegrated body

Academic research does not progress in a straight line. This is knowledge than any academic will accumulate in the course of their career, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. At this point I'm halfway through my PhD, and in those years I have been active as a researcher there have been several detours from my main research trajectory. In some cases, such detours have led me to very fruitful results, as when I tried to map the occurrences of the word "decus" in royal hagiography. Other times, these detours have been a complete waste of time, for instance when I spent an entire workday trying to find the origin of a Latin proverb only marginally relevant to my work, without any success at all. In the following blogpost, I want to share a minor detour which in the end put me on the right track, from my current research.

These past days I've been working extensively on the liturgical material for the feast of Edmund Martyr. His cult and the literature of that cult is one of the three case studies for my PhD thesis, and that means examining and translating a lot of material. At this point, I'm working my way through the chants for Matins in the office for Edmund, as transmitted in MS Pierpont Morgan 736, a manuscript from Bury St Edmunds dated to c.1130. This manuscript has, to my knowledge, not been edited, and I have therefore had to transcribe the entire thing myself, which has been something of a baptism by fire in paleography. The process has been very educational, and it has taken a long time. It has also needed a lot of revising, and sometimes my transcriptions have not been correct in the first place. Trying to find out what the original handwriting actually says, is precisely something that precipitates detours.

Antiphons of the second nocturne of the office for Saint Edmund

Photograph of a photocopy

MS Pierpont Morgan 736, f.94r

Today, my challenge was an antiphon from the second nocturne in the office for Saint Edmund. Antiphons are brief chants performed after each psalm during Matins. Each psalm can have its own individual antiphon. In some cases, the antiphons are taken from a common repository known as the commune sanctorum, the common of saints. In other cases, such as in the office for Edmund, the antiphons are composed specifically for that saint.

Since antiphons are musical pieces and sometimes have notation, as seen above, it is sometimes challenging to decide whether the space between strings of letters indicate a change to a new word, or whether it indicates a liturgical elongation, i.e. a word made longer through song (as when you sing "can't" as "caaaan't" and write it "ca an't"). This problem tricked me many times during my first round of transcribing, because I was not used to this phenomenon.

The antiphon I'm talking of here is the one marked as #57 in the picture above. Its text tells about the translation of the body of Edmund which was incorrupt and entire, despite Edmund being beheaded by the Danes. The text goes like this:

Translato thesauro signum divinum incorrupti et redintegrati corporis enituit vena tantum resplenduit sanguinea quo daret indicium illo sanctum pertulisse martyrium

[In the translation of this treasure, as a divine sign the incorrupt and reintegrated body shone and a bloody vein radiated so much as to give an indication of this holy one who had suffered martyrdom. (My rough translation)]

Translation of Edmund's corpse, guarded by the wolf

MS Harley 2278, John Lydgate's life of Edmund and Fremund, England, between 1434 and 1439

Courtesy of British Library

The problem for me was that I had not been careful enough when transcribing, and I had been fooled by the space which is set between "redinte" and "grati", making one word seem like two. When I was sitting down to translate this I hit one major obstacle, namely the fact that "redinte" is not a word in the Latin lexicon, at least not according the comprehensive but incomplete database of William Whitaker's Words. "Grati" was not a problem as such, since it is a possible form of "gratia", which can be translated as "favour", "goodwill" or "gift", but it did not help at all when "redinte" could not be translated.

After racking my brain a bit and still not realizing that the two words were actually one, I googled the line "redinte grati corpori", hoping that there would be some text or other that contained the same combination of words. The search did not yield any direct hits, but it did send me to a digitized version of Augustine's De genesi ad literam, a commentary on the book of Genesis. This particular version which I was lead to, is the third volume of an edition of Augustine's works, edited in Lyons in 1586. The phrase which led me to this particular book was "redintegratus corporibus", the renewal or revival of the bodies. This made me finally realize what was going on in the liturgical manuscript.

Augustine's use of this phrase has most likely no connection at all to the use of "redintegrati corporis" in the office for Saint Edmund. It is of course possible that the composer or composers of these chants was/were familiar with Augustine's commentary on Genesis, and it is even possible that they had that particular book in mind when putting this antiphon together. But without any more tangible proof of such a connection, I hesitate to make any such conclusions. Instead, the fact that a similar phrase to the one in the antiphon is found in Augustine, is a useful reminder that such detours in research can end in surprising and at the same time helpful results.

Similar blogposts:

Methodology of negatives

Edmund's hedgehog iconography

The finding of Edmund's head in a twelfth-century satirical poem

Time in medieval liturgical thought

 

Translating Yeats

May 29th is the anniversary of the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, a momentous watershed in late medieval history. The Byzantine Empire had long been gradually receding against the expansion of Ottoman Turks, and in 1453 the final deah-blow was delivered with the capturing of the capital and death of the last emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos. The history of the Byzantine Empire is a fascinating series of events, often treated by Western Europeans as marginal to the events of Catholic Christendom and consequently less known outside medievalist circles than, say, the history of England or the Papacy. However, the Byzantine Empire was its own centre and a looming entity in the history of the Near East.

There has always been a fascination with Byzantium in the Western mind, treated often as something alien, wildly different. One man who was very intrigued by the strangeness and mystery of the Byzantine Empire was William Butler Yeats, whose two poems on Byzantium evokes the sort of romantic mystification that has clouded more than explained the nature of the Empire and its history. These are both beautiful poems, and for this occasion I will present my favourite of the two - Sailing to Byzantium - together with my own translation into Norwegian. The translation will be followed by a literal rendition so as to show just in what ways I have twisted the original text in order to maintain the meaning, and what compromises the translation has required.

The City of Constantinople as described by John Mandeville,
From MS. Harley 3954, 15thC (East Anglia)
Courtesy of British Library

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young

In one another’s arms, birds in the trees

– Those dying generations – at their song,

The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing‐masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310#sthash.OAEavJht.dpuf

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310#sthash.OAEavJht.dpuf

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310#sthash.OAEavJht.dpuf

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees —Those dying generations—at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20310#sthash.OAEavJht.dpuf

Philosophers in Macedonia and tournaments in Constantinople,
From MS. Harley 3954, 15thC (East Anglia)
Courtesy of British Library

Å segle til Bysants

Dét er ikkje eit land for gamle menn. Dei

unge, arm i arm, fuglane i tre

– forgjengelege ættledd – i deira lei,

til song, kvar sølvsprengd sjø, kvart elvekre,

fugl, fisk og fe i ei stor sommar-rei

gjev pris til fødd, til skapt og døyande.

Av desse tonar fanga, kvar ei slekt

vil gløyme alt om tidlaust intellekt.

Ein kall er helst ein ubetydeleg ting,
ein rivna frakk oppå ein staur, so sant
då ikkje sjela klappar høgt og syng

for kvar ei kjøtleg rift i baug og spant.

Dei lærer ikkje song, men ser ikring
sin stordoms reisverk bygd på kvar ein kant;
og derfor seglar eg og søkjer glans

i keisaren sin helga by: Bysants.

De prestar som står i Guds helga loge
som mosaikken i ein gullgjord mur,
kom frå den helga logen, piler frå bogen,
og lær mi sjel å meistre moll og dur.
Kom et mitt hjarta opp; sjukleg av hugen

og bunde til eit døyand' kreatur,
det veit'kje kva det er; lat meg ta del
i den store æva sitt narrespel.

Når naturen slepp meg vil eg ikkje ta
min kropp frå noko som naturen hev,
men frå emalje, gull so tynt som blad,
ja slikt dei greske gullsmedane gjev
ein keisar som vil ut av svevnen dra;

ell' som vert sett på gullkvist og der kved
til vyrde menn og kvinner i Bysants
om kva som kjem, som er og eingong fanst.

Psellos and his pupil the Emperor, Byzantine mosaic c.800
Courtesy of Wikimedia

To Sail to Byzantium

That is not a country for old men. The

Young, arm in arm, the birds in trees,

- Those transient generations - in their direction

To song each silver-laden sea, each river-trout,

Fowl, fish and livestock in one big summer-throng

Give praises to the born, the created and the dying.

By these tones made captive, each family

Will forget all about timeless intellect.

And old man is rather an unimportant thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

The soul don't loudly clap and sing

For each a fleshly wound in prow and frame.

They do not learn song, but see around

The structures of their greatness on every side

And therefore I sail to seek splendour

In the emperor's hallowed city: Byzantium.

You priests who stand in God's hallowed fire,

As the mosaic of a golden wall,

Come from the hallowed fire, arrows from the bow,

And teach my soul to master majors and minors.

Come eat up my heart; sickened by the will

And fastened to a dying creature

It knows not what it is; and let me take part

In the great deception of eternity.

When nature releases me I will not take

My body from anything that nature has,

But from enamel, gold as thin as leaves,

Yes such the Grecian goldsmiths will give

An emperor who wants to depart from sleep;

Or which is set upon a golden bough and there chants

To high-born men and women of Byzantium

Of what will come, what is and what once was.

Byzantine mosaic allegedly depicting the soul in the body and outside the body
Courtesy of Wikimedia

Translations by Helen Waddell

and abstinence crowns all our care

with martyr-laurels for this day

- Veni Coronaberis, a garland for Helen Waddell, Geoffrey Hill

One of the books I picked up during my last trip to York was a volume of Medieval Latin lyrics translated into English by Helen Waddell and published in 1929. To me this was a phenomenal treasure as I have a great interest in Medieval literature in general and Medieval poetry in particular. In this blogpost I would like to share with you a small selection of short poems from my newly-acquired volume.

Helen Jane Waddell (1889-1965) was born in Tokyo to a missionary family and received her education at Victoria College and then at Queen's University in Belfast. From there on she embarked on a remarkable life of letters that earned her a wide-standing and long-lasting reputation. A formidable Medievalist she mastered both fiction and non-fiction and published several significant books: Her study of the performers of Medieval Latin poetry, The Wandering Scholars (1927), was an immediate success and so was her novel Peter Abelard (1933).

Despite her academic brilliance she was not strictly accurate in her translations and she rendered her English versions in a language reminiscent of the bardolatry of the 19th century, giving the lyrics a stilted quality even more noticeable to a modern ear. This is not, however, to say that she was a bad translator, for translation is always an art of compromise and fraught with contemporary expections the translator must take into account. I do not myself speak Latin, nor do I read it very well, so I am not in a position to point out Helen Waddell's various inaccuracies, but I have given here the original texts parallel with her renditions in order to give people of Latinity a little challenge.

The Translations:

From an MS. of St Rémy at Rheims

Pulchra comis annisque decens et candida vultu             Young and gold-haired, fair of face,

dulce quiescenti basia blanda dabas.                              Thou gav'st me tender kisses in my sleep.

si te iam vigilans non unquam cernere possum,                If waking I may never look upon thee,

somne, precor, iugiter lumina nostra tene.                       O Sleep, I pray you, never let me wake!

From an MS. of Beauvais

Te vigilans oculis, animo te nocte requiro,            By day mine eyes, by night my soul desires thee,

victa iacent solo cum mea membra toro.              Weary, I lie alone.

vidi ego me tecum falsa sub imagine somni.          Once in a dream it seemed thou wert beside me;

somnia tu vinces, si mihi vera venis.                     O far beyond all dreams, if thou woulds come!

From an MS. of Beauvais

O blandos oculos et inquietos                         O lovely restless eyes, that speak

et quadam propria nota loquaces!                   In language's despite!

illic et Venus et leves Amores                          For there sits Beauty, and the little Loves:

atque ipsa in medio sedet Voluptas.                Between them dwells Delight.

From an MS. of Monte Cassino

Ad Paulum Diaconum Written to Paul the Deacon at Monte Cassino

Hinc celer egrediens facili, mea carta, volatu                    Across the hills and in the valley's shade,

per silvas, colles, valles quoque prepete cursu                 Alone the small script goes,

alma deo cari Benedicti tecta require.                             Seeking for Benedict's beloved roof,

Est nam certa quies fessis venientibus illuc,                     Where waits its sure repose.

hic olus hospitibus, piscis hic, panis abundans;                They come and find, the tired travellers,

pax pia, mens humilis, pulcra et concordia fratrum,         Green herbs and ample bread,

laus, amor et cultus Christi simul omnibus horis.              Quiet and brothers' love and humbleness,

                                                                                             Christ's peace on every head.

Hrabanus Maurus

Ad Eigilum de libro quem scripserat                     To Eigilus, on the book that he had written

Nullum opus exsurgit quod non annosa vetustas      No work of men's hands but the weary years

expugnet, quod non vertat iniqua dies.                    Besiege and take it, comes its evil day:

grammata sola carent fato, mortemque repellunt.    The written word alone flouts destiny,

preterita renovant grammata sola biblis.                  Revives the past and gives the lie to Death.

rupe, suo legem cum dederat populo.                     God's finger made its furrows in the rock

sunt, fuerant, mundo venient quae forte futura,        In letters, when he gave his folk the law.

grammata haec monstrant famine cuncta suo.       And things that are, and have been, and may be,

                                                                             Their secret with the written word abides.

Sedulius Scottus

Apologia pro vita sua                                             Written as scholasticus at Liége

Aut lego vel scribo, doceo scrutorve sophiam:        I read or write, I teach or wonder what is truth,

obsecro celsithronum nocte dieque meum.               I call upon my God by night and day.

vescor, poto libens, rithmizans invoco Musas,          I eat and freely drink, I make my rhymes,

dormisco stertens: oro deum vigilans.                      And snoring sleep, or vigil keep and pray.

conscia mens scelerum deflet peccamina vitae;        And very ware of all my shames I am;

parcite vos misero, Christe Maria, viro.                  O Mary, Christ, have mercy on your man.

Notes

The following notes are largely based on Helen Waddell's own from 1929.

Pulchra comis: This poem is found in the 9th-century Royal MS. 15. B. xix. The poem was attributed to Virgil by the scribe, while Aldhelm of Malmesbury attributed it to Ovid.

Te vigilans oculi/O blandos oculos: These two poems comes from an anthology of the late 9th or early 10th century whose MS. was lost as a consequence of the Revolution.

Ad Paulum Diaconum: 12th-century tradition attributed the lyric to Charlemagne. Paul the Deacon, at some point a monk at Monte Cassino, did end up in Charlemagne's service for a while, but that is probably the only kernel of truth in this tradition. Although Charlemagne's love of poetry is more or less an established fact, it is not known that he himself attempted the art. Paul the Deacon is most famously known as the author of The History of the Lombards.

Ad Eigilum de libro quem scripserat : Hrabanus Maurus (776-856) was given the nickname Maurus by Alcuin after a disciple of Benedict, the father of monasticism. In 842 he resigned from his position as abbot of Fulda, but after seven years of living in solitude with his books he was summoned by Louis the German and became archbishop of Mainz in 847. The rest of his life was marked by theological strife against the heretic - and one might yield to that beast Anachronism and say proto-Calvinist - Gottschalk who preached the predestined damnation of men.

Apologia pro vita sua: Sedulius Scottus (fl.848-74) was, as his name tells, originally from Ireland. He came to Liège sometime before 851 where he became a scholasticus and gained a reputation as a poet and a scholar. He is not to be confused with Coelius Sedulius, author of Carmen Paschale.

Names of the Hedgehog

and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

- Genesis 2:19

Linguistics is one of my many passions and I find great pleasure in learning new words or learning how words have come about. One of the great things about being a Medievalist is the opportunity the subject-matter gives you to come across and learn new words when elving into a past age and its texts. In the course of my thesis work I have come across several great words, both in English and in Latin, and this blogpost is dedicated to the words used to describe one particular animal: the hedgehog.

Edmund's martyrdom

Old English

The oldest of the texts I will deal with in this blogpost is Life of St. Edmund by Ælfric of Eynsham (c.950-c.1010). This text is a hagiography of king Edmund of East Anglia who was killed by Vikings in 869 and it is written in Old English. In the story King Edmund is captured by the Viking chieftain Hingwar who wants him to become his underking and reveal the whereabouts of the royal treasure. The king, a Christian, refuses to become the subject of a pagan and steadfastly resists the tortures brought about by the Vikings. Hingwar orders his men to pierce the king with arrows, a martyrdom like that of St. Sebastian. In describing this episode Ælfric employs a very effective comparison, effective both because it is precise and because its hyperbolic nature increases the shock-effect of the brutality of martyrdom: Edmund, pierced by arrows, resembles an ígl, a hedgehog. The passage concludes as follows:

he eall wæs besæt mid heora scotungum swilce igles byrsta, swa swa Sebastianus wæs.

(he was covered with arrows in the manner of a hedhehog, as was Sebastian)

This particular passage will be a recurring feature of this linguistic expedition since this is the story in which I have found most of the names of the hedgehog, and indeed it is the story that put me onto this idea in the first place.

The name in question here is, as mentioned, ígl, a name that can, according to the Old English dictionary also be rendered as ígil or íl. Interestingly this particular name can be recognised as the root of the modern Swedish word for hedgehog: igelkott.

 Hedgehogs from the Aberdeen bestiary, c.1200

Latin

Like all other animals of the Middle Ages, real or mythical, the hedgehog was interpreted allegorically or "in mystical terms" in the bestiaries where it was made a didactic example for men to learn from. In the bestiary of MS Bodley 764, written between 1220 and1250 and translated and abbreviated by Richard Barber, the author first describes the creature's habits and way of life. He commends it for its cleverness and claims that they gather grapes directly from their vine with their spines, a myth that probably dates all the way back to Roman times. When he turns to the didactic part of the text, the mystical interpretation, the author is quite severe and says that the hedgehog is "a sinner full of vices like spines, skilled in wicked cunning, and in deceits and robberies. He cheats others of the fruit of their labours and takes their food for himself." Like the sinner who fears the judgement of God, it is claimed, so the hedgehog hides among rocks.

This unfavourable reputation owes probably much of its severity to the Vulgate where Jerome mistook the Hebrew word for owl, kippoz, for kippod, hedgehog. In Bible passages such as Isaiah 34:11 and Zephaniah 2:14 the hedgehog thus becomes a symbol of desolation and deserted places, said to inhabit the places that will be destroyed in the vengeance of God.

In Latin the hedgehog is known by the name irenaceus or erinacius. According to the author of the MS Bodley 764 bestiary the animal was also known by the name echinus and this rendition, perhaps a vulgarisation, we will find vestiges of in vernacular texts.

 Hedgehogs from the MS Bodley 764

Middle English

In one of the secondary sources I've been working with, I have been referred to three Middle English texts in which the hedgehog is named. Each of these texts is a version of the story of St. Edmund and they all employ the classic simile when describing the pierced King Edmund. I have also come across another Middle English text in which the hedgehog features poetically, a poem by William Dunbar, but here the matter does not pertain to the life of Edmund of East Anglia.

The oldest of the three hagiographic texts is the South English Legendary. This book is a collection of saints' lives rendered in verse and composed in the latter half of the 13th century somewhere close to Gloucester. Here the vernacular word for hedgehog resembles very much the Old English word and we see here one of the stations in the word's trajectory towards modern Swedish. In the words of the compiler of the legend, King Edmund was [a]s ful as an illespyl is of pikes al about.

John Lydgate (c.1370-1449/50), a monk at Bury-St-Edmunds, wrote the poetical rendition of the lives of Edmund and his cousin Fremund as a gift for the child-king Henry VI. The king stayed at Bury from Christmas 1433 to April 23, St. George's day, the following year and was given this didactic present, presumably aimed at shaping the young monarch to become a good and righteous Christian. In this work we may detect that the evolution of the language has favoured the name most resembling the Latin word. John Lydgate states that Edmund [r]assemble an yrchoun fulfillid with spynys thikke /As was the martyr seint Sebastyan.

A similar usage we can also find in the third text, the Gilte Legende. This opus is a mid-15th-century hagiographical collection translated from the French work Legende doree, which in turn is a translation of Jacobus the Voragine's 13th-century Legenda Aurea. Although more or less contemporary with John Lydgate the saint's martyrdom is rendered differently, owing perhaps to a difference in sources or the fact that Lydgate wrote in rhyme royal. According to the author of the Gilte Legende King Edmund appierid fulle of arowys lyke as an urchyn fulle of pryckis.

In conclusion of this linguistic excursion we must turn to a work by William Dunbar (1460?–1513x30), The Tretis of the twa mariit wemen and the wido. This poem is Dunbar's longest opus and one of the first to be printed. It is a comical work recounting a conversation between the three titular women.The subject is the trials of marriage and in a passage dealing with a husband's kisses the husband's cheeks are compared to the pines of a hedgehog: He schowis one me his schewill mouth & schendis my lippis / And with his hard hurcheone scyne sa heklis he my chekis.

St Sebastian by Andrea Mantegna

With Dunbar we come to a close as he stood on the threshold of Modern English and the English Renaissance. As we have seen the hedgehog has furnished authors with poetic and didactic material - and the simile of Edmund can be said to be both - throughout the Middle Ages. Due to its recurring role we have here been able to follow the evolution of its name in a long-spanning, but of course vastly incomplete, trajectory. The names I have presented above are not the only names awarded the hedgehog in Medieval times, but they serve nonetheless as a nice overview.