'Il Liber monstrorum e i glossari anglosassoni’ (English version) PDF

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VI The Liber monstrorum and Anglo-Saxon glossaries Various examples of teratological literature, that is, literature concerned with monsters and unnatural creatures, are found in the Anglo-Saxon period: two such works were brought together in London, BL, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, which in addition to ...

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VI

The Liber monstrorum and Anglo-Saxon glossaries

Various examples of teratological literature, that is, literature concerned with monsters and unnatural creatures, are found in the Anglo-Saxon period: two such works were brought together in London, BL, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, which in addition to Beowulf and Judith contains Old English versions of the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle and the 1 Wonders of the East. Both works are translations from Latin and both have complex 2 3 and remote origins, though the latter, whose Latin text (De rebus in Oriente 4

mirabilibus) is preserved in two manuscripts written in England, might also be an 1

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The manuscript also contains a homily on St Christopher. The presence in the same manuscript of two teratological works, of a homily on an unusually tall saint (‘twelf fæþma lang’) as well as Beowulf, with all its monsters, and Judith, where Holofernes is described as a man of more than human wickedness, cannot be accidental: see K. Sisam, ‘The Compilation of the Beowulf Manuscript’, in his Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 65-97. The Old English translation of the Letter of Alexander is based on a Latin version: ed. W.W. Boer, Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem ad codicum fidem edita et commentario critico instructa (unpubl. dissertation, Leiden Univ., 1953; The Hague, 1953; repr. [Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie, 50] Meisenheim am Glan, 1973), which is independent of the translation of the Greek text by Julius Valerius: ed. B. Kübler, Iuli Valeri Alexandri Polemi Res gestae Alexandri Macedonis translatae ex Aesopo graeco (Leipzig, 1888). For the Greek text, see the edition by W. Kroll, Historia Alexandri Magni (Pseudo-Callisthenes): Recensio vetusta I (Berlin, 1926). For the relationship between the above-mentioned works, see M.L. Brown, From Biography to Romance: The Letter from Alexander to Aristotle (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1988). The Wonders of the East has been published, together with the Letter of Alexander and the homily on St Christopher, by S. Rypins, Three Old English Prose Texts in MS. Cotton Vitellius A xv, EETS o.s. 161 (London, 1924). See M. Förster, ‘Zur altenglischen Mirabilien-Version’, Archiv 117 (1906), 367-70. London, BL, Cotton Tiberius B. v, vol. I (where each section of the Latin text is followed by an Old English translation), for which see P. McGurk et al., An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon illustrated Miscellany (British Library Cotton Tiberius B. v, Part I), EEMF 21 (Copenhagen, 1983) and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 614, which contains only the Latin text, for which see O. Pächt and J.J.G. Alexander, Illuminated Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library Oxford, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1966-73), III, no. 156 and C.M. Kauffmann, Romanesque Manuscripts 1066-1190, A Survey of Manuscripts illuminated in the British Isles III (London, 1975), p. 77, no. 38.

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Insular recasting of previous Latin texts. It is even more likely that the Liber 6 7 monstrorum de diversis generibus had an Anglo-Saxon origin, even though none of the manuscripts in which the treatise has been transmitted was copied in the British 8 Isles.

DATE AND ORIGIN OF THE LIBER MONSTRORUM The Liber monstrorum is divided into three books, comprising the description of monsters (bk I), beasts (bk II), and serpents (bk III), totalling approximately one 5

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The Latin text of Tiberius B. v, vol. I (ptd by Rypins, Three Old English Prose Texts, pp. 101-7) is not the original of either the Old English translation of the same manuscript or the translation in Vitellius A. xv. One of the other versions of the Latin text, contained in Paris, BN, nouv. acq. lat. 1065 – which might be closer to the original – has been published by H. Omont, ‘Lettre à l’empereur Adrien sur les merveilles de l’Asie’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 74 (1913), 507-15. The Latin Wonders of the East, too, might derive from a Greek original, according to R. Wittkower, ‘Marvels of the East. A Study in the History of Monsters’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942), 159-97, at 172. This hypothesis, put forward by A. Thomas, ‘Un manuscrit inutilisé du Liber Monstrorum’, ALMA 1 (1924), 232-45, has been endorsed by several scholars, such as D. Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1951), pp. 46-55; L. Whitbread, ‘The Liber Monstrorum and Beowulf’, Mediaeval Studies 36 (1974), 434-71, at 451 and note 33, with references to the previous literature on the subject; M. Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, Studi Medievali 3rd ser., 23 (1982), 151-92; G. Princi Braccini, ‘Tra folclore germanico e latinità insulare. Presenze del Liber Monstrorum e della Cosmographia dello Pseudo-Etico nel Beowulf e nel cod. Nowell’, Studi Medievali 3rd ser., 25 (1984), 681-720; F. Porsia, Liber monstrorum (Bari, 1976) and C. Bologna, Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus: Libro delle mirabili difformità (Milan, 1977). The Anglo-Saxon origin has, however, been challenged by A. Knock, ‘The Liber Monstrorum: An Unpublished Manuscript and some Reconsiderations’, Scriptorium 32 (1978), 19-28. M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911-31), I, 114-18, suggested a Frankish or Irish origin. Frankish authorship had also been hypothesised by M. Haupt, Opuscula II (Leipzig, 1876), p. 220. For a general bibliography on the Liber monstrorum (= Lm), see E. Dekkers and A. Gaar, Clavis patrum latinorum, 3rd edn. (Steenbrugge, 1995), no. 1124 and the works quoted in the preceding note. All the references and the quotations are taken from the edition by Porsia. See, now, A. Orchard, Pride and Prodiges. Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf-Manuscript (Cambridge, 1995), esp. pp. 86-115, with a new edition and translation at 254-85. The Lm is preserved in five manuscripts (two further manuscripts, now untraceable, are quoted in a ninth-century inventory of the library of Bobbio). See C. Bologna, ‘La tradizione manoscritta del Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus (Appunti per l’edizione critica)’, Cultura neolatina 34 (1974), 337-46. On Sankt Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 237, the last manuscript of the Lm to be discovered, see Knock, ‘The Liber Monstrorum’.

hundred and twenty items. Although compiled from disparate sources, ranging from writings such as the De civitate Dei of St Augustine to encyclopedic treatises such as the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville, the Liber monstrorum is a homogeneous work, clearly revealing the hand of one author, who is at once curious and detached. One piece of evidence produced in support of an Anglo-Saxon origin for the Liber monstrorum is an element which links it to Beowulf, namely the chapter devoted to Hygelac (I.2), a king mentioned in both works. In both Beowulf and the Liber monstrorum he is described as sovereign of the Geats (‘qui imperavit Getis et a Francis 9 occisus est’: Lm I.2), while in the Historia Francorum by Gregory of Tours and in the 10 Liber historiae Francorum he is said to be Danish. This agreement proves that the tradition on which the Liber monstrorum and Beowulf drew was not Frankish, but it does not necessarily prove any direct relationship between the two works, as is 11 maintained by Whitbread. The author of the treatise knew the variant of the Hygelac legend that was also known by the author of Beowulf; he was also familiar with the east coast of the North Sea and the island at the mouth of the Rhine, where Hygelac was said 12 to have been buried. The Anglo-Saxon origin of the Liber monstrorum is also suggested by the 13 characteristics of one of its oldest manuscripts, which uses some typically Insular abbreviations. The treatise, therefore, like so many other works written in the British Isles in the seventh and eighth centuries (e.g. those of Bede and Aldhelm), must have 9

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Gregorii episcopi Turonensis historiarum libri X (III,3), ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison, MGH SS rer Merov I, 1 (Hannover, 1951), 99. Liber historiae Francorum (XIX), ed. B. Krusch, MGH SS rer Merov II (Hannover, 1888; repr. 1984), 274-5. ‘I think it quite possible that the Liber … drew on a literary version of Beowulf’: Whitbread, ‘The Liber Monstrorum’, pp. 461-71. A more convincing approach is through the analysis of the variants of the name Hygelac which are found in all the manuscripts of the Lm: see Whitbread, ‘The Liber Monstrorum ‘, pp. 451 and 461-5, note 34; Lapidge, ‘Beowulf’, pp. 165-7 and 176-8; and Princi Braccini, ‘Tra folclore germanico’, pp. 716-17. See S. Backx, ‘Sur la date et l’origine du De monstris, beluis et serpentibus’, Latomus 3 (1939), 61, according to whom the Lm ‘a donc été rédigé au plus tôt dans la seconde moitié du VIIe siècle par un écrivain anglo-saxon qui connaissait l’estuaire du Rhin et ses légendes’. The relations between England and Frisia were frequent both in the seventh century and in the following centuries: when Wilfrid set out in 678 on his evangelizing mission among the Frisians he landed at the mouth of the Rhine: see W. Levison, England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), pp. 50-1, and Boniface, in 716, was to land at the same place and sail up the Rhine as far as Wijk bij Duurstede (Dorstet) (ibid., p. 6). Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Voss. lat. O. 60, which comes from Fleury; the Insular features of this manuscript were first noted by Thomas, ‘Un manuscrit inutilisé’, pp. 244-5.

been transmitted to a centre on the opposite side of the Channel and then circulated on the Continent, where all the extant manuscripts were written. Since the author of the Liber monstrorum knows and makes use of the Etymologiae 14 of Isidore of Seville, who died in 636, its composition should be dated to after the middle of the seventh century. It is more difficult to accept the terminus post quem 15 proposed by Porsia, who claims that in the chapter on the antipodes (Lm I.53), the author uses the present tense (‘ferunt’) to refer to the views which were expressed on the matter by Virgil of Salzburg and are mentioned in a letter written by Pope Zacharias to Boniface about 748. Although several scholars date the composition of the Liber 16 monstrorum to the eighth or ninth century, I believe it was more probably composed in a period contemporary with, if not prior to, Aldhelm (640?-709).

THE SOURCES OF THE LIBER MONSTRORUM On the assumption that the work was written in an Anglo-Saxon milieu after 650, attempts have been made to identify its author in one of the writers of the time. The 17 18 hypothesis that it is a work by Aldhelm or one of his pupils has been put forward by 14

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It is possible that a version of the Etymologiae was already in circulation before the death of Isidore and before Braulio of Saragosse revised it for publication: see M. Reydellet, ‘La diffusion des Origines d’Isidore de Séville au haut moyen âge’, Mélanges d’archeologie et d’histoire de l’École française à Rome 78 (1966), 383-437, at 385-7; on the circulation of the work by Isidore, see A.E. Anspach, ‘Das Fortleben Isidors im VII. bis IX. Jahrhundert’, Miscellanea Isidoriana. Homenaje a S. Isidoro de Sevilla en el XIII Centenario de su Muerte (Rome, 1936), pp. 323-56, at 336 and B. Bischoff, ‘Die europäische Verbreitung der Werke Isidors von Sevilla’, Isidoriana (Léon, 1961), pp. 317-44 (for the British Isles, pp. 327-36), repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien I (Stuttgart, 1966), pp. 171-94. Porsia, Liber monstrorum, pp. 99-100. A later dating is defended by D.R. Butturf, The Monsters and the Scholars: An Edition and Critical Study of the Liber monstrorum (unpubl. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Illinois, 1968), according to whom ‘the evidence points to the Liber’s having been composed somewhere between the eighth and tenth centuries’ (at 11). Butturf’s conjecture also springs from his some-what shortsighted evaluation of the level of early Anglo-Latin literature (ibid., p. 5). See the synopsis by Whitbread, ‘The Liber Monstrorum’, pp. 448-9, note 28. E. Faral, ‘La queue de poisson des sirènes’, Romania 74 (1953), 433-506, at 454 and 46670; Whitbread, ‘The Liber Monstrorum’, pp. 456-61. Porsia puts forward the hypothesis that the author of the Lm was Æthilwald or another Anglo-Saxon writer of the eighth century (Liber monstrorum, pp. 101-5); Bologna suggests that the Lm ‘sia opera di Aldhelmus stesso, o di un suo allievo (fors’anche Aethilwaldus) o comunque di un erudito vicino al suo ambiente’ (Liber montrorum, p. 178); Lapidge, ‘Beowulf’, p. 176, conjectures a contemporary of Aldhelm, a colleague or a

various scholars, one of the arguments being the presence of certain stylistic features, 19 which are particularly pronounced in the general prologue to the Liber monstrorum. Moreover, Aldhelm uses many, if not all, of the sources also used by the Liber monstrorum, excluding the teratological works drawn upon in the treatise (De rebus in Oriente mirabilibus, etc.). Among their common sources is a work otherwise unknown to Anglo-Saxon writers, so that Aldhelm and the author of the Liber monstrorum must have had access to the same rare sources: in a passage from the De pedum regulis (included in the longer Epistula ad Acircium) Aldhelm quotes two verses from Lucan’s 20 Orpheus; the author of the Liber monstrorum is also acquainted with the Orpheus, and 21 quotes from it on three occasions. In their descriptions of the lion, which is the subject of a riddle (XXXIX) and a chapter of the treatise (Lm II.1), Aldhelm and the author of the Liber monstrorum both use another source which was not widely known in the first centuries of Anglo-Latin literature: the Physiologus, even if the details selected by the two authors are different. In addition to the lion, other animals and portents described in Aldhelm’s riddles are present in the Liber monstrorum (the salamander, the minotaur, the Colossus, Scylla 22 and the elephant). One of the subjects of the Aenigmata is the fabulous unicorn, the description of which recalls that of the mysterious eternal beasts spoken about in the 23 treatise. In the riddle about the stork (XXXI) Aldhelm mentions the coluber and its

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pupil, at work at Malmesbury, where Aldhelm was abbot for many years. In a recent study A.P. McD. Orchard, ‘Some Aspects of Seventh-Century Hiberno-Latin Syntax: A Statistical Approach’, Peritia 7-8 (1987-8), 158-201, at 178, though pointing out ‘some strong and suggestive links with Aldhelm’, thinks it unlikely he was the author of the Lm. Several scholars have noted that the prose works of Aldhelm and the Lm share common features, such as complex syntax, refined style, the frequent recourse to alliteration and the use of uncommon words (although their lexical choices do not coincide). However, these features are fairly common in Anglo-Latin literature and should be evaluated more systematically: see Orchard, ‘Some Aspects’, pp. 158-9. R. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, MGH Auct antiq 15 (Berlin, 1919; repr. 1961), p. 159, 25-6. The poem by Lucan is lost and the quotation from it by Aldhelm is one of the few traces left: see W. Morel, Fragmenta poetarum latinorum (Leipzig, 1927; repr. 1963), pp. 128-9. The poem is also mentioned in the Brevis expositio in Georg. IV.492, ed. G. Thilo and H. Hagen, Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1878-1902; repr. Hildesheim, 1961), III, 2, 356. Morel, Fragmenta poetarum latinorum, p. 129, reproduces the three passages from the Lm (I.6; II.7 and III.8). Aenigm. XV (Salamandra) and Lm III.14 (De salamadra); aenigm. XXVIII (Minotaurus) and Lm I.50 (De Minotauro); aenigm. LXXII (Colosus) and Lm I.3 (De Colosso); aenigm. XCV (Scilla) and Lm I.14 (De Scylla); aenigm. XCVI (Elefans) and Lm II.2 (De elephantis). Aenigm. LX (Monocerus) and Lm II.12 (De aeternis Indiae beluis) and II.16 (De dente tyranno belua Indiae).

poison, using for this snake the same adjective, dirus, which qualifies it in the treatise (Lm III.17). Finally, in the Liber monstrorum and Aldhelm’s prose De virginitate, the 24 same details are given about the height of the Colossus. In the thirteenth century the Liber monstrorum was indirectly attributed to Aldhelm by Thomas of Cantimpré, the author of the Liber de natura rerum. In the prologue to this book mention is made of a certain ‘Adelinus’, ‘qui et si pauca, tamen bona valde 25

conscripsit’. The work of Thomas of Cantimpré contains as many as thirty quotations attributed to ‘Adelinus’, fourteen of which are taken from the Aenigmata, while the remaining sixteen can unquestionably be traced back to the Liber monstrorum. The Dominican encyclopedist probably based this attribution on a manuscript where the Liber monstrorum had been copied out together with the Aenigmata and where the 26 former work, too, might have been attributed to Aldhelm. Another element common to both Aldhelm and the Liber monstrorum will be discussed later. The date and place of composition of the teratological treatise must therefore be very close to the date and the place of composition of Aldhelm’s works, so that the Liber may have been written in a centre in Wessex either in the second half of the seventh century, if it is judged to be prior to or contemporary with Aldhelm, or in the first half of the eighth century, if it is to be attributed to an author familiar with Aldhelm’s works.

THE LIBER MONSTRORUM AND VERGIL One feature of the Liber monstrorum which is absent from other teratological works is the fact that its inventory of monstrous creatures includes ‘literary monsters’, that is creatures whose description the author has taken, for example, from the works of Vergil. The episode of Laocoon, narrated in the Aeneid (II.199-227), is reworked in the chapter De geminibus serpentibus in Troiae excidio (III.10): Et in excidio Troiae gemini serpentes a Tenedo insula, omni populo tuente, fretum sinuosis verberabant magno murmure motibus et ad terrae litus erectis natabant 24

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De virginitate ch. xxi (ed. Ehwald, p. 252) and Lm I.3. Porsia, Liber monstrorum, p. 141, remarks that this detail may well derive from Jerome’s translation of the Chronici canones of Eusebius of Caesarea: ‘Colossus erectus habens altitudinis pedes CVII’: ed. J.K. Fotheringham, Eusebii Pamphili Chronici canones, latine vertit, adauxit, ad sua tempora produxit (London, 1923), p. 270. H. Boese, Thomas Cantimpratensis Liber de natura rerum I (Berlin and New York, 1973), p. 4. This coincidence was first pointed out by Faral, ‘La queue’, pp. 457-67.

pectoribus; qui, ut Maro praecipuus poeta cecinit, iubas habebant sanguineas et oculi eorum igni horrebant et cruore; duos quoque primo impetu parvulos et tertium ipsis subeuntem venenosis diripuerunt morsibus.

The Liber monstrorum uses only a few details of Vergil’s description: ‘gemini a Tenedo ... immensis orbibus angues’ (lines 203-4), ‘pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta iubaeque / sanguineae superant undas’ (vv. 206-7) and ‘ardentisque oculos suffecti sanguine et igni’ (line 210). To describe the venomous bites details are brought together from verses which are at a certain distance from each other in the Aeneid: ‘morsu’ (line 215) and ‘perfusus ... atroque veneno’ (line 221). The author of the Liber monstrorum is not interested in the dramatic representation of the serpent’s approach: in Virgil it is the sea which roars (‘Fit sonitus spumante salo’, line 209), but in the chapter from the treatise it is the serpents that noisily lash the waves. Finally, he mistakes Laocoon rushing to the aid of his sons for a third child: Laocoon himself is never mentioned, for, by a complete reversal of the point of view, it is the serpents rather than the priest of Neptune that attract the author’s attention. The Liber monstrorum uses Vergil as a source in many other ways as well, drawing 27 mainly on the Aeneid a...