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Aldhelm's Enigmata and Byzantine riddles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Čelica Milovanović-Barham
Čelica Milovanović-Barham
Affiliation:
Millersville University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

Around the year 695 Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, wrote a collection of one hundred Latin enigmata or riddles to illustrate the rules of Latin metrics and versification, hoping that through that exercise ‘the rudiments of his small talent’ might grow sufficiently to enable him to write eventually ‘of more important subjects’. Almost instantly his Enigmata gained universal popularity: they were read as a primer of Latin poetry, they inspired other Anglo-Saxons (such as Tatwine and Eusebius, whose combined Latin enigmata make another hundred-piece collection) to follow in his footsteps, and they are said to have influenced the vernacular Old English riddles of the Exeter Book.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 22 , December 1993 , pp. 51 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Prologue, lines 10–12. A recent and extremely convenient edition of both Aldhelm and his predecessors and followers is: Glorie, F., Variae Collectiones Aenigmatum Merovingicae Aetatis, 2 vols., CCSL 133–133A (Turnhout, 1968), where the reference to Aldhelm's Prologue is at I, 377. Several indices and very exhaustive cross-referencing make this edition invaluable for the comparative study of riddles.Google Scholar

2 See Williamson, C., The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book (Chapel Hill, NC, 1977), p. 20Google Scholar, as well as Lapidge, M. and Rosier, J. L., Aldhelm: the Poetic Works (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 66–7.Google Scholar

3 Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich, 1911–1931) I, 138.Google Scholar

4 See Cameron, M. L., ‘Aldhelm as Naturalist: a Re-Examination of some of his Enigmata’, Peritia 4 (1985), 117–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howe, N., ‘Aldhelm's Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology’, ASE 14 (1985), 37–59Google Scholar; Scott, P. D., ‘Rhetorical and Symbolic Ambiguity: the Riddles of Symphosius and Aldhelm’, in Saints, Scholars and Heroes, ed. King, M. H. and Stevens, W. M., 2 vols. (Collegeville, MN, 1979) I, 117–44Google Scholar. On Aldhelm's Enigmata as a source of information about everyday life in Anglo-Saxon England, see Erhardt-Siebold, E. von, Die lateinischen Rätsel der Angelsachsen (Heidelberg, 1925).Google Scholar

5 For basic information and earlier bibliography on Indo-European riddles, see Schultz, W., ‘Rätsel’, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. Pauly, A., Wissowa, G. et al. , Ser. 1A 1 (1914), cols. 62–125Google Scholar, as well as Taylor, A., A Bibliography of Riddles, Folklore Fellows Communications 126 (Helsinki, 1939).Google Scholar

6 Scott, , ‘Rhetorical and Symbolic Ambiguity’, p. 134Google Scholar. Cf. a similar judgement in Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, pp. 62–3.Google Scholar

7 Prologue, lines 1–10, trans, by Stork, N. P., Through a Gloss Darkly: Aldhelm's Riddles in the British Library MS Royal 12.C.XXIII (Toronto, 1990), p. 90.Google Scholar

8 Aristotle, Poetics 1458 a.

9 My information comes from Glorie, , Variae Collectiones I, 371, nn. 5–6.Google Scholar

10 The most extensive publication so far (214 riddles) is: Byzantina aenigmata: Vizantijske zagonetke, ed. and trans. [into Serbian] Milovanović, Č. (Belgrade, 1986)Google Scholar. This edition (which henceforward will be abbreviated as Byz. aen.) was made on the basis of various earlier publications of individual riddles, ranging in time from 1831 to 1970. Of the 214 riddles included, about half a dozen can be found in the Palatine Anthology (with English trans. by Paton, W. R., in the Loeb Library, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1916–1918)). Bk XIV of the Palatine Anthology contains otherwise some fifty riddles, which obviously were known to the Byzantines (since the Anthology was compiled in the tenth century), but are impossible to date with any certainty. However, in view of the fact that these riddles contain a large number of mythological references, and that their metrical form is most often based on elegiac couplets (in contrast to the properly Byzantine riddles which are written in twelve- or fifteen-syllable lines) these should probably be considered pre-Byzantine. (An important caveat; the metrical form of a riddle is not an infallible criterion, since the elegiac couplet can be found as late as the twelfth century; see Prodromos's riddle about clouds in Migne, PG 133, col. 1418).Google Scholar

11 S. Lambros worked patiently for decades on collecting the material and planning a history of Byzantine riddles, but his death in the early twenties prevented him from completing the work. The only summary of the heyday of the Byzantine riddles in English is found in Taylor, A., The Literary Riddle Before 1600 (Berkeley, CA, 1948), pp. 45–52. Taylor relies chiefly on data collected by K. Krumbacher, and therefore assumes that the literary riddle in Byzantium was confined to the period between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. Manuscript research since Krumbacher has revealed several other names of Byzantine riddle masters, extending the history of their craft well into the fifteenth century (with a neo-Byzantine revival around the early eighteenth century).Google Scholar

12 Heinrici, C. F. G., Griechisch-Byzantinische Gesprächsbücher und Verwandtes aus Sammelhandschriften, Abhandlungen der philol.-hist. Klasse der Königlichen Sächsischen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 28.8 (Leipzig, 1911).Google Scholar

13 The practice goes back all the way to Babylon. Taylor, , The Literary Riddle, p. 12, cites some Babylonian school-texts as the oldest recorded riddles.Google Scholar

14 For example, consider the riddle from Palatine Anthology XIV.38:

Κτєι¯υα κάσιυ, κτάυє δ′ αύ μє κάσις θάυομєυ δ′ ύπς πατρός.

μητє´ρα δ′ άμφότєροι τєυ˚υαότєς κτάυομєυ

‘I slew my brother, my brother again slew me; our death is caused by our father, and after our death we both killed our mother’ (trans. W. R. Paton). The answer is: Eteocles and Polyneices, the sons of Oedipus; the riddle refers specifically to Euripides's version of the story (from the Phoenician Women) which is different from Sophocles's. Typologically, if not formally, the riddle is akin to the Byzantine:

Τί θαυ˘μα є`ποίησєυ ό Χ ριστςς πρω˘του

Τη`υ χєι¯ρα τη¯ς Σαλώμης ίάσατο єυ τη˘ ψάτυη˘

‘Which miracle did Jesus perform first? He healed Salome's hand in the manger’ (Byz. aen. no. 172), which refers not to the Bible, but to an apocryphal source, Protevangelium Jacobi, 19–20.

15 In the eleventh century the genre was represented by Christopher of Mytilene, John Mauropous, Michael Psellos, Basil Megalomytes; in the twelfth by Theodore Prodromos, Eustathios Macrembolites, Aulikalamos, Nikephoros Prosuch: in the thirteenth by Manuel Moschopoulos, Manuel Holobolos; in the fourteenth by lsaac Argyros, Joseph Bryennios; in the fifteenth by John Eugenikos. In addition, some of the early modern men of letters transmitted Byzantine riddles under their own names, e.g. Nicholas Alexander Maurokordatos, Gerasimos Spartaliotes, Nikodemos of Kiti, etc. The volume of each author's individual output (or what we know of it) varies greatly: some are represented by one or two riddles only, while others may claim one or two dozen.

16 Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, pp. 64–5.Google Scholar

17 Enigm. xxx.5: ‘Three brothers begot us of an unknown mother’ (trans. Lapidge and Rosier, ibid. p. 76).

18 Aen. Bern, xxv.2: ‘Three fathers together made us in one stroke …’ (ed. Glorie, , Varia Collections II, 571).Google Scholar

19 Byz. aen. no. 192, line 1: ‘I saw a father who produced a child without a mother …’

20 Enigm. c.82: ‘I ask puffed-up wise men to tell what my name is’ (trans. Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 94).Google Scholar

21 Byz. aen. no. 5, lines 6–7: ‘What's that? tell, announce, say, show and write it, being so smart and brainy, better than all of us!’

22 Alcuin, Carm. lxiii: magnus/agnus/manus/magus/mus/anus (ed. Dümmler, E., MGH, PLAC I (Berlin, 1881), 281–2).Google Scholar

23 There is a large group of such riddles in Byz. aen.: see nos. 81–144. In the Palatine Anthology, too, there are two such riddles, in elegiac couplets, dating perhaps from early Byzantine times; see Palatine Anthology XIV.105 and 106.

24 Byz. aen., no. 108: ‘A tiny animal, I am not edible; my name consists of three letters only; should you take away the first of my letters, I'd be a large one, and ready for eating.’ The solution is: μ⋯ς–υὐ (‘mouse–hog’).

25 Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 76: ‘My origin was from (the wax of) honey-bees, but my other outer part grew in the woods. Stiff leather provided me with my shoes. Now the iron point cuts into my comely face with its wandering movements, and carves furrows in the manner of a plough; but the holy seed for the crop is brought from heaven, and it produces abundant sheaves from its thousand-fold harvest. Alas, this holy harvest is destroyed by fierce weapons!’ In the following discussion, reference is made to other translations as well.Google Scholar

26 See von, Erhardt-Siebold, Die lateinischen Rätsel, p. 66.Google Scholar

27 ‘Rhetorical and Symbolic Ambiguity’, pp. 121–3.Google Scholar

28 ‘Wood gave birth to me and iron reformed me, and I am the mystic receptacle of the Muses. When shut I am silent, but I speak when you unfold me. Ares alone is the confidant of my conversation’ (Palatine Anthology XIV.60, trans. W. R. Paton). The very same epigram appears among the Byzantine riddles (Byz. aen., no. 70), attributed to Michael Psellos.

29 The image probably originated in Plato's Phaedrus, and it was very popular both in pagan and in Christian circles; see the extensive discussion in Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R. (Princeton, NJ, 1953), pp. 311–19.Google Scholar The metaphor ploughing/writing passed into the folklore of practically all the European peoples: Taylor, A., English Riddles from Oral Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1951), no. 1063.Google Scholar

30 Scott, , ‘Rhetorical and Symbolic Ambiguity’, pp. 121–3.Google Scholar

31 ‘Mysteries’ (i.e. mystery-religions) is a frequent metaphor for literature in ancient literary criticism; see, e.g. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demosth. 22.

32 Byz. aen., no. 25.

33 Ibid. no. 3.

34 Ibid. no 34.

35 Pitman, J. H., The Riddles of Aldhelm (New Haven, CT, 1925), p. 71.Google Scholar

36 Cf. Palatine Anthology XIV.45.

37 Byz. aen., no. 129: ‘A sweet-bearing winged animal is pregnant with me’.

38 Pitman, (The Riddles, p. 19)Google Scholar translates: ‘My tough back came from shoes’. Similarly, Erhardt-Siebold, E. von, Die lateinischen Rätsel, p. 66Google Scholar, who does not translate the line, yet interprets it in the same way: calciamenta is the material, tergora is the back of the book. Scott, P. D. (‘Rhetorical and Symbolic Ambiguity’, p. 121)Google Scholar translates: ‘Hard backs provide my shoes’: cf. Lapidge: ‘Stiff leather provided me with my shoes’ (Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 76)Google Scholar and Stork, : ‘Hard hides supplied my shoes’ (Through a Gloss Darkly, p. 138).Google Scholar

39 Isidore, Etym. XIX.xxxiv.2: ‘Bootmakers (caligarii) were named not from the tough skin of our soles (callum), but from calo, that is, wood without which it is impossible to sew together a shoe, what the Greeks call καλόποδας (shoemaker's lasts): earlier they were made of willow only. Hence shoes are called calciamenta because they are made on calo, that is wood; or because they are put on (calcentur)’.

40 Howe, , ‘Aldhelm's Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology’, p. 38.Google Scholar

41 It is interesting to note that the eleventh-century English glossator was not sure either how to interpret this line: above the word tergora he wrote hyda, which is not mistaken in itself, but does not apply here; tergora here means ‘the back’ (as in Vergil, Aeneid IX. 764). See Stork, , Through a Gloss Darkly, p. 137.Google Scholar

42 Ed. Glorie, , Variae Collectiones I, 347: ‘My father in heaven made me at first without a mother, but after I came out of my mother's womb … at death I will be placed back in my mother's lap …’Google Scholar

43 Byz. aen., no. 1: ‘My father bore me out of my mother's womb …’

44 Ibid. no. 171: ‘And who … returned back into his mother's womb …?’

45 Ed. Glorie, , Variae Collectiones I, 242: ‘Once we had resonant voice but no words; now we have no voice but do produce words; white fields we are, yet full of black lights; alive we don't speak, when dead we give answer.’Google Scholar

46 Byz. aen., no. 44: ‘I lived when I lived, but no speech was there; as soon as I died, I am full of speeches’. The same riddle reappears in later times, but with a different solution – ‘semandron’:

Τιˇςζω¯υ ουκ єλάλєι καί αποθαυω`υ єλάλєι και` οί ακούουτєς τςυ Θєςυ єδόξαζου

Τοˇ σήμαυ δρου

(Byz. aen., no. 168): ‘Who did not talk while alive, but having died began talking, and the listeners praised God? Semandron’.

47 All the traditional scribal themes are well known throughout the Balkans, as well as in English folklore. See Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition, passim.

48 Glorie, , Variae Collections II, 149.Google Scholar

49 ‘Which man who died, and was not buried, did not have flesh subject to decaying?’ (PL 94, col. 540).

50 Byz. aen., no. 173: ‘Who upon dying was not buried, and yet was not stinking? The wife of Lot, fleeing from Sodom, became a pillar of salt and is standing to this day’.

51 A good example would be the Lorsch riddle no. 8, published with the tentative solution fetus (Glorie, , Variae Collectiones I, 354)Google Scholar; if one compares it with the Byz. aen., no. 27, it becomes obvious that the Lorsch riddle represents yet another version of the famous riddle about a legendary king Mycon, or Cymon, and that the correct solution would be – king Mycon's horse. Conversely, a rather cleverly formulated riddle attributed to Michael Psellos (Byz. aen., no. 212):

Στєι˘χου τις οδόυ, στι˘χου ώδω˘υ єποίєι

καί στєίχου ηδє πάυυ αυώμαλου

καί ηδєυ ώς αυώμαλος η όδίς αυτου˘.

Byz. aen., no. 212: ‘On a road marching, one was making verses: stumbling often he sang verses quite uneven; he sang of his road, that it was uneven’. This riddle, which was published without any solution, can be understood with the help of a certain expression found in Aldhelm (scandentibus uelut iter carpentibus, ‘those who are scanning the verse as if they were pressing on along a road’: ed. Glorie, , Variae Collectiones I, 376). Thus the solution to the riddle would be writing (or scanning) metrical poetry – a very abstract subject for a riddle, no doubt, but apparently easily understandable to educated individuals in both Byzantium and Anglo-Saxon England.Google Scholar

52 Bischoff, B., ‘Das griechische Element in der abendländischen Bildung des Mittelalters’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 44 (1951), 27–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, repr. in his Mittelalterliche Studien, 3 vols. (Stuttgart, 1966–1981) II, 246–75.Google Scholar

53 Lapidge, and Rosier, , Aldhelm: the Poetic Works, p. 16.Google Scholar

54 The importance of Theodore as a transmitter of Byzantine cultural influences in Anglo-Saxon England was kindly pointed out to me by Professor M. Lapidge. See Lapidge, M., ‘The School of Theodore and Hadrian’, ASE 15 (1986), 45–72Google Scholar and ‘The Study of Greek at the School of Canterbury in the Seventh Century’, The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: the Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Herren, M. W. (London, 1988), pp. 169–94.Google Scholar

55 The educational purpose of Byzantine riddle-making is obvious not only in the question- and-answer riddle type, but also in the subtract-a-letter type, which bears a marked resemblance to a grammatical exercise called schedographia.

56 The connection with the Church, especially with monastic circles, is evident from the fact that out of the fifteen Byzantine riddle-makers known by name, at least eight were monks (for the others we lack biographical information). The overwhelming presence of monks among the riddle-masters in medieval and early modern times is clearly evident from the information gathered by Taylor, The Literary Riddle, passim.