However, the Lorsch riddle uses this in an entirely conventional way to describe a human womb. In other riddles, this word can refer figuratively to all kinds of things, such as the heat of a spark (Aldhelm Riddle 93) or the holes of a sponge ( Bern Riddle 32). Line 4 includes a word that crops up in several other medieval riddle collections- venter (“belly, womb, bowels”). However, I’m not sure that I am entirely convinced! Intriguingly, Patrizia Lendinara has suggested (page 80) that the reference to semen (“seed”) in line 3 is a bilingual pun on the Old English word sæd (“seed”) and the name of one of Adam’s sons, Seth. This is a very nice example of synecdoche (pronounce it “se neck dockie”)-the use of a part to describe a whole. Of course, the riddle is really about a whole host of births throughout the generations, viewed across the whole panorama of human time. The next two lines jump forward to the world after the Fall of Adam and Eve, when human mothers and fathers are creating more and more children! The riddle describes this as if it were a single instance of childbirth. Photograph from The British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts ((licence: CC0 1.0)” “Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden, from an early 14th century French illustrated manuscript, British Library Additional 10292, folio 31 verso. As you may have already realised, this father is God, who created Adam from the earth’s soil on the sixth day of Creation. In this tradition, line 2 tells us about a “pater supremus” ( supreme father), who created his child without a mother. Riddles often talk about family relations-they give us an ostensibly extraordinary example of parentage and then challenge us to explain it. #LatinGrammar fans will notice that this is described using the dative of possession ( mihi), which is also used widely in the Bern Riddles. This doesn’t mean that each individual will have a different fate, but rather that humankind as a whole passes through different “fates”-from the start to the end of the world and beyond. The riddle-if we can all agree to call it that-begins with the explanation that the speaker’s “fates” ( fata) are changeable. Photo from Wikimedia Commons (public domain)” ”The author of The Destruction of Lindisfarne, Alcuin (middle), along with his student, Hrabanus Maurus (left), and Archbishop Otgar of Mainz (right), from a mid-ninth century Frankish manuscript, Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod.652, fol. Of course, some might dispute that it is a riddle at all! However, as I hope to show you, it still has some playful and riddle-like aspects to it. It is a moralistic work, with lots of terror and dread, warning the reader that their time on earth is short. I get a very similar vibe from today’s riddle. Þonne he hit ær hydeð þenden he her leofað. For example, the following extract from the Old English poem, The Seafarer, reminds the reader that they should put their wealth to good use when still living, because gold will not save one’s soul at the Last Judgement. You may already know about memento mori, the motif in medieval and modern art where the reader, viewer, or listener is reminded of their own death, with the intention that they should correct their sins before it is too late. These kinds of sentiments usually have a moralistic and didactic purpose. The Destruction of Lindisfarne, lines 111-2, 121-2. Over there, one day is always what it will be.] Over here, time changes and everything you see is changeable. [What more shall I now write? All youth withers, Hic variat tempus, nil non mutabile cernis: Iam perit atque cadit corporis omne decus… Quid iam plura canam? Marcescit tota iuventus, Such meditations typically contrast the mutable and unpredictable times of now with the fixity and stability of the future world to come in heaven.Ī good example of a meditation on time appears in one of my favourite medieval Latin poems, The Destruction of Lindisfarne, written by the eighth century Northumbrian churchman and scholar, Alcuin of York. You can find them in all kinds of forms and genres, from letters and poems to prayers and homilies, and from theological and hagiographical texts to charters and legal texts. Meditations on the nature of humankind’s place in Christian time are extremely common in the early medieval period.
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