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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
In the vast body of medieval literature written in what is called the Germanic area of Europe—and in the Middle Ages that included parts of present-day France, Italy, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Poland—there is an immense amount of writing in a non-vernacular language known as Medieval Latin, in German Mittellateinisch—a term not coined by Wilhelm Meyer in 1882, as Karl Langosch claimed. It was used as early as 1838 by Jacob Grimm in the epoch-making Lateinische Gedichte des X. und XI. Jahrhunderts, prepared in collaboration with Andreas Schmeller. Mittellateinisch, among other things the medium of the Roman Catholic Church, is a language apart, growing not directly out of that of Cicero and Vergil, but rather originating from the late Latinity of Antiquity in its dying stages, and under the influence of tendencies present in the vernacular tongues.
1 Merker-Stammler, Reallexikon der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, 2. Auflage, ii (Berlin, 1960), 335.
2 Göttingen, 1838, p. viii.
3 Die Moselgedichte des D. Magnus Ausonius und des Venantius Fortunatus herausgegeben und erklärt von C. Hosius (Marburg, 1926), pp. 104 ff. This is the third of Venantius' Mosel poems; the other two are on pp. 97 ff. and 102 f.
English translation: Ll. 3–12: From here (i.e., Mainz) I am ordered to travel down the Mosel in a boat as a sailor,/ To proceed hurriedly, wafted along on the rippling water;/ And so (I) the seaman boarded his skiff and glided along in the sleek craft,/ Though not propelled by south winds, the prow speeded along the river./ However, there is a place near the bank with hidden rocks:/ Since the passage is narrow, the waves raise their heads higher;/ Here the swift current snatched the prow and dashed it against the reefs,/ And it was well-nigh swallowing up the rushing waters with its belly./ In safety, I was happy to see the spacious fields, And fleeing the river, I sought the pleasant countryside.
Ll. 17–22 (back on the river): Past the smoking chimney-tops of the village houses on shore:/ I glide where the Sauer river rushes along with speed./ From there, past projecting hills and sloping valleys,/ We glide to the Saar on the headlong currents of the river./ I am borne past Trier where high walls are open to view,/ A noble city and the leader among noble cities.
Ll. 25–36: Everywhere we behold mountains menacing with their peaks,/ Where needle-like crags rise and pierce the clouds,/ Where steep peaks stretch out high points,/ And the rough rocky mass on the heights rises to the stars./ But here too the rugged cliffs are not without advantage:/ Indeed the rocks give birth, and wine flows from them./ Here you see hills everywhere clad with vineshoots,/ And an errant breeze is wafted through the foliage of the vineyards;/ Tied to props, the vines are arranged in dense array,/ And the marked plots reach up to the point;/ The cultivated land of the peasants stands out among the coarse cliffs,/ And amid the rocky pallor the pleasant vine turns red.
Ll. 47–48: Then I come to where two rivers join in confluence,/ Here the foaming Rhine, there the fierce Mosel.
Ll. 51–54: Now, so that no sweetness might escape me as I travelled,/ I fed upon (enjoyed) the Muses, where my ear drank in their song:/ With resounding notes the horns struck the mountains,/ And the hanging cliffs reechoed their melodies.
Ll. 57–58: Not with quivering sound, but with clear song such harmony/ Resounds from the shore as issues from brass.
Ll. 63–66: Then, carried on the parapets of the fort of Andernach,/ I proceed thence, approaching as the burden (passenger) of my skiff./ Though on this side there are vineyards on the hills in ample spaces (numbers),/ The other shore is fertile with fields stretched out in a plain.
4 Ibid., pp. 24–89.
5 Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Poetarum Latinorum Medii Aevi (MGH, Poetae), ii (Berlin, 1884), 138–139. This is the battle in which Emperor Lothar was defeated by his two brothers, Ludwig the German and Karl the Bald, 25 June 841, some eight months before the Strasbourg oaths. See also Helen Waddell, Medieval Latin Lyrics, London (1947 printing), pp. 102 f. and 313.
English translation: St. 1: When first Aurora breaks up ugly night in the morning,/ It was no Sabbath, but a keg (curse) of Saturn,/ In the fraternal rupture of peace the evil demon rejoices.
St. 4: The overpowering right hand of God protected Lothar,/ He was victor by dint of his hand, and fought valiantly:/ If the rest had fought thus there would soon be peace.
St. 6: Fontanetum the peasants call the spring and also the village:/ Where the carnage and blood-letting of the Franks (took place),/ The fields, the woods and even the swamps are dismayed.
Gustav Ehrismann, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters, i (München, 1954), 234, makes comparisons between this poem, the “Modus Ottinc” (see n. 15 below) and the Old High German Ludwigslied. The Romanesque Lyric by Philip Schuyler Allen (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1928) contains renderings by Howard Mumford Jones of several of the poems here quoted.
6 MGH, Poetae, ii, 169.
English translation: Ll. 1–6: Tarrying in the country, I twined my fingers around the flowers to pluck them/ As they breathed their sweet nectar in a concert of fragrance./ I tore branches from the trunks of high trees/ That will give myrrh with their leaves and balsam with their sap./ When you behold them, dear reader, gathered in baskets,/ Spurn them not but gather them once again.
Ll. 11–12: If you seek to know the name of the one who gathered the flowers—/ I am called Maurus; hail without end to you!
7 Ibid., ii, 412. Also Helen Waddell, op. cit., pp. 110 f. and 316 ff.
English translation: St. 8: See, my tears burst forth when I recall/ What a good tranquil life I used to enjoy,/ When happy Angia (Reichenau) gave me/ Modest shelter.
St. 11: Though you are surrounded by deep waters,/ You are none the less steadfast in love,/ You who scatter holy writings among all,/ Happy island.
St. 12: Always craving to see you,/ Day and night I remember you,/ Who strive to bring us all that is good,/ Happy island.
St. 16: Grant me, Redeemer, I pray you, a span of life/ Till returning to the yearned-for lap of my fatherland,/ I can sing a service of praise/ To Christ.
8 MGH, Poetae, iii, 731 f. See. F. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1953), pp. 189 ff.
English translation: St. 1: Why do you bid me, little fellow,/ Why do you order me, little son,/ To sing a sweet song/ When I am far away as an exile/ In the midst of the sea?/ O why do you order me to sing?
St. 4: You know, clerical tyro,/ You know, little protégé of heaven,/ That I have been an exile here for a long time/ And have suffered much day and night./ O why do you bid me sing?
St. 9: I have been an exile for a long time/ Here at the sea, master:/ Know indeed that it has been almost/ Two years, but now at last/ Take pity on me./ This I ask most humbly.
9 Historisches Jahrbuch, xiX (1898), 254.
English translation: St. 1: False Roman belief (madness)/ Requires judgment (chastisement),/ Roman adultery/ Will destroy the Empire.
St. 4: For gold and silver/ This evil has been devised,/ Of Mother Avarice/ These sins are born.
St. 6: This evil-doing will soon steal its way/ Into the pontificate,/ Into the whole clergy/ If it had a chance./ Thus, because of the malady of their head,/ The lower clergy too will suffer.
10 A selection, Vagantendichtung, edited by Langosch, with German translations, has appeared as No. 78 in the paperback Fischer-Bücherei, Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1963. The critical Hilka-Schumann edition (i, 1, appeared in 1930), still incomplete at this writing (i, 3, and ii, 2, 3, are missing), is now under the editorship of Bernhard Bischoff of Munich. A recording of Orff's work is available (Angel record No. 35415).
11 Josef Nadler, Literaturgeschichte des deutschen Volkes: Dichtung und Schrifttum der deutschen Stämme und Landschaften, 4. Auflage, i (Berlin, 1939), 47.
12 See n. 5 above.
13 Werner Betz in Merker-Stammler, Reallexikon, 2. Auflage, i (Berlin, 1958), 24 ff. Julius Schwietering, Die deutsche Dichtung des Mittelalters (Potsdam, 1932; new ed., 1957).
14 München, 1949, pp. 96 ff.
15 These two poems, “Modus Ottinc” and “Modus Florum,” Carm. Cantabr., xi and xv, can now be found most conveniently in Langosch's Hymnen und Vagantenlieder, 2. unveränderte Auflage (Berlin, 1958), pp. 92 ff. and 126 f. The Standard edition of the Carmina Cantabrigiensia, by Karl Strecker, is in a separate volume of MGH (1926), but the edition of Walther Bulst (Editiones Heidelbergenses 17, 1950) is more convenient. The poem on Aachen is in F. J. E. Raby's Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse (Oxford, 1959), pp. 89 ff.
16 In the Legend of Pelagius, ll. 323–330. See Sister M. Gonsalva Wiegand, The Non-Dramatic Works of Hrosvitha: Text, Translation, and Commentary (St. Louis, Mo., 1936), p. 148.
17 Quellen und Forschungen, N. F. 7 (Berlin, 1962), p. 106: “Der Ruodlieb ist eine reife Frucht der benediktinischen Klosterkultur des elften Jahrhunderts. Nicht in der realistischen Schilderung des Lebens seiner Zeit oder in der Kraft und Fülle der eigenen Empfindung, sondern in der umformenden Zusammenfassung des in seiner Bildungswelt Lebendigen zu einem weit in die Zukunft hinausgreifenden Wunschbild eines christlichen erneuerten und verwandelten Lebens liegt die wesentliche Leistung seines Dichters.”
18 The first English translation, with Latin text, introduction, and commentary by E. H. Zeydel appeared in the spring of 1964 in the Univ. of North Carolina Studies in the Germanic Langs. and Lits. (No. 46). A German edition and translation by W. Trillitzsch and S. Hoyer appeared later in 1964.
19 J. Werner, Beiträge zur Kunde der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (1905), pp. 134 f.; now also in Langosch (n. 10 above), pp. 158 ff. Perhaps st. 1–4 and st. 5–8 were originally separate poems.
20 See the poems of these three poets in the Langosch publications mentioned above in nn. 10 and 15. The controversial question whether the Archipoeta was Germanic or not may be answered conclusively by the poet himself in favor of our assumption. In the poem “Omnia tempus habent” (Langosch, Hymnen und Vagantenlieder, pp. 220 f.), addressed to the German Archbishop Rainald of Cologne, the Archipoeta refers to himself as “nos ... Transmontanos” and addresses the Archbishop as a compatriot—“vir Transmontane.” His ten extant poems, edited by H. Watenphul and H. Krefeld, appeared in 1958 in Heidelberg. The poem “Omnia tempus habent” is No. iii. The poems of Hugh of Orleans were published by W. Meyer: Nachrichten von der kgl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Phil.-hist. Klasse, pp. 73 ff., 113 ff., and 231 ff., 1907. The poems of Walther (Gautier) von Châtillon, from the St. Omer manuscript, were critically edited in two volumes by Karl Strecker (Berlin, 1925, and Heidelberg, 1929).
21 Albert Hauck, Die Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, ii (Leipzig, 1890), 706.
22 “Das mittelalterliche Latein als historisches Phänomen,” in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, vii (1957), 1 ff.
23 Werner Nemitz, “Zur Erklärung der sprachlichen Verstöße Otfrids von Weißenburg,” in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen und Literatur, 84. Band (Tübingen, 1962), 358–432.
24 MGH, Auctorum Antiquissimorum Tomi IV pars prior (Berlin, 1881), p. 2: Praef.
English translation: Among them it was the same if I bellowed coarsely or sang; to them the cackling of a duck is no different from the singing of a swan, for their harp only gives back the strumming sound of barbaric songs, so that in their midst I, not as a musical but rather as a mousey poet, did not sing but chattered my poem, the flower of the song having been gnawed to bits, while they, the listeners, sitting at their maple tankards, pledging each other's health like mad, caroused with Bacchus as their arbiter.
This passage is quoted with omissions and errors by Ehrismann, op. cit., p. 13.
In his Carmina (vii, 8, ll. 61–64), MGH, loc. cit., pp. 162–163, Venantius distinguishes between the “Romanus” and his “lyra” and the “barbarus” with the “harpa.”
25 Geist und Kultur der Sprache (Heidelberg, 1925), p. 57.
26 Erforschung des Mittelalters (Leipzig, 1941), p. 64.
27 Einführung in das lateinische Mittelalter, i (Berlin, 1957), xxviii. Death prevented the completion of the other two planned volumes. The two preceding references (nn. 25 and 26) are also quoted by Kusch.
28 Die römische Literatur. Mit Anhang: Die lateinische Literatur im Übergang vom Altertum zum Mittelalter. 5. ergänzte Auflage (Leipzig, 1954), p. 107.
29 Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, viii, 1, p. 20.
30 On Middle Latin literature in general see the bibliographies in M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (München, 1911–31); F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, 2 vols., 2nd. ed. (Oxford, 1957); and Raby's work mentioned in n. 8 above.