Cellanus (fl. ca. 675-706) was the abbot of Péronne in

Picardy Picardy (; Picard and french: Picardie, , ) is a historical territory and a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it has been part of the new region of Hauts-de-France. It is located in the northern part of France. Hist ...

. At the time, Péronne was known as ''Perrona Scottorum'' on account of its fame as a home to Irish

peregrini In the early Roman Empire, from 30 BC to AD 212, a ''peregrinus'' (Latin: ) was a free provincial subject of the Empire who was not a Roman citizen. ''Peregrini'' constituted the vast majority of the Empire's inhabitants in the 1st and 2nd centur ...

. He was a penfriend and

correspondent A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locat ...

Aldhelm Aldhelm ( ang, Ealdhelm, la, Aldhelmus Malmesberiensis) (c. 63925 May 709), Abbot of Malmesbury Abbey, Bishop of Sherborne, and a writer and scholar of Latin poetry, was born before the middle of the 7th century. He is said to have been the ...

, and it is from a surviving letter that much of our knowledge of Cellanus originates.

Ludwig Traube Ludwig Traube may refer to: *Ludwig Traube (physician) (1818–1876), German physician and co-founder of experimental pathology in Germany *Ludwig Traube (palaeographer) Ludwig Traube (June 19, 1861 – May 19, 1907) was a paleographer and held ...

believed him to be identical with the Abbot Cellanus whose obit is recorded in the Annales Laureshamenses under 706; and was probably the ''Cellan mac Sechnusaigh, sapiens'', recorded in the same year in the

Annals of Ulster The ''Annals of Ulster'' ( ga, Annála Uladh) are annals of medieval Ireland. The entries span the years from 431 AD to 1540 AD. The entries up to 1489 AD were compiled in the late 15th century by the scribe Ruaidhrí Ó Luinín ...

(pp. 96–119, 1900). Traube furthermore attributed two

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

poems to Cellanus (Traube, pp. 105–08, 1900).

Panegyric to Saint Patrick

Cellanus was thought to have been the composer of a

panegyric A panegyric ( or ) is a formal public speech or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing. The original panegyrics were speeches delivered at public events in ancient Athens. Etymology The word originated as a compound of grc, ...

in honour of Saint Patrick after the manner of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

, which was inscribed on the walls of a

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name ...

at Peronne which was dedicated to Patrick. However, Lapidge (1994 pp 110–15,) attributes this to Abbot Boniface. Against this, Hoffmann (2001 p 17) and Howlett (1998 p 38), think the poem is probably

Hiberno-Latin Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned style of literary Latin first used and subsequently spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century. Vocabulary and influence Hiberno-Latin was notab ...

. On this subject, Charles D. Wright states:

References

* ''O Roma nobilis. Philologische Untersuchungen aus dem Mittelalter'',

, pp. 399–395, ''Abhandlungen der königlichen bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften'', Klasse 19, 1894. * ''Perrona Scottorum, ein Beitrag zur Überlieferungsgeschichte und zur Palaeographie des Mittelalters'', pp. 469–538, ''Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen'', ed. Franz Boll,

Paul Lehmann Paul Lehmann (13 July 1884 – 4 January 1964) was a German paleographer and philologist.Memoir by Harry Caplan, Taylor Starck, and B. L. Ullman in ''Speculum'' Vol. 40, No. 3, Jul. 1965, p. 583 Biography Paul Lehmann was the son of busines ...

, and Samuel Brandt,

München Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

1900 (1901, 1920). * ''Autographs of Insular Latin Authors of the Early Middle Ages'', pp. 103–36, Michael Lapidge, in ''Gli autografi medievali. Problemi paleografici e filologici. Atti del convegno di studio della Fondazione Ezio Franceschini. Erice, 25 settembre–2 ottobre 1990'', ed. Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Pinelli, 1994. * ''Insular Acrostics, Celtic Latin Colophons'', pp. 27–44, David Howlett, ''Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies'' 35, 1998. * ''Autographa des früheren Mittelalters.”, pp.1-62, Hartmut Hoffmann, ''Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters'' 17, 2001. * ''Hiberno-Latin Literature to 1169'',

Dáibhí Ó Cróinín Dáibhí Iarla Ó Cróinín (born 29 August 1954) is an Irish historian and authority on Hiberno-Latin texts, noted for his significant mid-1980s discovery in a manuscript in Padua of the "lost" Irish 84-year Easter table. Ó Cróinín was Prof ...

, chapter XI, ''A New History of Ireland'', volume I, 2005.

External links

* Charles D. Wright - https://web.archive.org/web/20120326130829/http://saslc.nd.edu/samples/c/cellanus_of_peronne.pdf * https://web.archive.org/web/20110204000857/http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/4/Grimmer.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Cellanus 7th-century Irish poets 7th-century Irish writers 7th-century Irish abbots Irish expatriates in France Irish Latinists 7th-century Latin writers