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The ''Enigmata Eusebii'' (riddles of Eusebius) are a collection of sixty Latin, hexametrical riddles composed in early medieval England, probably in the eighth century.
The ''Enigmata Eusebii'' (riddles of Eusebius) are a collection of sixty Latin, hexametrical riddles composed in early medieval England, probably in the eighth century.
Example
An example of Eusebius's work is enigma 42, on the dragon:Authorship
The manuscripts of the riddles name the author as Eusebius. This person has traditionally been identified asHwætberht
Hwaetberht (died 740s) was abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory, where he had served as a monk.
He was elected to succeed Abbot Ceolfrith in 716 or 717 when Ceolfrith set off on a pilgrimage to Rome. Bede reports that Hwaetberht had himself made ...
, the Abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory, based on Bede's identification of Hwætberht with the cognomen of 'Eusebius' in his ''Commentary on I Samuel''. However, the identification with Hwætberht has been questioned by several scholars, including Emily V Thornbury, who has suggested that a Kentish author might be likely.
Origins
The ''Enigmata Eusebii'' seem to have been composed to expand on the fortyriddles of Tatwine
Tatwine ( – 30 July 734) was the tenth Archbishop of Canterbury from 731 to 734. Prior to becoming archbishop, he was a monk and abbot of a Benedictine monastery. Besides his ecclesiastical career, Tatwine was a writer, and riddles he compo ...
, a collection composed by the eighth-century Mercian priest and archbishop Tatwine
Tatwine ( – 30 July 734) was the tenth Archbishop of Canterbury from 731 to 734. Prior to becoming archbishop, he was a monk and abbot of a Benedictine monastery. Besides his ecclesiastical career, Tatwine was a writer, and riddles he compo ...
, perhaps specifically to bring their number up to one hundred: the riddles of Tatwine and Eusebius both survive in the same two manuscripts, and in both the riddles of Eusebius are alongside Tatwine's. These are the early 11th-century London, British Library, Royal 12.Cxxiii (fols. 121v-7r) and the mid-11th-century Cambridge, University Library, Gg.5.35 (fols. 374v-77v). Both of these collections were almost certainly inspired by the slightly earlier riddles of Aldhelm
The ''Epistola ad Acircium, sive Liber de septenario, et de metris, aenigmatibus ac pedum regulis'' ('letter to Acircius, or the book on sevens, and on metres, riddles, and the regulation of poetic feet') is a Latin treatise by the West-Saxon sch ...
, another collection of one hundred Latin riddles. Many of Eusebius's riddles (and his predecessors') are based on the encyclopaedic writing of Isidore of Seville.
Contents
Riddles 1-4 of Eusebius's riddles are on the chain of being, from God to Man, 5-11 mostly on cosmological phenomena, 12-29 a miscellaneous collection mostly of objects, 30-36 mostly on writing, and 37-60 on animals.Mercedes Salvador-Bello, 'Patterns of Compilation in Anglo-Latin ''Enigmata'' and the Evidence of A Source-Collection in Riddles 1-40 of the ''Exeter Book'', ''Viator'', 43 (2012), 339–374 (p. 373-74). 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.102554. The following is a complete list.'Aenigmata Evsebii', ed. by Fr. Glorie, trans. by Erika von Erhardt-Seebold, in ''Tatuini omnia opera, Variae collectiones aenigmatum merovingicae aetatis, Anonymus de dubiis nominibus'', Corpus christianorum: series latina, 133-133a, 2 vols (Turnholt: Brepols, 1968), I 209-71.References
{{reflist Riddles Latin poetry