Anon Eccl 1^VII

Ad te, care ave, mitto;
audi nostrum carmen laudis;
factus esto fratrum recte
flore decus seniorum.
Presta, summe Pater, castam
plene fidem Audoeno,
†aminaui† ut tu, Numen,
isto uiro prebuisti.

Mitto ad te, care ave; audi nostrum carmen laudis; factus recte esto flore decus seniorum fratrum. Presta, summe Pater, castam fidem plene Audoeno, ut tu, Numen, prebuisti isto uiro †aminaui†.

I send [this] to you, dear grandsire; hear our song of praise; flowering, may you be rightly made a splendour of the senior brethren. Bestow, Highest Father, spotless faith abundantly upon Audoenus, just as you, Godhead, have granted to that man ‘aminaui’.

Mss: 732b(5rb marg) (Enc)

Editions: AÍ III, 64.

Context: The st. is inserted beside a didactic poem in Lat. hexameters, composed of proverbs common in Western European poetry of C12-13th. The accompanying marginalia consist of disconnected notes and doggerel sts on castration, Lat. lexis and the Chimera of classical myth.

Notes: [1] ave ‘grandsire’: The vocative sg. of avus rather than the salutation ave ‘hail’. The noun seems to function as an honorific (cf. Anon Eccl 2/5), possibly reflecting an equation with Aramaic abba ‘father’, which was commonly used in the medieval Church. This peculiar use of avus may have been promoted by the existence of the ON cognate afi ‘grandfather, forebear; man’, which has a broader application than the more precise Lat. term. — [1] mitto ‘I send’: Alternatively, ‘I dedicate’. The object ‘this’ is implicit. — [3-4]: Kålund translates these ll. du er bleven en pryd for de ældre brødre af den rette art ‘you have become an ornament for the older brothers of upright character’ (AÍ III, 64 n. 4). However, he misconstrues flore as an anomalous fem. gen. sg. noun modified by recte (i.e. florae rectae), which he translates without explanation as af den rette art ‘of upright character’. Recte must be read not as an adj. but as the adv. ‘rightly’. Flore is certainly the ablative of flos ‘flower, flowering’, and identifies the dedicatee’s personal advancement or physical maturity as the attendant circumstance of the honoured status wished upon him by the poet. — [3] factus esto ‘may you be made’: Esto appears to be the 2nd pers. sg. future imp. of esse ‘to be’, but might also be interpreted as the more common 3rd pers. sg. ‘let him be’, anticipating the prayer of the second helmingr. Kålund, on the advice of M. C. Gertz, emended to es tu (auxiliary + 2nd pers. pron.), producing a 2nd pers. perf. passive construction ‘you have been made’ (AÍ III, 64). This accords with his interpretation of the st. as an expression of praise for some honour already received by the dedicatee, but the pron. tu is syntactically superfluous. Cf. Anon Eccl 2/1 esto purus. — [4] presta ‘bestow’: = praesta. — [5-6]: The poet beseeches God to bestow faith upon ‘Audoenus’ (ON Auðunn). Kålund takes these ll. to refer to the poem’s intended recipient, perhaps Auðunn Þorbergsson (AÍ III, 64 n. 4), but it is conceivable that Audoenus is the name of the poet himself, who beseeches God for a share of the grace that has already been granted to the unidentified recipient of his praise. — [6] Audoeno ‘Auðunn’: The Lat. form of the name is properly pronounced Audoꝛnus, with four syllables, so the dat. sg. used here satisfies the octosyllabic hrynhent l. — [7] †aminaui†: An anomalous form, possibly a scribal corruption. Kålund and Gertz emended to anime (= animae) vim ‘power of the soul’ (AÍ III, 64); cf. ON sáluafli. The resultant trisyllable anime is awkward metrically, but if it is accepted, the st. acquires a specific learned frame of reference in the medieval theology of the soul. In his treatise De quantitate animae ‘The Magnitude of the Soul’, S. Augustine lists seven degrees or levels of animae vis through which humans may progress, culminating in an ideal state of contemplation of the divine (Augustinus Hipponensis, De quantitate animae ch. 33, cols 1073-7). The latter stages are only accessible to those with adequate faith, the basis of true Christian religious practice, through which the sinful soul may achieve reconciliation with God (ch. 36, cols 1079-80). In the context of the Lat. st., it might thus follow that while God has granted the dedicatee the innate power of the soul shared by all humanity, it is appropriate for the poet to wish upon him the vital gift of spotless faith through which he may reach the higher levels of spiritual advancement. An alternative interpretation of the ms. reading might take aminaui as a medieval morphological variant of aminui, passive inf. of Lat. a(d)minuere (ad + minuere ‘to diminish, make smaller’), dependent upon prebuisti ‘you have granted’. A contextually appropriate interpretation of this form as a hypothetical deponent verb ‘to be humble’ would be unparalleled, but not impossible. This reading would maintain the trochaic rhythm of the st., and the line-initial position of the first rhyming element. The sense of ll. 7-8 would then be ‘just as you, Godhead, have granted to that man to be humble’ (a suggestion made by Gottskálk Þ. Jensson, by email, July 2005). The only other solution that would preserve the metrical pattern would be to emend the text more drastically, supplying, for instance, a dependent inf. such as eminere ‘to excel, be pre-eminent’, or a direct object, such as aminiclum, a syncopated variant of the n. noun adminiculum ‘aid, support’. — [8] prebuisti ‘you have granted’: = praebuisti.

References

1. Bibliography
2. AÍ = Kålund, Kristian and Natanael Beckman. 1908-18. Alfræði íslenzk: Islandsk encyklopædisk litteratur. 3 vols. SUGNL 37, 41 and 45. Copenhagen: Møller.
3. Internal references
4. Jonathan Grove (ed.) 2007, ‘Anonymous Poems, Stanzas Addressed to Fellow Ecclesiastics 2’ in Margaret Clunies Ross (ed.), Poetry on Christian Subjects. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 474-5.