The Bern Riddles, also known as Aenigmata Bernensia, Aenigmata Hexasticha or Riddles of Tullius, are a collection of 63 metrical Latin riddles, named after the location of their earliest surviving manuscript, which today is held in Bern (though probably produced in Bourges): the early eighth-century Codex Bernensis 611.[1][2]
Origin
Although it has been suggested that they were composed in late antiquity,[3] most scholars consider that the Bern Riddles were inspired by the c. fourth-century collection of riddles attributed to Symphosius,[4] and date to around the seventh century.
The author of the Bern Riddles is not known but the book might have been written by "a Lombard familiar with Mediterranean flora and food";[5] perhaps in the monastery of Bobbio.[6] According to Archer Taylor, "The Berne Riddles are especially interesting for the author's familiarity with the North Italian landscape and its plants. Whoever he was, we may safely call him the first medieval riddle-master in Italy".[7] However, some scholars see the origin of the Bern Riddles in Anglo-Saxon England, where several early medieval collections of metrical riddles originated, such as the Enigmata of Aldhelm.[8]
Subjects
The subjects of the Bern Riddles are as follows:[9]
1. de olla (bowl)
2. de lucerna (lamp)
3. de sale (salt)
4. de scamno (bench)
5. de mansa (table)
6. de calice ((glass) chalice)
7. de uesica (air-bubble)
8. de ouo (egg)
9. de mola (millstone)
10. de scala (ladder)
11. de naue (ship)
12. de grano (grain of corn)
13. de uite (grapevine)
14. de oliua (olive)
15. de palma (palm-tree)
16. de cedride (cedar-berry)
17. de cribro (sieve)
18. de scopa (broom)
19. de cera (wax tablet)
20. de melle (honey)
21. de ape (bee)
22. de oue (sheep)
23. de ignis scintilla (fire-spark)
24. de membrana (parchment)
25. de litteris (letters)
26. de sinapi (mustard)
27. de papiro ((papyrus)-paper)
28. de serico (silkworm)
29. de speculo (mirror)
30. de pisce (fish)
31. de nympha (siphon)
32. de spongia (sponge)
33. de uiola (violet)
34. de rosa (rose)
35. de liliis (lilies)
36. de croco (saffron)
37. de pipere (pepper)
38. de glacie (ice)
39. de hedera (ivy)
40. de muscipula (mousetrap)
41. de uento (wind)
42. de glacie (ice)
43. de uermis bombycibus sericas uestes formantibus (silkworms)
44. de margarita (pearl)
45. de terra (earth)
46. de pistillo (pestle)
47. de cochlea (snail-shell)
48. de castanea (chestnut)
49. de pluuia (rain)
50. de uino (wine)
50a. de charta (wood-pulp paper)
51. de alio (garlic)
52. de rosa (rose)
53. de trutina (weighing-scales)
54. de insubulo (weaving-loom)
55. de sole (sun)
56. de sole (sun)
57. de sole (sun)
58. de luna (moon)
59. de luna (moon)
60. de caelo (sky)
61. de umbra (shadow)
62. de stellis (stars)
63. de uino (wine)
Examples
LI. De alio.
Multiplici ueste natus de matre productor
Nec habere corpus possum, si uestem amitto.
Meos, unde nasco, in uentre fero parentes;
Viuo nam sepultus, uitam et inde resumo.
Superis eductus nec umquam crescere possum,
Dum natura caput facit succedere plantis.[9]: 598
51. Garlic.
I am brought forth, born from my mother, with many-layered clothing;
I cannot have a body if I lose my clothing.
I carry my parents, from whom I am born, in my womb/stomach;
I live though interred, and from that place I resume my life.
I can never grow up, nurtured, to a great height,
since Nature makes my head go beneath my shoots/the soles of my feet.
LII. De rosa.
Mollis ego duro de corde genero natos;
In conceptu numquam amplexu uiri delector.
Sed dum infra meis concrescunt fili latebris,
Meum quisque nascens disrumpit uulnere corpus.
Postquam decorato uelantes tegmine matrem
Saepe delicati frangunt acumine fortes.[9]: 599
52. Rose.
Soft as I am, I produce sons from my hard heart;
in conceiving I am never delighted by the embrace of a man.
But as my sons grow strong beneath my hiding-places,
each ruptures my body with a wound as it is born.
Thereafter, covering their mother with an ornate blanket,
the weak often break the strong with a sharp point.
'Aenigmata in Dei nomine Tullii seu aenigmata quaestionum artis rhetoricae [aenigmata "bernensia"]', ed. by Fr. Glorie, trans. by Karl J. Minst, in Tatuini omnia opera, Variae collectiones aenigmatum merovingicae aetatis, Anonymus de dubiis nominibus, Corpus christianorum: series latina, 133-133a, 2 vols (Turnholt: Brepols, 1968), II 541–610.
Strecker, Karl (ed). “Aenigmata Hexasticha.” MGH: Poetae Latini aevi Carolingi, Vol. 4.2; Berlin, 1914. pp. 732-759.
^David Ganz, 'In the Circle of the Bishop of Bourges: Bern 611 and Late Merovingian Culture], in East and West in the Early Middle Ages: The Merovingian Kingdoms in Mediterranean Perspective, ed. by Stefan Esders, Yaniv Fox, Yitzhak Hen and Laury Sarti (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 265-80; doi:10.1017/9781316941072.018.
^Finch, Chauncey E.; Barb, Lat (1973). "and Newberry Case MS f 11'". Manuscripta. 17: 3–11. doi:10.1484/J.MSS.3.726.
^Finch, Chauncey E. (1967). "Codex Vat. Barb. Lat. 721 as a Source for the Riddles of Symphosius". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 98: 173–79. doi:10.2307/2935872. JSTOR2935872.
^Dieter Bitterli, Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), p. 22.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), p. 58.
^Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), p. 59.
^ abKlein, Thomas (2019). "Pater Occultus: The Latin Bern Riddles and Their Place in Early Medieval Riddling". Neophilologus. 103 (3): 399–417. doi:10.1007/s11061-018-9586-4. S2CID166052153.
^ abc'Aenigmata in Dei nomine Tullii seu aenigmata quaestionum artis rhetoricae [aenigmata "bernensia"]', ed. by Fr. Glorie, trans. by Karl J. Minst, in Tatuini omnia opera, Variae collectiones aenigmatum merovingicae aetatis, Anonymus de dubiis nominibus, Corpus christianorum: series latina, 133-133a, 2 vols (Turnholt: Brepols, 1968), II 541-610.
^Chauncey E. Finch, 'The Bern Riddles in Codex Vat. Reg. Lat. 1553', Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, 92 (1961), 145-55 (p. 145); https://www.jstor.org/stable/283806.
Further reading
Neville Mogford, 'The Moon and Stars in the Bern and Eusebius Riddles', in Riddles at Work in the Early Medieval Tradition: Words, Ideas, Interactions, ed. by Megan Cavell and Jennifer Neville (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 230–46 ISBN9781526133724, doi:10.7765/9781526133724.00028.