Serpentine verse
An enquiry to “The Academy” literary magazine in 1904 (30th April, p. 502) concerning a memorial with an indecipherable inscription in St. Dunstan-in-the-East, now a public garden after the church was destroyed in the Blitz:
A variant of the same, also from “The Academy” (17th September 1904, p. 203) this time set out by Percy Selver (if this (Percy) Paul Selver, at the age of 16) to make the solution to the riddle clear:
The top and bottom lines share the word-endings in the middle line, so this one reads, Quos anguis dirus tristi dulcedine pavit,/ Hos sanguis mirus Christi mulcedine lavit, two dactylic hexameters meaning, “Whom the dreadful serpent fed with baneful sweetness,/ these the miraculous blood of Christ has bathed with consolation.”
And the original in St Dunstan’s reads, Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit,/ Hos sanguis Christi miro tum munere lavit, “Whom the serpent laid low with grim and dreadful wound,/ These thereafter the blood of Christ has bathed with its miraculous gift.”
These might be described as two lines bound together by the ultimate in rhyming systems. Every single word rhymes with its counterpart in the other line. But when laid out as they were at St Dunstan’s, the relationship between the lines is more interesting, I think, and theologically meaningful. The fall of man described in the first line is bound up with, is actually inseparable from, the redemption described in the second, and vice versa. It makes me think of George Herbert’s perfect, alliterative lyric expressing the felix culpa in “Easter Wings”, “Then shall the fall further the flight in me.”
The origins of this Latin couplet seem pretty obscure to me, although having spent a sum total of two hours investigating this phenomenon, I’m prepared to be told they’re actually as clear as clear can be. Francesco Pipini (13-14th century), at Chronicon 1.47 (Muratori IX.628) attributes the verses to Hugh Primas (12th century), and presents them as an encapsulation of the Old and New Testaments achieved in the shortest possible space–which I think, in my theologically untutored way, amounts from a Christian perspective to the same principle as addressed in the last paragraph, fall and redemption. Pipini also records that these intertwined lines were called versus intercalares, “intercalary verses”, which I like.
Pipini offers yet another variation, Quos anguis tristi virus mulcedine pavit,/ Hos sanguis Christi mirus dulcedine lavit, “Whom the serpent’s venom fed with baneful temptation,/ These the miraculous blood of Christ has bathed in sweetness.” Other accounts (e.g. this one, and obliquely this one) of the St. Dunstan version, I should say, locate it in another City church hit during the Blitz, St. Anne and St. Agnes on Gresham Street.
Your best post yet, I think, bursting with poetry. Following the links, I got a wonderful picture of life among the ruins. The church of St Dunstan bombed in WW2, leaving only Wren’s steeple and the tower, converted into a garden: a nice emblem of a dead language put to new uses, as in a Latin hexameter couplet deconstructed and redeveloped in a less linear, more organic form. Herbert’s splendid poem, another organic format. I might even buy Croke’s exotic book. Thanks.
Thank you!
Latin hexameters from the 12th century share a lot of features with older Persian and Arabic qasidas (long, rhymed odes). Versus cristati and leonine verse, as well as versus intercalares, the medieval Latin forms of rhymes resemble the Persian tarsi. Qasidas maintain a consistent end rhyme throughout the entire poem. In the first line, the first hemistich (half-line) ends with the same rhyme as the end of the full line, setting the rhyming pattern for the rest of the poem—almost like a proto-versus cristati/intercalares.
Take this verse from a qasida by Qiwami of Ganja (Nizami Ganjavi’s brother):
Ay falak-rá hawá-yi qadr-i-tu bár
Wáy malak-rá thaná-yi ṣadr-i-tu kár!
“O heaven, whose very weight is lifted by your honor,
And O angels, whose sole task is to praise your exalted rank!”
The relationship with inscriptions like the ones at St Dunstan/Saint Anne’s Aldersgate, and the inscription at Champery is striking:
Quos anguis tristi diro cum vulnere stravit,
Hos sanguis Christi miro tum munere lavit.
“Those whom a serpent struck with a harsh, dreadful fate,
Christ’s blood wondrously washed, healing their state.”
English example:
O love who liest on my breast so light,
O dove who fliest to thy nest at night!
Other English examples can be found in English poetry, like in The Ingoldsby Legends.
I think Persian and Arabic qasidas were an influence on medieval Latin poetry in its use of elaborate rhyme and wordplay. Arabic poetry reached a peak in Abbasid Iraq in the 8th century when al-Farahidi wrote ‘lm al-‘Urudh (the science of meters). After the 10th century, Iranians developed the qasida immensely. Nasir Khusraw, for example, used it extensively for philosophical/theological purposes; Ibn Sina did the same. The diwans (collected works of a poet) were circulated in al-Andalus during that time.
Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and 12th century Latin poetry display similarities to Islamic poetry especially rhyme. Andalusian poets (e.g., Ibn Quzman) and their zajals (colloquial sung poems) provided models for troubadour poetry and for some Old French lyrics and carols. Maybe the sharing went both ways.
Dactylic hexameter (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil’s Aeneid) is undeniably a western tradition. However, rhyming is not. It’s possible that the western traditions of meter and poetic verse influenced Arabic/Persian poetry. According to Ibn Sana al-Mulk (13th century), one group of the poems in circulation in al-Andalus was in accordance with the standard meters as set by al-Farahidi, but a second group was in “neglected and unusual meters.” These innovations in meter and rhyme, could speak to a non-Arabic origin, either a Celtic or Romance one, I’d imagine.
If it did come to England from the Islamic world, we can be pretty confident that it got there through the Normans (crusades, Sicily, and troubadors). The arrow incident, and the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni give us some clues. So the story goes: Robert Curthose, the eldest son of William the Conqueror, was wounded by a poisoned arrow during the First Crusade, at the siege of Jerusalem, which later festered into a fistula. Upon arriving at Salerno in 1100, he sought the help of the Salernitan physicians. They advised that the wound required regular suction (by mouth!) of the poison, which Robert, out of concern for others’ safety, refused to permit. Moved by love and devotion, his new wife, Sibylla of Conversana, secretly performed this act while he slept. (I mean… It’s best not to think about it.) This act did not harm her, and Robert recovered.
In gratitude, the Salernitan physicians compiled the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni, a medical poem written in 1101, to guide him in preserving his health, beginning with the famous opening line:
Anglorum regi scripsit tota schola Salerni
“The whole school of Salerno writes to the King of the English.”
The Salernitans condensed their medical wisdom into Latin rhyming verse, making it memorable and easy to recite. Just like Avicenna/Ibn Sina did when he created his 1326 verse poem Al-Urjuzah Fi Al-Tibb, a poetic summary of his “The Canon of Medicine.” The Regimen gained immense popularity, being translated and cited by physicians across Europe.
The Regimen provided guidelines on diet, exercise, and hygiene, making medical advice accessible. An example of a recommendation for fistula treatment (an important topic in the Regimen as it afflicted the king of England) included a plaster made of arsenic, sulfur, lime, and soap, humorously described by Philemon Holland (1552–1637), the translator general of his time:
“These foure, by way of Playster, Are able any fistula to maister.”
He translated it into iambic tetrameter. Interestingly, the same meter was used to translate Ambrosian hymns in iambic dimeter from Latin, like this felix culpa example: “What more sublime can be this, / that every sin end in bliss.”
John of Milan was the named compiler of the Regimen Sanitatis Salerni in a manuscript found by Zacharius Sylvius in 1648. John, allegedly, edited the code after the death of his mentor, Constantinus Africanus, who had brought medical knowledge from the Islamic world to Europe. The knowledge transfer to England (and Europe broadly) was significant, and Salerno’s terminology, such as referring to medicine as “physica,” influenced medical practices in England and elsewhere through these poems.
The Salernitan tradition of versifying medical advice was thought to be especially appealing to the Normans, known for their fondness of poetry. Even Rollo, the Norman leader, had a metrical epitaph:
Dux Normanorum cunctorum norma bonorum
Rollo ferus fortis quem gens Normannica mortis
Invocat articulo loco jacet in tumulo.
“The Duke of all the Normans, the standard of the good,
Rollo, fierce and strong, whom the Norman people call upon
In the moment of death, lies buried in this tomb.”
It’s written in dactylic hexameter with leonine verses, but not versus intercalares. It vaguely resembles Arabic Saj’ rhymed prose, but I don’t have an exact pre-cursor.
Pre-Islamic Arabic Saj’ (Al-A’sha):
Laylī dāmisun wa-ṭ-ṭarīqu nākibun,
wa-l-qalbu khāfiqun wa-d-dam‘u sākibun.
“My night is dark, the road is crooked,
the heart is trembling, and tears are flowing.”
The epitaph of Roger, the (Norman) duke of Sicily, who died in 1101 also had a rhyming epitaph:
Linquens teirenas—migravit dux ad amoenas
Rogerius sedes,—nam coeli detinet aedes.
This is also dactylic hexameter with leonine verse.
Interestingly, we’re told (I don’t remember by who) that early American doctors were still reciting the Regimen’s medical poems and combining the verse about sage:
Cur moriatur homo, cui salvia crescit in horto?
“Why should a man die while sage grows in his garden?”
…with the Latin couplet from your inscription:
Quos anguis dirus tristi mulcedine pavit,
Hos sanguis mirus Christi dulcedine lavit.
The serpent couplet is in dactylic hexameter and has versus intercalares. However, the rhyme from the Regimen about sage is not a perfect match for any classical meter like dactylic hexameter, which may imply it was a translation or at least borrowed from the Islamic tradition of poetry. (I’m convinced that the longer I research this, the more I’ll discover that I’m absolutely wrong and it’s actually from Celtic or somesuch thing. :))
Jewish poets wrote in Arabic with typical Arabic meters at that time, so we can (most probably) rule them out as having a unique influence. Although there are some interesting bits of poetry in Hebrew that would be interesting to investigate further:
Song of Solomon 2:7 & 3:5 (lines restructured for rhyming purposes):
Hishba‘ti etkhem / b’not Yerushalayim
bi-tzva’ot / o b’aylot
ha-sadeh im ta‘iru / v’im t’or’ru
et ha-ahavah / ‘ad she-teḥpatz
Sources seem to agree that your inscription was written by Hugh Primas. However, there is also a long religiously themed poem of about 3,000 lines, De Contemptu Mundi, written by Bernard of Morlaix (of Cluny) about 1140. The meter of his poem is, in J. M. Neale’s words, “Dactylic hexameter, divided into three parts, between which a caesura is inadmissible. The hexameter has a tailed rhyme, and feminine leonine rhyme between the two first clauses.” Neale (his translator) speaks of the “majestic sweetness” of the meter, and Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886), who was just as qualified to judge it, comments on its “awkwardness and repulsiveness.” So, it’s a matter of taste, I suppose. 🙂
I’ll leave you with another example of the exact same type of poem as yours but with leonine verse:
pit rem nam pit rem
Qui ca uxo poe ca atque dolo
ret re na ret re.
Page 178 also mentions a word puzzle inscription in Lamspringe, Germany published in “London Magazine” in 1757.
The Galaxy, William Conant Church (Editor), George Wakeman (Contributor), 1866
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Galaxy/Ji8ZAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Quos+anguis&pg=PA178&printsec=frontcover
Thanks for all of this, which is extremely interesting. I’ll study it properly tomorrow. The sage line is also a hexameter, I think.
You might be right; the sage line might be dactylic hexameter… but I can’t get it to fit quite right without bending the rules of Latin verse (that I’m aware of). I broke it down like this:
Cur mo-ri-a-tur ho-mo
cui sal-vi-a cre-scit in hor-to
The stress on “moriatur” falls irregularly across the syllables and “in horto” or “-to” isn’t a spondeee or trochee. It also has too many syllables (I think) because syllable length is determined by vowel quantity and position, and it has ambiguities (at least to me) regarding which syllables are long or short.
Did you break it up like this?
Cur mo (– –) ri-a-tur (– ᴜ ᴜ) ho-mo (– –) /
cui sal (– –)vi-a cre (– ᴜ ᴜ) scit in hor (– ᴜ ᴜ) to (?)
Or maybe like this? 😂
Cur mo-ri-a- (– ᴜ ᴜ) tur ho-mo (– –)
cui sal-vi-a (– ᴜ ᴜ) cre-scit (– –) in hor-to (– ᴜ ᴜ) (Ending with a dactyl?)
The problems for me boil down to inconsistent feet, syllable length, and the final foot issue, but maybe I’m dividing the vowels incorrectly.
You are absolutely right, it is a hexameter! You said “hexameter” not “dactylic hexameter.” It is indeed a “loose hexameter” or “rhythmic hexameter,” if you will. If those are not technical terms, they should be. 😀 I went through the first few pages of the Regimen. Turns out, I could have just scrolled up and reread what you said and it would have saved me some time, but you’ll be happy to know that you are correct– it *generally* attempts to *loosely* follow a hexameter. lol
“Anglorum regi scripsit scola tota Salerni”
14 syllables
Anglo- (– ᴜ) (part of a spondee?)
rum re- (ᴜ –) (a dactyl)
gi scrip- (– –) (a spondee)
sit sco- (– ᴜ) (a trochee)
la to- (ᴜ ᴜ) (? not fitting hexameter perfectly)
ta Sa-ler-ni (– ᴜ ᴜ) (a dactyl)
“Si vis incolumem, si vis te reddere sanum”
15 syllables
Attempting to divide this into six feet:
Si vis (– –)(a spondee)
in-co- (ᴜ ᴜ) (? not fitting hexameter perfectly)
lu-mem (– –) (a spondee)
si vis (– –) (another spondee)
te red- (– ᴜ)(a trochee)
de-re sa-num (ᴜ ᴜ –) (a reversed dactyl?)
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-9414702-bk
(Page 1 starts on page 7.)
Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum necnon Magistri Arnoldi de Nova Villa
(“The Regimen of Health of Salerno, along with Master Arnold of Villanova”)
Feliciter incipit
(“Happily it begins”)
Anglorum regi scripsit scola tota Salerni:
(“The whole school of Salerno wrote to the King of the English:”)
Si vis incolumem, si vis te reddere sanum:
(“If you wish to be healthy, if you want to become sound:”)
Curas tolle graves, irasci crede profanum.
(“Cast off heavy worries; believe that anger is unholy.”)
Parce mero, cenato parum, non sit tibi vanum
(“Be sparing with wine, dine lightly, and let it not seem vain”)
Surgere post epulas; somnum fuge meridianum.
(“To rise after meals; avoid the midday nap.”)
Ad mictum retine, nec aspira fortiter annu.
(“Do not retain urine; do not exhale forcefully.”)
Haec bene si serves, tu longo tempore vives.
(“If you observe these rules well, you will live a long time.”)
Iste est libellus editus a doctoribus Salernitanis,
(“This is the little book issued by the doctors of Salerno,”)
in quo inscribuntur multa et diversa pro conservatione sanitatis humanae.
(“in which many and various guidelines are inscribed for the preservation of human health.”)
Et totus est liber ad utilitatem regis Angliae.
(“And the whole book is for the benefit of the King of England.”)
Et in tertio lecto auctor ponit octo nocumenta generalia
(“And in the third reading, the author presents eight general harms”)
pro conservatione sanitatis, de quibus postea specialiter per ordinem determinabit.
(“for the preservation of health, which he will later explain specifically in order.”)
Primum ergo documentum est quod homo sanus, volens vivere,
(“The first rule, therefore, is that a healthy person, wishing to live,”)
debet ab eo removere graves curas.
(“should remove heavy worries from himself.”)
Nam curae exsiccant corpora, ex quo tristificant spiritus vitales.
(“For worries dry up the body, and as a result, sadden the vital spirits.”)
Modo spiritus tristes exsiccant ossa.
(“Sad spirits dry out the bones.”)
Documentum ergo complendum est tristitia,
(“The rule must be followed to avoid sadness,”)
quae similiter corpora exsiccat et infrigidat, macerant et emaciat:
(“which similarly dries and cools the body, makes it thin and emaciated;”)
inducunt cor, contrahunt spiritum, arctant.
(“they constrict the heart, weaken, and tighten the spirit.”)
Indignationem excitat; ratione triplicat, ingenium acutum secando.
(“Anger excites; it confounds reason, cutting sharp wit.”)
Memoriam obtundunt, eximio rerum memoriam adimunt.
(“They dull memory and deprive one of the recollection of things.”)
Denique aliqui pingues et carnosi sunt, spiritu atque mobiles.
Thanks again! In dactylic hexameters, the length or shortness of a syllable is decided either by the natural length of the vowel in a syllable or by whether or not the syllable is closed by a consonant. In effect, if any vowel or diphthong is followed by two consonants, that syllable is long, so for instance in
Anglorum regi scripsit scola tota Salerni
the natural lengths are
Anglōrum rēgī scrīpsit scola tōta Salernī
and so the first “a” is naturally short, but the syllable is long because of the following consonants. The second “i” of scrīpsit is naturally short but again the syllable is long because of the following consonants; same with the “e” of Salerni. So it’s a perfectly good classical hexameter:
_ _ /_ _/ _ _ /_ u u/ _ u u/ _ _
I was searching for anything Nietzsche may have written about the Germanic future tense and instead found very interesting notes written by him about Greek and Latin meter. It was of special interest to him.; he filled 4 notebooks on the subject. Unfortunately, they were not published, but what I did read by him in the paper below is very interesting.
Halporn, James W. “Nietzsche: On the Theory of Quantitative Rhythm.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 6, no. 2 (1967): 233–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163072.
Page 128. https://books.google.com/books?id=nKV13A0lOokC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=rhythm%20in%20the%20Greek%20and%20Roman&f=false
I was searching for anything Nietzsche may have written about the Germanic future tense and instead found very interesting notes written by him about Greek and Latin meter. It was of special interest to him.; he filled 4 notebooks on the subject. Unfortunately, they were not published, but what I did read by him in the paper below is very interesting.
Halporn, James W. “Nietzsche: On the Theory of Quantitative Rhythm.” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics 6, no. 2 (1967): 233–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20163072.
Page 128. https://books.google.com/books?id=nKV13A0lOokC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=rhythm%20in%20the%20Greek%20and%20Roman&f=false
Thank you!