Gaude quod primam te sors mihi fecit amicam. Me turbat graviter qui crebro defluit ymber, nam vereor nostris hunc vindictam dare culpis.
Rejoice, for fate has made you my first sweetheart! The rain that comes down so often disturbs me greatly, for I fear it takes vengeance for our transgressions.
The commentaries suggest possible hidden meanings for the word imber (“rain”): that it refers to the river Regen (Regen = “rain” in German) which flows into the Danube at Regensburg (Traill/Haynes, p. 162); or that it stands for (part of) the name of a female authority figure at the correspondent’s monastery (like Regintrud or Reinhild). Whether we read it in this way or not, it is the first of numerous poems in the exchange which hint at actual physical meetings and assignations between correspondents. Paravicini is skeptical that any such meetings ever took place (1979, pp. 10-11). Newman writes the following, about the Regensburg community and a few other similar exchanges:
I will consider such poetry as the artefact of an emotional community, one in which learning Latin, imitating Ovid, and cultivating a kind of high-minded but flirtatious cross-gender friendship went hand in hand. This emotional community was a fragile one, not sustainable over the long term, because it made such outrageously high demands. Its elite members were required to maintain their vowed chastity or virginity, devote their lives to the service of God, attest to the disinterested purity of their friendships, and at the same time engage in a playful and competitive literary game whose very essence was the composition of amorous verse. This was hard enough for young and middle-aged clerics. Many of them were rhetorically bisexual, addressing love poems to boys as well as women, and if self discipline failed them [male clerics], they could break their vows of chastity without getting caught. But of girls and young women–cloistered, at risk of pregnancy, and at even greater risk of damaging their vitally important fama, their reputation for virtue–the game was an emotional high-wire act that may have had more casualties than we know. (2016, p. xvi-xvii)
Corrige versiculos tibi quos presento, magister, Nam tua verba mihi reputo pro lumine Verbi, Sed nimium doleo, quia preponas mihi Bertham.
Correct the little verses that I present to you, Master, for I consider your words as the light of the Word. But it grieves me deeply that you prefer Bertha to me.
Here I include the markings separating the poems from each other in the manuscript:
If taken at face value, the second line suggests that the master was also giving instruction of a religious nature to the women. There is almost no evidence of this in the surviving correspondence, least of all in the male-authored poems, which are entirely secular in nature—and many rather risqué, as we have seen. Alternately, the woman is placing her teacher’s secular artes-instruction (on love specifically? ) on the same level as the Word of God. There are examples of this kind of thing throughout later courtly poetry. Two that come to mind are Gottfried von Strassburg’s equation of the story of Tristan & Isolde to the Christian Eucharist (Tristan, lines 243-240), and the German minnesinger Reinmar’s claim that his chosen lady is as meaningful to him as “Easter day.”
Traill/Haynes (2021 p. 161) consider these verses just regular hexameters, not leonines (as we saw here). Here is how I scan them:
The second one looks decently leonine to me, so perhaps this is indeed the intended meter and it’s in this that the woman wishes corrections? I believe the third verse could be improved by switching the word order of the first half-line: sed doleo nimium, allowing nimium to rhyme with Bertham. But this is above my pay-grade as a Germanist and I’m not sure. Also, I am unsure about the vowel quantity of presento in line 1. In classical Latin this would be praesento, with the first syllable with a diphthong (ae) long by nature, so it would be a mistake to assign it a short value as the student does (note preponas in line 3, where the first syllable is long in keeping with the classical form praeponare). But perhaps pre- had lost its long-by-nature nature at this point? I’m sure a medieval Latinist would know. Maybe I’ll ask the famous Danuta Shanzer, with whom I studied medieval Latin at Cornell many years ago!
Just as that letter wishes to be written to me, so yours does to you!
May your letter wish to be written to me, even as mine to you. (Dronke)
Your letter longs to be written to me, as does this one of mine to you. (Traill/Haynes)
This is a delightfully clever line, where singular littera stands for both epistles, and the two verbs optat and scribi, the first and last words, govern both. This grammatic-prosodic play expresses the unity of the two correspondents, despite their distance—for which the caesura is also a figure. Below is how I believe Traill/Haynes and Dronke are construing the grammar. ista littera means “this letter of mine to you,” and tua littera means “your letter to me”:
I would like to suggest a different reading. In classical Latin, iste means “that one near to you,” i.e., to the person addressed. Therefore, I would read ista littera as “your letter” in the sense of “that letter of yours for me,” and tua littera as “my letter” in the sense of “the letter intended for you.” Thus:
In this interpretation, the letters are sent across the caesura. The overall form also consists of three nested “arcs” of reference or movement, including a sort of embrace between the writers!
It may even be that these two readings are simultaneously possible and that a certain confusion between “mine” and “thine” is intended here, as part of the play of identity and unity.
Hunc mihi Mercurius florem dedit ingeniosus, Quo possim viciis precibusque resistere fedis. Ius igitur nullus retinet de me quoque stultus. Quos incesta iuvant, consortia nostra relinquant. Qui nostris longe sociis discordat ab ore, (5) In quorum numero si converseris, abesto. Vix admittantur qui rebus mille probantur, Sed tamen hos modice complectimur atque modeste. Denique quîs virtus nostrum vult credere pignus, Illos extrema curat bene fingere lima/luna, (10) Ut sermone bono clam crescant atque perito, Moribus egregiis sint undique rite politis. Ergo quam venias prius ad nos, instrue pennas, Si quas imposuit ratio tibi quando creavit, Ne qua parte dolo sis oblitus inveterato. (15) Quem similis morum sibi iunxit fama bonorum, Illi vestalis chorus obtat dona salutis.
Clever Mercury gave me this flower, which enables me to resist vices and shameful requests. Accordingly, no fool has control over me either. Any men who delight in indecent acts should leave our company— and anyone who strongly disagrees with our companions should take his leave, as should you, if you associate with such men. We scarcely admit even those who have proven themselves a thousandfold but we do embrace them—with moderation and modesty. In the end, Virtue is careful to shape well with a final filing those to whom she chooses to entrust our honor so that imperceptibly they grow in good and witty conversation and prove to be of excellent character, duly polished in all respects. So before you come to us, preen your feathers (if Reason bestowed any on you, when she created you) to ensure that you are in no way besmirched by ingrained guile. Our vestal chorus wishes the gift of greeting only for a man who has acquired a reputation for good character similar to our own.*
This is the first extended female-authored poem in the collection and one of its jewels. The reference to the “vestal chorus” and the “gifts of welcome” at the end, the focus on the proper comportment of men in the company of women, and the admonitory tone all suggest it is closely related to poem no. 6, perhaps written by the same woman. If I might indulge in a bit of speculation: the men, as per no. 6, have been welcomed into the company of women, but at least one of them—addressed here—has been making indecent proposals (preces foedi, see for example no. 3, 8) and violating the “speech norms” of the women (this is how I interpret sociis nostris ab ore discordare, “to discord with our companions from/with regard to the mouth”). This poem is sent as a stern warning, expanding on the standards the women expect to be observed and reiterating more forcefully the conditionality of the welcome.
Here, virtue is a “craftsman’s file” (lima). In a later poem (no. 40, very possibly by the same lady) it is a sculptor (illos diligimus, quos sculpsit provide Virtus, “we love those whom provident Virtue sculpts”). The idea of refined behavior as the result of an artistic process of shaping raw and rough human material is frequently found in courtly literature. In his famous study The Origins of Courtliness (1985), Stephen Jaeger discusses an example the mid-12th century Facetus, a didactic poem about the cultivation of manners, which uses imagery similar to that above. In the poem “Qui chantar sol” by the troubadour Giraut de Bornelh (1138-1215), courtly love “sculpts and chisels in me the fair features of a person perfect in courtly skills and virtues” (si.m desbois’e m’entalha d’un adrech cors ginhos sas avinens faissos). In Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, the title character is described as the work of a master artist (bildaere), both outside in his physical beauty as well as inside in his moral quality as a knight: “Whatever the merits of the outer artist, the inner one was even better trained and more capable to render perfect chivalry than the outward constitution” (swie sô der ûzer waere, der innere bildaere, der was baz betihtet, bemeistert unde berihtet ze ritters figiure dan diu ûzerefaitiure, 6643-6648).
As noted previously I am not a Latinist. I have read a lot of Latin literature, both classical and medieval, and although I have a basic feel for differences in quality, I don’t have the training to articulate them. That said, it seems to me that this verse is fairly high quality. For example, it shows considerable richness in metrical variation within the leonine scheme. Below, I identify 11 different line-types, out of 32 possible variations of 5 variable feet 16 possible variations of 4 variable feet (note that the 5th and 6th feet do not vary, they must be a dactyl and a spondee, respectively). There are no repetitions until the seventh line, and no adjacent or even close repetitions. This seems to show a lot of poetic skill.
Mists are holding the earth in thrall, sludgy heavy hoar. They drape the hills smudge the fields, kneel upon the river vast and unmoving. Trembling fretful captive Earth waits unbreathing in fearful expectation. Is this the end? Are the days of rejoicing gone of blooming, singing, greening life? Are they gone? No breeze No sun. She has gone down in defeat. The forest weeps, heavy tears fall softly, softly disheartened. A quailing fear quivers through the trees. There— a deep draw of breath. Incensed, the mists rise in the hills flood into the bottoms climb from the chasms again, into the heights surrounding and saturating the forest and then are still once more. Angry low the brume creeps along the fields. A baleful wall of fog encloses the river. A sudden rending— A flash of sun— whirling masses of fog billowing rising erratic wary fluttering of birds in the bushes— and everything sinks down anew surrender, exhaustion. Earth breathes once again. A fresh and vigorous exhalation full of rage. The mists scud about the cliffs whirling, piling up. A rent and a flood of sun pours over the fog wall at the water a blow to the back forcing it to move on. Teardrops sparkle in the forest branches a soft, wary birdcall sounds under the trees and again— shy, hesitant. Clouds are still chasing over the treetops over cliff and chasm but frantically now, fearfully rising ever higher as fingers of sun drill through the tatters of mist and prod them apart, thrusting them up, on high and hurling them over the hills. In wild flight they bob up and duck down then vanish the cloud-fiends! Earth rises up out of the gentle respiration sunlit and shining, drunk with loveliness. A flash and sparkle over bush and hedge over meadow vale and forest hills an exultation, a victory. The spring days of jubilant sun—will they come again with their sprouting life, their surfeit of strength? The moist ground—is it murmuring, burgeoning? The buds and blooms—do they hearken? Like ghosts the mists have vanished only in a little valley a thin white ribbon stretches along the forest edge scurrying off in fear rising up at the rock face and sailing of in the sky. Spry skittery this late little cloud hurrying after the others. Bright is the air and bright the heavens. But Earth is weary weary after the battle her smile is melancholy she is resting. From the nodding trees, leaves fall pale yellow leaves. They are suddenly there nobody saw them before grey streaks in Earth’s tresses. The trees shake their heads and the flowers nod it’s not as it usually is it’s so sad so still Earth is waiting. Waiting for the battles to come for age for defeat.
So here. after a brief and abject summer, we are already in autumn and back to the theater of warfare between antagonistic natural forces.
Mittit vestalis chorus ad vos xenia pacis, Concedens vestre dominandi iura caterve, Sic tamen ut precium virtus sibi reddat honestum.
1. The chorus of vestals sends you men gifts of peace, granting your company the right to govern us, but only so far as virtue demands and honest price. (Newman)
2.Your chorus of vestal virgins sends you a gift of peace, granting you the right to be master of your followers, provided only that virtue should prove its own honorable reward. (Traill/Haynes)
Newman notes how the Regensburg women, who are from the nobility, here express consciousness of their social superiority over the visiting clerics (2016 p. 260). This poem also broaches a related theme that some of the later ones will express with great eloquence and insistence: that the men are expected to conduct themselves with propriety. The idea that women foster male virtue is a major feature of courtly love. Another is that men seek a woman’s love as a reward for service. As the Traill/Haynes translation suggests (“virtue should prove its own honorable reward”), the women are perhaps seeking to nip such amorous expectations in the bud.
Despite numerous intimations to the contrary in the texts, Paravicini is skeptical that the interactions between the men and the women went beyond the exchange of texts and small gifts (1979, p. 10). Traill/Haynes, too, suggest an exclusively epistolary relationship (2021, p. 7). If that was the case, it is difficult to understand what the iura dominandi (“rights of lordship”) were, here conceded by the women with ceremony and a note of caution. In my view, this suggests a more interpersonal and formalized setting. Perhaps there was some sort of classroom instruction involved, in addition to which the women submitted individual written exercises to the teacher?
Simia dicaris vel spinx, quibus assimularis Vultu deformi, nullo moderamine comi.
An ape you should be called, or sphinx, which you resemble in your ugly face and unkempt hair.
This is the first female-authored poem in the collection. Newman suggests that the blatantly insulting tone has to do with consciousness on the part of the women that they were socially superior to their male teacher(s) (2016 p. 260, see also the next poem).
Quicquid flos flori rutilans sub tempore verni, Hoc demandat ei, pariter ludos Ymenei, Qui te pre cunctis amat, excole nomen amantis. Nunc effrenatis venis redit ardor amoris. Pro dolor, ahc, quid agunt, me dulcia somnia ludunt. (5) O dum dormito, tua se presentat imago, Oscula defigit, complectens ipsa recedit. Tu mihi, tu cura, tenuique fugacior aura Instabilis nimium stabiles deludis amores. Sed cum fervet amor, ferus intolerabilis ardor. (10) Fervor, ahc restringam, stipulat summam medicinam. Quid medicina valet, qui nobis herbida confert? Nil confert nobis, non est medicabilis herbis, Sed quam formosa, tu salubris medicina. Tecum dulcis amor, amor est dulcissimus ardor, (15) Sed lactas steriles per dulce tempus amores, Si non plus cedis, vel ad oscula danda patebis.
What a flower asks a flower, sparkling in springtime, is what the man who loves you above all demands: the games of Hymen! Welcome the name of a lover! Now the ardor of love returns to my unruly veins. Alas, what is happening? Sweet dreams deceive me: O even as I sleep, your image appears to me, plies me with kisses, and in embracing vanishes! You’re mine, my care, more fleeting than a gentle breeze. All too inconstant, you make sport of constant loves. But when love blazes, its heat is fierce, unbearable! Its fervor – shall I check it? – demands the strongest medicine. Yet what use is medicine? What can a herbal potion do? It does nothing for me; love is not treatable with herbs. But you, my fair one – what a wholesome remedy! With you is sweet loving; love is the sweetest ardor. But in this sweet season, you are nursing barren loves – If you yield no more to me, let yourself at least be kissed.*
This poem borrows much language from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Heroides (see the references below, from Paravicini 1979 p. 18). Newman notes the “piquancy” of its position, “sandwiched between two poems that warn against sinful love” (2016 p. 259).
The exclamations ahc! (lines 5, 11) seem to be the German ach! The Latin o and oh, both short vowel and long, would have been available for the purpose, so this seems to be an intentional choice on the part of our probably native German(ic) writer to underscore the intensity and authenticity of his feelings by interjecting in his native language. This is especially interesting considering the erudite-artificial origin of much of the imagery.
Sagemære 