This short research blog focuses on the development of the word แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ โto sinโ from the advent of Christianity to the late Byzantine era. The word, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ, is widely used in the Bible as it appears forty-three times. To wordโs primary meaning in the Bible was to โerr and sinโ; however, from time to time, it was also used to signify the action of offending. แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ occurs in many different forms in the New Testament as we see it in aorist first-person singular active form แผญฮผฮฑฯฯฮฟฮฝโ eight times, second-person singular indicative middle six times, and second-person indicative active plural form three times.[1] I will trace the different nuances in the meaning of this word in the subsequent periods, especially in the late Byzantine period. My argument is that as several Greek and non-Greek sources indicate, the word แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ began having a military connotation in this period as it was applied to the Christian military units who had cooperated with the enemy forces, especially the Turks.
Inscription, in The Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum
In Homeric times, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ had no religious connotation. The Theological Dictionary of the New Testament suggests that, initially, the word was used to convey the action of โmissingโ i.e failure to follow rules and signify a moral deficit or immoral physical undertaking. [2] However, in the later periods (c. 400 BCE), we begin seeing a shift from legal to religious use since แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ made its way to the Book of Kings in the old testament, meaning โto rebelโ against the god and his order in the earth.[3] From a theological standpoint, rebelling against the will of God means to err from the true path and therefore to sin. In this way, those who had intentionally deviated from moral or religious standards came to be defined as ฮฑฮผฮฑฯฯฯฮปฯฯ โthe sinful oneโ in the later Christian religious texts.[4]
Early Christian symbols on an Egyptian textile, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio.
แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ is mostly used to signify the action of โsinโ and neglecting the commands of God with an exception of โoffendingโ in the New Testament.[5] In the Book of Romans, for instance, we see the following structure: โฮณแฝฐฯ แผฮฝฯฮผฯฯ แผฅฮผฮฑฯฯฮฟฮฝ แผฮฝฯฮผฯฯ ฮบฮฑแฝถโ which means โIndeed without law I sinned without law also[โฆ]โ.[6] Here, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ was used in the aorist, active, and indicative form. In another example, this time from the Book of Corinthians, the word is used in such a construction: โฮฟแฝฯฯฯ ฮดแฝฒ แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฮฟฮฝฯฮตฯ ฮตแผฐฯ ฯฮฟแฝบฯโ meaning โthus moreover sinning against those [โฆ]โ in the participle, present, active form.[7] Besides the action of sinning, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ seems to be used in a different meaning, โto offendโ, in the Book of Apostles although a minor disagreement exists between various interpreters. Regarding the following phase: โฮฮฑฮฏฯฮฑฯฮฌ ฯฮน แผฅฮผฮฑฯฯฮฟฮฝ[โฆ]โ while New American Standard Bible renders the word as โcommittingโ, the King James version translate the term as โoffendingโ. However, the new international version disagrees with these suggestions, interpreting the whole phrase as โCaesar [in] anything sinned [โฆ]โ.[8]
Nicolle, David. Armies of the Ottoman Turks 1300-1774. London: Osprey, 1983.
Besides its use in legal and religious spheres, towards the late Byzantine period, we begin seeing the word, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ, or its variants in Greek and Turkish texts in the military context. With the Turkish advance towards western Asia Minor and the Balkans in the later 13th and early 14th centuries, the local Greek-speaking people began adjusting to the newly established political reality in their respective territories by means of cooperating with their new rulers. A significant portion of the Greek population in these regions had converted to Islam, while others participated in the Ottoman military system as auxiliary units. As the later Byzantine writer Pachymeres states in his ฮฯฯฮฟฯฮฏฮฑ, the Greeks from Anatolia, โแผฯฮนฮผฮนฮพฮฌฮฝฯฯฮฝ ฮบฮฑแฝถ แฟฌฯฮผฮฑรญฯฮฝ แผฮพ แผฮฝฮฑฯฮฟฮปแฟฯโ, had occasionally joined the Turkish forces to raid the Byzantine territories in the hopes of acquiring material gain.[9] Besides Pachymeres, Doukas also refers to these Greek collaborators in his historical work, calling them โฮผฮนฮพฮฟฮฒฮฑฯฮฒฮฑฯฮฟฮนโ meaning half-Greek and half-Turks.[10] Although these authors shunned using the word, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฯฮปฯฯ, several Turkish authors borrow this term from their Greek correspondents. An early Ottoman called Aลฤฑkpaลazade reports that the founder of the Ottoman principality, Osman Gazi, had a โmartolosโ ( ู ุงุฑุชููุณ) by the name of Artun who acted as a spy in the Byzantine territories for the Ottomans.[11] After the Ottoman conquests in the Balkans, as the land surveys indicate, the Ottomans had given landed estates to several Christian military units who were also called โmartolosโ.[12]
Greek Armatolos by Carl Haag (1820โ1915).
Lastly, after the mid-fourteenth century, the Ottomans also formed provincial forces in mainland Greece named โarmatolosโ which had a clear phonetic resemblance with the word โamartolosโ. Although several scholars argued that this term had derived from a medieval loan word from Latin arma โweaponโ via Greek ฮฑฯฮผฮฑฯฮฟฮปฯฯ it is also within the boundaries of possibility that the development of that word might have originated from ฮฑฮผฮฑฯฯฯฮปฯฯ since the use of the latter preceded the former. During the Greek War of Independence (1821-1828), these ฮฑฯฮผฮฑฯฮฟฮปฯฯ units had actively participated in military encounters against the Ottoman forces as we are able to trace their role in Greek folk songs: โฯฯ ฮปฮปฮฟฮณฮนฯฯฮตฮฏฯฮต ฯฮฟ ฮบฮฑฮปฮฌ, /ฯฯฮน (: ฮณฮนฮฑฯฮฏ) ฯฮฑฯ ฮบฮฑฮฏฮผฮต ฯฮฑ ฯฯฯฮนฮฌยท / ฮณฯฮฎฮณฮฟฯฮฑ ฯโ ฮฑฯฮผฮฑฯฮฟฮปฮฏฮบฮน,/ ฮฟฯโ ฮตฯฯฯฮผฮฑฯฯฮต ฯฮฑฮฝ ฮปฯฮบฮฟฮนโ โThink well, / that [why] we burn your villages; / quickly the armatoliki, / that we come like wolvesโ.[13]
In sum, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ had no religious implications during Homeric times as it was used to convey the idea of โmissingโ (i.e. โmissing the markโ). However, in the later periods, it started appearing in the Bible as the word began to signify the act of transgression against the word of God. In the late Byzantine period, however, a derivation of this word, แผฮผฮฑฯฯฯฮปฯฯ, was used for Christians who cooperated with the enemy forces since it was thought that they rebelled against God by aligning themselves with the non-Christian adversaries.
[1] Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. Search for word: แผฮผฮฑฯฯฮฌฮฝฯ.
[2]Danker, Frederick W. et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Exeter: Eerdmans, 1974) 44.
That the erudition of Irish scholars in the early Middle Ages was not always cast in a positive light is reflected in a letter, written nearly two centuries earlier, by Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury (d. 709). Aldhelm writes in admonishing language to his student Wihtfrith that he is none too pleased with the latterโs decision to go study in Ireland. He wonders why Wihtfrith would forsake the study of the Old and New Testament to read foul pagan literature, i.e., Virgil, which was apparently being taught in the monastic centres of Ireland. More colourful still is Aldhelmโs language in the oft-quoted passage below:
Quidnam, rogitans quaeso, orthodoxae fidei sacramento commodi affert circa temeratum spurcae Proserpinae incestumโquod abhorret fari enucleateโ legendo scrutandoque sudescere aut Hermionam, petulantem Menelai et Helenae sobolem, quae, ut prisca produnt opuscula, despondebatur pridem iure dotis Oresti demumque sententia immutata Neoptolemo nupsit, lectionis praeconio venerari aut Lupercorum bacchantum antistites ritu litantium Priapo parasitorum heroico stilo historiae caraxere.
What, pray, I beseech you eagerly, is the benefit to the sanctity of the orthodox faith to expend energy by reading and studying the foul pollution of base Proserpina, which I shrink from mentioning in plain speech; or to revere, through celebration in study, Hermione, the wanton offspring of Menelaus and Helen, who, as the ancient texts report, was engaged for a while by right of dowry to Orestes, then, having changed her mind, married Neoptolemus; or to recordโin the heroic style of epicโthe high priests of the Luperci, who revel in the fashion of those cults that sacrifice to Priapus [โฆ].[1]
But Aldhelm did not stop there. No, truly, Ireland held further dangers still than the dactylic hexameters of the Augustan poets of old. He continues:
Porro tuum discipulatum ceu cernuus arcuatis poplitibus flexisque suffraginibus feculenta farna compulsus posco, ut nequaquam prostibula vel lupanarium nugas, in quis pompulentae prostitutae delitescunt, lenocinante luxu adeas, quae obrizo rutilante periscelidis armillaque lacertorum terete utpote faleris falerati curules comuntur, [โฆ]
Moreover, I, compelled by this foul report, beg your Discipleship, genuflecting, as it were, with arched knee and bent leg, that you in no wise go near the whores or the trumpery of bawdy houses, where lurk pretentious prostitutes with luxury as their pander, who are adorned with the flashing burnish of leg-bands and with smooth arm bracelets, just as ornamented chariots are adorned with metal bosses; [โฆ]
It would seem that reading Virgil and engaging prostitutes go hand in hand, the beneficiary being equally worthy of damnation in Aldhelmโs eyes. It is a pity that we never find out whether Wihtfrith actually heeded his teacherโs advice or, indeed, what lines (facetiously penned in hexameter?) he may have tendered in response to assuage his anxious masterโs fears. The letter to Wihtfrith, along with many others of Aldhelmโs writings, survives today only in William of Malmesburyโs Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, an early-twelfth-century history of the English bishops. Aldhelmโs letters are contained in Book V of the Gesta, the section of Williamโs work dedicated to the history of Malmesbury Abbey and to Aldhelm, its founder.
King Alfred and a Reindeerย
Having now moved from Ireland, via Wales, into Anglo-Saxon England, we are coming to our final stop on the journey through language contacts, manuscripts, and riddles in North-western Europe. While this section does not contain a riddle or admonition, it deals with one of the most interesting examples of language contact that I have come across. And it involves no lesser a man than Alfred of Wessex himself. As I mentioned before, it is only natural to reflect, when two languages come into contact, how these are both different and alike. When I recently listened to BBC4โs In Our Time podcast on the โDanelawโ[2] (referring to both an area of Norse occupation as well as customs and legal practices), one of the speakers, Prof. Judith Jesch of the University of Nottingham, discussed the story of the voyages of the Norwegian tradesman Ohthere during his stay at the court of King Alfred. Alfred had acceded to the throne of Wessex in 871, the only kingdom within Anglo-Saxon England that was not under Norse rule at the time, and later in 886, Alfred negotiated a treaty with the Danish king Guthrum, establishing a border between their two domains. Apart from being a skilled military and political leader, Alfred was also invested in cultural reform and education, looking for inspiration across the Channel to what had been achieved as part of the Carolingian Renaissance. One of the areas that Alfredโs efforts centred on was providing translations of important Latin texts, especially theological and historical works. One of these works was Orosiusโ Seven Books against the Pagans, by that time the standard source for world history. At one time, it was even believed that it was Alfred himself who translated the text into Old English, although this theory has now largely fallen out of favour.[3] And it is as part of the Old English Orosius that we find the fascinating story of the voyage of Ohthere to Alfredโs court. Ohthere tells the king that he comes from the northernmost part of Norway, hardly inhabited, and brings him a gift of walrus tusks, containing precious ivory. Then he tells the king that:
He wรฆs swyรฐe spedig man on รพรฆm รฆhtum รพe heora speda on beoรฐ, รพรฆt is on wildrum. He hรฆfde รพagyt, รฐa he รพone cyningc sohte, tamra deora unbebohtra syx hund. รพa deor hi hataรฐ hranas; [โฆ]
He was a very rich man in those possessions which their riches consist of, that in wild deer. He had still, when he came to see the king, six hundred unsold tame deer. These deer they call โreindeerโ.[4]
Ohthereโs account in British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius B i, f. 12v [5]Several insights can be gained from this little anecdote. As Judith Jesch points out in the podcast, there seems to have been no translator present at the conversation between Ohthere and the king. It must be that either Ohthereโas a tradesmanโhad sufficient knowledge of Old English to talk to Alfred; or that in turn, Alfred and the members of his court had sufficient knowledge of Old Norse to navigate the conversation; or indeed, that Old Norse and Old English were similar enough that, to borrow Jeschโs terms, linguistic differences could easily be negotiated. Such a negotiation is particularly apparent from the above passage by the introduction of the word for โreindeerโ into the English language. Since English had no word for this foreign animal, the Norse hreinn was borrowed into English as hrรกn (see Bosworth and Toller s.v. hrรกn), as Old Norse ei is equivalent to Old English รก (that the reverse happened also can be seen through the borrowing of English personal names such as รthelstan into Norse as Aรฐalsteinn).[6] We can imagine Alfredโs clerk interrogating Ohthere as to what exactly a hrรกn was and why it made him so wealthy. Embedded in the wider context of the Old English translation of Orosius, we therefore find this fascinating exchange between Alfred the Great and a humble yet resourceful reindeer farmer from Norway.
This selection of anecdotes found and lifted from the pages of medieval parchment provides just a glimpse into the fascinating world of medieval Irish, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse contacts. And just as the modern student diligently devotes their time to make sense of the difficult Old-Irish Paradigms and Selections from the Old-Irish Glosses, annotating their copy with helpful notes, so did medieval scribes annotate their Latin texts, spelling out difficulties and playing with languages. And as undergraduates and postgraduates apply to the most competitive and most coveted university programmes, either with or without the counsel of an academic mentor or advisor, so did Wihtfrith no doubt make Ireland his educational destination. And no doubt, when Alfred of Wessex received Ohthere at his court, we may not have anticipated learning so much about northern Norwegian fauna. What these examples teach us is that history and language, manuscripts and literature can never be studied in isolation, but must come together to allow us to construct the story of the past. And while the past may be a different country (pace Hartley),[7] they donโt always do things differently there.
Marie-Luise Theuerkauf, Ph.D.
University of Cambridge
[1] Lapidge, M. and Herren, M., Aldhelm: The Prose Works. D.S. Brewer, 1979: 154.
[3] Lund, Niels (ed.), Two voyagers at the court of King Alfred: The ventures of Ohthere and Wulfstan, together with the Description of northern Europe from the Old English Orosius. York, 1984: 6.
In what follows, I would like to offer a little medley of anecdotes, originating from Ireland, Wales, or Anglo-Saxon England which I have either come across during my time as an undergraduate student, and remember very fondly, or have learned about more recently, and which have struck me as particularly fascinating. While my own background is in Celtic Studies, where I work especially on editing Old and Middle Irish texts (yes, from the original manuscripts), Iโve always had a fondness for the relationships that existed between various medieval civilisations and especially for contact between languages. During the year I spent as a Murphy Irish Exchange Fellow at Notre Dame, I also had the opportunity to study Greek and Latin with Profs. Mazurek and Mazurek, topping up on my knowledge of both of these languages pursued while studying in Ireland. Below are four tales of linguistic contact, demonstrating scribal cleverness and competition, some riddles, the danger of studying in Ireland, and also information about reindeer. I hope youโll enjoy!
Nolite te grammatica carborundorumย (or some actual Latin)
Every student of Old Irish, myself included, will at one stage have come across the Old Irish Glosses, and most of the time they will form the foundation of any beginnerโs level Old Irish course. As a novice to this fascinating language, I naturally wondered what exactly glosses were and why they were so important. In John Strachanโs Old Irish Paradigms and Glosses, one of the standard teaching works, we find the complicated tables which ought to be learned off by heart by anyone wishing to have even the smallest sense of how the Old Irish verbal system works. But the bulk of the book is filled with practice sentences drawn from actual unadapted material (in contrast to the grammatical โsafe-spaceโ that is E. G. Quinโs Old-Irish Workbook), and thus the adventurous student is plunged into the world of orthographical variation and grammatical uncertainty, the world of the Glosses. The primary sources for the student of Old Irish, which also provide the majority of the source material to Rudolf Thurneysenโs seminal Grammar of Old Irish, are interlinear and marginal notes written in Old Irish as commentary on Latin texts, found in manuscripts which are now, for the most part, kept in libraries in Continental Europe. One such source is a mid-ninth-century manuscript in the Stiftsbibliothek of St. Gallen in Switzerland, known as Codex Sangallensis904.[1] It contains a copy of Priscianโs Institutiones Grammaticaeย (6thย century), one of the most important sources for the instruction of Latin in the Middle Ages.
Abbey Library, St. Gall, Switzerland
To the student of Old Irish, this work is simply known as โthe St. Gall Glossesโ. As can be seen in the image below, the main text is written in large script, but in-between the lines and in the margins, we find much smaller annotations, explanations, and comments in Latin and in Old Irish. These are to a large extent explanatory teaching notes, as a knowledge of Latin was indispensable for understanding, studying, and also copying biblical texts, hagiography, or even computus.[2]
St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 904, f. 3 โ Prisciani grammatica
When studying a foreign language, be it ancient, medieval, or modern, it is only natural to ponder the ways in which that language is both alike and different from oneโs own. And building a bridge between the familiar and the foreign is the mark of a good teacher as well as a good student. Among the glosses found in the Codex Sangallensisย are numerous gems of language contact, which provide insight into the mind of the medieval Irish Latin teacher and of his students. An example familiar to many students of Old Irish will no doubt be the little nature poem written in the margin on ff. 203-4, here given from Gerard Murphyโs edition[3] together with Seamus Heaneyโs and Timothy OโNeillโs translation:[4]
Dom-แธarcai fidbaide fรกl fom-chain loรญd luin, lรบad nฤd cรฉl; hลซas mo lebrรกn, ind lรญnech, fom-chain trรญrech inna n-รฉn. ย Fomm-chain coรญ men, medair mass, hi mbrot glass de dingnaib doss. Debrath! nom-Choimmdiu-coรญma: caรญn-scrรญbaimm fo roรญda ross. ย
Pent under high tree canopy,
A blackbird, listen, sings for me,
Above my little bookโs ruled quires
I hear the wild birds jubilant.
From a shrub covert, shadow-mantled
A cuckooโs clear sing-song delights me.
O at the last, the Lord protect me!
How well I write beneath the wood.
This little poem is one of the highlights of medieval Irish nature poetry and was long held to be a reflection of the hermitic lifestyle of the medieval Irish monk until that assumption was challenged by Donnchadh ร Corrรกin.[5] In what might feel more recent, but was still twenty years ago this year, Patrick Ford made a fascinating contribution to the subject in challenging โthe conventional scholarship that ignores the physical setting in which we find it [the poem]โ.[6] Ford was interested in the question, which had not before been asked, as to why this little poem had survived in this particular manuscript and on this particular page of Priscianโs Grammar, and confronted the practice of reading texts outside their manuscript contexts lest โthe genre determines the meaning of the workโ. But what exactly is the poemโs manuscript context?
Nature poem beginning Dom-แธarcai fidbaide fรกl, St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 904, f. 203, lower margin
On f. 203 in the St. Gall copy of Priscianโs Grammar, the reader is treated to a description of the Latin pronominal system (this is part of Book 12 of De Figuris), specifically the distinctions between simple and compound pronouns, e.g. huiusmodi,ย mecum, etc. With this manuscript context in mind, Ford has made the ingenious argument that the scribe, far from musing about blackbirds and cuckoos, very much had pronouns on his mind.[7] One of the most distinctive features of Old Irish (and, to a certain extent, also Welsh) are infixed pronouns. In the Old Irish verbal system, both the subject and the object of an action were expressed within the verbal complex, the former through the ending of a synthetic verb form, e.g. finnamarย โLet us find outโ, and the latter through a pronoun that was either suffixed to the verbal ending or inserted before the main verb with the help of a preverb or other particle. Thus, โHe kills his enemyโ (as you do) is marbaid a nรกmait, but โHe kills himโ is either marbthaiย with a suffixed pronoun or na marbaย with an infixed pronoun (and the conjunct particle no as well as the dependent form of the verb). There is nothing equivalent to the infixed pronoun in Latin, however. Given that our little nature poem contains six pronouns in the space of eight lines, five of which are infixed pronouns and one possessive, Ford concluded that the scribe was engaging both critically and creatively with Priscianโs text: he responded to the idiosyncrasies of Latin pronominal compounding in the most Old Irish way possibleโwith a poem filled with infixed pronouns.
While the poem of the scribe in the woods may be the most famous example of the creative interplay between Latin and Old Irish, it is far from the only one. The differences between Latin and Old Irish are most certainly not confined to the way both languages employ pronouns. One of the most striking differences between the two is the modal category of the infinitive. While most European languages have an infinitive (รฉtudier, studieren, etc.), Irish does not. But that does not mean that Latin infinitives are not glossed in Priscian and other Latin texts containing Old Irish glossing. See, for instance, the following examples occurring in the Old Irish glosses to the commentary on the Psalms contained in the Codex Ambrosianusย C 301 inf, another ninth-century Irish manuscript now held at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan.[8] On f. 15aย 10, the word inficereย is glossed fris-n-orr, literally โthat he may injureโ; on f. 78bย 24, the deponent infinitive opinariย is glossed with an Old Irish deponent form du-menammarย โthat we may opineโ; and on f. 39bย 3, supplicareย is glossed with แน gesย โthat he may prayโ. The Old Irish solution for the lack of an infinitive was to put the verb into the present subjunctive and employ a sub-clause construction known as a nasalising relative clause (this nasalisation is indicated by the ninngesย and before the verbal stem in fris-n-orr).
Dwelling for another moment on Priscian and the teaching of Latin in Irish monasteries, Irish scribes did not only ponder the differences between Latin and their own language, but also commented on the similarities or sought equivalent Irish solutions for a particular Latin phenomenon. A curious case of morphological creativity in the glosses on Priscian is the occurrence of what seem to be special comparative forms of certain adjectives. See for instance the two forms on f. 45, where the forms maรกnuย โa little greaterโ and laigรฉniuย โa little smallerโ occur. These are to be understood as comparative forms of mรณrย โgreatโ and beccย โsmallโ (with adjectival suppletion) respectively, though their regular comparative forms are mรณoย or mรกo and lagiu. The words glossed by mรกanuย and laigรฉniu, respectively, are maiusculusย and minusculus, again โa little greaterโ and โa little smallerโ.
The words maiusculusand minusculus glossed on f. 45 of St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 904
It appears then that the Latin teacher wanted to make his students understand that โculย is a Latin diminutive suffix which can express variation in the degree of comparison, specifically to what extent something is lesser or smaller than something else. And the Irish equivalent of such a diminutive suffix is รฉnย or รกn. Thus, laigiuย becomes laigรฉniuย and mรณoย becomes maรกnu, creating nonce words for the sake of teaching. The Old Irish Glosses are a veritable treasure trove, and any student or scholar versed in the reading of insular minuscule should set the Thesaurus Paleohibernicus, the standard edition of the Old Irish Glosses,[9] aside and look at the manuscripts directly. Fortunately, the St. Gall manuscript has been fully digitized and can be consulted free of charge.ย
Greek Substitution Cyphers, or โAre you smarter than an Irishman?โ
Our next stop on the journey of language contact is Wales, although we are taking a few Irish people along with us. One of the most intriguing riddles of medieval Western Christendom (in my not entirely unbiased opinion) is the cypher known as the โBamberg Cryptogramโ. So called after one of its manuscript sources, a late-tenth-century codex held at the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg in Bavaria, the context of the cryptogram goes back to an Irish scholar named Dubthach mac Mรกel Tuile whose obit is recorded in 869. Dubthach was a most learned man, versed not only in Latin and, to a certain extent, Greek, but also in computus, cryptography, and cryptanalysis.[10]ย The โRosetta Stoneโ to Dubthachโs cypher is provided by a letter written in Latin verse which gives the answer to the riddle (provided one is fluent in Latin, of course). This letter was sent by another Hiberno-Latin author named Suadbar, better known under the name Sedulius Scottus, another of the great ninth-century Irish scholars, to his master Colgu in Ireland. The context of the letter is Suadbarโs journey to the court of Merfyn Frych (d. 844), king of Gwynedd in North Wales, together with three companions. He tells us that scholars, such as himself and his fellow students, arriving from Ireland at the court of Merfyn are tested and given Dubthachโs cypher to decode.
Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek,Msc.Class.6,ย f. 109v[11]In what Nora Chadwick termed โa delightful bit of patriotic cheatingโ,[12] Suadbar did not wish upon his fellow Irishmen at home the embarrassment of being unable to decipher the code in front of the king. And so he sends the letter. Dubthachโs cypher itself is quite short; it consists of twenty-two letters and four words. The cypher in the image above is found in l. 7 (uii or g) and is extracted here below:
If you have ever had any dealings with codes and cyphers (if not, I highly recommend Simon Singhโs The Code Book), it will be obvious to you that we are dealing with a simple substitution cypher using the Greek alphabet as the basis. In order to understand the message, Suadbar and his companions had to substitute Roman letters for the Greek ones by assigning a Greek letter to each letter in their own alphabet and proceeding alphabetically. The key for the cypher, as given on f. 109r of the Bamberg manuscript, is as follows:
ฮ
ฮ
ฮ
ฮ
ฮ
S
ฮ
ฮ
ฮ
ฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮS
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
ฮฮ
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
k
l
m
n
o
p
q
r
s
t
u
x
y
z
Equipped with this cryptanalytic tool, we can now read the above line as
MERMEN. REX. CONCHN. SALUTEM
As David Howlett explains in the commentary to his edition of the cryptogram,[13] the phrase is from the salutation of a letter from King Merfyn to Cyngen (Irishย Conchen), king of Powys and brother to Merfynโs wife Nest. The name of the king, Merfyn, in Welsh is here spelled in Irish orthography, where medialย mย would have the same phonetic value as fย in Welsh, hence Mermen. Translated, the line means โMerfyn the king salutes Conchennโ. Let us hope that Suadbarโs fellow students back in Ireland were worthy of the answer!ย
[5]ร Corrรกin, Donnchadh, โEarly Irish hermit poetry?โ, in D. ร Corrรกin, L. Breatnach, and K. McCone (eds.), Sages, Saints and Storytellers. Celtic Studies in Honour of Professor James Carney. Maynooth, 1989: 251-67.
[6]Ford, Patrick K., โBlackbirds, Cuckoos, and Infixed Pronouns. Another Context of Early Irish Nature Poetryโ, in R. Black, W. Gillies, and R. ร Maolalaigh (eds.).Celtic Connections. Proceedings of the 10thInternational Congress of Celtic Studies, 1999: 162-170; 162-3.
[9]Stokes, Whitley and John Strachan (eds.), Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, 3 vols. Cambridge, 1903 (repr. 1987).
[10]Dubthach mac Mรกel Tuine, doctissimus Latinorum totius Europae, in Christo dormiuitโDubthach mac Mรกel Tuile, most learned of all the Latinists of Europe, died in Christโ (Dรกibhรญ ร Crรณinรญn, Early Medieval Ireland, 400-1200. London and New York, 1995: 236).
[12]Chadwick, Nora K., โEarly culture and learning in North Wales,โ in N. Chadwick, K. Hughes, C. Brooke, and K. Jackson, Studies in the Early British Church. Cambridge, 1958: 29-120; 96.
[13]Howlett, David, โTwo Irish Jokesโ, in Pรกdraic Moran and Immo Warntjes (eds.), Early Medieval Ireland and Europe: Chronology, Contacts, Scholarship.A Festschrift for Dรกibhรญ ร Crรณinรญn. Turnhout, 2015: 225-264; 243.
