Enigmata Eusebii

An example of Eusebius's work is enigma 42, on the dragon:{{rp|252}}

The manuscripts of the riddles name the author as Eusebius. This person has traditionally been identified as Hwætberht, the Abbot of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory, based on Bede's identification of Hwætberht with the cognomen of 'Eusebius' in his Commentary on I Samuel.{{Cite book|last=Williams|first=Mary Jane McDonald|title=The Riddles of Tatwine and Eusebius|publisher=Unpublished PhD Thesis|year=1974|location=University of Michigan|pages=44-57}}{{Cite book|last=Salvador-Bello|title=Isidorean Perceptions of Order|pages=234}} However, the identification with Hwætberht has been questioned by several scholars, including Emily V Thornbury, who has suggested that a Kentish author might be likely.{{Cite book|last=Thornbury|first=Emily V.|title=Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2014|location=Cambridge|pages=57-8}}

The Enigmata Eusebii seem to have been composed to expand on the forty riddles of Tatwine, a collection composed by the eighth-century Mercian priest and archbishop Tatwine, perhaps specifically to bring their number up to one hundred: the riddles of Tatwine and Eusebius both survive in the same two manuscripts, and in both the riddles of Eusebius are alongside Tatwine's. These are the early 11th-century London, British Library, Royal 12.Cxxiii (fols. 121v-7r) and the mid-11th-century Cambridge, University Library, Gg.5.35 (fols. 374v-77v). Both of these collections were almost certainly inspired by the slightly earlier riddles of Aldhelm, another collection of one hundred Latin riddles.{{Cite book|last=Salvador-Bello|first=Mercedes|title=Isidorean Perceptions of Order: The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata|publisher=West Virginia University Press|year=2014|isbn=9781935978527|location=Morgantown|pages=221}}{{Cite book|last=Williams|first=Mary Jane McDonald|title=The Riddles of Tatwine and Eusebius|publisher=Unpublished PhD Thesis|year=1974|location=University of Michigan|pages=44-57}}. Many of Eusebius's riddles (and his predecessors') are based on the encyclopaedic writing of Isidore of Seville.{{CN|date=October 2021}}

Riddles 1-4 of Eusebius's riddles are on the chain of being, from God to Man, 5-11 mostly on cosmological phenomena, 12-29 a miscellaneous collection mostly of objects, 30-36 mostly on writing, and 37-60 on animals.Mercedes Salvador-Bello, 'Patterns of Compilation in Anglo-Latin Enigmata and the Evidence of A Source-Collection in Riddles 1-40 of the Exeter Book, Viator, 43 (2012), 339–374 (p. 373-74). 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.102554. The following is a complete list.'Aenigmata Evsebii', ed. by Fr. Glorie, trans. by Erika von Erhardt-Seebold, in Tatuini omnia opera, Variae collectiones aenigmatum merovingicae aetatis, Anonymus de dubiis nominibus, Corpus christianorum: series latina, 133-133a, 2 vols (Turnholt: Brepols, 1968), I 209-71.

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Category:Riddles

Category:Medieval Latin poetry

Category:Texts of Anglo-Saxon England in Latin