Lorsch riddles

The Lorsch riddles, also known as the Aenigmata Anglica,{{Cite book|title = Proba the Prophet: The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=_x2oBgAAQBAJ|publisher = BRILL|date = 2015-02-05|isbn = 9789004289482|language = en|first = Sigrid Schottenius|last = Cullhed}} are a collection of twelve hexametrical, early medieval Latin riddles that were anonymously written in the ninth century.

The absence of line breaks separating individual verses (among other things){{Cite book|title = Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=gMVycdqSh28C|publisher = University of Toronto Press|date = 2011-01-01|isbn = 9781442642171|language = en|first = Leslie|last = Lockett}} show that they are possibly of English origin.{{Cite book|title = Say what I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=I8iyB_5BeCAC|publisher = University of Toronto Press|date = 2009-01-01|isbn = 9780802093523|language = en|first = Dieter|last = Bitterli}} The poems were heavily influenced by Aldhelm's Enigmata.{{Cite book|title=Proba the Prophet: The Christian Virgilian Cento of Faltonia Betitia Proba|last=Schottenius Cullhed|first=Sigrid|publisher=Brill|year=2015|isbn=|location=Leiden|pages=87}} None of the poems have a written solution, which has caused much debate over the answers to some of them; the solutions as given in Glore's edition are: 1. de homine/person; 2. de anima/soul; 3. de aqua/water; 4. de glacie/ice; 5. de cupa uinaria/wine-cup; 6. de niue/snow; 7. de castanea/chestnut; 8. de fetu/foetus; 9. de penna/feather; 10. de luminari/eternal light; 11. de tauro/bull; 12. de atramento/ink.'Aenigmata "lavreshamensia" [anigmata "anglica"]', 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), [https://archive.org/details/corpuschristiano0133unse I] 345–58.

The riddles are preserved in only one manuscript (Vatican, [http://bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de/bav/bav_pal_lat_1753 Pal. Lat. 1753]).Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011), p. 4. The manuscript was written c. 800 in the Carolingian scriptorium of Lorsch Abbey, where it was rediscovered in 1753.{{Cite book|title = Say what I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=I8iyB_5BeCAC|publisher = University of Toronto Press|date = 2009-01-01|isbn = 9780802093523|language = en|first = Dieter|last = Bitterli}} It contains among a variety of grammatical texts the Aenigmata of Symphosius, the Enigmata of Aldhelm and a variety of prose and metrical texts by Boniface.{{Cite web|url=http://bibliotheca-laureshamensis-digital.de/bav/bav_pal_lat_1753|title=Bibliotheca Laureshamensis digital}}