Nennius

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Nennius (also Nemniuus or Ninnius ) was an early medieval monk and scholar in Wales at the transition from the 8th to the 9th century. Most statements about him are uncertain. He is generally regarded as the author of the History Of The Britons , one with legends and legends interspersed compilation to chronology, history and geography of Britain . However, this attribution of authorship is extremely uncertain; and David E. Thornton, for example, considers it almost entirely certain that Nennius did not write the Historia Brittonum .

Possible biographical data and authorship of the Historia Brittonum

Only in one of several different versions of the Historia Brittonum , the so-called Nennius Review, is Nennius named as an author. There are still five medieval manuscripts of this text version. The author is not named in the oldest completely preserved version of the work, the so-called Harleian Review, which is available in the British Library's manuscript Harleian MS 3859 from around 1100 . The majority of the 40 or so Latin manuscripts still in existence of the work state, admittedly wrongly, that the monk Gildas , who lived in the early 6th century, was the alleged author who, in his work De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, described the fall of the Roman province of Britain and its (partly ) Portrayed the conquest by the Anglo-Saxons . The actual author of the Historia Brittonum is likely to be a Welsh cleric who, in addition to Latin and Old Welsh, at least also spoke Old English and who probably compiled the Historia Brittonum at the court of King Merfyn Frych von Gwynedd around 829/830.

In Sawley Abbey was David N. Dumville According to 1164 to 1166, the oldest extant manuscript of Nennius-review, the manuscript nunmehrige 139 of the Corpus Christi College in Cambridge . As a basis for this, three copyists used a manuscript from the Gildas review, into which they incorporated material from an older, now lost copy of the Nennius review that they had collated with it. From this copy they also inserted a foreword according to which a Nennius (alternatively also called Ninnius or Nemnius ) had written down the Historia Brittonum . The four other surviving manuscripts of the Nennius Review come from the Cambridge manuscript.

The prologue of the Historia Brittonum not only lists Nennius as the author, but also states that he was a student of Elvodugus. Elvodugus is with the Bishop of Bangor , Elfoddw , identified the 768 the Welsh part of the Christians brought to Easter to celebrate at the same time with the other Christians in Britain. The Annales Cambriae record the death of Bishop Elfoddw in 809. Nennius could also be the same as a scholar named Nemniuus , who is said to have invented a Welsh alphabet based on the Anglo-Saxon runic script (Futhork). This alphabet designed by Nemniuus can be found in a manuscript written in 817 ( Bodleian Library MS Auct. F.4.32, Oxford ).

The authenticity of the prologue of the Historia Brittonum is controversial, so the authorship of Nennius remains very uncertain. Perhaps this letter was only during a taken by the writer Owain (Euben) under the leadership of the priest Beulan around the mid-11th century text revision of the History Of The Britons into interpolated . The reason for the inclusion of the prologue is perhaps to be found in the fact that the work should be given greater credibility due to its assignment to Nennius as a scholar of the early 9th century.

The supposed historian Nennius is to be distinguished from the British Prince Nennius .

translation

  • Nennius: Historia Brittonum . Bilingual edition Latin-German. Translated, introduced and explained by Günter Klawes. Marix, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86539-289-3

literature

  • Nora K. Chadwick (Ed.): Studies in the Early British Church . - Hamden, Conn. : Shoe String Pr., 1973 <Repr. d. Cambridge 1958 edition> - ISBN 0-208-01315-6
  • David N. Dumville: Nennius and the "Historia Brittonum" . In: Studia Celtica 10/11 (1975/76), pp. 78-95
  • David N. Dumville: Histories and Pseudo-histories of the Insular Middle Ages. 1990.
  • M. Lapidge / R. Sharpe: A Bibliography of Celtic-Latin Literature 400-1200. 1985, pp. 42–45 (bibliography)
  • Christopher J. McDonough:  Nennius. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 21, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017272-0 , pp. 69-71.
  • John Morris (Ed.): Arthurian Sources, Vol. 8, Nennius, British History and The Welsh Annals. London 1980.
  • David E. Thornton: Nennius , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), 2004, vol. 40, p. 423 f.

Web links

Wikisource: Nennius  - Sources and full texts (Latin)

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c d e David E. Thornton: Nennius , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), 2004, Vol. 40, p. 423.
  2. ↑ Christopher J. McDonough:  Nennius. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 21, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017272-0 , pp. 69-70.
  3. ↑ a b Christopher J. McDonough:  Nennius. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 21, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017272-0 , p. 70.
  4. ↑ Christopher J. McDonough:  Nennius. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 21, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2002, ISBN 3-11-017272-0 , pp. 70-71.
personal data
SURNAME Nennius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Nemnivus, Nemniuus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION early medieval historian
DATE OF BIRTH 8th century
DATE OF DEATH 9th century