Aethicus Ister (Aethicus Donares, Aethicus of Istria or Aethicus Ister) was the protagonist of the 7th/8th-century ''Cosmographia'', purportedly written by a man of church
Hieronymus
Hieronymus, in English pronounced or , is the Latin form of the Ancient Greek name (Hierṓnymos), meaning "with a sacred name". It corresponds to the English given name Jerome.
Variants
* Albanian: Jeronimi
* Arabic: جيروم (Jerome)
* Basqu ...
(Jerome, but not the Church Father
Jerome
Jerome (; la, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος Σωφρόνιος Ἱερώνυμος; – 30 September 420), also known as Jerome of Stridon, was a Christian presbyter, priest, Confessor of the Faith, confessor, th ...
), who purportedly censors an even older work for producing the book as its censored version.
It is a forgery from the Middle Ages.
It describes the travels of Aethicus around the world, and includes descriptions of foreign peoples in usually less than favourable terms. It displays a
flat Earth
The flat-Earth model is an archaic and scientifically disproven conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat-Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (5th century BC), the ...
cosmology, maybe for making sport of it.
There are also numerous passages which deal directly with the legends of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon ( grc, wikt:Ἀλέξανδρος, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexandros; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Maced ...
. Heinz Löwe (1913–1991) found a striking correspondence between the letters of Aethicus and the
Old Turkic script
The Old Turkic script (also known as variously Göktürk script, Orkhon script, Orkhon-Yenisey script, Turkic runes) was the alphabet used by the Göktürks and other early Turkic khanates from the 8th to 10th centuries to record the Old T ...
. He considers Aethicus to be of late Avar ethnicity from the Carpathian basin. Aethicus is believed by Franz Brunhölzl to have been a Scythian that lived in the region of nowadays
Dobrogea,
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
.
[Franz Brunhölzl: Zur Kosmographie des Aethicus. In: Festschrift für Max Spindler zum 75. Geburtstag, München 1969, S. 75–89; Franz Brunhölzl: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Bd. 1, München 1975, S. 63f.]
Sources
In terms of sources, the Bible and
Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville ( la, Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – 4 April 636) was a Spanish scholar, theologian, and archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of 19th-century historian Montalembert, as "the last scholar of ...
(d. 636) form the lion's share of Pseudo-Jerome's allusions. It was once argued that Jerome's work had provided source material for Isidore, but this was disproven by Dalche (1984). These sources, and the others, are presented in a very paraphrased form and are rarely made reference to directly. The work is also filled with many fictional sources, which makes Jerome similar to
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus (french: Virgile de Toulouse, fl. c. 7th century), known in English as Virgil the Grammarian or Virgil of Toulouse, is the author of two early medieval grammatical texts known as the ''Epitomae'' and the ''Epistolae''.
...
, an Irish pseudo-grammarian of the 7th century. Whether there is any relationship between the two has been considered by Herren (1994), but the evidence is not conclusive in proving a certain, direct connexion between the authors.
The title ''Aethici Cosmographia'' was first incorrectly given a work published in 1575 by Josias Simmler and later by Grovonis in 1696. The text has some identical geographic observations but the framing is completely different, in this case more of names in lists.
It has been supposed that the writer is Julius Honores (even later called Pseudo-Aethicus) mentioned by
Cassiodorus
Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (c. 485 – c. 585), commonly known as Cassiodorus (), was a Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and writer serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. ''Senator'' w ...
in ''Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum'' (25) as Julius Honorius Crator.
Criticisms
The
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
of the work is sometimes vulgar and facile, other times cryptic and opaque, owing in part to Jerome's extremely difficult vocabulary of Graecisms and Latin/Greek compounds. (See Herren, 2001).
Anagram
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...
games, and etymological 'jokes' (e.g. using the verb 'monstrare' followed by the noun '
monstrum', then the verb 'demonstrare') and other ludic elements are found throughout. The Latin spelling of the work seems to suggest also that the author was a
Merovingian
The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gauli ...
Frank
Frank or Franks may refer to:
People
* Frank (given name)
* Frank (surname)
* Franks (surname)
* Franks, a medieval Germanic people
* Frank, a term in the Muslim world for all western Europeans, particularly during the Crusades - see Farang
Curr ...
(Prinz, 1993), but the idea of "Merovingian" spellings has recently been attacked as an unreliable measure of origin. Furthermore, only one manuscript of the work appears to have been written in
Tours
Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...
, while the majority can be traced to centres in what is now Germany (Prinz, 1993).
Jerome may have been associated with the Frankish translator of
Pseudo-Methodius (Petrus Monachus). There are several passages which seem to be borrowed one way or another, suggesting perhaps a parallel relationship rather than one of dependence. Nevertheless, Jerome's knowledge of
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
(a rare feat in
Western Europe
Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context.
The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
at the time) may indicate an association with the Canterbury school of
Archbishop Theodore in the late 7th century. See a recent article by Michael Herren (in ''Nova de Veteribus'') on a possible Anglo-Saxon connection for Jerome. What seems clear is that Jerome was not limited to a single locale throughout his working lifetime.
Bibliography
Editions
*''The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister: Text, Translation, and Commentary'', ed. Michael W. Herren, Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011).
*''Die Kosmographie des Aethicus'', ed. O. Prinz,
MGH (Munich: 1993).
*''Aethici Istrici Cosmographia ab Hieronymo ex Graeco Latinum breviarium redacta'', ed.
H. Wuttke (Leipzig: 1854).
*''Éthicus et les ouvrages cosmographiques intitulés de ce nom'', ed. A. d'Averzac (Paris: 1852).
*(Partial) ''Aethici Istri Cosmographi Origo Francorum'', ed. B. Krusch, in MGH SS rer. Merv. VII (Hanover: 1919).
Studies
* J.G. Dalché, "Du nouveau sur Aethicus Ister? A propos d'une théorie récente", ''Journal des savants'', 3-4 (1984), pp. 175–186.
* G. Hays, "'Important if True': Lucan's Orpheus and Aethicus Ister', in ''Notes and Queries'', (2010)
'contra'' the interpretation by R. Pollard "'Lucan' and 'Aethicus Ister'", ''Notes and Queries'', 53 (2006), pp. 7-10
* M. Herren, "Aethicus Ister and Virgil the Grammarian", in ''Mélanges François Kerlouégan'' (Paris: 1994), pp. 285–288.
* M. Herren, "The ‘Greek Element’ in the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister", ''Journal of Medieval Latin'', 11 (2001), pp. 184–200.
* M. Herren, "The ‘Cosmography’ of Aethicus Ister: Speculations about its date, provenance, and audience", in Nova de Veteribus, eds. A. Bihrer and E. Stein (Munich: 2004), pp. 79–102.
* K. Hillkowitz, ''Zur Kosmographie des Aethicus'', I (Bonn: 1934); II (Frankfurt: 1973).
* H. Löwe, ''Ein literarischer Widersacher des Bonifatius. Virgil von Salzburg und die Kosmographie des Aethicus Ister'' (Wiesbaden: 1952).
* I. Wood
"Aethicus Ister: An exercise in difference" in ''Grenze und Differenz im frühen Mittelalter'', eds. W. Pohl und H. Reimitz (Vienna: 2000), pp. 197–208.
References
{{Authority control
Ister, Aethicus
Alexander the Great in legend
Medieval legends