Cellanus (fl. ca. 675-706) was the abbot of
Péronne in
Picardy. At the time, Péronne was known as ''Perrona Scottorum'' on account of its fame as a home to Irish
peregrini.
He was a
penfriend and
correspondent
A correspondent or on-the-scene reporter is usually a journalist or commentator for a magazine, or an agent who contributes reports to a newspaper, or radio or television news, or another type of company, from a remote, often distant, locati ...
of
Aldhelm, and it is from a surviving letter that much of our knowledge of Cellanus originates.
Ludwig Traube believed him to be identical with the Abbot Cellanus whose obit is recorded in the
Annales Laureshamenses under 706; and was probably the ''Cellan mac Sechnusaigh, sapiens'', recorded in the same year in the
Annals of Ulster (pp. 96–119, 1900). Traube furthermore attributed two
hexameter
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...
poems to Cellanus (Traube, pp. 105–08, 1900).
Panegyric to Saint Patrick
Cellanus was thought to have been the composer of a
panegyric in honour of
Saint Patrick after the manner of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
, which was inscribed on the walls of a
basilica
In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's Forum (Roman), forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building ...
at Peronne which was dedicated to Patrick. However, Lapidge (1994 pp 110–15,) attributes this to Abbot Boniface. Against this, Hoffmann (2001 p 17) and Howlett (1998 p 38), think the poem is probably
Hiberno-Latin. On this subject, Charles D. Wright states:
References
* ''O Roma nobilis. Philologische Untersuchungen aus dem Mittelalter'',
Ludwig Traube, pp. 399–395, ''Abhandlungen der königlichen bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften'', Klasse 19, 1894.
* ''Perrona Scottorum, ein Beitrag zur Überlieferungsgeschichte und zur Palaeographie des Mittelalters'', pp. 469–538, ''Vorlesungen und Abhandlungen'', ed.
Franz Boll,
Paul Lehmann, and Samuel Brandt,
München 1900 (1901, 1920).
* ''Autographs of Insular Latin Authors of the Early Middle Ages'', pp. 103–36, Michael Lapidge, in ''Gli autografi medievali. Problemi paleografici e filologici. Atti del convegno di studio della Fondazione Ezio Franceschini. Erice, 25 settembre–2 ottobre 1990'', ed. Paolo Chiesa and Lucia Pinelli, 1994.
* ''Insular Acrostics, Celtic Latin Colophons'', pp. 27–44, David Howlett, ''Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies'' 35, 1998.
* ''Autographa des früheren Mittelalters.”, pp.1-62, Hartmut Hoffmann, ''Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters'' 17, 2001.
* ''Hiberno-Latin Literature to 1169'',
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín
Dáibhí Iarla Ó Cróinín (born 29 August 1954) is an Irish historian and authority on Hiberno-Latin texts, noted for his significant mid-1980s discovery in a manuscript in Padua of the "lost" Irish 84-year Easter table. Ó Cróinín was Prof ...
, chapter XI, ''A New History of Ireland'', volume I, 2005.
External links
* Charles D. Wright - https://web.archive.org/web/20120326130829/http://saslc.nd.edu/samples/c/cellanus_of_peronne.pdf
* https://web.archive.org/web/20110204000857/http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/4/Grimmer.html
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cellanus
7th-century Irish poets
7th-century Irish writers
7th-century Irish abbots
Irish expatriates in France
Irish Latinists
7th-century Latin writers