To celebrate pressing send on the final (final!) set of proofs for my book, I’m starting a countdown to its publication in April 2022 with Tuesday Tunes—a Latin refrain song each week!
This week’s song is Anni novi prima die, possibly penned and definitely compiled by Abbess Herrad of Landsberg in her Hortus Deliciarum, a compendium of knowledge for the novices at Hohenburg Abbey (Mont St Odile) in Alsace in the late 12th century. Although the manuscript was destroyed in an 1870 bombing and fire in Strasbourg, the poetry of Anni novi prima die survived because parts of the manuscript had been copied prior to its destruction. Rosalie Green et al published a reconstruction in 1979 that has become the standard source for everything we know about its contents, including Latin poetry (some notated) composed and/or compiled by Herrad. The Latin songs in the Hortus Deliciarum are by and for women, in other words, and reflect the kind of devotional (and not always liturgical) music making that was taking place throughout Europe in the Middle Ages.
Anni novi prima die is one such song, a celebration of the Feast of the Circumcision on 1 January, which was also often celebrated (unofficially at that time) as the New Year. Each strophe cites the new year (“anni novi”) in the same way, always framed around the ritual act of Christ’s Circumcision and reflecting one of the earliest poetic links between the liturgical feast day and popular celebrations of 1 January. Most interesting is the developing refrain that emphasis first the “when” and then the “who” of the ritual act (text and translation below). While Anni novi prima die is unique to the Hortus Deliciarum, it is part of a larger group of songs that not only celebrates 1 January as an inherently pluralistic day ritually and popularly, but also that employs “anni novi” or “annus novus” as a refrain within and among songs. More on this and the other Latin “New Year’s songs” in Chapter 1 “Latin Song and Refrain in the Medieval Year” of Devotional Refrains in Medieval Latin Song.
(Although Anni novi prima die is unnotated, you can hear a reconstruction of a different-notated!-Latin poem from the Hortus Deliciarum by Discantus, Sol oritur occasus; image below.)
Hortus Deliciarum (destroyed), folio 323r. Herrad of Landsberg (right) and her community.
Hortus deliciarum (destroyed), fol. 30r. Sol oritur occasus nescius (polyphonic) and Primus parens (monophonic)
Text and Translation of Anni novi prima die* (Hortus deliciarum, fol. 30v)
1. Anni novi prima die
Filius virginis Marie
Morem gessit natilie.
Dum, dum, dum circumcidi sustinuit
In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.
2. Anni novi die prima
Superna moderans et ima
Passus est sub petre lima
Dum, dum, dum circumcidi sustinuit
In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.
3. Anni novi die nova
Homo cor animaque nova,
Ad ipsius laudem ova
Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit
In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.
4. Anni novi festum cole
Qui manet sub utroque sole
Te peccati solvit mole.
Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit
In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.
5. Anni novi die festo
Pater et Spiritus adesto,
Et fac ut sis nobis presto,
Qui, qui, qui circumcidi sustinuit
In quo non fuit dignum quid abscidi.
1. On the first day of the New Year,
the Son of the Virgin Mary
bore the custom of his birth.
When, when, when he endured to be circumcised
in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.
2. On the first day of the New Year,
governing the celestial and terrestrial,
He suffered under the sharpened stone.
When, when, when he endured to be circumcised
in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.
3. On the new day of the New Year,
person, heart, and new spirit,
rejoice in His praise.
Who, who, who endured to be circumcised
in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.
4. Keep the feast of the New Year:
He who abides throughout the seasons
releases you from the heavy burden of sin.
Who, who, who endured to be circumcised
in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.
5. On the feast day of the New Year,
come, Father and [Holy] Spirit,
and make yourself available to us.
Who, who, who endured to be circumcised
in whom there was nothing worthy of being cut away.
*Latin edited in Green, ed., Herrad of Hohenbourg, 2:144.
© All materials Mary Channen Caldwell January 11, 2022. Please ask for permission before reproducing or citing. I do not own the image rights; all images are in public domain as of January 2022.
Select Bibliography
Cames, Gérard. Allégores et symboles dans l'Hortus deliciarum. Leiden: Brill, 1971.
Engelhardt, Christian Moritz. Herrad von Landsperg, Aebtissin zu Hohenburg, oder St. Odilien, im Elsass, in zwölften Jahrhundert und ihr Werk: Hortus deliciarum. Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1818.
Green, Rosalie, ed. Herrad of Hohenbourg: Hortus deliciarum. 2 vols. London and Leiden: Warburg Institute and Brill, 1979. (Includes Kenneth Levy’s contribution titled “The Musical Notation” (ch. 7), 2:87–88.)
Griffiths, Fiona J. The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
Griffiths, Fiona. "Herrad of Hohenbourg: A Synthesis of Learning in The Garden of Delights." In Listen Daughter: The Speculum Virginum and the Formation of Religious Women in the Middle Ages, edited by Constant J. Mews, 221-243. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
Griffiths, Fiona. "Nuns' Memories or Missing History in Alsace (c. 1200): Herrad of Hohenbourg's Garden of Delights." In Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700-1300, edited by Elisabeth Van Houts, 132-149. Harlow and New York: Longman, 2001.
Joyner, Danielle. Painting the Hortus deliciarum: Medieval Women, Wisdom, and Time. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.
Schultz, Simone. Hortus deliciarum: le plus beau trésor d'Alsace. Strasbourg: Coprur, 2004.
Yardley, Anne Bagnall. "‘Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne’: The Cloistered Musician in the Middle Ages." In Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150-1950, edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick, 15-38. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
*I haven’t yet read this (from 2021) on puppets in the Hortus Deliciarum!