De creatura ('On Creation') is an 83-line Latin polystichic poem by the seventh- to eighth-century Anglo-Saxon poet Aldhelm and an important text among Anglo-Saxon riddles. The poem seeks to express the wondrous diversity of creation, usually by drawing vivid contrasts between different natural phenomena, one of which is usually physically higher and more magnificent, and one of which is usually physically lower and more mundane.
Contents
De creatura is one of two of Aldhelm's riddles known to have been translated into Old English (the other being the Leiden Riddle): a fairly close but expansive, albeit now fragmentary, translation survives as the 108-line Riddle 40 of the Exeter Book (according to the numbering of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records). This was itself shortened and reworked as the ten-line Riddle 66, and adapted even further as the now largely lost, presently six-line Riddle 94, both also found in the Exeter Book. These riddles stand as a rare example of an Old English poem surviving in multiple copies.
Aldhelm's De creatura
De creatura is the culminatory hundredth poem of Aldhelm's collection of verse riddles, known as the Enigmata, and also much the longest. The Enigmata survive included in his work on Latin poetics, the Epistola ad Acircium (presumably composed during the reign of its apparent addressee, Aldfrith of Northumbria, 685-704/5). Its main source is the Corpus Hermeticum, Treatise XI, 20, where the Divine Intellect, the Mind of God is addressing Hermes Trismegistus.
Riddle 40
Linguistic evidence suggests that Riddle 40 was probably not composed before the tenth century. This is consistent with the fact that it was clearly translated from a recension of Aldhelm's poem in which lines 61-67 have been moved to before line 44. As the only manuscript of De creatura from Anglo-Saxon England to contain this recension is Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697, originally written on the Continent but brought to England by the earlier tenth century, and since this manuscript contains some glosses consistent with Riddle 40, it is conceivable and even likely that Riddle 40 was translated from Rawlinson C. 697 itself. Thomas A. Bredehoft has gone so far as to argue that Riddle 40 enjoys relatively little formulaic diction, but that those lines it does have in common with other Old English poems suggest a particularly strong association with other Exeter Book poems, suggesting that the translation must have been done in the mid-tenth century by someone familiar with a similar corpus of texts, and familiar with Dunstan's promotion of interest in Aldhelm at Glastonbury.
Riddle 40 was given unusual prominence by the scribe of the Exeter Book, and might in an exemplar of the manuscript have stood as the culmination of a collection of 40 Old English riddles. Unfortunately its ending is lost due to a missing bifolium in the manuscript.
Riddle 66
As edited by Krapp and Dobbie and translated by Sebo, Riddle 66 reads:
Riddle 66 has been praised for its tight composition, paring down the exuberant Riddle 40 to a cosmographical focus, giving an elegant structure and memorable form, most of which is paralleled in Riddle 94.
Riddle 94
Riddle 94 is mostly now lost due to damage to the Exeter Book. As edited by Krapp and Dobbie and translated by Sebo, Riddle 66 reads:
Editions
Major editions and translations of Aldhelm's Latin are:
Major editions of the Old English adaptations are: