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Muspilli
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Muspilli
Muspilli is an Old High German alliterative verse poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the poem, including its title, remain controversial among scholars.
The text is extant in a single ninth-century manuscript: Clm 14098 of the Bavarian State Library, Munich. The bulk of the manuscript contains a Latin theological text presented between 821 and 827 by Adalram, bishop of Salzburg, to the young Louis the German (c. 810–876). Into this orderly written manuscript, the text of the Muspilli was untidily entered, with numerous scribal errors, using blank pages, lower margins and even the dedication page.
Though in Carolingian minuscules, the handwriting is not that of a trained scribe. The language is essentially Bavarian dialect of the middle or late 9th century. The poem's beginning and ending are missing: they were probably written on the manuscript's outer leaves, which have since been lost. Legibility has always been a problem with this text, and some early editors used reagents which have left permanent stains. There are many conjectural readings, some of them crucial to modern interpretation of the work.
Most of the poem is in alliterative verse of very uneven quality. Some lines contain rhymes, using a poetic form pioneered in the ninth century by Otfrid of Weissenburg (c. 790–875). This formal unevenness has often led scholars to regard the surviving text as a composite made up of older material and younger accretions – an impression reinforced by the poem's thematic and stylistic diversity. But it is also possible that a single poet deliberately chose to vary the verse forms in this way.
In 1832 the first editor, Johann Andreas Schmeller, proposed as the poem's provisional title what seemed to be a key word in line 57: dar nimac denne mak andremo helfan uora demo muspille ('there no kinsman is able to help another before the muspilli). This is the only known occurrence of this word in Old High German. Its immediate context is the destruction of the world by fire, but it is unclear whether the word denotes a person or some other entity. Distinctively, Kolb took uora as a local preposition ('in front of'), with muspilli signifying the Last Judgment itself, or perhaps its location or its presiding Judge.
Related forms are found in two other Germanic languages. The Old Saxon Christian poem Heliand (early or mid 9th century) presents (and perhaps personifies) mudspelli (mutspelli) as a destructive force, coming as a thief in the night, and associated with the end of the world. In Old Norse, Muspellr occurs as a proper name, apparently that of the progenitor or leader of a band of fighters ('Muspellr's sons'), who are led by fiery Surtr against the gods at Ragnarök (a series of events heralding the death of major deities, including Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr and Loki). The oldest known occurrences are in the Poetic Edda: Völuspá (51 Muspells lýþir) and Lokasenna (42 Muspells synir) (originals 10th century, manuscripts from about 1270). More elaborate detail on Ragnarök is supplied in the Prose Edda (attributed to Snorri Sturluson, compiled round 1220, manuscripts from about 1300), and here the section known as Gylfaginning (chapters 4, 13, and 51) has references to Muspell(i), Muspells megir, Muspells synir and Muspells heimr.
Muspilli is usually analysed as a two-part compound, with well over 20 different etymologies proposed, depending on whether the word is seen as a survival from old Germanic, pagan times, or as a newly coined Christian term originating within the German-speaking area. Only a few examples can be mentioned here. As possible meanings, Bostock, King and McLintock favoured 'pronouncement about (the fate of) the world' or 'destruction (or destroyer) of the earth'. Like Sperber and Krogmann, Finger argued that the word originated in Old Saxon as a synonym for Christ, 'He who slays with the word of His mouth' (as in 2 Thessalonians 2, 8 and Apocalypse 19, 15). Finger also contended that the word was imported into Norway (not Iceland) under Christian influence, and that the Old Norse texts (though themselves touched by Christianity) show no deeper understanding of its meaning. Jeske also regarded the word as a Christian coinage, deriving its first syllable from Latin mundus 'world' and -spill- (more conventionally) from a Germanic root meaning 'destruction'.
Scholarly consensus on the word's origin and meaning is unsettled. There is, however, agreement that as a title, it fails to match the poem's principal theme: the fate of souls after death.
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Muspilli
Muspilli is an Old High German alliterative verse poem known in incomplete form (103 lines) from a ninth-century Bavarian manuscript. Its subject is the fate of the soul immediately after death and at the Last Judgment. Many aspects of the interpretation of the poem, including its title, remain controversial among scholars.
The text is extant in a single ninth-century manuscript: Clm 14098 of the Bavarian State Library, Munich. The bulk of the manuscript contains a Latin theological text presented between 821 and 827 by Adalram, bishop of Salzburg, to the young Louis the German (c. 810–876). Into this orderly written manuscript, the text of the Muspilli was untidily entered, with numerous scribal errors, using blank pages, lower margins and even the dedication page.
Though in Carolingian minuscules, the handwriting is not that of a trained scribe. The language is essentially Bavarian dialect of the middle or late 9th century. The poem's beginning and ending are missing: they were probably written on the manuscript's outer leaves, which have since been lost. Legibility has always been a problem with this text, and some early editors used reagents which have left permanent stains. There are many conjectural readings, some of them crucial to modern interpretation of the work.
Most of the poem is in alliterative verse of very uneven quality. Some lines contain rhymes, using a poetic form pioneered in the ninth century by Otfrid of Weissenburg (c. 790–875). This formal unevenness has often led scholars to regard the surviving text as a composite made up of older material and younger accretions – an impression reinforced by the poem's thematic and stylistic diversity. But it is also possible that a single poet deliberately chose to vary the verse forms in this way.
In 1832 the first editor, Johann Andreas Schmeller, proposed as the poem's provisional title what seemed to be a key word in line 57: dar nimac denne mak andremo helfan uora demo muspille ('there no kinsman is able to help another before the muspilli). This is the only known occurrence of this word in Old High German. Its immediate context is the destruction of the world by fire, but it is unclear whether the word denotes a person or some other entity. Distinctively, Kolb took uora as a local preposition ('in front of'), with muspilli signifying the Last Judgment itself, or perhaps its location or its presiding Judge.
Related forms are found in two other Germanic languages. The Old Saxon Christian poem Heliand (early or mid 9th century) presents (and perhaps personifies) mudspelli (mutspelli) as a destructive force, coming as a thief in the night, and associated with the end of the world. In Old Norse, Muspellr occurs as a proper name, apparently that of the progenitor or leader of a band of fighters ('Muspellr's sons'), who are led by fiery Surtr against the gods at Ragnarök (a series of events heralding the death of major deities, including Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr and Loki). The oldest known occurrences are in the Poetic Edda: Völuspá (51 Muspells lýþir) and Lokasenna (42 Muspells synir) (originals 10th century, manuscripts from about 1270). More elaborate detail on Ragnarök is supplied in the Prose Edda (attributed to Snorri Sturluson, compiled round 1220, manuscripts from about 1300), and here the section known as Gylfaginning (chapters 4, 13, and 51) has references to Muspell(i), Muspells megir, Muspells synir and Muspells heimr.
Muspilli is usually analysed as a two-part compound, with well over 20 different etymologies proposed, depending on whether the word is seen as a survival from old Germanic, pagan times, or as a newly coined Christian term originating within the German-speaking area. Only a few examples can be mentioned here. As possible meanings, Bostock, King and McLintock favoured 'pronouncement about (the fate of) the world' or 'destruction (or destroyer) of the earth'. Like Sperber and Krogmann, Finger argued that the word originated in Old Saxon as a synonym for Christ, 'He who slays with the word of His mouth' (as in 2 Thessalonians 2, 8 and Apocalypse 19, 15). Finger also contended that the word was imported into Norway (not Iceland) under Christian influence, and that the Old Norse texts (though themselves touched by Christianity) show no deeper understanding of its meaning. Jeske also regarded the word as a Christian coinage, deriving its first syllable from Latin mundus 'world' and -spill- (more conventionally) from a Germanic root meaning 'destruction'.
Scholarly consensus on the word's origin and meaning is unsettled. There is, however, agreement that as a title, it fails to match the poem's principal theme: the fate of souls after death.
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