The Prebiarum de multorum exemplaribus is a Hiberno-Latin

Hiberno-Latin

Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned sort of Latin literature created and spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century.-Vocabulary and Influence:...

 interrogatory florilegium

Florilegium

In medieval Latin a florilegium was a compilation of excerpts from other writings. The word is formed the Latin flos and legere : literally a gathering of flowers, or collection of fine extracts from the body of a larger work. It was adapted from the Greek anthologia "anthology", with the same...

 of the mid-8th century, written as a dialogue in a series of 93 short questions and answers. The word prebiarum seems to be a corruption of breviarium, though the work is not a breviary

Breviary

A breviary is a liturgical book of the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church containing the public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office...

 in the usual sense; the title is not customarily translated into English, but would mean something like "A Breviary of Examples from Many Sources." The Latin

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...

 dialogue makes use of triads

Triads of Ireland

The title Trecheng Breth Féne "A Triad of Judgments of the Irish", more widely known as "The Triads of Ireland", refers to a miscellaneous collection of about 214 Old Irish triads on a variety of topics, such as nature, geography, law, custom and behaviour...

, a tripartite form of expression characteristic of early Irish literature

Early Irish literature

-The earliest Irish authors:It is unclear when literacy first came to Ireland. The earliest Irish writings are inscriptions, mostly simple memorials, on stone in the ogham alphabet, the earliest of which date to the fourth century...

. Its subject matter is exegetical

Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...

 or didactic; that is, it seeks to explain or teach, often through an enumeration of its points.

The Prebiarum is mostly of comparative

Comparative literature

Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

 interest, and has been dismissed as an example of texts, often written by monks

Christian monasticism

Christian monasticism is a practice which began to develop early in the history of the Christian Church, modeled upon scriptural examples and ideals, including those in the Old Testament, but not mandated as an institution in the scriptures. It has come to be regulated by religious rules Christian...

, that "display a vulgarization of religious subjects, treating them as popular trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

, meant more for fun and humour than for any overly didactic, serious purpose." This characterization may represent an elitist view not evident to all readers of the Prebiarum. Like other catechetical

Catechism

A catechism , i.e. to indoctrinate) is a summary or exposition of doctrine, traditionally used in Christian religious teaching from New Testament times to the present...

 Hiberno-Latin writings, the Prebiarum with its modest aims seems intended to help ordinary people with Bible study

Bible study (Christian)

In Christianity, Bible study is the study of the Bible by ordinary people as a personal religious or spiritual practice. Some denominations may call this devotion or devotional acts; however in other denominations devotion has other meanings...

.

The text's 20th-century editor regarded the Prebiarum as "a handbook

Handbook

A handbook is a type of reference work, or other collection of instructions, that is intended to provide ready reference .A handbook is sometimes referred to as a vade mecum or pocket reference that is intended to be carried at all times.Handbooks may deal with any topic, and are generally...

 useful to the itinerant preacher, the teacher, or even to the spiritual father charged with the obligation of giving spiritual conferences or instructions. … In no sense is the work sophisticated; it is rather simple, direct, even somewhat archaic in spirit."

Sources, analogues, and intellectual context

Despite its 8th-century date, the Prebiarum is disconnected from the intellectual and theological

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 preoccupations of the Carolingian Renaissance

Carolingian Renaissance

In the history of ideas the Carolingian Renaissance stands out as a period of intellectual and cultural revival in Europe occurring from the late eighth century, in the generation of Alcuin, to the 9th century, and the generation of Heiric of Auxerre, with the peak of the activities coordinated...

 and represents a more "primitive state of biblical learning." Its methods cannot be said to derive from the exegetical literature

Exegesis

Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...

 of 7th-century Ireland, nor from the Northumbrian tradition of Bede

Bede

Bede , also referred to as Saint Bede or the Venerable Bede , was a monk at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria...

.

As a collection of miscellaneous snippets from various sources (collectanea), the Prebiarum draws on patristic

Church Fathers

The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...

 sources such as Jerome

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Roman Christian priest, confessor, theologian and historian, and who became a Doctor of the Church. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Stridon, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...

, Augustine, and Gregory, as well as medieval writings of obscure origin. The Prebiarum is similar to the Joca monarchorum ("Monks' jests") and Collectanaea pseudo-Bedae (sometimes noted as Collectanaea Bedae). The author or compiler of the Prebiarum drew on at least three works by Isidore of Seville

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville served as Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as the historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...

, the Etymologiae

Etymologiae

Etymologiae is an encyclopedia compiled by Isidore of Seville towards the end of his life. It forms a bridge between a condensed epitome of classical learning at the close of Late Antiquity and the inheritance received, in large part through Isidore's work, by the early Middle Ages...

, De ecclesiasticis officiis, and the Sententiae, along with the Irish pseudepigraphical Liber de numeris.

Other parallels can be found in works of Irish provenance or character, such as Pseudo-Cyprian's De XII Abusiuis Saeculi

Duodecim abusivis saeculi

De duodecim abusivis saeculi "On the Twelve Abuses of the World" is a treatise on social and political morality written by an anonymous Irish author between 630 and 700. During the Middle Ages the work was very popular throughout Europe.-Background:...

, the Irish Pseudo-Bede's De XIII Diuisionibus Temporum, the Cambrai Homily

Cambrai Homily

The Cambrai Homily is the earliest known Irish homily, dating to the 7th or early 8th century. It is evidence that a written vernacular encouraged by the Church had already been established alongside Latin by the 7th century in Ireland. The homily is also the oldest single example of an extended...

, and Pseudo-Isidore

Pseudo-Isidore

Pseudo-Isidore is the pseudonym given to the scholar or group of scholars responsible for the Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, the most extensive and influential set of forgeries found in medieval Canon law. The authors were a group of Frankish clerics writing in the second quarter of the ninth century...

's Questiones tam de nouo quam de uetere testamentum.

Linguistically, the text is influenced by Merovingian and Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin

Vulgar Latin is any of the nonstandard forms of Latin from which the Romance languages developed. Because of its nonstandard nature, it had no official orthography. All written works used Classical Latin, with very few exceptions...

. The Prebiarum is addressed to an Adalfeus (Adalfeo spiritali), who might tenuously be identified as the Adelphus (d. 670) who was the third abbot

Abbot

The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...

 of Remiremont

Remiremont Abbey

Remiremont Abbey was a Benedictine abbey near Remiremont, Vosges, France.-History:It was founded about 620 by Romaric, a lord at the court of Chlothar II, who, having been converted by Saint Ame, a monk of Luxeuil, took the habit at Luxeuil...

. The Adalfeo of the text might also be a mistaken transliteration of Greek Ἀδελφῷ (from adelphos, "brother"), and the phrase mean "for a spiritual brother."

Triads

The Prebiarum provides an enumerative response to many of the questions it poses, often in the form of a triadic utterance, including triads on greed (cupiditas) and martyrdom. One pair of triads is of a type circulated in other florilegia of moral extracts:

What are the worst things in this world? There are three. The soul of a sinner after death, the demons coming into his path, and not getting well rid of them for eternity.

What are the best things in this world? There are three. The soul of a just man after its departure from the body, and angels coming into his path, and to possess the eternal kingdom without end.

The text

The Prebiarum exists in a single manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

 that was most likely transcribed in the scriptorium

Scriptorium

Scriptorium, literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the copying of manuscripts by monastic scribes...

 of Bishop Arbeo of Freising

Arbeo of Freising

Arbeo of Freising was Bishop of Freising.He was a member of the Benedictine Order. At first a priest and notary under Bishop Joseph of Freising, he became in 763 abbot of the newly-founded monastery of Scharnitz...

. It thus originated in southeast Germany around Salzburg

Archbishopric of Salzburg

The Archbishopric of Salzburg was an ecclesiastical State of the Holy Roman Empire, its territory roughly congruent with the present-day Austrian state of Salzburg....

, probably within the circle of St. Virgilius

Vergilius of Salzburg

Vergilius of Salzburg was an Irish churchman, an early astronomer and bishop of Salzburg. His obituary calls him the geometer.-Biography:...

, which had a strong Irish presence. It is bound with five other minor works, four of which are of Irish provenance. Orthography

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

and linguistic aspects date the work to the mid-8th century. Given this setting, it may be Arbeo who is addressed in the dedication as a "spiritual brother."

Selected bibliography

• McNally, Robert E. Scriptores Hiberniae Minores Pars I. Corpus Christianorum 108B. Turnhout, 1973. Abbreviated SHM in this article.