The linguistic diffusion of Cisiojanus mnemonics…

Even though (academic opinion has it that) the idea of a Cisiojanus feast-name mnemonic first appeared in Germany in the 12th Century and largely diffused there, there is no such thing as a single universal Cisiojanus. That is, most examples of Cisiojanus have local tweaks – local saints, local memorials, local feasts.

Bear in mind that Christianity in the Middle Ages was a much less centralized affair than it became in the sixteenth Century and beyond: medieval Rome was a dump (the Vatican’s fabulous Renaissance buildings had yet to be erected), and papal behaviour was often more political than pontifical.

And so it was that Christian practice was more of a patchwork, where feasts (major ones excepted) were determined locally by bishops, towns, councils, and even guilds. The various examples I posted here before meshed syllables from local saints’ names into the Cisiojanus meta-framework: there is a lot more work for historians to do in terms of mapping the “adaptation trees”.

Interestingly, though, the basic Cisiojanus template was sufficiently flexible that it was able to be adapted not just to different German-speaking regions, but also to completely different languages.

Given that I haven’t found any review article on this “linguistic diffusion” of Cisiojanus, all I can do us offer up a brief set of research notes on all the different language Cisiojanus variants I’ve run across, in the hope that these might offer a starting point in that direction.

German Cisiojanus literature

Just as an aside, the root of the modern Cisiojanus literature is, without doubt:

“Cisiojanus : Studien zur mnemonischen Literatur anhand des spätmittelalterlichen Kalendergedichts” (1974) by Rolf Max Kully, which appeared in “Zeitschrift: Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde”, Band (Jahr): 70 (1974), Heft 3-4.

Before Kully, one of the most influential papers was by P. Diels (1937), Der älteste polnische Cisiojanus.

This year, there was a paper “All Days Are Equal, but Some Days Are More Equal than Others: Late Medieval German Cisiojani and Their Structure of Time” by Silvan Wagner at IMC 2018, as part of the “Memorising Time: The Cisiojanus as a Complex Storage of Pre-Modern Memory” session.

English Cisiojanus literature

“A Unique English Cisioianus” (2005), by William H. Smith, in ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 18:2, pp.10-16. This covers Chapel Hill MS 522.

Scottish Cisiojanus literature

A Scoto-Irish Cisiojanus (1980), by Alexander Boyle, in Analecta Bollandiana, Volume 98, Issue 1-2, pp. 39-47. Boyle is discussing MS Laing III 21, folios 1-9: and refers back to a 1959 paper “Cisiojani Latini” by Oloph Edenius, which divides Cisiojanus manuscripts into two types – syllable-based (usually Latin) and word-based (usually vernacular).

Boyle has another article (with David McRoberts) called “A Hebridean Cisiojanus“, The Innes Review, Volume 21 Issue 2, Page 108-123.

Irish Cisiojanus literature

An Irish cisiojanus by William O’Sullivan, in Collectanea Hibernica No. 29 (1988), pp.7-13. I haven’t seen this fully, but fragments on Google make it seem as though O’Sullivan thinks Boyle and McRoberts got their Hebridean Cisiojanus wrong.

Italian Cisiojanus literature

Nicola De Nisco, a PhD student at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia, uploaded Un inedito esemplare italiano di Cisioianus to academia.edu. This paper describes an Italian Cisiojanus that appears on the final page of “manoscritto ambrosiano + 93 sup.”, from the second half of the fifteenth century: it has a good bibliography.

De Nisco transcribes January as:

Sci.si.da.ia.nus.e.pi.si.bi.uen.pau.lim.fe.li.mar.an
Pri.sca.fab.ag.vim.cen.ti.pau.lus.cri.so.sto.mi.que.

For July (which has long been an interest of mine), the transcription runs:

Oc.pro.ces.no.dor.oc.ui.chi.li.fra.be.er.ma.co.di.post.al.
Ar.ga.mar.prax.mag.ab.crist.ia.an.na.pan.ta.le.on

Interestingly, De Nisco gave a presentation on “The Memory of Saints and His Stratifications: A Philological Approach to the Study of Italian Cisiojani” in IMC 2018, in the same session described above.

Hungarian Cisiojanus literature

There’s a Hungarian Cisiojanus described here, which goes far beyond the paltry limits of my tourist Hungarian.

Westjiddischer Cisiojanus literature

A fairly slim literature here, it has to be said, but Simon Neuberg (1999) “Aschkenasisches Latein. Ein westjiddischer Cisiojanus“, in Jiddische Philologie: Festschrift für Erika Timm, pp. 111–132.

French Cisiojanus literature

Here’s a webpage discussing a French Cisiojanus from circa 1500, courtesy of prolific Cisiojanus commentator Erik Drigsdahl. January looks like this:

En ian vier que les Roys ve nus sont
Glau me dit fre min mor font
An thoin boit le iour vin cent fois
Pol us en sont tous ses dois

A version of the same French rhyme was found in a 1514 pastedown (courtesy of a crowdsearch project!), according to this 2014 page.

Dutch Cisiojanus literature

There’s a mention (I believe) of a Dutch Cisiojanus in KB Brussel 15.659-61 by Theo Meder’s “Sprookspreker in Holland“.

Icelandic Cisiojanus literature

A 16th century Icelandic Cisiojanus is mentioned on footnote 18 of page 35 of the Saga book here: it says that the syllable ‘bla’ for St Blaise got inserted into the Cisiojanus in Guðbrandur Þorláksson’s (1576) “Bænabok med morgum godvm og nytsamligum bænum”. As a side note, I’ve been to plenty of presentations that would seem to celebrate St Blaise three times over. 😉