We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2017
The symbolic, or perhaps more accurately, non-numerical significance of numbers has long been an accepted factor in the religion and superstition of the western world; in particular, medieval man in his search for the divine order underlying all manifestations of the external world possessed a natural propensity for numerological interpretation. It is, therefore, no surprise to find in the literature of the Middle Ages constant reference to, and interpretation of, numbers — numbers which in many cases even today have about them a sinister, friendly, or sanctified aura. The meaning of numbers and their manner of employment vary, however, greatly in different forms of writing and it is thus important to bear in mind the advice of Hopper, that although symbolic numbers are profusely scattered through the pages of nearly all medieval writings, it is necessary to distinguish, especially in secular and unscientific literature, between the philosophical or scientific use of number, the symbolic, the imitative, and the merely naïve preference for certain commonly used numbers.’ Hopper was concerned in his work with the general meaning of numbers as they appeared in medieval writings of all kinds and not with literature per se, where, at least in Germany, a further distinction must be made on the basis of recent scholarship. For considerable interest has been evinced in recent years in the structure of medieval German literature and in particular in the arithmetically symmetrical plans which seem to have been drawn up by poets as a framework for their composition. Whilst, therefore, the use of numbers in religious and edifying works may justifiably be viewed as deriving from Christian symbolism and is therefore to be distinguished on the one hand from the scientific use of number and on the other from the ‘naïve preference for certain commonly used numbers,’ a further category must be established in that the planned arithmetical form of medieval secular literature may have in fact no symbolic meaning. To take only a few simple examples: the Goldene Schmiede of Konrad von Würzburg consists of 1,000 couplets or the perfect number 10 raised to the power of the Trinity. Gottfried's Tristan on the other hand was possibly calculated to cover 25,000 lines, by which, presumably, nothing is symbolised. The fact that Otfried writes: ‘Wangta zuein thero jaro fiarzug ni was' and ‘Thria stunton finfzug ouh thri,’ for 38 and 153 respectively, is due to the innate significance of these numbers and not to the exigencies of versification. There is no significance, however, in the Nibelungenlied's ‘Sehs unt ahzec türne,’ ‘sehs unt ahzec wip,’ and ‘Sehs unt ahzec vrouwen’ (404.1, 525.1, 572.1). Similarly, the use of the seven-line stanza may be conditioned by the symbolic significance of the number seven, but the same is presumably not the case with Wolfram's groups of thirty lines. More important perhaps than these examples: the numerical structure of the Annolied has a specific meaning in relation to the religious content of the work, but there is no meaning inherent in the symmetrical line and stanza groups in the works of Gottfried, Wolfram, and Hartmann.
1 A synopsis of this essay was read at the Kentucky Foreign Language Conference in April 1963. In the University of British Columbia my thanks are due to the President's Committee on Research for a grant which enabled me to consult works in the library of the University of California and to the Inter-Library Borrowing Service which obtained for me many out-of-the-way works on numerology.Google Scholar
2 Hopper, V. S., Medieval Number Symbolism (New York 1938)127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 See Tax, Petrus, Wort, Sinnbild, Zahl im Tristanroman (Philologische Studien und Quellen 8; Berlin 1961)169 and the literature there quoted.Google Scholar
4 Otfried's, Evangelienbuch (ed. Erdmann, O, 3. Aufl. besorgt Wolff, v. L.: Altdeutsche Textbibliothek 49; Tübingen 1957) 3.4.17 and 5.13.19-20.Google Scholar
5 For a convenient listing of the numbers in the Nibelungenlied see Morgan, B. Q. ‘On the use of numbers in the Nibeliungenlied,’ Journal of English and Germanic Philology 30 (1937) 10–20.Google Scholar
6 Dealt with at great length by Fritschi, K., Das Annolied (Diss. Zürich 1957). See also below n. 34.Google Scholar
7 Hatto, A. T. and Taylor, R. J., ‘Recent work on the arithmetical principles in medieval poetry,’ Modern Language Review 46 (1951) 396–403; Rupp, Heinz, 'Neue Forschung zu Form und Bau mittelalterlicher Dichtung, Der Deutschunterricht 40(1959)117-24.Google Scholar
8 See Swinburne, H., ‘Numbers in Otfried's Evangelienharmonie,’ Modern Language Review 52(1957)195–202.Google Scholar
9 Sect. 2 in fin. (PL 38.1198).Google Scholar
10 Sect. 3 (PL 38.1166-7).Google Scholar
11 Note also his interest in music and its relationship to mathematics.Google Scholar
12 De doct Christiana 2.25 (PL 34.48). The next quotation is from the end of the same section.Google Scholar
13 There is a considerable body of literature on this subject, some of it listed by Hopper, , p. cit. (supra n. 2).Google Scholar
14 Cod. Monac. arab. 802; translated from Roscher, W. H., Die Hebdomadenlehre der griechischen Philosophen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie und Medizin (Leipzig 1906) 1.Google Scholar
15 Aristotle, , Metaphysics 1.5 (986a 3ff.).Google Scholar
16 Introductio Arithmetica 1.6 (p. 12.1–5 Hoche [Leipzig 1866]).Google Scholar
17 The contributing influences of Judaic and popular number superstitions are of course not denied.Google Scholar
18 Fontaine, J., Isidore de Séville et la culture classique dans l'Espagne wisigothique (Paris 1959) I 371 (see in general the whole of the third chapter of the third part).Google Scholar
19 Sawicki, Stanislaw, Gottfried von Strassburg und die Poetik des Mittelalters (Germanische Studien 124; Berlin 1932)155.Google Scholar
20 ‘Der grosse Heilige der Antike selbst, Virgil mit seiner Aeneis, Vorbild und Ursprung der grossen mittelalterlichen Epik überhaupt’ — Naumann, Hans, ‘Ritterlicher Standeskultur um 1200,’ in Naumann, Hans und Müller, Günther, Höfische Kultur (Halle 1929).7.Google Scholar
21 Duckworth, G. E., ‘Mathematical symmetry in Virgil's Aeneid,’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 91(1960)184–220, and the later development found in his Structural Patterns and Proportions in Vergil's Aeneid (Ann Arbor 1962).Google Scholar
22 Guy Le Grelle, S. J. ‘Le premier livre des Géorgiques, poème pythagoricien,’ Les études classiques 17(1949)139–235.Google Scholar
23 See Tschirch, Fritz, ‘Schlüsselzahlen: Studie zur geistigen Durchdringung der Form in der deutschen Dichtung des Mittelalters,’ Beiträge zur deutschen und nordischen Literatur; Festgabe für Leopold Magon zum 70. Geburststag (Berlin 1958) 30–53.Google Scholar
24 Maury, Paul, ‘Le secret de Virgile et l'architecture des Bucoliques,’ Lettres d'humanité 3 (1944) 71–147; the diagram based on Maury's Fig. 3 (p. 126). The line totals of Eclogues III, VI and VII were corrected by Maury from 111, 86 and 70 respectively.Google Scholar
25 Vita Donati 15; lines 49-50 ed. Hardie, C. (Oxford 1957) 5.Google Scholar
26 Duckworth, , op. cit. 212.Google Scholar
27 Vita Donati 23–4; lines 85-91, p. 7 Hardie.Google Scholar
28 Grelle, Le, op. cit., 147.Google Scholar
29 Richardson, L., Poetical Theory in Republican Rome (New Haven 1944) 132 (cf. 126).Google Scholar
30 See Kienast, R., ‘Zur Tektonik von Wolframs Willehalm,’ Studien zur deutschen Philologie des Mittelalters Fr. Panzer dargebracht (Heidelberg 1950) 96–115.Google Scholar
31 Eggers, Hans, ‘Der goldene Schnitt im Aufbau alt- und mittelhochdeutscher Epen,’ Wirkendes Wort 10 (1960) 193–203.Google Scholar
32 See Batts, M. S., ‘Numbers and number symbolism in medieval German poetry,’ Modern Language Quarterly 24 (1963) 342–349.Google Scholar
33
Actually 1/2 
.Google Scholar
34 The Annolied is the prime example, but it seems possible to produce so many cases of numerical symbolism and numerical patterns from this work that one tends to distrust each new attempt to solve the puzzle. See Fritschi, , op. cit. (supra n. 6); Eggers, , op. cit. (supra n. 31); and Knab, Doris, Das Annolied: Probleme seiner literarischen Einordnung (Hermaea N. F. 11; Tübingen 1962) for further literature.Google Scholar
35 Not to mention current number superstition, numerological fortune-telling, mystical numerical practices of secret societies, etc.Google Scholar
36 De musica 6.56 (PL 32.1191).Google Scholar
