Original Documents Benedictiones Ad Mensas Ekkehardi Monachi

IN the collection of remarkable manuscripts preserved in the library of the convent of St. Gall is the " Liber Benedictionalis," a work written A.D. 1000 or thereabouts, the contents of which throw considerable light on the cloister-life, as also on the customs and general state of culture of that period.Ekkehard the Fourth, or the younger (born A.D. 980, deceased 1036), was a monk and " magister scholarum " in the convent of St. Gall, and author of the "Casus S. Galli," 1 a work of inestimable value for a knowledge of tlie mediaeval period, and especially so with regard to Germany.While a student under the direction of his tutor Notker (Labeo), and also in after life, Ekkehard composed a number of poems on various subjects, such as epitaphs, inscriptions on pictures, hymns on the yearly festivals, short graces for meals, etc., which form collectively a considerable volume.It bears the name of " Liber Benedictionalis," and is numbered 393 among the manuscripts in the library of the convent.All these poems are in Latin, and in the rhyming hexameter verse called leonine.They are by no means remarkable for elegance of diction, nor correct in form ; occasionally they are so obscure that the author has felt himself obliged to render his meaning more intelligible by the addition of detached words, or notes, in Latin and German.In the case of several poems it is evident that they are no effusions of poetical inspiration, but must be regarded as exercises for making Latin verse, or as themes-" dictamina magistri diei debita "-as the author himself terms them, the purport and development of which the tutor had explained.Occasionally they are mere memoranda of Notker's lectures on rhetoric, logic, dialectics, astronomy, etc., or quotations from Greek and Latin poets and historians read with the tutor.With all their imperfections and want of poetical merit, these poems, and among them the " Benedictiones ad Mensas " especially, a precise reproduction of which we now give, form a part of those interesting works which afford us a glance of the inner life and social condition of the middle ages.It is well known that the term Benedictiones, or blessings, is given to those solemn acts so frequent formerly in the Mosaic ritual, and adopted by the Christian religion, whereby, by means of certain prayers, the grace and favor of Heaven were to be extended to some project, or person, or thing.The ceremony in use since the first centuries of the Christian Church, at the rite of benediction, and also at that of exorcism so closely connected with it, has been the making the sign of the cross, and the aspersion of holy water.Under the former formula the blessing and the adjuration

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