ANNO, CANTO DI (Annolied). — It is a Middle High German poem composed between 1077 and 1081 by a cleric of the monastery of Siegburg near Bonn. In it, alongside a compendium of ecclesiastical history from the creation of man and secular history through the five monarchies up to the time of Bishop Anno of Cologne (d. 1075), culminating in the glorification of the Franks and the city of Cologne, there is added a panegyric of Anno and the narration of miracles that occurred at his tomb. The poem, whose legendary portion is common to that of a *Vita Annonis* of 1105, which perhaps goes back, along with the poem, to a single more ancient source, though at times betraying its rough draft, contains in its 876 verses vivid and picturesque passages, and does not lack in some battle scenes (in which, alongside elements from German popular epic, classical reminiscences are evident, especially from Virgil and Lucan) of true poetic fervor.
The manuscript of the poem, now lost, was first edited by Opitz in 1639.
BIBL.:
Opitz, *Annolied*, ed. cit.;
Bruno Vignoli, *Il poema Annolied*, Rome 1933.