Annone, Chant of (Annolled)

ANNONE, Chant of (Annolled). - It is a poem in Middle High German, composed between 1077 and 1081 by an ecclesiastic of the monastery of Siegburg near Bonn. To a compendium of ecclesiastical history from the creation of man and of profane history through the five monarchies up to the times of Bishop Anno of Cologne (d. 1075), culminating in the glorification of the Franks and of the city of Cologne, there is added a panegyric of Anno and the narration of the miracles that occurred at his tomb. The poem, whose legendary part is common to that of a Vita Annoni of 1105, which perhaps goes back with the poem to a single older source, although here and there showing signs of being a rough draft, contains in its 876 verses lively and picturesque passages, and is not lacking in certain battle scenes (in which, alongside motifs of German popular epic, classical reminiscences are evident, especially of Virgil and Lucan) of true poetic impetus.

The manuscript of the poem, now lost, was first edited by Opitz in 1639.

Bruno Vignolo