ANNONE, CANTO di (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 secular history through the five monarchies down to the time of Bishop Annone of Cologne (d. 1075), culminating in the glorification of the Franks and the city of Cologne, it adds a panegyric of Annone and an account of the miracles that occurred at his tomb. The poem, whose legendary portion is shared with that of a Vita Annoni of 1105, which perhaps, together with the poem, goes back to a single older source, though showing here and there the marks of rough drafting, contains in its 876 verses lively and picturesque passages, and in certain battle scenes (in which, alongside motifs from German popular epic, classical reminiscences are evident, especially of Virgil and Lucan) displays genuine poetic impetus.
The manuscript of the poem, now lost, was first edited by Opitz in 1639. Bruno Vignolo