Ansello (i.e., Anselmo)

ANSELLO (i.e., Anselmo). - Benedictine, called the Scholastic (Ansellus Scholasticus). With the authors of the Histoire littéraire de la France it was believed, until today, that he was a monk of Fleury, living in the 10th century; but A. Wilmart, basing himself on cod. Vaticano Reg. lat. 73, calls him a monk of Saint-Germain d'Auxerre, and leaves uncertain the century in which he lived (10th or 11th).

His name is linked to the Visio cuiusdam monachi, better known by the name of Visio Anelli, very famous in the Middle Ages, and yet remaining in manuscript until the last century, when Edélestand du Méril published it (1843) in Poésies latines populaires (I, 200-17) and Migne reproduced it (PL 151, 643-52). A critical edition of it is still desired.

The poem has as its setting the abbey of St. Remigius of Reims and describes the vision that a monk, passing by there, had of the devil and of hell. It is composed of octosyllabic verses, with rhymed couplets and assonances, with the penultimate syllable always short and without elision.

It is preceded by a letter-preface, addressed to an abbot Odo, perhaps Odo of Cluny (924-42), but it could also be Odo of Saint-Germain d'Auxerre (1032-52). Having remained unpublished, the letter was critically published, in 1933, by Wilmart, on the basis of three manuscripts.