Commentary for Bern Riddle 19: De cera/De pice


Date: Wed 27 Jan 2021
Matching Riddle: Bern Riddle 19: De cera/De pice

Sometimes, the Bern Riddles like to make us work hard for their solutions. You might remember Bern Riddle 16, which can be solved as either citrus fruit or cedar/juniper berry. Well, this is another riddle where we get to choose the solution. Many manuscripts give it the title of De pice (“About Pitch”), but one gives De nimpha (“About the fountain/siphon”) and another gives De cera (“About [bees]wax”). My preference is definitely “wax,” which fits with the next two riddles (“honey” and “bee”). Having said all this, it is a tricky riddle to read, and it took me quite a while to work out how the solution fits—see if you agree with my reading.

“Beeswax. Photograph (by Frank Mikley) from Wikipedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0)

The first two lines are all about likeness between a mother and her child—as with so many other riddles, we are expected to guess who the parent is. Originally, I thought that she was a mould for wax candles, but recently I have changed my mind: the mother is the beehive, who is utterly unlike her child, and who gives birth to the wax without any “manly seed” (virili… de semine). The wax caps are then cut out of the honeycomb “womb” (venter) by humans. As line 3 explains, although the hive has had the wax cut from it, it “lives on.” In this way, the riddle uses the virgin birth and caesarean birth motifs that we have already come across with Bern Riddle 8’s egg.

“6th/early 7th century beeswax candles, found in the Frankish-Alemannic graveyard of Oberflach, near Tuttlingen, Germany. Photograph (by Andreas Franzkowiak) from Wikipedia Commons (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0)

The wax is then burnt as a candle. Most early medieval candles would have been made of tallow, but expensive beeswax candles burnt brighter and with a more pleasant odour. Because of this, beeswax candles were frequently reserved for their use in liturgy, and particularly the Easter Vigil, where a candle would be lit on the night of Holy Saturday in the image of the Resurrection.

The final two lines are quite tricky to account for. Why is wax only valuable when it is darkened? My best guess is that these lines refer either to the process of rendering beeswax (i.e. melting and then straining it) to remove any impurities, or to the process of hand-dipping candles. If heated excessively, both processes can lead to the wax being discoloured. But I would welcome any other suggestions. Like I said, the Bern Riddles like to make us work!

Tags: latin  Bern Riddles 

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Bern Riddle 8: De ovo
Bern Riddle 16: De cedride
Bern Riddle 20: De melle
Bern Riddle 21: De apibus