medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Friday, March 14, 2008, at 2:35 pm, John Briggs wrote:
> Was "Nanatensis" (for that seems to be the word in question) ever used
> as
> the Latin form of "Nantes"? (Rather than "Namnetum" or "Namnetica"?)
Probably so, though proving that would take more time than I would wish to devote to this inquiry.
"Namnetum" can occur as "Nannetum" (easily done if you're not watching your minims closely enough or if you misinterpret the spelling represented by a transverse suprascript bar indicating a missing nasal). See Favre's Du Cange, V, 568, s.v. NANTEE: "Est autem Nannetum civitas Armoriae, et dicitur secundum aliquos Nannetis."
An adjectival form for "Nannetis" would be "Nannetensis". That in turn could be spelled in a variety of ways. For spellings with the second vowel as "a", see:
http://tinyurl.com/2nvkzh
In at least two of these instances "Nannatensi[s]" has to signify Nantes.
Reducing "Nannatensis" to "Nanatensis" is again easily done, especially if a transverse suprascript bar were faint or absent. Finding instances of the latter spelling is not so easy (and the tendency of dictionaries not to pay a lot of attention to proper nouns, esp. to their variant spellings, doesn't help). But see Heinrich Husmann, "Ein Faszikel Notre-Dame-Kompositionen auf Texte des Pariser Kanzlers Philipp in einer Dominikanerhandschrift (Rom, Santa Sabina XIV L 3)", _Archiv für Musikwissenschaft_ 24 (1967), 1-23, p. 17, where Husmann interprets Humbert of Romans' "in civitate Nanaten. in Britannia" (ap. Fritz Heintke, _Humbert von Romans: der fünfte Ordensmeister der Dominikaner_ [Berlin, 1933], p. 162; Heintke "emends" to "Navaten.") to mean "in the city of Nantes in Brittany".
Best,
John Dillon
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