>A long, long time ago, for the FEAST listing for 4 August, I mentioned the
>following:
>
>> * Molua or Lughaidh, abbot (608)
>> - when he died, the birds wept
>
>To which Tom Izbicki said:
>
>> Please send me more on this. The image is striking. tom izbicki
>
>I couldn't agree more. I found this quite touching, actually, when I read
>it good old Butler. So, from time to time in the library I've checked
>Butler's sources: AA.SS Aug. i; C. Plummer's edition in the Vitae SS.
>Hib., ii, pp. 206-225; and the most recent edition of the Codex
>Salmanticensis, done in the mid-1960s (don't have that info with me) in
>the Bollandists' series Subsidia Hagiographica, v. 20. I could not find
>this image reported in any of these three sources.
>
>Can anyone else out there find this for us? At least two of us are very
>curious to find the source!
>
>Thanks, George Ferzoco
>
George,
I don't want to disturb the effect which this image has produced on us all,
but I think that the author of your text had adopted a literary tradition
going back to Ovid's description of the death of Orpheus, Metam. XI, 736:
Te maesta volucres, Orpheu, te turba ferarum,
Te rigidi silices, tua carmina saepe secutae
Fleverunt silvae; positis te frondibus arbor
Tonsa comas luxit; lacrimis quoque flumina dicunt
Increvisse suis, obstrusaque carbasa pullo
Naides et Dryades passosque habuere capillos.
I cannot remember where (in Curtius?), but once I have read an amusing
collection of medieval examples taken from 'planctus' and the like,
illustrating how this topos was varied and expanded ad infinitum (et adsurdum).
Otfried
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