[log in to unmask] Fri Nov 28 00:26:10 1997 wrote on: Thu,
27 Nov 1997 14:49:13 +0000 (GMT), apropos of Virgil of Salzburg:
>supposedly he was once denounced (by St Boniface) for
>teaching that beneath the earth there exists another world
>and other men and also a sun and moon
I pass this on from Leofranc Holford-Strevens:
This is no mere supposition: the evidence is Pope Zacharias'
letter of 1 May 748 replying to Boniface's numerous complaints,
including one that Virgilius maintained
quod alius mundus et alii homines sub terra sint seu sol et luna
Zacharias took evasive action, referring the matter to a
commission of inquiry. (_Epistolae_, ed. M. Tangl, MGH Epist.
Selectae_ 1 (1916), no. 80.) `Alii homines' might be just the
classical Antipodes, but `alius mundus . . . seu sol et luna'
suggests that he had in mind his great namesake at Aeneid 6. 640-
1 on the Groves of the Blessed:
Largior hic campos aether et lumine vestit
purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
The ether is more generous here, and clothes the fields in
lustrous light, and they know their own sun, their own stars.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bonnie Blackburn
67 St Bernard's Road
Oxford OX2 6EJ
tel. 01865 552808 fax 01865 512237
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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