Library › Latin: Myth, Hymn & Religion › Tabula Insigniorum
This collection gathers Latin verse inscriptions associated with the abbey of Saint Gall. Its headings name parts of a monastic church and its surroundings: the oratory of Saint Peter, the baptistery, the altar of the Saviour at the cross, the Gospel lectern, the space behind the altar, places to the east and west, the walls and the gate. Some verses are brief tituli for each place, such as ‘Behold, Christ receives his reborn children’ for the baptistery, while others give measurements of the church and its columns, including a church two hundred feet long and forty wide. Later entries record gifts to Saint Gall, among them one given by a Father Burchard and one by Nortbert.
Inscriptions of this kind show how verse was used to label and interpret the spaces of an early medieval monastery, naming patron saints, altars and donors. Several lines closely match the inscriptions on the famous ninth-century Plan of Saint Gall, which makes the collection of interest to historians of monastic architecture. It is a mixed compilation, and its pieces are of different dates.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Corpus Corporum, the Latin text repository of the University of Zurich (edition: Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. 87, Parisiis 1851), reused with attribution for non-commercial purposes (CC BY-NC-SA). Every word has been analyzed with LatinCy, a neural language model for Latin — click or tap any word for its dictionary form, part of speech, and complete morphology, together with the full entry from Lewis & Short’s A Latin Dictionary.