Library › Latin: Myth, Hymn & Religion › De Mundi Transitu
This rhythmical poem, beginning “Mundus iste transibit” (This world will pass away), is one of the verse works attributed to Columbanus, the Irish monk who founded Luxeuil and Bobbio and died in 615; the attribution, like that of the other poems under his name, has been disputed. In short lines it reflects on the transience of the world, the equality of all in death, and the folly of the greedy who will not give to Christ.
The poem belongs to the Hiberno-Latin tradition of rhythmical verse, which counted syllables and used rhyme rather than classical quantity, and it shows the monastic preoccupation with death and judgement. Whoever its author, it is an early and characteristic example of the moral verse that Irish monks brought to continental Europe.
About this edition. The Latin text comes from Musisque Deoque, the digital archive of Latin poetry (edition: W. Gundlach, 1892), licensed CC BY-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.