Aethicus Ister

Start of the Cosmographia in the late 8th- or 9th-century manuscript from southwestern Germany

Aethicus Ister (Aethicus Donares, Aethicus of Istria or Aethicus Ister) was the protagonist of the 7th/8th-century Cosmographia, purportedly written by a man of church Hieronymus (Jerome, but not the Church Father Jerome), who purportedly censors an even older work for producing the book as its censored version.[1] It is a forgery from the Middle Ages.[1]

It describes the travels of Aethicus around the world, and includes descriptions of foreign peoples in usually less than favourable terms. It displays a flat Earth cosmology, maybe for making sport of it.[2] There are also numerous passages which deal directly with the legends of Alexander the Great.[3] Heinz Löwe (1913–1991) found a striking correspondence between the letters of Aethicus[clarify] and the Old Turkic script.[4] He considers Aethicus to be of late Avar ethnicity from the Carpathian basin.[5] Aethicus is believed by Franz Brunhölzl to have been a Scythian that lived in the region of present day Dobrogea, Romania.[6]

  1. ^ a b Elizabeth P. Archibald; William Brockliss; Jonathan Gnoza (26 February 2015). Learning Latin and Greek from Antiquity to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-139-99294-7.
  2. ^ Marília Futre Pinheiro; S. J. Harrison (2011). Fictional Traces: Receptions of the Ancient Novel. Barkhuis. ISBN 978-90-77922-97-2.
  3. ^ See A. Anderson, Alexander's gate, Gog and Magog, and the enclosed nations (Cambridge MA: 1932)
  4. ^ Heinz Löwe: Aethicus Ister und das alttürkische Runenalphabet. Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung und Mittelalters. vol. 32 issue 1. 1976 p. 1–22[1] Archived 2022-11-22 at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Löwe 1976: 19–20
  6. ^ Franz Brunhölzl: Zur Kosmographie des Aethicus. In: Festschrift für Max Spindler zum 75. Geburtstag, München 1969, S. 75–89; Franz Brunhölzl: Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, Bd. 1, München 1975, S. 63f.