Il significato di subnixus in alcuni testi tardolatini

Donato De Gianni

2024-01-01

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Abstract

This paper aims to show that in late Latin texts the word subnixus, employed without an ablative, can mean ‘humble’, ‘grovelling’, as emerges particularly in the Heptateuch poem. It can be further assumed that the reception of this usage of subnixus in medieval Latin is due precisely to the Hept., which was widely used in the medieval school to exemplify linguistic and metrical particularities. Indeed, the first occurrences of subnixus with this meaning in medieval Latin are found in Aldhelm and Bede, who often cite the Hept. in their metrical treatises. In his Vita Cuthberti metrica (7, 189) Bede also borrows the nexus subnixusque rogat from Hept. gen. 522.