Pangur Ban: The White Fuller of The Monastery
White Cat Studying Hard, by Author
We have a notion that cats were verboten throughout the Middle Ages, and that the church hated them. As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is a gross oversimplification. For one thing, many church members praised cats.
Take the Old Irish poem, Pangur Ban. It’s about a cat and the virtue he exhibits.
The Subject
Pangur means fuller, which may refer to cats doing what we now call making biscuits. Ban probably refers to the cat’s fur color- which means white. I like to think an actual white cat who loved to soften sleeping spots was the monastery’s mascot. I don’t know if he really existed or if he is symbolic, but I like cats.
Possible Author And His Monastery
We know that this poem was written in Reichenau Abbey, which is on Reichenau island in Germany. It was founded in AD 724 by Saint Pirman as part of Charlemagne’s network of religious houses. The saint was booted from it three years later for political reasons and went on to proselytize in Alsace. Successive abbots made it an educational hub, training many of the clerks that worked for Charlemagne and Charles Martel.
The actual author of the poem is unknown, but historians strongly suspect a Latin grammarian and philosopher by the name of Sedulous Scottus. He is most known for his De Rectorus Christianus, which is a treatise on how kings should exercise self restraint and respect the divide between church and state. He is praised for being humanistic and acknowledging the balance between secular and spiritual needs.
The historians think his style of writing in this essay and other treatises was similar to the poem. More notably, he wrote in Latin, Greek, and Old Irish. So…maybe he wrote something to teach Old Irish in his Abbey as a throwaway? Or there was another scholar at the abbey who wrote in Old Irish and read a lot Sedulous Scottus? Copyright and IP weren’t things at the time, so we may never know.
Translations
There are many versions available. Robin Flower and Seamus Heaney are the most available. The critical translation is from John Strachan and Whitley Stokes, written in 1903.
Translation is always tricky, and a translator’s dilemma is always between a literal take and a more poetic catching of the sense of the work. Poems in particular present a problem because meter and rhyme have to be followed.
The Art
I’ve linked both translations of the poem so you can enjoy them. Both have a simple opening: a cat is crouching before a mouse hole and a monk describes his zeal in catching mice as similar to his zeal in studying and exploring theology. It ends with a celebration of both their zeal.
This poem is in the Reichenau Primer, alongside sections of the Aeneid and other teaching materials, making it a bit like Beowulf in that it is an original submission to a story collection. So, this poem is a teaching aid for Old Irish, rather like what you got in fourth grade English class.
This sheds some light on the subject matter, as it’s a way to praise a student’s diligence by comparing the student to someone they would like, the abbey’s mouser. That is my guess anyway.
And it may explain why no one put their name to the poem. Like many teaching materials, everyone thinks they are unimportant and cast offs that the grownups don’t want anymore so it’s ok for children.
It is now to be found in St Peter’s Abbey; the most famous piece they have.
Effect
I don’t know if there was ever a ‘real’ Pangur Ban, but he definitely has namesakes like he was.. A white cat named Pangur Ban showed up in a children’s movie, The Secret of the Kells, that is based on Irish mythology.
There have been many other translations and whole series based on this character of the little white fuller.
Then of course there are people like me analyzing the poem for Medieval attitudes about cats, work, and scholarly contemplation.
It’s an excellent epilogue, and I hope that the real Pangur Ban, if there was one, lived a long happy life as the abbey’s beloved pet.
Sources:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pirmin