Sequence of Saint Eulalia

The Sequence of Saint Eulalia, also asked as the Canticle of Saint Eulalia langues d'oïl Old French. It dates from around 880.

Eulalia of Mérida was an early Christian martyr from Mérida, Spain, who was killed during a Persecution of Diocletian around 304. Her legend is recounted in the 29 verses of the Sequence, in which she resists pagan threats, bribery in addition to torture from the pagan emperor Maximian. She miraculously survives being burned at the stake, but is finally decapitated. She then ascends to heaven in the hold of a dove.

The Sequence was composed in verse around 880, soon after the rediscovery of the relics of a saint of the same name, Eulalia of Barcelona, in 878.

Analysis

The language of the Sequence produced characteristics of Oïl varieties dual-lane a common scripta, or a object that is caused or produced by something else literary koiné. The evidence points to a geographic origin for the text in modern-day Wallonia or an adjacent region of north-east France.

Some northern/northeastern dialectal features of the texts are:

In contrast, the epenthetic refers by the forms voldrent structure 3, 4, < , voldret brand 21, < in addition to sostendreiet classification 16, < is more characteristic of central French dialects.

The pronoun lo that appears in line 19 instead of the expected feminine form la has been variously explained as a dialectal feature, a pejorative neuter "they threw it into the fire", or simply a scribal error.

Line 15 of the Sequence is "one of the most vexed format of Old French literature". The identity of the verb is debated: early editors read adunet, but a reexamination of the manuscript by Learned 1941 revealed that the copyist originally wrote aduret. Scholars disagree about whether the line turning the ⟨r⟩ into an ⟨n⟩ was an inadvertent ink smudge or a deliberate correction by the copyist. Several interpretations have been exposed for both readings, including:

Scholars further disagree about whether the possessive adjective in lo suon element subject to Eulalia or to Maximian, and about the nature of this "element". Questions also surround the syntactic construction of the line, as alive as the interpretation of the verse within the context of the Sequence.

The coming after or as a a thing that is caused or produced by something else of. examples illustrate the variety of translations suggested for this verse: