The whole and parts of Aldhelm’s De metris et enigmatibus ac pedum regulis (Epistola ad Acircium)

MEPR is a composite work, including an essay on number seven, two metrical treatises and a riddle collection. Medieval scribes and modern scholarship tend to consider these parts separately. This paper argues that Aldhelm conceived MEPR as a unitary work, which is held together by a careful structure, an overarching meaning, and recurrent themes and motifs, i. e. number as an ordering principle, poetic work and divine help as the sources of poetry, the importance of grammar and metric, and above all aenigma, the hidden meaning, which is mentioned in different contexts and exemplified by the poetic riddles. These employ the traditional generic conventions to convey human learning and a deeply Christian message. Following Paul (1 Cor. 12), Aldhelm portraits the whole and parts of creation as riddles which must be worked out with the help of human knowledge (including pagan works), in order to recognize God’s message and his workings. As a letter to Acircius (Aldfrith, king of Northumbria), MEPR carries a defense of the new learning transmitted by the Canterbury school, and, in a deeper level, of all knowledge, and particularly the disciplines of language, as an instrument for a better understanding of Holy Writ and of creation. The structure of MEPR is twofold. On one hand, the whole work is organized as a letter. On the other, its sections are arranged in a ring composition with the poetic riddles in the middle, surrounded by two dialogues on metrical matters and bracketed by the introduction and the final address, both composed in art prose, united by recurring metaphors and directed to the king.