Jaiaca, The City of Sunrise

Abstract

OUR CONCERN IN THIS PAPER is a pretty problem set up by a pair of Old English dialogues, primarily occupied with Biblical lore but occasionally wandering off into other kinds of arcane knowledge. One of them is the prose Salomon and Saturn, found in the first portion of M8 Cotton Vitellius A. xv, which is dated by Max Forster auf das zweite Viertel des 12. J ahrhunderts,l and its two Middle English translations, The M aister of Oxford's Catechism, found in 1\188Lansdowne 762 (late XV or early XVI century) and Harley 1304 (XV century).2 The other is Adrian and Ritheus, found in M8 Cotton Julius A. ii, \vhich is perhaps of the twelfth century.3 Both of them are related and derive in some measure from the well-known continental J oca Monachorum. Their personae