Josipov problem u latinskoj kombinatoričkoj poeziji Ladislava Simandija (1655–1715)
The Josephus Problem in the Latin Combinatorial Poetry of Ladislaus Simandi (1655-1712)

Summary/Abstract: he Pauline monk Ladislaus Simandi (Ladislav Simandi, Simándi László, ?, 1655 – Lepoglava, 1715) wrote a book of Latin visual and combinatorial poetry dedicated to St. Paul the First Heremite, Corvi albi eremitici nova musa inconcinna (Częstochowa 1712?, 1719). The 68 pages of this booklet contain 34 artificia, samples of visual poetry (carmina figurata), pattern poems (versus intexti), rebuses and different tipes of combinatorial alphabetic, verbal and/or numeric verses (anagrams, chronograms, acrostichs, palindroms, carmina cabbalistica, etc.). In this paper the author concentrates on a counting-out game presented on pages 53–56 of Simandi's poetry book under the heading Corvus Albus astuto stratagemate ludit. To follow the instructions given there, one should use five Latin verses on St. Paul of Thebes as a starting point for setting a required number of white and black playing pieces (pebbles) according to the numeric value assigned to every vowel. Each verse amounts to 30 pebbles (15 black and 15 white) and the game consists in counting pebbles and eliminating black ones according to a rule pre-established for each verse, until a single white pebble remains. Simandi’s poetry book has been well described and analyzed by István Kilián. Nevertheless, Kilián failed to connect Simandi’s game to a version of the so-called Ludus Sancti Petri or Ludus Josephi, which is based on a mathematical problem known as the Josephus problem, whose origin is derived from a scene in Josephus’ Bellum Judaicum (3.8.7). Apart from linking Simandi’s verses to the mathematical problem and describing the game in detail, the author points out the unusual nature of this piece: it is a pastime framed in spiritual poetry, in which the quest for the ‘higher sense’ ends up in a sort of board game.

• Details
• Contents