bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The genesis of The Battle of Maldon
Authors: Blake N. F.
Published: September 2008

The Battle of Maldon is usually taken by modern scholars to be a reasonably accurate account of the way in which the battle developed. While not everyone today would necessarily agree with Gordon's statement, ‘the account of the battle in the poem, in so far as its statements can be checked, is accurate in every particular’, it nevertheless remains indicative of a not uncommon attitude. This attitude has been accentuated both by such fantasies as that of the late Professor Tolkien, who invented a poetic aftermath for the poem, and by attempts to localize the site of the battle following the indications provided in the poem. Reviews of Byrhtnoth's generalship also presuppose that the poem presents a realistic account of the battle, so that tactical decision can be evaluated. Some voices have been raised against taking the poem's account too literally, and many commentators now tend to assume a general, if not a detailed, accuracy. Most would perhaps agree with Professor Cross when he writes ‘the poet has selected from, elaborated on, and presumably omitted from a knowledge (not necessarily detailed) of the real events to suit his own purpose as distinguished in the poem’. Even this presupposes that the author was using historical evidence as the basis of his poem.
An interpretation of the Pacx, Pax and Paxs pennies
Authors: Keynes Simon
Published: September 2008

Three eleventh-century English coin types bear legends on the reverse field which are customarily interpreted as forms of the Latin word pax, ‘peace’. The earliest is the Pacx type of Edward the Confessor, which takes its name from the letters p-a-c-x distributed in the four angles of a cross (see fig. 2a); the second is the sole, Pax, type of Harold II, which has the legend pax disposed horizontally within an inner circle (see fig. 2b); and finally there is the Paxs type of William I, which has four annulets within the angles of a cross, each containing one letter of the legend paxs (see fig. 2c). The issue of a type conveying ‘peace’ could be, and has been, regarded as a political gesture arising from specific circumstances, but it is difficult for a historian to understand why such a gesture should have been made on the three occasions in the eleventh century indicated by numismatic chronology – at the beginning of the reigns of Edward and Harold, and again two decades after the accession of William.
The Anglo-Saxon origins of Norwich: the problems and approaches
Authors: Carter Alan
Published: September 2008

Since the fifteenth century pride and covetousness have bedevilled the study of Norwich's origins – pride in its medieval splendour and size, and covetousness of the antiquity of its rivals in the English urban hierarchy. Modern hypotheses about the city's origins have been coloured by those of earlier antiquarians to a considerable extent, and so some notice must first be taken of them.
The ætheling: a study in Anglo-Saxon constitutional history
Authors: Dumville David N.
Published: September 2008

In hisCeltic and Anglo-Saxon KingshipProfessor D. A. Binchy reconsidered the early (pre-Norman) Welsh law of succession and concluded that ‘it was recast after the Anglo-Saxon model’. In his view the matter turned on two questions which have an important bearing on both Welsh and English history. When did the ‘Common Celtic’ type of kingship, in which a successor could be drawn from a four-generation group, give way in Wales to a system in which ‘the reigning king nominates his successor, who will normally be his son and only in exceptional circumstances his brother or paternal nephew’, and in particular what is the evidence provided on this point by the Welsh laws? Was the Anglo-Saxon ætheling the model for this Welsh constitutional innovation? It is my purpose in the present paper to discuss the position of the ætheling in matters of royal succession during the Anglo-Saxon period. Consideration of the relevance of these findings to Welsh history and law will be reserved for an article to be published elsewhere.
The dates of Deira
Authors: Miller Molly
Published: September 2008

Of recent years, the persuasion seems to have been gaining ground that the records of earliest Northumbria are muddled and that the eighth-century sources are more muddled than those of the twelfth and later. If the last part of this proposition were true, it would be a remarkable and unique fact, worthy of much further exploration; if the first part were true in any distinctive sense, that the early Northumbrian material is more confused than the West Saxon or Dalriadan, then we should have to consider how far Bede was contaminated by his native context.
World history in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: its sources and its separateness from the Old English Orosius
Authors: Bately Janet M.
Published: September 2008

Although a great deal has been written about the sources and manner of compilation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in its various versions, very little attention has been paid to its earliest section – the annals covering the period from the landing of Julius Caesar, s.a. 60 BC, to the coming of Hengest and Horsa, s.a. 449. Eight of these annals deal with the history of Britain and derive their material from the chronological summary at the end of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastical. The remaining twenty-four (1–45 and 62–155) deal with world history, and the origin of their information is a matter of dispute. Plummer claimed that they are derived from ‘some epitome of universal history, the source of which I have not yet been able to trace’. Hodgkin, on the other hand, considered that the composition of the Chronicle was intimately connected with that of the Old English Orosius and took Orosius to be a major source for the annals in question:
Milred of Worcester's collection of Latin epigrams and its continental counterparts
Authors: Sims-Williams Patrick
Published: September 2008

Milred, who was bishop of Worcester from 743 × 745 to 774 × 775, is almost as shadowy a figure in the history of Anglo-Latin literature today as he was in the sixteenth century when John Leland recorded in hisCommentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis: ‘invidiosa vetustasMilredimonumenta destruxit’. The only composition by Milred that has come to light, in a single ninth-century continental manuscript, is the letter of consolation that he sent to Lull of Mainz after St Boniface's martyrdom. Apart from its inherent interest, this letter, with its elegant use of Vergilian echoes, is a valuable indication of Milred's literary interests and aspirations. Better still, it ends with a tantalizing glimpse of the literary world in which Milred lived: a postscript in which he apologizes for failing to send a copy of the picture poems of Optatianus Porphyrius because Cuthbert, the archbishop of Canterbury, had failed to return them. It was perhaps this very copy of Porphyrius that served as the model for the decoration of the Codex Aureus (Stockholm, Kungliga Biblioteket, A. 135), which may have been produced at St Augustine's, Canterbury, during Cuthbert's time.
Byrhtferth'sEnchiridionand the computus in Oxford, St John's College 17
Authors: Baker Peter S.
Published: September 2008

More than fifty years after its first appearance in print, Byrhtferth'sManual, orEnchiridionas he called it himself, is among the most puzzling texts of the Old English prose corpus. Its obscurity is due partly to its unglamorous subject matter – mathematics (computus) and the calendar – but more, perhaps, to its apparently bewildering organization. Humfrey Wanley called it an ‘opus miscellaneum’, Richard Wülker described it as ‘auβerordentlich bunter’ and Frederick Tupper referred to it as ‘that remarkable potpourri’. Indeed theEnchiridionseems often enough to wander aimlessly or shift abruptly; it seems to follow no plan and many an intrepid scholar has come away from it with the disquieting feeling that, having read a scientific primer, he has learned shamefully little science. As Heinrich Henel and N. R. Ker pointed out, the text has come down to us disarranged; but the restoration of the misplaced sections to their proper order only partly relieves the confusion. We may as well admit at the outset that Byrhtferth often digressed and often backtracked: as an organizer he was barely tolerable. But if we fail to understand theEnchiridionthe fault is partly our own, for it was not Byrhtferth's intention to write a wholly self-contained book. As Henel ably demonstrated, theEnchiridionwas designed as a commentary on the computus; this fact is the key we need to unlock the mysteries of Byrhtferth's work. To read it without referring to a computus would be as pointless as to read a biblical commentary without referring to a bible.
Princeps Merciorum gentis: the family, career and connections of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia, 956–83
Authors: Williams A.
Published: September 2008

Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia from 956 to 983, is not an immediately familiar figure. Yet he was one of the most powerful men in the political life of his day. The author of the Vita Oswaldi was in no doubt of his importance in the disturbances which followed the death of Edgar:
The settlement of England in Bede and theChronicle
Authors: Sims-Williams Patrick
Published: September 2008

For the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England, 1849 should be a more significant date than 449. In 1849 John Mitchell Kemble publishedThe Saxons in England. Earlier historians, even critical ones like Sharon Turner and J. M. Lappenberg, had basically retold the narratives of Bede and theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, with picturesque details from Henry of Huntingdon and others. Kemble swept all that away: ‘I confess that the more I examine this question, the more completely I am convinced that the received accounts of our migrations, our subsequent fortunes, and ultimate settlement, are devoid of historical truth in every detail.’
Lapidary traditions in Anglo-Saxon England: part II, Bede'sExplanatio Apocalypsisand related works
Authors: Kitson Peter
Published: September 2008

Part I of this article1treated the three main streams of lapidary knowledge current in the early Middle Ages (the classical encyclopaedists, the patristic2and the medical traditions, with particular attention, in the last-named, to the lapidary of Damigeron and its recensions);3gloss traditions, terminology and popular beliefs about jewels in Anglo-Saxon England; and the origin and content of the Old English Lapidary, with a new edition of it. This part II treats the lapidary passage in Bede'sExplanatio Apocalypsis;a Hiberno-Latin tractDe Duodecim Lapidibus(henceforthDDL) used by Bede; and (with a critical edition) a tenth-century Latin hymnCives celestis patrie, quite likely composed in Anglo-Saxon England, and closely based on Bede's work.4
Literary art and oral tradition in Old English and Serbian poetry
Authors: Foley John Miles
Published: September 2008

Oral literature research entered Old English literature through Albert Lord's 1949 dissertation, eleven years later to becomeThe Singer of Tales, and Francis P. Magoun, Jr's ensuing essay, ‘The Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry’.1As I have pointed out elsewhere,2these two scholars were not the first to identify and discuss the recurrent phrase or ‘formula’ in the poetry; German Higher Criticism of the nineteenth century had analysed the use of commonplaces of diction (orParallelstellen) to try to determine authorship and to establish the text of various poems. What Lord and Magoun originated was the idea of an explicit and necessary connection between the formula, defined by Milman Parry as ‘a group of words regularly used under the same metrical conditions to express a given essential idea’,3and a poem's orality. Following the lead of Parry's ground-breaking analyses of Homeric epic and the Parry–Lord field work on South Slavic oral epic, they and scholars following them reasoned that the source of formulaic structure lay in a tradition of oral verse-making and that formulaic phraseology was a kind of poetic idiom fashioned over generations by bards responding to the continual pressure of composition in performance. Only if his mind were well stocked with phrases of metrical shape – if, in short, he had learned his poetic language well – could an oral poet fluently tell his tale in the form of traditional verse.
A reading ofAndreas: the poem as poem
Authors: Irving Edward B.
Published: September 2008

The Old English poemAndreasdeserves a reading entirely on its own terms. For years we have been studying it in various distracting ways: as if it were a deliberate and feeble imitation ofBeowulf(which it is not);1or trying to attach it to the Cynewulfian canon;2or taking it as a compendium of patristic lore (which hardly any Old English poems are);3or we may see it as an example of an inherently inferior medieval genre, hagiographical romance; or (most often) as an embarrassing misapplication of the heroic style to the wrong subject. Clearly the poem invites us to make these classifications, but its own noteworthy achievements have been generally overlooked. We need a straightforward frontal attack by the critic: just what is this poem up to, line by line? The best guide in the process seems to me to be the Latin source, to which we have a fairly close approximation in theRecensio Casanatensis.4Careful consultation of this source lets us see what forms the poet's imagination imposes on his given material and gives us the clearest idea of the kind of poet he is.
From memory to record: musical notations in manuscripts from Exeter
Authors: Rankin Susan
Published: September 2008

When Ælfric wrote that ‘every mass-priest should have a mass-book and epistle-book and song-book and reading-book and psalter and handbook and penitential and kalendar’, there is every possibility that by ‘song-book’ he was thinking of a book containing not just chant texts, but also their melodies. A type of musical notation recognized as Anglo-Saxon appears in more than one hundred manuscript sources of the late tenth and the eleventh centuries, many of which may be linked with major ecclesiastical centres such as Worcester, Exeter, Sherborne, Canterbury, Durham and Winchester. Whilst it is possible that knowledge of musical notation reached England via northern France during the ninth century, it was apparently not until after the mid-tenth century, when the Benedictine revival occasioned numerous contacts between England and the continent, that music-writing became established in Anglo-Saxon England. Several Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of the late tenth century have contemporary notation, and they show the use at this period of two different neumatic systems. One system – closely related to northern French notations, particularly those of Corbie — was to set the pattern for the great majority of eleventh-century English notations; the other type, related to notations of Breton provenance, appears mainly confined to sources originating in south-west England. The breadth of notational detail found in one of the so-called Winchester Tropers (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 473) indicates that the practice of notating music was well established, at least at Winchester, by the year 1000.
A new charter of King Edgar
Authors: Brooks Nicholas , Gelling Margaret , Johnson Douglas
Published: September 2008

The document printed below, an early- or mid-seventeenth-century copy of a hitherto unrecorded charter of 963 by which King Edgar granted 5 hides at Ballidon in Derbyshire to a certain Æthelferth (see pl. XIV), came to light early in 1983 among some manuscripts on temporary deposit at the Staffordshire Record Office. It is published by kind permission of the depositor. The account of the provenance of the charter and of the history of the estate, which follows, is the work of one author (D.A.J.), whilst another (N.P.B.) is responsible for the edition and the topographical analysis, and the third (M.G.) has contributed the discussion of the place-name forms.
Stylistic disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood
Authors: Pasternack Carol Braun
Published: September 2008

The stylistic disjunctions in The Dream of the Rood are not a new topic. They have been treated explicitly and implicitly for many years from several different points of view. The most frequently noted disjunction occurs at line 78 where the cross, having completed its eye-witness account of the crucifixion, commences a homily explaining the significance of its experience. But there are others as well: at 27 where the poet switches personae from dreamer to cross, at 121 where the dreamer again becomes the speaker to describe his personal reaction to his vision and at 147 where the poet begins an impersonal magnification of Christ which concludes the poem.
The construction of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius II
Authors: Raw Barbara C.
Published: September 2008

In recent years a number of books and articles has appeared in which new and contradictory claims have been made about the compilation of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius II. In view of these contradictions it is necessary to re-examine the manuscript and to set out what information can be gained from it and what can reasonably be inferred from that information.
Wulf and Eadwacer: all passion pent
Authors: Greenfield Stanley B.
Published: September 2008

The nineteen-line Old English poem known as Wulf and Eadwacer has proved a notorious lodestone and analytical trap for critics; and still another interpretation of it may seem futile, if not presumptuous. Nevertheless, I believe no more firmly in my interpretation than others have believed in theirs: that is, I am no less confident that it will clear up most of the verbal and situational mysteries the poem presents; that it will enable us to see the lyric as structurally whole; that it will help us appreciate even more its aesthetic qualities; and that it will gain a critical consensus. To achieve such modest goals, I shall have to consider assumptions about the mind-set of the Anglo-Saxon audience as well as the poem's structure, diction, tone and imagery. It will thus be well to have the poem before us, and I venture a poetic translation which I shall comment on in due course.
The school of Theodore and Hadrian
Authors: Lapidge Michael
Published: September 2008

In 669 Theodore, a Greek-speaking monk originally from Tarsus in Asia Minor, arrived in England to take up his duties as archbishop of Canterbury. He was joined the following year by his colleague Hadrian, a Latin-speaking African by origin and former abbot of a monastery in Campania (near Naples). One of their first tasks at Canterbury was the establishment of a school; and according to Bede (writing some sixty years later), they soon ‘attracted a crowd of students into whose minds they daily poured the streams of wholesome learning’. Bede goes on to report, as evidence of their teaching, that some of their students who survived to his own day were as fluent in Greek and Latin as in their native language. Elsewhere he names some of these students: Tobias (later bishop of Rochester), Albinus (Hadrian's successor as abbot in Canterbury), Oftfor (later bishop of Worcester) and John of Beverley. Bede does not mention Aldhelm in this connection; but we know from a letter addressed by Aldhelm to Hadrian that he too must be numbered among their students. Unfortunately Aldhelm is the only one of these Canterburyalumnito have left any writings, so we are in no position to appraise the high opinion which Bede had formed of their learning.
The third book of theBella Parisiacae Urbisby Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and its Old English gloss
Authors: Lendinara Patrizia
Published: September 2008

A certain ‘Descidia Parisiace polis’, which can safely be identified with the work of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés now commonly known as theBella Parisiacae Urbis, is listed among the books given by Æthelwold to the monastery of Peterborough. We shall never know if Æthelwold's gift corresponds to any of the surviving manuscripts of Abbo's poem – though probably it does not – but the inventory gives evidence of the popularity of his work in England. In the following pages I shall consider the genesis and successive fortune of Abbo's poem and provide a new assessment of the value of theBella Parisiacae Urbis. This assessment is a necessary first step to the understanding of the reasons for the success of his poem – and specifically of its third book – in England, as is witnessed by the number of English manuscripts containing the Latin text and by the Old English gloss which was added to this small, intriguing work.
Anglo-Saxon objectives at Sutton Hoo, 1985
Authors: Carver M. O. H.
Published: September 2008

A modern field project in archaeology is a co-operative enterprise serving an extensive and diverse public. We can no longer afford to disturb the bones of our ancestors under the mantle of serendipity or academic intuition. The archaeologist, as the one person destined ever to see the evidence at first hand, strives for the virtue of enlightened impartiality, and sets off like an explorer, constrained by communal responsibilities and armed with a list of questions furnished by a wide variety of clients. Since Sutton Hoo has been hailed as the most vivid and instructive set of archaeological evidence for the seventh-century yet identified, Anglo-Saxon questions dominate this lengthy agenda. What was the status of the great ship burial discovered there in 1939? What was the role of the cemetery in which it lay? Why was it sited in that particular place, on a scarp above the River Deben in south-east Suffolk (see pi. V)? Was it the burial ground of kings, and were they kings of East Anglia? Was it a national centre or an overdeveloped version of the local mortuary culture? Is it diagnostic of a formative kingdom, or out of joint with the times, the outstation of a religious and political affiliation alien to the hinterland? What was its connection with Scandinavia and the Scandinavians? Were its people Anglo-Saxon, or Anglian or Saxon or British or multi-racial? Was it typical or unique?
Bibliography for 1985
Authors: Berkhout Carl T. , Biddle Martin , Blackburn Mark , Coutts C. R. E. , Dumville David , Foot Sarah , Keynes Simon
Published: September 2008

This bibliography is meant to include all books, articles and significant reviews published in any branch of Anglo–Saxon studies during 1985. It excludes reprints unless they contain new material. It will be continued annually. The year of publication of a book or article is 1985 unless otherwise stated.
Early Anglo-Saxon glossaries and the school of Canterbury
Authors: Pheifer J. D.
Published: September 2008

‘The Anglo-Saxon glosses are part of the Anglo-Saxon literary heritage.’ This oracular pronouncement of Professor Stanley's has been elucidated by Michael Lapidge's recent article on the school of Canterbury, to which mine is in some ways complementary. Lapidge makes a strong case for his view that the ‘original English collection’ ofglossae collectaein the Leiden Glossary and other continental glossaries was compiled in Canterbury under Archbishop Theodore (669–90) and Abbot Hadrian (671–709 × 10) and transmitted to continental centres of Anglo-Saxon missionary activity during the eighth century, and he emphasizes its importance as ‘a wonderful treasury of evidence for the books which were known and studied in early England’. One piece of evidence that he adduces for the English origin of this collection is the fact that batches of glosses derived from it are found in the Epinal–Erfurt and Corpus glossaries, which establishes that the collection was already in existence and in England when the Epinal–Erfurt Glossary was compiled betweenc.675 and the end of the seventh century, and was still there intact when the compiler of the Corpus Glossary used it a century or more later.
The Yale fragments of the West Saxon gospels
Authors: Liuzza Roy Michael
Published: September 2008

The manuscripts which contain the Old English translation of the gospels have been little studied since Skeat's compendious editions of the last century, yet the interest and importance of these codices, no less than that of the texts they preserve, should not be underestimated. The vernacular translation of a biblical text stands as a monument to the confidence and competence of Anglo-Saxon monastic culture; the evidence of the surviving manuscripts can offer insights into the development and dissemination of this text. The following study examines two fragments from an otherwise lost manuscript of the West Saxon gospels, which are preserved as an endleaf and parchment reinforcements in the binding of a fourteenth-century Latin psalter now in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Beinecke 578. I shall first discuss the psalter and its accompanying texts in the attempt to localize the manuscript and its binding. I shall then turn to the West Saxon gospel fragments; after presenting a description and, for the first time, a complete transcription, I shall attempt to locate this text in the context of other Anglo-Saxon gospel manuscripts.
Old English prose before and during the reign of Alfred
Authors: Bately Janet M.
Published: September 2008

Old English poetry had its origins in the pagan continental past of the Anglo-Saxons. The development of an Old English literary prose is generally supposed to have taken place many centuries later in Christian England. According to a recent work by Michael Alexander, for instance.
Anglo-Saxon medicine and magic
Authors: Cameron M. L.
Published: September 2008

When J. R. R. Tolkein criticized the critics of Beowulf, it was because ‘Beowulf has been used as a quarry of fact and fancy far more assiduously than it has been studied as a work of art.’ The Old English medical documents have suffered from a similar treament in that critics have rarely dealt with them primarily as medical documents. So far as I know, none of them has been criticized primarily as a medical work, to the extent that its recipes and remedies have been evaluated for their usefulness as medical treatments. But they have been searched, discussed, emended and evaluated as sources for the study of paganism, magic, superstitions, Christianity and the influence of Christian and Latin culture on the primitive beliefs of the Teutonic peoples, and as indicators of the spread of Greek and Latin science among the Northern peoples. Yet they were all originally conceived, used and finally preserved in writing as medical documents. They deserve consideration for what they were intended to be.
Evidence for knowledge of Greek in Anglo-Saxon England
Authors: Bodden Mary Catherine
Published: September 2008

More than half of the extant manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon England, both vernacular and Latin, contain Greek. How much Greek did the early English know? M. L. W. Laistner accepted only a handful of early authors, Bede among them, as ‘competent Hellenists’. Bernhard Bischoff, too, noted that among the numerous witnesses to Greek writing in the medieval West, only a few show knowledge of the language itself, and the majority in their corrupt state suggest just the opposite; moreover, he points out, their function is very often liturgical. By the same token, a recent survey of the rich Greek materials from Sankt Gallen makes the general observation that ‘few medievals possessed an ability to read Greek prose, an ability based on, at least, an acquaintance with the elementary principles of grammar’. For a number of years, I have been compiling a catalogue of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts containing Greek, and on the basis of what I have seen, these various assumptions – that much of the Greek was badly copied, that its vocabulary was largely ecclesiastical or liturgical, that such a vocabulary would necessarily repeat itself, yielding therefore perhaps no more than some 500 to 800 Greek words, and that knowledge of Greek grammer (declensions, inflexions and so forth) was minimal – need major modification. In what follows, I shall examine these various assumptions in turn.
Three men and a boat: Sutton Hoo and the East Saxon kingdom
Authors: Pearson Michael Parker , Van De Noort Robert , Woolf Alex
Published: September 2008

In August 1939 I drove from Cambridge with Hector and Nora Chadwick to see the Sutton Hoo dig. Phillips and Chadwick had never met and both were slightly apprehensive. The encounter turned out to be a great success. As we were leaving Chadwick said to Charles ‘It's the grave of King Rædwald you know. I've no doubt of that.’

Glyn Daniel (address given at the funeral of Charles Phillips at Teddington on 2 October 1985)
Aldhelm'sEnigmataand Byzantine riddles
Authors: Milovanović-Barham Čelica
Published: September 2008

Around the year 695 Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, wrote a collection of one hundred Latinenigmataor riddles to illustrate the rules of Latin metrics and versification, hoping that through that exercise ‘the rudiments of his small talent’ might grow sufficiently to enable him to write eventually ‘of more important subjects’. Almost instantly hisEnigmatagained universal popularity: they were read as a primer of Latin poetry, they inspired other Anglo-Saxons (such as Tatwine and Eusebius, whose combined Latinenigmatamake another hundred-piece collection) to follow in his footsteps, and they are said to have influenced the vernacular Old English riddles of theExeter Book.
An unreported early use of Bede's De natura rerum
Authors: King Vernon
Published: September 2008

Although there can be little doubt that Bede's works were widely known on the Continent by the end of the eighth century, the evidence supporting this assumption has been largely confined to the number of early manuscripts containing his works, together with requests for copies of his works contained in letters from continental scholars. The number of identified cases where his work is quoted before the beginning of the ninth century is very limited; and yet one clear case has been overlooked, as a result of a misattribution made more than one hundred years ago.
An Anglo-Saxon fragment of Alcuin's letters in the Newberry Library, Chicago
Authors: Ganz David
Published: September 2008

Among the fragments in the Newberry Library listed by Michael Masi in 1972,1his item no. 15 was described as ‘ninth century’ and ‘insular’. When I examined them, the two leaves of this fragment proved to contain portions of three letters of Alcuin, written to Charlemagne in the late 790s.2Copies of these letters are found in several ninth-century Carolingian manuscripts, but the only copy hitherto known to survive from Anglo-Saxon England is an elegant volume now in the library of Lambeth Palace, bound as the third part of manuscript 218, from the library at Bury St Edmunds.3Both the Newberry fragments and Lambeth 218 deserve consideration both on palaeographical grounds and for what they reveal about the literary interests of Anglo-Saxon England. This study explores the circumstances in which they were produced, copied and read, in an effort to restore to them ‘the place, the traditions, the influences, the sources which explain the various aspects of its composition and contents; its destination and its purpose; the people who were involved’.4
Convention and originality in the Old English ‘beasts of battle’ typescene
Authors: Griffith M. S.
Published: September 2008

The main part of this paper will deal with the typescene of the beasts of battle, and will describe its content and use as rigorously as possible in formulaic terms. In particular, the relationship between the conventional and the original will be examined in order to show that the scene is more traditional than has been thought and that many of the variations occur within conventional parameters. The term ‘typescene’ has been used with too much flexibility by Anglo-Saxonists, and will here be used with the meaning outlined by G. S. Kirk:
Serious entertainments: an examination of a peculiar type of Viking atrocity
Authors: Mcdougall Ian
Published: September 2008

In a letter written to King Æthelred of Northumbria in or soon after 793, Alcuin bewails the appalling aftermath of the Viking attack on Lindisfarne. He writes, ‘vineam electam vulpes depredarunt, hereditas Domini data est populo non suo. Et ubi laus Domini, ibi ludus gentium. Festivitas sancta versa est in luctum.’1Alcuin's horror at Viking merriment is shared by a great many other medieval historians in their accounts of the depredations of the Norsemen. Adam of Bremen, for instance, laments the Vikings' assault upon the Franks in 882, in which they made so bold as to attack King Charles III himself, and generally ‘made sport of our people‘.2Florence of Worcester similarly deplores the brutality of Sveinn Forkbeard's men, who invaded East Mercia in 1013, all the while ‘revelling in acts of savagery‘.3William of Malmesbury remarks on the ungentle sense of humour of Cnut the Great, who, after inviting Earl Uhtred of Northumbria to surrender himself into his custody, promptly had his hostage put to death, as William puts it, ‘with inhuman levity‘.4In short, it is not unusual to find medieval chroniclers expressing their distaste for the evident pleasure invading Scandinavians occasionally derived from committing acts of atrocity.
A background to Augustine's mission to Anglo-Saxon England
Authors: Meens Rob
Published: September 2008

As is well known, Bede gives a biased account of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England. He highlights the role of the Roman mission, initiated by Pope Gregory the Great and led by Augustine, the first bishop of Canterbury. Almost as important in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is the effort made by the Irish to Christianize Northumbria. The Frankish contribution to the missionary process, however, is not mentioned at all, though Frankish clerics certainly played an important role in the conversion of England. This role is attested by later contacts between England and the Frankish church. The letters of Gregory the Great relating to the mission of Augustine, moreover, make it clear that this mission also benefited greatly from help supplied by the Frankish church. The continuity of the British church seems to have been stronger than Bede suggests and his statement that the Britons did nothing to convert the Angles and the Saxons should be regarded as an overstatement. It has been argued recently that Bede left out an account of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons living west and south-west of the Mercians, the Hwicce, the Magonsæte and the Wreocensæte, not because of a lack of information, but because of the part the Britons played in it.
The early Kentish ‘divorce laws’: a reconsideration of Æthelberht, chs. 79 and 80
Authors: Hough Carole A.
Published: September 2008

Evidence concerning the position of women in Anglo-Saxon England, particularly during the early period, is sparse and often difficult to assess. Surviving law-codes constitute an important source of information, but due to their cryptic phraseology and sometimes archaic vocabulary they are notoriously open to misinterpretation. Two clauses from the earliest extant code, issued by King Æthelberht of Kent towards the beginning of the seventh century, are commonly treated as evidence of the independent status of divorced women in early Kentish society. So far as I am aware this view has never been challenged, although it remains uncorroborated by other sources and is by no means the only possible interpretation of the text. In this paper I wish to put forward an alternative reading.
The pattern of Old Englishburhin early Lindsey
Authors: Cox Barrie
Published: September 2008

In Lincolnshire as a whole, place-names which have Old Englishburh‘a fortified place’ as their generics fall into two distinct geographical groups (fig. 1). In the northern half of the county, the locations of these names suggest that a comprehensive system of defence was eventually created for the territory of the Lindisfaran. In the far south, the two isolated instances ofburhmay signal original strongholds of Middle Angles styled in The Tribal Hidage the Bilmigas (but who on place-name evidence are more correctly to be called the Billingas) and the Gyrwe. It is, however, theburhnames in that region defined as Lindsey in The Lindsey Survey of the reign of Henry I (1100–35) which are the focus of this paper.
The language of the ‘Fonthill Letter’
Authors: Gretsch Mechthild
Published: September 2008

The ‘Fonthill Letter’ is a document sent by Ordlaf, ealdorman of Wiltshire from 897 onwards, to King Edward the Elder (899–924). It was intended to be used as evidence in a lawsuit which one Æthelhelm Higa had instituted against the bishop of Winchester, claiming possession of five hides at Fonthill in Wiltshire, which Ealdorman Ordlaf had given to the bishop in exchange for five hides in another part of Wiltshire. The letter traces the intricate history of the Fonthill estate, relating the sequence of events by which it had come into Ordlaf's possession through his godson Helmstan, who had distinguished himself by having been twice convicted of theft. Eventually, the letter served its purpose: Æthelhelm Higa withdrew from the suit.
Dry-point glosses to Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis in Beinecke 401
Authors: Rusche Philip G.
Published: September 2008

Yale University, Beinecke Library, 401 contains twenty-six leaves of a ninth-century English manuscript of Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis. The manuscript has 189 Old English glosses in ink which were published by A. S. Napier in 1900. Napier also noted the presence of dry-point glosses in the manuscript, and in 1961 H.D. Meritt published twenty-six of these. I have found a total of 160 dry-point glosses and gloss fragments to 153 lemmata in the manuscript, which, other than Meritt's twenty-six, have not been printed before. Dry-point glosses are often neglected in studies of glossing, no doubt due to the difficulty of reading marks scratched into the parchment without ink; I have therefore prefaced my list of glosses and their lemmata with a discussion of dry-point glossing and what it can reveal concerning education in Anglo-Saxon England.
Some difficulties inBeowulf, lines 874–902: Sigemund reconsidered
Authors: Griffith M. S.
Published: September 2008

The episode of Beowulf's fight with Grendel is followed almost immediately by brief accounts of two very different heroic careers – those of Sigemund and of Heremod – sung by a minstrel-thegn of Hrothgar, apparently in praise of the hero, as the celebrating Danes race their horses back from Grendel's mere. This narrative sequence invites us to contextualize Beowulf's first great exploit in a broader frame, but the poet does not make explicit the precise nature of the comparisons between these three figures. The critics, however, have broadly agreed that the link with Sigemund compliments Beowulf, whilst the parallel with Heremod contrasts with the hero and with Sigemund. E. G. Stanley comments that the poet ‘perhaps … perceives the hero of his poem at this point as being all that, in descriptions known to him, made Sigemund glorious and all that Heremod was not’. F. C. Robinson agrees that the meaning of this section ‘is never spelled out, but the implication is clear: Beowulf is like Sigemund, unlike Heremod’. The contrast between the ‘sustained heroic exploits’ of Sigemund and the downfall of Heremod is, for R. E. Kaske,. ‘the basic theme of the whole Sigemund-Heremod passage’, and this interpretation is, he thinks, ‘hardly open to question’. The purpose of this article is to re-open the question of the nature of the relationship between Sigemund and Beowulf.
The interchangeability of Old English verbal prefixes
Authors: Ogura Michiko
Published: September 2008

Old English prefixed verbs are numerous. At times prefixes are used to convey different shades of meaning, but often the meanings seem, in context, not to convey definite distinctions in sense. Prefixes and prefixed verbs must have been important in Old English, judging from their numbers and morphological distinctions, but most prefixes had adverbial and/or prepositional counter-parts, and verbs with adverbs or prepositional phrases (whether preposed or postposed to verbs) could be used alongside prefixed verbs.
TheRegularis Concordiaand its Old English gloss
Authors: Kornexl Lucia
Published: September 2008

When writing about the tenth-century ecclesiastical reform in England thirteen years ago, Eric John rightly pointed out that ‘the tenth and early eleventh centuries are the least studied and most taken for granted periods of both English and Continental history’. But today, this contention is no longer true: investigation into different aspects of the monastic revival has resulted in a considerable number of special publications. In particular, the millennial celebrations marking the deaths of the leading reformers, Æthelwold (d. 984), Dunstan (d. 988) and Oswald (d. 992), have been accompanied by a reassessment of their activities and achievements, the fruits of which are assembled in three collections of essays by experts in a variety of fields. The renewed interest in the reform era has naturally drawn scholarly attention to the primary sources which provide first-hand information about the thought, aims and strategies of the reformers. Among such documents, theRegularis Concordia(henceforthRC) plays a major part as an object of historical and liturgical research; besides, it has turned out in recent years that the Latin text and especially the Old English interlinear gloss of the consuetudinary also offer important material for the philologist and the historical linguist.
Law and litigation in theLibellus Æthelwoldi episcopi
Authors: Kennedy Alan
Published: September 2008

The work entitledLibellus quorundam insignium operum beati Æthelwoldi episcopi, in both of the manuscripts in which it is preserved as an independent text, is an account of how the endowment of Ely Abbey was accumulated in the years following the refoundation of the abbey in 970, and how it was defended in the difficult times which followed the death of King Edgar in 975. TheLibelluswas produced by an Ely monk writing early in the twelfth century, who says in the prologue to the work (LE, Appendix A) that Hervey, first bishop of Ely (1108–31), suggested to him the project of translating into Latin certain vernacular records concerning Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester (963–84), the founder of the monastery, to supplement thevitacomposed by WulfstanCantor. The text includes verses in praise of Æthelwold, and in praise of the village of Downham: similarities in vocabulary and metre to a metricalvitaof St Æthelthryth composed by a monk of Ely called Gregory, also during the time of Bishop Hervey, suggest that the author of theLibelluswas probably the same man. TheLibellushas long been known as a work in its own right, but it has been printed as such only once, over 300 years ago, and it has been accessible to scholarship primarily in the form in which it was incorporated into bk II of the twelfth-century history of Ely Abbey known asLiber Eliensis, whose compiler used it as the basis for his own account of the refoundation of the abbey and its fortunes during the succeeding decades.
The Anglo-Saxons and the Christianization of Scandinavia
Authors: Abrams Lesley
Published: September 2008

St Anskar, a monk of Corbie and Corvey, is often referred to as the ‘Apostle of the North’. In 826 he was attached to the retinue of Harald, king of Denmark, upon the king's baptism at the court of Louis the Pious; Anskar was sent to evangelize first the Danes, who were an increasing threat to the northern border of the Empire, and then the Swedes of the Mälar region, whose rulers may have hoped for imperial favour. If the mission of Anskar and his immediate successors had significant and enduring effects beyond his death in 865, however, they have so far failed to make themselves known to historians. The see of Hamburg-Bremen, of which Anskar was the first archbishop, had indeed been given responsibility for the northern mission-field, and successive popes renewed their theoretical support for this goal; but activity, let alone success, was not conspicuous for many years thereafter. The conversion of the Scandinavian peoples had to wait, and when it came the impetus was not from Hamburg-Bremen alone. Rather, the story of the Christianization of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from the later tenth century through the eleventh is one with a significantly English cast and an English script, although the German church – and maybe others – never quite withdrew from the stage. Scandinavian historians have long been concerned with this missionary activity of Anglo-Saxon churchmen, but it has attracted undeservedly less interest and attention on this side of the North Sea.
Manus Bedae: Bede's contribution to Ceolfrith's bibles
Authors: Marsden Richard
Published: September 2008

Bede entered Wearmouth–Jarrow at the age of seven and thereafter, he tells us at the conclusion of his Historia ecclesiastica, spent all his life ‘applying myself entirely to the study of the Scriptures’. He goes on, ‘From the time I became a priest until the fifty-ninth year of my life I have made it my business, for my own benefit and that of my brothers, to make brief extracts from the works of the venerable fathers on the holy scriptures, or to add notes of my own to clarify their sense and interpretation.’ Bede's modest remarks preface an impressive list of his own works, which includes commentaries on Genesis, I Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, the Prophets, Mark, Luke, Acts and Revelation, and many other exegetical, didactic and historical volumes. Installed at Jarrow from about 679 until his death in 735, he contributed more than anyone to the intellectual distinction of early-eighth-century Northumbria. At the same time, the twin house of Wearmouth–Jarrow was winning lasting renown for the products of its scriptorium (or scriptoria). Not least among these were the three great Vulgate bible pandects which Abbot Ceolfrith caused to be made, an achievement celebrated by the chroniclers of the house, who included Bede himself. One of these pandects, which we know today as the Codex Amiatinus, was dispatched to St Peter's in Rome in 716, then spent more than 900 years at Monte Amiata in the Appenines, and is now in Florence (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1). The other two were for use in the Wearmouth and Jarrow churches. One of these has been lost without trace, but the second survived in the cathedral priory of Worcester until the sixteenth century, when an entrepreneurial Nottinghamshire family made use of some of its torn-out leaves as document wrappers. Twelve of these, with some fragments of a thirteenth, are now in the British Library under three different shelfmarks (Loan 81, Add. 37777 and Add. 45025).
The transmission and reception of Graeco-Roman mythology in Anglo-Saxon England, 670–800
Authors: Herren Michael W.
Published: September 2008

Rhetoricians, orators, and public speakers of all stripes, if asked the question, which Greek or Roman deity they should invoke in case of need, would surely answer ‘Hermes’ or ‘Mercury’. Members of this profession who also read early Latin-Old English glossaries might therefore be surprised to learn that thedeus oratorumwas none other than Priapus! This came as good news to me as one who occasionally looks for novel ways to arouse an audience. However, as I reflected further on the meaning of Épinal Glossary 10v32, my expectations wilted.Oratorummust be a simple error forhortorum, ‘of gardens’. Priapus may befecundus, but he is notfacundus.