bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Exodusand the treasure of Pharaoh
Authors: Vickrey John F.
Published: September 2008

Some years ago Professor Fred C. Robinson advised retention of the usually emended manuscript readingafrisc meowlein line 580b of the Old EnglishExoduspoem. His argument was thatafrisc meowle, ‘African woman’, alluded to the wife of Moses, who is mentioned elsewhere in the biblical Exodus though not in the passage to which the last lines of theExoduspoem correspond. Moreover, Robinson maintains, Moses's wife might have been familiar otherwise to an early medieval audience, for among the commentators she was identified as a type or figure of ‘the church gathered out of the nations’. In explaining why Moses's wife might be alluded to at this point, Robinson considers the suitability of such an allusion as an amplifying, even though extra-biblical, detail. His reasons are of weight. They concern, however, only the literal identity of theafrisc meowleas the wife of Moses; they make nothing of her significance as a type of the church. But another compelling reason for retaining the manuscript reading here may be found if the phraseafrisc meowleand also the following lines 582–9a are considered from the figural point of view. The passage as a whole has never been so considered. The Israelites plunder the Egyptian treasure washed up on the shore, and that is that.
The vision of paradise: a symbolic reading of the Old EnglishPhoenix
Authors: Calder Daniel G.
Published: September 2008

The classification ofThe Phoenixas a Christian allegory has obscured the perception that the poem may contain a single symbolic vision, for the attention given the poem has always centred on the apparent allegorizations drawn from the LactantianDe Ave Phoenice. The long description of paradise at the beginning, the phoenix's journey from paradise, its fiery death and resurrection – elements derived from Lactantius and expanded by a clearly Christian reading – invite the exegete to untangle a carefully woven allegorical web. The exegetical approaches are, in some ways, justified. Even Lactantius's poem, which at no time refers to a system of Christian theology, is legitimately subject to this kind of inquiry, for the phoenix, standing by itself, had been a symbol charged with Christian meaning since the earliest patristic writers. Augustine's words may be taken as a summary statement for the Christian interpretation: ‘Quod enim de phoenice loqueris … Resurrectionem quippe ilia significat corporum.’ In practice, however, strict allegorical readings ofThe Phoenixhave not proved very helpful. An ever-changing perspective in the poem makes it difficult to discover a logically coherent and consistent pattern of allegorical meaning, and attempts to find such a pattern have led either to disappointment with the poem or to an exegetical system so rigid that it falsifies the poem itself.
Conceivable clues to twelve Old English words
Authors: Meritt Herbert Dean
Published: September 2008

In Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 383, on pp. 102–7, there are instructions for the tasks of a reeve, followed by several long lists of necessary tools and appurtenances. The closing list is preceded by mention of some particular kinds of craftsmen – mylewerde, sutere, leadgotan, contains some sixty terms of tools and equipment and concludes with the entries sapbox, camb, yrfebinne, fodderhec, fyrgebeorh, meluhudern, ælhyde, ofnrace, mexscofle. From the entry ælhyde BT Suppl enters with a query , ‘an eel-skin’, and Hall enters ǣlhyd queryingly defined as ‘eel receptacle’, ‘eel-skin’. Perhaps ælhyde is not a compound and perhaps æl does not mean ‘eel’.
Northumbria and the Book of Kells
Authors: Brown T. J. , Verey C. D.
Published: September 2008

It is a century and a half since the Book of Kells began to be revered as the supreme work of Irish calligraphy and art in the Early Christian period, and a quarter of a century since Monsieur François Masai challenged that traditional opinion, arguing that the Book was in fact made in Northumbria, apparently at Lindisfarne, or at least in some centre influenced both by Lindisfarne and Wearmouth–Jarrow – a definition which, he thought, could well apply to Iona. Masai's Essai sur les Origines de la Miniature dite irlandaise, completed in Brussels in 1944, makes no pretence to be based on research at first hand; it was written as a critique of traditional beliefs about the origins of Hiberno-Saxon illumination, with particular reference to works by Mlle Françoise Henry and Mrs Geneviève Marsh-Micheli. As such, it strikes me as a brilliant success, although some of its conclusions are false and some are not as well founded as they could have been, if Masai had revised his war-time text on the basis of a post-war examination of the manuscripts themselves. It was as a follower of Masai – his was the first book I read on Hiberno-Saxon art – that I persuaded Dr E. A. Lowe to consider, shortly before his death in August 1969, the attribution of the Book of Kells which will appear in the second edition of Codices Latini Antiquiores, part 11; and since Dr Lowe cited me as ‘an expert in this field’, I am under an obligation to publish the arguments that I advanced in 1968 and 1969, partly in letters and partly through reports which he received from his successive assistants Dr Braxton Ross and Dr Virginia Brown. The core of what I have to say is a reconsideration of a group of manuscripts, described in CLA, in the history of which Wearmouth–Jarrow had an important part to play. Lowe's devotion to the Venerable Bede and to the manuscripts produced at Wearmouth–Jarrow is well known, and I should like my lecture to count as a tribute not only to Bede's memory but to the memory of the palaeographer whose work has thrown such a bright light on the intellectual history of Bede's monastery.
The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: the hagiographic sources
Authors: Fell Christine
Published: September 2008

The author or compiler of the saga of Edward the Confessor Saga Játvarðar konungs bins helga frequently refers to his sources. Sometimes he does this in vague terms such as ‘svá segja sannfróðir menn’ (ch. 1) and ‘segja menn’ (ch. 6). At other times he seems to be bringing together two sources as in the phrases ‘Þat er ok sumra manna sögn’ (ch. 6) and ‘Ok er þpat margra manna sögn’ (ch. 8). Two references indicate English provenance for part of his material: ‘Svá segja Enskir menn’ (ch. 5) and ‘Þat er sögn Enskra manna’ (ch. 8). He also mentions Scandinavian sources, indicating awareness of Danish tradition in ‘Ok þat hafa Danir til þess’ (ch. 9) and alluding to a history of the kings of Norway in ‘Sem sagt er í Æfi Noregs-konunga’ (ch. 7). But he does not always find Scandinavian scholarship well-informed: ‘Þá þykkjaz fróðir menn í Noregskonungs veldi eigi (víst) vita hverr þessi konungr hefir verit.’ Fortunately Icelandic learning can supply the missing detail: ‘þat er sagt frá orðum Gizurar Hallz sonar, eins hins vitrasta mannz á Íslandi’ (ch. 2). This is his only reference to an authority by name.
The beginning of the year in England,c.500–900
Authors: Harrison Kenneth
Published: September 2008

Writing a little before the year 1000, Ælfric in a homily on the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January) had this to say about the beginning of the year:

We have often heard that men call this day ‘the day of the year’, as if this day were foremost in the year's circuit; but we find no explanation in Christian books, why this day is accounted the beginning of the year. The old Romans, in heathen days, began the year's circuit on this day; and the Hebrew people at the vernal equinox; the Greeks on the summer solstice; and the Egyptian nations began the reckoning of their year at harvest. Now our reckoning begins, according to the Roman institution, on this day, for no religious reason, but for the old custom. Some of our servicebooks begin on the Lord's Advent; yet it is not on that account the beginning of the year.
An Old English penitential motif
Authors: Godden M. R.
Published: September 2008

Recent work on the two major Old English homilists, Ælfric and Wulfstan, has not been lacking, with new editions of their homilies and continued study of their sources and style. The anonymous homilies have received rather less attention, and this has meant that one important Old English homiletic type, the penitential homily, has been largely neglected. These ‘exhortations to repentance, illustrated by devotional commonplaces’ as the penitential homilies have been called, are fairly rare in the work of Ælfric, the most popular of the Old English homilists, but are common in the Vercelli collection and other anonymous collections like the Blickling Manuscript. They have been neglected, presumably, both because they are anonymous and because they are often composed of standard motifs and topics, unlike Ælfric's sophisticated syntheses of patristic sources and Wulfstan's use of contemporary detail. But we have recently come to accept that the process of selecting and adapting standard formulas and themes which lies behind Old English poetry can be of considerable interest, and the similar process involved in the composition of these penitential homilies seems also deserving of study.
The thematic significance ofenta geweorcand related imagery inThe Wanderer
Authors: Frankis P. J.
Published: September 2008

Our uncertainty about the full implications for poet and audience of particular words and phrases is a serious obstacle to our understanding of Old English poetry. With regard to the final section ofThe Wanderer(73–115) some advances in our knowledge and understanding have already been made, notably by Professor J. E. Cross in his studies of the Latin antecedents of two passages: he shows that lines 80–4 use the motif of the Fates of Men, with the Old Englishsum … sum… structure translating the Latinalius … alius…, and that lines 92–6 are based on theubi sunttopos of the transience of life. This information gives us a better grasp of the impact these lines may have had on an informed Anglo-Saxon audience and helps us to evaluate the poem; but many details still remain unclear. The present study is concerned with the context of these two passages (73–105), and in particular with the puzzling image of ‘the work of giants’ that has been destroyed by God (85–7).
Old English colour classification: where do matters stand?
Authors: Barley Nigel F.
Published: September 2008

Various attempts have been made by Anglo-Saxonists to deal with the Old English colour vocabulary but the subject remains far from clear. In the present article I shall try to show some of the reasons why this is so and offer a re-interpretation of the Old English colour words as a system, treating the Anglo-Saxons simply as a standard ethnographic corpus of anthropological data and therefore amenable to the techniques applied to those present-day communities that are the concern of the anthropologist.
The concept of the hall in Old English poetry
Authors: Hume Kathryn
Published: September 2008

The range of cultural assumptions underlying Old English poetry and the sentiments and sources which inspired it, not to mention the methods of composition – oral or written – are subjects of vigorous dispute. Much that was once considered indigenous and Germanic is now being revalued in the light of Latin analogues and works accepted for a century as secular are being treated by many as Christian doctrinal discourses. Since the intellectual milieu is so uncertain a basis for interpreting controversial poems, other approaches are needed. One that suggests itself is the exploration of idea-complexes. When a theme or situation recurs in a number of poems, in widely differing contexts, patterns of association can be isolated and analysed. The theme of exile, for example, is a centre of a cluster of ideas. Another is the concept of the hall: what is looked to for safety and what is feared as a threat to that security make apt points of departure for a study of a culture's major assumptions. Moreover, because the hall is the focus for conflicting attitudes, the array of associations proves useful to a more general understanding of the nature of Old English poetry.
God's presence through grace as the theme of Cynewulf's Christ II and the relationship of this theme to Christ I and Christ III
Authors: Chase Colin
Published: September 2008

Cynewulf's dependence on Gregory the Great's Ascension Day homily for the structure and much of the subject matter of Christ II has been acknowledged since 1853. After commenting in some detail on the gospel text for the day (Mark xvi. 14–20) Gregory devotes the final third of his homily to more general reflections – ‘ut aliquid de ipsa tantae solemnitatis consideratione dicamus’ – on the theme of the elevation of human nature in the Lord's ascension: ‘Ascendente vero Domino, est humanitas exaltata.’ Though Cynewulf takes his lead from these general reflections of Gregory at every point, a comparison of poem and homily shows that in doing so he substitutes his own theme of God's continuing presence with man since the ascension in his gifts of grace. This article concerns this thematic change and its implications for the relationship of Christ II to Christ I and Christ III.
King Alfred's æstel
Authors: Harbert Bruce
Published: September 2008

King Alfred's preface to the Old English Pastoral Care, explaining how and why he made this translation from the original of Gregory the Great, ends thus:

Siððan ic hie geliornod hæfde, swæ swæ ic hie forstod, ond swæ ic hie andgitfullicost areccean meahte, ic hie on Englisc awende; ond to ælcum biscepstole on minum rice wille ane onsendan; ond on ælcre bið an æstel, se bið on fiftegum mancessa.
Laurence Nowell's transcript of BM Cotton Otho B. xi
Authors: Grant Raymond J. S.
Published: September 2008

Madden's note on the flyleaf of BM Cotton Otho B. xi introduces the scholar to the remnants of a most interesting manuscript: ‘Previous to the fire of 1731 this MS. consisted of 231 leaves. In 1734 Oxley reported it as “burned”, and Planta says “Desideratur”. A description of its contents when perfect is given by Dr. Smith in his Catalogue 1696 and more in detail by Wanley in his Cat. libb. Septentr. apud Hickes, p. 219.’
The architectural interest of Æthelwulf'sDe Abbatibus
Authors: Taylor H. M.
Published: September 2008

The purpose of this article is to describe the architectural evidence contained in a ninth-century poem which has recently been published in a new critical edition. The poem relates to a Northumbrian abbey dependent on Lindisfarne and its content provides some welcome additions to the present small number of contemporary descriptions of churches and their fittings. The poet, who was a member of the community, describes in some detail two churches of the abbey as well as a greater church which he saw in a vision. The poem is dedicated to Egbert, bishop of Lindisfarne 803–21, who would presumably be familiar with the abbey; and this dedication therefore serves not only to date the poem within the first quarter of the ninth century but also to indicate indirectly that it should be free from the wilder exaggerations that have sometimes brought discredit on contemporary descriptions of buildings.
Towards a revision of the internal chronology of the coinages of Edward the Elder and Plegmund
Authors: Dolley Michael
Published: September 2008

A number of years ago it was observed by the present writer that the later issues of King Edward the Elder's two substantive types (Brooke 12 and 13) can be distinguished from the earlier by the fact that they are struck on relatively spread flans. The diameter of typical pieces with the Cuerdale provenance for example is 20–1 mm, while pieces which have very close affinities with the earliest coins of Athelstan have a mean diameter in the region of 22–3 mm. It was further noticed that the coinage of Plegmund, archbishop of Canterbury, exhibits a neat dichotomy between pennies which conform in style and module to late, but not the very latest, coins of Alfred the Great and pennies which patently are contemporary with the later, but not the earlier, coins of Edward the Elder. The hypothesis was further advanced, and seems now generally accepted, that the Canterbury mint was closed as a consequence of the two-pronged Viking attack on Kent in 892 and opened again at least a year or two before the death of Plegmund. It follows that the inception of the last phase of Edward's coinage falls likewise at least a couple of years before the archbishop's demise, an event which is uniformly dated in the numismatic literature to 914. Nor can numismatists altogether be blamed for their consistency in accepting without demur a date proposed without any indication of controversy by so respectable, and indeed magisterial, a work of reference as F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde, Handbook of British Chronology.
Cuthswith, seventh-century abbess of Inkberrow, near Worcester, and the Würzburg manuscript of Jerome on Ecclesiastes
Authors: Sims-Williams Patrick
Published: September 2008

The fifth-century Italian manuscript of Jerome's Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. p. th. q. 2, which M. Adriaen takes as the base of his recent edition, is interesting to English scholars on various counts. On ir it bears a very early Old English inscription, in Anglo-Saxon majuscule which Lowe and Bischoff date c. 700:

Cuthsuuithae. boec.

thaerae abbatissan.

(‘a book of Cuthswith the abbess’). In all probability this was written in England itself rather than at an Anglo-Saxon centre on the continent, in view of the chronology of the English missions. The commentary is in ‘a beautiful bold uncial of the oldest type’, but six leaves of the manuscript's original 114 (fols. 10, 13, 63, 68, 81 and 82) were replaced by leaves of a thicker parchment, in England according to Lowe and Bischoff. It is not known why this was necessary, nor where the text was taken from. Lowe dates the writing of these later leaves to the seventh century. He observes that they were ‘written, if one may judge from the syllable-by-syllable copying, by a scribe for whom Latin was an alien tongue and who was not completely sure of his uncial characters’. D. H. Wright remarks that their example of an English scribe ‘doing his unequal best to reproduce the unfamiliar letter forms’ is not a very helpful illustration of the relationship of English uncial to Italian models, ‘for the script he writes has no style of its own, and therefore no future’. The main interest of the manuscript in the history of English uncial is as an illustration of foreign models which were available; it is, in Lowe's words, ‘the oldest extant uncial manuscript that was at hand to serve as a model in an English scriptorium’.
The authenticating voice in Beowulf
Authors: Greenfield Stanley B.
Published: September 2008

Two major concerns of recent Beowulf criticism have been (1) to establish the extent to which the poet used his pagan heroic narrative to shadow forth Christian meaning and (2) to establish the exact attitude of the poet towards his hero and towards the social institutions and mores of his hero's day – which, as we know, was several centuries before the poet's own. A nexus of such considerations has been the last word of the poem, lofgeornost: in the concluding lines the poet reports that the mourning Geats said that

…he wære wyruldcyning[a]

manna mildust ond mon(ðw)ærust,

leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (3180–2)

There have been arguments on the basis of other contextual uses of lofgeorn that this word for ‘most eager for praise’ must have an unfavourable connotation here in Beowulf and hence carry the implication of a moral flaw in the hero, though these arguments have not, in my opinion, been convincing. But even if we accept a favourable connotation in this instance, since Beowulf's warriors would hardly be speaking ill of their fallen chieftain during his funeral rites, we still have the problem of deciding whether the poet himself was being sympathetic towards the warriors' view, or whether he was taking an ironic stance or attitude towards that praise from his undeniably Christian outlook.
Ælfric's use of discourse in some saints' lives
Authors: Waterhouse Ruth
Published: September 2008

A writer can put direct speech into the mouths of the characters within his story or he can report their speech indirectly, and his use of different methods of presenting or suggesting their speech is one of his most potent means of creating characterization and of controlling the effect of his story. In general the character who is given direct speech is more dramatically effective, more ‘real’, than the one who is represented through indirect speech; on the other hand, the many gradations within the broad category of ‘indirect speech’ allow the writer much more scope in the variety of function and the subtlety of effect that can be created. This is as true of early writers as of the modern novelist, and Ælfric is one who was clearly aware of the potentiality of both direct and indirect speech in reinforcing the message which he wished to bring home to his audience. This can be illustrated especially well from the saints' lives which he derived from Bede, where the source is more exactly known than it usually is and where comparison is possible not only with the Latin but also with the earlier Old English translation.
Beginnings continued: a decade of studies of Old English prose
Authors: Gatch Milton McC.
Published: September 2008

When this article appears, a decade will have passed since the publication ofContinuations and Beginnings, edited by E. G. Stanley, a collection of studies in Old English literature, three of which deal with aspects of Old English prose. Each of these essays is a superb and expert summary of recent scholarship by someone who has made major contributions in this field; and they may, therefore, serve as an approximateterminus a quofor main sections of the present survey of theétat des questionswhich are of current concern in the study of Old English prose. One hears from time to time more-or-less facetious attempts at explication of the titleContinuations and Beginningsand I hope not to have compounded an issue by playing on that heading myself. I take Stanley to have meant that the essays he edited are intended both as summaries of the achievements of English philologists who studied the prose of the Anglo-Saxons in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and as pointers to newer trends. By my title I mean to convey that I am concerned here primarily with current trends.
The parts of an Anglo-Saxon mill
Authors: Rahtz Philip , Bullough Donald
Published: September 2008

The literature on watermills is extensive, and includes many papers on what is usually called the ‘horizontal’ mill, that is to say mills with a horizontal wheel and a vertical shaft, as against those with a vertical wheel and a horizontal shaft. It is here proposed that the type under discussion in this paper, sometimes called the ‘Norse’ or ‘Greek’ mill, should be called the ‘horizontal-wheeled’ mill, and the other the ‘vertical-wheeled’ mill.
Aldhelm's prose style and its origins
Authors: Winterbottom Michael
Published: September 2008

Eduard Norden's great bookDie antike Kunstprosais grounded on first-hand acquaintance with an astonishingly wide range of literature, both from classical antiquity and from the Middle Ages. But at the authors of Anglo-Saxon England Norden does seem to have drawn the line. ‘The two great writers, Aldhelm and Bede’, he says, ‘write, like all Anglo-Saxons, a stylistically uncultivated (verwildertes) though grammatically correct Latin.’ There is no need to labour the point that Aldhelm and Bede are not to be mentioned thus cavalierly in the same stylistic breath: we are all familiar today with the distinction between the ‘hermeneutic’ Latin of the one and the ‘classical’ Latin of the other. But at least Norden could not fall victim to another widely accepted doctrine that purports to explain the origin of that distinction: the doctrine that Aldhelm's style was influenced by Ireland, Bede's by the continent of Europe. I doubt if this is true even of Bede. But my present business is with Aldhelm; I shall try to show that his literary origins are not to be found in Ireland. At the same time I shall be challenging Norden's claim that his Latin was uncultivated. I shall suggest, indeed, that its cultivation was of a kind that Norden himself would have been uniquely qualified to analyse.
The Latin and Old English glosses in thears Tatuini
Authors: Law Vivien
Published: September 2008

The practice of the late classical grammarians of providing copious lists of frequently archaic and obscure examples of the parts of speech was subjected to varying treatment at the hands of their medieval adapters. Some omitted these lists altogether; some substituted commoner examples current in ecclesiastical vocabulary; others incorporated the classical material almost unaltered into their own works. Thears grammatica Tatuini, a lengthy treatise by the Mercian scholar Tatwine, archbishop of Canterbury from 731 until his death in 734, contains extensive lists drawn from such authors as Charisius and Phocas. Early in the textual tradition of all the surviving copies of this work several of the examples in the first,de nominesection were supplied with glosses, five in Latin and eighteen in Old English. Although they have been mentioned several times, no commentary on them, nor even an adequate transcription of them, has been published. Yet the glosses – particularly those in Old English – are of considerable interest, not only for their contribution to Old English lexicography, but also for the glimpse they afford of one aspect of the study of Latin in early-eighth-century England.
The narrative structure of Hengest's revenge in Beowulf
Authors: Vickrey John F.
Published: September 2008

Although Beowulf scholars have now generally accepted Frederick Klaeber's emendation … Finne / [ea]l unblitme (1128b–9a), the meaning of unblitme has remained in some doubt. Professors Dobbie and Rosier have held that unblitme means literally ‘without casting of lots’ and by extension ‘without choice”, Dobbie explaining that Hengest, ‘having no choice, was forced to remain with Finn’ and Rosier affirming that he did so ‘entirely with lack of choice’. Their view of unblitme has for some time gone unchallenged. But lately Professor Fry has dissented, contending briefly that ‘“without casting of lots” should produce just the opposite of “having no choice”. Casting lots throws the result up to chance, and so un-blitme should logically mean “not by chance”, that is “voluntarily”.’ There can be little question, I think, that Fry is right in rejecting the older view of unblitme. To take unblitme to mean ‘having no choice’ is to equivocate on the word ‘choice’. Any hlitm, ‘casting of lots’, would imply ‘choice’ in the sense ‘decision pursuant to lots and not to one's desires’. But the translation ‘having no choice’ means much more than this; it means ‘unwillingly‘free choice, choice pursuant to one's desires‘.
Two lost documents of King Athelstan
Authors: Barker Eric E.
Published: September 2008

TheLiber Vitaeof Durham is a well known and frequently studied document. Now preserved in the British Library, London, under the press-mark Cotton Domitian vii, it consists of a list of benefactors to St Cuthbert's community, or, at least, of those for whom the prayers of the community were solicited. The names were written in alternate lines of gold and silver in the early part of the ninth century, and very little was added for two centuries or more. Then, between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries, many other names were written in, and the book was even occasionally used as a kind of register for documents. An important exception to this generalization consists of the nameaeðelstan rexadded at the top of 12r in a mid-tenth-century hand which attempts to imitate some of the features of the original script. King Atheistan (924–39) was remembered as a great benefactor to St Cuthbert's and it is fitting that he should have been thus commemorated.
The Leofric Missal and tenth-century English art
Authors: Deshman Robert
Published: September 2008

One of the most crucial and problematic periods in the history of English medieval art is the tenth century. Already in the first half of the century there were signs of renewed artistic activity after the comparatively barren period of the ninth century when the Viking invasions rent the fabric of Anglo-Saxon society. But a full revival did not occur until the second half of the tenth century under the impetus of monastic reform and strong royal support. It was then that English artists created the so-called ‘Winchester Style’, which was to exercise a powerful influence in England and also on the continent for more than a century. Despite the research of many scholars, most notably Homburger and Wormald, there are still many more questions than answers about the sources and development of tenth-century English art. Among the most important works from this time are the Anglo-Saxon drawings and initial which were added to the so-called Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579). Through a consideration of their style, technique, ornament and iconography I hope to take a step towards a clearer understanding of this period of artistic renaissance.
Napier's ‘Wulfstan’ homily xxx: its sources, its relationship to the Vercelli Book and its style
Authors: Scragg D. G.
Published: September 2008

The item which Napier printed as no. xxx in his collected edition of the homilies of Archbishop Wulfstan and which is extant complete only in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 113, written at Worcester in the third quarter of the eleventh century, has long been recognized as a compilation in which a few sentences of undoubted Wulfstan authorship are fitted into a remarkable patchwork of extracts from pseudo-Wulfstan and tenth-century anonymous writings. Karl Jost has stated that the opening and concluding sections consist of extracts from theInstitutes of Polityand from Napier's homilies xxiv, xlvi and ii, while in the middle section he has identified parallels to two Vercelli homilies, nos. iv and ix, and to Napier xlix, which also occurs in the Vercelli Book as homily x. He has speculated that for another passage the compiler may have drawn upon an earlier version of a text now surviving in London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, but he missed a parallel with Vercelli xxi which had been noted by McIntosh. What in effect Jost and others have shown is that in a ‘scissors and paste’ homily in which no more than a few sentences can be ascribed to the compiler (and these perhaps only because he took them from books since lost) we find extracts from a considerable number of works. The purpose of this article is to examine again the sources of the compilation, to show that very probably more than half of it was drawn from a single codex similar to the Vercelli Book, and to illustrate the influence Wulfstan's writings and style had on its author.
English history and Norman legend in the Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor
Authors: Fell Christine
Published: September 2008

In this, my third article on the sources of Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga, the fourteenth-century Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor, I hope to cover all the material that I have not dealt with previously. In my first article, on the hagiographical sources, I suggested that the saga writer used two specific texts, a service book containing the lections for St Edward's day and the Speculum Historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. In my second one, on the saga's version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium, I showed that this account was very closely related to the one in the anonymous and unpublished Chronicon Laudunensis. Here I wish to show the full extent of the saga's debt to CL. In doing this I also need to show how the saga writer used Scandinavian sources, a range of material that he acknowledges when he refers us to what is said í æfi Noregskonunga. The specific saga which he has utilized most fully is that of Harald Hardrada, Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar. Since he was compiling JS in the fourteenth century, HS would have been available to him in a number of recensions. Extant ones include the early-thirteenth-century Msk and Fsk, both of which may have been utilized by Snorri Sturluson in Hkr later in that century. Some of the later manuscripts of Hkr, such as Eirspennill, include interpolations and there are compilations, such as the fourteenth-century Hulda, which combine material from Msk and Hkr. The evidence indicates that the compiler of JS knew HS in more than one of these redactions.
Sutton Hoo published: a review
Authors: Biddle Martin , Binns Alan , Cameron J. M. , Metcalf D. M. , Page R. I. , Sparrow Charles , Warren F. L.
Published: September 2008

The discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial in the summer of 1939 opened a window on the early Anglo-Saxon world through which we have all since been looking. But the view has inevitably been blurred until now, lacking the precise definition which only the publication of the definitive study could provide. The first of the four volumes of this most eagerly awaited and often anticipated account has now appeared: it is an offering worthy of its subject, comprehensive, generous in detail, splendidly produced.
The text of a damaged passage in the Exeter Book: Advent (Christ I) 18–32
Authors: Pope John C.
Published: September 2008

Lines 18–32 of the Old English Advent, formerly known as Christ I, have suffered severely from the overflow of a mug of beer, or perhaps cider, that someone set down on the first extant page (8r) of the Exeter Book. Efforts to recover the readings of this passage have taxed the eyes and ingenuity of a number of scholars since 1830, when N. F. S. Grundtvig made the first transcription of the entire volume. A greatly improved text, the first and last to be based on freshly available photographic evidence in addition to renewed examination of the manuscript itself, was included by G. P. Krapp and E. V. K. Dobbie in their edition of the Exeter Book in 1936; but inherited misreadings have not been entirely eliminated either from this or from the slightly improved texts that have appeared since that date. The present article was prompted by a desire to correct a small but disturbing error that was first observed by S. K. Das, whose able exposition of it, published in 1937, has been overlooked by everyone who has had occasion to edit the poem since that time. But some other improved, partly conjectural readings in the same passage, though published, have not been adequately explained, and a fresh study of the manuscript together with the best photographic evidence has revealed some small inaccuracies that have remained unnoticed in all our texts. Thus what was originally conceived as a brief note has grown into something more complicated, involving a number of readings and a sketch of the slow process by which several generations of scholars have approached, little by little, a complete recovery of the passage as it stood before it was so nearly obliterated.
Sylf, seasons, structure and genre in The Seafarer
Authors: Greenfield Stanley B.
Published: September 2008

In ‘Second Thoughts on the Interpretation of The Seafarer’, John C. Pope gracefully retracted his earlier suggestion that The Seafarer and The Wanderer contain ‘dramatic voices’ and, in the process of retraction, generously acknowledged my own challenge to his two-speaker theory. In this later essay Professor Pope makes a number of illuminating comments about problems in The Seafarer: I feel especially enlightened by his evidence and argument that the phrase gifre ond grædig (62a) is apt for the bird-soul (the hyge-anfloga) of the speaker contemplating what is spiritually good, conveying ‘precisely the overwhelming desire, comparable to the fierce greediness of a bird of prey but purified by its object, that the seafarer feels for what he is about to name as “Dryhtnes dreamas”, “the joys of the Lord”’.
The lexical and syntactic variants shared by two of the later manuscripts of King Alfred's translation of Gregory'sCura Pastoralis
Authors: Horgan Dorothy M.
Published: September 2008

The purpose of this article is to analyse the different categories of the lexical and syntactic variation which is common to two unpublished manuscripts of King Alfred's translation of Gregory'sCura Pastoralis, Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 22 (717), fols. 72–158, and Cambridge, University Library, Ii. 2. 4, referred to henceforth as T and U respectively. These manuscripts are an obvious choice for the following reasons: the relationship of the tenth- (or early-eleventh-)century T to the eleventh-century U (almost certainly written at Exeter) can be at least tentatively established as far as the history of the transmission of the test is concerned; the work has the status of royal origin and one can therefore expect it to have been treated with due respect by later copyists; and the work is of considerable length. My study is based on a complete collation of both manuscripts, since, in any analysis of this kind, numerical weight of evidence lends conviction to the conclusions, but the material, because of its quantity, cannot be presented here in its entirety. What I have attempted to do is to demonstrate, with selected examples as evidence, the clear pattern of variation that emerges. It is hoped that as a result some light is thrown upon linguistic developments within West Saxon and upon the scribal practices involved in the copying and recopying of earlier texts in late Old English times.
Farming in the Anglo-Saxon landscape: an archaeologist's review
Authors: Fowler P. J.
Published: September 2008

Almost exactly forty years ago, Evert Barger published his survey entitled ‘The Present Position of Studies in English Field Systems’. It is a measure both of his percipience and of an underlying stasis in this field of scholarly enquiry that, even after the academic dynamism which has characterized agrarian studies so much in the two most recent decades, Barger's paper is still, if suitably edited rather than completely recast, by no means entirely superseded. Indeed, in some respects large parts of the evidence, the research and the published sources on which he drew for his synthesis are not only as relevant today as they were in 1938 but could even be said to be more fashionable now.
Evidence for primacy of alliteration in Old English metre
Authors: Hoover David L.
Published: September 2008

The study of Old English metre has a long and illustrious history, yet it seems fair to say that the work of many respected scholars over the past hundred years has not produced unanimity. One reason for this is that objective and unequivocal evidence about the metre of Old English poetry is very difficult to discover. That is, before evidence is considered, or even collected, a substantial amount of interpretation and analysis has usually taken place. In the following pages, however, I shall present some previously unnoticed and quite unequivocal evidence about Old English metre that does not depend upon any particular metrical theory or upon unsupported assumptions, but rather upon the uncontroversial and universally accepted fact that Old English poetry requires a minimum of two alliterating stresses, one in each verse (or half-line), and allows two alliterations on the same sound only in theaverse.
The ‘Sunday Letter’ and the ‘Sunday Lists’
Authors: Lees Clare A.
Published: September 2008

The so-called ‘Sunday Letter’ (otherwise entitled the ‘Heavenly Letter’, the Carta Dominica or the ‘Lettre du Christ tombée du ciel’) is extant in Latin and many vernacular languages and has already attracted a considerable explicatory literature. As is well known, the ‘Sunday Letter’ purports to be a letter from Christ himself, written variously in his own blood, with a golden rod or by an angel. It falls on to one of the principal shrines of Christendom (frequently Rome, Jerusalem or Bethlehem) and passes into the hands of the clergy. The letter urges strict enforcement of the observance of Sunday, accompanied by dire threats for those who fail to comply. ‘Sunday Lists’ (also known as the ‘Benedictions of Sunday’ or the dignatio Diei dominici), sometimes lengthy, are inserted within some of the extant examples of the ‘Letter’. These enumerate notable scriptural events which occurred, or are said to have occurred, on Sunday, in order to strengthen reasons for veneration of the day. Recent publication of individual, and isolated, ‘Sunday Lists’ from early Hiberno-Latin manuscripts has suggested that a survey of available and new material and a reconsideration of the relationship between the ‘Sunday Lists’ and the ‘Sunday Letter’ would be useful.
Disputes about bocland: the forum for their adjudication
Authors: Kennedy A. G.
Published: September 2008

It is my purpose in this article to discuss one aspect of land tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. For good reason there has been little enduring agreement among scholars on fundamental tenurial questions, and opinion on issues of interest to legal historians has tended to be cyclical. There are no contemporary manuals on land law, and as legal documents the primary sources are intractable and opaque. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that scholars have held and continue to hold divergent views about the essential incidents that attached to bocland and folcland, the two types of tenure that are usually taken to be comprehensive of all independent landholding in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the introduction of written title in the seventh century. At present the most popular explanations of these tenures derive in essence from the thesis set out by Sir Paul Vinogradoff nearly a hundred years ago. Vinogradoff argued that folcland was so called because it was subject to folcriht, the general communal law of the land, and that bocland was land freed by the royal act embodied in the diploma (OE boc) from the constraints and burdens which folcriht imposed. The diploma was thus a kind of private statute in favour of the grantee. The thesis has its difficulties, and few have accepted it without reservation, but alternative views have similarly failed to find wholehearted support.
Edgar the Ætheling: Anglo-Saxon prince, rebel and crusader
Authors: Hooper Nicholas
Published: September 2008

In the years which followed the Norman Conquest, the Old English aristocracy was largely deprived of its lands and offices, both lay and ecclesiastical. The resistance of the English nobility to the Norman Conquest made a large contribution to its own eclipse, but it is rarely that we are afforded a glimpse of the fortunes of an individual. The historian may, however, dwell in some detail on the career of one man, Edgar the Ætheling. Episodes from his life are preserved in a variety of works composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. TheAnglo-Saxon Chroniclecontains several entries relating to his activities after 1066, and the D version shows a special interest in Edgar and his family. Among Latin histories, those of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis follow his activities, although none of these authors was well informed about his life. Edgar appears not to have made a strongly favourable impression upon any of them: to the anonymous compilers of theAnglo-Saxon Chroniclehe was the rightful heir to the throne of England, but to both William and Orderic he was indolent. There is little difficulty involved in bringing together the known episodes of his life, and although his royal blood makes him a far from typical example the picture that emerges gives a useful insight into how one Englishman fared in the unstable political climate of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, and in its aftermath. It is intended here to assemble the evidence for the life of Edgar and to treat him not as a footnote to history, which is how he has often fared at the hands of historians, but as a character of no small importance in the history of the Norman Conquest of England.
The Christ and the beasts panel on the Ruthwell Cross
Authors: Haney Kristine Edmondson
Published: September 2008

Although the Ruthwell Cross has universally been regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements of early Northumbrian civilization, the meaning of its iconographic programme remains the subject of considerable debate. Central to most interpretations is the largest panel on the Cross, one depicting Christ and the beasts (see pl. Ia). The correct identification of this scene has long been regarded as crucial for achieving an understanding of the iconographic programme as a whole. While this scene must be accepted as the key to the programme, no entirely satisfactory explanation of its meaning has hitherto been offered. This study will draw attention to textual and visual evidence which provides a new basis for understanding this panel and its relationship to the remaining scenes.
A new fragment of a ninth-century English bible
Authors: Brown Michelle P.
Published: September 2008

The fragment in question consists of the remains of a bifolium, now a complete single leaf with an irregular stub carrying the ends of three lines of script at its head. The text is Judges v.5–6, vi.6 and x.7 to xi.26. It is undecorated, but written in a highly accomplished Insular cursive minuscule of Phase ii. The fragment, hitherto unpublished, is of importance as the relict of what may have been a bible written in Southumbria during the first half of the ninth century and which on stylistic grounds evidently belongs to the so-called ‘Canterbury’ or ‘Tiberius’ group of manuscripts. This group has played a prominent and often controversial role in the evaluation of the ninth century and its contribution to the history of Anglo-Saxon manuscript production.
An eleventh-century English missal fragment in the British Library
Authors: Hartzell K. D.
Published: September 2008

In the introduction to his edition of the New Minster Missal (Le Havre, Bibliothèque municipale, 330), Derek Turner tells us that the manuscript he is editing ‘is one of the five fairly complete mass-books of probable English provenance remaining from before 1100, and the oldest true missal’. By ‘missal’ he means, of course, that Le Havre 330 is a mass book of the sort which usually contains a suitably integrated ordering of texts and chants of the sacramentary, the lectionary and the gradual according to the various traditional propers and ordinaries of the temporal and sanctoral arranged to accompany the church year; normally there are also some votive masses after the main corpus of the book.
The unknowable audience of the Blickling Homilies
Authors: Gatch Milton McC.
Published: September 2008

Manige men beoð þe beforan oþrum mannum hwæethugu god begangaþ 7 raþe hie hit anforlataþ, forþan þe Crist sylfa cwaæþ pæt he nelle gehyran þæs gimleasan 7 þæs forgytenan mannes gebedrædene. Ne þæt to nahte nyt ne bið þæt man godne mete ete oþþe þæt betste win on gebeorscipe drince gif þæt gelimpeþ þæt he hit eft spiwende anforlæteþ, þæt he ær to blisse nam 7 to lichoman nyttnesse. Swa we þonne þa gastlican lare unwæriice ne sceolan anforlætan, þe ure saul big leofaþ 7 feded bið. Swa se lichoma buton mete 7 drence leofian ne mæg, swa þonne seo saul gif heo ne bið mid godes worde feded gastlice hungre 7 þurste heo bið cwelmed. Forþon myccle swiþor we sceolan þencan be þæm gastlicum þingum þonne be þæm lichomlicum