Contributions to the forty-sixth volume of Anglo-Saxon England focus on aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and history across a period from the seventh to the eleventh century. The study of a fragment of a tenth-century sacramentary offers new evidence for the role of music in Anglo-Saxon England, while consideration of charter-evidence in both Latin and Old English from Worcester c.870 to 992 sheds fresh light on institutional interaction between the two main languages of Anglo-Saxon England. Two contributions consider Beowulf and its immediate manuscript-context, the first focusing on the spellings of the second scribe, and the next on the later history of the manuscript into the sixteenth century, facilitating its survival to this day. Finally, a detailed study of English landed society before and after the Norman Conquest has resulted in new perspectives on landed wealth in England in 1066 and 1086. Each article is preceded by a short abstract.
This book illustrates some of the exciting paths of enquiry being explored in many different fields of Anglo-Saxon studies - archaeology, legal history, palaeography, Old English syntax and poetic, Latin learning with its many reflexes in Old English prose literature, and others. In all these fields it is clear that fresh perspectives may be achieved by examining even well-known objects and texts in the light of modern approaches and scholarship. Several studies concentrate on aspects of early Anglo-Saxon civilization: the settlement at Mucking, Essex; the iconography of the famous gold coin struck in the name of Bishop Liudhard; the early Anglo-Saxon law on adultery; and a reconstruction of an early Anglo-Saxon copy of the Heptateuch. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book, with a five-year index to volumes 16-20 (previous indexes being in volumes 5, 10 and 15).
The principal emphasis of this book is the relationship between England and its neighbours in the pre-Conquest period. It brings together fresh information of England's place in the early medieval world, with essays concentrating on finance and trade, travel, learning and education. A detailed analysis of the Old English vocabulary for money and wealth shows different usage over two centuries reflects a developing awareness, particularly on the part of Ælfric, of the relationship between wealth and power. Medical recipes in Bald's Leechbook, which stipulate the use of exotic spices from Arabia, have stimulated a fascinating essay on how these ingredients may have made their way from Arabia and the Mediterranean to England. Other essays in this wide-ranging book examine the Old English Rune Poem in the context of its two later Scandinavian analogues; the use in England of Jerome's Hebracium translation of the psalter; and the study in English schools of the difficult verse of Abbo of
That Alcuin addressed to the monks of Lindisfarne the question, 'What has Ingeld to do with Christ?', is a much repeated dogma in Old English studies; but in this book close examination of the letter in question shows that it was addressed not to Lindisfarne nor to a monastic community, but to a bishop in Mercia. That 'Ultán the scribe' was responsible for some of the most lavishly illuminated Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is shown to be another untenable dogma. Fresh perspectives from interdisciplinary study: the 'beasts-of-battle' typescenes which are characteristic of Old English poetry are studied in the wider context of other European literatures. The nasty Viking habit of murdering hostages by throwing bones at them (as happened to St Ælfeah) is illuminated by a wide-ranging study of analogues in Scandinavian literatures. Characteristic features of Aldhelm's enigmata are elucidated by the study of Byzantine riddles, thereby revealing a link between England and the Greek orient. The
The vitality of Anglo-Saxon studies is reflected in the continuing acquisition of fresh knowledge and perspectives gained from the combination of disparate but complementary skills and disciplines. Evidence presented in this book reveals unsuspected aspects of the influence of Aldhelm's Latin poetry in early medieval Spain. The many non-runic inscriptions which have been discovered since 1980 are catalogued and analysed. Comprehensive analysis of a little-understood Latin source of the Old English medical treatise known as Bald's Leechbook throws light not only on the English text but also, surprisingly, on the transmissional history of the Latin source. The decoration of an important manuscript from the early tenth century, the Tanner Bede, is set in the context of tenth-century developments in manuscript illumination, and the analysis of the Regularis concordia from an architectural point of view permits fresh understanding of the layout of monastic churches in the later Anglo-Saxon
In the present volume, the two essays that frame the book provide exciting insight into the mental world of the Anglo-Saxons by showing on the one hand how they understood the processes of reading and assimilating knowledge and, on the other, how they conceived of time and the passage of the seasons. In the field of art history, two essays treat two of the best-known Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. The lavish symbol pages in the 'Book of Durrow' are shown to reflect a programmatic exposition of the meaning of Easter, and a posthumous essay by a distinguished art historian shows how the Anglo-Saxon illustrations added to the 'Galba Psalter' are best to be understood in the context of the programme of learning instituted by King Alfred. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
One of the most important primary sources for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon England is the charters and manuscripts which survive from the period before 1066. In the present book, two complementary essays treat the charters of mid tenth-century English kings, bringing previously unknown documents to light, establishing the circumstances in which they were produced, and demonstrating that changes in practice in the royal chancery had far-reaching effect on all aspects of Anglo-Saxon script and book production. The question of the medieval representation of women is illuminated by a study of the difficulties which a well-known monastic author, Ælfric, faced in characterizing an Old Testament heroine who used her body to achieve her ends, while a number of traditional assumptions about the property rights of divorced women in England are freshly challenged by close philological analysis of surviving law-codes. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all
The discovery in Sonderhausen of a fragmentary psalter glossed in Latin and Old English allows fresh inferences to be drawn regarding the study of the psalter in Anglo-Saxon England, and of the transmission of the corpus of vernacular psalter glosses. A detailed textual and palaeographical study of the Wearmouth-Jarrow bibles leads to the exciting possibility that the hand of Bede can be identified, annotating the text of the Bible which he no doubt played an instrumental role in establishing. Two Latin texts from the circle of Archbishop Wulfstan are published here in full, whilst disciplined philological and historical analysis helps to clarify a puzzling reference in Æthelbert's law-code to the early medieval practice of providing food render for the king. Finally, the volume contains two pioneering essays in the histoire des mentalités. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
It is red-letter day in Anglo-Saxon studies when a previously unknown Old English text comes to light. In 2002, as the result of some outstanding scholarly detective work, a fragmentary homiliary, containing exegetical homilies for the Sundays after Pentecost, came to light in the Somerset County Records Office in Taunton. The manuscript apparently dates from the middle years of the eleventh century; but questions of when and where and by whom the homiliary was composed can only be answered by close philological study of the Old English text itself. The present volume of Anglo-Saxon England contains a printed edition of this interesting text, and detailed philological analysis leads to the extraordinary hypothesis that the text may have been composed by someone whose native language was not English, and who was apparently unfamiliar with the mainstream of English homiletic composition, best illustrated in the work of Ælfric. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's
Several unusual fields of study are extensively explored in this volume: a distinctive politico-religious cult, penitentials, inscriptions, the Sutton Hoo whetstone and medical knowledge; while treatments of more 'standard' subjects like late Anglo-Saxon law, King Alfred's Boethius and Beowulf, lead to unusual conclusions. A phenomenon special to Anglo-Saxon England is given a full and separate treatment in a careful and imaginative analysis of the ecclesiastical and political significance of the cults of murdered royal saints. Elizabeth Okasha's Hand-List which has been indispensable to any work on Anglo-Saxon non-runic inscriptions for some time has been refreshed by the description and illustration of twenty-six additional items and by other addenda and corrigenda. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
This volume offers fundamental evidence and discussion illuminating a wide range of important subjects: possible influence of Cicero on Bede's attitude to rhetoric; the probability that Theodore and Hadrian brought a glossary from Italy to England; the traditional concept of the narrator in Old English poetry; the nationality of the author of the Old English poem Genesis B; the conceptions of history controlling the Old English Orosius; the establishment of Square minuscule as the standard English script of the tenth century; criteria for distinguishing between Anglo-Saxon script written in England and script written by Anglo-Saxons on the continent; the grounds for claiming that certain surviving pre-Conquest manuscripts were once at Glastonbury; the extent of the circulation of Prudentius's Psychomachia in Anglo-Saxon England; the regional distribution of names of different origins among the moneyers of the Anglo-Danish era. Early and late periods and north and south thus find a
Areas of study pursued in this book include a revealing grammatical document from eighth-century Northumbria; renewed excavations at Sutton Hoo are reported; the existence of an unnoticed late Old English prose version of parts of Gregory's Dialogues is pointed out. Fresh thinking is directed to topics as interesting and diverse as a design on the Sutton Hoo purse lid; the origin of a little-considered English decorated manuscript containing lives of saints now in Paris; the enigmatic poem Wulf and Eadwacer; word order as an element on Old English poetic style; surviving traces of the teaching which Theodore and Hadrian delivered in England; the career of a Latin text much studied in English schools for its difficult vocabulary; the political aspects of relic cults during the last century and a half of Anglo-Saxon monarchy; and the organization of the invading armies led by Swein Forkbeard and Cnut. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all
This volume makes important contributions to our stock of primary manuscript evidence: it recovers parts of six previously unrecorded charters and analyses two sets of fragments, each unique in its own way – two leaves of Old Testament text written in Mercia or Canterbury early in the ninth century and six leaves of a missal written at Worcester in the mid-eleventh century. Significant issues in both ecclesiastical and secular history are tackled too – the location of Lindsey, the fate of Rutland during the Scandinavian invasions and settlements, and the state of our knowledge of the archaeology of the Five Boroughs of Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, Stamford and Lincoln. Vernacular literature receives its fair share of attention as well: the relationship between author and audience is examined in the cases of a biblical poem and of the prose homiliary which is still least well understood among the principle ones extant. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publica
This volume explores many fundamental questions regarding Anglo-Saxon history. Among those considered is the question of did the earliest English prose really divide into a Mercian tradition and a separate West Saxon one? What is the full roll-call of extant texts containing late Old English 'Winchester' words? How far was Anglo-Saxon medicine hocus-pocus and how far the fruit of deliberate experimentation? How much Greek vocabulary was known in Anglo-Saxon England, and how was it known and how used? How did Anglo-Saxon land law work in practice? Advances in scholarship, application of modern scientific knowledge of a type not normally available, fresh directions of thought, original analysis, stricter criteria and additions to the stock of primary evidence all characterize this book. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
Among topics covered in this volume, two important authorship questions are settled; the discovery of a major Northumbrian settlement is reported; the conceptions of Old English literature which have prevailed during the last three hundred years are paraded for critical inspection and substantial contributions are made to our knowledge of subjects as diverse as a monastic library of the first rank, eighth-century Latin poetic activity, metrical technique and literary convention in our greatest surviving vernacular poem; the family basis of political power in the tenth century; late Anglo-Saxon legal concepts; and scientific exposition in the early eleventh century. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book (with a separate section onomastic section). There is also an index to volumes 6 – 10, complementing the index found in volume 5.
Four very different kinds of Anglo-Saxon thinking are clarified in this volume: traditions, learned and oral, about the settlement of the country, study of foreign-language grammar, interest in exotic jewels as reflections of the glory of God, and a mainly rational attitude to medicine. Publication of no less than three discoveries augments our corpus of manuscript evidence. The nature of Old English poetry is illuminated, and a useful summary of the editorial treatment of textual problems in Beowulf is provided. A re-examination of the accounts of the settlement in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle yields insights into the processes of Anglo-Saxon learned historiography and oral tradition. A thorough-going analysis of an under-studied major work, Bald's Leechbook, demonstrates that the compiler, perhaps in King Alfred's reign, translated selections from a wide range of Latin texts in composing a well-organized treatise directed against the diseases prevalent
Was Old English metre really based on stress and rhythm? Do we really know that a particular glossed manuscript of a Latin curriculum author was used in an Anglo-Saxon classroom and, if so, how? How were disputes about bookland dealt with? What happened to the last male representative of the West Saxon royal line after the Norman Conquest? And what are the implications of the Taylors' great work on Anglo-Saxon architecture for related studies? These are among the challenging questions taken up in this book. The publication of findings concerning a striking sculptured stone unearthed at Repton and an interpretation of a panel on the Ruthwell Cross bring us close to some distinctive Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking. So do two source studies of vernacular prose, a demonstration of Aldhelm's interest in how a name is related to its referent, and a searching enquiry into early Anglo-Saxon kingship. Textual criticism and phonology are put to good use too. The usual comprehensive bibliography of
Among the diverse topics covered in this volume is a pioneer account of a unique group of Anglo-Saxon embroideries preserved on the continent and the publication of a previously unknown charter. Themes illuminated are as varied as the status of women, early urban history, the nature of medical collections, the standing of Marian feasts and the function of musical notation. The study of Old English poetry is advanced textually, codicologically, culturally, linguistically and critically. Innovation and established practice go hand-in-hand: a record of the first conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and versions of six papers read at conference are included. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies rounds off the book.
Ideas about the whole sweep of Anglo-Saxon history and in particular the importance of combining skills from many disciplines are at the centre of this volume. Walter Goffart invites us to think again about what Bede meant by 'the true law of history', while Joanna Story argues that the early Frankish annals give us important insight into the raw material available to Bede. J. R. Madicott traces the rapid development of Mercian power in Bede's time, and a team of textual scholars and scientists report on their experiments to test the efficacy of Anglo-Saxon medical prescriptions. At the other end of the period, Gale R. Owen-Crocker shows how the birds in the margins of the Bayeux Tapestry are used to comment on the narrative of the Norman Conquest, while Rebecca Rushforth finds evidence for continued post-Conquest interest in the descendents of the royal house of Wessex. The usual comprehensive bibliography of the previous year's publications in all branches of Anglo-Saxon studies
