King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult: A Childhood Remembered 9789048544998

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
I Cult and Canon: The Chronicle
Some Key Dates: 1849–1904
1 Kiss the Reliquary
2 Remember the Pope
3 Fix the Date
II Too Good to be True: The Life
4 Write the Life
5 Win the Book
III The Curve of Destiny: The Works
6 Cross the Border
7 Win the Crown
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult

Hagiography beyond Tradition The study of sanctity in medieval Europe is starting to elicit cutting-edge, innovative and genuinely interdisciplinary scholarship that destabilizes what people have conventionally considered to be hagiography. This is demonstrated in the topic range of panels sponsored by the Hagiography Society at recent landmark medievalist conferences. While hagiography has traditionally been understood only in religious terms, recent scholarship moves beyond such frameworks to consider alternate ways of identifying and representing exemplary people. So doing, such research emphasises modern cultural analogies and resonances with medieval figures. It is not enough, however, to approach saints’ lives with a “sexy” modern framework. The best scholarship is rooted in analytical rigour, close attention to context(s), and a keen awareness of the potential pitfalls of anachronism, all the while accepting that anachronism can often be productive. This series provides a home for the kind of work that negotiates that border between the traditional and the contemporary and encourages scholarship enhanced by interventions drawn from celebrity studies, trans studies, crip theory, animal and monster studies, the history of senses and the emotions, media studies, and beyond. Rather than considering hagiography as a single genre, the series is open to expanding the ways in which we imagine how people come to be offered for veneration, as well as the media and genres in which they are fashioned, represented, and celebrated. Series Editor Alicia Spencer-Hall, Queen Mary, University of London Editorial Board Martha Newman, University of Texas Sarah Salih, King’s College London Bill Burgwinkle, University of Cambridge Virginia Burrus, Syracuse University

King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult A Childhood Remembered

Tomás Mario Kalmar

Amsterdam University Press

In memory of my beloved mentor Giles Constable to whom my completion of this book owes so much.

Cover illustration: Bibliothèque nationale de France Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout isbn 978 94 6372 961 1 e-isbn 978 90 4854 499 8 (pdf) doi 10.5117/ 9789463729611 nur 684 © T. Kalmar / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2023 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments

9 15

I  Cult and Canon: The Chronicle Some Key Dates: 1849–1904

19

1 Kiss the Reliquary Victorian reliquarianism The death of Alfred The birth of Alfred A relic of Alfred

25 27 31 40 50

2 Remember the Pope Hagiography Chronology Psychology

69 70 78 82

3 Fix the Date Harmony from dissonance From Rome to Athelney The Infidel vs The Believer Stubbs’ Gambit Plummer’s blind spot

95 96 102 114 134 141

II  Too Good to be True: The Life 4 Write the Life Respect Allusion Plagiarism Echoes Clichés Irony

161 162 174 180 186 190 193

5 Win the Book Transcendental flotsam and jetsam Redaction criticism The Poem Itself. Et legit Appendix A Six translations of Race for the Book

199 200 204 208 218 225

III  The Curve of Destiny: The Works 6 Cross the Border The Pope and the Book Legere et interpretari simul From Bonifatian to Alfredian biliteracy A game of figures Typologie interne

231 232 233 245 246 251

7 Win the Crown Race for the crown Commentary When I was young Scylla and Charybdis Envoi

257 262 267 272 277 280

Bibliography

281

Index

303

Foreword Tomás Kalmar is an activist, linguist, mathematician, community worker, medievalist, school-bus driver, musician, educationalist and researcher in literacy whose outlook encompasses many continents and cultures. I think of him as a kind of intellectual shaman for the twenty-first century. Tomás is the perfect person to help us understand how the uncertainties about the birthdate of the celebrated medieval English King Alfred connect with many major themes of life today, from Brexit to the war in Ukraine and beyond. This book represents a lifetime of thought, research and debate by Tomás about King Alfred but it also reflects his wider intellectual and personal journey. Tomás has produced one of the most idiosyncratic and thought-provoking studies of medieval British history to have appeared in recent years. In its originality, range of intellectual reference and distinct voice, Tomás’s book can be compared with Asser’s Life of Alfred itself. Tomás’s book is compelling because of the way it lays bare the ideological and cultural contexts of what might otherwise seem a matter of pedantic antiquarian interest. The story of King Alfred is intimately bound up with the articulation of Britain’s invented national narrative, that island story beloved of politicians from Winston Churchill to Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. King Alfred stood at the head of the Whig ‘Temple of Worthies’ at Stowe House in Buckinghamshire; ‘Rule Britannia’ was originally the final number in Thomas Arne’s masque Alfred. The idea that we can strip away these later accretions and use the power of Victorian German philology and text-criticism to restore and recover the original Alfred is a chimera. Whatever we think or say about Alfred is shaped by a millennium of myths, a heritage it is impossible to escape. We may imagine that these myths are so much deadwood to be stripped away, but it is precisely because Alfred is at the heart of cultural archetypes which have shaped not just Britain, but the whole English-speaking world, that Alfred the Great remains a vital subject for study in the twenty-first century. Tomás memorably describes for us the remarkable range of characters who energetically sought during the nineteenth century to reinvent Alfred as the founding father of the British Empire and apostle of an Anglosphere. This Alfred was the presiding deity of the Victorian weaponization of English language and literature in support of Empire, most notoriously expressed in Macaulay’s 1855 declarations that ‘a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia’ and ‘of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most

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King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

useful.’ Tomás introduces us to such extraordinary and largely forgotten Victorian scholars of Alfred as the poet Martin Tupper, ever ready with a verse to celebrate Alfred, denounce the French and chase away religious doubt; the apostle of positivism in England, Frederic Harrison; the Christian socialist Dean of Ely, Charles Stubbs; the Oxford curate John Allen Giles, whose soft-heartedness ended in his imprisonment; the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clifton, William Clifford, who allayed his doubts about papal infallibility by contemplating and elaborating the connection of Alfred with his diocese; and the iconoclastic and questioning Manchester lawyer and politician Henry Howorth. It may seem that revisiting figures like Tupper, Clifford and Howorth will not help us in recapturing the historical King Alfred, but our view of Alfred and his significance is inescapably shaped by the way in which Tupper, Harrison, Clifford and others used the cult of Alfred to fashion modern notions of Britain and its Empire. Seen as the founder of the nation, Alfred’s virtues came to epitomize fantasies of English exceptionalism, as Charles Dickens’s description of Alfred in his Child’s History of England (1851–1853) makes clear: The noble king […] in his single person, possessed all the Saxon virtues. Whom misfortune could not subdue, whom prosperity could not spoil, whose perseverance, nothing could shake. Who was hopeful in defeat, and generous in success. Who loved justice, freedom, truth and knowledge.

Stories about Alfred feed into many of the most deeply felt historical memes of the English. The image of Alfred reduced to hiding from the Danes at Athelney, standing alone, but eventually managing to achieve victory against the odds is fundamental to English self-conception. The ‘island story’ is punctuated with images of puny England/Britain bravely standing alone at times of crisis, whether against the Spanish in 1588, Napoleon in 1803 or Germany in 1940, and nevertheless winning through. This English self-fashioning, as underdogs prepared to stand up against global bullies, conveniently omits a great deal, such as the fact that in 1940 Britain possessed the largest Empire the world has ever known and could hardly be seen as an underdog, but the continued mythic potency of this English self-image cannot be denied. It fed into sentiment in favour of Brexit, where feeling that Britain should once again stand on its own was evident. The leading Brexiteer and Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, who represents Somerset North East in parliament and named one of his children after Alfred, chose Alfred as one his three historical heroes,

Foreword

11

describing him as ‘the first Eurosceptic, who got rid of the Danes and made England independent.’1 It is an essential civic duty to probe and investigate beliefs such as those of Rees-Mogg, who is of course a Catholic in the diocese whose first bishop was the advocate of Asser, William Clifford. Indeed, Rees-Mogg’s Somerset fantasies about Alfred read like a debased and ignorant version of Bishop Clifford’s work (it is unclear whether Rees-Mogg’s claim that Alfred ruled in 678 ad is a typing error for 876). Victorian debates like those between Clifford and Howorth, and the reaction to them of other Victorian scholars such as Charles Plummer, still provide key elements in the framework of modern historiography. Visitors to the British Library’s 2018 exhibition AngloSaxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War were presented with a dazzling array of cultural artefacts, but the strongly nationalistic framework of the exhibition’s narrative remained, despite occasional reference to continental contacts, fundamentally the story of the creation of modern England by Alfred and his successors. By taking us back to the Victorian roots of this narrative, Tomás illustrates how it was formed by strongly racist and imperialist impulses. By showing the doubts, debates and outright manipulation which accompanied the formation of these narrative structures, he encourages us to revisit and challenge them. A striking feature of Tomás’s analysis is the importance in Victorian historiography of religious controversy, and particularly the reestablishment of the Catholic hierarchy in Great Britain. The extent to which our view of the Middle Ages is coloured today by the Anglo-Catholic movement does not receive sufficient attention. The more scientific evidence-based historiography pioneered by Ranke and others in the nineteenth century, whose gospel was proclaimed by Lord Acton in the first number of the English Historical Review in 1886, claimed to transcend such religious and national bias by rigorous textual criticism. In the case of Alfred, the new scientific philological techniques were used by William Henry Stevenson to try and recover the text of Asser’s Life of Alfred which had been burnt in the Cotton Library fire in 1731 and was only known from early modern transcripts and editions of uncertain accuracy. However, as Tomás describes, the result of Stevenson’s work was to turn the text of Asser into the kind of reliquary whose sanctity could not be questioned. Criticisms of Asser by V. H. Galbraith in 1964 and Alfred Smyth in 2002 have been fiercely rebutted. The result of Stevenson’s vindication of Asser’s 1 https://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2010/06/jacob-reesmogg-identifies-thethree-historical-heroes-from-his-constituency-who-will-be-his-politica.html. Rees-Mogg also named St Alphege as a hero because he was the first low-tax martyr.

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King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

text has too often been to freeze the debate around Alfred and his role of national life. It is almost as if historians are apprehensive of the prospect of losing Alfred by probing the evidence too rigorously. Tomás reminds us of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s complaint about ‘Manchesterismus,’ scholarship reliant on detailed documentary analysis, of which Stevenson’s edition of Asser is an imposing example. After reading Tomás’s book, it is difficult to avoid the reflection that Victorian scholars engaged more enthusiastically with the wider issues of national and cultural formation than we do today. Perhaps we should follow Tomás’s example and recapture some of their sense of intellectual urgency. The writing of this foreword has coincided with the f irst month of the war in Ukraine in 2022. The history of Ukraine is a disheartening example of the abuse of history and the need for historians to adopt wider perspectives. As is well known, Vladimir Putin justified the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 by a piece of pseudo-history which claimed that Ukraine and other territories were never true nations, but parts of Russia. The roots of this assertion go to the emergence in the second half of the ninth century of Kyivan Rus’, in which Vikings played a role. Putin’s self-serving claim that Russia is the successor of Kyivan Rus’ and that Ukraine should not be a separate state had already been put forward at great length by Soviet historians under Stalin. An example is the work of Boris Grekov, whose Kievan Rus’ won the Stalin Prize in 1939. Grekov immersed himself in the study of primary sources but was nevertheless renowned for producing thoroughly documented historical works which supported Stalinist ideology. Grekov’s Kievan Rus’ attacked Ukrainian historians such as Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and Grekov used his documentary mastery to argue that agricultural structures showed that modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were all successors of Kyivan Rus’, precisely the claim Putin is now making. The war in Ukraine is a stark reminder of how ninth-century history and its distortion and manipulation for political purposes can have devastating impacts on modern life. The effect of Grekov’s work as a historian was to stifle debate and provide legitimization for Stalin’s (and now Putin’s) actions. The formation of Kyivan Rus’ was contemporary with the process of state formation under Alfred and his successors in England, and both were played out under pressure from Viking settlers. We should not push the parallels too far, and certainly the upshot is nowhere near as dramatic in England as in the Ukraine, but in both England and the Ukraine, we can see how modern debates and fantasies about the ninth century have fed the formation of national cultures and identities. It is perhaps for this reason that questioning

Foreword

13

of the status of Asser’s text as reconstructed by Stevenson has always been a sensitive issue. It is not just Alfred that might be lost with Asser: the whole foundation story of the English nation, so carefully constructed from the time of Archbishop Parker to Charles Plummer, might be at risk. The result of this determination to treat Asser’s text like a carefully reconstructed Ming vase has been that it is viewed as a singularity, an oddity, and as a result seemed even more suspicious. As Tomás shows, it is only when it ceases to become a nationalistic icon and is viewed in its wider European context, that Asser’s Life of Alfred starts to make sense. Behind the work of both Tomás and myself lies a debt of gratitude to Professor Vivian Hunter Galbraith, Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford from 1948 to 1957. Galbraith was notorious in Alfredian studies for questioning the status of Asser’s Life. I was a rather disconsolate undergraduate, although in the end, after many trials and tribulations, I secured an excellent exam result at the University of London. One of the very patient teachers who spent more time on me than I deserved was the Scottish historian Lionel Stones, who had been taught by Galbraith at Oxford. I was very impressed by Professor Stones’s stories of Galbraith and this encouraged me to read his books on Domesday. Galbraith’s discussion of Asser prompted me to try and wrestle with Asser which for a while was my constant companion as an undergraduate. Subsequently, I was deeply impressed by Galbraith’s writing on archives and his notion of an ‘archivists’ history’ had a profound influence on me. I benefitted from acquaintance with Galbraith at second hand. Tomás received more direct encouragement and kindness from him. In 1962, visiting UC Berkeley at the invitation of Robert Brentano, Galbraith took Tomás under his wing, and then directed his senior honors thesis (1963–4). It is worth recording that after reading the final draft of the thesis, Galbraith, in a letter of 9 May 1964, wrote: ‘Let me just say that you have in large part converted me to your high opinion of the Story of the Book. In this matter I am with you, and — in modern parlance — “with it”!’ The correspondence between them shows Galbraith’s willingness — despite his insistence that he was too old to learn new tricks — to engage with cutting edge ideas about the role of psychology and oral tradition in historical studies. But at the root of Galbraith’s advice to the young Tomás was that the importance of rigorous historical criticism remains fundamental. Such historical criticism can be used to challenge metanarratives (as Galbraith’s own lecture on ‘Good and Bad Kings in Medieval English History’) or it can be used to reinterpret and validate primary texts, but for Galbraith it remained the essential skill:

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King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

May I advise you — without wishing to limit your original excursions into Psychology — to take time in mastering the elements of straight, historical criticism. Don’t let Psychology become a substitute for the hard discipline of criticism — superbly set out in Stevenson’s edition of the Life. My views on Asser derive from an intensive study of W. H. S — from which (using, by the way, some elementary psychology) I derived the clear impression that he knew — or almost knew — deep down that Asser was a fake — but in the climate of opinion obtaining in late 19th century England — could not quite bring himself to abandon as a fake a text on which he had lavished a lifetime of expert, philological criticism. Suppose him to be alive today — and I believe he would have decided on the evidence of pp. 147–344 (the Notes) in a contrary sense. My view does no more than face up to the almost innumerable doubts and difficulties set out in Stevenson’s notes — and then — almost ignored — in the Introduction. In short — you should aim at making your Psychological approach clinch arguments set on a line which all historians can accept.

The most striking thing about Galbraith’s letters to Tomás, apart from the kindness of a very senior and busy academic writing at such length and so thoughtfully to a very junior scholar, is the way in which Galbraith’s letters are animated by his zest for historical criticism. On December 28, 1966, Galbraith wrote ‘Since the first day we met — my object has been to nourish the historian in you, who must precede the psychologist and sociologist which you will always be by nature (φυσε).’ The book Tomás has now written shows how profoundly he benefitted from Galbraith’s insistence on the central importance of rigorous textual criticism. It is enlivened by Tomas’s love of close critical reading and the way he uses textual analysis to make fascinating cross-connections. It is an exciting ride, and I am sure you will enjoy it. Andrew Prescott April 7, 2022 Andrew Prescott (FSA, FRHS) is Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Glasgow, and previously held posts at the University of Sheffield, the University of Wales Lampeter, and King’s College London. From 1979 to 2000 he was Curator of Manuscripts at the British Library, coordinating some of their earliest digitization projects, including Electronic Beowulf. His books include The Benedictional of St Æthelwold: A Masterpiece of Anglo-Saxon Art (2002).

Acknowledgments Sixty years is a long time for a book to gestate. This one has developed through various stages since its conception at Sydney University in 1961. My first debt is to my beloved teachers at Berkeley and Harvard in the 1960s: William J. Bouwsma, Robert Brentano, Giles Constable, Erik Erikson, and V. H. Galbraith. In 1967 Walter D. Love took me under his wing to help me draft a version which he nicknamed ‘Hagiography in a New Key,’ alluding to Susanne Langer. He intended to publish it as the inaugural volume of Studies in British History and Culture but died in an accident while it was still work in progress. He lives on in my heart. In the 1990s I returned, like Rip Van Winkle, to Anglo-Saxon Studies thanks to the late lamented National Endowment for the Humanities who awarded me a Fellowship to participate in the Summer Institute on ‘Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context’ at the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, directed by Paul Szarmach and Timothy Graham. That’s how I met and was befriended by David Dumville, Simon Keynes, and Andrew Prescott who have consistently induced me to refine my argument about Asser, hagiography, and the question of Alfred’s birthdate. I celebrated my 65th birthday in 2007 by writing, for private circulation, ‘Asser’s imitatio of Einhard: clichés, echoes, and allusions.’ That essay has benefitted deeply from responses by Walter Berschin, David Dumville, David Ganz, David Howlett, Paul Kershaw, Simon Keynes, Janet Nelson, Nancy Partner, David Pratt, Christopher Ricks, Anton Scharer, and Larry Swain. Thanks to their collegial advice and moral support, it was ready for publication by the American Society for Irish Medieval Studies in their journal EOLAS in 2014, whom I now can thank for permission to include it here, in a revised expanded form, as ‘Write the Life.’ Colleagues who in the past two decades have generously helped me improve earlier versions of one or more other chapters include Richard Abels, Janet Bately, Tiffany Beechy, Mary Blockley, Milly Budny, Caroline Bynum, Patrick Conner, Nicole Guenther Discenza, Daniel Donoghue, James Estes, Alban Gautier, Bruce Gilchrist, Kurt Holden, Sonya Jensen, Chris Jones, Paul Kershaw, Pétur Knútsson, Courtney Kohnshuh, Francis Leneghan, Ryan McDermott, Robin Norris, David Pelteret, Jane Roberts, Carin Ruff, Paolo Trovato, and Daniel Woolf. Heartfelt thanks to Jane Roberts for genial advice on the whole book over the past few years. In connection with the final revision I am particularly grateful to John Coakley for his take on each of my chapters as they were drafted. When

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King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

‘Cross the Border’ went off the rails he helped me get back on track. And then when the manuscript was finished, Irina Dumitrescu and her online tertulia helped me laugh at my endless obsession with my footnotes. I single out for particular gratitude Imke Lichterfeld whose tact and skill gave me the nerve to cut the umbilical cord by hitting send on the deadline she set for me. My personal friends in Mexico, Australia, and the United States must forgive me for not thanking each of you by name. Let me just name here Antonio Alatorre, Harry Bessett, Jr., Philip Bouwsma, Karen Campbell, José Luis Díaz Gómez, Jennifer FauntLeRoy, Hanna Fingeret, Vaughan Hinton, Rip Keller, Mo McGee, Michael D. Milder, David L. Roberts, Ray Saxon, Alfred Schenkman, and Michael Zank. And how my heart glows when I muse on what I owe to my immediate family. It is thanks to my parents that I am a birthright disciple of Alfred Adler whose spirit tacitly permeates what I have to say. My late brother George, who died while this final revision was in process, never doubted that a tremor would pass through the body politic of the British Empire when a question mark was at last added to Alfred’s birthdate. Through thick and thin his faith in my vision never wavered. My sister Alice has lived with Alfred since she was twelve, my sons Chris and Dmitri since they were born. My next-door neighbor and beloved sister-in-law Daphne has lovingly shared and embraced George’s faith in my passion. And above all con todo el alma I thank mi amorcito Bridget, whose intuition, intellect, imagination, courage, and cariño have so inspired and sustained me day after day for so many years.

I Cult and Canon: The Chronicle

1849



1850 1852

1857 1861

1865 1870

1872

1874

Some Key Dates: 1849–1904 Martin Tupper organizes Jubilee (i.e. millenary) of Alfred’s Birth at Wantage. Jollification and mirth. Greased may-pole surmounted by leg of mutton. Ox roasted whole with gilded horns and ribbons. Alfred celebrated as the first intellectual to write plain, pure English. August Comte establishes Calendar of Positivist Religion of Humanity: every year on day seven of the month of Charlemagne, Alfred to be privately adored in the intimate domesticity of the family. Restoration of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy in England. Martin Tupper’s 1850 Metrical Translation of King Alfred’s Poems reprinted in Volume I of Jubilee Edition of The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, bound in solid English oak. In Rome Pius IX himself consecrates Cardinal Weld’s grandson William Clifford as Bishop of Clifton. Thorpe publishes his Rolls Series edition of six manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle synoptically displayed in parallel columns followed by a single collated translation. Earle publishes his philological edition of Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel (independent of Thorpe’s). Vatican I. Invention of Tradition: Papal Infallibility. Bishop Clifford, the most determined of the English bishops, leads English opposition to Cardinal Manning. Clifford last bishop in England to promulgate new dogma and submit to Manning’s triumph. University College, Oxford insouciantly celebrates fraudulent Millenary of its alleged foundation by Alfred, further discrediting authenticity of Asser’s Life and making Alfred himself a laughing stock at whom anyone can poke fun with impunity. Bishop Clifford reads to the Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society (where Freeman is his friend and frequent sparring-partner) his imaginative paper: ‘An inquiry concerning the real Site of the Battle

20 

1876



1877

1878

King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

of Aethan-dune, and of other localities mentioned by Asser in his account of the great struggle which took place in the year 878, between King Ælfred and the Danes for the possession of Wessex,’ in which he proves to his own satisfaction that in his darkest hour Alfred’s brave battles were actually fought in Clifford’s own diocese. Henry Howorth launches his iconoclastic attack in the pages of the Athenæum, proving not only that Asser’s Life is a fly-blown forgery concocted by a stupid monk in the twelfth century, but also that Alfred himself is a figment of the imagination who should be banished from the pages of history to the pages of romance, where he can be set free to play the harp and burn cakes to his heart’s content. Bishop Clifford nobly rises to Asser’s defense, pointing out that if Howorth wins, Alfred becomes a mere Arthur. In his campaign to discredit any quest for a historical Alfred, Howorth plays his trump card: the indubitable fact that Asser has trouble choosing between four birthdates for Alfred: 842, 848, 849, and 851. Clifford falls silent. Howorth seems to have won his case. Nothing short of Stevenson’s 1904 historische-kritische Ausgabe of Asser’s Life, on modern German principles, will suffice to critique and pull out the many nails which Howorth triumphantly claims to have driven into Asser’s coffin. For the rest of the century Asser and his Life are in limbo. Bishop Clifford elected President of Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society. His Inaugural Address develops further his antiquarian approach, pushing to even wilder extremes his eccentric translation into Somersetshire of places mentioned in medieval accounts of Alfredian battles. In a torrential downpour, Bishop Clifford leads a small group of fellow-antiquaries in a sad little celebration at Athelney of Alfred’s miraculous reemergence from his darkest hours, 999 years ago. Millenary of the Peace of Wedmore at which Alfred took Guthrum as his Christian godson. (Clifford, Earle, Freeman, et al.)

Some Key Dates: 1849–1904

1880 1885

1886

1887 1889

1892 1897

Frederic Harrison becomes President of the English Positivist Committee (1880–1905). Freeman proves by his version of strict historical criticism that Alfred is the most perfect human being who has ever lived. For the next twenty years, Freeman’s view of Alfred becomes a controlling cliché of the Imperialist cult of Alfred. In the introduction to his Rolls Series edition of William of Malmesbury, Stubbs quietly redefines the situation by taking the controversy about Asser out of the hands of virtuoso antiquarian controversialists and placing it in the hands of sober professional historians prepared to engage in careful redaction criticism. He points out that although in the received text Asser may seem at sea about Alfred’s birthdate, nevertheless an earlier version of the Life was seen by William of Malmesbury and it may still hold what it claims to hold. British Empire celebrates Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee. Plummer releases preliminary printing of the bare Old English text of his revision of Earle’s 1865 Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel. In a brief temporary preface, he alludes to the Athenæum debate between Howorth and Clifford by roundly declaring Alfred to be no mere Arthur. To prove this, you don’t need Asser. The Chronicle suffices. Plummer’s edition of the Parker Chronicle will — among many other major achievements — canonically secure Alfred’s historicity from Howorth’s iconoclasm. Volume 1 of Plummer’s revision of Earle published. Harrison publishes Positivist New Calendar of Great Men. Calls for celebrating Alfred Millenary in 1901. The Empire celebrates Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Harrison persuades the Imperialist Sir Walter Besant and the Mayor of Winchester to plan a stupendous sequel to the Diamond Jubilee on the Millenary of Alfred’s Death in 1901, to make the people know the Father of the Empire that has lasted a thousand years: In the year 1897 — on that memorable day when we were all drunk with the visible glory and the greatness of the Empire — there arose in the minds of many a feeling that

21

22 

1898

1899

1901

1904

King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

we ought to teach the people the meaning of what we saw set forth in that procession — the meaning of our Empire — not only what it is, but how it came — through whose creation — by whose foundation. Now so much is Alfred the Founder that every ship in our Navy might have his name — every school his bust: every Guildhall his statue. He is everywhere. But he is invisible. And the people do not know him. The boys do not learn about him. There is nothing to show him. We want a monument to Alfred, if only to make the people learn and remember the origin of our Empire — if only that his noble example may be kept before us, to stimulate and to inspire and to encourage. — walter besant. (Bowker, Alfred the Great, p. 35) In the recently founded English Historical Review Stevenson publishes his article dryly proving by echt historical criticism that in the margin of a manuscript a careless scribe mechanically dislocated the date of Alfred’s death from ad 899 to ad 901. The Millenarians decide to go ahead with the 1901 date for their Millenary, unmoved by what Harrison calls the remorseless criticism of historical scholarship. Asser’s authenticity still in limbo, pending Stevenson’s long-awaited edition of the Life. Earle, now seventy-five years old, lectures on the Alfred Jewel as a precious authentic relic of Alfred’s spirit. Plummer completes publication of his canonical revision of Earle’s Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel. He repeats his assertion that Alfred is no mere Arthur and declares his faith in Alfred as the original author of the Chronicle. Queen Victoria dies. Stubbs is also dying. Alfredomania grips the Empire and the USA as the Millenary approaches. Earle publishes his intimate meditations on the Alfred Jewel. At Oxford Plummer delivers his sane and sober canonical lectures on The Life and Times of Alfred the Great. He draws the line on hagiography and inaugurates our now unhagiographic Alfred, purged of legend. Stevenson’s long-awaited canonical edition of Asser’s Life finally published by Oxford University Press. In his voluminous Introduction and Notes he barely mentions Plummer but reproduces Plummer’s strategy of containment point by point. Howorth’s attack on

Some Key Dates: 1849–1904

Asser effectively rebutted at last, but only by working within the conditions laid down by Howorth himself. Bishop Clifford’s English Catholic defense of Asser buried in silent oblivion. Asser grudgingly readmitted into the Alfredian Canon, on condition that he behave himself by letting the Chronicle take precedence over his Life, and by apologizing for letting his Celtic imagination indulge in hagiographic rhetoric. The line between history and hagiography has been canonically established. The cult of Alfred has been purified.

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1

Kiss the Reliquary The authority of canon and its structure is not to be found in a study either of the final textual form or the community, but in both, through the dialog between them. — DONN F. MORGAN The gods of the hearth exist for us still; and let all new faith be tolerant of that fetishism, lest it bruise its own roots. — GEORGE ELIOT

Abstract In Romola George Eliot elucidates the morality of Comtean attitudes to relics and reliquaries. Devotees of Comte’s Religion of Humanity, led by Frederic Harrison, experienced every reliquarian thrill sacramentally, as a sign of grace. Harrison expertly orchestrated the 1901 Millenary of Alfred’s Death to help us all experience these fetishistic thrills unashamedly, collectively, in public. During the 1849 Jubilee of Alfred’s Birth, the thrill of translating Alfred’s burning words into a modern reliquary healed Martin Tupper’s notorious stammer. Can we who today still love Alfred afford to sacrifice such devout thrills of emotion felt by those who locked, kissed, and unlocked the Victorian reliquaries — the Chronicle, the Life, the Works — in which Alfred’s relics, we hope and trust, still lie enshrined? Keywords: George Eliot, John Allen Giles, John Henry Newman, Reliquary, Nineteenth-century medievalism

One can start with a thrill of emotion. A thrill that one has experienced oneself. If this thrill has been experienced by others it can be publicly named. Naming the thrill allows me to open this book. The thrill of holding in your own hands material remains of a dearly beloved person. Proof that the one you adore, though now absent, was once

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH01

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present. The exquisite thrill of believing that your love is not unrequited: that what you hold in your hands was destined by your beloved to thrill you here and now. I wear a locket around my neck. The locket contains a lock of hair. I know that this lock of hair once grew out of my beloved’s living body. This knowledge triggers a thrill of emotion. I take the locket in my hands. I gaze on it. I kiss it. The lock of hair is a first-class relic. But if not a lock of hair, something else will do. A letter, say, written by my beloved, preferably to me, but if to another, so be it — so long as it preserves my beloved’s adorable handwriting. An autograph, a second-class relic. But if neither a piece of my beloved’s body, nor the rhythm of my beloved’s hand, nor the contours of my beloved’s thoughts, something else must do. The thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine, but will find relief in the thrill of kissing the cup which touched, if not habitually, then at least once, the beloved’s lips. A third-class relic. And so on. A lover’s discourse.1

Victorian reliquarianism 1862 Kissing a relic After a little trifling with her dress, she took from her bosom the white silk bag which her own hands had made on the farewell night at Combe-Raven. It drew together at the mouth with delicate silken strings. The first thing she took out, on opening it, was a lock of Frank’s hair, tied with a morsel of silver thread; the next was a sheet of paper containing the extracts which she had copied from her father’s will and her father’s letter; the last was a closely folded packet of bank-notes, to the value of nearly two hundred pounds. […] She put back the notes at once, without a second glance at them; and then sat looking thoughtfully at the lock of hair, as it lay on her lap. ‘You are better than nothing,’ she said, speaking to it with a girl’s fanciful tenderness. ‘I can sit and look at you sometimes, till I almost think I am looking at Frank. Oh, my darling! my darling!’ Her voice faltered softly, and she put the lock of hair, with a languid gentleness, to her lips. It fell from her fingers into her bosom. A lovely tinge of colour rose on her cheeks, and spread downward to her neck, as if it followed 1 Barthes, Lover’s Discourse.

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the falling hair. She closed her eyes, and let her fair head droop softly. The world passed from her; and, for one enchanted moment, Love opened the gates of Paradise to the daughter of Eve.2

1899 A walking reliquary She had now relinquished the object, laying it upon the bench, and Vanderbank took it up. ‘Its origin’s lost in the night of time — it has no history except that I’ve used it. But I assure you that I do want to give you something. I’ve never given you anything.’ She was silent a little. ‘The exhibition you’re making,’ she seriously sighed at last, ‘of your inconstancy and superficiality! All the relics of you that I’ve treasured and that I supposed at the time to have meant something!’ ‘The “relics”? Have you a lock of my hair?’ Then as her meaning came to him: ‘Oh little Christmas things? Have you really kept them?’ ‘Laid away in a drawer of their own — done up in pink paper.’ ‘I know what you’re coming to,’ Vanderbank said. ‘You’ve given me things, and you’re trying to convict me of having lost the sweet sense of them. But you can’t do it. Where my heart’s concerned I’m a walking reliquary. Pink paper? I use gold paper — and the finest of all, the gold paper of the mind.’ He gave a flip with a f ingernail to his cigarette, and looked at its quickened fire…3

1904 Ruskin’s Chair ‘This is all very well,’ said a visitor, after looking over the sketches and books of the Ruskin Museum at Coniston, ‘but what the public would prefer is to see the chair he sat in.’ Something tangible, that brings before us the person, rather than his work, is what we all like; for though successful workers are continually asking us to judge them by what they have done, we know there is more. We want to see their portraits; their faces will tell us — better than their books — whether we can trust them. We want to know their lives by signs and tokens unconsciously left, before we fall down and worship them for what, after all, may be only a lucky accident of success. They cry out indignantly that this should not be; but so it is. 2 Collins, No Name, p. 177. 3 James, The Awkward Age, bk 5, ch. 1.

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Relics of heroes even the ancient Romans treasured. Relics of saints our forefathers would fight and die for. Relics of those who in modern times have made our lives better and brighter we need not be ashamed of preserving. And among relics I count all the little incidents, the by-play of life, the anecdotes which betray character, so long as they are truly told and ‘lovingly,’ as George Richmond said about his portrait of Ruskin. ‘Have you not flattered him?’ asked the severe parents. ‘No; it is only the truth lovingly told.’4

1863 The Container and the Thing Contained George Eliot’s Romola is the fullest and most detailed elucidation known to me of what I am calling Victorian reliquarianism. Romola narrates the moral development of its heroine, who converts from the pagan Humanism of the Renaissance to the passionate Christianity of Savonarola. Those who have written on George Eliot agree that Romola is her least successful work. Yet it was her personal favorite. Critics who evaluate it as a historical novel prove it doesn’t quite f it the genre. Not that there are any anachronisms in it. On the contrary, it is so relentlessly encrusted with correct historical detail that in the end judicious critics feel the historicity suffocates the story. As a work of art, consequently, the intricately wrought structure of Romola has been less interpreted than that of her other novels. A reliquary is the ruling metaphor of Romola’s discourse. The novel is structured as the story of a reliquary: who commissioned it, for what purpose, how it was paid for; how it was made, on what model; what was painted on its surface, by whom, why, and in what iconography; why a potent relic was locked inside it, how it came to be unlocked, and what became of its precious contents. The human beings in the story value and handle many minor relics and ‘mystic treasures.’ The community is knit together by a symbolic network of tokens and talismans, little things with sacred memories clinging to them, hung around the neck, worn on the finger, containing secrets, betokening vows, given with love, sold for money, triggering the thrill of recognition scenes, or the dread of being recognized. As in the scene from Henry James above, each character is portrayed as sustaining a particular attitude toward the value of these relics and their containers: what is of particular interest in each of the innumerable scenes in which 4

These are the opening paragraphs of Collingwood, Ruskin Relics, p. 3.

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a relic changes hands is how and why it is given, taken, bartered, or sold. Every single such exchange, no matter how simple or seemingly trivial, advances the moral plot. Thus each human being in the novel is revealed to be in a particular phase of moral development, either progressing or regressing — or staying put. Every relic has a story that goes with it. That’s what makes it a relic and not just an inert inanimate thing. In a well-tuned community the story is passed along every time the relic changes hands. To sever the relic from its story is an irrevocably impious act. Henceforth the former relic will be a mere thing — with or without ‘use value.’ If the rules of chess were forgotten tomorrow, chess pieces would revert to being slivers of wood. Some, like the Icelandic ivory pieces of the twelfth century, would be valued as art, or as so many grams of precious metal.5 Just so, the relics — the rings and gems — that Tito sells without telling the story of their origin are degraded into a sort of coin, call it a commodity fetish, laden with whatever economic value an inert unhoused relic can fetch in the public market. How you feel about fetishism — about what I am calling Victorian reliquarianism — determines how you interpret George Eliot’s existential project of nourishing the roots of the religion of the future. Romola can be read as a detailed imaginative sensitive critical feminist explication of the organic fetishism that was the root metaphor of Comte’s Positivist Religion of Humanity.6 The reliquary that is the heart of Romola is commissioned by Tito. He pays for it with his enslaved padrino’s ransom-money, raised by selling his padrino’s ring, the relic Tito is wearing on his finger when we first meet him in the opening pages of the narrative.7 The surface of the reliquary is

5 In 2019 one of the Icelandic pieces was auctioned at Sotheby’s for £735,000. 6 In his review of what Felicia Bonaparte accomplished in her brilliant book, The Triptych and the Cross, J. Hillis Miller stresses Bonaparte’s transformative explication of Romola as an epic: ‘Romola is not just a realistic novel which occasionally draws analogies between its characters and mythological prototypes. It is throughout and in every episode simultaneously referential and symbolic. It is a masterwork of historical accuracy and psychological verisimilitude, while at the same time it is an epic of Western culture. […] To have demonstrated irrefutably the existence in the Victorian period of a form of literature usually thought to have appeared only in the twentieth century is to have accomplished much.’ 7 I say padrino for ‘adopted father’ — is this intimacy betwen the old and the young man the love that dare not speak its name? When mirabile dictu, Baldassare, the padrino, shows up at the end, a broken man, he recognizes his ring on someone’s finger in Genoa. This recognition of his betrayal leads to the padrino killing Tito in vengeance.

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painted by the Florentine painter Piero. The iconography itself tells a story. Bacchus and Ariadne are depicted as the ‘imaged selves’ of Tito and Romola. The reliquary thus stands for Renaissance art. It is a wooden case in the form of a triptych.8 It is Tito’s gift to Romola on the occasion of their betrothal. The Thing Contained in the painted wooden Container is a potent relic: a crucifix. The crucifix changed hands when Romola’s estranged brother, Fra Luca, on his death bed, asked Savonarola to give it to Romola. It is not a first-class relic, not a portion of Fra Luca’s body, but a sacred object charged with the dead Beloved’s living power: a third-class relic. Tito encloses it ‘in a tomb of joy.’ ‘But if I ever wanted to look at the crucifix again?’ asks Romola. ‘Ah!’ replies Tito, ‘for that very reason it is hidden — hidden by these images of youth and joy.’ ‘But it is still there — it is only hidden,’ says Romola, hardly conscious. Burying the relic in the reliquary closes the first volume of the novel. In the middle volume, Romola sees through Tito’s talent for concealment and recognizes that the reliquary is a lying screen. As an outward sign of her inward conversion away from Humanist fetishism she finds the key, unlocks the reliquary, takes out her brother’s crucifix, reclaims its virtue, and hangs it round her neck. In the last volume, Romola, with the crucifix around her neck, leads the life of a Positivist Saint and comes to terms with what is of value in Savonarola. The format of Romola is thus that of a moral-conversion three-decker Victorian novel. By 1894, the potboiler template could be caricatured by Mary Erle, the protagonist of Ella Hepworth Dixon’s 1894 novel The Story of a Modern Woman: ‘I have been given a commission to do a three-volume novel on the old lines — a dying man in a hospital and a forged will in the first volume; a ball and a picnic in the second, and an elopement, which must, of course, be prevented at the last moment by the opportune death of the wife, or the husband — I forget which it is to be — in the last.’9

George Eliot converted this three-volume format into a triptych. The first and last volumes enclose the middle volume which encloses the moral conversion, the ressourcement of the relic contained in the reliquary contained

8 I call it a reliquary, George Eliot calls it a tabernacle. 9 Dixon, Story of a Modern Woman, p. 120.

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by George Eliot’s triptych. She composed, in short, a textual reliquary for us to unlock. So, in this book, have I.

The death of Alfred In June, 1901, participants in the Summer Camp of the National Home Reading Union listened to a sermon preached in Winchester Cathedral by the Christian Socialist whom they had appointed for this occasion, Dr. Charles W. Stubbs, Dean of Ely. They heard him say: One day last month I stood in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and gazed on the oldest manuscript of the oldest historical work written in any Teutonic language. It was the text of the ‘Old English Chronicle,’ that national record which, at Alfred’s bidding, in part quite probably under his own eye, took shape first here in the scriptorium of the monastery at Winchester and from the brief annals of your local church gradually grew into shape a continuous detailed history of the English people from their earliest coming into this land down at least to the middle of the twelfth century. As I took the book in my hand and turned to the pages written in the beautiful Saxon writing of that time, the ink still black, as if written only last week, where at the record of the death of Æthelwulf, Alfred’s father, the roll widens into the fuller story of Alfred’s own reign, written with a vigour, and a freshness, and a life worthy of the temper and the spirit of a king whose deeds they record, and which at least serve to mark the gift of a new power to the English language, I am not ashamed to confess that I felt a thrill of emotion, akin, I suppose, to that with which a mediæval churchman kissed the reliquary in which he believed a fragment of the true Cross lay enshrined.10

In 1901, at Winchester, commemorating the millenary of Alfred’s death, the Dean of Ely was not ashamed to confess his thrill in public because he was addressing a congregation gathered together for the express purpose of collectively adoring the once-present, now-absent Beloved Person — namely 10 Bowker, Millenary, p. 33. On Charles W. Stubbs, see Chase, ‘Christian socialism’; and Stubbs, Creed. I will refer to him throughout as ‘the Dean of Ely,’ or just ‘the Dean’ to prevent confusion with his more famous namesake, Bishop William Stubbs, who features prominently in ch. 3 below.

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Alfred — whose relics sparked his thrill of emotion. His reliquarian thrill, quintessentially Victorian, gathers him and his community into communion with a cognate thrill, quintessentially medieval. The Victorian thrill fulfils — or does it merely parody?11 — what was prefigured in the medieval thrill. His public confession is part of the solemn liturgy of a new civic religion designed to canonize England’s Darling as the Patron Saint of the British Empire. Assemble the people, unlock the nation’s most sacred reliquary, and let them gaze upon the vigor, the temper, the spirit of the naked relic. Or let them, at least, witness the ardent testimony of a Victorian churchman eligible to unlock the reliquary, commune with the relic in private, and then communicate his thrill in public to his community of believers. A reliquary is not an icon. It is not a graven image. It is a Container. Its authenticity depends simply on that of the Thing Contained. If it does not hold what it claims to hold, if it is empty, or if the alleged bones of San Fulano de Tal are no saint’s bones but a mere sinner’s, or a pig’s bones, then the reliquary, no matter how revered, no matter how ancient, no matter how golden, is spurious. I may still kiss it, and I may feel a thrill of emotion, but that emotion is as fabricated as the reliquary: sheer fetishism. ‘Fetishism occurs when the mind ceases to realize that it has itself created the outward images or things to which it subsequently posits itself as in some sort of subservient relation.’12 Why does it matter how plain or fancy the reliquary may be, whether the size of Winchester Cathedral, or the ring on your f inger? Why does it matter why it was made, when, by whom, out of what materials, on what model? Not by the skill nor by the sincerity of the craftsmen who made it is the reliquary authenticated but by the charisma of the relics it contains.

11 ‘Das Andenken ist die säkularisierte Reliquie. Das Andenken ist das Komplement des Erlebnisses. In ihm hat die zunehmende Selbstentfremdung des Menschen, der seine Vergangenheit als tote Habe inventarisiert, sich niedergeschlagen. Die Allegorie hat im neunzehnten Jahrhundert die Umwelt geräumt, um sich in der Innenwelt anzusiedeln. Die Reliquie kommt von der Leiche, das Andenken von der abgestorbenen Erfahrung her, welche sich, euphemistisch, Erlebnis nennt.’ Benjamin, ‘Zentralpark,’ p. 487. ‘Commemoration secularizes the relic. Commemoration complements experience. It bears the imprint of the increasing alienation of a man who files away his past in an inventory as if a commodity. In the nineteenth century, allegory left the exterior world and settled in the interior world. The relic comes from the corpse, commemoration from an experience that passed away and euphemistically calls itself an encounter.’ [Translation by my friend Michael Zank.] 12 Simpson, Fetishism, p. xiii, quoted by Logan, Fetishism, p. 74.

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The Thing Contained seems, in turn, to contain the power to electrify a thrill of emotion in the midst of the community of believers gathered in the Beloved’s name. And this may be an illusion. A sliver of wood, contained in a precious reliquary, manipulated in a liturgical drama, seems to possess the power to cause a thrill of emotion in a medieval churchman. But it may be the other way around: the community’s collective thrill of emotion may be what converts a mere sliver of wood into a fragment of the True Cross. And yet, to the Dean of Ely and to his faithful audience none of this seems to matter. They are not ashamed. Only if there never could be a True Cross would their public thrill of emotion be in bad faith, only if the Crucifixion is nothing but a figment of the imagination, a myth, a fable. As long as there has existed, somewhere, sometime, at least one authentic relic, the historicity of the Beloved Person cannot be destroyed merely by disproving the authenticity of this or that reputed relic. The believer can say to non-believers, ‘Granted, not all fragments of the True Cross are authentic. But quite possibly at least one of them is. Or can you prove that not even that is possible? Prove to me beyond a shadow of doubt that this is not a true relic or else I’ll believe.’ The voice of John Henry Newman on the two reputed heads of St Paul: From time immemorial they have been preserved upon or under the altar as the heads of saints or martyrs; and it requires to know very little of Christian antiquities to be perfectly certain that they really are saintly relics, even though unknown. Hence the sole mistake is, that Catholics have venerated, what ought to be venerated anyhow, under a wrong name; perhaps have expected miracles (which they had a right to expect), and have experienced them (as they might well experience them), because they were the relics of saints, though they were in error as to what saints. This surely is no great matter. […] You must consider also that reputed relics, such as you have mentioned, are generally in the custody of religious bodies, who are naturally very jealous of attempts to prove them spurious, and, with a pardonable esprit de corps, defend them with all their might, and oppose obstacles in the way of an adverse decision; just as your own society defends, most worthily, the fair fame of your foundress, Queen Boadicea. Were the case given against her by every tribunal in the land, your valiant and loyal Head would not abandon her; it would break his magnanimous heart; he would die in her service as a good knight. Both from religious

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duty, then, and from human feeling, it is a very arduous thing to get a received relic disowned.13

The True Cross is one thing, St Botolph’s toe-bone is something else again. The Reformation exorcised as idolatrous the thrill of emotion felt by anyone kissing a reliquary which enshrined a fragment of a mere Saint. To still feel that thrill in 1901 would be to go over to the Roman Communion. And this is the true thrust of the Dean of Ely’s choice of the True Cross and the verb believed. Just as a medieval churchman believed in the historicity of the True Cross, so the Dean is not ashamed to confess his belief in the historicity of the protagonist of the Chronicle, England’s mythical darling, Alfred, rightly dubbed the Great. The Dean is not ashamed to compare late Victorian faith in the Founder of the British Empire to medieval faith in the Founder of Christendom, the historical Jesus himself. His confession of belief shivers with the Victorian vertigo of faith and doubt, the hidden danger of Gnosticism should the reliquary prove empty, should the relic turn out to be a mere sliver of wood, a mere fetish, should the story of Alfred prove to be an alluring fable devoid of historical basis, a mere Arthur. The 1901 Alfred Millenary was conceived, produced and stage-managed by the indefatigable Frederic Harrison (1831–1923).14 He ardently believed that modern fetishism should not merely imitate, it should fulf il what primitive and medieval fetishism merely prefigured. It should deliver what was promised, reveal what was concealed in the earlier stages of fetishism. Harrison was a leading English prophet of Comte’s Positivist Religion of Humanity which, to put it frankly, called for a consciously designed socially engineered regeneration of fetishism for the salvation of modern society. Peter Melville Logan bluntly and accurately epitomizes the grand utopian project: [Comte] decided that modern people need fetishism, and if they will not do without it, then Positivists must supply an object that channels their fetishism. He called this his new Religion of Humanity in which people would worship the new god of humanity in proto-Catholic ceremonies replete with mystical regalia, statues, and religious iconology, so that 13 Newman, Loss and Gain, p. 261. 14 Vogeler, Harrison, p. 349. The contribution of Comtism to the collective public adoration of Alfred during the 1901 Millenary has been underestimated. For an illuminating study of what made Harrison tick, see Kent, Brains and Numbers. See also Vogeler, ‘Frederic Harrison.’

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their need for fetishistic beliefs would be directed at the human race as a whole, which he considered a far preferable fetish to supernatural gods.15

To channel fetishism Comte decreed, for example, that everyone everywhere should annually adore each of the Guardian Angels of Humanity in turn, on the day appointed in his new Calendar of Great Men. On the first Sunday of the Month of Charlemagne (better known to nonbelievers as July) it is Alfred’s turn to be privately adored. This culte privée of Positivist Saints in the domestic intimacy of the family hearth is designed to groom the population for collective adoration in public on the Great Men’s respective anniversaries, jubilees, centenaries, and millenaries.16 Harrison enthusiastically and eff iciently designed, orchestrated, choreographed and stage-managed these liturgical rituals for his community of believers, the Independent Positivists of Newton Hall. Producing these centenaries was his expertise. And the Alfred Millenary was his masterpiece. In his 1888 English version of Comte’s New Calendar of the Lives of Great Men, Harrison had already drawn attention to the approach of the thousandth anniversary of King Alfred’s death and ‘expressed a hope that a fitting celebration would be held in the king’s honour, and by the king’s countrymen.’17 In his 1902 valedictory address to his Newton Hall congregation he recorded the two dozen centenaries he had helped to stage-manage in the previous twenty-one years, and reports that his proposal to celebrate the 1901 Alfred millenary had already been endorsed in 1890 by those who went on the Positivist summer pilgrimage to Alfred’s Winchester that year.18

15 Logan, Fetishism, p. 13. What Logan calls proto-Catholic I would prefer to label meta-Catholic or crypto-Catholic. Huxley famously labeled it Catholicism minus Christianity. Proto-fascist is another option. 16 Currently Comte seems, in certain circles, to be making something of a comeback. Wernick, Comte. My repugnance to him has made it hard for me to enter with charity and sympathy into an understanding of his cult. I have been helped by Chadwick, European Mind; McLeod, Religion and People; and especially by Henri de Lubac’s extraordinarily tactful and illuminating chapter in Atheist Humanism, pp. 131–169. Above all I continue to be helped by studying the tapestry of Comtean fetishisms woven by George Eliot into the structure and texture of Romola. 17 Bowker, Millenary, p. 5. Vogeler (Harrison, p. 297) observes that ‘To mark anniversaries of births seemed unscientific; to Positivists only the date of death was sacred, for it completed one’s contributions to Humanity. “Did heaven ring and earth shake when a rather shiftless tradesman at Stratford, in April 1564, had a third child?”, Harrison asked.’ 18 Harrison, ‘Valedictory,’ p. 379. He also recalls sixteen other summer ‘pilgrimages’ in the twenty-one years.

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Harrison’s inner vocation was to walk cheerfully over the world answering that of Comte in everyone he met. But his well-curated public persona conscientiously refrained from foregrounding his priesthood in the Religion of Humanity.19 To the general public he came across as a famous Man of Letters. ‘When he writes on literature,’ John Gross remarks, ‘it is odd how small a part his Comtean allegiances seem to play. He might be almost any well-to-do old-fashioned radical, who just happens to have one rather large bee in his bonnet.’20 Harrison faithfully believed in Alfred’s living power to unite Imperialists, Little Englanders and Americans.21 He toured the United States in early 1901, determined to organize maximum participation in the Millenary by all Anglo-Saxons. In March he addressed Harvard College on ‘The Writings of King Alfred.’ When he came to Alfred’s vernacular translation of Gregory’s Cura Pastoralis, he said: There is a most fascinating relic connected with this very work [viz. the OE Pastoral Care.] The Bodleian Library at Oxford possesses the very copy which the King sent to Worcester. It is inscribed Ðeos Bóc Sceal To Wiogara Ceastre, i.e. this book shall (go) to Worcester. I saw it when I was last in Oxford. And when I took in my own hands the very copy of his toil which Alfred a thousand years ago sent with his greeting to his Bishop at Worcester, which he solemnly commanded in the name of God no man should remove from the Minster; when I held in my hand in the Ashmolean Museum the very jewel which the King had made for himself (perhaps to bear upon his scepter) inscribed Alfred had me worked — I felt something of that thrill which men of old felt when they kissed the fragment of the true cross, or which the Romans felt when 19 Though repudiating the title of priest, Harrison led the prayers for humanity within his community of believers at Newton Hall, off iciated at the little liturgical ceremonies, and administered Comte’s sacraments: Vogeler, Harrison, pp. 159–170. 20 Gross, Man of Letters, p. 12. 21 Vogeler, Harrison, p. 348. Cf: ‘Neither Welshman, nor Scot, nor Irishman, can feel that Alfred’s memory has left the trace of a wound for his national pride. No difference of Church arises to separate any who would do Alfred honour. No saint in the Calendar was a more loyal and cherished member of the ancient faith; and yet no Protestant can imagine a purer and more simple follower of the Gospel.’ Harrison, ‘Alfred as King,’ p. 65. Further: ‘East and West were filled with a profound impression of the lofty and religious enthusiasm of the West-Saxon king — the new Charlemagne of Britain who dreamed of an intellectual commerce between the ancient world and the new world, between the East and the West. This was to be a true imperialist — to found a world-wide empire of sympathy, knowledge, and ideas — not one of bloodshed, domination, and ruin.’ Harrison, ‘The Millenary,’ p. 60.

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they saluted the Sibylline Books. If today we fall short in the power of mystical imagination, our saner relic-worship is founded upon history, scholarship, and jealous searching into the minutest footprints of the past.22

Whoops! Something here is not comme il faut. This striking similarity immediately raises doubts about the integrity of the Dean’s testimony and the authenticity of his thrill of emotion. Harrison delivered his Harvard lecture in March 1901 and remarks that it had been published as a pamphlet in May 1901.23 He regarded Christian Socialists as ‘unconscious disciples’ of Comte.24 He would have been in communication with Dean Stubbs, and would have sent him the pamphlet before the Dean preached in June. So you have to wonder whether the Dean really did experience a thrill ‘one day last month,’ viz., in May, or whether he was just recycling a striking rhetorical figure from Harrison, a mere meme. For Harrison this meme of kissing a relic was not a trite cliché. Feeling the thrill in private and confessing it in public was his heart’s desire. The thrill of fetishism was a sign of inward grace. It was an article of his creed that this was a natural effect of the scientific law governing organic progress from premodern to modern fetishism. He wanted to train all of us to thrill together, harmoniously, simultaneously. When he compares the Old English Pastoral Care and the Alfred Jewel to the true cross and the Sibylline books, Harrison is comparing two Alfredian relics to two older fetishisms.25 Between them, these four spark one thrill. They act upon one 22 Harrison, ‘The Writings,’ pp. 82–83. 23 Harrison, Washington, Prefatory Note, p. vii. 24 Vogeler, Harrison, pp. 52–53. For Harrison’s interactions and collaboration with Christian Socialists see also Kent, Brains and Numbers, pp. 71–73. In 1859, Harrison taught at the Working Men’s College run by the Christian Socialists. He left because his Comtean teachings were regarded even by Maurice as beyond the pale. But he kept up close collaborations with Christian Socialists and his first ‘chapel’ was a short walk from the Working Mens’ College and shared its goals for working class education. Vogeler, Harrison, p. 94. 25 Harrison will have known John Earle’s deeply pondered proof that the Alfred Jewel is an authentic relic of Alfred’s soul because of the ‘inward aff inity between the symbolism of the Jewel and that of the epilogue to the translation of the Pastoral Care, one of the surest monuments of the mind of King Alfred.’ Earle, Alfred Jewel, p. 91. Compare Harrison’s rhetoric to Earle’s: ‘Now we come to the translation of the Cura Pastoralis, a work of high and manifold interest. A copy of it was sent to every bishop in England. The very copy which was addressed to Werferth, Bishop of Worcester, is still in our possession. It is preserved in the Bodleian Library, and may be seen under glass by every visitor. This wonderful relic, like the Alfred Jewel, seems to bring us into personal contact with the great king himself.’ Earle, ‘Alfred as a Writer,’ p. 187.

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another at a distance in an ‘electric’ field of force. Historically they are four thrills separated in chronological time, psychologically they are one. By sharing this generic Positivist thrill all humanity is to be brought into communion with the dead and the unborn. Not just with the medieval churchman. With the laity too. Hence Harrison’s men of old kissing a relic. Not just Christians. Hence Harrison’s Romans. The Dean distills Harrison’s two relics down to one. The Old English Pastoral Care and the Alfred Jewel jointly give way to the Old English Chronicle. The thrill of the legendary Sibylline Books serves Harrison’s creed but not the Dean’s. He leaves them out, along with the thrill of the Alfred Jewel. The Dean does not picture men of old going around kissing an actual sliver of wood. He knows better than that. His medieval churchman kisses the reliquary, not the relic. Unlike Harrison, he does not fudge the tension — central to my concern in this book — between the Container and the Thing Contained, between the reliquary and the relic it screens and interprets. Lest the Dean’s way of turning a text into a reliquary repel us as irremediably Victorian kitsch, we can take a wider view and gain a more refreshing perspective by situating his reliquarian trope at the tail end of a humanist discourse whose dignified lineage goes back at least as far as Erasmus’s paradigmatic quest for the historical Jerome. To purify the cult of St Jerome by strengthening its historical foundations, Erasmus reinforced the Humanist paradigm: you expel the apocrypha from the canon, you castigate the received texts, you expunge the legendary f ictions.26 As far as his beloved St Jerome was concerned, Erasmus was a walking reliquary: If there is still someone who requires extravagant miracles let him read Jerome’s own books; there he will find as many miracles as sentences. If he requires relics, let him read the same books. We carefully preserve a saint’s shoe, pieces of his shirt, or his dirty handkerchief in gilded reliquaries, while the books into which they put so much work, and in which we have the best part of them still living and breathing, we abandon to be gnawed at will by bug, worm, and cockroach. In the writings he has left us Jerome lives again, teaching, consoling, encouraging, kindling our piety from the fire of his own heart. These are his true, most sacred, most powerful and efficacious relics.27 26 On castigatio see Jed, Chaste Thinking. 27 Translated and paraphrased by Rice, Jerome, pp. 131–132. (My italics.)

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Whoever today opens afresh the received canon of Alfredian texts to listen for Alfred’s voice will have to have views about which texts are still canonical, and within those texts which passages are authentic, and within those passages which phrase, sometimes even which conjunction.28 Despite, or must I say because of, the progress achieved by Alfredian scholarship, anyone who today unlocks the canonical Victorian reliquaries to search for Alfred’s true, most sacred, most powerful and efficacious relics must still navigate the modern or postmodern vertigo of faith and doubt. Questions of canon criticism immediately arise. Can you ingenuously just open a reliquary and peek inside? Must you still believe in the canon established by serious Victorian scholars around the time of the Dean of Ely’s thrill of emotion? Can we unlock their triad of reliquaries — the Chronicle, the Life, the Works29 — one at a time? in any order? Must we know the order in which they were originally created, which is the Container, which the Thing Contained? Can chronology contain a life? Can hagiography contain chronology? And if you expel this or that reliquary and its relics from the canon as spurious, will it make no difference to how you then experience the other two? And suppose — say for liturgical or maybe pedagogical reasons — you do decide to select a single Alfredian text to serve as our prime reliquary, why favor the Chronicle, as the Dean of Ely did in 1901? Akin to a coin hoard or a cartulary, a chronicle seems like a collection of hard facts: can they be turned into ‘relics’ merely by straightening out their chronological order? On the face of it, either the Works or the Life would seem a safer reliquary than the Chronicle. After all, suppose that there actually is an Alfredian relic somehow buried somewhere in one of those canonical texts: what would such a metaphorical splinter of a metaphorical Alfredian cross look like? How would you even know you had found one? How could you prove it was not just a fetishistic projection of your fervent desire for intimate contact with a kiss left in 28 For instance, the word cyninge in the phrase to cyninge gehalgode in MS A of the Chronicle, s.a. 853 (ch. 2, pp. 83-84 below); the difference between þa and ond þa at the end of the Parker West Saxon Regnal List (ch. 3, p. 147 below); and the difference between et legit and qui legit in c. 23 of Stevenson, Asser’s Life of King Alfred (ch. 5, p. 219 below.) 29 For brevity’s sake, throughout this book I say, as the Victorians did, ‘the Chronicle’ to mean the text of the Parker MS (MS A) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle up to the annal for 897 AD; ‘the Life’ (abbreviated WHS) to mean the text of Asser’s Vita Ælfredi established by Stevenson in 1904 (sometimes minus the secondary dislocated Anno Ælfredi chronological scaffolding — on which see ch. 3 below); and ‘the Works’ to mean the OE translations attached to the name of Alfred, beginning with the OE translation of the Pastoral Care.

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the cup by your Beloved, of your passionate yearning to thrill to his voice inviting you into an intimate dialogue?30 How do you prove your relic true? Is it a question of evidence? Or, in the end, of faith? How do you kiss such a relic? With questions like these in mind we can ponder why and how Martin Tupper celebrated the 1849 Jubilee of Alfred’s birth by choosing a relic from Alfred’s Works to translate into a splendid new national reliquary.

The birth of Alfred Frederic Harrison and his Positivist congregation had more than a decade to work on their 1901 Millenary of Alfred’s death. In 1849, a jubilant celebration of Alfred’s birth when and where he was born — October 849, Wantage — was envisioned by Martin Tupper just three hectic months before he managed to make it happen.31 The committee that organized the Millenary of Alfred’s death produced for posterity an icon of Alfred in the form of a statue, admittedly jejune but at least enormous. An icon is not a reliquary, it does not enshrine a relic. The intellectuals who legitimized the Jubilee of Alfred’s birth in 1849 created their new reliquary in the form of a Jubilee Edition of the Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, dedicated to Queen Victoria, translated into plain, pure English, and bound in solid English oak. And when the famous proverbial philosopher Martin Tupper faithfully translated into that new reliquary a relic of Alfred, he cured himself of the nervous stammer that had thitherto shaped his life as a prolif ic provider of Protestant proverbs beloved by millions of English-speaking readers from the Royal Family at Windsor to the harassed housewife in Cincinnati. 30 ‘It is failure to enter into a world of sometimes alien thought which has helped largely to produce what one might term “the curse of King Alfred”: a tendency for learned scholars of good judgement to lurch occasionally into nonsense when they come to write about that king. An example is V. H. Galbraith’s belief that Asser’s account of Alfred’s illness was a guarantee of inauthenticity, inconsistent with Alfred’s having been the “simple, great-hearted warrior” whom Galbraith somehow knew him to have been. There are other instances of the Curse at work.’ Campbell, ‘Placing Alfred,’ p. 6. 31 Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ pp. 341–344. Keynes compellingly situates the 1849 Millenary in the context of the 1848 European revolutions. His brilliant account of the entire cult of Alfred can be characterised as ‘cultography,’ a history of England as a series of cults and translationes, which we, by a sort of legal fiction, may regard as a single cult, one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Tongue in cheek, Keynes attributes agency to Alfred’s ‘legendary namesake’ as the protagonist of this historical narrative, in rivalry with Arthur.

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Before he fell from popularity and became a laughingstock, Martin Tupper (1810–1889) had had an extraordinary rise to become the most read — possibly the most prolific and platitudinous — poet in the Anglo-Saxon world.32 He earned his living (wrote Angus Ross in 1971) by writing many poems and ballads on current affairs full of complacency and jingoism, which earned him popularity with a large section of the English public. His four series of Proverbial Philosophy (1838–76), presenting banal thoughts in a fatally loose, versified prose, have embedded him in amber, because he had the facility to write down the unspoken code of millions of prosperous citizens of the century. These works had an enormous vogue in Britain and America and he is important as a social phenomenon.33

In his heyday, however, when his millions of admirers decoded what Tupper had encoded for them, their thrill was spelled out by the American journalist N. P. Willis as follows: Aspirations, fancies, beliefs we have long folded in our hearts as dear and sacred things, yet never had the power or the courage to reveal, bloom out as naturally in his pages as wild flowers when the blossoming time is come. We are not so much struck by the grandeur of his conceptions, or fascinated by the elegance of his diction, as warmed, ennobled, and delighted by the glow of his enthusiasm, the purity of his principles, and the continuous gushing forth of his tenderness. His words form an electric chain, along which he sends his own soul, thrilling around the wide circle of his readers.34

Despite his stammer — more likely because of his stammer — Tupper attained in his writing the prophetic voice of bardic authority which the nervous fear that paralyzed his tongue prevented him from performing viva voce.35 His heart’s desire was to declaim in public, to preach truth in 32 Narrated in Derek Hudson’s genial and entertaining Martin Tupper. 33 Ross, ‘Tupper.’ I thank my chum David L. Roberts for drawing my attention to this admirably succinct vignette. 34 N. P. Willis’s Home Journal (n.d.). My italics. Complacently quoted (with no date) by Martin Tupper himself in My Life. On N. P. Willis (1806–1867) see Baker, Sentiment and Celebrity. 35 ‘One of the apparent calamities of My Life […] was the […] very bad impediment of speech, which blighted my youth and manhood […] obliging me to social humiliations of many kinds, to silence in class and on examination occasions (hence my written poetries in lieu of spoken

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church, to plead an innocent case in court, ‘though lowly, great in might to tune his country’s heart and tongue, and tune them both aright.’36 In 1838, when he was twenty-eight years old and still stammering, he had publicly described his suffering in his initial series of Proverbial Philosophy: On Speaking. Come, I will show thee an affliction, unnumbered among the world’s sorrows. Yet real, and wearisome, and constant, embittering the cup of life. There be, who can think within themselves, and the f ire burneth at their heart, And eloquence waiteth at their lips, yet they speak not with their tongue: There be, whom zeal quickeneth, or slander stirreth to reply, Or need constraineth to ask, or pity sendeth as her messengers, But nervous dread and sensitive shame freeze the current of their speech: The mouth is sealed as with lead, a cold weight presseth on the heart, The mocking promise of power is once more broken in performance, And they stand impotent of words, travailing with unborn thoughts: Courage is cowed at the portal: wisdom is widowed of utterance He that went to comfort is pitied; he that should rebuke is silent. And fools who might listen and learn, stand by to look and laugh; While friends, with kinder eyes, wound deeper by compassion, And thought, finding not a vent, smouldereth, gnawing at the heart, And the man sinketh in his sphere, for lack of empty sounds. There be many cares and sorrows thou has not yet considered, And well may thy soul rejoice in the fair privilege of speech; For at every turn to want a word, — thou canst not guess that want; It is a lack of breath or bread: life hath no grief more galling.

and then he imagined what it would be like to speak: Come, I will tell thee of a joy, which the parasites of pleasure have not known, Though earth, and air, and sea, have gorged all the appetites of sense. Behold, what fire is in his eye, what fervour on his cheek! That glorious burst of winged words! — how hound they from his tongue! prose), and in early manhood preventing me from taking orders, and thereafter from speaking in the law courts. […] When quite alone I could spout like Demosthenes; it was only nervous fear that paralysed my tongue.’ (My italics.) Tupper, My Life, p. 91. 36 ‘The Assurance of Horace.’

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The full expression of the mighty thought, the strong triumphant argument, The rush of native eloquence, resistless as Niagara, The keen demand, the clear reply, the fine poetic image, The nice analogy, the clenching fact, the metaphor bold and free, The grasp of concentrated intellect, wielding the omnipotence of truth, The grandeur of his speech, in his majesty of mind! Champion of the right, — patriot, or priest, or pleader of the innocent cause, Upon whose lips the mystic bee hath dropped the honey of persuasion, Whose heart and tongue have been touched, as of old, by the live coal from the altar, How wide the spreading of thy peace, how deep the draught of thy pleasure! To hold the multitude as one, breathing in measured cadence, A thousand men with flashing eyes, waiting upon thy will; A thousand hearts kindled by thee with consecrated fire, Ten flaming spiritual hecatombs offered on the mount of God: And now a pause, a thrilling pause, — they live but in thy words, — Thou hast broken the bounds of self, as the Nile at its rising, Thou art expanded into them, one faith, one hope, one spirit, They breathe but in thy breath, their minds are passive unto thine, Thou turnest the key of their love, bending their affections to thy purpose, And all, in sympathy with thee, tremble with tumultous emotions. Verily, O man, with truth for thy theme, eloquence shall throne thee with archangels.37

It was a decade later that Tupper and his old Charterhouse schoolmate, the brilliant classical scholar John Allen Giles, worked together to make the imagined Jubilee of Alfred’s birth come true. Martin Tupper was as relentlessly energetic as Frederic Harrison and far more passionately devoted to Alfred. But when it came to improvising a millenary, he lacked Harrison’s suave savoir faire.38 Simon Keynes: The origin, inwardness, progress, and aftermath of the celebrations at Wantage in October 1849 is a story which deserves to be told in full, as that of a man committed with all his heart to the Alfredian legend in all 37 ‘On Speaking.’ 38 On an uncooperative letter from Lord John Manners he scribbled, ‘These Normans still scorn the Anglo-Saxon.’ Hudson, Tupper, p. 92.

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its glory, yet unable for whatever reason to secure much public support for a grandiose scheme; and it would need at the same time to be told in relation to the later and more successful festivities in 1878 and 1901.39

The full story of the 1849 Jubilee and its aftermath includes the foundation of the University of Sydney in 1852. Its first Principal, the Rev. John Woolley, believed Alfred had founded Oxford in 872. Woolley had sailed from England, arriving in Sydney in July. In his Inaugural Oration he invoked Alfred as the spiritual founder of the former convict colony’s newborn University. The hierarchy of values expressed in his long oration rewards close attention. Here a substantive sample must suffice: Amidst the social and political revolution40 which is going on before our eyes, fraught in many respects with elements of anxiety and alarm, there is no circumstance more suggestive to a patriotic mind of sober exultation and rational hope, than the foundation in the bosom of our society, by the unaided, unsuggested act of that society itself, of the first colonial University in the British Empire. […] When I shrink from the task imposed by my office […] in one respect alone I seem appropriately to occupy this position: I stand as the representative, not only of one of our ancient Universities, but of the oldest collegiate corporation in Christendom, to congratulate this far-off, youngest accession to the sacred sisterhood of learning and science. Nine hundred and eighty years have passed since our glorious Alfred provided, amidst the fens and forests of Oxford, a home of union and refuge for the poor and scattered scholars who were, in those rude and uncertain times, with toil and danger watching before the pale and glimmering lamp of knowledge. What thought arose within the King’s heart as he stood within his narrow and humble portal, you, sir, the founder of the University of Sydney, may perhaps, most easily and justly conceive. Did his prophetic eye discern, rising out from that tangled and untrodden bush, the ‘streamlike wandering of that glorious street,’41 glittering with piles of stately palaces and venerable spires? Did he anticipate, with a noble pride, the Anglo-Saxon root which he had planted, not merely after a thousand years living and undecayed, but 39 Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ pp. 342–343. 40 Alluding to the 1848 revolutions when European thrones tottered. Possibly an echo of Kemble’s ‘tottering thrones.’ Kemble, The Saxons, p. v. 41 Alluding to Wordsworth’s oft-cited May 30, 1820 sonnet on Oxford, ‘Ye sacred Nurseries of blooming Youth.’

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casting off the parasitical growth of prejudice and time, and bursting forth in renewed beauty and more extended usefulness? Did his imagination dare her flight beyond the limits of his island home, and picture in the remotest corners of the earth the children of his race, nurtured in his own institutions, bearing forth the spirit and the forms which they loved into a yet wilder solitude, and a more inaccessible wilderness?42 […] Could he have seen in this assembly [in Sydney] a nearer representation of that little company which he gathered around his banner at Oxford for a struggle more arduous than against the invading Dane, a conquest more glorious than the subjugation of a kingdom, he would, I am assured, have found in the triumphal commemoration of his own university,43 a scene not more congenial to his spirit, not more deserving of his sympathy and interest than the modest inauguration of ours. 44

A hundred and nine years later, in 1961, burrowing in the bowels of Sydney University’s Fisher Library, I came across The Jubilee Edition of the Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, published in 1852 by the august-looking committee that had legitimized the 1849 Jubilee. 45 It was bound in thick slabs of solid English oak. 46 As I took the ancient tome in my hands and opened the heavy oak cover to browse its hundreds of pages I am indeed ashamed to confess that I too felt a thrill of emotion akin to those I have been trying not to deride above. The entire body of Alfred’s Works enfolded whole in an authentic relic of the Mother Country! To be touching a piece of oak that was no metaphor but that had truly grown from an acorn over a hundred years ago, stout and sturdy and strong, in the green and fertile far-away soil of dear old England! 42 Kemble had characterized the Saxons as naturally migratory, beginning with their emigration towards the coasts of Britain. He had imagined their householders spreading across the English countryside, like ‘the backwoodsman in America, or the settler in an Australian bush.’ (My italics.) See Young, English Ethnicity, p. 67. 43 In 1872 Oxford would celebrate the Millenary of its cultic foundation by Alfred — does Woolley’s remark mean that that mythical Millenary was already expected and talked about in 1852? I know of no other such early indication. 44 Barff, University of Sydney, pp. 29–31. For more on Woolley, see Melleuish, ‘Woolley.’ ‘The material bearing on the mythical history of the University of Oxford is most conveniently assembled in J. Parker, The Early History of Oxford 727–1100, (Oxford, 1885) 24–62, 305–17.’ Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ p. 235, n. 52. 45 Giles, Works. 46 In hindsight I now believe Woolley himself brought that oaken reliquary to Sydney and bestowed it on the Library as, in effect, a liturgical act. Today I don’t know how many copies of the 1852 publication of Volume I were originally bound in oak. Possibly this was the only one! Perhaps there is one in Oxford. But at the time, I assumed they all were.

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The awe I felt was the awe instilled in every schoolchild in Australia by the majesty of the British Empire. I had first experienced Empire Day as Cracker Night, months after arriving in Sydney from Mexico in 1948. I was six years old. On May 24 our neighbors in Lane Cove celebrated the birth of Queen Victoria by burning an enormous bonfire that lasted all night, with endless fireworks, some of which I even learned to set off all by myself although I was so terrified of fire. Hence the thrill of holding in my hands the Alfredian Jubilee Reliquary. Today, in academia, faith in the historical Alfred as author of his alleged works is troubled by new doubts. Our hierarchies of values are not Victorian. Indeed, they are currently rather chaotic. Within the community of those of us who still believe in the greatness of the no longer legendary now chastely historical Alfred, there is a widely felt need for a new Alfredian canon. 47 Between 1992 and 2007 Malcolm Godden lost his faith in Alfred as author of anything. 48 Until 2013 Godden was the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford: his ex cathedra judgements are not to be scorned by the faithful. We Alfredophiles are once again going through the sort of paradigm shift that biblical scholars call a period of intense canonical process. During such a paradigm shift, as we shall see in my later chapters, obsolete options excluded by the previous canonical closure come to life once again. Silenced doubts can be voiced. While the canon remains open, values shuffle, sometimes kaleidoscopically. Doubting that Alfred translated anything at all, Malcolm Godden has brought into the open the unfortunate and possibly embarrassing truth that for centuries Alfred’s biliteracy has usually come down to a question of faith. Those of us who still yearn to hear Alfred’s voice speaking to us from his heart remain eager to suspend our disbelief, credere ut intelligere. Others of us, the agnostics, are trying to find out how to sit on the fence without getting too uncomfortable. In the recent comprehensive and authoritative Brill Companion to Alfred, Alfred our guiding spirit has prudently become Alfred our author-function: 47 In my opinion David Pratt meets this need in The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great. The scope and precision of Pratt’s conceptual framework, in the spirit of Quentin Skinner, empowers him to see the political efficacy of Alfredian discourse steadily and to see it whole. He puts together a canon of texts and other artefacts, interprets them severally and jointly as a set of variations on a common theme, and cogently articulates that theme. See also Janet Nelson’s incisive ‘Review.’ 48 Contrast Godden, ‘Literary Language,’ e.g. at pp. 524–526, and Translations, with ‘Player King’ and ‘Write Anything?’ For detailed bibliography on this issue see Discenza and Szarmach’s Companion.

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Alfred the Great’s role in various accomplishments and texts can be hard to discern, and it may not always conform to modern understandings of the author. If we adopt Michel Foucault’s idea of the author-function, however, we may gain a broader understanding of Alfred. The designation of ‘Alfred’ allows us to group certain texts together and place others outside the group, as Foucault notes the name of the author does. At a minimum, the fact that a number of texts were attached to a single name implies that relationships of homogeneity, filiation, reciprocal explanation, authentication, or of common utilization were established among them. Finally, the author’s name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse. Discourse that possesses an author’s name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten; neither is it accorded the momentary attention given to ordinary fleeting words. Rather, its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates. 49

Or, to reinvoke the epigraph to this chapter, ‘the authority of canon and its structure is not to be found in a study either of the final textual form or the community, but in both, through the dialog between them.’50 Regarded from this perspective, the Jubilee Edition marks a cusp, a critical moment in the dialogue between the nineteenth-century cult of Alfred and the cult’s canonical Latin and Old English ‘scriptures.’ A full case history of the creation and reception of this edition could be well illuminated by, and could in turn illuminate, recent studies of the mid-century social and economic environment of Anglo-Saxon studies in general and the cult of Alfred in particular. Simon Keynes has shown in characteristically engaging detail how by 1800 the cult had already ‘gathered enough momentum to rise way above the niceties of historical scholarship.’51 The middle of the nineteenth century marks the transition in Anglo-Saxon scholarship from enthusiasm to science. Allen J. Frantzen analyzes this turning point ‘in which ideas and methods of the past — antiquarian, polemical, partisan, and amateur — began to give way to the scientific methods of Germanic philology.’52 Granted, the Jubilee Edition was to be professionally rendered obsolete by Plummer’s monumental 1899 edition of the Chronicle, his 1901 Ford Lectures on the Life 49 Discenza and Szarmach, Companion, p. 3. 50 Morgan, ‘Text and Community,’ p. 18. 51 Keynes. ‘The Cult,’ p. 328. 52 Frantzen, Desire, p. 57.

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and Times of Alfred the Great, and Stevenson’s 1904 still-canonical edition of the Life. Granted, the scholars who produced the Jubilee Edition were not applying themselves to recovering an authentic canon of uncorrupted texts in the spirit of Erasmus. In hindsight they seem naïvely innocent of elementary source criticism.53 We can see today how they lingered on the wrong side of the nineteenth-century philological paradigm shift so beautifully explored by Haruko Momma.54 Yet in the 1850s the Jubilee Edition was a significant collaborative achievement, nothing to sneer at.55 Nothing like it had been seen before and nothing like it has been attempted since. There is no other attempt to collect between two covers all the texts attached to the single author-function ‘Alfred.’ Through the best practices of early Victorian gentlemen enthusiastically yet conscientiously observing the niceties of philological and historical scholarship as they understood them, the Jubilee Edition grounded faith in Alfred’s historicity without sacrificing the Romantic persona of Alfred the folk poet, the intellectual who opted for the vernacular. Chris Jones has elegantly explicated how, when England ‘is depicted as a nation whose kings were once folk-poets, a certain myth about the relation between sovereign, nation, and people is being promulgated.’56 Although it took only three months to produce the Jubilee celebration in October 1849, it then took the contributors a few years to finish delivering their translations for the Whole Works.57 Except, that is, for Martin 53 See, for example, how Giles relies on ‘scissors and paste’ to lay out and misinterpret his 128-page ‘Harmony of the Chroniclers During the Life of King Alfred: A. D. 849–901,’ Chapter I of Giles, Works. See further, below, ch. 3. 54 Momma, Philology. 55 For a well-documented preliminary account of the informal interpersonal network that produced the Jubilee Edition, see Daniel Thomas, ‘Fox and Bosworth.’ Phillips, ‘Victorian Translations’ helpfully situates Martin Tupper’s translation of ‘King Alfred’s Poems’ in the context of translations by Cardale, Fox, and Sedgefield of the full OE Boethius. 56 Jones, Fossil Poetry, p. 84. 57 ‘The scale of the project envisaged was impressive. The work […] was to comprise four volumes, containing not only editions of all of the Old English texts ascribed to the king, but also translations, notes, illustrations, and introductory essays. According to the prospectus, contributors would include both Kemble and Thorpe, as well as Bosworth, Fox, Cardale, and other notable scholars such as Thomas Wright (1810–1877) and John Earle (1824–1903). Bosworth agreed to contribute an edition and translation of the Old English Orosius. Giles proposed that Fox should revise his work on the Metres for the edition, and suggested that Cardale should do the same for the text and translation of the prose Boethius. […] In the event, the “Jubilee Edition” fell far short of Giles’ ambitious designs. A lack of subscribers meant that the project was considerably delayed, with many of the heavy-weight contributors pulling out, to be replaced by less well-known scholars. An initial volume was published in 1852. This consisted for the most

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Tupper who as we shall see below instantly sprang into action and was able to deliver his ‘Metrical Translation of King Alfred’s Poems’ only a few weeks after the 1849 celebration — even though he had not thitherto studied Old English. One need not deny that from today’s point of view the Jubilee Edition typifies the enthusiastic amateurishness diagnosed by Clare Simmons as characteristic of scholarly publications in that period. Its production values are far from those to which we have become accustomed in intellectual books professionally edited and produced by an academic university press.58 In a word, it looks ‘self-published.’59 Which indeed it was, for a limited number of subscribers, by a network of connoisseurs and amateurs in the non-pejorative sense, under the leadership not only of Martin Tupper, who was no scholar, but also of J. A. Giles, whose scholarship was prodigious. Here is how Clare Simmons sums up her interesting section on the market for such publications: The success of historical publications between 1820 and 1850 demonstrates a new emphasis on authentic, factual history, while the interest in local history further suggests that such history was interpreted personally, as a recreation of the history-reader’s own heritage. The cult of King Alfred had been fostered by radicals who through their social or economic positions had had little or no access to documentary materials about their hero. With the rise of publications that brought documentary evidence within the reach of the middle classes, knowledge of Saxons, and to some extent of Normans, was less dependent on a slender mythic tradition. […] The popular myth of the eighteenth century could now be complemented by the popularization of Anglo-Saxon writings themselves — or at least an interpretation of those writings.60 part of the promised critical essays, but it also included Tupper’s own verse translation of (and commentary on) the Metres of Boethius. […] The further scope of the project had to be reduced to encompass only translations of the original texts, which appeared in two volumes, printed together, published in 1858. These included Bosworth’s translation of Orosius, along with Fox’s translation of the prose Boethius. Fox also contributed a translation of the prose preface of the Old English Dialogues.’ Thomas, ‘Fox and Bosworth,’ pp. 246–247. 58 ‘Early British scholars of Anglo-Saxon were, it is true, by and large not good philologists, but despite working without the benefit of modern editions, grammars, and dictionaries they were sometimes highly perceptive literary critics, as well as influential cultural commentators and effective communicators, and they were brave enough to assume their audience was not a narrowly specialist one.’ Jones, Fossil Poetry, p. 139. 59 On individual and collaborative self-publication, see Levine, Amateur and Professional. 60 Simmons, Reversing the Conquest, p. 53.

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Robert Young has marked the mid-century change in the construction of English ethnicity by the tendency to replace ‘Saxon’ by ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as the generic term for the English.61 When linguistic sameness became the basis of race, culture and nation, an imagined community of blood — lineage, pedigree, stock — was being reimagined as a community of speech.62 For Romantics like Martin Tupper, it became possible and attractive to shift from racial purity to linguistic purity. It was predominantly in North America (especially in Canada) that the phrase ‘Anglo-Saxon’ was first used ‘as a synonym for plain, unvarnished English.’63 Martin Tupper’s plain ‘proverbial’ English was even more popular in North America than in England. In 1848 he was a chief editor of the short-lived little journal entitled The Anglo-Saxon.64 Young indeed identifies that very title as the first significant marker to include in the Anglo-Saxon linguistic diaspora ‘every man whose thoughts and words are English’65— a global consciousness which was to increase steadily for the rest of the century.

A relic of Alfred And for the audience addressed in the Preface to the 1852 Jubilee Edition it was in plain English that Alfred, like the whistling plough boy, spoke and thought. Alfred was one of us. He was our own Alfred, ‘the least of whose virtues was to have been born a king.’66 He, like us, spoke English unpolluted by the ‘sesquipedalia verba of Southern Europe.’67 And Alfred was no Celt: What is now actually known of those great heroes whose names still sound — but as little more than empty echoes — on the tongues of our countrymen, or in the pages of our writers? Where are the deeds of King Arthur — of Cymbeline — of Caswallon? Where are the lays and harpings of Merlin, Taliessin, and a crowd of bards, who once excited or controlled 61 This paragraph is my précis of some of what I have learned from Young, English Ethnicity, especially pp. 54–60, 182–187. 62 Young, English Ethnicity, pp. 58, 180. 63 Young, English Ethnicity, p. 182. 64 Young, English Ethnicity, pp. 185–187. On the connection between that journal and the 1849 Jubilee, see Phillips, Victorian Translations, p. 158. 65 Young, English Ethnicity, p. 185, quoting the journal’s opening introductory ‘Address to Anglo-Saxons.’ 66 Giles, Works, Preface, xi. (Italics original.) 67 Tupper, cited below, p. 000, n. 111.

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the passions of multitudes, and directed them in harmony, as if they were knit into one mass? These have perished, by the law of things, which allows nothing to be everlasting. If then the name and actions of our own Alfred have survived the term which is fatal to the rest of mankind, — if he is still the object of ardent admiration to those who are of kindred blood, and who feel that he was in thoughts and feelings one of themselves, it must surely be the superior brilliancy of his character or of his intellect, which has floated him down the stream, where others have been swallowed up, even to the end of the long period of a thousand years.68

This Preface is unsigned. The vernacular bard who excites and controls the passions of multitudes and knits them into one harmonious mass: that is who Martin Tupper yearned to be, who his beloved Alfred had once been and would forever be. This passage is quintessentially Tupperian: it is unlikely to express the views of Giles, the General Editor. It is even less likely that the following passage from the Preface was written by Giles: The works of King Alfred give us a magnificent idea of his superiority over the rest of the world: for he was the inventor, if we may use the expression, of a vernacular literature. His writings are not stored up in the obscurities of monkish Latin, of which it is hard to say whether the trouble of reading it or of writing it is the greater: but they were written in plain English, which the plough-boy, as he whistled his way to the furrow in the neighborhood of Wantage, might have read with ease, and with profit. […] All beside Alfred were grinding in the heavy mill of the Fathers and the Schoolmen, putting forth to the world masses of literary rubbish, which, without doing one atom of good to mankind, swelled the libraries of the monasteries, entailing a load of mental tribulation on posterity for centuries to come.69

That Giles ever felt such vehemently anti-Latin sentiments is dubious. Giles was not as famous as Tupper. Hardly anyone was. But his hundred and eighty scholarly publications established his position ‘as one of the most industrious and prolific of the nineteenth century. A generation or two of mature scholars and of schoolchildren pursued their studies in his editions and translations of the biblical, classical and historical texts.’70 When it came 68 Giles, Works, p. xv. 69 Giles, Works, p. xi. 70 Bromwich, Giles, p. vii.

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to Latin and Greek, Giles was something of a child prodigy. Yet his speech ‘had always slight traces of the Somerset dialect — which he could speak a little, & was very proud of it.’71 By the time he was eight years old he could recite Pope’s Iliad by heart. His childhood grasp of Latin and Greek was so advanced that when he entered Charterhouse School the principal, Dr Russell, rapidly moved him from the bottom of the Twelfth Form to the top of the school at breakneck speed.72 Russell then coached him to win, against stiff competition, a ‘Somerset scholarship’ to Corpus Christi College, Oxford: [Dr. Russell] told me to translate at my leisure hours Longinus’s work on the Sublime, which he said would be good practice, and he promised he would himself revise and correct my translation. I followed his advice, and learnt from his corrections how important it is to give the meaning of every word, if you wish to show an accurate knowledge of an author, and not to give a loose paraphrase of a whole sentence. […] It would be difficult for any one to work harder than I did at this time, and the consequence was that when I went to Oxford, I had read so large a quantity of Latin, Greek, and History, that my progress towards obtaining a degree with honours was very much accelerated.

Giles went on to publish sixty-six volumes in Dr Giles’s Keys to the Classics, translated word for word with the text. As for ‘monkish Latin,’ he published eleven volumes in his series of Patres Ecclesiae Anglicanae, promptly bought by Migne in 1843 to reprint in his Patrologiae cursus completus. Fourteen other medieval volumes were published by the Caxton Society, 1844–1854. His six English translations of The Monkish Historians of Great Britain were subsequently incorporated into Bohn’s Antiquarian Library.73 In short, he would hardly have been the one to describe his publications as masses of literary rubbish which entailed a load of mental tribulation on posterity. That will have been Martin Tupper, for what had traumatised the adolescent Tupper was the agonizing mental tribulation of translating Latin viva voce in class under the sadistic tyranny of this same Dr Russell, condemning Tupper ‘to silence in class and on examination occasions.’ For this man [Russell] and the school he so despotically drilled into passive servility and pedantic scholarship, I have less than no reverence, 71 Bromwich, Giles, quoting Giles’s son Arthur, p. x. 72 Giles narrates his own progress in juicy detail. Bromwich, Giles, pp. 47–48. 73 For precise details see Bromwich’s bibliography, pp. xii–xviii.

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for he worked so upon an over-sensitive nature to force a boy beyond his powers, as to fix for many years the infirmity of stammering, which was my affliction until past middle life.74

Reminiscing at the end of his life Tupper records that while still at Charterhouse he vowed that if ever [Russell] was made a Bishop (happily he wasn’t) I would desert the Church of England; as yet [1886] I have not, albeit it has lately become so papalised as to be little worth an honest Protestant’s adherence. […] As to the exclusively classic education in my young days I for myself have from youth upwards always protested against it as mainly waste of time and of very little service in the battle of life.’75

Russell, for instance, once tortured the teenage Tupper by ordering him to translate the entire Iliad word for word in a month or else be expelled from the school. Fortunately seventy of his schoolmates pulled together to collectively do the whole thing for him in a week. Given such translation trauma, the question naturally arises: how then did Tupper find the nerve in 1849 to open Samuel Fox’s 1835 edition of the Old English Metres of Boethius,76 and merrily translate all thirty-one of them in a few weeks even though he was starting to read Old English from scratch? How could he be so sure that he had faithfully preserved the original relics in his translation? Before studying Tupper’s English versions in quest of an answer I pause to make clear how Giles the scholar vs Tupper the poet initially framed and then reframed the scope and limits of Tupper’s task, from its euphoric inception in Wantage on Thursday, October 25, 1849 to its completion weeks later in 1850. A climactic moment of the Jubilee came at the jovial dinner on Alfred’s birthday at the Alfred’s Head Inn in Wantage: 74 Tupper, My Life, pp. 14–15. 75 Tupper My Life, pp.16, 72. 76 Fox was in the Jubilee network. His translation of the entire prose OE Boethius (i.e. the Oxford MS) was published in 1858 in Volume 2 of the Jubilee Edition. In the light of my critique of Tupper’s translation in the following pages, it is worth noting that when, in 1864, Bohn’s Antiquarian Library republished Fox’s 1858 prose translation of the entire OE Boethius, Fox ‘availed himself of the kind permission of Martin Tupper, Esq., D.C.L., &c. &c., to substitute his excellent poetical translation of the Metres for his own literal one, and he tenders his sincere thanks for the permission which has been so freely accorded.’ Fox, Boethius, p. vii. Perhaps, as Phillips remarks, this decision was ‘owing to Tupper’s international popularity at the time.’ Phillips, Victorian Translations, p. 166.

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It passed off very well, though there was room for only a hundred to sit down and a number of gentlemen who had tickets were disappointed. […] The local gentry, who had been so discouraging at first, thoroughly enjoyed themselves when it came to the point, and Mr Pusey, M.P., was kind enough to allow them to drink out of the venerable ‘Pusey horn’,77 which it was believed that King Canute had presented to the ancestors of Mr. Pusey. […] The great day ended with a Ball in the town hall, where ‘the polka and waltz were kept up till a late hour.’78

At that dinner, ‘attended by guests from every part of England, and from America — that hopeful mother of Anglo-Saxons, as well as from Germany, that ancient cradle of our common race it was declared to the world that the name of Alfred, who on that spot f irst saw the light, should not be forgotten.’79 When Giles announced the resolution to undertake the Jubilee Edition, Tupper found the nerve to propose a toast and recite a poem. ‘A specially important feat for him, as it was the first time he had spoken in public and officially marked the end of his stammer.’80 Then in 1850, well before any of the serious scholars could even have got started, Tupper faithfully delivered his contribution. Giles promptly printed 250 copies of the 131-page book, framed with this short disclaimer: This book is in the nature of a pilot-balloon. The Jubilee Edition of King Alfred’s Complete Works is necessarily delayed, in order that such writings, — so interesting to Englishmen of every clime and time, — may be produced with all the splendour, care and learning which are due to the Royal Founder of the Anglo-Saxon Race. In the meantime, and with a view to keep alive the public feeling in the matter, a small and perhaps a popular taste of King Alfred’s mind is here presented to the reader. The prospectus, appended hereto, will be found to give all necessary information on the matter: and it need scarcely be observed that this metrical translation from the pen of Dr Martin Tupper is in substance only, and not in shape, a part of the Jubilee Edition.81

The tone of this paragraph needs to be contrasted with how Tupper himself framed his labor of love in his own six-page Preface. Here is a crucial paragraph: 77 Now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, #220-1938. Gallery location: Silver, room 65, case 8, shelf 3. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-pusey-horn/. 78 Hudson, Tupper, p. 95. 79 Giles, Works, p. ix. 80 Hudson, Tupper, p. 95. 81 Tupper, Alfred’s Poems.

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A circular lately issued by a number of gentlemen who have associated together to honour the memory of King Alfred the Great, announces to the world that a complete collection of his works will speedily be published under the title of the ‘Jubilee Edition of the Works of King Alfred.’ It is also announced that in vol. I of that edition, containing Preliminary Essays, will appear, ‘A poetical English version of King Alfred’s own Poems,’ to illustrate Anglo-Saxon poetry in general: and the present writer (to whom this task has been assigned,) feels that he can best fulfil the terms of that announcement by giving this actual picture of King Alfred’s own poetry, with a running commentary upon the Metres as they are successively exhibited: this may be more agreeable and not less instructive than a laboured essay about a topic whereon there is not much to be said at all, and what there is has long been exhausted by Sharon Turner, Hickes, Conybeare, and some others.82

Reading between the lines, it looks as if Tupper was assigned the task of illustrating Anglo-Saxon poetry in general (the italics are Tupper’s), and that in his opinion that is what he had, in his commentaries, done. Giles, while acknowledging that Tupper was the first to do what was taking others longer,83 nevertheless does not overstate Tupper’s achievement. If this trial balloon is a little reliquary on its own, the relic it contains is but ‘a small and perhaps a popular taste of King Alfred’s mind.’ Tupper, on the other hand, complacently flatters himself that his work says all that needs to be said about 82 Giles, Works, p. ix. (Italics original.) 83 For example, the serious seventy-five-year-old scholar Ebenezer Thomson. In 1858 he introduced his substantial 200-page translation of ‘Alfred’s Bede’ with a thought-provoking little Note which reads in part: ‘The Translation here given may seem to need a few words of apology. It was undertaken at a very short notice by one, who, though he had read a good deal of Anglo-Saxon, had not included Alfred’s Bede in his course of study, and who entertains a strong prejudice against the mixed mode of forming a language. While he feels it a pleasure to read Homer or Herodotus in Greek, Livy or Virgil in Latin, Göthe or Schiller in German, Cædmon or Alfred in Anglo-Saxon, he can also relish the writings — in prose or rhyme — of the great authors of our own more composite and heterogeneous form of speech during the last five centuries. But in attempting to render the pure English of the ninth century into the language of the present day, it has been thought worthy of attention to give a decided and universal preference to words of native English growth, though some of these might be deemed a little antiquated; care being taken at the same time to render faithfully the sense and spirit of Alfred’s original English. Scarcely any reader, moderately acquainted with our current literature, would require a glossary for such words as “lore” doctrine or advice, “shed” separated, “main” power, from “mayen” to be able — “felled” suppressed, “mood” mind, “wilsomeness” resolution or devotedness, “fordoom” condemn, “go (or come) on hand (into hand)” surrender, “after-follower” successor, “hallowed” consecrated, and a few others. The authorized version of holy writ has preserved many a phrase, as well as single words, in their ancient sense and structure.’ Thomson, ‘Alfred’s Bede,’ p. 200. On Kemble’s desire to do the OE Bede for this edition, see n. 103 below.

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Anglo-Saxon poetry in general, and refrains from disagreeably flogging a horse long exhausted by learned scholars. About his assigned topic he knows, to put it plainly, nothing at all. He had only spent a few weeks peeking into it.84 Volume I was finally ready to print in 1852, with thirteen ‘Preliminary Essays’ (five of them by Giles).85 It had promised to contain Alfred’s Whole Works but as things turned out the only relic of Alfred’s burning words contained in it (other than perhaps Alfred’s Will86) was Tupper’s small and popular taste of Alfred’s mind. Subscribers had to wait another six years for the scholarly translations of the substantial prose works. To help Tupper save face by meeting the minimal standards of scholarship expected by his subscribers, Giles reframed it by inserting a three-page Introduction of his own, deftly sketching what was currently known about Anglo-Saxon poetry, thus supplying what Tupper could not. What Tupper could do, what he was famous for doing superbly, was to versify proverbial philosophy. Here (labeled, for ease of reference, Exhibits A and B) are two samples, two of Tupper’s candidates for what a textual relic of Alfred actually looks like, as published separately in 1850, and then republished in the 1852 Jubilee Edition. Between them they can help us understand how Tupper translated them so swiftly. Exhibit A Wealth is but a curse, If wisdom be not added to the purse. Though a man hold an hundred and threescore Acres of tilth, with gold all covere’d o’er Like growing corn, — it all is nothing worth, unless it prove his Friend, not Foe, on earth. For wherein, saving for good use alone, does gold-ore differ from a simple stone?87 84 Decades later Tupper reminisced: ‘One of the rarest of the books I have written (if any bibliomaniac of some future age desires to collect them) must always be “King Alfred’s Poems, now first turned into English metres” for the little volume was privately printed by Dr Allen Giles, the edition being only of 250 copies. […] I constructed it on purpose for the “Jubilee Edition of the Works of King Alfred,” learning as well as I could (by the help of Dr. Bosworth’s Dictionary and a Grammar) in a few weeks a little Anglo-Saxon, — and I confess considerably assisted by Mr Fox’s prose translation of Boethius.’ Tupper, My Life, pp. 165–166. 85 Republished along with Volume II in 1858. Often reprinted, and now readily available online. Then in 1863 this Volume I was separately republished as Giles et al., Memorials of Alfred. 86 Simply recycled from Appendix I of Giles, Alfred, pp. 1–15. (The Appendices are separately paginated.) 87 Tupper, Alfred’s Poems, p. 26 = Giles, Works, p. 251.

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Exhibit B: A Sorrowful Fytte Lo, I sang cheerily In my bright days, But now all wearily Chaunt I my lays — Sorrowing tearfully, Saddest of men, Can I sing cheerfully As I could then? Many a verity In those glad times Of my prosperity Taught I in rhymes; Now from forgetfulness Wanders my tongue, Wasting in fretfulness Metres unsung. Worldliness brought me here Foolishly blind, Riches have wrought me here Sadness of mind; When I rely on them Lo! they depart — Bitterly, fie on them! Rend they my heart. Why did your songs to me, World-loving men, Say joy belongs to me Ever as then? Why did ye lyingly Think such a thing, Seeing how flyingly Wealth may take wing?88

88 Tupper, Alfred’s Poems, pp. 13–14 = Giles, Works, pp. 172–173.

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To sever these relics from their story would be an irrevocably impious act. For if you had come across either one, on its own, with no prior context, no legend to frame it, no reliquary to contain it, you would hardly have known to exclaim ‘Oh look! this is Anglo-Saxon poetry!’ let alone ‘Eureka! Here is a piece of Alfred’s mind!’ What today we think Anglo-Saxon poetry looks and feels like is a long, long way from what people thought in the first half of the nineteenth century. For all the scorn and opprobrium that one might heap on such a translation, it ought to be possible to have some sympathy and understanding for the cultural context in which such an Alfred could be imagined. In 1849 Anglo-Saxon poetry was still, for many readers, a category formation defined by verse structures familiar from English Romanticism. Tupper’s version, then, is a balladic, ‘folksy’ romantic-primitivist poem in the style of Scott’s jog-trot, medievalist verse romance narratives such as The Lay of the Last Minstrel and The Lady of the Lake, and entirely in accord with the rooted and continuous tradition of Englishness that Anglo-Saxon poetry was made to serve during the early nineteenth century.89 The plot thickens, however, if we want to check the original Old English text of (for example) the final proverb in Exhibit A, to see if we think it can indeed give us a glimpse of Alfred’s Weltanschauung: For wherein, saving for good use alone, does gold-ore differ from a simple stone?

This is a translation into Tupperese of: For wad is gold bute ston, bute it habbe wis mon?90 89 Just by substituting Alfred for Beowulf, and Tupper for Wackerbarth, I have simply plagiarised here this entire paragraph from p. 123 of Chris Jones’s delicate and cogent study of this kind of verse in Fossil Poetry. Chris Jones’s book, especially chapters 2 and 3, richly illuminates what Tupper thought he was doing here. Tupper himself is again complacent on this issue, as (for just one example) in his comment on the prosody he chooses for ‘True Greatness,’ Metre 17: ‘There really seems little reason to disturb the patient reader with many notes; let him have the satisfaction of knowing that our verse is no loose paraphrase, but a close rendering, and that several of these metres seem to be analogous with the short and tripping lines of early minstrelsy. It will be remembered that the true ballad line (as in Macaulay’s Lays of Rome), though sometimes written long-wise, is in truth an eight-syllable stanza of short lines, and not a four-syllable of long ones.’ Alfred’s Poems, p. 67 = Giles, Works, p. 209. For a sample of the ‘jaunty full swing’ of Wackerbath’s 1849 translation of Beowulf, see Jones, Fossil Poetry, pp. 122–123. Like Tupper’s, Wackerbath’s ‘ballad-like rhyming syllabic metre was appealing to the literary taste of the day.’ Magennis, Translating Beowulf, p. 52. 90 Spoiler alert! For my source for this line see nn. 99-100, below.

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This neat proverb rhymes. It’s memorable. It’s philosophical. But it’s not Anglo-Saxon. It’s Middle English. This rhyming couplet comes from the thirteenth century ‘Proverbs of Alfred,’ a title which must have warmed the proverbial cockles of Tupper’s heart.91 You will not find this little relic by searching in Samuel Fox’s 1835 edition of King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of the Metres of Boethius, in which no Middle English proverb lies enshrined.92 Although Tupper doesn’t say so, the proverbs he translated come from Spelman’s Life of Ælfred the Great via Appendix II of Giles’s Life and Times of King Alfred the Great, where the source for our proverb appears not in the original medieval language but only in Spelman’s seventeenth-century English prose: For what differs gold from a stone, but by discrete using of it?93 91 The standard view is summarized by Simon Keynes: ‘The fact that Alfred […] was regarded in the twelfth century […] as the author of “proverbs” of some kind, encourages the supposition, or rather the wishful thought, that some wise sayings attributed to Alfred in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries might have been genuinely Alfredian in origin. The tradition, for whatever it might be worth, is represented principally by the several ‘Alfredian’ sayings incorporated in The Owl and the Nightingale (c. 1250), and by the more extensive body of material preserved in different versions of the so-called Proverbs of Alfred. Some of this Alfredian wisdom, including the king’s last words of advice to his son, was cited by Sir John Spelman in the seventeenth century, and was thus absorbed into the legend.’ Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ pp. 233–234. However, for a very recent postcolonial critique of this hitherto unquestioned assumption, with close attention to the function of this particular line in this particular ‘Proverb,’ see now O’Camb, ‘Proverbs of Alfred.’ Drawing on his expertise in digital humanities, O’Camb argues the case that the Proverbs of Alfred was ‘probably produced in an intellectual milieu where Alfredian writings were preserved and studied in the vernacular’ (p. 248). 92 Fox ended his Preface with the earnest wish ‘that each succeeding publication of the remains of our early authors will stimulate the desire to rescue from the corroding hand of time these interesting relics of former ages.’ But here relics seems to be synonymous with Chris Jones’s fossils rather than with what I want it to mean. Fox, Metres of Boethius, p. viii. 93 Spelman wrote his great Life of King Alfred around 1640. In 1678 it was published in the Latin translation by the Catholic Obadiah Walker of unhappy memory. In 1709 Hearne published Spelman’s original English version. In 1851 Pauli criticised Spelman’s work: ‘Judging by [Spelman’s] account of the sufferings of Alfred and his country, the same monkish spirit seems to have existed in the Oxford of the seventeenth century as was in operation there in the twelfth and thirteenth.’ Pauli, Alfred, pp. 14–15. Nevertheless, Simon Keynes characterizes Spelman’s Life as seminal: ‘When used thereafter as the basis for more popular accounts of the king, [Spelman’s Life] effectively determined the parameters of Alfredian studies which have endured to the present day.’ Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ p. 254. See also n. 91 above on Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ pp. 233–234. Spelman found the copy of the Proverbs of Alfred ‘so faulty and ill written, in a mongrel hand, (as well as language)’ that he transcribed and translated only the first five of the stanzas in BL, Cotton Galba A. xix. Then he gave a loose paraphrase of only the next half dozen with no accompanying original text, and then he stopped. Giles copied all this into his Life and Times of King Alfred the

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Giles and Tupper were innocent of the distinction we have made (before postconialism)94 between genuine pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon poetry and the post-Conquest mish-mash of rhyme and alliteration in the ‘Proverbs of Alfred.’ In his Table of Contents Giles listed his Appendix as ‘from the Saxon’ and claimed it was from an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ manuscript, even though Spelman, whom Giles had quoted verbatim, explicitly characterised its language as mongrel English. Giles did not doubt that these proverbs were genuine Alfredian relics. We have to add the interesting fragment here appended: the authorship is disputable; but there is no doubt that it is a genuine echo of the words of Alfred, especially the latter part, the beautiful pathos of which, as addressed by the dying Alfred to his son and successor Edward the Elder, is truly affecting.95

In 1850 Tupper introduced his translation of the Proverbs by reproducing this footnote of Giles — again without mentioning him. And in 1852 he placidly added that ‘the Anglo-Saxon of this fragment has come down to us in a much more modern form, and is therefore not given here. The antiquary will hereafter find it among the original texts.’96 All of which is to say that, for Tupper, to translate the Proverbs did not, in fact, take nerve. He did not have to start from scratch, he needed neither Dictionary nor Grammar, and there was no need to look at Anglo-Saxon poetry, whether in particular or in general. All he had to do was ‘balladize’ Spelman’s loose translation.97 This becomes evident when one compares Tupper’s and Spelman’s vocabularies, phrasings, and mistranslations — in this instance, for example, Spelman’s discrete using and Tupper’s good use.98 Great, translating afresh the first versified stanzas. For the next six, he reproduced verbatim just Spelman’s loose prose paraphrase, including Spelman’s comments on the work: Spelman Ælfred, pp. 125–131 = Giles, Alfred, pp. 325–327 and Appendix II. Where both Spelman and Giles stop, so does Tupper. My Exhibit A corresponds to the sixth (unversified) English stanza. 94 See end of n. 91 above. 95 Giles, Alfred, p. ‘14’ of Appendices. 96 Alfred’s Poems, p. 123 = Giles, Works, p. 245. (Presumably by ‘hereafter’ he meant in the intended later volumes?) 97 I take this useful verb ‘balladize’ from Jones, Fossil Poetry, p. 124. 98 For the sake of comparison with Exhibit A here is Spelman’s prose paraphrase: ‘Without wisdom wealth is worth little. Though a man had an hundred and seventy acres sown with gold, and all grew like corn, yet were all that wealth worth nothing, unless that of an enemy one could make it become his friend. For what differs gold from a stone, but by discrete using of it?’ Giles, Alfred, Appendix II, p. 19 (the seven Appendices are separately paginated.) Giles entitles this

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Tupper seems to have felt no desire to grasp the actual relic, the source of Exhibit A in its original language. Otherwise he would have studied the complete ‘Proverbs of Alfred’ edited, translated, and included (along with copious erudite disquisitions on individual proverbs in many languages) in a f ine book, published by the Ælfric Society in 1848, by the great John Mitchell Kemble.99 That is where I found the original source of our proverb: For wad is gold bute ston, bute it habbe wis mon?100

which Kemble translated more plainly, more memorably, more proverbially than either Spelman or Tupper: For what is gold but a stone, unless a wise man have it?101

Kemble had been immediately, in 1849, invited into Giles’s network of contributors. Back in May of 1833 Kemble had already written to his friend and beloved teacher Jakob Grimm expressing his hope that the Society of Antiquaries’ newly formed Saxon Committee would let him publish Alfred’s works.102 Less than two months after the 1849 Jubilee, he reported to Grimm as follows: December 17, 1849 Some friends in England, among whom Bunsen is active, have been trying to set on foot a complete edition of King Ælfred’s works, & have written to me to join in the project. I like the notion very well, and if they will let me do the Beda and Orosius, I will do them with pleasure; but I have

Appendix: ‘King Alfred’s Proverbs, given at Shifford A.D. 890. From an ancient Anglo-Saxon Manuscript, formerly in the Cottonian Library, and quoted by Spelman in his Life of Alfred; but now supposed to be lost.’ Tupper titles his translation of this Appendix: ‘King Alfred’s Parliament at Shifford, A Metrical Fragment from the Anglo-Saxon.’ 99 Kemble, Salomon and Saturnus. This is a diff icult long Old English poem, on which see now Dumitrescu, Experience of Education, pp. 34–59. For better manuscripts, editions, and intepretations of the Proverbs see Skeat, The Proverbs, and then Arngart, The Proverbs. 100 See n. 90 above. 101 Kemble, Salomon and Saturnus, p. 220. 102 Momma, Philology, p. 78.

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no great wish to be troubled with the Gregorius or the Boethius, which are grievously dull.103

The text of the ‘Proverbs of Alfred’ edited by Kemble is much longer than Spelman’s. He included thirty-seven stanzas, and he corrected Spelman’s various misunderstandings and mistranslations.104 On whether the Proverbs preserve echoes of Alfred’s own words, he concluded ‘It is probable that this is derived from a Saxon original, and Ælfred here appears in the traditional character of a teacher […] This shows the estimate of his character, which long survived in this land.’105 His book as a whole is all about the ‘treasure of popular wisdom which is found in the proverbial sayings of a people.’106 Nevertheless, it is evident that Kemble had no effect at all on Tupper’s translations. Bluntly put, Tupper didn’t really care about the ipsissima verba of what he was translating. Mongrel, shmongrel: ninth century, thirteenth century, seventeenth century — it was all Anglo-Saxon to him. He could simply trust his native tongue. Kemble did not suffer fools gladly and was caustic about amateurs who lacked (or dared to resist) the echt philological discipline taught by the Brothers Grimm.107 This too may have something to do with why Tupper doesn’t even mention his work. All this makes it easier to reconstruct Tupper’s strategy for composing Exhibit B, ‘A Sorrowful Fytte.’ Here he was translating from Samuel Fox’s Metres of Boethius. Here he could read Fox’s literal translation in the righthand column, and in the left-hand column he could try to read the original Old English poem, which he then reproduced in small print above his own translation. Here is Fox’s version:108 103 Wiley, Kemble and Grimm, December 17, 1849, p. 41. On the OE Bede in the Jubilee Edition, see end of n. 83, p. 55 above. 104 For just one example: Spelman and Tupper’s ‘hundred and seventy’ for huntseuinti should be just ‘seventy.’ Kemble, Salomon and Saturnus, p. 229. 105 ‘The proverbs which are thus put into Alfred’s mouth are important from their antiquity, and of the more value to us because some of them correspond to proverbs already alluded to in this introduction. Such of these as I have observed I shall now proceed to note; others of them, again, are found at a later period in other languages of Europe.’ Kemble, Salomon and Saturnus, p. 215. 106 Kemble, Salomon and Saturnus, p. 226. 107 On which see Thomas, ‘Fox and Bosworth,’ pp. 235–242 and Momma, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Revolution: John Mitchell Kemble and the paradigm,’ pp. 60–94. 108 Fox, Metres of Boethius, pp. 11–12. The punctuation marking the end of each half-line is Fox’s innovation, of which he was justifiably proud. Here is Irvine and Godden’s translation: ‘Formerly I sang many songs joyfully in happy times; now, sighing, exhausted by weeping, I, a sad outcast, must sing laments. This sighing and sobbing have hindered me so that I cannot compose those

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Hwæt, ic lioða fela. lustlice geo. sanc on sælum. nu sceal siofigende. wope gewæged. wreccea giomor. singan sarcwidas. Me þios siccetung hafað. agæled, ðes geocsa. þæt ic þa ged ne mæg. gefegean swa fægre. þeah ic fela gio þa. sette soð-cwida. þonne ic on sælum wæs.

Behold I many lays, With delight formerly, Sung in my prosperity; Now shall I sorrowing, Weighed down with weeping, A sad wretch, Sing mournful songs! Me this sighing has Hindered, — this sobbing, That songs I cannot So fair compose; Though I formerly many True maxims arranged, When I was in prosperity.

Today one would want to study this passage of verse from MS Cotton Otho A.vi by pondering its relation to the Old English prose translation in MS Bodley 180, and comparing both to Boethius’s original poem, Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi, taking care to contrast how each one functions in its own context.109 For Tupper such nuances do not arise. He gives his attention to each Metre, one at a time, gives it a title, chooses a modern metre, and off he goes, versifying away. He is not starting from scratch. He need not read and understand every single Old English Metre. He can just balladize Fox’s en face literal translation and go merrily on. In Tupper’s self-understanding his most important achievement was that in his personal Jubilee celebration he was faithful to his inner Alfred. Tupper was a wizard at improvising. He could spout sonnets ad lib. ‘The best always come at a burst, spontaneously and as it were inspirationally.’110 But here, for perhaps the first, perhaps the only, time since Charterhouse days, songs so elegantly, although I formerly composed many a true discourse in happy times.’ Irvine and Godden, Boethius, p. 11. 109 Such a task has now been rendered manageable by Godden and Irvine’s monumental work, OE Boethius. 110 Tupper, My Life, p. 143. Quoted by Drinkwater, ‘Tupper,’ p. 211. Looking back at the 1880s in 1930, Drinkwater dwelt on Tupper’s facility at versifying ex tempore: ‘The accomplished improviser who employs his gifts not derisively but sympathetically has a great pull on people, and when he can give his incantations a literary turn the spell and the prestige are complete. As Tupper went through life he could rise in verse — if rise be the word — to any occasion at a moment’s notice. If he stays in a historic house, and if his host calls at dinner for a rhyme in honour of its associations, delivery is made before bedtime, if not indeed before the port has finished circulating.’ Drinkwater ‘Tupper,’ pp. 204–205.

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he imposed a strict discipline on his improvising. To honestly translate the relic into its new reliquary intact, he vowed to honor the rules spelled out in his ‘Translator’s Preface’: The ‘Poems of King Alfred’ are here for the first time given to the English reader in a rhythmical dress: and that, without any known or meant sacrif ice of faithfulness, any ill-judged attempt at ‘improvements’ or additions, any other wish than the simple one of making Alfred’s mind known to us his distant children, as much as possible in his own words. The writer has aimed everywhere at these five points: 1. To be literal. 2. To keep the still used words of our ancient Anglo-Saxon tongue wherever he could, and to throw aside all Latinized and other mixed forms of expression. 3. To vary the metres at least as often as Boethius; and never to admit a false or doubtful rhyme. 4. To keep constantly in view the alliterations, the parallelism, the frequently recurring echoes both in sense and in sound, which are principal features of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. 5. To catch the spirit, and not the notes alone, of Alfred’s harp, and to be at once easy and exact, rhymed (often doubly or trebly) and yet, as a first rule, representing what Alfred really said, and not what a modern may put into his mouth for rhyme’s sake. It will readily be believed, that, if these f ive rules have been at all regarded, the work here done has been one of no small difficulty.111

To point out that verity/prosperity is Latin and chaunt I my lays is French would be churlish. Disciplining his voice by fulfilling his vow was a joyous and therapeutic experience which I believe helped him heal his wandering tongue, travailing with unborn thoughts, wasting in fretfulness metres unsung. As he goes along translating Metre by Metre he adds a running commentary, often pointing out which of the rules he is following, how hard the task is, how much he is enjoying it, and how much better his versified version is than Fox’s literal line by line translation. (Fox’s translation was a crib, a line-by-line gloss designed to guide the reader into the Old English poems and their prosody. Tupper’s is not.) Here’s a sample of his commentaries:

111 Tupper, ‘The Translator’s Preface,’ Alfred’s Poems, pp. 3–4 = Giles, Works, pp. 161–162.

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To show how united our modern and ancient English are, there are nearly forty words in this short poem unchanged from the royal minstrel’s Anglo Saxon: and the same ratio will be found to pervade most of the other metres. In our version every word is Anglo-Saxon English. In these poems, likely enough then soon to become the ballads of the poor sung from village to village by the welcome wandering minstrels, Alfred has sought to include a little piece of every kind of knowledge. These metres, for the most part, are here rendered into such primitive English as that a Saxon may readily understand them: wherein the difference is very great between this rhymed version, and the prose one of Mr Fox, to which we are in other respects so much beholden.112

For the first few Metres he had a lot of fun looking up in Bosworth’s recently published Dictionary some of Alfred’s actual Old English words. In his first commentary (one of his longest) he invites his reader to join in the game he has begun: In this as in others of these metres, it is a great satisfaction to see how easily they fall into modern rhymes, without a sacrifice of faithfulness. However, when (instructed by Dr Bosworth) we remember that of the 38,000 words of Modern English, 23,000, or more than 3/5ths, are Anglo-Saxon, — this harmony will appear less wonderful. But, — what a pity it is that any of the fine old root-words of our tongue should have been forgotten: — for example, in this very Opening song, how is it we have lost ‘myreg’ — as good a word as ‘pleasure,’ and the root of ‘merry’ — and ‘gilpe’ — vainglory? — and ‘spell’ not quite yet obsolete, — story? and ‘list’— surely as good a word as art? ‘fitte’ a song — ‘leoth’ a poem, — and many more? We have of late years been throwing away, by the hundred, the stout old props of our strong north-country speech, and have substituted in their stead the sesquipedalia verba of Southern Europe. Nothing then can be more wholesome than to return for awhile to such good plain stuff as Alfred’s stalwart Anglo-Saxon: it is a right bracing air; — may the reader enjoy the sport as much as the writer. We have here before us fresh fields and a fair brooklet of English running water.113

About two-thirds of the way through his exercise he captures in a striking metaphor the inwardness of his intimacy with Alfred: 112 Comment on Metres 6, 12, 28, and Conclusion. Alfred’s Poems, p. 130 = Giles, Works, pp. 182–183. 113 Comment on Metre 1. On sesquipedalia verba cf. above, p. 50, n. 67.

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To the writer no intellectual delight has been much more true or deep than thus to fill the mind with the pure and good philosophy of Alfred, and then to let his homilies flow out into these new shapes: as it were, gold, melted anew in an earthen crucible, and poured out into the popular moulds of modern metres.114

Alfred’s tongue was not foreign. Tupper successfully plied an honest trade in proverbs for a global ‘Anglo-Saxon’ community nourished by unvarnished English. So did Alfred. Tupper’s inner Alfred was an archetypal proverbial philosopher who, just like Tupper himself, poured the molten gold of his wisdom into the popular jingles of Anglo-Saxon proverbial poems.115 This archetypal identity simplified his task: melt Alfred’s proverbial relics back into pure gold in the earthen crucible of your own innocent soul and then immediately pour them out again, still golden, into the fresh moulds of your modern jingles116 — that is to say into forms which were (to quote Chris Jones once more) ‘valorized and idealized by Romanticism: the ballad, the metrical romance, the song; forms that can be understood as an expression of folk culture, rather than those of a neo-classicist aesthetics.’117 About Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon thoughts there was nothing foreign, they were always already English because where Alfred’s heart was concerned Tupper was always already a walking reliquary. But Alfred, unlike Tupper, had the nerve to translate from Latin into English without stammering, and not just word for word but bravely and freely. However, whereas Alfred could pour out all his molten gold only into a uniform humdrum alliterative jingle, Tupper, rivalling Boethius, poured it afresh into thirty different metres. Tupper now felt equal in speech to the most fluent of his fellows, inluding even his beloved Alfred. For what Alfred had done he too could do, and then some. 114 Comment on Metre 21, Alfred’s Poems, p. 36. Slightly toned down in Giles, Works, p. 224: ‘To the writer it has been a true and deep delight thus to fill the mind with the philosophy of Alfred.’ 115 In 1872 when Richard Morris included the ‘Proverbs of Alfred’ in his OE Miscellany he did not refer to Tupper by name, but he did make the following allusion in his Preface: ‘The Proverbs of Alfred contain some plain and sensible maxims for the guidance of our ancestors’ every-day life. The source of many of our common proverbs will be recognized among these early illustrations of Proverbial Philosophy.’ Morris, Miscellany, p. ix. 116 ‘There were no rhymes in those days; alliteration was the only sort of jingle […] and for the poetical part of my own production at least nothing is of the slipshod order of half rhymes or alternate prose and verse — too common, especially in our hymnology — but honest double rhyming throughout.’ My Life, pp. 165–166. 117 Jones, Fossil Poetry, pp. 19–20.

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I have saved for the end the main question: how could Tupper be so sure that his relic was true, not just a fetishistic projection of his fervent desire for intimate contact with his Beloved, of his passionate yearning to thrill to Alfred’s voice inviting him into an intimate dialogue? Tupper answers this question with a fresh proverb: It may be more learned to doubt, but it is far more sensible to believe. For it is written: ‘Ic sceal sprecan: I shall speak.’118 What Alfred prefigured, Tupper fulfilled. Having spoken, Tupper stammered no more.119 That’s all very well for Tupper and his generation, but here we are in the twenty-first century, still looking at these Victorian reliquaries and asking whether we can unlock one, open it up, look into it, and agree that, yes, there really does seem to be a relic in there and we do have an honest chance of proving it true. The task is to find the key that unlocks the reliquary. Tupper’s key no longer fits. And so I return to the Dean of Ely and his thrill of emotion. The Dean and his community trusted that the Parker Chronicle was the most dependable of the Alfredian reliquaries, made by Alfred himself ‘under his own eye’ to contain an actual relic of his own mind, the contours of his thought. Their faith was warranted by the way critical scholarship professionally mediated the dialogue between being too learned to believe and being too devout to doubt, between canon and cult. The Victorian quest for the historical Alfred led by the Rev. Charles Plummer reached a successful climax in his canonical edition of the Chronicle in 1899 and in his Ford Lectures on the Life and Times of King Alfred the Great in 1901. (What motivated Plummer is a focus of attention in chapter 3 below.) In language promptly echoed by the Dean of Ely, Plummer had, in 1899, professed his disciplined faith in the Chronicle as a genuine Alfredian reliquary: To whom are we to attribute this earliest form of the national Chronicle? I have no hesitation in declaring that in my opinion the popular answer is in this case the right one: it is the work of Alfred the Great. […] That the 118 ‘From the circumstances of the third person being used in these lines (a custom far from unusual with authors in every age and nation) some have supposed that Alfred did not write them. The truth seems to lie in the opposite position: not merely from the prevalent moral resemblance to Alfred’s mind; as in that shrewd hint of the evils of dullness, in the eschewal of vain glory, &c; — but chiefly from the text itself. After disclaiming self praise, recommending rhymes, and announcing the author, — Alfred comes simply to the first person; Ic sceal sprecan, i shall speak: — it may be more learned to doubt, but it is far more sensible to believe.’ Comment on Metre 1. 119 ‘God […] made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the most fluent of my fellows.’ Tupper, My Life, p. 92.

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idea of a national Chronicle as opposed to merely local annals was his, that the idea was carried out under his direction and supervision, this I do most firmly believe. And we may, I think, safely place in the forefront of the Chronicle the inscription which encircles Alfred’s Jewel: ælfred mec heht gewyrcan, ‘Alfred ordered me to be made.’120

Plummer’s this I do most firmly believe empowered and legitimized the Dean of Ely’s reliquarian thrill of emotion.121 In his Ford Lectures a few months after the Dean’s 1901 summer sermon, Plummer publicly put his finger on a relic of Alfred contained in that reliquary: the story of Alfred’s childhood pilgrimage to be anointed King by the Pope in Rome. First he proved that the original source of that popular medieval legend was a three-word phrase in the annal for 853, to cyninge gehalgode (‘anointed him king’). Then he conjectured that this phrase was a sort of Freudian slip, revealing how Alfred himself had misunderstood and misremembered what had actually happened in Rome when he was young: ‘I think that Alfred must have understood the ceremony [which he experienced in Rome] to mean something more than confirmation [as the Pope’s godson].’122 If Alfred was the original author of to cyninge gehalgode then, concluded Plummer, we do have here a true taste of Alfred’s mind. For if the story in the Chronicle is a fiction, if its protagonist was also its author, if the story is autohagiographical, if it is a fable, then it is a fable that Alfred made up. Indeed, a fable that made Alfred up. Can this fable contain the meaning of the Chronicle, of Alfred’s life, the way a fragment of the true cross contains the meaning of the reliquaries that contain it, of the Gospels, the New Testament, the Bible, the life of the historical Jesus? To that provocative question I now attend.

120 Plummer, Chronicles, p. 72. 121 Plummer reaffirmed his faith in 1901, invoking the high authority of Stubbs and quoting John Earle, his close friend and former teacher: ‘I never can read the annals of 893–897 without seeming to hear the voice of King Alfred.’ Earle, ‘Alfred as a Writer,’ p. 20, quoted by Plummer, Alfred, p. 11. 122 Plummer, Alfred, p. 72.

2

Remember the Pope So bleibt das Geschehen in all seiner sinnlichen Kraft doch immer Gleichnis, verhüllt und deutungsbedürftigt.1 (What happened, with all its concrete force, remains forever parabolic, cloaked and needful of interpretation.)2 — ERICH AUERBACH Common opinion has it that the plot of a narrative imposes a meaning on the events that comprise its story level by revealing at the end a structure that was immanent in the events all along. — HAYDEN WHITE3

Abstract In the nineteenth century Protestant historians expunged hagiography. But for Aelred of Rievaulx history was contained by hagiography. His Cistercian version of the popular fable that the infant Alfred was anointed king by the Pope in Rome embedded Alfred in hagiographic time liberated from chronology: Biblical typology bound what the Pope foresaw in Alfred’s destiny to what Samuel foresaw in David’s. And in 1901 Plummer believed the 853 papal anointing was not, in fact, royal, and that Alfred psychologically misinterpreted it as typologically prefiguring his royal adulthood. By substituting psychological for spiritual understanding, Plummer canonized the Chronicle as prime reliquary for the Protestant cult of the historical Alfred, since its annal for 853 contains this authentic Anglo-Saxon relic of Alfred’s psychology. Keywords: Cistercian hagiography, psycho-history, autohagiography, Herbert Thurston, Quipu, childhood memory 1 Auerbach, ‘Figura’ (2016 [1938]), p. 169. 2 (I have replaced ‘History’ with ‘What happened’ and ‘a figure’ with ‘parabolic’ in Mannheim’s translation.) Auerbach, ‘Figura’ (1959) p. 58. Auerbach, ‘Figura,’ (2016 [1938]), p. 100. For an important commentary on deutungsbedürftigt in this sentence see Porter, ‘Disfigurations,’ pp. 96, 99. 3 White, ‘Narrativity,’ p. 20

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH02

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Hagiography A holy city. A high priest. An island kingdom. Its king. His son. Five atoms from the universe of legend. Their interactions form a molecule, the organic nucleus of a fable about a king who sends his son on a long pilgrimage to the holy city to be blessed by the high priest. By labeling this a fable I intend to be open to the possibility of finding it anywhere on a spectrum from dream to folktale to cosmic myth, whether or not it could ever narrate something that actually happened. At the low end, let it be a dream that opens a story collected from the folk by the Brothers Grimm: Es war einmal ein König der träumte er sende seinen Sohn in die heilige Stadt um vom Hohenpriester gesegnet zu werden. Once upon a time there was a king who dreamt that he would send his son to the holy city to be blessed by the high priest. 4 Call the son Omar. Tell a brief Sufi parable about what happens when you go on a pilgrimage and how it transforms you when you come back but not the way you thought it would. Expand it into a rollicking good yarn from the Arabian Nights with many an entertaining yet edifying incident along the way there and back. Now call the son Alfred. Elevate the rollicking good yarn to the highest artistic levels of historical imagination: let Thomas Mann write a trilogy, Alfred and His Brothers. Book I: deep meditations on the son’s experiences en route to Rome, interactions between Germanic orality and Romance literacy, bilingual conversations at the court of Charles the Bald, dialogues with Eriugena about predestination and free will, games played with Charles’s teenage daughter, Judith.5 Book II: The holy city. Rome in the middle of the ninth century wie es eigentligh gewesen. The many languages, including the lingua romana, in which people chat about the weather or the price of a cabbage in the marketplace. What the Pope said to him in Latin when he anointed him king. Book III: Alfred’s journey back over the Alps. His father’s wedding night with Judith. Mixed feelings upon rejoining his family and his community back home. The grudges, the reconciliations, the blessings. Then, to reach a cosmic level, let the fable typify Toynbee’s two-fold motif of Withdrawal-and-Return.6 A challenge threatens the island kingdom. The son of the king responds: he departs on a pilgrimage. Thanks to his 4 For an example of just such a dream, see below p. 92, n. 73. 5 Whether Alfred was actually about the same age as Judith is the topic of ch. 3, ‘Fix the Date.’ His experience of crossing language and literacy borders is the topic of ch. 6, ‘Cross the Border.’ 6 Toynbee, History, III, pp. 248–390; Toynbee and Somervell, History, pp. 217–240.

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mystical transfiguration in the holy city, he returns in glory and power to help his community meet the challenge by growing in wisdom and wealth. This motif, Toynbee preached, is ‘evidently of cosmic range; and it is therefore not surprising to find that it has furnished one of the “primordial images” of Mythology, which is an intuitive form of apprehending and expressing universal truths.’7 Thus elevated, Alfred could join St Paul, St Benedict, St Gregory the Great, not to mention Buddha, Mohammed, and Machiavelli, in Toynbee’s roster of archetypically creative individuals who saved their civilizations by withdrawing and returning transfigured.8 The shortest written version of this Alfredian fable was included in the middle of the annal for 853 ad in the Parker Chronicle. It charts the fable’s molecular nucleus in four short clauses linked paratactically by ond and þa: That same year King Æthelwulf sent his son Alfred to Rome. At that time Lord Leo was Pope in Rome. ond he hine to cyninge gehalgode He consecrated him king. ond hiene him to biscepsuna nam.9 And took him as his godson.’ Ond þy ilcan geare sende cyning Eþelwulf his sunu to Rome. Þa was domne Leo papa on Rome

In this vernacular version the High Priest transforms the Son into a King, and becomes compadre to the Son’s father, the King of the Island Kingdom.10 In Asser’s Latin version this kernel germinated and bore fruit in a medieval legend popular until the Reformation. After the Reformation, English pilgrimages to holy cities and high priests lost their charm. In his History of England Hume mocks Alfred’s lamentable Anglo-Saxon submission to Rome: The Saxons, receiving their religion from Roman monks, were taught at the same time a profound reverence for that see, and were naturally led to regard it as the capital of their religion. Pilgrimages to Rome were represented as the most meritorious acts of devotion. Not only noblemen and ladies of rank undertook this tedious journey; but kings themselves, abdicating their crowns, sought for a secure passport to heaven at the 7 Toynbee, History, III, p. 259. 8 Toynbee, History, III, p. 263–332. 9 Plummer, Chronicles, s.a. 853. 10 On the Pope’s compaternitas with Æthelwulf, see Scharer, ‘Salbungsfrage,’ and Lynch, Christianizing Kinship.

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feet of the Roman pontiff. New reliques, perpetually sent from that endless mint of superstition, and magnified by lying miracles, invented in convents, operated on the astonished minds of the multitude. And every prince has attained the eulogies of the monks, the only historians of those ages, not in proportion to his civil and military virtues, but to his devoted attachment towards their order, and his superstitious reverence for Rome.11

Nonetheless, to inaugurate his account of Alfred’s reign Hume chooses a version of our fable: 871: ALFRED: This prince gave very early marks of those great virtues and shining talents, by which, during the most difficult times, he saved his country from utter ruin and subversion. Ethelwolf, his father, the year after his return with Alfred from Rome, had again sent the young prince thither with a numerous retinue; and a report being spread of the king’s death, the pope, Leo III, gave Alfred the royal unction; whether prognosticating his future greatness from the appearances of his pregnant genius, or willing to pretend even in that age, to the right of conferring kingdomes.12

In his edifying account of the cult of Alfred, Keynes has shown in detail how medieval chroniclers and historians allowed folklore and hagiography to refine, enhance, and celebrate Alfred’s legendary namesake as he journeyed from the Chronicle to Asser, Æthelweard, Ælfric, Byrhtferth of Ramsey, John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, the School of St Albans, John of Wallingford, and Matthew Paris. Within this Latin tradition, the fable of Alfred’s papal anointing reached a peak in a late fourteenth-century Westminster text, to which Stevenson drew attention in 1904: The statements derived from compilations embodying the [Latin] words of [Asser’s] Life regarding the ceremony at Rome were eagerly seized upon by later monkish writers who were anxious to magnify the power of the papacy. The monks of Westminster pretended that the very crown with which [Alfred] was crowned at Rome was brought to England by him, and was preserved among the regalia in the abbey. A ‘crown of King 11 Hume, History of England, I, p. 52. 12 Hume, History of England, I. pp. 63–64. (Hume’s Alfred was probably all that Comte knew about Alfred.)

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Alfred’ was found among the regalia at the time of the Commonwealth. There can be little doubt that this was the crown of Edward the Confessor of the earlier records, and its ascription to Alfred is subsequent to the attempt made by William de Sudbury, a fourteenth-century monk of Westminster, to prove that the abbey still preserved the regalia brought by Alfred from Rome.13

Stevenson noted that Richard of Cirencester inserted William of Sudbury’s tract on the Alfredian regalia into his mediocre late medieval compilation, the Speculum Historiale de Gestis Regum Angliae.14 Its compiler would more rightly be nicknamed Richard the Obscure were it not for his main, indeed his only, claim to fame: namely that he was not the author of De situ Britanniae, a work mischievously attributed to him by its eighteenth-century forger, Charles Bertram.15 The fable of Alfred’s papal anointing was transcendentally important to Richard of Cirencester. To frame his hagiographic account of Alfred’s reign Richard chose the vibrant prose poem which had been composed in the middle of the twelfth-century historiographical reawakening by Aelred of Rievaulx to introduce Aethelwulf’s son Alfred in his Genealogia regum Anglorum: Cujus filius fuit illud Anglorum decus, regum gemma, virtutum exemplar Aluredus, cæteris fratribus suis junior ætate, sed animosior virtute, unde et a patre plus cunctis fratribus amabatur, ob morum scilicet suorum similitudinem, et spiritalis cujusdam gratiæ privilegium 13 WHS, pp. 182–183. See also Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ pp. 232–233 and n. 38. 14 Ricardi de Cirencestria, Speculum Historiale. 15 ‘The ingenuity and learning displayed in Bertram’s forgery are really extraordinary, and fully account for the unparalleled success which the imposture obtained. At the time when the work appeared, the idiom of mediæval Latin writers had been little studied, and there were in England few, if any, persons capable of perceiving that the Latinity of the pseudo-Richard was not that of a fourteenth-century monk. Bertram’s antiquarian information, moreover, was, on the whole, quite on a level with the best knowledge of his time. The spurious treatise, therefore, was eagerly accepted by most of the English antiquaries as an invaluable source of information on the Roman geography of Britain.’ Bradley, ‘Bertram.’ Both the forgery and Richard’s authentic work, the Speculum historiale, were edited by John E. B. Mayor for the Rolls Series in 1867 with a long introduction devoted primarily to a learned and devastating critique of the forgery, and merely a brief and dismissive comment on the authentic Speculum. Stephen Bann begins his incisive study of the representation of history in the nineteenth century with interesting comments on how the effect of Bertram’s hoax ‘thoroughly permeated the historical study of Roman Britain, with effects that were to take many decades to eradicate.’ Bann, Clothing of Clio, p. 7.

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quæ in eo adhuc puero mirabiliter refulgebat. Unde eum pater cum adhuc puerulus esset, cum multis militibus maximisque donariis Romam misit, ut sanctissimorum apostolorum precibus commendaretur, et a summo pontifice benediceretur; venerabilis autem summus sacerdos Leo qui tunc Ecclesiæ Romanæ præfuit, vultum et statum pueri contemplatus, cum in eo divinæ præsentiam majestatis scintillantium virtutum indiciis persensisset, tempus et ætatem regnandi regiæ unctionis sacramento præveniens, sicut quondam Samuel puerum David, ita eum in regem sanctissimus præsul devotissime consecravit.16 (Whose son was that ornament of the English, gem of kings, emblem of virtues, Alfred, junior to his other brothers in age but more spirited in virtue, hence by his father loved more than all his brothers on account of the similitudo of his conduct and the privilege of a kind of spiritual grace which shone in him even, miraculously, in boyhood, wherefore when he was still a little boy his father sent him to Rome with many knights and the greatest gifts, that he might be commended to the prayers of the holiest apostles and be blessed by the supreme pontiff. When the venerable high priest Leo, who then ruled the Roman church, having contemplated the boy’s countenance and stature, felt the presence of Divine majesty in him through the signs of his brilliant virtues, foreseeing the time and age when he would reign by the sacrament of royal unction, as once Samuel did the boy David, so the holiest prelate most devoutly consecrated him king.)17 16 Aelred, Genealogia, col. 718. Newly edited by Pezzini, Aelredi. Aelred devotes twenty percent of the Genealogia to Alfred (and almost twenty percent to Edgar.) The Genealogia was very popular. Twenty-two manuscripts survive. Freeman, ‘Aelred Historian,’ p. 140. 17 No translation can hope to preserve the poetic syntax, prosody, and musical integrity of the Latin viva voce. In my translation I have tried to get a little closer to the rhythm of the original by slightly modifying Jane Patricia Freeland’s fine translation in Dutton, Aelred, pp. 76–77.

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I have left similitudo untranslated to flag it as a technical term central to the hagiographic discourse of Cistercian affective theology: God created man in his imago and similitudo.18 In her penetrating study of Cistercian historical writing 1150–1220, Elizabeth Freeman situates Aelred’s Genealogia in the context of corporate Cistercian life, English historical writing, and modern historiographical debates. Of particular relevance to Aelred’s version of our fable are her reflections on the quest for the region of similitude: Cistercian theology is devoted to the recovery of the divine likeness in humanity; in other words it is the quest for the region of similitude. It is sapiential in emphasis, a theology in which individuals seek the experience of God, particularly via appreciation and contemplation of God’s humanity. […] God is sought through the experiences of others and through experiences with others. For example, the Cistercians’ most influential spiritual writers endorsed the inherent value of the interim, the period of earthly pilgrimage and the deeds and events that occur there. Although the soul will not be restored until after it is dissociated from the temporal body, in the meantime (in the interim) individuals can and must continue to seek the region of similitude in whatever contexts they happen to be living in. […] As Columban Heaney argues, ‘What primarily interested [Cistercians] was not what constitutes man essentially in this image and likeness, but what is happening to the image and likeness in the various phases of man’s historical existence.’19

Today many historians still believe a borderline can be drawn separating historiography from hagiography. For Aelred there was no such line. On the contrary, his vocation was to make sure that line would never be drawn. For when it is, you are caught in the regio dissimilitudinis. Elizabeth Freeman dwells fruitfully on what she calls the ‘peculiar timelessness’ of Aelred’s representations of men and women as ‘mechanisms 18 ‘Cistercian anthropology, especially Aelred’s, gives a central place to the concepts of image and likeness from Genesis 1:26: “God created man in his image and likeness.” [Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram.] Building on Augustine’s development of these concepts, Cistercians associate the image with humankind, whose essence is divine, and the likeness with the human capacity to will to conform to that nature. They explain that because of the Fall, original sin has obscured the image and wiped out the likeness; expulsion from Paradise thrust humankind into the region of unlikeness. […] Love is therefore at the center of every attempt to restore the image.’ Boquet, ‘Aelred,’ pp. 176–177. 19 Freeman, Cistercian Historical Writing, pp. 13–14. (Italics original.) Freeman quotes Heaney, ‘Aelred’s Theology,’ p. 17.

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by which the Genealogia overall presents an image of English genealogical history that is powerful precisely because of this timelessness.’20 The Chronicle pegs the vernacular fable down to an Anno Domini date. Aelred does not. He mentions no dates at all in the Genealogia, which is governed not by chronological time but by cosmological thinking. His sacramental understanding of kingship gives shape and meaning to this date-free mode of narration.21 By liberating our fable from chronology, Aelred situates it in purely hagiographic time. Pace Freeman, there is no need to call this timelessness ‘peculiar,’ for it is a governing principle of sacred biography. 22 To f ind even a single ad date in a saint’s life is rare and thought-provoking. 23 If for Hume history excludes hagiography, for Aelred hagiography contains history. Aelred’s hagiographic imagination animates the traditional motifs woven into the Latin version of our fable by his predecessors, starting with Asser. As a child the son’s similitudo to God shines with virtue: a perennial hagiographic motif. It is not in the vernacular Chronicle but in the Latin Life that the king sends his youngest son to the holy city because he loves him more than his older brothers: an atom of legend pregnant with destiny, folkloric, yet biblically sanctif ied, for both Asser and Aelred, by Joseph and David. 24 The king sends his youngest son to Rome for ‘meritorious acts of devotion,’ to be blessed by the prayers of the holiest saints whose relics make Rome such a holy city: an inherently liturgical act, always already a magna virtus. Aelred’s biblical typology situates the Pope’s epiphany in hagiographic time: Leo sees in Alfred what he knows Samuel foresaw in David. God tells him ‘I choose this boy. He’s going to be a great king one day. This boy is David. Be Samuel. Anoint him.’ With prophetic insight, Leo experiences this event as an outward 20 See Freeman, ‘The Timeless Nation,’ in Cistercian Historical Writing, pp. 55–87, at p. 86. Freeman seeks to explain the power of this timelessness by drawing on the theoretical framework of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. 21 ‘[Burton] analyzes each of the seven histories individually while simultaneously identifying a quasi-sacramental understanding of history that pervades all seven works.’ Freeman, ‘Aelred historian,’ p. 126, n. 45, citing Burton, Ælred. (My italics.) 22 Heffernan, Sacred Biography. See also Jones, Saints’ Lives. 23 For an illuminating example of a hagiographer using a single Anno Domini date to sanctify chronology, see Walter Berschin’s valuable comments (Biographie, III, p. 224 ff.) on the initial sentence of Thegan’s Life of Louis. Asser’s intertwining of chronology and hagiography in his Life of Alfred will be the focus of attention in Part II below. 24 Aelred’s a patre plus cunctis fratribus amabatur blends Asser’s rex praefatum filium suum (WHS c. 8) and cum communi et ingenti patris sui et matris amore supra omnes fratres suos, immo ab omnibus, nimium diligeretur (WHS c. 22).

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sign of inward grace. The high priest liturgically celebrates the sacrament of regal anointing because he has contemplated the soul of the son, and has experienced there the Divine Presence that Aelred saw everywhere in history.25 It is the same Divine Presence that Samuel experienced when he gazed on young David. This biblical typology binding Alfred to David is no mere rhetorical flourish on Aelred’s part, no fanciful analogy or indulgent allusion. It is, in Erich Auerbach’s technical sense, figural. It is a serious spiritual exegesis of our fable. ‘The two poles of the figure are separate in time, but they both also lie within time as real events or figures. Both figures are part of the ongoing flow of historical life. What is spiritual is the act of understanding, the intellectus spiritualis.’26 The Divine Presence is eternal, beyond mere chronology. What for God is simultaneous looks to us like action at a distance. The moment when the Pope anoints Alfred is not separated by millennia of measurable chronology from the moment when Samuel anoints David. Spiritually they are adjacent. From God’s point of view they are one. For hagiography is everywhere orthogonal to chronology. It intersects chronology at every point in time. Since all ages are immediate to God, the fact that David’s anointing occurs historically in Old Testament times and Alfred’s in our times does not weaken the typological identification. On the contrary, it strengthens it and drives it home.27 By embedding Leo’s sacramental anointing in a sacred typological framework, Aelred elevates Alfred’s life to the same cosmic level as my tongue-in-cheek elevation à la Toynbee. For intelligent medieval hagiographers, biblical typology and action at a distance provide an interpretive frame as lofty, cosmic, mythic as Toynbee’s. 25 ‘Burton has recently noted that, in different but mutually enhancing ways, all the histories emphasize the divine presence among humanity; the political histories show earthly figures cooperating with heaven, while Aelred’s other, saintly histories show heaven reaching down to cooperate with earth.’ Freeman, ‘Aelred Historian,’ pp. 133–134, citing Burton, Aelred. 26 ‘Beide Pole der Figur sind zeitlich getrennt, liegen aber beide, als wirkliche Vorgänge oder Gestalten, innerhalb der Zeit; sie sind beide, wie schon mehrhaft betont wurde, in dem fließenden Strom enthalten, welcher das geschichtliche Leben ist, und nur das Verständnis, der intellectus spiritualis, ist ein geistiger Akt.’ Auerbach, ‘Figura’ (2016 [1938]), p. 164. I have slightly modified the recent retranslation by Newman: Auerbach, ‘Figura’ (2014), p. 96. 27 ‘The affirmation [of literal truth] is not made in spite of the fact that the narrative complies with Old Testament texts, for such compliance is clearly held to conf irm the veracity of the narrative, to establish the fidelity of the historian to his chronicle. Yet the old texts have, at least in some cases, manifestly generated the new narrative. The more far-fetched and improbable the intertextual relations, the more certainly historical the narrative must be.’ Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, pp. 105, 107. (Italics original.)

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Chronology On the other hand, by redacting the barebones vernacular version of the fable into what looks like the one-way street of a horizontal chronological framework, the Chronicler seems to resemble those modern historians who, like Hume, devoutly believed that everything in the vertical dimension, including mysticism, hagiography, typology, teleology, and action at a distance, must be thoroughly expunged as superstitious supernaturalism. Every tough-minded historical critic was honor-bound to insist that all this folklore, all this hagiographic biblical typological rigmarole was mere romantic embroidery, the luxuriance of a riotous imagination, a wild and frolic fancy that had to be disciplined, had to be flattened out within a single purely horizontal dimension, let the spiritual chips fall where they may. The principle that horizontal chronology is the antidote to vertical hagiography was attractively explicated in 1865 by Earle in his groundbreaking philological edition of Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Earle was not a historian. He was an old-style Romantic philologist.28 He read the Chronicle as literature.29 He enjoyed treating it as a cabinet of vernacular fossils, specimens geologically stratified by a slow temporal process to be lovingly and patiently reconstructed and mapped out, level by level, age by age.30 So he began by characterizing the redactorial framework of a chronicle in its primitive most ancient form.31 I quote here a representative sampling of Earle’s discourse: History is like a web of cloth; you cannot add to it or take from it without destroying its integrity. The Chronicle is like a set of counters arranged on a recurring mathematical plan that can be continued ad infinitum in any direction, and can accommodate insertions in any part. […] In early times the particulars of past events were much more trusted to the memory than they are now; and only the chronological scaffolding 28 John Earle had been a distinguished member of Giles’s network of Alfredophiles — see above ch. 1, p. 48, n. 57. 29 Earle, Anglo-Saxon Literature. 30 On antiquarian geology as a ruling metaphor for this kind of nineteenth-century English philology, see Jones, Fossil Poetry. 31 In 1899 Plummer successfully carried off the prodigious task of revising Earle’s 1865 edition not as a philologist but as a strictly disciplined historical critic. Plummer decided to incorporate ‘the whole of this first division [of his 1899 Introduction] with some abridgement from Professor Earle’s [1865] Introduction. I do not think it is possible to state better the difference between Histories and Chronicles.’ Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. xvii, n. 1.

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was committed to parchment. […] The Peruvians had a memoria technica, made of knots upon diversely colored strings. A Peruvian woman showed a bundle of knotted strings, and said her whole life was there. Each knot was the index to a story, and all the stories were preserved in her memory. Our own early chronicles are something like this series of knots; for in their laconic annals much was implied and little expressed, and therefore they are a series of knots of which the solution died out with their authors. […] Tradition and experience furnished them with more facts than they had the capacity to accommodate. Where memory failed, fancy promptly entered, as into a forfeited domain. The wild and frolic fancy was ever ready, in the absence of any controlling system of order, to foment confusion and revel in it, and to conjure up out of the chaos new and grotesque combinations. Therefore they wanted, not History, but Chronology. When men had felt the necessity of guarding themselves against mytho-poesy, they found their first guarantee of the security of historical truths in tables of chronology. The Saxon Chronicles exhibit this process more than any (perhaps) in existence.32

Unlike later medieval historians the redactor of the Parker Chronicle inaugurates his account of Alfred’s reign by inserting our fable not in the annal for 871 ad when the adult king takes the throne but in the earlier annal for 853 ad when the boy goes to Rome. By so doing, he has knotted the papal anointing into a series of knots. Implicitly, his redactorial knot is simultaneously a hagiographic prefiguration of Alfred’s adult kingship and a fulfilment of knots that precede and prefigure it. To quote the distinguished redaction critic Norman Perrin, ‘No interpretation of any pericope can be adequate that does not raise questions about the place and function of that pericope within the structure of the work as a whole.’33 Alfred’s adult reign thus becomes part of the meaning of the fable, the ultimate moral of the fable and of the Chronicle as well. In Aelred’s biblical typology a ‘type’ in the Old Testament finds its ‘antitype’ in Leo’s anointing Alfred. But here, if Alfred’s taking the throne in the annal for 871 ad is the ‘antitype’ then the ‘type’ it fulfils is to be found not in the Bible but within Alfred’s own life cycle, within the Chronicle, in the annal for 853. This sort of typology, 32 Earle, Chronicles, pp. i–v, slightly abridged by Plummer, Chronicles, 1899, II, pp. xvii–xxi. (Italics original.) For a contrasting model of the origin of chronicles, see Jones, Saints’ Lives. 33 Perrin, ‘Evangelist as Author,’ p. 61. Or to state this critical principle even more succinctly: ‘The position of a pericope in its context is frequently the earliest commentary on it.’ Rohde, Evangelists, p. 20. I return to this quotation in ch. 5, p. 206, n. 17 below.

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in which childhood is to adulthood as type is to antitype, is not, strictly speaking, biblical. It is what Jacques Fontaine labels a typologie interne: an interior typology that provides a life with an inner structure, a backbone.34 Within the Chronicle’s narrative what our fable prefigures is the curve of the son’s destiny: though he begins as the littlest and the last of his brothers, he is destined to become the greatest and the first. Redacted thus within the annal for 853, this sliver of hagiographic time challenges the historian’s resolve to guard against the vertical lift of mythopoesy. This is why so many historians have found it a strange puzzle. In 1967 Janet Nelson wrote: Alfred’s royal anointing by Leo IV has long been one of the puzzles of Alfredian scholarship. Despite the ingenuity of the greatest Anglo-Saxon specialists, no really satisfactory explanation has yet been given of the strange story retailed by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under the year 853, and repeated in Latin translation by Asser in his Vita Alfredi.35

The hagiographer’s device of prefiguration and fulfilment to shape an individual’s life story was dignified by the doctrine that God sees the future of an infant and reveals his foreknowledge in a sign. That theological doctrine is now as superstitious, as unacceptable, as the astrological doctrine that a constellation of stars acts at a distance to ‘influence’ the configuration and destiny of your life from the moment of your birth. Northrop Frye articulates the principle concisely: Causes have to be in the same temporal plane as their effects, or they are not genuine causes. Ascribing a disease to the will of God or to the malice of a witch is not causal thinking. Typology points to future events that are often thought of as transcending time, so that they contain a vertical lift as well as a horizontal move forward.36

But the death of God need not entail the death of hagiography, or at least not the extinction of the vertical lift of figural story-telling. This, I believe, is the gist of Auerbach’s Mimesis. A story-teller can represent the destiny of 34 This idea of a typologie interne is a theme of ch. 6, ‘Cross the Border,’ below. 35 Janet Nelson situates the fable in the history of English royal consecrations and the function of secular power divinely conceded through priestly mediators. Nelson, ‘The Problem,’ p. 145. On relevant liturgical inauguration rituals see Scharer, ‘Die Salbungsfrage.’ For a contrasting Roman Catholic interpretation, see below, pp. 86–88. 36 Frye, The Great Code, p. 82.

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a protagonist through the recurrence of a motif, can shape a gestalt early in the story so as to foreshadow a later gestalt, can achieve poetic closure by finally revealing what was concealed in the initial gesture. By fulfilling the promise of the beginning, the end appears predestined. This is to read the Chronicle not as history but as literature mingled with myth.37 Many scholars today have the skills needed to read any text as literature, even a parking ticket, and then deconstruct it as myth-riddled. Still, it is a delicate task to bring such skills to bear on reading the Chronicle as literature, both because of the complexity of its texts and because of the rich repertoire of diverse and sometimes incommensurate discourses that literary historians can now bring, severally and jointly, into play.38 To wiggle through the resulting tangle of theoretical frameworks and their respective terminologies I here resort to a simple schematic model by elaborating Earle’s metaphor of each annal as a knot on a Peruvian quipu, on the understanding that many things happen, but few are deemed knot-worthy, some only when the passage of years has revealed, in hindsight, their value. This elementary model of the Chronicle’s redactorial framework will prove adequate for my present purpose: the revaluation of the process Plummer went through in 1901 to end up imagining that Alfred was the original author of this fable. To read the Chronicle as literature is to bracket off as a red herring the historian’s otherwise pressing question of whether the papal anointing could or could not have actually taken place, so as to understand the trip to Rome not as an annal among the annals, not as a reign among the reigns, but as a fable among the fables, a knot among the knots. Imagine knots on five colored threads, one for each of the atoms of legend that form the nucleus of the fable: the Holy City, the High Priest, the Island Kingdom, its King, and his Son. Every time the Chronicle mentions Rome, a Pope, a King, or a Son, tie a knot on the appropriately colored thread. If it mentions two or more of these, knit their threads together. You thus arrive at a dynamic colored network of permutations and combinations of the five interacting 37 ‘It remains remarkable that we can locate the migration myth in the Anglo-Saxon historical work which, because it is most constrained by chronological exactitude, seems most resistant to myth. […] Perhaps the most obvious and certainly the most frequent allusions to the migration myth in this work are the royal genealogies that trace a given Anglo-Saxon ruler to the two men who led the Saxons across the North Sea. Each king who claimed descent from Hengest and Horsa [or, like Alfred, from Cerdic and Cynric] was advancing a claim to political legitimacy, but such a claim could have no force unless the migration had acquired mythic status in the culture.’ Howe, Migration and Mythmaking, p. 29. On the ‘mingling of history and myth’ in the Chronicle, see Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning,’ p. 100. 38 Comprehensively surveyed in Partner and Foot, Historical Theory.

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‘atoms of legend,’ from Cerdic and Cynric in the opening sentences of the prefatory King List, to the annal for 896, a hip-pocket map of the myth of the Island Kingdom and the curve of its destiny as explicated in detail by Nicholas Howe, Sarah Foot, and others.39 At 853 ad our fable knits all five threads together into a single molecular knot for the first and only time in the Chronicle. Tug on that knot and feel the vibrations in the five threads acting at a distance all the way back to the very first King and his Son; throbbing wherever a King takes a throne, goes to the Holy City, or dies; and reverberating when a High Priest in the Holy City takes the initiative to convert the Island Kingdom. Vibrations also travel forward to tug at every ‘future’ knot that mentions Alfred. The interconnection of threads and knots thus models the Chronicle’s typologie interne, the logic of its intertwined prefigurations and fulfilments, and lets us see that in its original context the fable could already function as cryptohagiography, as a node central, not marginal, to the narrative structure of the Chronicle. Snip it in half and much unravels.

Psychology What makes the fable embedded in the annal strangely challenging to historians is that it is a shadow cast backwards in time by the climax of the Chronicle’s narrative, truth mingled with myth. It is an effect of action at a distance whose cause is to be sought not in the past but in the future. It is, in a word, prophetic. 40 Plummer met this challenge in 1901. At the beginning of the third of his Ford Lectures he initiated his own narrative of Alfred’s life with a bold psychological conjecture. In what I have nicknamed his Victorian Quest for the Historical Alfred, 41 Plummer’s goal was, as 39 Howe, Migration and Mythmaking. See also Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn,’ conveniently condensed by Foot in ‘Finding the Meaning’: ‘There is a continual tension between the syntactical parataxis of the record of each separate year and the rhetorical unity of intention that characterizes the whole, a tension which the reader must transcend before the wider meaning will become clear. […] The distinct strands have been deliberately selected by their compilers to construct a meaningful plot, a dynamic sequential skeleton of which chronological sequence is a significant organizing principle but not the sole determinant of the selection of material for inclusion’ (p. 97). 40 ‘There is an important sense in which the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle can be shown to function as a specifically Christian history, because it was necessarily concerned with working out God’s intentions for the English; it is prophetic in both its structure and its goals.’ Foot, ‘Finding the Meaning,’ p. 101. 41 Kalmar, ‘No Mere Arthur.’

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Richard Abels phrases it, ‘to prune away the many myths that had gathered around Alfred and to restore the historical person and celebrate his real accomplishments.’42 Not to debunk the Victorian cult of Alfred but to purify it in the spirit of Erasmus by expelling the apocrypha from the canon, castigating its received texts, and expunging its legendary fictions. 43 However, the line between fact and fiction, between the historical Alfred and his legendary namesake, runs right through the middle of our fable. Plummer was certain that Popes did not go about consecrating infant kings while their older brothers were still alive and while their fathers were still reigning. That can happen only in the forfeited domain of legend. Plummer, in accord with the Chronicle, begins his account of Alfred’s life with the fabled trip to Rome. He has to. The ‘silly story’ of the burnt cakes and the ‘wandering folk-tales which get attached to more than one historical character’44 — stories about a king passing for a minstrel incognito — can be easily pruned away as later accretions. The legend of the papal anointing cannot. Its original written source is not some later Latin writer, not even Asser, but the veridical vernacular Chronicle: The earliest event recorded in the life of Alfred is his being sent to Rome in 853, when he would be, according to [my theory], five years old. 45 Of the fact [that he went to Rome] there can be no possible doubt. It is not only mentioned by the Chronicle and Asser, but we have the actual letter which Leo IV wrote to Æthelwulf announcing Alfred’s safe arrival. 46 […] The passion for pilgrimages and relics was indeed at its height in the ninth century. So far there is no difficulty. The difficulty is as to what took place at Rome. 47

Hume lamented that the Pope anointed Alfred king. Plummer denies that he did so. His difficulty is that the line between hard fact and legendary fiction divides the short vernacular version in half: the first two clauses tell you something that did happen, the third one something that didn’t. When 42 Abels, ‘Alfred and his Biographers,’ p. 66. Richard Abels’s vignette of Plummer is packed with vision and precision. 43 On Erasmus see above, ch. 1, pp. 38–39. 44 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 24, 62. 45 The flaws in Plummer’s theory of Alfred’s age in 853 are the focus of attention in ch. 3, ‘Fix the Date,’ below. 46 This is the letter which in 1967 Janet Nelson cogently proved was a late forgery, see above, p. 80, n. 35. But by 1991 she had changed her mind: see n. 51 below. 47 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 70–71.

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the Pope anoints him king, the historical Alfred turns into his legendary counterpart right in front of your eyes. It was this anomaly that persuaded Felix Liebermann to deny that the Chronicle was an authentically Alfredian reliquary. Patrick Wormald characterised Liebermann as ‘a bona fide member of the academic circles that had transformed the study of Germanic law since the 1820s.’ 48 Liebermann, like Grimm, saw urgermanisch law as a system inherent in society’s soul. When he read Plummer’s 1899 edition of the Chronicle, he balked at Plummer’s confession of faith: ‘that the idea of a national Chronicle as opposed to merely local annals was [Alfred’s], that the idea was carried out under his direction and supervision, this I do most firmly believe.’49 From Liebermann’s perspective ‘the gross improbability’ of the papal anointing proved that, on the contrary, the Chronicle cannot have been drawn up under Alfred’s influence.50 To salvage as much as possible for historical truth, Plummer elucidates what the Pope actually did do. He confirmed Alfred as his godson. That need not be doubted. Unreported by the Chronicle, on the other hand, but written, independently, in a letter by Pope Leo, was that he actually made Alfred a Roman ‘consul’ by putting something on his head, in some solemn ritual. Not a crown. Not a royal crown, anyway. Maybe ‘a diadem of some kind.’ Still, whatever anointing the Pope may or may not have actually done, his letter could not and did not say he made Alfred king. Who, then, misreported what had happened? Rudely put, who is lying? Liebermann is sure the story is a lie, but he is also sure Alfred was not the sort of person who could tell, or even who could believe, such a lie.51 In response, Plummer says ‘I am inclined to turn the argument round the other way. I think that 48 Wormald, English Law, pp. 21, 23. 49 Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. civ — see above, ch. 1, p. 68, n. 120. 50 As reported by Plummer himself in a footnote to his 1901 lectures: ‘In a review of vol. ii of my [viz Plummer’s] Saxon Chron., in Brandl und Tobler, Archiv für ’s Studium der neueren Sprachen, [1900] civ. pp. 188 ff [at 193],’ Plummer, Alfred, p. 72, n. 2. 51 Janet Nelson comments: ‘So far as I know, Liebermann was the only scholar to admit the possibility that the anointing was a deliberate fabrication and not just the result of error — but the further possibility that Alfred was its author was clearly too much for him. Perhaps this was at the back of Stenton’s mind when he so vehemently denied Alfred’s authorship of the 853 entry. It may be significant too, that Liebermann’s point has never been revived in more recent literature.’ Nelson, ‘Royal Anointing,’ p. 159. She wrote this in 1967 when she was convinced Alfred consciously fabricated the lie. When, twenty-four years later, she modified her conclusion, she wrote: ‘While Leo did not (strictly speaking) make Alfred a king, he set the seal of throne-worthiness on him: Alfred was not a prospective, a potential heir. The claim that Alfred was “consecrated king” in 853 simply drew out the implication of papally invented rituals that were probably intended anyway to be ambiguous. Whoever, c. 890, entered this statement in

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Alfred must have understood the ceremony to mean something more than confirmation.’52 The story is not an outright lie. It is Alfred’s way of making sense of his own life. Alfred was indeed the sort of person who could believe such a story, who could believe that his childhood prefigured his adulthood, that he was destined to win the crown. In his heart Plummer yearned for intimate glimpses into Alfred’s soul as lovingly as Martin Tupper did.53 When studying the Old English Alfredian translations, Plummer trusted that Alfred’s additions to the Latin original ‘give us the clearest insight into his own character and modes of thought.’ And again: ‘When all deductions have been made, there remain enough [vernacular additions] that we may safely take as evidence of Alfred’s thought and feeling.’54 It is as if Plummer, a year after Liebermann’s challenge to his faith, treats Alfred as having revealingly misunderstood an oral Latin ritual, and then construes this as comparable to Alfred’s mistranslations of written Latin prose: as a potential glimpse into Alfred’s interior life. Even more to the point, it is as if the addition of to cyninge gehalgode to whatever it was the Pope actually said in his ninth century lingua romana is, for Plummer, like those additions in the Old English translations which ‘are due entirely to Alfred’s imagination and are intended to make clear to us how, in his view, the event narrated came about.’55 Liebermann notwithstanding, if the fable does epitomize Alfred’s understanding of his own life, then its retroactive insertion in the Chronicle can strengthen, not weaken, our faith that ælfred mec heht gewyrcan. For in that case this is not just the legendary Alfred speaking to us. This is the historical Alfred we quest. Alfred believes his own fable. Plummer cannot help hearing Alfred’s voice in the later 893–897 annals.56 He hears that same voice narrating this fable — speaking not in 853 but in the 890s. If the original source of this fable is indeed the historical Alfred then its typology, rightly understood, does offer us a true glimpse into his interior life. By substituting psychological for spiritual understanding, Plummer frees the fable from rigid chronology and redeems typology’s vertical lift. In Plummer’s the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had no intention of being controversial. The question of Alfred’s truthfulness or otherwise seems to me a red herring.’ Nelson, ‘Franks and English,’ pp. 143–144. 52 Plummer, Alfred, p. 72. 53 On Martin Tupper’s devotion to Alfred see ch. 1 above. 54 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 161, 177, 181. See ch. 7, p. 273, n. 38 below. It must be admitted that Plummer’s list of eight ‘very Alfredian’ passages (pp. 181–182) are actually very Tupperian nuggets of proverbial philosophy. 55 Plummer, Alfred, p. 161. 56 ‘I never can read the annals of 893–897 without seeming to hear the voice of King Alfred.’ Plummer, Alfred, p. 11. See above, ch. 1, p. 68, n. 121.

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imagination, what converts a childhood experience of an actual ritual into an adult story of an imagined royal anointing is its passage through Alfred’s memory, his mind, his heart, his Geist, his psyche — his Ego, his Superego, and his Id. In short, through his Unconscious. Dreamwork does not turn the spiritual figura into a hard fact, it converts it into a psychological figura. And so, although Plummer begins by confining the vertical lift of hagiography to a single clause, indeed to the single word cyninge, he ends up inviting us to situate cyninge in a psychological domain rather than in a purely horizontal dimension, to entertain the possibility that the young protagonist of the fable did foresee his own destiny, did vow to make his romantic fable come true, did see himself as King. This, to my way of thought, is what Plummer really means when he repeatedly predicates that Alfred holds in real history the place which romance assigns to Arthur.57 Plummer did not convince everyone. At the peak of the 1901 Millenary the learned Jesuit Herbert Thurston spoke up for the Roman Catholic branch of the cult of Alfred, especially for those who believe Popes do indeed confer kingdoms. In October 1901, while Plummer was delivering his Ford Lectures denying the papal anointing, the Jesuit journal The Month published Thurston’s meaty and well-timed article affirming it.58 His erudite essay is worth rescuing from oblivion, and not only for the delicacy of its casuistry.59 Consider, for example, the rhetoric of this opening move: 57 He says this first in the 1889 preliminary printing of Earle and Plummer, Chronicles, p. xiii, then again in 1899 in Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. 114 and again in Plummer, ‘Subjection to the Higher Powers,’ p. 210. In 1900 Conybeare began his Alfred in the Chroniclers with this contrast: ‘Through the mist of long-past ages, two heroic names shine out as the special glory of our island, each the peculiar possession of one of the two branches of the Aryan family whose fusion has made Britain what it is. The Celtic ideal has embodied itself in the character of Arthur, the Teutonic in that of Alfred. And it is characteristic of the genius of the two races, that while the individuality of Arthur, as expressed in Cymric legend, is almost wholly mythical, that of Alfred, as handed down by Anglo-Saxon story, is almost entirely historical. “He is a singular instance,” says Mr. Freeman, “of a prince who has become a hero of romance; who, as a hero of romance, has had countless imaginary exploits and imaginary institutions attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable.”’ Conybeare, Alfred, p. 1. More generally, on Arthur as Alfred’s rival, see Keynes, ‘The Cult.’ 58 Thurston, ‘Roman Sacring.’ Thurston was the latest of a series of Catholic scholars who studied the historical continuity between English Catholicism and the early Anglo-Saxon church. He was a prolific historian, liturgical scholar, and hagiographer, whose life stretched from the lifetime of Charles Dickens to the Blitz. His long and paradoxical career made him appear ‘almost an advocatus diaboli to many Catholics, and yet at the same time, an indomitable defenso fidei to many an incautious anti-Catholic writer.’ McMullin, ‘Thurston,’ p. 207. For more see Crehan, Thurston, and Heimann, ‘Thurston.’ 59 It c a n be acces sed on l i ne at ht t ps://w w w.goog le.com . au/ book s/ed it ion/ The_Month/K_ZAAQAAMAAJ.

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It is natural that on such an occasion [viz. the 1901 Millenary] those features in the life of a hero which seem less popular or less conspicuously patriotic, should be kept rather in the background. We need not accuse our Protestant friends of any malicious intent because they have dwelt but little upon Alfred’s Catholicism or upon his attitude towards Rome and the Papacy. But it may surely be pardoned in a [Jesuit] journal like The Month, if we do not here observe the same reticence. […] It may not be amiss to remind ourselves that he, who is by common consent the greatest and noblest monarch in our annals, was after all a Catholic prince of conspicuous piety, a man who heard daily Mass and burned candles uninterruptedly before his favorite relics. He it was who alone among our sovereigns received sacred unction in Rome at the hands of the Pope.60

A turning point in Thurston’s argument hinges on identifying a non sequitur which under other circumstances might have seemed obvious, namely the syllogism ‘A Pope says he did X, therefore he didn’t do Y.’ Yes, as Stubbs had established, we do have a letter from Pope Leo saying he invested Alfred as his godson ‘with the girdle [cingulum] and vestments of consulship, whatever that may mean.’61 But no, it does not follow that therefore he did not also anoint him king.62 It isn’t one or the other. He may have done both. Thurston’s expertise authorized him to compare the consecration of a king or bishop to the consecration of the eucharistic elements in the mass. He was a keen connoisseur of the exquisite minutiae of early medieval papal rituals, robes, and garbs. He devotes a third of his essay to the cingulum with which the Pope invested Alfred, proving that the festal garb of the consuls in the fifth century became the festal garb of kings and emperors from the ninth to the fifteenth. Therefore the Pope, in investing the boy Alfred with what he called a consul’s robes, 60 Thurston, ‘Roman Sacring,’ pp. 337–338. 61 ‘Whatever that may mean’ is Stubbs’ turn of phrase, Gesta Regum, II, p. 42. 62 ‘Supposing even that Pope Leo’s letter to Ethelwulf proves that no royal consecration in the ordinary sense had taken place before the time it was despatched, it is not in any way inconsistent with the possibility that such an unctio regalis was imparted at a later date. The passage quoted […] is but an extract. We have no right to draw inferences not only from what it says, but from what it omits to say. For anything we know about the matter the Pope may have gone on to declare in the very next sentence that it was his intention to crown the child and to anoint him when he had resided for a somewhat longer period at the Papal Court.’ Thurston, ‘Roman Sacring,’ p. 341. This is the letter Janet Nelson first proved a forgery, then changed her mind; see above nn. 46 and 51.

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was very probably attiring him as the Emperor himself was attired on state occasions.63

For his punchline he quotes these lines from England’s Darling, by Alfred Austin, the Poet Laureate: ‘Nay sign a cross upon your brow and sleep; | Since by Pope Leo he was hallowed king, | Heaven keeps a watch upon his chosen head.’ I will let Thurston take the floor again at the end of the next chapter, ‘Fix the Date.’64 In 1904, without naming Plummer, Stevenson accepted the thrust of his psychological conjecture, He allowed for typological prefiguration and fulfilment in Alfred’s mind: It would seem that it was the ceremony of creation as consul that was misunderstood by Alfred or by the writer of this entry in the Chron. as a coronation as king. This entry cannot well have been written until after Alfred’s accession to the throne in 871, and it is possible that he regarded his coronation in England as the consummation of the ceremony at Rome. In any case it is difficult to reject the theory that we can detect his influence in this strange entry.65

But on the other hand, in 1967 Janet Nelson wrote: Alfred could not have confused another ceremony with royal anointing; but he could deliberately have transformed the one into the other. […] [A mere blessing] could have been quietly converted forty years later into a consecration and publicized as such. [… ] This amounts, admittedly, to crediting Alfred and his circle of advisers with the deliberate falsification of events; but this seems the most plausible explanation of the Chronicle entry for 853, and so of Asser’s account too.66

In 1983 the attitude of professional historians who treat the papal anointing as marginal to our understanding of the Chronicle was summed up by Keynes and Lapidge: 63 Thurston, ‘Roman Sacring,’ p. 348. 64 Ch. 3, p. 154, n. 158. 65 WHS, p. 181. 66 Nelson, ‘The Problem,’ p. 158. But (as noted above, nn. 46, 51, 62) by 1991 she had changed her mind: ‘The question of Alfred’s truthfulness or otherwise seems to me a red herring.’

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In the belief that only someone outside the king’s circle would have misunderstood the nature of the ceremony, or conversely, that only someone within the king’s circle would have misrepresented it, this claim that Alfred was anointed king in 853 is regularly cited in the discussion about the authorship of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; but whether the error is deliberate or not, the chronicler probably intended merely to convey that Alfred had been marked out for kingship when still a young boy, in much the same way as heavenly signs attended the birth of those who were to become saints (and therefore the claim signifies no more than that this annal in its received form was written when Alfred was king).67

In other words, what is represented as foresight, prefiguration, prediction, was actually hindsight, postfiguration, retrodiction. The hagiographic touch merely proves that someone tied the chronological knot not proleptically in 853 but retroactively some time after Alfred had taken the throne in 871. The crude question whose lie is this? is thus refined into whose foresight? whose hindsight? At bottom, whose insight? Plummer answers this question when he winds up his account of the fable by invoking Aelred’s figural Cistercian exegesis, which endows the Pope with the gift of prophesy. Although ‘humanly speaking, it was of course impossible that Alfred’s succession to the West Saxon throne should have been foreseen in 853’ — even by a Pope — Plummer nevertheless ends up conjecturing that what in hindsight was retroactively represented as foresight may have been Alfred’s own spiritual, or call it, if you prefer, psychological, insight: When in the course of years Alfred inherited his father’s throne, he, and others, may well have seen in the action of him who was ‘high priest that same year,’ a prophetic significance; just as St. John traces a higher inspiration in words, which, in the intention of the speaker, simply laid down the doctrine of political expediency in its most brutal form.68

By alluding to the ‘high priest that same year,’ Plummer thus hints at the possibility that Alfred’s self-understanding may be the origin of the inner 67 Keynes and Lapidge, Asser, p. 232, n. 19. (My italics.) 68 Plummer cites John 11.49–52: ‘But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad.’ Plummer, Alfred, p. 74.

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typology which structures the Chronicle’s narrative of his life. In 1998, in his well-regarded biography of Alfred, Richard Abels carefully spelled out this possibility in greater detail: Youthful ‘memories’ can be deceptive. […] Alfred seems to have misremembered or misrepresented the most extraordinary event in his early life: his reception by Pope Leo IV during the first of his childhood pilgrimages to Rome. […] Enough scholarly ink has been spilled on the subject to drown a colloquium of graduate students. […] The problem has so disturbed historians that some have rejected the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a private compilation originating far from the king’s court69 and Asser’s Life as a forgery. Others have taken the opposite tack and seen the error as Alfred’s clever use of ‘propaganda’. The truth of the matter is, of course, impossible to establish. But it seems to me that Alfred, looking back from the vantage point of the early 890’s, may have come to believe that he had, indeed, been anointed king as a boy. Experts on early medieval liturgy and inauguration rituals are sceptical that anyone could mistake the rite of confirmation for a royal consecration. But an aging man recalling an event from his early childhood, forty years before, might well have done so. One can easily imagine Alfred reshaping the memories of his youth to conform to the realities of his adult life.70

And then he explores in greater depth Plummer’s hint that biblical typology shaped Alfred’s personal private typologie interne, his psychological understanding of his own life: For Alfred it could have been hardly coincidental that his life bore striking parallels to that of King David, in whose Psalms he found special solace and meaning. Like David, he had soared above his older brothers and achieved greatness as king after being driven into the wastelands. And like the Hebrew king, he had smashed his heathen enemies and restored the worship of God in his kingdom. Alfred knew from Holy Scripture that David had been marked out in his youth by the prophet Samuel, who had selected him out of all his brothers to be anointed king, years before he actually ascended the throne. Possibly Alfred ‘remembered’ the ceremony in Rome decades before as similarly prefiguring his unexpected and divinely ordained kingship. Alfred, like Bede, understood the ‘true law 69 Abels is alluding to Sir Frank Stenton and Dorothy Whitelock. 70 Abels, Alfred, p. 61

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of history’ as revealing the underlying spiritual truth in human actions. This, of course, is speculation, but it fits well with Alfred’s vision of himself and his life as revealed through his writings.71

A consensus is now emerging among Alfredian scholars that Alfred in effect authored his own hagiography, that the cult of the legendary Alfred which has lasted over a thousand years was founded by the historical Alfred himself, that he, so to speak, believed in his legendary namesake. The hypothesis that Alfred was, as it were, the meta-redactor of all his works — the Chronicle, the Laws, the Works, even the Life — is now being once again seriously debated. Like Aelred, and unlike Plummer, I do not find it hard to imagine the Pope himself prognosticating young Alfred’s future greatness from, as Hume puts it, the appearances of Alfred’s pregnant genius. I appreciate Hume’s verb prognosticate. It can bear the sense of biblical prophesy, and yet in its medical sense it can secularize the rhetorical representation of insight as if it were foresight. It can help flatten the vertical lift of typology and teleology. Just as a doctor can deliver a professional judgment about the expected development of a disease, so Leo can contemplate the boy and be vouchsafed a certain kind of secular insight, call it professional insight, to prognosticate the development of virtue and predict that this youth will go far and be a great man some day. I am inclined to let my wild and frolic fancy fly further off the chronological axis, to redeem a little more of the forfeited domain. Why, I wonder, does Alfred have to wait till his old age before retroactively shaping his memories? Maybe he shapes them in advance. Maybe he jumps the gun. Maybe he too prognosticates. Maybe before he even takes the throne he already believes the fable. When he encounters all those people on the way to Rome and back, when he experiences the Pope and others in Rome, maybe that’s when he foresees his own future greatness and vows, ‘One day I too will be a great king.’ Even, I dare say, ‘One day I will be Pope.’ Such a vow has doubtless been made in vain by many others. But history is written by the winners, those who remember their youthful vows and fulfil them. In his intriguing 2006 essay on what serious biographers of Alfred have to go through to discipline their imagination, Richard Abels ends up with the following penetrating insight:

71 Abels, Alfred, p. 62.

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The narratives told by these very different historians [Asser, Plummer, Smyth, and Abels himself] are, when all is said and done, remarkably similar. This, I believe, is because the narrative is common to the sources that underlie all three historical accounts, sources that ultimately derive from Alfred’s court. These are the stories that Alfred himself wanted told to preserve his ‘memory in good works’. In other words, the underlying narrative which has seduced so many historians, including me, is Alfred’s own narrative — the story and image that he and his courtiers shaped to make sense of his life. This, of course, is not to say that this story and image are historical truth, only that it is the closest to historical truth that the surviving sources will permit us to get — and the closest, I believe, that Alfred wanted us to get.72

To which I add: what if this is as close as Alfred himself could get to the meaning of his life? If Alfred already believed his own fable when young, I take pleasure in wondering whether he, like Joseph, told his parents and his brothers. How did they respond? Did he, like Joseph, dream his future? Was it dreamwork that turned fact into fiction, converted the memory of an experience into a figura? Did he say ‘Lo! I dreamt the Pope anointed me King and you all bowed down to me’?73 Such pleasant flights of the imagination can make Plummer’s psychological conjecture more and more attractive. If we are content to say, with Martin Tupper, that it is far more sensible to believe than to doubt, then we can rejoice that what we have here, in this fable, in this memory, in this typology, is an authentic relic of Alfred’s psychological reality, a relic which can contain the meaning of his life and of the reliquary in which he himself chose to enshrine it, the Parker Chronicle which, quite rightly, thrilled the Dean of Ely. But since it is still, after all, more learned to suspect the allure of mythopoesy, we will want a justification firmer than faith alone. We want proof that 72 Abels, ‘Imagination,’ p. 75. 73 Sir John Spelman: ‘Yet I find in the Apology for Oxford [lib. II. § . 197], (for the MS. itself I have not seen,) that an incertain Author in his Marginal Notes upon Ranulph Higden affirms, that Æthelwolf had such Direction from an Angel in a Dream, in these words: Atulphe Rex dilecte Dei, quid moraris? mitte filium post-genitum ad Rom. Pontificem, ut ab ipso inungatur in Regem Anglorum, et sic ab ipso procedat unctio regalis ad ceteros Reges ipsius regni in perpetuum duratura. Omnipotens Dominus filium tuum elegit in principem super Anglos, quia regnum Angliæ est regnum Dei in illo, et dic Swithuno quod ipse vadat cum filio tuo ad Rom. Pont. quod ipse homo Justus est in conspectu Domini, &c. And this saith that Note is in the life of St. Alfred writt by St. Neotus.’ Spelman, Ælfred, p. 18. Cf. p. 70, n. 4 above.

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we are on the right track here, that we are coming closer to understanding Alfred’s psychology. To test Plummer’s conjecture I want to open the Life and the Works and look for independent evidence that Alfred’s youthful memories did nourish his faith in the curve of his own destiny, or even vice versa that his faith in the curve of his own destiny nourished his memories. I take on that challenge in Parts II and III below. But first there remains, alas! one last legendary accretion to be expunged, one f inal cobweb to remove. Plummer and Stevenson were prodigious pioneers in strict historical criticism of the primary sources of the Alfred legend, but their work was not impeccable. They left unpruned the romantic image of Alfred as a mere infant in Rome. They failed to free the historical Alfred from this romantic motif, and instead lodged it deep into the current foundations of Alfredian scholarship not as romance but as hard fact. Their mistaken conviction that they could discover and use Alfred’s true birthdate as a guard against mytho-poesy has had uncorrected consequences. One, as we shall see in Part II below, is our tendency to misunderstand the innovative game Asser plays by pivoting back and forth from the horizontal to the vertical dimensions, from chronology to hagiography and back. Another is that they taught us to believe more firmly than ever that Æthelwulf sent to Rome a mere puerulus no more than five years old. This skews how we imagine Alfred’s adult memories of Rome, as well as how we reconstruct both the purpose of his childhood pilgrimage and the chronology of his subsequent career — how, in the end, we make sense of Alfred’s life as a whole. Why Plummer and Stevenson refrained from expunging this romantic motif, and at what cost, is the topic of the next chapter.

3

Fix the Date We can easily picture the historian as he stumbles about in the past, stubbing his toe on the hard facts if he doesn’t watch out. I wish to inquire whether the historical fact is really as hard and stable as it is often supposed to be. — CARL BECKER It is generally agreed that no one has ever edited medieval texts more beautifully or gracefully than Stubbs; no one has more unblinkingly adhered to the knowable ‘fact.’ — ROBERT BRENTANO

Abstract This chapter constitutes a case history of how, thanks to scholarship, a cult can collectively construct a hard fact. Because Victorian historians relied on strict chronology as an antidote to hagiography, they elected the Old English Chronicle to replace Asser’s hagiographic Latin Life of Alfred as the prime reliquary for the cult of the historical Alfred. Plummer found Alfred’s true birthdate not in the Life but the Chronicle. This dialectic of hagiography and chronology illuminates how and why the question of the legendary Alfred’s historical birthdate was first posed in 1876 by the nouveau riche autodidact Henry Howorth in his intense controversy with the aristocratic Roman Catholic Bishop William Clifford and then professionally, but shortsightedly, resolved by Plummer in 1901. Keywords: papal infallibility, Vatican I, antiquarianism, Bishop William Stubbs, Henry Howorth, Bishop William Clifford

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH03

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Harmony from dissonance One can start with a thrill of emotion. One can start with a legend. Or one can start with a hard fact. The challenge of reaching consensus on how old Alfred was when he went to Rome in 853 played a crucial (now long forgotten) role in establishing the relation between the Life and the Chronicle. In 1889 Stubbs suggested ca. 842 as a plausible date for Alfred’s birth, making it easier to suspend disbelief in Asser’s stories of Alfred’s childhood. The context in which the question of Alfred’s true birthdate was posed by Stubbs and then definitively but defectively answered by Plummer illuminates the dialectic of hagiography and chronology in the cult of Alfred the Great. In 1901 Plummer changed Alfred’s canonical birthdate from 849 to 848. The 849 date came from the Life, 848 from the Chronicle. On the face of it, Plummer’s change in chronology looks trivial. Under normal circumstances, historians would not pretend to pin down with such precision and passion the year in which an Anglo-Saxon king was actually born. Alfred’s case is exceptional. But so were the circumstances under which Plummer felt the need to stake his claim that he had fixed the date. In my recent essay ‘Then Alfred Took the Throne and Then What? Parker’s Error and Plummer’s Blind Spot’ I diagnosed the syntactical mirage on which Plummer’s 848 date depends.1 And in a companion article, ‘Born in the Margin: The Chronological Scaffolding of Asser’s Vita Ælfredi,’ I concluded that someone other than Asser added the Life’s unusual Anno Ælfredi scaffolding to the Anno Domini scaffolding which Asser copied from the Chronicle.2 Both the 848 and the 849 birthdates are, at best, conjectures vulnerable to critical scrutiny. Neither one is a hard fact. The evidence does not compel us to believe that we know when Alfred was born. My aim in this chapter is to understand how and why the choice between 849 and 848 became a site of ideological struggle in the second half of the nineteenth century — a choice between the Life and the Chronicle, between childhood and adulthood, between hagiography and chronology, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between Celt and Anglo-Saxon. What, I ask, made Plummer and Stevenson curtail their disciplined textual criticism, the severe logical scrutiny called for by their gossamer-thin evidence? Why was it so important to prove that one of these two chronologically adjacent dates was a hard fact and the other was not? Why was it taboo to 1 2

Kalmar, ‘And Then What?’ Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin.’

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acknowledge, calmly, that we cannot know precisely when the historical Alfred was actually born? This chapter constitutes a case history of how, thanks to scholarship, a cult can collectively construct a hard fact. 1852 Six chroniclers For centuries the 849 birthdate had passed innocuously enough from chronicle to chronicle, from history to history, until 1876 when Henry Howorth astutely identified the Life as the birthdate’s original source and insisted that ‘pseudo-Asser’ had no clue as to when Alfred was born. What the evidence looked like and how it was interpreted before Howorth’s iconoclastic critique can be seen in the 128-page ‘Harmony of the Chroniclers During the Life of King Alfred: A. D. 849–90’ compiled by John Allen Giles for the opening section of his 1852 Jubilee Edition of Alfred’s Works.3 Giles read the Life as a chronicle among the chronicles: These six chronicles [the ‘Saxon Chronicle,’ Asser, Ethelwerd, Florence, Huntingdon, and Simeon] form the ground work of our authority for the period of English history preceding the times in which their authors lived. In the ‘Harmony’ their narratives will be arranged in parallel columns; for which mode of treatment, they are admirably adapted by the tabular form of annals into which they were originally thrown by their authors.4

Many of the problematic misunderstandings of the Life since 1876 have been guided by this misleading image of Asser trying to throw his hagiographic narrative into the tabular form of annals. Historical criticism as understood by Giles did not yet ask who copied from whom, let alone in what order. He was, as I remarked above, naïvely innocent of elementary source criticism.5 He valued every chronicler as an independent witness. His goal was to harmonize them. It is necessary to judge each of them on his own merits, and constantly to refer to those tests which criticism supplies, as the best means of eliciting the truth. The most approved of these methods is certainly to compare one chronicle with another; for if, by this process, all are found to be at 3 On which see ch. 1 above, pp. 47–50. 4 Giles, Works, I.5. I am sure that Giles originally compiled this for his own use in writing his Life and Times of Alfred the Great, where he quotes and cites the six chroniclers page after page. 5 See above, ch. 1, p. 48, n. 53

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variance, we may safely say that no satisfactory inference can be deduced; but if, on the contrary, all agree in the main points of their narratives, it is an obvious result that they are all founded upon a ground-work of truth.6

His synoptic table works like a Harmony of the Gospels. You can see in precise detail what is in all of them, what in just some, what in one alone. Giles is not seeking to establish the original source of an item, let alone a stemma of its descent to those who directly or indirectly draw from that source. He finds it more sensible to believe that if something is said to have happened, and all six witnesses say it did, then it obviously happened. Look at the first page of his ‘Harmony’ and you see at a glance that the 849 birthdate is shared by three of his six chroniclers — Asser, Florence and Simeon — and therefore has, by Giles’s method, at least a fifty-fifty chance of being founded upon a groundwork of truth.7 The vernacular ‘Saxon Chronicle,’ on the other hand, has no annal for 849, and thus no birthdate for Alfred. We do not, when we first see him, on his pilgrimage to Rome s.a. 853, know how old he is. This puts the ‘Saxon Chronicle’ at variance with the other three. Should it therefore induce a modicum of doubt on their testimony? Not for Giles: It is very remarkable that the [Saxon] chronicle does not notice the birth of Alfred in 849, but is highly laudatory of him under 901 the year of his death, and for several preceding years. The inference, which I draw from this fact, is, that the events of 849 and following years were written before Alfred’s fame was established, and that those of 901 and the years immediately preceding were written by some contemporary when Alfred’s reputation was at its height.8 6 Giles Works, I.2. 7 The year 849 was the very first thing one would have seen in the Cotton MS of the Life. But Giles’s reliance on scissors-and-paste inevitably obscures the interesting fact that in Simeon’s chronicle 849 is the annal number under which Alfred enters the chronicle, whereas in Florence’s (i.e. John of Worcester’s) chronicle, ‘in the manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College 157) the Marianan annal number is [systematically] written on the left of the first line of the annal, the Dionysiac on the right. [John] inserts most of the biographical matter relating to Alfred under 871 ad, the Dionysiac year of Alfred’s accession recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. But when he introduces Alfred’s genealogy with the sentence Angulsaxonum rex Aelfredus in illa paga que nominatur Berrocscire nascitur he inserts it, apparently accidentally, under the Marianan year 871, which is opposite the Dionysiac ad 849.’ Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 96 and n. 37. See Darlington and McGurk, John of Worcester, II.260. 8 Giles Works, I.3.

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Here we see his romantic naïveté. He seems to assume that even though Alfred was ‘born a king’ his birth was not considered worthy of an annal.9 But Alfred was not born a king. None of the versions of the Old English Chronicle record a royal birth, for the rather obvious reason that when a boy was born no one could know whether he was destined to be king. Not even when a king’s reputation was at its height was his birth retroactively inserted into an old annal. The problematic relation between the Chronicle and the Life which has perturbed Alfredian Studies from Howorth’s 1876 attack to the present was already, by 1852, becoming an issue, a site of struggle. The respected Methodist antiquary Thomas Wright (1810–1877), a member of Giles’s Jubilee Committee, had argued in 1841 that the Life was a forgery. His (mistaken) premise was that the Chronicle ‘was not composed before the beginning of the tenth century, and it is more probable that it is the work of a later period.’ The Life copied from the Chronicle; ergo whoever wrote it was only pretending to be Asser. QED.10 Giles preferred to sit on the fence. He evaded taking sides between the Methodist Thomas Wright and the distinguished Catholic historian John Lingard (1771–1851). Lingard’s sound grasp of the fundamental principles of source criticism put him far in advance of his contemporaries.11 In 1845, when he revised, at the age of seventy-four, his History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (first published in 1806), he inserted a judicious eight-page Note on Asser (pp. 420–428) in response to Wright’s recent doubts. To clarify the choice faced by any rigorous historian, he first invokes the elementary principle that if two texts, A and B, share X in common then either A drew from B, or B from A, or else both A and B drew from a common source: It should be observed, that the chronological entries in Asser’s work bear a striking resemblance to the corresponding entries in the Saxon Chronicle. The former are indeed more full; they manifest a more intimate acquaintance with the court of Wessex, and with the fortunes of its princes; but they are frequently the same in substance, and occasionally so nearly identical in matter and manner, that it is impossible not to see that either one of the two writers translated from the other, or that both drew from one common source. The latter appears to me the more probable 9 ‘The least of whose virtues was to have been born a king’; see above ch. 1, p. 50, n. 66. 10 Wright, ‘Asser.’ 11 Jones, Lingard.

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supposition. […] I have entered into this detail, that the reader may be the better able to judge of a question which has lately been raised by Mr. Wright […] whether the work attributed to Asser was in reality written by that prelate, or by any one contemporary with Alfred.12

And then he goes on to emphasize how much is at stake, given that Asser is a primary source for all the later chronicles and historians: Now it should be remembered that it is on the work attributed to Asser that the reputation of Alfred is founded. Destroy its credit, and his fame is gone. You may perhaps learn from others a few particulars respecting his life, and his perpetual struggle with the Danes for the independence of his country; but it is to the pages of Asser alone that his panegyrists, both ancient and modern, resort for the leading traits in his character, his domestic policy, his ardour in the pursuit of learning, and his efforts for the improvement of his people. On this account I may be allowed to inquire, whether the premises set forth by Mr. Wright warrant the conclusions which he seeks to draw from them.13

His analysis concludes that Asser is who he pretends to be. The difficulties suggested by Wright are an illusion: [They] cannot be of sufficient weight to deprive Asser of his claim to a work which has gone under his name for eight centuries, and which bears indisputable evidence of having been written by a foreign scholar, high in the confidence and frequently resident in the court of King Alfred; such, in fact, as Asser represents himself to have been.14

In 1848, and again in 1852, Giles refers to Lingard’s argument.15 He realizes that his Harmony shows that Asser’s ‘historical notices are in many places identical in language with the other chroniclers of this period, and everywhere correspond most remarkably; as if all had been drawn from some common original.’ But he does not care to find out whether that common original of all the others was Asser, and if so how his language passed from one to the next, let alone whether the Saxon Chronicle was his original 12 Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, II, p. 423. 13 Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, II, p. 425. Lingard’s emphases. 14 Lingard, Anglo-Saxon Church, II, p. 428. 15 Giles, Six Chronicles, p. vi. Giles, Works, p. 4.

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source. In particular, he holds back from concluding that either Simeon and Florence (and a fortiori later chroniclers) got the 849 date from Asser, or else if all three got it from some other source it was not from the Chronicle. In short he is reluctant to let the 849 date stand or fall with Asser’s credit. It’s not only that in the euphoria of the 1849 Jubilee Giles needs the thrill of believing Alfred was born exactly a thousand years ago. It’s also that he’s lax about his professed principles. ‘He lacked critical rigour and much of his writing was done as task work for booksellers, so that his texts are careless, badly organized, and lack proper apparatus.’16 In practice he disregards ‘those tests which criticism supplies’ and is instead temperamentally inclined to give every chronicler the benefit of the doubt. If one chronicler alone says something happened, his solitary voice is, for Giles, nonetheless worth listening to. Even when a scholar says no, it isn’t. Giles was not judgmental about other people’s peccadilloes. He was a remarkably open-minded curate. At Oxford he had been headed for a brilliant career in Law, but he was the eldest of sixteen children, and (to quote from his obituary) ‘in order to retain his fellowship at Corpus and the income attached to it, he was persuaded by his parents to take orders, a calling for which he had no inclination, and for which he was little suited.’17 He writes in his memoirs that his father caused all his children to imbibe from their earliest years those principles of government which have always been held by the Tory party. In one particular alone I have deviated from those principles, and can no longer uphold the extreme views, which have always characterized the High Church party in this country. I do not admit that our English Church has the right to exercise the claim of infallibility, or to close the mouth of private judgement: it is a progressive institution, and every Englishman, whether he attends church or chapel, is a member of the English church, and has as great a right to hold his own opinion as the Sovereign upon the throne, or the Archbishop of Canterbury or York.18

His open-hearted good nature led to his scandalous imprisonment in 1855 for forging the wedding certificate of a pregnant woman: 16 Blair, ‘Giles.’ For an elegant and entertaining study of Giles as a prolific and idiosyncratic scholar, see now Vincent, ‘Giles.’ 17 See his obituary in Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, 30 (1884), pp. 166–168, quoted by Bromwich, Giles, p. ix, n. 13. 18 Bromwich, Giles, p. 40.

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Disaffection with the church helps to explain his disastrous act of good nature on 5 October 1854, when he performed the marriage of one of his printing girls (who had requested secrecy to avoid ‘rough music’) outside the legal hours, falsif ied its date in the parish register, falsely entered that it was performed by licence, and forged the mark of a witness who was not present. Local reactions show an irritation with his conduct as curate — one of the vicars wrote to Wilberforce rejoicing ‘that we are freed for ever from the ministrations of one who for many reasons was quite unf itted for his off ice’ — and Giles’s wild attempts to influence witnesses and obscure the facts made matters worse. On 6 March 1855 he was tried at Oxford assizes. He spoke on his own behalf; Wilberforce also spoke for him, though for the rest of his life Giles was to blame him as a malicious instigator of the prosecution. Giles was found guilty, but strongly recommended to mercy; Lord Campbell sentenced him to a year’s imprisonment in Oxford Castle. There was much sympathy for him in the university and county, and after three months’ imprisonment he was released by royal warrant on 3 June.19

All in all, it is as if he is reluctant to deny forgers a voice. And so, sitting on the fence in 1852, he laments the potential silencing of Asser’s voice: But, as if no part of history is ever to be free from suspicion, or from difficulty, a doubt has been raised concerning the authenticity of this work. […] But we have neither time nor space to enter further into this question. As the work has been edited by Petrie, so has it been here translated, and the reader, taking it upon its own merits, will find therein much of interest about our glorious king, concerning whom he will lament with me that all we know is so little, so unsatisfying.20

From Rome to Athelney 1870 Vatican I: The invention of tradition On January 28, 1870, a few weeks after Pope Pius IX had opened the Twentieth Oecumenical Council now known as Vatican I, John Henry Newman wrote a 19 Blair, ‘Giles.’ 20 Giles, Six Chronicles, p. vi.

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famous private letter to Bishop Ullathorne.21 ‘A letter to Ullathorne gave him not just an excuse to have his say but an opportunity to do this on the high and unassailable ground of a privileged communication with his Bishop.’22 It was one of the most confidential letters that he ever wrote in his life.23 Two eventful months later Bishop Clifford caused a stir around the world by nonetheless leaking it to the public.24 Newman’s candid characterization of Manning’s clique as an aggressive and insolent faction catalyzed the crisis of faith and doubt in the Pope’s infallibility: What have we done to be treated, as the faithful never were treated before? When has definition of doctrine de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern painful necessity? Why should an aggressive and insolent faction be allowed to make the heart of the just to mourn, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful? Why can’t we be let alone, when we have pursued peace, and thought no evil? I assure you, my dear Lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another […]; one day determining to give up all theology as a bad job, and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable; at another tempted to believe all the worst which a book like Janus [= Döllinger] says; others doubting about the capacity possessed by Bishops, drawn from all corners of the earth, to judge what is fitting for European society, and then again angry with the Holy See for listening to the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists, and converts.25

Bishop Clifford was the most determined English anti-infallibilist,26 the bravest and best of the English theologians,27 the very soul of chivalry.28 ‘He was the most capable and the most learned among the bishops in theology and canon law.’29 ‘His total contribution at the Council far exceeded 21 On Vatican I, see now O’Malley, Vatican I and O’Malley, Bishops. Ullathorne represented ‘the yeoman reactions, the stolid, prosaic, humorous character and the long-rooted traditions of Catholicism in England.’ Mathew, Catholicism in England, p. 191. 22 Page, Newman, p. 85. 23 Newman to Charlotte Wood, 14 April 1870, cited by Wilcox, Spiritual Director, p. 182, n. 115. 24 On the possibility that Ullathorne himself may have been involved in the leak of Newman’s letter, see Page, Newman, p. 92. 25 Page, Newman, p. 86. 26 Page, Newman, p. 92. 27 Chadwick, Popes, p. 207. 28 Bishop Kerry to Newman, letter of February 20, 1870: Butler, History of the Vatican Council, II, p. 30, quoted by Hughes ‘Bishops,’ p. 201. 29 Cwiekowski, English Bishops, p. 47.

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that of all the other English bishops combined.’30 His fluency in Latin and Italian, his doctorates in Philosophy and Divinity, and his specialized knowledge of medieval Canon Law empowered him to keep stressing the fact that the bishops’ deliberations at Vatican I ‘were going beyond the terms of reference as laid down in the Bull summoning the Council and were therefore in danger of being invalid.’31 Along with Newman and Ullathorne, and their enemy Manning, Clifford can be regarded as one of the four most outstanding Catholic prelates of the late nineteenth century church in England.32 The balance Clifford sought between bishopcentered and pope-centered ecclesiology was posthumously vindicated by Vatican II. Descended from both Norman and Anglo-Saxon nobility, Clifford was an irrefrangibly aristocratic Englishman. His mother was a Weld, his father a Clifford. The Welds and Cliffords intermarried. The Cliffords still trace their descent all the way back to Robert, Duke of Normandy, whose grandson came over with his cousin William the Conqueror and fought against the legendary Anglo-Saxon Eadric the Wild from whom in turn the Welds, an ancient family with branches in England and the USA,33 trace their descent.34 His conscientious opposition to Pio Nono’s desires at Vatican I was rendered all the more poignant by the close relationship between the papacy and Clifford and his grandfather Cardinal Weld and his great-grandfather Thomas Weld the Elder, said to have been the second largest landowner in England.35 Thomas Weld [the Elder] (1750–1810), of Lulworth in Dorset, is remembered today principally on three counts: his rôle as the founder of Stonyhurst College in 1794; his benefactions to religious orders at the height of the French revolution as they fled from political upheaval and danger in continental Europe; and his friendship with George III, including his hosting of several visits of the king to Lulworth Castle in the 1790s. Weld’s munif icence in making available his Lancashire seat, Stonyhurst, to 30 Harding, Clifford, p. 142. Harding provides invaluable English translations of Clifford’s most important (Latin) addresses to the Council. 31 Harding, Clifford, p. 32. 32 Harding, ‘Clifford.’ 33 The most prominent living member of this family in the USA is William Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts. 34 For details on the Cliffords, see Clifford, The House of Clifford. 35 Mathew, Catholicism in England, p. 157.

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the English ex-Jesuit ‘Gentlemen of Liège’ has received attention from historians.36

Clifford’s grandfather Cardinal Thomas Weld (1773–1837), the eldest of the Elder’s many children, came to be known as the Cardinal of the Seven Sacraments because he had been both married and ordained. In 1815 the death of his wife (née Lucy-Bridget Clifford) ‘left him at liberty to embrace the ecclesiastical state.’37 He was ordained priest in 1821. And then on his trip to Rome with his dying daughter and her children in 1830, he was unexpectedly told by Cardinal Alboni that Pius VIII had decided to admit him into the College of Cardinals. His grandson William Clifford, then seven years old, was with him at the time. Cardinal Weld’s wealth allowed him to set up a sumptuous lifestyle for himself and his grandchildren in the Palazzo Odescalchi, ‘splendidly furnished, and periodically filled by the aristocracy of Rome, native and foreign, and by large numbers of his fellow-countrymen.’38 And so, after Pio Nono restored the Catholic Hierarchy in England in 1850, Cardinal Weld’s grandson William Clifford was already very much a personaggio; for the brilliant and scholarly priest was also the son of Lord Clifford of Chudleigh, and Lord Clifford, a Devon magnate, was indeed a power in that age when peers really led the social and political life of the communities where their properties lay. And when [Clifford] finally settled to study for the priesthood he went to Rome, to the famous Accademia for Noble Ecclesiastics. This was in 1840 [when Clifford was seventeen]. […] In the next ten years, spent continually at Rome, Clifford, to whom all houses were open, for Cardinal Weld had been his uncle [as well as his grandfather] and he had relatives by marriage among the Papal aristocracy, made good use of his time in every respect. He laid the foundations of a really good formation, both in theology and canon law; he became an accomplished Italian speaker;39 and he learned the business of finding his way about in that world of the Curia Romana where to live is itself a great art. 40

36 Whitehead, ‘Weld.’ 37 Cooper, ‘Weld.’ 38 Wiseman, Recollections, p. 244. 39 He had a slight speech impediment, but not when he discoursed in Italian or Latin — only in English. 40 Hughes ‘Bishops,’ p. 199.

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The close bond that then developed between young William Clifford and Pio Nono was made public in 1857 when, seven years after restoring the Catholic hierarchy in England, Pio Nono, motu proprio, consecrated him in the Sistine Chapel as Bishop of Clifton. 41 The Tablet reported that the Holy Father ‘expressed his particular satisfaction in conferring his honour on the son of Lord Clifford, and the grandson of Cardinal Weld, two English Catholics who have both deserved so well of the Church.’42 At thirty-three, Clifford was the youngest Catholic bishop to be appointed in England since the Reformation. His father Lord Clifford proudly wrote to him, ‘Ever since I heard that Pio Nono was the first pope since St Gregory the Great who had consecrated with his own hands an English Bishop, I have had those words ringing in my ears and making them tingle.’43 In 1870, as the Vatican Council’s great struggle came to a climax it became clear that Clifford and the Minority had been defeated. The Definition of Papal Infallibility would pass the final vote. Manning had won. Clifford urged all the Minority bishops to vote non placet. But instead by deciding to leave Rome before it took place they abstained from the final vote altogether. 44 In the aftermath Clifford’s principled public defeat made him a center of attention: By absenting himself from the public session of a General Council in the proceedings of which he had played no small part, he had demonstrated in the most public way possible — short of registering a non placet vote — his disapproval of what was being enacted. And yet, as everyone knew and as Bishop Amherst had been at pains to point out to the Pope himself, the Church had no son more loyal than William Clifford. What, therefore, would he do?45

41 Harding, Clifford, pp. 32–45 traces in characteristically minute detail the ‘tortuous route’ by which the choice of Clifford to cope with the disastrous diocesan debt of the see of Clifton was finally made. On Pio Nono see now Kertzer, Pius IX. 42 The Tablet, February 28, 1857, quoted by Harding, Clifford, p. 43, n. 38. ‘It is only fair to add,’ comments the Clifford family historian, ‘that his appointment was based upon his financial and social position as much as upon his personal intellect and brilliance.’ Clifford, The House of Clifford, p. 183. Although it is true that Bishop Clifford personally paid off the disastrous diocesan debt, Harding feels it necessary to note that ‘in the records of Propaganda relating to the appointment no mention is made either of Clifford’s social position or of his ability personally to help pay off the diocesan debt.’ Harding, p. 41, n. 31. 43 Harding, Clifford, pp. 44–45. (Italics original.) 44 O’Malley, Vatican I, pp. 214–222. 45 Harding, Clifford, p. 195.

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1871–1875 Athelney: What would Alfred do? The triumphant Manning ruthlessly imposed on the English hierarchy the Invention of Tradition which Clifford witnessed at Vatican I. Harding, Page, and Cziekowski have explored in close detail how Clifford coped with the calamity of his defeat. The crisis he experienced after returning to his diocese in England is well-documented, especially in his correspondence with Newman. Clifford was the last English bishop to write the mandatory epistle enforcing Papal Infallibility as a tenet of faith. Three years later Gladstone publicly expostulated that the promulgation of Papal Infallibility made it impossible for any Roman Catholic to remain a thorough Englishman. 46 Gladstone’s tract sold 150,000 copies in a couple of months. Clifford and Newman were under increasing pressure to take the lead in demonstrating how deeply mistaken Gladstone was. Between 1871 and 1877, Clifford’s ‘conscious Englishness’ found solace and inspiration in reliving inwardly every minute detail of the tactics and strategy implemented by Alfred in his great struggle after the calamity of his defeat by the violent Vikings in 877. 47 For example: But is it true that Alfred hid himself, and forsook his post in the hour of his country’s greatest need? Far from it! Though the people were panicstricken by the sudden inroad of the Danes, Alfred never lost courage or despaired of his country. […] Three things are clear from these passages. 1st. If during those eleven weeks Alfred led a wandering life, he cannot for any considerable period of time have lain concealed, either at Athelney or anywhere else. 2nd. If he had with him all along a small band of faithful followers, it cannot be true that he had forsaken his people. 3rd. As he constantly assailed the Danes, they must have known in what part of the country he was, though they were ignorant of the exact spot. 48

What makes Clifford relevant to this chapter and this book is this spiritual, or at least psychological, connection between his struggle at Vatican I and his passionate participation in the antiquarian cult of Alfred, culminating in the contribution that this illustrious English Catholic personaggio made to the Victorian controversy over the value of a hagiographic Life written by 46 Gladstone, Expostulation. 47 On ‘conscious Englishness’ as a primary element in the old English Catholic tradition before Vatican I, see Mathew, Catholicism in England, p. 177. 48 Clifford, ‘Inaugural,’ pp. 12–13.

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a Welsh monk, and the chronological contradictions in that Life regarding Alfred’s birthdate. When the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society was established in 1849, the Dean of Westminster, Dr Buckland celebrated its mission: Among the many advantages of a society pursuing the study of antedeluvian, and post-deluvian, and mediaeval times, the first was that it afforded the only occasion he [Dr Buckland] knew for cultivating those feelings of brotherly love and friendship which he rejoiced to see existing among all classes, however differing one from another in politics or religion; it afforded neutral ground, on which persons of all parties in religion and politics, might meet: and he rejoiced to say that amongst the wise provisions of this institution there was one which forbad all discussions on subjects of a religious or political character. Here they met as brethren, as subjects of one common government, and children of one common God; and it was their business, to investigate the works of the Almighty in creation, and the works of Man in the ages long gone by, to collect evidence and documents concerning past political events, which affected us little now, except as they were beacons to admonish us to avoid those political errors into which our forefathers often fell and perished. 49

At its meetings Clifford was a constantly charming and well-liked participant. The Society elected him President in 1877. (Presidents had a one-year term.) Two years earlier, at the Society’s Annual Meeting, Clifford had read his ‘Inquiry concerning the real Site of the Battle of Aethan-dune, and of other localities mentioned by Asser in his account of the great struggle which took place in the year 878, between King Ælfred and the Danes for the possession of Wessex.’50 Discovering the true site of the battle which saved England, so as to retell the oft-told tale of England’s darkest hour, 49 Buckland, ‘Address,’ p. 12. (Italics original.) See Levine, Amateur and Professional, p. 56, n. 42. Giles’s brother, the architect Charles Edmund Giles, was a founding secretary. See Bromwich, Giles, p. viii. William Buckland (1784–1856) was an eccentric theologian and geologist who believed ‘that the whole of the enormous superficial deposits of the globe are to be accounted for by Noah’s flood.’ Faber, Oxford Apostles, pp. 56–57: Alexander Pope had written ‘Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.’ Shuttleworth, Bishop of Chichester, wrote ‘Some doubts were once expressed about the Flood: Buckland arose, and all was clear — as mud.’ 50 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune.’

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was a popular genre of antiquarian discourse. Clifford’s performance in 1875 gathered the members of the Society into intimate communion with the spirit of Alfred in passages that sound like allegories of Clifford’s great struggle which took place in the year 1870 at Vatican I. ‘Positions were alternately lost and won and for considerable lengths of time the outcomes seemed doubtful. Alfred, who to his followers seemed more than mortal, was everywhere present restoring confidence and inspiring fresh courage in his men.’51 The flight of wishful thinking which led Clifford to believe that Christian England was saved in his own diocese is illuminated in Ryan Lavelle’s elegant case study of the antiquarian passion for locating a particular battlefield as a lieu de memoire: The discussion of the location of the battlef ield site of Edington was contentious amongst late eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and early twentiethcentury antiquarians, whose disputes arose because they associated the location of the battlefield site with the importance of a national event. Ethandun is a significant case study to employ in the historiography of Anglo-Saxon battlefields because the campaigns leading to that particular battle gave (and, to an extent, still give) students of the subject a range of debatable interpretations. The antiquarian significance of Alfred the Great can hardly be underestimated, and one might expect that the authors were somewhat partisan in their opinions and, not infrequently, into flights of wishful thinking. […] During the nineteenth century, a wide range of opinions were held, which placed the putative location of the battle at Slaughterford (Wilts.), Yatton (Wilts.), Edington (Somerset) [this was Clifford’s 1875 flight], Eddington (Berks.), and near Minchampton (Glos.), as well as the now generally accepted site of Edington near Westbury (Wilts.).52

As long as they honored the methodological constraints of topography and onomastics, antiquaries felt free to let their wild and frolic fancy redeem the forfeited domain of mytho-poesy. As far as source criticism is concerned, 51 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune,’ p. 22. 52 Lavelle, ‘Fields of Slaughter,’ pp. 314, 310. For bibliographical details for each of these sites see p. 310, nn. 210–215. For a summary of the range of amateur and professional scholarship on the location of Athendune see Lavells’s Table 7.1, p. 311. For Clifford, see p. 310, n. 212; p. 313, n. 222. On the ‘perfervid ingenuity’ of local antiquaries — especially Clifford — see Stevenson’s note on Ethandun, Asser, pp. 273–278. Stevenson attacks Clifford further on p. 259, n. 4; pp. 263, 265, n. 3; p. 269, n. 4; and p. 270.

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Clifford’s method was to believe what every medieval chronicler or historian has to say about Ælfred’s response to Gothrum, and Healfdene, and his brothers Inguar and Ubbo. Clifford raises Giles’s lax methodology to a higher, more steadfast, level. Whereas Giles is content to trust that if his six early chroniclers say something happened then their agreement is obviously founded upon a groundwork of truth, Clifford feels called to harmonize all medieval chroniclers who have anything to say about Alfred’s decisive battles. When their accounts of Alfred’s battles with the pagan kings seem impossibly dissonant his solution is to suppose that all those battles took place in his own diocese, on his ancestral home turf in Somerset. Then everything becomes consonant, coherent, and compelling: Before proceeding further I must call attention to some passages of other writers, which seem at first sight to conflict with the narrative of Asser, but which in fact confirm and illustrate it if only it be admitted that the Danes [led by Ubbo] landed at the mouth of the Parret. These writers are late, as compared with Asser and the Chronicle, and therefore it might not be thought prudent to attach great weight to their statements. But the strength of their testimony lies in this: that whereas they appear to contradict Asser, or to be wholly unintelligible on the supposition that what Asser relates took place near Bideford, they harmonise with him and throw light on his narrative if [Cynwith] the scene of action is placed at Combwich.53 It is seldom that writers invent stories for the mere purpose of deceiving their readers; but it would be truly wonderful if facts and places harmonized with fiction better than with truth.54

Credo ut intelligam. Clifford’s translatio of ancient shrines into his own diocese is harmonious. It is even more harmonious if it is true. Ergo it must be a hard fact and not a mere fiction. QED. This hermeneutic principle bears comparison with Newman’s guiding principle in his interpretation of doctrinal development, namely quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, the famous Vincentian rule of thumb by which to gauge Tradition: to find the truth, consider and harmonize what always was believed by everyone everywhere. In the most important of his addresses to the Vatican Council ‘On the Definition of Papal Infallibity’ Clifford had emphasized how ‘our people’ in 53 On how Clifford gets from ‘Cynwith’ to ‘Combwitch’ to ‘Cannington Park,’ see p. 114 and n. 62, below. 54 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune,’ p. 11 and n. 8.

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England were taught to understand the supremacy of the Pope. He rebutted Manning by quoting Cardinal Wiseman’s ‘Lectures to the People’: In the third [of his Lectures], on the subject of the way in which matters are transacted in a council, [the most eminent Cardinal Wiseman] gives this explanation to the people: ‘Suppose there were to arise some question about a particular doctrine about which no one could agree and no one knows what is to be thought, what is the mind of the church, and what is prudent and necessary in regard to an enquiry and what is to be done. The method of proceeding is this: a close examination would be instituted of the writings of the ancient fathers of the Church, and so would be known what was held in various regions in different centuries: and thus, having collected the votes of the whole world of all ages, it would not be a new doctrine that would be handed down, but a definition would be made of what had always been held in the Catholic Church. In each case the matter would be dealt with as an historical enquiry, and, so that a right definition would be arrived at, nothing would be omitted; then at last, the decree passed by the Church would be infallible’.55

And this in turn suggests an affinity between the hermeneutic principle informing Clifford’s Alfredian meditations and his expert knowledge of the mentality of a medieval canon lawyer seeking harmony from dissonance, as explicated by Stephan Kuttner in 1960: [Gratian’s phrase] Concordia discordantium canonum may indeed be considered a motto which sums up the signal achievement of the medieval mind in organizing the law of the Church into a harmonious system out of an infinite variety of diverse, even contradictory, elements. […] For the jurists and legislators of the Church who constructed the medieval system of canon law, the problem presented itself as a challenge on three levels: (1) the quest for harmony of the sources of law, or the problem of the confusing wealth of written traditions; (2) the quest for harmony of ecclesiastical institutions, or the problem of the varieties of social forms in time and space; (3) the quest for harmony of the mystical body, or the problem of perfecting in legal terms the interpenetration of spiritual and corporate elements, which is the essential mark distinguishing the Church from all other modes of social existence.56 55 May 25, 1870. Translated by Harding, Clifford, p. 406. (My emphasis.) 56 Kuttner, Harmony from Dissonance, pp. 10, 15.

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However, when we look closely at how Clifford trusts affinity of sound to persuade himself and his listeners that he has found the current names of places named in medieval sources, we can see how the controlling principles of onomastics as he understood them left mytho-poesy plenty of room for play. To highlight how the progressive self-disciplining of antiquarian methodologies was advanced by the scientific analysis of the significance of place-names, Ryan Lavelle quotes this interesting passage written in 1859 by R. C. Alexander: Many again look upon [onomastic] enquiries of this kind as mere literary curiosities, but conducted judiciously they throw the most unexpected and interesting light upon the history of a people’s civilization, its ancient manners and modes of thought, and not unfrequently upon historical events, and in this point of view deserve the full attention of the local antiquary. […] I trust that I shall not have occupied these pages of the [Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History] Magazine quite uselessly, if I have only shown how little reliance is to be placed upon the mere chiming of names with each other without analysis of the intrinsic meaning of them.57

For an early and typical example of uncontrolled reliance on the mere chiming of names I turn to the Rev. John Whitaker, Rector of Ruan Lanyhorne, Cornwall, who in 1809 wrote a pious Life of Saint Neot, the Oldest of all the Brothers to King Alfred.58 To locate the place where St Neot appears to Alfred in a dream, promising him victory in the coming battle of Ethandune, Whitaker listens for an echo: [Asser writes:] ‘As soon as the next morning appeared to light them, the king moved his camp thence, came to a place called Æcgley [Asser’s text actually reads Æcglea — TK], and there encamped for the night.’ Where this place is, has occasioned much perplexity. Bishop Gibson suggested Clay Hill near Warminster, as coming nearest of any name that he could recollect in affinity of sound to Æcgley. […] A place occurs a little to the north-east of Trowbridge, and answers exactly in its name to the Saxon orthography of Æcgley, this being 57 Alexander, ‘Edington,’ pp. 206–207, quoted by Lavelle, ‘Fields of Slaughter,’ pp. 308–309 and n. 207. 58 Whitaker is the f irst in Lavelle’s list of those who placed Ethandune, Lavelle ‘Fields of Slaughter,’ p. 310, n. 210.

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denominated Iglea by the Saxon Chronicle, being so denominated even by Asser’s own Annals,59 and having its appellation re-echoed in that of Highley at present, a common immediately beyond Whaddon, and almost escaping observation from obscurity. At this place it was that Alfred had the dream, which was so signally verified by the event, and made such an impression upon him at the moment. The mind of Alfred was struggling with the event of the morrow. The morrow was to decide his fortune as a king, perhaps his fate as a man, for ever. In this frame of spirits probably, all suspended in the coming battle of the morning, he fell asleep. Then appeared before his closing eyes the form of his brother Neot, and spoke in words of comfort to his closing ears; assuring him he would go before his standards on the morrow, and God would fight on the morrow for him.60

When it comes to mere chimes, Clifford is even worse than Whitaker. Consider his discovery of Ubbo’s burial place. He launches his 1875 account of Alfred’s great struggle with the arrival of Ubbo, the brother of Healfden and Inguar: Presently an event occurred which is thus described by Asser:— ‘That same year [878] a brother of Healfden and Inguar with three-and-twenty ships […] set sail for Devon, and there with twelve hundred men rashly doing, he was in the end defeated and slain by the King’s officers before the castle Cynwith.’ The brother of Healfden and Inguar here spoken of is Ubbo, as we learn from John Brompton and Gaimar. […] The site of the landing must be determined; and in weighing the evidence attention must be paid not only to each separate statement, but even more so to the harmony between those statements which results from the adoption of the particulare site which I am about to indicate, whereas on every other supposition those statements appear to be either meaningless or contradictory.61

For eight pages he explores the benefit of believing that Ubbo landed at the mouth of the river Parret. He identifies the site of Cynwith by equating it to Roger of Hoveden’s Cimwich which becomes Combwich, ‘a little seaport 59 Whitaker is referring to what we now call ‘The Annals of St Neots,’ on which see WHS, and Dumville and Lapidge, St Neots. 60 Whitaker Saint Neot, pp. 266–267. (Italics original.) 61 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune,’ pp. 2–4.

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on the western bank of the Parrett, a few miles below Bridgewater.’62 And then by adding tun to fabricate Cyn-wit-tun, ‘the castle of King’s town,’ he reaches — about a mile from Combwich — Cannington Park on whose summit ‘is an ancient encampment, answering in every respect to Asser’s description of the Castle of Cynwith,’ from which Alfred’s men suddenly rushed out like wild boars to slaughter Ubbo and most of his men.63 Clifford needs to see for himself where Ubbo’s body is actually buried. He walks around until he finds it: Amongst the slain the Danes found the denuded body of their chief, and they gave him the honours of a royal funeral. With loud lamentations they bore his mangled remains to a spot on the shore near to his ships. There they laid him in the ground, and raised over his remains a large pile of stones. Brompton says ‘They named it Ubbalowe, and it is in the county of Devon.’ The place, says Camden, ‘has ever since been known to our historians as Hubbaboro, or tumulus Hubbae,’ the mound of Hubba. Does any vestige of it remain at this day? I have diligently sought for it. At the distance of about a mile from Combwich, on what I call the Devonshire side of the river, at the corner of a field on the left hand side of the road, which leads from Stokeland Bristol to Stert, not far from the back of the river, may be seen a large circular mound covered with turf and surrounded by a trench. Its appearance and position recalls the tombs of the Vikings lately discovered in Norway. May not this be the mound of Ubbo? I have not found any evidence of its ever having been known by the name of Hubbalowe or Hubbaboro, but at the distance of about a mile there is a farm called Upper Cock farm. Cock is a word still in use to signify a mound or hillock, when we speak of a hay-cock. To cock is to set erect or raise on piles. May not then Upper-cock be a corruption of Ubba-coc, the mound of Ubba?64

The Infidel vs The Believer In the middle of January 1876, five months after reading his paper on Ubbacoc to the Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, and a year to the day after Newman had published his long-awaited response to 62 See above, p. 110, n. 53. 63 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune,’ p. 5. 64 Clifford, ‘Aethan-dune,’ pp. 12–13.

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Gladstone’s Expostulation,65 Bishop Clifford opened the latest issue of the weekly Athenæum, where his attention was caught by a brief letter on ‘The Death of the Northumbrian Dane, Halfdene’ from a Mr. Henry Howorth of Manchester. Howorth accused Asser of an incredible blunder concerning the place and circumstances of Halfdene’s death at Cynwith, which Howorth located not in Devonshire but in Ireland. Clifford wrote a smart reply pointing out that it was Howorth, not Asser, who had blundered: the Danish king who died at Cynwith was not Halfdene but his brother Ubba. And Cynwith was to be found neither in Ireland nor in Devonshire. It was in Somerset. The Athenæum promptly printed Clifford’s rebuttal and the battle over Asser was joined. For the next nine months the Athenæum’s readers were possibly edified and certainly entertained by the drama of these two virtuoso controversialists matching wits in a rhetorical duel which was to prove the last of its kind. Custody of the Alfredian reliquaries was about to go through a translatio from the scintillating polemics of provincial antiquaries to the disciplined discourse of Oxford professors. The ludic structure of the Athenæum controversy invites comparison to a well-contested chess match with its opening moves, on who died where; its middle game, on Asser’s hagiographic imagination; and its endgame, on Howorth’s determination to banish Alfred from the pages of history to the pages of romance. As in chess, Howorth and Clifford take turns attacking each other’s position. Each move redefines the situation defined by his opponent’s previous move.66 For months the outcome seems doubtful. Howorth 65 Gladstone’s Expostulation was published November 5, 1874. Clifford published his powerful rebuttal on November 15, 1874 in the form of a Pastoral Letter, ‘Catholic Allegiance.’ Harding includes the full Pastoral Letter as Appendix 15, Clifford, pp. 453–463 and analyzes its logic, pp. 215–218. Newman published his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on January 15, 1875. For the close consultation between Clifford and Newman in the composition of their respective responses, see Page, Newman, ch. 5, ‘But, If I Am to Write, I Will Say my Say,’ pp. 245–318. 66 ‘The Chess position is never isolated, never static. It is a phase in an argument. If one is obsessed with the difficulty of spelling out and translating the words, the argument cannot be followed. But once the elements can be interpreted, one is able to perceive the sort of argument that is going on — the consideration of possible changes in the given position, and the consequences of those changes. Each move considered is a step in an argument, and is effective, or interesting, according to the answers that are available, and the way in which the moves can be followed up. There may be many answers or few; and each answer may have many answers or few; each of these in turn has its few or many answers. What the Chess player requires to do is to follow as many possible lines as he can, each separately, and each as far as he can. His vision, therefore, must be wide and deep — and above all, clear. […] The second step is the recognition that not all the powers of all the Pieces matter equally all the time. On every Chess board something is important and something relatively unimportant; something is relevant to the argument, something is irrelevant.’ Abrahams, Chess, pp. 102–103.

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and Clifford come from different walks of life but on this chessboard they meet as brethren, subjects of one common government, namely the rules of the antiquarian game, and as children of one common God, namely the spirit of that game. This is an exciting duel between perfectly matched champions performing for an audience. They eschew ad hominem attacks and do not address one another in the second person. On occasion they appeal overtly to their readers. The harder they fight, the more punctilious their decorum: ‘I must thank the Bishop of Clifton for his courteous remarks about Halfdene, but I cannot accept his conclusion.’ ‘I need scarcely add that my delay is in no way due to any want of appreciation of Mr. Howorth’s remarks.’ ‘I feel much flattered by the care and learning which Bishop Clifford has devoted to his second letter, for the courteous tone of which I repeat my acknowledgments.’ ‘I think I have a right to complain of Mr. Howorth’s saying that I have acknowledged that I was not justified in using an expression, when I have written a long letter to justify my having made use of it, and that letter remains unanswered.’ ‘I shall feel aggrieved if Bishop Clifford deems me capable of wilfully misrepresenting him. I have too great a respect for his learning and integrity to feel vain about any issue in the controversy except a perfectly clear and candid one.’ ‘I hold Mr. Howorth perfectly blameless of any desire to wilfully misrepresent me. I certainly thought he had misunderstood me, and perhaps I did not sufficiently reflect that, when a writer finds himself misunderstood, the blame does not always rest exclusively with his reader; but I certainly never wished to impute any wrong motive to Mr. Howorth.’

In what follows, I concentrate on the rhetorical tropes Howorth and Clifford choose to define and redefine the tug between chronology and hagiography so as to resolve the paradox of Asser’s canonical relation to the Chronicle, and the problem of Alfred’s birthdate. But first, a vignette of Clifford’s opponent, Henry Howorth. Howorth was no aristocrat. The son of a rich Manchester merchant, he was born in Lisbon in 1842 and lived until 1923. He did not attend Oxford or Cambridge. Inheriting the wealth which his family had earned in trade, he launched himself on a lifelong career as a pugnacious antiquarian controversialist. At the age of twenty-six he published his first work, a

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monograph on the origin of the races of north Russia. From 1876 to 1888 he worked on the blood-soaked volumes of his History of the Mongols from the 9th to the 19th Century. Recondite subject matter and an exhaustive review of all the documentary evidence characterize his work. He was called to the Bar in 1867. His brilliant legal mind is manifest in his capacity to account for every single detail — the more microscopic the better — either by enlisting it in the case he is arguing for, or by annihilating it in the case he is arguing against. Iconoclasm is his ruling passion and the modern methods of German criticism his favorite weapon. If in the Athenæum controversy over Asser Clifford is a champion of the old English Catholic tradition, Howorth is a pioneer of the new spirit of Manchesterismus.67 Throughout his long life Howorth ambitiously pursued elective office. In 1886, 1892, and 1895 he was elected to Parliament as an independent-minded conservative for the tough borough of Salford South.68 He helped to found numerous Societies and was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1875, and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1893, the year after he was knighted. He was elected President of the Royal Numismatic Society, the Viking Society, and the Royal Archæological Institute, where his presidency lasted from 1897 until his death in 1923. He was known as the prince of paradox-mongers and his obituaries frankly acknowledged his iconoclastic eccentricity: ‘Few writers of the day treated topics of current controversy so freely and outspokenly, and his reputation as a publicist would have been greater had he possessed the gift of conciseness and limited the range of his comments to a smaller selection of subjects.’69 In 1876 Howorth had reached the age at which Clifford had been consecrated bishop by Pio Nono: thirty-four years old. 67 Eighty years later, Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote to Wallace Notenstein (May 2, 1957): ‘I despair of seeing good work born [in Oxford] now. Manchesterismus has killed it: the Manchester medievalism of Tout & Tait, Davis and Powicke, Jacob and Galbraith and that brood of clericallyminded hacks. […] The Manchester School, in my opinion, stand condemned by their record in this respect. They have dominated English historical work for a generation and they have ended by making it mere boring antiquarianism. Now what is the use of merely switching the narrow specialist beam from the reign of Richard II to the reign of George III, from the Exchequer to the East India Company Board? What we need is a new spirit — the spirit of Pirenne or Bloch, Febvre or Braudel — if these dry bones are ever to live again. But where can we f ind it? The Manchester School have killed it and now Namierism has degenerated, in the hands of his disciples, into the cult of minutiae.’ Quoted by Bentley, England’s Past, pp. 230–231 and n. 24. 68 Howorth, ‘The Future of Conservatism.’ For his contributions to Hansard, see https://api. parliament.uk/historic-hansard/people/mr-henry-howorth/index.html. 69 A. H. T., ‘Howorth,’ p. 307.

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Opening: Where did Ubbo die? To return now to the Athenæum controversy: the opening move in Howorth’s attack on the cult of Alfred conceals a baited, barbed hook, as will become clear when Clifford swallows the bait. Howorth begins by drawing the attention of the Athenæum’s readers to what he calls a curious mistake in the standard histories of the Battle of Cynwith. He observes that the German historians Lappenberg and Pauli, drawing on Asser and the Chronicle, say that Halfdene was killed by Alfred’s men at Cynwith in Devonshire. And yet, to any one at all familiar with the details of the history of Wessex at this period, the account must prima facie seem incredible. That at the very period when the fortunes of Alfred were almost at the lowest ebb, when he could barely keep a poor band of followers together, his countrymen further west should not only have made some headway against the enemy, but should even have killed their most noted leader [Halfdene], and destroyed his host, is beyond the reach of credibility.70

With onomastic skill he adroitly identifies Halfdene with the Albann named in the recently (1867) published R. S. edition of the twelfth-century Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh.71 Since his ulterior motive is to debunk both the Life and the Chronicle he goes on to identify Cynwith with Loch Cuan (Strangford Loch) in Ireland. For good measure he also identifies Odda (named by Aethelweard) as ‘assuredly the Ædh or Hugh Finnlaiath’ who slew Halfdene in Ireland. By thus ‘rectifying the whole story and making it perfectly plain,’ Howorth proves that the 1200 Danes who died at Cynwith in 877 were slain not by Alfred’s men but by the Irish, and not in Devonshire but in County Down. This barb struck at the heart of Clifford’s identification with Alfred’s great struggle in Somerset. Adding insult to injury, Howorth baited the hook by pointing out a very important moral, upon which I should like to enlarge in another letter, — namely the authority of Asser — a question which has occupied me much for a long time. I would merely say here that it seems incredible 70 The Athenæum, #2516, January 15, 1876, p. 88. 71 Howorth may be the first to have identified Albann as Halfdan. This was no mere chiming of names. For a recent phonemic justification of this identification see Smyth, Scandinavian Kings, p. 263, n. 31.

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that a native of South Wales, and a contemporary and close friend of Alfred, could have made such a blunder.

Clifford’s response, published a month later, naturally took Howorth’s exposition at face value.72 In his second paragraph, which I quote here in full, Clifford simultaneously exposes Howorth’s own blunder, and swallows Howorth’s bait: But Mr. Howorth himself has made a strange mistake. The Danish chief who fell at Cynwith was, according to all historians, not Halfden, but a brother of Halfden [Clifford’s emphasis]. ‘Frater Inguari et Halfdeni,’ says Asser. So do the others. Dr. Pauli, quoted by Mr. Howorth, writes (p. 94):—’His name is not mentioned, but we may guess it without much doubt to have been Ubba.’ Thus the whole of Mr. Howorth’s argument against the credibility of Asser falls to the ground. For if the Danish chief Albann, who is stated in the Irish Chronicles to have fallen at Loch Strangford is ‘undoubtedly Halfden,’ as Mr. Howorth asserts, then it is clear that those Chronicles and Asser are treating of two perfectly different events. The one describes the death of Halfden, the other that of his brother Ubba, and there is no reason for confounding Loch Strangford with the Castle of Cynwith. The real site of this castle has been treated by me at some length in a paper which will shortly appear amongst the Transactions of the Somersetshire Archæological and Natural History Society for the year 1875.

A fortnight later Howorth begins to show his true colors in a longer (two-column) piece.73 He expels from the fellowship of prime authorities both the Chronicle and the Life, and reveals the ulterior motive of his initial ‘rectification of the whole story’ of Halfdene’s death: I have made a minute examination of Asser’s work, and, with the permission of the editor of the Athenæum, hope, on another occasion, to condense the result, which goes entirely to support the theory of Mr. Thomas Wright, that the work is made up of a compilation from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and a series of traditions about Alfred, nearly all of which are fabulous and of no authority. […] The passage which refers to the death of Halfdene is a translation from the Chronicle, and I merely quoted Asser’s name in connexion 72 Athenæum, #2520, February 12, 1876, pp. 233–234. 73 #2523, March 4, 1876, p. 329.

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with it as a last nail driven into a coffin and by no means as the basis of my incredulity as to his authority, upon which I have no doubt whatever.

In the body of his answer to Clifford — who surely thought he had already had the last word — Halfdene’s death, the ostensible bone of contention, is made to hang on the presence or absence of the word et. Was it Halfdene, brother of Inguar, who fell at Cynwith, or was it, as Asser and the Chronicle would have it, a brother of Halfdene et Inguar? Howorth’s version of source criticism stresses that this crucial et is not to be found in two of his three prime authorities: Ethelwerd and ‘Simeon of Durham.’ It is only Asser who says it was a brother of Halfdene-and-Inguar who fell at Cynwith, and Asser is merely translating from the Chronicle. Here, then, is the evidence; and I fail to see how it supports the contention of Bishop Clifford that the Danish chief who fell at Cynwith was, according to all historians, [Howorth’s emphasis] not Halfdene but Halfdene’s brother. Out of three prime authorities, two say distinctly it was Halfdene; the third, the English Chronicle, is singularly full of errors in this portion, and it is certainly of much less value than either of the other authorities, which I prefer, therefore, to follow; and far from my argument falling to the ground, it seems to me to be impregnable.

Ignoring Asser’s ipsissima verba — frater Inguari et Halfdeni — while still claiming that Asser had made an incredible blunder, Howorth’s casuistic attempt to drive this nail into Asser’s coffin could not really hope to survive scrutiny. His opening moves were over, and he was about to enter the middle game by moving into a direct attack on Asser’s status as the prime reliquary for devotees of the cult of Alfred. But first he had to wait for Clifford’s response. It appeared promptly, two weeks later, and spells out in considerable detail the rather obvious answer to ‘The question which we have to decide: Whether in the sentence, “Halfdene Inguares frater,” the conjunction “et” between the two names has been omitted purposely by the author, or dropped by the carelessness of transcribers.’74 Since the Chronicle suffices to demolish Howorth’s theory, Clifford sidesteps Howorth’s expulsion of Asser: It is not my intention at present to treat the question of the authority of Asser. I have carefully read all that I have been able to find published on 74 #2525, March 18, 1876, p. 395

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the subject, I have in addition made numerous notes of my own, and I have arrived at a very different conclusion; but I shall in the present instance confine my observation to the other three writers [viz. the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, ‘Simeon of Durham,’ and ‘Florence of Worcester’].

He then gives a detailed account of the state of each of these texts and their interrelationships. Much of what he says, although new at the time, is consonant with the consensus among scholars today. By thus accepting Howorth’s ostensible moves, he beats Howorth at his own game and proves that (discounting scribal errors) according to all historians it was a brother of Halfdene, not Halfdene himself, who fell at Cynwith. One would have thought that the case of Halfdene’s death had been thoroughly settled and that Howorth had no alternative but to admit he had painted himself into a corner. Yet the next week the Athenæum carried Howorth’s response under the new heading ‘Asser’s Life of Alfred.’ It is longer (three columns) than the previous pieces in the series and is, as promised, an examination of Asser’s work more minute and incisive than anything thitherto attempted. Middle game: Lingard’s Dictum Far from admitting that he has given up defending his original theory about Halfdene, Howorth begins by putting his finger on Clifford’s major weakness as a source critic, namely his catholic desire to harmonize what was always believed by everyone everywhere. The Bishop now acknowledges that the phrase, ‘according to all historians,’ was not justified. He now says that the authorities I rely upon are only two out of a long list of historians. What long list of historians? I should be very grateful to be pointed to a single one. Of course a very long list may be made out if we include every one who has written on the subject, from Florence of Worcester to Dr. Pauli; but as all copied from one another, or from the primary authorities, their witness is valueless. Second-hand authorities are of no use when we can reach the fountain-sources whence they drew their inspiration.75

This brings him, at last, to a crux of Alfredian studies to this day: the relationship between the Latin Life and the Old English Chronicle on the 75 #2526 March 25, 1876, pp. 425–426. (My italics.)

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one hand, and between Asser and all later chroniclers and historians on the other. The real issue which remains is the comparative value of Asser, Ethelward, the old chronicle quoted as Simeon of Durham, and the Anglo-Saxon chronicle as authorities for the history of the second half of the ninth century. This issue is very fairly raised by Bishop Clifford, and, as I know of none more pregnant with valuable consequences and none more fitted to be discussed in the pages of the Athenæum, I crave permission to raise it, more especially as my conclusions are at all points so different from those of the Bishop of Clifton. I will begin with Asser.

The rest of the piece is a masterly exposition of all the picaresque vicissitudes suffered over the centuries by Asser’s text, the complex interrelationships between Asser, ‘Simeon of Durham,’ ‘Florence of Worcester,’ and the ‘Annals of St Neots,’ and the limits within which any severely historical scholarship on Asser must be undertaken. To those of us raised on W. H. Stevenson’s 1904 edition of Asser, much of what Howorth says in this and his next (even longer) Athenæum piece is very familiar. Among the 260 footnotes in the 1984 English translation of Asser’s Life by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, there are some that can be traced back to the long Introduction and the plethora of footnotes in Stevenson’s formidable 1904 edition of Asser, which in turn can be traced back to issues articulated by Howorth in the 1876 Athenæum controversy. But this familiarity is in no way inevitable. On the contrary, the familiarity today of what Howorth wrote in the 1870s is a measure of his achievement. As will be evident by the end of this chapter, although he eventually failed to expel Asser permanently from the Alfredian canon, he did succeed in ensuring that Asser was to be readmitted only on Howorth’s own antiromantic terms, the criteria of echt historical criticism. On March 25, 1876, however, Howorth still had a long way to go. His program is well summarised in his fourth paragraph, in which he alludes to Lingard’s dictum, ‘Destroy Asser’s credit, and Alfred’s fame is gone.’ Among the heroes of popular romance few stand out in history as types of kingly virtue and of moral grandeur with more distinctness than Alfred, and yet it would seem that few legends are based upon so slight and flimsy a basis. If it be literally true, as one of Alfred’s skilful biographers and apologists has said that the fame of Alfred depends upon the account of him contained in his biography by Asser, it follows that if we reject this we

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must erase a great deal of Alfred’s romantic career from the pages of history. Now Asser’s Life of Alfred is one of the most fly-blown and suspicious works quoted by historians. I cannot deem it anything but a misfortune that the overwhelming objections to its credibility, which have been at various times urged, should not have drawn from such authority as Sir Thomas Hardy or others either a condemnation such as is now universally dealt to Ingulfus, or some attempt to reinstate him rather more critical and worthy of attention than the very feeble defence by Dr. Lingard. I have no hesitation in saying that a large portion of the biographical part of the work is valueless.

Clifford’s response was swift and uncompromising. It appeared two weeks later under the old heading ‘The Death of Halfdene.’76 In the terms of my chess metaphor there are now, so to speak, two relevant pieces active on the board, Halfdene and Asser, and Clifford is determined to make his opponent take Halfdene, not Asser, off the board. Halfdene is not in play and cannot be used to attack Asser, and he appeals to the Athenæum’s readers as spectators of the game for their final verdict against Howorth’s sleight of hand, the pretense that Clifford has yielded even an inch. In the terms of Howorth’s own metaphor, Halfdene was to be the last nail in Asser’s coffin, but for Clifford there is no coffin, and certainly no nail named Halfdene. Clifford’s letter is relatively brief, four paragraphs. In his first paragraph he allows himself to express some heat; in the last, some passion. I learn, from Mr Howorth’s letter in the Athenæum of March the 25th that ‘the Bishop now acknowledges that the phrase “according to all historians” was not justified.’ Nobody, I am sure, can be more astonished than I am at such a statement. Not only have I never made any such acknowledgment, but my last letter was written expressly to prove that the only two exceptions pointed out by Mr. Howorth were no exceptions at all. Mr. Howorth does not attempt to refute my arguments, but says they do not convince him. I have no complaint to make of this. Utitur jure suo, and our readers must judge between us. But I think I have a right to complain of his saying that I have acknowledged that I was not justified in using an expression, when I have written a long letter to justify my having made use of it, and that letter remains unanswered.

He then lays bare Howorth’s duplicity by recapitulating the moves made in the controversy so far, resulting in the state of the question between them. 76 #2528, April 8, 1876, pp. 499–500.

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He shows how Howorth characteristically shifted his ground without ever admitting his non sequiturs and without refuting Clifford’s valid points. In the next two paragraphs he gives his own verdict, consonant with what I call his catholic hermeneutic principle, and rests his case concerning Halfdene. Lingard’s dictum captures the fundamental principle of source criticism in a nutshell. Yet Clifford calls Howorth’s invocation of it a bold assertion. In his letter of March 25th, Mr. Howorth says he would be grateful to be pointed to a single historian who supports my view. I refer him to those mentioned by himself: the Saxon Chronicle, Dr. Pauli, Lappenberg, &c., and, again I repeat it, to ‘all historians’ who have mentioned the occurrence. Mr. Howorth says that, ‘as they all copy from one another, or from the prime authorities, their witness is valueless.’ This is a bold assertion to make. But be it so. Whatever their weight, be they few or be they many, be they ancient or be they modern, they are all on my side.

And then, in a noble cadence Clifford reveals the full extent of Howorth’s perfidy. The real issue is neither where Cynwith is nor who died where. It is Asser. This is no mere antiquarian wrangle over a scribal et. It is a battle for the very heart of England’s true greatness, a battle between the Infidels and the Believers. Clifford stretches Lingard’s dictum to its loftiest conclusion: destroy Asser’s credit and England’s greatest reliquary is gone. Mr. Howorth next proceeds to discuss the historical value of Asser’s ‘Life of Alfred.’ Here I must at once make a statement in order to avoid misconception. The importance of this question cannot, to my mind be over-rated. If it be true that there is still extant a life of Alfred, written not only by a contemporary, but by one who was his friend and companion, and if that work is still accessible in its original form, it is beyond doubt the greatest treasure of English history. If, on the other hand, we have nothing but a collection of legends, grouped together by some obscure and credulous writer long after the days when Alfred lived, not only is the work of no value, but the Alfred whom we have learnt to love and admire as the greatest of Englishmen, dwindles down to little more than an Arthur or a William Tell. Moved by these considerations, I have, during the past three years, devoted what time I have had at my disposal to a careful investigation of the question; and, although the heaviest part of my work is completed, a considerable time must yet elapse before I am able to present to the public the result of my labours. Under these circumstances, I cannot undertake to notice at present in a separate form

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any observations that Mr. Howorth may make on this subject; and this I mention lest he should interpret my silence as due to indifference or slight. As I mentioned in my first letter that some observations of mine on the real site of Cynwith Castle would appear in the ‘Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological Society,’ I must add that, owing to some unavoidable delays, these Proceedings cannot be published before May 11.

It seems unlikely that at this point the Athenæum’s readers would have voted Howorth the winner. They had witnessed the extraordinary spectacle of a noble Catholic bishop successfully rescuing the greatest treasure of English history from the brash attack of a nouveau riche autodidact. Was Alfred a mere Arthur? Was this a question of evidence to be settled by modern scientific methods or was it a matter of faith to be determined by what had always been believed? It is the gravity of this question so succinctly posed by Clifford that warrants reviewing in such detail the tactical moves played in this controversy. A quarter of a century later, when Stevenson reestablished Asser’s authenticity, he ignored Clifford’s strategic defense of Alfred’s historicity in the service of the cult of Alfred. Clifford’s very name was all but forgotten. Plummer and Stevenson proved Howorth wrong but they used his modern scientific methods to do so. Asser has, ever since, paid the price demanded by Manchester. Those of us interested in the political unconscious, in the natural laws that seem to govern the formation of an authorized canon, may find a moral here worth pondering. Endgame: Did Alfred have four birthdates? Howorth’s long response appeared immediately.77 As he had said he would, he condenses into four columns the result of his comprehensive examination of all the features that distinguish Asser’s work and make it suspect. Every facet he identifies has, ever since, had to be somehow accounted for by anyone seriously proposing to defend Asser. He presents each item in the worst possible light and enjoys hammering home nail after nail into poor Asser’s coffin. Howorth’s piece is dense, too long for me to comment on in detail. I focus here on the crux of his argument, on which everything depends, and which has had the most lasting influence on Alfredian studies to the present day, namely his characterization of Asser’s unusual, indeed unique, interlacing of horizontal chronology and vertical hagiography. In his previous post he 77 #2535, May 27, 1876, pp. 727–729

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had already asserted that ‘the work as we have it, even after we deduct the interpolations supposed to have been inserted by Parker, is a composite one, and actually written in two different centuries, and probably, therefore, made up from two different sources.’78 He now spells out his two-source theory: The ‘Life of Alfred,’ as has been remarked by Mr. Wright, is in form one of the strangest biographies that was ever seen, and is of quite a different character from Eginhard’s ‘Life of Charlemagne,’ or the many other productions of the period, in which the lives of saints and worthies have been recorded. It does not consist, as they do, of a continuous narrative, but is in reality a mere edition of the Chronicle, with several long paragraphs inserted at various points. It may thus be divided into two sections, that which corresponds to the Chronicle, and which, excepting a few touches to which I shall presently refer, is a mere translation or replica of the Chronicle, and that which may justly claim the title of the ‘Life of Alfred,’ namely, the portion in the added paragraphs. This being so, it is hardly likely that one who was sitting down deliberately to tell the story of Alfred’s life would have built up such a patchwork of Chronicle and Life as we now possess, and it seems to follow either that the paragraphs have been abstracted from a continuous Life of Alfred, which no longer exists, and inserted in the text of a piece of the Chronicle which was truncated at either end, or else that some monk who was writing out the Chronicle has inserted at intervals such accounts about Alfred as may have reached him.79

But what the tough-minded Howorth attacks is not what the tenderminded Clifford defends. Howorth attacks chronology, Clifford defends charisma. Howorth attacks a redactor who has contaminated a horizontal chronicle by pasting into it stories from the forfeited domain of vertical mytho-poesy. For Clifford the greatest treasure of English history is no mere Chronicle. It is an edifying Life written by a Welsh monk who was Alfred’s friend and companion. To speak honestly: for Bishop Clifford, as for the Catholic historians Lingard and Milner, Alfred was a saint and Asser was his hagiographer.80 The greatest treasure of English history is a precious reliquary: it enshrines sacred relics of Alfred’s charisma. At Athelney and Ethandune — and maybe at Vatican I — Clifford communed with the 78 #2526 March 25, 1876, p. 426. 79 #2535 May 27, 1876, p. 727. 80 Milner, Antiquities of Winchester.

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immortal Alfred. Howorth, gleefully committed to flattening the vertical lift of typology and romance, is not one to illuminate his mind with a sense of the divine by meditating on the symbolic meaning of a saint’s life.81 No act of communion with the protagonist of Asser’s legend-riddled patchwork is ever, for Howorth, a live option. It is, on the contrary, exactly what a critical historian must outlaw. We have inherited from Howorth this image of a redactor ineptly cutting up bits and pieces of unsavory hagiography and stuffing them into slices of wholesome chronicle. ‘Asser’s Life is a sandwich,’ wrote Christopher Brooke in 1963, ‘made up of a version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with a description of various aspects of Alfred’s life and activity squeezed into it.’82 Before this controlling cliché was institutionalised in earnest by Stevenson in 1904 it had been proposed in jest by Plummer lecturing on Asser in 1901: The way in which these biographical sections are inserted [into the series of annals] is so inconsequent and inartistic, that one is sometimes almost inclined to think that the compiler, while keeping his annals (as he could hardly help doing) in chronological order, cut up his biographical matter into strips, put the strips in a hat, and then took them out in any order which chance might dictate; much as a famous Oxford parody supposed the names of successful candidates in certain pass examinations to be determined.83

In his next lecture, by alluding to recent paradigm shifts in biblical criticism, Plummer tempered the jocular image of a redactor randomly wielding scissors and paste: I have so far spoken of ‘our author’ in the singular. But the question must now be faced: is the work (apart from the actual and possible interpolations) the composition of a single hand? When I first took up this question I rather hoped that the result to be arrived at would be, that the annals were the work of one author, the biographical notes of another, while the florid head-links, of which I spoke before, would be the work of the later editor who combined the two documents. This would have been a result dear to the heart of the higher critic. But any such theory, however pretty, will not stand a moment’s examination. Allowing for the difference in 81 My phrasing here is inspired by Brady, Froude. 82 Brooke, Kings, p. 23. 83 Plummer, Alfred, p. 15.

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subject-matter, the same characteristics appear both in the annalistic and biographical sections.84

And then in 1904, Stevenson himself chopped up Asser’s interlaced text, quite arbitrarily, into 106 numbered chapters, systematically flagging each one in his Notes as either ‘From the Chronicle’ or ‘Due to Asser.’ It is worth following up Plummer’s allusion to ‘florid head-links,’ and to the Higher Critics who had developed the successful Two Source Theory for the composition of the Synoptic Gospels. The condescending lack of respect for a mere compiler or redactor, which Plummer and Stevenson (and Howorth) shared with ‘higher’ critics throughout the formative period of biblical source analysis, is helpfully characterized by John Barton as follows: In discovering ‘sources’ in such works as the Pentateuch, [nineteenthcentury] critics simultaneously discovered ‘redactors’, the Israelite scribes, archivists or collectors who must have been responsible for combining the sources into the finished works we now encounter in the Old Testament. But throughout the formative period of source analysis, no one took much interest in these shadowy figures. For one thing, the excitement of reconstructing the earlier stages in the text’s growth deflected interest from its final form; for another, it was probably felt that the redactors could hardly have been people of much originality or even intelligence, or they would have made a better job of their work, and not left the tell-tale traces of inconsistency and meandering narrative thread that has enabled modern scholarship to reconstruct the raw materials with which they plied their tedious trade. The only active contribution the redactors of the Pentateuch could be credited with was to be seen in little ‘link’ passages papering over the more palpable gaps between two sources; or in the occasional phrase which was designed to persuade the reader that the text was a smooth, continuous whole, but which was so ineptly obtruded into the narrative that it actually made matters worse.85

In preparation for the redaction criticism that informs Part II of this book, I must here in turn at once make a statement, in order to avoid misconception. The importance of this question cannot, to my mind, be over-rated. If it be true that the Life is nothing but bits and pieces of jejune 84 Plummer Alfred, § 35, pp. 44–45. Plummer commends to students of the synoptic problem the way Symeon of Durham used three versions of Asser’s text (pp. 31–32 and p. 32, n. 1). 85 Barton, Reading the OT, pp. 45–46.

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fantasies and fables cut and pasted higgledy-piggledy into a short segment of a preexisting chronicle truncated at either end, not only is the work of no literary or psychological value, but it dwindles down to little more than an unfinished and mediocre mish-mash compiled by a muddle-headed Celt — even if that Celt is who he claims to be. If, on the other hand, the Life is a unique work of Latin literature written by an avant-garde Welsh intellectual experimenting with compounding chronology and hagiography in a new kind of biography designed to invite comparison with Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, as well as with paradigmatic saints’ lives, then it is beyond doubt precious evidence of a major turning point in the history of life-writing and hagiography — whoever its author may have been. Moved by these considerations, I have, during the past fifty years, devoted what time I myself have had at my disposal to a careful investigation of this question; and, since the heaviest part of my work is now completed, I am able to present to the public the result of my labors in the form of this present book, as my contribution in good faith to the cult of Alfred. In Part II I will pass judgment on how Plummer and Stevenson sought to annul the marriage between horizontal annals and vertical biography which Einhard aimed at and which Asser achieved. Asser’s innovative compositional framework communicates the Gregorian balance sought by his protagonist between the active and the contemplative life. Asser represents this mixed modus of Alfred’s life as a type played out in both celestial and terrestrial time. But for now, back to the Endgame. Clifford’s last move Clifford took a month to make what turned out to be his last move.86 About Howorth’s two-source theory he chooses to say nothing explicit. But his own quite different understanding of the form and genre of Asser’s Life is implicit in his decision to focus on how Alfred’s charisma vibrates in Asser’s childhood stories. Unlike Howorth he feels no need to resist the vertical lift of childhood experiences, whether psychological or spiritual. After all, he, like Alfred, can remember Popes: he was himself consecrated by one in Rome. And he can remember that earlier Pope who had made his grandfather a cardinal when he himself had been a child in Rome. The passage in Asser’s life that we now know as Stevenson’s chapter 23 tells the story of young Alfred winning his mother’s book of Saxon poetry by being the first to understand and recite it. For Howorth this beloved story 86 #2539, June 24, 1876, pp. 859–860.

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exemplifies the fabulous quality of Asser’s hagiography. What he is attacking is a fabula, a figura foreshadowing the future. No modern historian can allow the future to act on the past at a distance like this. The story must be flattened onto the one-way horizontal track to the future, even if it can then not be harmonized with the Life’s unusual double chronological scaffolding. Clifford is more invested in clarifying what the story means than pinning it down to when it happened. I wish he could simply have said that any trip to Rome is always already a magna virtus, any tolle, lege conversion is St Augustine’s, and any child reading to his elders is the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Holy City. This is not to say that the childhood stories are mere fictions but to point out that they are not mere facts.87 But in 1876, for a Roman Catholic to explicitly defend hagiographic virtutes in public would mean giving up the antiquarian game by playing what is, so to speak, a taboo move. Without breaching the decorum that guarantees ‘the neutral ground, on which persons of all parties in religion and politics might meet,’ Clifford does what he can.88 In his previous move Howorth had focused on the messy chronology of Alfred’s early days and education, so as to sneer at the contradictions and absurdities of Asser’s claim that ‘it was not till Alfred was twelve years old that he began to learn anything.’ Clifford responds by proving this to be a mistranslation of Asser’s Latin diction. At source criticism, Howorth excels; at Latinity, Clifford. He explains that the Latinity of writers of the ninth century, which Howorth had described as rugged and obscure, ‘differs considerably from that of the age of Augustus, and serious errors have been the consequence of sufficient notice not having been taken of this fact.’ In his long response (four columns) he explicates in some detail how Howorth has missed the sense in which Asser uses the terms parentes, infantia, ars liberalis, lector, legere, recitans, recitare, and especially illiteratus. Many scholars since then would have benefited from fortifying the thrust of Clifford’s move here. In chapter 6 below I will favor taking illiteratus as meaning not so much ‘illiterate’ as ‘illatinate,’ that is to say as ‘not yet bilingual.’89 So I savor the way Clifford illustrates what Asser means when he says Alfred ad duodecimum aetatis annum illiteratus permansit: This is about the same as to say of a boy in our days, that he is so shamefully ignorant that, though he can read English, he has reached the age of twelve 87 Cf. Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 81. 88 On the scope and limits of Victorian attitudes to saints and hagiographic lives across the confessional divide, see now Atkins, Making Saints. 89 Grundmann, ‘Illiteratus.’

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without being able to read a Greek book written with contractions. The wonder would be if he could do so.

Having swept away Howorth’s mistranslations, he ends by summing up the story of the book as a parable of Alfred’s charismatic ardor for learning, his lifelong thirst for wisdom. In 1901 Plummer will call it a pretty story.90 Here Clifford calls it simple, truthful, charming and instructive. He ends on a surprisingly light note by alluding to the ‘Hunting of the Snark,’ published but three months earlier: What I have here done for the story of Ælfred and the book, I have had to do in like manner for the story of Ælfred’s malady, and for many others. For the objections brought forward against Asser by Mr. Howorth form but a small portion of the long list of difficulties lying before me. They look at first a formidable array, but if only hunted with care, ‘They will softly and silently vanish away and never be heard of again.’

Howorth’s last move During the weeks that followed, Clifford seemed to have had the last word, checkmating Howorth. But in September Howorth had the last word and checkmated Clifford.91 He begins with a courteous but characteristically provocative flourish: I deem myself very fortunate in having to correspond with one whose learning and urbanity are so conspicuous as they are in Bishop Clifford, and although we differ completely in our main conclusion, he has put me and others of your readers under great obligations for many of his suggestive sentences — obligations which will be increased when he gives us, as he promises, a conspectus of his researches on Asser.

He goes on to accept a few of Clifford’s explications of the Latin vocabulary, but vigorously rejects others. The question of Alfred’s birthdate arises when Howorth administers chronology as an antidote to hagiography: the story of Alfred and the book could only have happened before the infant Alfred went to Rome in 853. The notion that before he was four years old he learned to read a 90 Plummer, Alfred, p. 81. 91 #2549, September 2, 1876, pp. 307–309. At six columns, this is the longest contribution to the controversy.

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book in a few days is ‘utterly fabulous.’ He could equally have called the story, as A. P. Smyth would in 1995, ‘quintessentially hagiographic.’92 In the century and a half since 1876, every interpretation of why Asser tells both of these fables has had to resolve, one way or another, this tension between the trip to Rome and the book story, between remembering the Pope and racing for the Book. Howorth proceeds to add more items to his already long ‘list of objections to the work generally quoted as Asser’s “Life of Alfred” which is far from being exhausted.’ Along the way he pours more scorn on Asser’s stories: We have jejune anecdotes about his making lanterns out of horn, and constructing time-measures by means of candles, the queer stories that form the staple of popular romance, and which may be put by the side of those about the cowherd’s wife, &c., which, in the days when Pinnock’s ‘Goldsmith’ was a standard book, were made to pass for history.

As the coup de grâce he focuses close attention on statements in the Life which cannot be harmonized with the fact that Alfred was born in 849. These are of three kinds. They mainly arise because, for each annal, in addition to the Chronicle’s ad numeral, Asser’s peculiarly doubled chronological scaffolding also tells us how old Alfred was that year. For ease of reference I nickname this secondary scaffolding the Anno Ælfredi series, abbreviated aæ.93 The last annal in the Life is for 887. But Asser says he is writing in Alfred’s forty-fifth year. If Alfred was born in 849 this should be 893. Why the gap of six years? Why does Asser not report anything that happened between 887, when Alfred began to legere et interpretari simul, and 893? (This gap chafes every scholar who tries to reconstruct the chronological order in which the first Alfredian translations were produced.)94 92 Smyth, Alfred, p. 186. On which see n. 94 below, and ch. 5, pp. 203–204 below. 93 ‘The chronological scaffolding of Asser’s Vita Ælfredi systematically dates events by the passage of years since the births of both Christ and Alfred. Its two-pronged dating formula is: Anno Dominicae incarnationis x natiuitatis autem Aelfredi regis yo, where x is a Roman numeral such as dccclxxx and y is an ordinal number such as vigesimo nono. Nothing in any other medieval biography offers an exact parallel to this stereoscopic coupling.’ Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 79. But my last sentence is an error: see p. 140, nn. 114, 115 below. 94 ‘It would be odd,’ wrote Dorothy Whitelock in 1966, ‘if five or six years later [than 887] Asser was unaware of any [translation] works undertaken. […] I would prefer to put down Asser’s silence to some cause other than ignorance.’ Whitelock, ‘The Prose,’ p. 73. ‘Despite his evident interest in issues of literacy, education and translation involving the king,’ wrote Malcolm Godden in 2012, ‘Asser makes no reference at all to the Old English Pastoral Care or the associated programme of translation and education. That itself is very surprising, given Alfred’s claim that Asser had helped him with the translation. It would have been natural to mention it, and the companying

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Asser says Alfred went to Rome in his eleventh year: Anno Dominicæ Incarnationis dcccliii, nativitatis autem Æfredi regis undecimo.95 But if he was born in 849, undecimo should be quinto. In addition to contradictions between the childhood fables and Asser’s chronological scaffolding there are half a dozen other contradictions between the ad and the aæ scaffoldings. These two series cannot be harmonized: [Asser] makes the year 879 a.d. coincide with the twenty-eighth of Alfred, whereas it was the thirty-first, and the blunder is repeated under the years 880, 881, 882, 883, and 884, which are respectively made the 29th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, and 33rd years of his reign [sic: ‘of his reign’ is a slip, Howorth means ‘of his age’]. After the last year there is inserted a long episode, after which the chronicle form is again adopted, and the blunder again renewed, for he makes the year 886 — only six years, be it remembered, before the work professes to have been written — coincide with the 35th year of Alfred. Is it credible that such extraordinary and persistent errors and contradictions as to dates should have been committed by Alfred’s familiar friend, writing when Alfred was forty-five years old, and getting programme, as the sequel to the great moment when Alfred learnt to read Latin in chapter 88, or in connection with the final chapter on the king’s insistence on the importance of literacy. The obvious […] explanation […] is to suppose Asser knew nothing of the whole project […] because the Pastoral Care and the programme were not conceived and launched until after the completion of Asser’s Life in 893. […] That, however produced its own chronological problems, as Dorothy Whitelock noted […] It also posited a long delay after the moment in 887 when, according to Asser, the king apparently learned to read and acquired a determination to translate and teach others.’ Godden, ‘Stories,’ p. 124. And in 2017, Daniel Anlezark wrote, ‘It would be astounding, given Asser’s interest in all aspects of Alfred’s literacy, if he deliberately or accidentally omitted mention of a project involving the very four scholars [Plegmund, Asser, Grimbald, and John — named by Alfred in the Preface to the OE Pastoral Care] whose importance is discussed in his Life, finished in 893. It would also defy comprehension if the biographer who lauds Alfred’s ability to interpret a short scriptural passage should fail to mention his leading role in translating a major patristic text — if this is what happened.’ Anlezark, Alfred, p. 86. See also Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 80, n. 2: ‘Alfred P. Smyth’s attack on the Life and its author is motivated in part by a desire to free the chronology of Alfred’s reign from the straitjacket imposed by the Life’s unusual scaffolding. That desire may be more simply (and legitimately) met by straight textual criticism of the scaffolding itself than by the complicated scenario proposed by Smyth to debunk the view that what he calls a quintessentially hagiographic Life could ever have been written by Asser.’ (Note, incidentally, that both in the Chronicle and the Life the annal for 887 was not completed until 889. ‘The events recorded in chapter 85 cover a period from late 887 to early 889; Asser simply follows ASC in placing them all in the annal for 887, though neither he nor the chronicler necessarily implies by so doing that all the events took place in 887 itself.’ Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 267, n. 205.) 95 On what has come to be known as the Cotton MS’s ‘eccentric’ undecimo reading, see Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ pp. 92–94.

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his information chiefly from his master, or is it not rather the blundering product of a late and careless compiler, and quite befitting the author of the many other mistakes I have pointed out?96

Ridiculing the blunders in Asser’s chronology, he seems to have checkmated Clifford. The more you trust chronology as an antidote to hagiography, the more lethal Howorth’s logic appears. For if you can’t even trust Asser to tell you plainly when Alfred was born, how dare you trust him on any of his other redactorial additions to the Chronicle? ‘This completes my criticism of Asser’s “Life of Alfred”,’ says Howorth, and rests his case: I shall await with interest the resuscitation of Asser’s reputation which has been promised by Bishop Clifford. It will, no doubt, be a learned work, and, if it is successful, few will welcome it more than myself, but I confess that at present the task seems more than Herculean.

Clifford fell silent. The years passed. Clifford never did present to the public the result of his intimate communion with Alfred’s friend, companion, and hagiographer.97 His defense of Alfred’s charisma sank into oblivion.98 Yet the contours of the Athenæum controversy continue to influence the dynamics of the dialogue between cult and canon, and can be discerned in the contours of Stevenson’s 1904 critical edition of the Life, the need for which had been so ardently emphasised by both Howorth and Clifford, each for his own reasons, and which after more than a century still remains canonical.

Stubbs’ Gambit In 1852 Giles had been reluctant to acknowledge that if Asser’s credit is destroyed, Alfred’s 849 birthdate is gone. In 1876 Howorth’s success depended 96 Howorth overlooks the evidence that the aæ series is already out of synch from 870 to 876. See the table and the graph in ‘Born in the Margin,’ pp. 86–87. Stubbs gets it right; see below, p. 138, n. 111. 97 His copious notes would make interesting reading today. (I would be curious to know whether they are written in English, Italian, Latin, or all three.) They survive in the Clifford family’s archives at Chudleigh. 98 But see Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ p. 347, n. 588; p. 348, n. 590.

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on the converse: destroy Alfred’s birthdate and Asser’s credit is gone. This is illogical. Take the 849 birthdate off the board and Asser’s position actually improves. The formidable array of chronological contradictions softly and silently vanishes away and need never be heard of again. You merely have to test the hypothesis that the secondary aæ scaffolding with its 849 birthdate is not ‘due to Asser.’ Drawing on my chess metaphor I call this move a gambit, because it offers to sacrifice a pawn in return for an improved position — a move that would have checkmated Howorth if only Clifford had felt free to make it in 1876.99 If only, that is to say, 849 had not become such a hard fact to stub your toe on. In the discourse of chess the conventions of eponymy allow one to test a gambit’s strengths and weaknesses and develop the logical corollaries of its ramifications beyond what may or may not have been in the mind of the master who originally thought of playing it. And so I nickname this one Stubbs’ Gambit because it was in his Rolls Series edition of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum that Stubbs quietly pointed out that by sacrificing aæ and its 849 birthdate we do not destroy Asser’s credibility, we enhance it. Howorth had been sure that William of Malmesbury did not know Asser’s Life: William of Malmesbury stands out among our earlier chroniclers as a singularly critical and philosophical historian. In the Preface to his ‘Historia Regum,’ he gives an account of the authorities which were accessible to him which referred to Anglo-Saxon times. Not a word about Asser or any work by him. Is it credible that so diligent an historian, and one who knew the materials of Early English history so well that he was even acquainted with the little-known work of Ethelward, would have overlooked such a prize as Asser’s ‘Life of Alfred’ if it had then existed, or would have failed to mention with special honour the biographer of the king? I deem it almost incredible, and in itself to be suff icient to cast doubt on the work, which, as I have argued from other considerations, I hold to be a compilation of the same century as William of Malmesbury and doubtless later in date than his history.100 99 ‘A gambit is an early attempt to seize the initiative forcibly (usually at the cost of a pawn or two). The gambiteer hopes to profit from his rapid development and superior mobility to score an early victory, or to regain his material with interest.’ Evans, Chess, p. 124. 100 Howorth, #2549, September 2, 1876, p. 308.

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Stubbs pulls this nail out of Asser’s coffin. He rebuts Howorth by examining in detail how William did indeed use Asser’s Life: The present is not the place for any critical examination of this celebrated work; and if I say that, in my opinion, the present state of [Asser’s] text is such as to inspire some dangerous doubts, I do not wish to be understood as questioning the general truth of the work as history, or as throwing suspicion on its genuineness and authenticity. Of the particular difficulties to which I refer the most important are those which affect Asser himself and his relation to Alfred, points which do not come into consideration in the work before us. It is sufficient for the occasion to accept the hypothesis that [William of Malmesbury] had in his hands the book which we possess as the ‘Vita Alfredi.’ It is from the text, as nearly as possible in its existing form, that he seems to have taken his extracts.101

J. E. Kirby’s recent and valuable reassessment of Stubbs’ role in the professionalization of historical scholarship helps us see that while Stubbs inaugurated a new tradition of university historians, he was still a late yet prominent figure in the old tradition of ecclesiastical antiquaries whose participation in the cult of Alfred has been the focus of attention in these pages: This ecclesiastical lineage fundamentally revises our understanding of the intellectual origins not only of Stubbs, but of the historical profession more generally. He did indeed stand with one foot on the German giants; but the other foot rested closer to home, on the shoulders of English bishops, parsons and antiquaries. The resulting picture of historical study in England is one of greater continuity across the amateur-professional divide. This continuity was in great measure religious, as ecclesiastical antiquities and controversies provided material for clergy to engage in source-based historical scholarship both before and after the establishment of academic history and the arrival of Geschichtsquellen. As Maitland later testified, ‘in Victorian England a vast part of the best work that was done for medieval history was done by clerks in holy orders. It would be far too little to say that in this, as in many other matters, the Church of England fully maintained her reputation as a learned Church.’102 101 Stubbs, Gesta Regum, II, xxxix–xl. See also I,129 n.1, and I,133. 102 Kirby, ‘Stubbs,’ p. 87. (Quoting The collected papers of Frederic William Maitland (Cambridge, 1911), III, p. 469.)

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Stubbs addressed, without explicitly mentioning, the Athenæum controversy. He would not descend to the level of an antiquarian wrangle over nails, hammers, and coffins. ‘Significantly, he shunned media that he associated with polemical or unreflective thought, inveighing against erroneous or hostile comment on religious and historical controversies by “casual critics” in periodicals, newspapers, and “trashy books.”’103 Stubbs shared with many antiquaries an interest in whoever translated relics from earlier containers into the ones in which they are now preserved for us: I now proceed to an examination of the materials used by our author in the composition of the second book of the Gesta: the portion of the work for which we owe him on the whole the most special gratitude, not so much perhaps for its actual value as history, as for its conservation of traditions and relics of popular beliefs which are to be found nowhere else. […] The second book is a congeries of relics which but for him might have been lost.104

Like the Christian Socialist Dean of Ely, like the f iercely Protestant Martin Tupper, like the Catholic Bishop Clifford, Bishop Stubbs was a serious Christian: a Tractarian.105 Unlike them, he was not a devotee of the cult of Alfred. And when he talks about the relics preserved in the medieval texts which he edits and interprets, he doesn’t mean material objects that spark thrills of emotion when you kiss the reliquaries that hold them.106 He uses the term relics in an archaeological sense comparable to the sense in which Chris Jones uses the analogous geological term fossils.107 As a Tractarian, Stubbs ‘explicitly rejected the claim that the English Church and its faith were “Protestant”, affirming that they were instead “Catholic.”’108 In his treatment of Asser he mediated between Howorth’s Protestantism and Clifford’s Catholicism. For the Infidel, Asser’s Life is not an unworthy vessel, it is no vessel at all. Not just empty, but incapable of containing anything, except, perhaps, one damn fable after another, higgledy-piggledy. For the 103 Kirby, ‘Stubbs,’ p. 101. 104 Stubbs, Gesta Regum, p. xxxviii. 105 Kirby, ‘Stubbs,’ passim. 106 Brentano quotes Stubbs, Gesta Regum, II, p. lxxxix: ‘The merest contact with the miraculous seems to have the effect of starting [William of Malmesbury] off at a tangent.’ Of a piece of hagiography Stubbs wrote ‘its quaintness seems to border on wantonness of invention.’ Brentano, ‘Sound of Stubbs,’ p. 10. 107 Jones, Fossil Poetry. 108 Kirby, ‘Stubbs,’ p. 90.

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Believer, as Clifford testifies, it is a sacred reliquary containing precious relics of real power, providing present solace and inspiration. Stubbs here frames the Life as the original container of a triad of relics of Alfred’s childhood, a triad rewoven by William of Malmesbury into his Gesta Regum. Stubbs displayed most sharply his stalking, hesitant, patient approach to ‘truth’ in his piecing together of sources and working out of manuscript genealogies in his Rolls Series introductions to medieval chroniclers, and most maturely in his William of Malmesbury. The taste for webbed contingencies is inseparable in Stubbs from a delight in the purely observed individual ‘fact’.109

I say ‘rewoven’ because what Howorth presents, polemically, as Asser’s disorderly jumble of discrete flotsam and jetsam, Stubbs represents, irenically, as a web of contingencies out of which might hesitantly emerge a knowable fact: the date of Alfred’s birth. He is implicitly continuing his rebuttal of Howorth’s checkmate of Clifford without, again, condescending to the level of the Athenæum controversy. Stubbs introduces his gambit by quietly remarking, ‘There are a few points in the history of Alfred on which the present examination gives me the opportunity of commenting.’ He chooses to begin with Asser’s redactorial addition of Alfred’s age to the Chronicle’s annal for 853: One of these is his mission to Rome in his infancy. This event is placed in the Chronicle, which was drawn up under his own eye, in the year 853; and in the same year by Asser, who in the extant text describes it as the eleventh year of the boy’s age. If, however, Alfred was born in 849, he was sent to Rome when he was only four.110

But he immediately lets the double scaffolding raise a doubt: ‘The years of his age are, indeed, calculated very confusedly: from 851 to 869 from 848; from 870 to 876 from 849; and from 878 to 887 from 851.’ This sentence neatly codifies Howorth’s long list of ‘blunders.’ It lets a simple pattern emerge as a progression which mechanically pulls the implicit birthdate forward from 848 to 849 to 851 in two stumbles.111 (It also corrects Howorth’s evidence 109 Brentano, ‘Sound of Stubbs,’ p. 2. 110 Stubbs, Gesta Regum, p. xli. 111 Here Stubbs (like Howorth) counts ‘the n-th year of Alfred’s life’ as the year after his n-th birthday. Cf. p. 149, n. 142 below.

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by including the first stumble, the annals from 870 to 876, which Howorth had overlooked.) Since Alfred’s eleventh year is exempt from this mechanical progression, Stubbs can now introduce his gambit as a wistful temptation: This confusion might tempt us to disregard the calculation of age altogether, and so to throw the year of the great king’s birth back to a date which would make it at least credible that he was sent to Rome for education at an age at which he would be likely to profit by it.

This word undecimo may be our only clue to Alfred’s age in Rome, and therefore the one and only clue to his birthdate. Accepting this gambit could free us from trying to believe that Æthelwulf would send a mere infant to Rome. And Asser’s redactorial link between Alfred’s eleventh and twelfth years then makes the triad of childhood virtutes more coherent: And this, again, has a bearing on the story told by Asser about his learning to read. His mother promised a book to the son who should first learn to read; Alfred was the successful competitor and this appears to be fixed to the boy’s twelfth year.112 But his own mother, although in legend she appears as late as the year 872, must be thought to have died before 856, in which year Ethelwulf married Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald. Judith was only twelve years old at the time, and is scarcely likely to have posed as the mother of a boy of seven or eight; nor was her conduct in after life such that Alfred was likely, in talking to Asser, to describe her as his mother. If, however, the year 853 were indeed his eleventh year, the story might be credible.

Stubbs concludes by recasting his gambit not as a tempting flight of wishful thinking but as a serious hypothesis worth evaluating. ‘Such an adjustment of dates is only possible on the hypothesis that the author of the Vita was altogether at sea about the matter.’ Or, as I put it above, on the hypothesis that the secondary aæ scaffolding based on 849 is not ‘due to Asser.’ 112 In ch. 6 below I explore this common but misleading conception of when and why Alfred ceased to be illiteratus. As redacted by Asser, Alfred’s twelfth year is not when he ceased to be illiterate by learning to read: it’s when he ceased to be illatinate by getting to know Latin as a living language during his pilgrimage to Rome. To say that Alfred was ignorant of Latin until he went to Rome in his eleventh year makes sense. To say he was ignorant of the alphabet until 861 ad does not. Nothing about 861 throws light on why he crossed the language border in 861.

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Stubbs is proposing to save the relics by removing aæ, the battered and rickety reinforcement of the reliquary’s ad chronological scaffolding. For the sake of the interacting stories he is willing to sacrifice the dates. The tactical value of Stubbs’ Gambit resides not in his authority as Regius Professor of Modern History, nor in the persuasiveness of his prose,113 but in the logic of a simple exercise in textual criticism that it induces. I erred when I wrote in 2016 that nothing in any other medieval biography offers an exact parallel to the Cotton MS’s doubled chronological scaffolding, ad + aæ.114 I overlooked the parallel of the ninth-century Life of Louis the Pious written by ‘the Astronomer.’115 Tremp, in his edition, used nineteen manuscripts.116 In the margin of only three of these, Tremp’s L1, W, and K, there is a double dating system: a series of ad numerals corresponding to the unnumbered annals in the body of the text, with a second series synchronically counting how old Louis was year by year.117 Either someone wrote the two series side by side in the margin of an exemplar from which L1, W, and K descend, or else the Astronomer himself originally wrote the double system which someone then left out of an exemplar from which the other sixteen descend. Given how far apart L1, W, and K are in the stemma, Tremp concludes that we cannot rule out either possibility. Either conclusion is legitimate.118 The evidence lets us choose which of the two makes more sense. Mutatis mutandis, the same goes for Asser’s Life. Tremp’s logic lets me summarize here the gist of the textual criticism of Asser’s chronological scaffolding spelled out in exhaustive detail in my Peritia article.119 From Giles and Howorth and Clifford to the present it has been evident that there are four witnesses to what Asser wrote. Call them C, S, N, and J.120 C and S 113 On which see Brentano’s elegant study of the poetics of Stubbs’ rhetorical skill, ‘Sound of Stubbs.’ 114 See n. 93 above. 115 Tremp, Astronomus. See also Berschin, Biographie, III, pp. 227–236. 116 Tremp, pp. 123–133. 117 Tremp, p. 150. The layout in L 1, W, and K is rudimentary: no Latin formula, just the numerals. For the stemma see Tremp, p. 153. 118 Tremp, p. 155. 119 Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin.’ 120 C = the text of the lost Cottonian manuscript of the Vita Ælfredi; S = Byrhtferth of Ramsey’s portion of ‘Symeon of Durham’s’ Historia regum Anglorum; N = ‘The Annals of St Neots’ s.aa. 849–901; J = ‘Florence’ now John of Worcester’s Chronicle s.aa. 849–901. These correspond to the sigla in Stevenson’s apparatus as follows: C = Cott, S = SD1, N = SN, and J = Flor. For canonical overviews of the transmission of Asser’s text in C, S, N, and J, see Plummer, Alfred, especially pp. 21–23, 31–33, 60–62; WHS, §§ lv–lix; and Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, especially pp. 57–58. For a proposed improvement on the current paradigm, see Dumville and Lapidge, St Neots, pp.

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display both ad and aæ: the familiar double scaffolding. But N and J ‘omit’ aæ. They have just the single ad scaffolding of the Chronicle. Either N and J preserve what Asser actually wrote and someone else inserted aæ into the exemplar from which C and S descend, or else Asser did couple ad to aæ and someone else left aæ out of the exemplar from which N and J descend. The latter option is the current consensus. But in Asser’s case the evidence provided by the slippage in aæ (almost identical in C and S) favors the former option, favors Asser’s innocence of the ‘blunders’ caused by the chronological contradictions.121 And if it wasn’t Asser who doubled the Life’s scaffolding, if Asser never placed aæ on the board to begin with, removing it from play is not much of a sacrifice. Elementary textual criticism favors its removal anyway. Why handcuff Asser to the chronological contradictions? To decline Stubbs’ Gambit would degrade the coherence of Asser’s crucial stories, and thus of the Life as a whole. Nothing in the evidence forces Asser to march to aæ’s mechanical, though wobbly, metronome. Coupling it to the Chronicle’s primary ad metronome hinders us from hearing, over the chronological noise, Asser’s own voice. Accept Stubbs’ Gambit and Asser’s hagiographic account of Alfred’s biliteracy takes vertical flight. All we have to sacrifice is the illusion that 849 was, for Asser, a hard fact, along with the various conclusions which have been drawn from stubbing our toes on that illusion, conclusions which turn out to have penetrated, as equally hard facts, into the formation of the Alfredian canon more deeply than meets the eye, particularly the unwarranted ‘fact’ that the Life was written in 893 ad. Unforeseen costs and benefits of accepting Stubbs’ Gambit will emerge in the rest of this book.

Plummer’s blind spot Why then did Plummer neither decline nor accept Stubbs’ Gambit? Why did he sidestep it? This simple question has no simple answer. Stubbs recalibrated the evidence for Alfred’s birthdate. Plummer’s strategy for coping with Stubbs’ recalibration is implicit in the series of steps he took between 1889 and 1901. He started off by rebutting Howorth’s attack on Alfred’s historicity, not by xxxix–xliii. For a would-be revolutionary paradigm-shift focussing on S = Byrhtferth of Ramsey, see Hart, Learning and Culture. 121 On the purely mechanical nature of the ‘slippage’ see below, pp. 149–150, nn. 143-145. On the marginality of this kind of mechanical dislocation see Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ pp. 94–97.

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defending Asser but by publishing his magisterial revision of Earle’s Two Saxon Chronicles Parallel between 1889 and 1899. His splendid edition of the Chronicle is not a defense of Clifford. It is not a vindication of the Life as England’s greatest reliquary, the greatest treasure of English history. It disproves Lingard’s original Dictum, on which, each in their own way, Howorth and Clifford had depended. Destroy Asser’s credit, and Alfred’s fame is not gone. On the contrary, Alfred, the protagonist no longer of the Welsh Latin Life but now only of the vernacular Chronicle, emerges all the cleaner, more Anglo-Saxon, less Celtic. When Plummer says that thanks to the Chronicle ‘Alfred holds in history the place that Arthur holds in romance’ he is alluding to Clifford.122 The cult does not need the Life. The Chronicle is a better reliquary. By canonizing the Chronicle as sufficient proof of Alfred’s historical greatness, Plummer’s edition redefined the relation between a life and a chronicle and thus institutionalised a major and permanent paradigm shift in the cult of Alfred. This paradigm shift was legitimized by Plummer’s grasp of the disciplines of historical criticism in general, and his meticulous textual criticism in particular, in a word by his professionalism. In the Preface to the published version of his 1901 Ford Lectures, he would declare: I am sorry that I have had to speak unfavourably of some of the recent Alfred literature which has come under my notice. I am a little jealous for the honour of English historical scholarship; and I am more than a little jealous that the greatest name in English history should be considered a theme on which any one may try his prentice hand.123

We have seen that in 1852 Alfred’s historicity was established not by the Life nor by the Chronicle but by the Works as the cult’s prime reliquary. But the Works played no part in the Athenæum controversy. They were not even mentioned. The Life had become the bone of contention, the prime reliquary both for Howorth’s Manchesterismus and for the English Catholic branch of the cult. Plummer’s scholarly edition demoted the Life and promoted the Chronicle to the rank of prime reliquary. Alfred himself made it. It was drawn up ‘under his own eye,’ says Bishop Stubbs in 1889.124 So, in 1901, does the Dean of Ely when he confesses his thrill of emotion. 122 See above ch. 2, p. 86, n. 57. 123 Plummer, Alfred, p. vii. 124 See above p. 138, n. 110.

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As the 1901 Millenary approached, Plummer could not ignore the pressure to choose one of the birthdates implicit in Asser’s Life. The attractive 842 date which, as Stubbs put it, ‘would make it at least credible that he was sent to Rome for education at an age at which he would be likely to profit by it,’ depends on the single word undecimo preserved in surviving postmedieval transcripts of a medieval manuscript which turned into a blob of glup in the fire that burned the Cottonian Library in 1731.125 To defend 842 in public against 849 by accepting Stubbs’ Gambit would be to vanish into an arcane realm where the value of burnt manuscripts is weighed against that of popular opinion, the value of stories against that of dates, and the value of Asser’s opinions against some criterion yet to be determined. With the date of Alfred’s death now flapping around between 899 and 901, Plummer had to peg the date of his birth down to a single year. He had to make up his mind. To doubt Alfred’s birthdate in public was made more problematic by the proto-fascist hoopla surrounding the approaching celebration of Alfred the Great’s Thousand Year Empire. Millions of Anglo-Saxons around the globe were being urged to deify Alfred by sheer popular acclaim as the most perfect human being who had ever lived, the archetypal Urvater of the Race, Father of the British Empire, of its Laws, its Navy, and its Prose. In 1897 Frederic Harrison persuaded the Mayor of Winchester and the Imperialist Sir Walter Besant to help him mount his tremendous sequel to Queen Victoria’s grandiose Diamond Jubilee. In 1898, Besant addressed a small provincial gathering at the Guildhall in Winchester: When we were all drunk with the visible glory and the greatness of the Empire — there arose in the minds of many a feeling that we ought to teach the people the meaning of what we saw set forth in that procession — the meaning of our Empire — not only what it is, but how it came — through whose creation — by whose foundation. Now so much is Alfred the Founder that every ship in our Navy might have his name — every school his bust: every Guildhall his statue. He is everywhere. But he is invisible. And the people do not know him. The boys do not learn about him. There is nothing to show him. We want a monument to Alfred, if only to make the people learn and remember the origin of our Empire — if only that his noble example may be kept before us, to stimulate and to inspire and to encourage.126 125 Prescott, ‘The Ghost of Asser.’ 126 Besant, Alfred, p. 35. The 1901 Millenary has now been seriously studied from various perspectives: Yorke, Millenary; Simmons, Reversing the Conquest, pp. 185–191; Heathorn, ‘Englishman.’

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Seeking a larger audience, he then addressed the general public in a popular book published (after he died) in 1901: If the subject could interest the folk of Winchester, why should it not interest also the whole of the Anglo-Saxon world? I desire to stand before a larger audience in a wider theatre. I desire to fill that theatre with the people to whom at present Alfred is but a name, if even that. I should like, if it were possible, to see before me, in imagination, tier beyond tier, stretching far away in the distance, circle beyond circle, millions of white faces intent upon the story of the English king.127

Alfred’s sanctity was more interesting than his birthdate. But sanctity and birthdate were interlocked. Alfred could not have two birthdates, any more than St Paul could have two heads. But he had to have at least one. If Alfred had no birthdate, his sanctity was as mythical as Arthur’s. And so was his historicity. What was politically and psychologically at stake in this fervor over Alfred’s historicity as ‘fons et origo of political stability in England’128 is illuminated by Hannah Arendt’s contrast between the tribalism characteristic of Continental pan-movements and the chauvinist mystique of British and French Imperialism: Only with the ‘enlarged tribal consciousness’ did that peculiar identification of nationality with one’s own soul emerge, that turned-inward pride that is no longer concerned only with public affairs but pervades every phase of private life until, for example, ‘the private life of each true Pole is a public life of Polishness.’ In psychological terms, the chief differences between even the most violent chauvinism and this tribal nationalism is that one is extroverted, concerned with visible spiritual and material achievements of the nation, whereas the other, even in its mildest forms (for example, the German youth movement) is introverted, concentrates on the individual’s own soul which is considered as the embodiment of general national qualities. Chauvinist mystique still points to something that really existed in the past […] and merely tries to elevate this into a realm beyond human control; tribalism, on the other hand, starts from non-existent pseudomystical elements which it proposes to realize fully in the future.129 127 Besant, Alfred, p. 12. 128 Keynes, ‘The Cult,’ p. 341. 129 Arendt, Totalitarianism, pp. 226–227.

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Under these circumstances, Plummer’s strategy for steering clear of Stubbs’ Gambit was to demonstrate that if you destroy Asser’s credit Alfred still has a birthdate, refuting Howorth’s corollary of Lingard’s dictum. You don’t have to listen to Asser. The Chronicle can tell you when Alfred was born. Granted, the Chronicle has no annal for 849. But in the last sentence of the Parker West Saxon Regnal List, Plummer found evidence for Alfred’s true birthdate unscathed by Asser. In 1899, he packed a lot into this laconic note on the annal for 853: There has been much discussion as to the date of Alfred’s birth, Stubbs II.xxxix–xli [viz. Stubbs’ Gambit]. It seems to have been overlooked that the date is fixed by the genealogical Preface to [the Parker] MS. of the Chron[icle], a strictly contemporary authority, which says that he was ‘turned’ twenty-three at his accession in 871. This fixes his birth to 848. He was therefore five years old at the time of his first visit to Rome.130

From his point of view he had rendered Stubbs’ Gambit moot. Alfred had one and only one birthdate. There was no further need to consider the choice between 842 and 849. He was not, at this point, concerned with saving Asser’s credit. ‘Into the discussion of the date and character of the so-called Asser, I am fortunately not bound to enter. I trust the many problems connected with it will soon be solved for us by Mr. W. H. Stevenson.’131 Under calmer circumstances, however, one would look askance at the claim that you could track down the exact birth year of an Anglo-Saxon king by consulting a Regnal List. What I have called Plummer’s blind spot seduced him into falling under the spell of the odd notion that instead of telling us how long Alfred has been reigning the composer of this Regnal List would prefer to tell us how old Alfred once was. A genealogy is a chain of ancestors; a regnal list, a chain of regnal lengths. A birthdate or an aetas would be as out of place in such a genealogy or a regnal list as on a coin or a charter. Imagine a witness list that included something like I Alfred, twenty-three years of age, witness this. One would need a lot of persuading to believe that such a charter could be genuine. The rules of the game make it virtually impossible to slip an aetas onto a coin, a charter — or a genealogical regnal list. It goes against the grain. It is at bottom a question of genre, a question for philology, a question of Old English syntax.132 130 Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. 79. 131 Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. lxxxiv, end of n. 4. 132 For a detailed explication see Kalmar, ‘And Then What?’ On the textual strategies that structure traditional alliterating genealogies in general and the West Saxon Regnal List in

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The last four clauses of the West Saxon Regnal List do not say ‘Alfred was twenty-three in 871.’ They say, ‘Then Alfred took the throne and when 23 years of his age had passed, 396 had passed since the Conquest of Wessex’ (Þa feng Ælfred to rice ond þa was ágán his ielde 23 wintra ond 396 wintra þæs þe his cyn ærest Westseaxna lond on Wealum geodon). The subtle resources of laconic Old English paratactic syntax were obscure to nineteenth-century English philologists, even those as well-versed in Old English as Earle and Plummer. What we now know about Old English syntax discredits the attitude which Bruce Mitchell once parodied as ‘parataxis bad, hypotaxis good,’ the assumption that our rude stout-hearted ancestors could not be expected to have been as articulate as we are since we can use hypotaxis to establish logical and temporal connections between our clauses and they couldn’t. In recent years we have become more aware than Earle and Plummer could ever have been of how disabling that attitude can be. It has become clear to anyone who reads Bruce Mitchell’s majestic study of Old English Syntax that if you ignore the conjunctions that link clauses in an Old English text like the West Saxon Regnal List, you misunderstand how the clauses interact. What Alistair Campbell had written in 1970 was strongly endorsed by Mitchell in 1985: Failure to recognize that even co-ordinating conjunctions are syntactically subordinating has often led scholars to quote clauses which are opened by such conjunctions without the conjunctions, which alone make their word-order possible. Such mal-quotation is frequent in Bosworth-Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.133

Readers interested in a complete analysis of how the sixty clauses in the West Saxon Regnal List are linked by just three conjunctions, ond, þa, ond þa, and þæs, can see it laid out in ‘And Then What?’134 Here it will be enough to simplify the syntactic issue by considering a Modern English analogy. King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head was cut off is not the same as King Charles walked and talked and after half an hour his particular, see the elegant and characteristically incisive analysis by Bredehoft, ‘Genealogies.’ On the West Saxon Regnal List as a whole, see Irvine, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,’ pp. 353–354. 133 Campbell, ‘Verse Influences,’ p. 93, n. 4; quoted and vigorously endorsed by Bruce Mitchell, who comments: ‘it is more than time for those who intend to write on the order of elements in OE to take to head Alistair Campbell’s last formulation of what should long ago have been a truism.’ OE Syntax § 1731 (I, p. 714). 134 A color-coded layout of the linked clauses is also available separately at https://www. academia.edu/14547737/.

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head was cut off. If English is your native tongue the difference is obvious. If not, perhaps not. Plummer assumed that Alfred took the throne after twenty-three years of Alfred’s ield had already passed. This is analogous to assuming King Charles walked and talked half an hour after his head had already been cut off. Plummer is ignoring the difference between *þa his ielde 23 wintra ágán was, and ond þa was ágán his ielde 23 wintra, between þa and ond þa, between ‘when’ and ‘and when.’ He does not appreciate the function of that little ond before the second þa, analogous to the effect of inserting and before after in the sentence about poor King Charles. His blind spot prevents him from considering even the possibility that Alfred’s ield begins when he starts reigning, not when he is born.135 The difference between this happened when 23 years had passed and this happened and when 23 years had passed is as clear in Modern English as it was in Old English. In the first case the sentence can end. In the second it can’t. It has to keep going: …and when 23 years of his age had passed 396 years had passed since the Conquest of Wessex. Plummer’s blind spot lets him see the value of 23 but not the value of 396. Twenty-three looks like a precious clue to a much-desired fact. He needs it to prove that he has fixed Alfred’s birthdate. Three hundred and ninety-six measures how long the dynasty has been reigning. He doesn’t need this numeral. For the sake of the desired birthdate he needs to sacrifice 396. It must be ignored. It’s meaningless. It goes in the wastebasket.136 In short, Plummer was seduced by a mirage. He had not eyes to see all that was written there. The West Saxon Regnal List does not let us believe that 848 is a fact any harder than 849, that the Anno Ælfredi scaffolding in the Cotton MS of the Life is off by just one year, that the historical Alfred was five not four when he went to Rome. If we want to know when Alfred was born we have no choice, for better or for worse, but to ask Asser. Armed with Alfred’s true birthdate Plummer was finally ready to respond to Stubbs’ Gambit. Plummer was not Stubbs’ equal. Nobody was. But he came close.137 It was thanks to Stubbs that Plummer had been invited to give the Ford Lectures. That they regarded each other as professional peers is 135 On the semantics of ield see Kalmar, ‘And Then What?,’ pp. 57–66. 136 ‘The interval the Preface places between the Conquest of Wessex and Alfred’s accession, 396 years, is of course too long.’ Plummer Chronicles, II, p. 3. See further, Kalmar, ‘And Then What?,’ pp. 54–55 and passim. 137 ‘Plummer’s own editorial work in Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and later medieval history, liturgy, palaeography, and law — richly illuminated by his own rare breadth of learning — is still relevant and valuable, even after a century of substantial scholarship in medieval studies. His text of Bede, especially, has been described as final. For his generation, which was such a pivotal

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evident in the gracious eulogy with which Plummer begins his lectures in September, five months after Stubbs’ death in April: I trust you will not think it inappropriate if I begin these lectures by paying my humble tribute to the memory of the great historian who, since my appointment to this post of Ford’s Lecturer, has been taken from us. I believe that to him I am very largely indebted for the honour of appearing before you to-day; and if that were so, it would only be of a piece with the many acts of kindness and encouragement which he showed me; encouragement sometimes couched in that humorous form which he loved, and which was occasionally misunderstood by those who had not, like himself, the saving gift of humour.138

I take seriously the language in which Plummer goes on to express his experience of Stubbs’ impeccable scholarship: It is not easy to measure the greatness of his loss. He was unquestionably one of the most learned men in Europe; one of the few who could venture to assert an historical negative. If he declared ‘there is no authority for such a view or statement,’ you knew that there was nothing more to be said. But even more wonderful than the extent of his learning was the way in which he could compress it, and bring it all to bear upon the particular point with which he was dealing. I daresay it has happened to you, as it has often happened to myself, to read other books and authorities, and to fancy that one had gained from them fresh facts and views, and then to go back to Stubbs and find that all our new facts and views were there already; only, until we had read more widely ourselves, we had not eyes to see all that was written there.139

One would expect, in the light of this, that he will treat Stubbs’ Gambit with respect. But, as we are about to see, he doesn’t. At the beginning of his lecture on Alfred’s life before taking the throne, Plummer expands into two paragraphs what he had packed into his laconic 1899 Note on Alfred’s birthdate.140 He begins, ‘There has been a good deal one for the transition from Victorian to modern, Plummer exemplif ied uniquely Arnoldian sweetness and light.’ Schoeck, ‘Plummer.’ 138 Plummer, Alfred, p. 1. 139 Ibid. 140 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 69–70, leading directly into his five pages on the 853 pilgrimage to Rome, which are the focus of ch. 2 above.

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of discussion as to the date of Alfred’s birth.’ This echoes the beginning of his 1899 Note. There, ‘much discussion’ alluded primarily to the Athenæum controversy and Stubbs. Here, ‘a good deal of discussion’ alludes in addition to the traction that the 842 date has been getting in certain quarters between 1899 and 1901.141 A striking difference between this 1901 expansion and the short 1899 note is that whereas in 1899 he had immediately cited Stubbs’ Gambit, without having to deal with ‘the so-called Asser,’ here on the contrary he deals with Asser but doesn’t cite Stubbs at all. By the time he’s done, you would never know from these two paragraphs that Stubbs had anything at all to say on the subject. This is surprising. Plummer neatly resolves, once and for all, the source of the contradictions in aæ which Howorth had presented in his long list of ‘blunders’: In one case, the annal for 853, the resulting year of Alfred’s nativity is 843.142 With this single exception all the other errors are accounted for by the accidental repetition of numbers, combined with the occurrence of blank annals which are not allowed for. I have shown elsewhere how the chronology of the Saxon Chronicle is dislocated in various places by similar causes of a purely mechanical nature.143

This is a big step forward. Having seen the similarity between the mechanical dislocations in aæ and analogous dislocations in the ad scaffolding of various manuscripts of the Chronicle,144 the next logical step should be to interpret the significant difference between the two cases. The dislocations in aæ are not due to blank annals. The Life has none. More important, the Chronicle MSS have only a single ad scaffolding whose occasional dislocations are necessarily marginal to the content of the annals. In the Life the ad scaffolding is not dislocated. Therefore the dislocations in the 141 For example, in 1899 the Bishop of Bristol (whose name I have not yet been able to discover) wrote: ‘In the year 853, which Asser declares to have been the fifth year of Alfred’s life — though some say his eleventh year, which would seem more probable — Ethelwulf sent him to Rome.’ Bishop of Bristol, ‘Religious Man and Educationalist,’ p. 72. Plummer genially remarked early in his opening Ford lecture that it was a mistake for this bishop to have made Alfred ‘a BroadChurchman with agnostic proclivities.’ Alfred, p. 6. For another example, see Harrison, ‘The Millenary,’ pp. 47–49. And see below on the Jesuit scholar Herbert Thurston in 1901, p. 154, n. 158. 142 Plummer counts Alfred’s eleventh year as the year before his eleventh birthday. Cf. p. 138, n. 111 above. 143 For a helpful graph of the evidence, see Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 87. 144 MS B is particularly rich in examples of scribal slips that do or don’t dislocate en bloc a series of subsequent numerals.

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aæ scaffolding are necessarily marginal not only to the text of the Life but also to the undislocated ad scaffolding.145 aæ is a marginal component of the parergon, of the frame itself. This favors accepting Stubbs’ Gambit. Yet Plummer declares, ‘It is idle to build anything on this.’ Stubbs’ Gambit was predicated on the fact that undecimo is not part of this dislocation. When you remove aæ, undecimo survives as the only place where Asser couples an ad date taken from the Chronicle to an ordinal numeral recording how old Alfred was that year. Plummer fudges this crucial point. He wants to dismiss undecimo as a scribal slip exempt from that familiar principle of textual criticism: difficilior lectio potior. And he betrays a rare lack of candor by attributing the gambit not to its true author, Stubbs, but to a lesser historian: ‘Sir James Ramsay indeed seizes on the one eccentric annal 853 as giving the true date of Alfred’s birth.’146 His diction here is worth noting as a symptom of his blind spot. After all, one could fairly say that Plummer himself seizes on the one allegedly eccentric clause in the West Saxon Regnal List as giving the true date of Alfred’s birth. ‘But, to say the least,’ Plummer goes on, ‘the doctrine of chances is strongly against this. We cannot indeed account for this date by progressive degeneration, but it is simply one of those scribal errors to which numerals are peculiarly liable.’ He invokes a deus ex machina to let undecimo softly and silently vanish away and never be heard of again. This is cavalier. We have here a case of two witnesses contradicting one another: the author of the so-called ‘eccentric’ undecimo reading and the author of the dislocated aæ-system. Which of these authors (if any) is Asser? This cannot fairly be construed as a case of twenty-five witnesses independently contradicting — let alone outvoting — one so-called ‘eccentric’ witness over and over again.147 To give 849 twenty-five times as much 145 On the marginality of purely mechanical chronological dislocations, see Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ pp. 88–90. 146 Ramsay, Foundations of England, I, p. 247, n. 1. See also p. 257: ‘[Grimbald’s] acquaintance with Ælfred was said to date from the time of the king’s first journey to Rome, a further proof that Ælfred was more than five years old at that time.’ 147 Stevenson will be more forthright: ‘So serious are the difficulties raised by the view that the events [of the book story] in this chapter [23] relate to Alfred’s twelfth or thirteenth year, that Stubbs proposed to obviate them by assigning Alfred’s birth to an earlier date than 849, the year given in the Life, because the Cottonian MS. of the latter described 853 as the eleventh year of his life. […] But this is one of several blunders in the numbering of his years, and it is disproved by the more general reckoning of his age from 849 [that is, by aæ.]’ Asser, p. 223. Stevenson here treats the undecimo reading as if it were the same sort of ‘blunder’ as the accidental repetition of a number that dislocates the aæ-series. But it is not a purely mechanical error. It is a different kind of slip, if indeed it is a slip. See ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 93, n. 19.

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weight as the single undecimo reading only because it was mechanically witnessed twenty-five times in the aæ scaffolding before being dislocated would be as fallacious as to favour a questionable manuscript reading merely because twenty-five scribes ‘slavishly’ copied it over and over again in twenty-five later manuscripts. There is, to say the least, no ‘doctrine of chances’ relevant to this situation. Having thus dealt with the evidence for 849, Plummer moves on to the evidence for 848 by expanding his 1899 note on Alfred’s birthdate. For ease of comparison I here lay out the 1899 note and the 1901 paragraph. 1899 Chronicle, II, p. 79 1901 Alfred, p. 70 It seems to have been The best authority for the date of Alfred’s overlooked that the date is birth has been generally overlooked. This is fixed by the genealogical the genealogical preface prefixed to MS. Ā of Preface to [the Parker] the Chronicle. This is a strictly contemporary MS. of the Chron[icle], document, being drawn up during Alfred’s a strictly contemporary reign, as is proved by the fact that, though it authority, which says that gives Alfred’ accession, it does not, as in the he was ‘turned’ twenty- case of all the preceding kings, give the length three at his accession in of his reign. According to this authority Alfred 871. This fixes his birth to ‘took to the kingdom when there was gone of 848. He was therefore five his age three and twenty winters.’ In other years old at the time of his words, Alfred was ‘turned’ twenty-three, as we first visit to Rome. say, at his accession in 871. This fixes his birth to 848. The place, according to Asser, was Wantage.

He begins by promoting to the status of the best authority for the date of Alfred’s birth what ‘has been generally overlooked.’ This is the moment where 849 gives way to 848 as Alfred’s true birthdate and the Chronicle replaces the Life as Alfred’s best reliquary. This is a microcosm of Plummer’s successful paradigm shift. A lot hangs on that word ‘best’. After all, destroy Asser’s credit and this, for better or for worse, becomes the only authority for Alfred’s birthdate. And vice versa: if — as is indeed the case — this is no authority at all, then Asser remains, for better or for worse, the one and only authority. What, for Plummer, makes this Regnal List a better authority than the Life is the internal evidence that it is ‘a strictly contemporary document, being drawn up during Alfred’s reign, as is proved by the fact that, though it gives Alfred’s accession [albeit with no ad date — TK], it does not, as in the case

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of all the preceding kings, give the length of his reign.’148 Plummer’s blind spot prevents him from considering the twenty-three years of Alfred’s ield as internal evidence that this Regnal List was composed when twenty-three years had passed since Alfred took the throne, precious internal evidence that has in turn been overlooked. Plummer goes on to explain: ‘According to this authority, Alfred “took to the kingdom when there was gone of his age three and twenty winters.” In other words, Alfred was ‘turned’ twenty-three, as we say, at his accession in 871.’ The Old English is idiomatic, but Plummer’s Modern English is not. His pseudo-archaic diction here, when there was gone of his age, betrays how even in 1901 excellent philologists still felt the Romantic desire to maintain mutual intelligibility between Old and Modern English by favoring Tupperesque archaisms.149 In 1884 the foremost English philologist John Earle, Plummer’s beloved teacher and lifelong friend, had translated these last four clauses of the West Saxon Regnal List in his popular book on Anglo-Saxon Literature as follows: ‘Then took Alfred their brother to the realm, and then was agone of his age 23 years; and 396 years from that his race erst took Wessex from the Welsh.’150 Earle and Plummer were unaware of the poetic use of the formula (ond) þa was ágán to frame how many years of an era or ield have passed and especially to synchronize the end-points of two such durations.151 Finally, Plummer’s blind spot is perhaps most visible to us in the minute details of the footnote which he added to the published version of this lecture: A yet earlier copy of this document is printed in Sweet’s Oldest English Texts, p. 179; another copy occurs in the Cambridge University MS. of the Anglo-Saxon Bede; and a third in a fragment which probably belonged to MS. B of the Chronicle; all these MSS. read ‘xxiii’ with A; a later copy printed by Professor Napier reads ‘xxii.,’ this is probably a mere slip, or it may be due to the influence of Asser. See Chronicle, II.xxviii. f., lxxxix. f., I, 79. In the Hyde Register, pp. 94 ff., is a later copy beginning with Ine and going down to Canute; this omits the passage about Alfred’s age.152

This is a rare instance of Plummer misrepresenting evidence which he himself has so meticulously established and to which his own references 148 See below, n. 153. 149 Cf. Tupper: ‘In our version every word is Anglo-Saxon English.’ Alfred’s Poems, p. 130. See ch. 1, p. 65 above. 150 Earle, Anglo-Saxon Literature, p. 171. 151 For examples from Elena and Andreas see Kalmar, ‘And Then What?,’ pp. 66–69. 152 Plummer, Alfred, p. 70, n 3. My emphasis.

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direct his readers. In 1899 he had written that nothing is said in the West Saxon Regnal List as to the length of Alfred’s reign, ‘for the excellent reason that when the preface was written the length of the reign could not be known; and later scribes, with more self-restraint than they sometimes manifest, have refrained from supplying the deficiency,’153 even though he knew, better than anyone else, that the later tenth century scribe of β (British Library Cotton MS Tiberius A iii, f. 178) did indeed supply the deficiency by updating the 23 to Alfred’s full twenty-eight-and-a-half-year regnal length. And yet in this footnote he claims that ‘all these MSS. read xxiii ’ even though he has recorded that β actually reads 7 heold oþran healfan geare læs þe .xxx. wintra.154 And so does the Hyde Register: it does not omit ‘23’, it replaces ‘23’ with ‘28 ½.’ I have made bold to lay out in such pedantic detail moments which betray recurrent symptoms of Plummer’s blind spot both because of what is at stake and also because I take in good faith his gracious Gratiarum Actio: ‘Here, as elsewhere, I would express prospectively my gratitude to all who shall privately or publicly correct any mistakes into which I may have fallen.’155 A strategy of containment The way I’ve composed this case history is intended to let readers draw their own conclusions. The moral I myself draw from it is this: Tupper’s faith in his translation of Alfred’s burning words was legitimized by the way he disciplined his imagination. The same goes for Clifford’s faith in Upper Cock Farm as Ubba’s final resting place. And it turns out that the same can be said of Plummer’s faith in 848. It too was legitimized by the way he disciplined his imagination. The disciplines differ dramatically, but in the end even Plummer’s faith in chronology’s power to curb mytho-poesy backfires. After all, a five-year-old pilgrim in Rome is more, not less, romantic than an eleven-year-old.156 As a sort of Freudian slip, his blind spot allows him to trust in a flight of wishful thinking so as to believe that a figment of his own imagination is in fact true. His mind ceased to realize that by relying 153 Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. cvi § 102. 154 Plummer, Chronicles, I, p. 5, n. 5. Note also II, p. cvi § 102, n.1: ‘I have already shown how a later scribe did continue the genealogy to the exact point to which his own Chronicle extended; see above.’ Cf. also: ‘The genealogy of the West Saxon house (cited by me as β which, apart from scribal variations, resembles that in A, except that it is continued down to Edward the Martyr)’ II, p. lxxxix § 88. (My italics.) 155 Plummer, Chronicles, II, p. xiii. 156 But see above, p. 130, n. 87 on the hagiographic charge of a saint’s twelfth year.

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on scissors-and-paste it had itself created a date to which it then posited itself as subservient.157 He had unconsciously created a bright new fetish for our cult in the form of a hard fact. Plummer did not immediately convert everyone to his new date. The Catholic branch of the cult found its spokesperson in the Jesuit scholar Herbert Thurston whom we met near the end of chapter 2.158 Thurston concluded his 1901 essay by summarizing the benefits of accepting Stubbs’ Gambit: If we could believe that Alfred was not five, but — as Asser’s text in one place suggests, though quite inconsistently — eleven years old at the time of his first visit to Rome, many puzzling features in his history would find an explanation. We could then fit in the story of his learning to read, we could account for his deep attachment to such purely Roman books as St. Gregory’s Pastoral Care, St. Gregory’s Dialogues, or the Boethius, we could understand his imitation in the case of his grandson Athelstan, of the ceremony of his own investiture, we could see an educational purpose in Ethelwulf’s willingness to exile his youngest and best beloved child, we could better account for the mention of that very preference — strange enough otherwise if the boy was only eight when his father died — we should be less surprised to find Alfred’s name among the witnesses to a charter of 853, and so on.

Finally, if Alfred was eleven, one other conclusion would also follow, and that is, that the possibility of Alfred’s having been mistaken about the nature of the Roman ceremony would be more completely excluded, and we should have more confidence than even at present in adhering to the fact so plainly stated by Asser and the Chronicles, that during his stay in Rome, Alfred was anointed king.159

To which let me add by repeating that if Asser doesn’t think Alfred was born in 849, then he doesn’t think 893 is Alfred’s forty-fifth year. The six-year gap between 893 and 887 need chafe us no more.160 The Alfredian canon was closed in 1904 by the publication, at last, of Stevenson’s edition of the Life, on which I have had occasion to comment 157 I am alluding here to ch. 1, p. 33, n. 12, above. 158 Ch. 2, pp. 86-88, and n. 64. 159 Thurston, ‘Roman Sacring,’ p. 352. 160 See p. 132, n. 94 above.

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from time to time, and will continue to comment in the following chapters. Here I highlight four points. Firstly, Stevenson turns Asser’s reliquary into a curious museum piece which can serve no liturgical purpose. We are not to look inside it for authentic relics. Its regrettably hagiographic character testifies to the superstition of the age. Not Alfred’s superstition. The Celtic superstition of its author. Secondly, Stevenson is not prepared to diagnose Plummer’s syntactic mirage. He wants to make the 848 birthdate a rigorous test of Asser’s veracity.161 (He does not give Plummer credit for this date. In fact it is worth noting how rarely he mentions Plummer at all, even though he repeats Plummer’s strategy for sidestepping Stubbs’ Gambit.) Thirdly, his mission is to reconstruct the text of only the burnt Cotton MS, not the ninth century autograph which was its source. So he cuts short his otherwise thorough textual criticism. He feels no need to carry out the simple exercise which I sketched out above and which would have helped us all perceive the original marginality of the aæ scaffolding with its 849 birthdate, and thus the benefits of accepting Stubbs’ Gambit. Finally, he sets no limits to Asser’s stupidity and incompetence, condescending to invoke Asser’s Celtic muddle-headedness as sufficient to explain the chronological contradictions on which Howorth had placed so much emphasis, but which Stubbs’ Gambit dissolves.162 Both the marginal evidence that Asser thought Alfred was born in 849 and the wisp of evidence that Alfred was actually born in 848 are too slender to bear the weight that has been hung from them. The year 848 marks the birth neither of Asser’s protagonist nor of his historical namesake but merely of the Victorian Father of the British Empire. We do not know when Alfred was born. I doubt we ever will. To quote Plummer himself on the scant evidence for historical facts about Alfred: We must look that fact full in the face, and must not allow ourselves to supply the defects of the evidence by the luxuriance of a riotous imagination. The growth of legend is largely due to the unwillingness of men to acquiesce in inevitable ignorance, especially in the case of historical characters like Alfred, whom we rightly desire to honour and to love.’163 161 WHS, p. 223. 162 For example: ‘These various difficulties [viz. the chronological contradictions] have arisen from hastily reading the Life, and are due to the author’s bad arrangement of his material and to his obscurity of style.’ WHS, p. 224. 163 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 9–10.

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Implicitly, Plummer and Stevenson carried off an ideological strategy of containment. They found a way to readmit the Life into the canon without leaving any wiggle room for romance, mytho-poesy, typology, teleology, everything I have lumped under the rubric of ‘hagiography.’ This meant they had to flatten whatever gives the Life its vertical lift, and reinforce whatever is as one-dimensional as a horizontal chronicle. Stevenson’s mastery of historical criticism notwithstanding, his canonical edition of Asser’s Life was flawed by the anti-Celtic, anti-hagiographic attitude implicit in his methodology. Asser was grudgingly readmitted into the Alfredian Canon on condition that he behave himself by letting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle take precedence over his Celtic Life, and by apologizing for letting his Celtic imagination tempt him to indulge in Celtic hagiographic rhetoric. The line between Anglo-Saxon history and Celtic hagiography had been categorically institutionalized and was to be professionally maintained by Alfredian scholars for most of the twentieth century. Embedded deep within the methodology, structure, and typographical layout of Stevenson’s formidable edition are the binary oppositions between fact and fiction, chronology and hagiography, history and romance, epitomized in the Victorian dichotomy between Protestant and Catholic, between Anglo-Saxon and Celt.164 Subsequently, these ideological oppositions tended to inhibit the normal operations of critical literary inquiry into the question of what Asser’s Life claims to hold. Consider, for example, Siegmund Hellman’s seminal 1932 essay establishing the place of Einhard’s imitatio of Suetonius in literary history.165 No one in the twentieth century attempted a similarly serious study of Asser’s literarische Stellung, the intellectual context of Asser’s 164 Alban Gautier boldly diagnoses the Protestant ethos that has corseted our understanding of Asser: ‘C’est qu’une telle conjunction — un combatant souffreteux, un philosophe calotin, un père de la nation bigot et valétudinaire — n’entrait pas dans l’horizon mental des possibles pour les historiens (et quelques historiennes) encore souvent formés dans les public schools, où les sports collectifs et les langues anciennes formaient les deux piliers d’une formation solide, competitive, saine, pratiquante sans ostentation et cultivée sans intellectualisme — en un mot, virile.’ Gautier, Asser, p. lxxii. ‘A conjunction of a sickly warrior, a papist philosopher, a bigoted neurotic father of the nation did not fit into historians’ mental horizon of possibilities, historians still often trained in public schools where team sports and ancient languages formed the two pillars of a solid, competitive, healthy education, churchgoing without ostentation, cultivated without intellectualism — in a word, virile.’ In support of which, he quotes Patrick Wormald: ‘What the late General de Gaulle liked (or rather disliked) to call “les Anglo-Saxons” do not take kindly to the notion that their leaders are intellectuals, let alone neurotics.’ Wormald, ‘Living with Alfred,’ p. 20. 165 Hellmann, ‘Einhards literarische Stellung.’

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imitatio of Einhard. Or consider Jacques Fontaine’s richly nuanced analysis of how Sulpicius Severus created a typologie martinienne, a novel typology intrinsic to Martin’s interior life in which his terrestrial militia becomes the prophetic ‘type’ of his ascetic militia […] as if the years of military service had been in the life of Martin a sort of personal Old Testament, a preparation for the complete advent of Christ in his life.166

The work of evaluating how Asser used prefiguration and fulfilment to craft an equally novel typologie alfredienne intrinsic to Alfred’s interior life lies before us. In 1999 I predicted that the day would come for us all to be cheerfully saying to one another that Asser’s Life is authentic precisely because it is so quintessentially hagiographic. That day has now come: Now that we are learning to hear Asser’s voice not through the ears of the Victorians, but with our own ears, with no reason at all to fear the voice of an intelligent and sophisticated hagiographer, we will at last be listening to a voice which Alfred himself heard. And we may gain a richer and historically more accurate understanding of the function of hagiographic discourse in Alfred’s circle of scholars. The function of hagiography at Alfred’s court may have been precisely to help inaugurate the incipient cult of Alfred himself. If so, it launched something that has lasted eleven hundred years: a cult that is alive and still kicking.167

166 Sulpicius Severus, Vita S. Martini, pp. 133–135. On the Chronicle’s use of the papal anointing as a typologie interne, see above, ch. 2, p. 80, n. 34, and p. 82. For more on Fontaine’s taxonomy of typologies in the plural, see ch. 6, pp. 253–255, n. 54 below. 167 Kalmar, ‘No Mere Arthur.’

II Too Good to be True: The Life

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Write the Life Vitae serve as reliquaries for the relics (saints) which they display textually. — ALICIA SPENCER-HALL In analytic terms, we are not skilled at discussing imitative works as imitations. Once we have noted a so-called model or source, we are only beginning to understand the model as a constitutive element of the literary structure, an element whose dynamic presence has to be accounted for. We have not been adept as literary critics at accounting for imitative successes as against the many failures, or at recognizing the variety of strategies imitative writers pursued. — THOMAS GREENE

Abstract Historians have been baffled by the way Asser interlaces allusions to Einhard, echoes of his own words, and hagiographic clichés. Reading the Vita Alfredi as literature advances the current paradigm shift in our attitudes towards Asser, allowing us to appreciate the rhetoric and imagination that inform his imitatio of Einhard’s Vita Karoli. Thomas Greene on literary imitation, Walter Berschin on Carolingian life-writing, Christopher Ricks on the poetics of allusion, Erich Auerbach on prefiguration and fulfillment, David Howlett on chiasmus, and John Hollander on self-echoing illuminate the literary game Asser plays with clichés, echoes, and allusions. By condensing the modus of Alfred’s life into a childhood fable, a hagiographic figura, he invites us to see him succeed where Einhard failed. Keywords: V. H. Galbraith, Hiberno-latin hagiography, Asser, Vita Alfredi, Einhard, Vita Karoli

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH04

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Respect After 1983 it became possible to read Asser’s Life as a work of literature. The turning point in scholarly respect paid to Asser not as a mere redactor in the pejorative sense but as the author of an interesting work of art can be dated with such precision because it was in 1983 that Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge promoted Asser’s Life of King Alfred to the status of a contribution to world literature worthy of being published in English translation as a Penguin Classic.1 E. V. Rieu launched the Penguin Classics series in 1946. His Penguin edition of the Odyssey proclaimed ‘that this was a book that anyone — everyone — could, and should, read.’ The classics were no longer ‘the exclusive province of the privileged few.’2 By the time Rieu retired as general editor of the Penguin Classics series, he had overseen the publication of about 160 volumes, faithful to his original vision: The series is to be composed of original translations from Greek, Latin and later European classics, and it is the editor’s intention to commission translators who can emulate his own example and present the general reader with readable and attractive versions of the great writers’ books in modern English, shorn of the unnecessary difficulties and erudition, the archaic flavour and the foreign idiom that renders so many existing translations repellent to modern taste.3

But when Betty Radice became editor of the series in 1974, she ‘argued for the place of scholarship in popular editions, and modified the earlier Penguin convention of the plain text, adding line references, bibliographies, maps, explanatory notes and indexes.’ Thus, for example, to the forty-three pages devoted to their authoritative English translation of Asser’s peculiar Latin prose, Keynes and Lapidge were able to provide 260 footnotes taking up 55 pages. Betty Radice recognized the importance of the academic market, where the impeccable scholarship of Keynes’ and Lapidge’s edition has made it the most favored book on the historical Alfred. 4 There are, I 1 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred. 2 I quote and will paraphrase from https://www.penguin.com/static/html/classics/history. php. 3 Ibid. For a (partial) list of the first 125 volumes, see https://penguinchecklist.wordpress. com/penguin-classics/classics1/. 4 ‘Alfred for All’ was how Richard Sharpe titled his review.

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wager, many students who have read no other. It is certainly the canonical translation of the Life.5 As I mentioned above, many of Keynes’ and Lapidge’s footnotes descend, via Stevenson’s footnotes, from issues raised by Howorth in the Athenæum controversy.6 Traces of Victorian condescension linger. Howorth’s two-source theory survives in the continuing assumption that Asser composed his text by setting out to translate the relevant annals from the Chronicle, interrupting his translation from time to time in order to supplement it by inserting other material into it, and yet failing to f inish his translation by bringing it up to 893. Believing that Asser was writing in 893 leads them to continue blaming his muddled lack of rigor for the vexing chronological contradictions best settled (as I explained in the previous chapter) by accepting Stubbs’ Gambit. One example may suff ice: For the period after 887 Asser abandons the Chronicle altogether: it was in 887 that Alfred learnt how to read Latin under his tutelage (chapters 87–9), and henceforth Asser was able to draw on his direct experience of the king; this was evidently preferable to the mundane and difficult business of sustaining the chronological narrative any further.7

Or again: It is odd that Asser himself does not use the Chronicle after 887, but this need not imply that his copy extended no further. Asser leaves the Chronicle in 887 because in that year Alfred learnt how to read (chapter 87), and this occasions a long and rambling account of the king’s various domestic activities and achievements which occupies Asser from chapter 88 to the end of the work. It may be that by this stage (chapter 106) Asser had said what he most wanted to say about the king, and could not bring himself to return once again to the more mundane task of translating the remaining entries in his copy of the Chronicle, particularly when the

5 In 1906, Yale University Press published a competent translation of Stevenson’s 1904 edition by the distinguished medievalist A. S. Cook, but this was promptly suppressed by Oxford University Press on the grounds that it infringed their copyright. ‘The Cook Affair,’ OUP Archives. L C Janes’s 1908 translation, often republished, had to pretend to be a translation of Petrie’s earlier 1848 edition. See ch. 5, p. 219, n. 60 below. 6 Ch. 3, p. 122. 7 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 55–56. (My italics.)

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material available could only be anti-climactic; so instead he left the work in its rather unfinished state.8

Asser set himself the bold task of creating a new kind of Life that would outshine Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne. Keynes and Lapidge regrettably end up continuing to blame him for not completing the simpler task the Victorian scholars assigned him: pad a translated chronicle. It is one thing to provide the general reader with an attractive English translation of a work that has already earned the aura of a masterpiece of world literature, written by an admirable writer in his or her own language but hitherto the exclusive province of the privileged few. It is quite another thing to do this for an obscure Latin text which seems to have seldom been read as a work of art by anyone at all (except perhaps by a Catholic like Lingard, Clifford, or Thurston.) I trust the Penguin Classics edition has inspired some readers to try and read the original Latin text as a work of literature, starting on the first page and reading it aloud all the way through to the end, the way many have read, say, Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately, Asser’s strange Latin prose — I may as well be frank and say his strange mind — makes this hard to do. The task is made all the more daunting by the typographical layout of Stevenson’s monumental edition of the Latin, with its continuous switching to italics and back, and its 106 arbitrary chapter divisions unrelated to Asser’s conception. One ends up wondering who has actually experienced the original Latin text as a coherent work of art. 8 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 278. (My italics.) See also p. 230 n. 10: ‘If Asser once intended to return to the Chronicle for the events 888–92 he apparently changed his mind, or left his work in this respect incomplete.’ Keynes and Lapidge do acknowledge that ‘it could be argued, of course, that Asser’s version of the Chronicle did not extend beyond 887’ (p. 232, n. 116). Accepting Stubbs’ Gambit entails the corollary that shortly after 887 Asser was looking at a version of the Chronicle ending with the annal for 887. This frees us to envision both the Life and a vernacular Chronicle being produced in tandem around 889. In his original 1865 edition of the Chronicle, Earle detected a change in prose style after 887 and concluded that ‘the editorial task of throwing the book into shape […] was probably done about the year 887.’ Earle, Chronicles, pp. viii–ix; and see also p. xv, where he comments rather casually that ‘No doubt there were copies made of a Chronicle which ended in 887, and one of these was in the hands of the composer of the Asserian Biography.’ But in his 1899 revision of Earle’s edition, Plummer wrote: ‘I may remark generally that my analysis of the Alfredian Chronicle is much less elaborate than that given by Earle and by Grubitz. I cannot feel that certainty about their results which would justify me in embodying them. […] These writers think that the fact that Asser does not use the Chronicle beyond 887 shows that there was an edition of the Chronicle which stopped at that point. […] The inference is uncertain […] but, if true, it would merely mean that we must move back the compilation of the Alfredian Chronicle some four or five years.’ Plummer, Chronicles, p. cxii, n. 4. Cf. WHS, pp. lxxxii–lxxxiii. See Kalmar, ‘Born in the Margin,’ p. 83, n. 11. On this issue see above ch. 3, p. 132, n. 94, and p. 154, n. 160. See further ch. 6 below.

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Asser’s text is not, for Keynes and Lapidge, a well-wrought urn.9 For David Howlett, it is. He experiences it as ‘an integrated authentic work of architectonic genius.’10 In 1995 Howlett analyzed the inner structure of Asser’s Life as akin to what he calls the biblical style of over fifty major and minor Celtic Latin authors ranging from the fifth century to the Norman Conquest.11 The deep Celtic roots of Asser’s verbal artistry had thitherto been treated with contempt or condescension more often than with respect or admiration. One may agree with David Dumville that Howlett ‘works his material too hard.’12 But one must also agree with John Higgins that Howlett’s extensive and intensive diagramming of Asser’s complex rhetoric and allusiveness opens the way to literary criticism of all sorts by critics of every bent, not simply his own discussion of the structural principles inherent in the texts. There are very few attempts to treat these Celtic Latin writings as literature by any scholars. We will now be in a position to submit them to the sort of searching treatment they deserve and which will prove greatly fruitful.13

The publication in 2013 of an eminently readable Latin/French edition by Alban Gautier advances the paradigm shift initiated by the Penguin Classics edition.14 Gautier’s succinct yet comprehensive and judicious introduction integrates the work of over eighty scholars, most of it published since 1983. Thanks to changing interests, attitudes, and methods, Stevenson’s lazy muddle-headed Celt is now giving way to a late Carolingian intellectual artfully creating a Celtic Latin mirror in which Alfred and his court can view Alfred’s own image of his relationship to God and other rulers. Interdisciplinary historians have started deploying relevant techniques of literary criticism to register and appreciate resonances between Asser’s voice and other voices discoursing on his topics, recorded in texts copied, written, 9 In 1996 Simon Keynes wrote ‘No one has yet claimed that the Life of King Alfred is a literary masterpiece.’ Keynes, ‘Authenticity,’ p. 536. 10 Howlett, ‘Alfredian Arithmetic,’ p. 49. 11 Howlett, Celtic Latin Tradition. For a sympathetic review see Snyder, ‘Review.’ 12 Dumville, ‘Review,’ p. 406. 13 Higgins, ‘Review,’ p. 59. 14 Gautier, Asser. If what late nineteenth-century scholars most needed was a historical-critical edition of Asser’s text, our most urgent need today is for a readable edition of the sort now provided by Dumbarton Oaks with a facing English translation — something like the inexpensive Reclam edition of Einhard. Gautier provides this. He keeps Stevenson’s distracting chapter divisions, presumably for ease of reference. But the layout of his Latin text is certainly far more readable than Stevenson’s.

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read, and heard in the ninth century. For example, Paul Kershaw’s study of the dynamics of the relationship between Alfred and God in Asser’s narrative redeems the weird account of Alfred’s wedding night (WHS c. 74) which Plummer characterized as ‘a concoction in the worst hagiological manner’15 and Stevenson disdained as ‘due to the author’s Celtic love of exaggeration and rhetoric.’16 Kershaw’s study transforms modern understanding of the Life as a whole and thus of Asser and of Alfred’s court and culture.17 He makes the case that ‘Asser’s presentation of Alfred’s devotions, their physical results and the political anxieties that they created, demand, rather than deny, a late ninth-century context for the Life.’ He does so by showing that when placed against the backdrop of contemporary devotional practices, attitudes to the relationship between the body and sin, the increased emphasis upon humility as a pre-eminent virtue of the good ruler, and the key currents of thought at the West Saxon court of the 890s, Asser’s account of Alfred ‘storming Heaven’ comes into focus as a passage that is not merely intelligible within contemporary culture, but which crystallises several of its key concerns.18

He clarifies what is at stake: The central question remains, of course, the degree to which Asser’s own account can in any way be taken as representative of Alfred’s own perception of his life. If we allow that Asser’s account of Alfred’s behaviour, and the fears and ideas that underlay it, might have emanated from Alfred himself, then we are presented with a powerful image of a ruler internalizing contemporary models of royal behaviour; in this case, a ruler both interpreting but perhaps also shaping his conduct in the light of the lessons of the psalms and the Pastoral Care. Yet even if we settle for seeing the account as Asser’s casting of Alfred’s youthful devotions in terms chosen to resonate with Alfred himself, we are left with an image of Asser as a biographer shaping not only the account of events he unfolded in the Life but also deploying ideas which he knew to have powerful contemporary currency at the West Saxon court in the 890s.19 15 Plummer, Alfred, p. 27. 16 WHS, p. 294. 17 Kershaw, ‘Illness,’ p. 218. 18 Kershaw, ‘Illness,’ p. 223. 19 Kershaw, ‘Illness,’ pp. 218–219.

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The distinguished Viennese historian Anton Scharer has identif ied phrases and ideas in Asser’s work that resonate harmoniously with motifs common to the court cultures of both the West Franks and the West Saxons. Scharer interprets Asser’s invocation of the Irish scholar Sedulius Scottus’s Liber de rectoribus Christianis (written in Francia 869–870) as a constitutive structural element of Asser’s Life.20 To persuade modern readers that Asser meant his work to function, likewise, as a mirror for princes, Scharer teaches us to listen closely to the way Asser shared a discourse with Sedulius Scottus, to how (for example) Asser and Sedulius Scottus used abstract nouns like veritas, patientia, largitas, affabilitas in similar ways. He analyzes how Asser put together a ‘patchwork’ of allusions to Sedulius Scottus and other writers, proving that ‘the Carolingian element in the political ideologies and historical writings of Anglo-Saxon England is clearly much stronger than is usually acknowledged.’21 This willingness to respect Asser’s literary craftsmanship disarms some of the criticisms directed against him, namely those that rest on misunderstanding his words. The publication of Kleine Topik und Hermeneutik, the fifth and final volume of Walter Berschin’s Biographie und Epochenstil im lateinischen Mittelalter, in 2004 makes it possible to compare the literary composition of Asser’s Life to that of five hundred Latin vitae composed before it and five hundred after it, and to pose and answer the questions a literary (rather than historical) critic wants to put to Asser: not Shall we let you take the floor as a witness? Can your testimony be believed? but questions like What game are you playing with your language?22 What strategy do you embody in your text to encompass what situation?23 This was not possible as long as we insisted that Asser’s Life was devoid of literary value, and that its only claim to attention was the use to which it can be put by scholars professionally committed to policing the border between history and hagiography. That border, thanks to Berschin, is now an ecosystem. As Berschin goes along, he examines closely every time historians have felt the need to draw the line on hagiography through or around a medieval Latin Life, and he notes, with wit, logic, and panache, the hundreds of literary crossings back and forth across that line. His work is 20 See Kershaw, ‘Illness,’ 220. See also Charles-Edwards, Wales, p. 453. 21 Dyson, Scottus Sedulius. Scharer, ‘Writing History.’ On Asser’s standing in the Carolingian historical tradition (including, especially, Einhard) see also Campbell, ‘Asser.’ 22 ‘Coming to understand the meaning of an utterance is like learning the rules of a game.’ Hirsch, Validity, p. 70. 23 ‘Every document bequeathed us by history must be treated as a strategy for encompassing a situation.’ Burke, Literary Form, p. 93.

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open to fertile postmodern reflections on the formation of traditions, canons, and genres, but is refreshingly free of jargon and theoretical schemata. He roots his version of Literaturgeschichte in the tradition of German humanism that Anglo-American scholars associate with Auerbach, Curtius, and Spitzer, and which also includes Dilthey and his son-in-law Misch: in short, the Goethean tradition.24 Read as literature, the distinction between hagiography and biography becomes rhetorical, a matter of style. What it means to claim that you have made a new container for a person’s life by imitating an old one is the question that drives Berschin’s inquiry. Neither the historical question What happened? nor the theological question Who is a saint? but the literary question What is a Life? The answer is always a variation on what Einhard makes explicit in the preface to his Life of Charles: namely that, like a reliquary, what such a book holds is a memoria of a great life. What a memoria is, how it compares to a relic, and how a text can be made to hold such a thing varies from epoch to epoch, region to region, monastery to monastery, vita to vita.25 In each case, Berschin fruitfully seeks to identify which strategies an author chooses from an available repertoire to construct such a container for such a thing contained. He thus situates the resulting work in, and evaluates its contribution to, the overall history of life-writing, memoria, and imitatio.26 By the time Berschin allots five pages to his vignette of Asser near the very end of Volume III on the Carolingians, you have — if you began at the 24 As an epigraph to his final volume, Berschin chose the following quotation from Goethe: ‘Alles warhaft Biographische … bringt das vergangene Leben wieder hervor, mehr oder weniger wirklich oder im ausführlichen Bilde. Man wird nicht müde, Biographien zu lesen so wenig als Reisebeschreibungen: denn man lebt mit Lebendigen. Die Geschichte, selbst die best, hat immer etwas Leichenhafters, den Geruch der Todtengruft.’ Biographie, Volume V. ‘Everything truly biographical brings back the past life, more or less real, or in a detailed image. One is as little fatigued by reading biographies as by reading travelogues, for among the living one is alive, whereas history has, even at its best, always something cadaverous about it, a whiff of the crypt.’ (My translation, with help from Michael Zank.) 25 Particularly useful is the way, volume by volume, Berschin groups the Lives he reviews into (ultimately a hundred) categories, subgenres, micro-canons, each constellated by ad hoc criteria called for by concrete family resemblances. 26 It is impertinent to offer a thumbnail sketch of a work of such prodigious scope and precision. I merely highlight facets relevant to this present study. A sense of the scope (though not of the precision) of Berschin’s master narrative is offered in the ten-page synopsis constituting his chapter on ‘Biography’ in Mantello and Rigg, Medieval Latin, pp. 607–617. Unfortunately, the editorial decision to include a separate (excellent) chapter on ‘Hagiography’ by David Townsend defers to the Berlin Wall between medieval Latin biography and hagiography that Berschin’s work has made a paper dragon.

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beginning of Volume I — been guided through five hundred Lives written before Asser’s; you have travelled to the foothills of the interesting Lives written in St Boniface’s orbit,27 climbed up to Einhard’s peak, and down the other side to the very outskirts, the last gasp, as it were, of the Carolingian renovatio. Not that Asser, and Alfred, and those around them, necessarily experienced it as a last gasp. They may well have felt themselves the avantgarde of the future. In his literarische Stellung, in his natural habitat, Asser no longer looks like a freak. His work links the long chain of mainstream hagiography modeled on Sulpicius Severus’s Life of St Martin to the short chain of Carolingian secular biography inaugurated by Einhard’s imitatio of Suetonius. Berschin concludes that by doubling the pivot from ‘diachrony’ to ‘synchrony’ modeled by Einhard Asser found a balance between annals and biography: Asser drives home, so to speak, the main thrust of Einhard’s biographical project.28 This is what I meant when I pontificated above that if the Life is a unique work of Latin literature written by an avant-garde Welsh intellectual experimenting with blending chronology and hagiography into a new kind of biography designed to invite comparison with Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne as well as with paradigmatic saints’ lives, then it is beyond doubt precious evidence of a major turning point in the history of life-writing and hagiography.29

Berschin’s schematic vignette of how Asser fulfils Einhard’s project needs to be expanded and unpacked. Berschin’s diachrony vs synchrony is my horizontal vs vertical. The balance achieved by Asser between these two dimensions is what I called ‘the marriage between horizontal annals and vertical biography which Einhard aimed at and which Asser achieved.’30 When Einhard pivots in his c. 18 from Charles’s public life to his interiorem atque domesticam vitam he is imitating the pivot in c. 61 of Suetonius’s Life 27 On which see Wood, The Missionary Life. On Boniface and biliteracy, see ch. 6, ‘Cross the Border,’ below. 28 ‘Mit einem zweimaligen Paradigmenwechsel von Annalenschema zur Biographie nach Einharts Vorbild hat Asser einen Ausgleich zwischen Diachronie und Synchronie gefunden; überdies hat er wesentliche Programmpunkte der Biographie Einharts sozusagen erledigt.’ Berschin, Biographie, III, p. 420. What Berschin calls Asser’s Paradigmenwechsel is not a paradigm shift in Thomas Kuhn’s sense. It is a change of genre, a pivot within the text, from Annalenschema to Biographie, from chronology to hagiography, from ‘Deeds’ to ‘Life.’ 29 Ch. 3, p. 129 above. 30 Ch. 3, p. 129 above and ch. 5, p. 207 below.

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of Augustus from his public life to his interiorem atque familiarem vitam. Einhard, like Suetonius, does this once. Asser does it twice. First, to introduce the childhood race for the book (WHS c. 21), and again to introduce Alfred’s wedding night (WHS c. 73). In this chapter I explore the interaction between these two major pivots, call them Pivot 1 and Pivot 2. There is also a third and final pivot when Asser turns his final annal into his account of the day Alfred began to legere et interpretari simul. (WHS c. 87). This will be my focus of attention in chapter 6, ‘Cross the Border.’ Underrating or misapprehending the gravity of Asser’s relation to Einhard can certainly lead to misunderstanding his words. It can also lead to misunderstanding the relation of Alfred to Charlemagne, and of the Alfredian renaissance to the Carolingian renovatio. In the nineteenth century Asser’s ‘debt’ to Einhard was variously interpreted by historians unimpressed by Carolingian imitatio. Thomas Wright, for example, made it one more strike against the authenticity of the Life: ‘When we turn to Asser, we seem to have a writer [that is to say, a forger] who would fain imitate the biographer of the Frankish emperor.’31 Stevenson rebutted him thus: The character of Einhard’s Life is egregiously overdrawn [by Wright], and it is a somewhat unhappy comparison, for if it were not for external evidence, that work would be more hopelessly condemned than the present one is by Wright. It is a medley of phrases culled from Suetonius, and abounds with chronological errors.32

What makes this an unhappy comparison is that if Asser’s debt to Einhard is like Einhard’s debt to Suetonius then it should follow, logically, that in the absence of external evidence Asser too should be ‘hopelessly condemned.’ But this is the opposite of what Stevenson was trying to maintain. And so we find Stevenson downplaying as far as he could the depth and intimacy of Asser’s imitation of Einhard. This dim view of Einhard’s imitatio of Suetonius still prevailed in 1923 when Louis Halphen inaugurated the series Les Classiques de l’Histoire au Moyen Age by publishing his edition and translation of Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne.33 To Halphen’s mind, Einhard imitated Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars so ‘slavishly’ and ‘borrowed’ so many phrases from Suetonius that 31 Wright, ‘Asser,’ p. 175. On Wright’s attack on Asser, see above, ch. 3, p. 99, n. 10. 32 WHS, p. xcviii. 33 Halphen, Eginhard.

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his Life of Charles turns out to be more like a Life of the Thirteenth Caesar than like an original work. Although Halphen’s edition was reprinted until 2007, this view had already been rendered obsolete in 1932 when Siegmund Hellman’s Einhards Literarische Stellung ‘changed everything’ — as Thomas Noble puts it — by reinterpreting Einhard’s Life as a work of literature, a full-fledged Carolingian imitatio of Antiquity.34 And so in 2015 when a multidisciplinary team of a dozen scholars led by Michell Sot and Christiane Veyrard-Cosme completely revised Halphen’s edition, they were able to show in detail how: Eginhard a pratiqué l’imitatio, au sens cicéronien du terme, ce qui n’a rien de servile ni de péjoratif. L’imitatio, c’est l’émulation, la volonté de faire mieux: dans l’ordre des vertus, dans l’ordre littéraire aussi. Par l’imitatio de Suétone et de Cicéron, par ses emprunts conceptuels, formels et stylistiques, il a cherché à écrire autrement et mieux que ses devanciers.35 [Einhard practiced imitatio in the Ciceronian sense of the term, neither slavish nor pejorative. Imitatio is emulation, the will to outdo: in literary value as well as in virtue. By imitating Suetonius and Cicero, by his conceptual, formal and stylistic borrowings, he sought to write something different from, and better than, his predecessors.]

My aim in this book is to treat Asser as if, in this respect, he were Einhard’s intellectual peer. If Einhard, by centering his text on the modus of Charles’s life, outdid Suetonius, then Asser, by letting his childhood fables epitomize the modus of Alfred’s life, outdid Einhard. The notion of a Welsh intellectual was, for many Victorians, a risible oxymoron of the sort they jocularly called an ‘Irishism.’ Fortunately, Thomas Charles-Edwards has now authoritatively removed this obstacle to respecting Asser’s Welsh intellect by situating him and his work in the context of centuries of Welsh education and culture. If, as Scharer demonstrates, Asser was au courant with the Late Carolingian court culture of the West Franks, this does not mean that ‘only by coming to England could a Welsh scholar hope to come into contact with books and ideas from Francia.’ It is this hidden premiss alone that could suggest that the major Frankish element in the Life must signify Asser’s huge intellectual debt to his contacts in Alfred’s household. What is wrong with this assumption is that it neglects 34 Noble, ‘Greatness,’ p. 10. 35 Sot and Veyrard-Cosme, Éginhard, p. xxxvi.

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the traffic of scholars and books between Francia and Ireland which had been going on for centuries and was especially busy in the ninth century. In this interchange, St Davids was favorably placed. […] The contacts available to Asser when he went to Alfred’s court fitted into a long-term pattern of intellectual interchange between the British Isles and Francia. […] Asser, therefore, when he met the other scholars who worked for Alfred may have come, in his own words, from ‘the furthest western parts of Wales’, but that does not mean that he emerged from intellectual backwoods to be transformed in his outlook by a far more cosmopolitan group of scholars. It is, in general, impossible to tell which books he read at St Davids and which he read in England; but his culture was essentially formed by the time he met Alfred: the king was not anxious to import scholars from outside his kingdom for their intellectual benefit but for that of Wessex.36

From here on, anyone who sets out to grasp Asser’s Life as a whole can rely on Charles-Edwards for guidance. Packed with vision and precision, his fourteen pages on Asser deepen and expand Berschin’s vignette. His analysis of how Asser modeled his work on Einhard’s is superior to anything proposed so far. He does not explicitly characterize this as imitatio in the Ciceronian sense, nor in Berschin’s medieval sense, let alone in the sense of Thomas Greene’s deep study of humanist imitatio in the Renaissance.37 But imitatio is implicit in his principle that what matters is how you adapt your model: The Life of Charlemagne is a key to understanding the Life of Alfred. Here again there are potential misunderstandings to be cleared out of the way. Historians who seek to trace the influences of one writer on another are understandably prone to argue in terms of degrees of indebtedness. On the other hand once one knows that a writer in a particular genre has read and pondered another work in the same genre, the differences between them become much more significant. Intellectual history, after all, is not just a matter of borrowings; what is often very rewarding is to watch a writer setting out to do something different from his model. The combination of indebtedness and independence is especially revealing.38

Of particular relevance to my concerns in this book is the contrast between the way Einhard and Asser handled time: 36 Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 453–454. 37 Greene, Light in Troy. 38 Charles-Edwards, Wales, p. 455.

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Einhard had eschewed chronology as far as possible even for the Deeds of Charlemagne. He had thus made his text more timeless and so more monumental than his model, Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars. […] Because Asser was not concerned to present a timeless portrayal of Alfred, he could make open use of annals.

Charles-Edwards makes a compelling case that Asser structured the Life not by padding a chronicle but by dividing Alfred’s lifecycle into three stages presented in chronological order: What mattered to Asser emerges as soon as we analyse the three blocks devoted to the Life. They cover, respectively, (1) the reasons why Alfred did not learn to read Latin in his youth, but only to love, memorize, and read, English poetry; (2) the education of Alfred’s children and how Alfred came to assemble a group of scholars; (3) how Alfred himself came to read and expound Latin texts. The central theme for Asser was Alfred’s intellectual development.39

What I call Pivots 1–3 occur in the middle of each of these three blocks respectively:40 The Structure of the Vita Ælfredi ‘Deeds’ versus ‘Life’ The first stage of life: c. c. 3–21 Deeds = annals 851–866 c. c. 21 Pivot 1 c. c. 21–25 Life as a boy The second stage of life: c. c. 26–72 Deeds = annals 867–884 c. 73 Pivot 2 c. c. 74–81 Life after marriage The third stage of life: c. c. 82–86 Deeds = annals 886–887 c. 87 Pivot 3 Life after lectio c. c. 87–106

39 Charles-Edwards, Wales, pp. 457–458, 462. 40 This is my modification of Charles-Edwards’ Box 14.3, Wales, pp. 460–461. It needs to be compared with, ‘The Structure of Einhard’s Vita Karoli,’ Box 14.2.

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The next step is to seek a more detailed understanding of Asser’s rhetoric, the poetics of his allusive gestures. (Neither Berschin not Charles-Edwards descend to that level of detail.) Einhard imitates not only the structure but also the texture of Suetonius’s prose. Asser does not imitate Einhard’s (let alone Suetonius’s) classical texture. Far from it. In the rest of this chapter I focus on how Asser uses interlacing allusions, echoes, and clichés to knit together passages within and across the three sections of his innovative composition. Treating Asser with respect will let us appreciate how his Life testifies to the intellectual labor once shared by two intellectuals: a Welsh monk and a West-Saxon king. As the late Patrick Wormald put it shortly before he died: If [Asser’s Life] is no forgery, nor what we British learned in the 1980s to call Welsh windbaggery, nor yet pious flannel, but tells us how Alfred saw himself (or how its author thought he might), then a logical deduction from the weirdness of Alfred’s biographer is that Alfred was in some sense weird himself — a deduction to which we are in any case driven by the singular fact that he wrote books. 41

Allusion Listen again to Plummer discoursing on Asser in 1901: May I add without offence that I think another Celtic trait in our author is a certain largeness of statement? Mons. Henri Martin, a great admirer of the Celts, notes as characteristic of them a certain ‘rebellion against facts’; and there are many things in Asser which we can hardly accept as literally true, though as I have shown already, and shall have to show again, some of the criticisms directed against him rest on misunderstanding his words. 42

Henri Martin, the great admirer of the Celts whom Plummer is quoting here, was the author of the seventeen-volume Histoire de France, published in Paris between 1854–1870. 43 Plummer’s footnote points out that Martin’s remark about the Celts’ ‘indomptable personnalité, toujours prête à reágir 41 Wormald, ‘Living with Alfred,’ p. 5. 42 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 41–42. (My italics.) 43 Martin, France, I, p. 36.

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contre le despotisme du fait’44 is a passage alluded to by Matthew Arnold. Anyone who follows up this allusion to an allusion will get the point. Arnold had written: I remember when I was young, I was taught to think of Celt as separated by an impassable gulf from Teuton; my father [Thomas Arnold], in particular, was never weary of contrasting them; he insisted much oftener on the separation between us and them than on the separation between us and any other race in the world. […] This begot a strange reluctance to further — nay, allow, — even among quiet, peaceable people like the Welsh, the publication of documents of their ancient literature, the monuments of the Cymric genius; such was the sense of repulsion, the sense of incompatibility, of radical antagonism, making it seem dangerous to let such opposites to ourselves have speech and utterance. Certainly the Jew — the Jew of ancient times, at least, — then seemed a thousand degrees nearer than the Celt to us. 45

Plummer pondered, as an example of Asser’s congenital Celtic rebellion against facts, what Asser might mean by ‘aedificia of gold and silver incomparably wrought under [Alfred’s] instructions.’ He mused, ‘Even the most Celtic imagination cannot suppose that Alfred built edifices, in the ordinary sense, of the precious metals, especially as his own royal halls and chambers are expressly stated to have been of stone and wood.’46 Three years later Stevenson echoed Plummer in the final cadence of his 131-page Introduction: The work still presents some difficulties […] There still remain certain passages that lay the author open to the charge of exaggeration, such as his mention of gold-covered and silver-covered buildings (c. 91, 20). […] Much may be forgiven Celtic rhetoric, but one cannot help wondering what the ‘truth-telling’ king would have thought of such exaggerations or misrepresentations. 47

As Asser approaches a climax in his work (WHS c. 91), he uses the phrase aedificiis aureis et argenteis in the fourth of six rhetorical questions which 44 ‘[Their] indomitable personality, always ready to react against the despotism of fact.’ 45 Arnold, Celtic Literature, pp. 23–25. 46 Plummer, Alfred, p. 46. 47 WHS, pp. cxxx–cxxxi.

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allude, in exactly parallel order, to the series of six topics on which Einhard discourses in cc. 15 to 17 as he approaches his pivot in c. 18: 1. the wars; 2. the territorial extent of his conquest; 3. the correspondence and gifts from foreign potentates; 4. the building of Aix-la-Chapelle — adorned with gold and silver (c. 26); 5. the wooden bridge to be rebuilt in stone; and 6. the palaces. 1

2

3

Einhard c. c. 15–17 Asser48 Haec sunt bella … What shall I say of his repeated expeditions against the heathen, his wars, and the incessant occupations of government? ipse per bella Of the daily … memorata primo of the nations Aquitaniam et which dwell on the Wasconiam [Cyrrenian] sea to totumque Pyrinei the farthest end of montis iugum et Ireland? usque ad Hiberum amnem Nam etiam de Extant epistolae ab For we have Hierosolyma ab eis ad illum missae, seen and read El patriarcha episletters to him from tolas et dona illi Jerusalem, by the directas vidimus et patriarch El[ias]. legimus.

Asser, WHS c. 91 Quid loquar de frequentibus contra paganos expeditionibus et bellis et incessabilibus regni gubernaculis? De cotidiana nationum, quae in Cyrreno mari usque ultimum Hiberniae finem habitant?

Einhard49 These are the wars.

himself, in the wars described, first added Aquitaine and Gascony and the whole range of the Pyrenees as far as the River Ebro. Letters which they sent to him survive.

48 Tr. Cook, Asser, pp. 51–52. (In #5 I have replaced ‘erected’ by ‘constructed’.) 49 Tr. Ganz, Einhard and Notker, pp. 28–30, 36.

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5

6

De civitatibus et urbibus renovandis et aliis, ubi nunquam ante fuerant, construendis, aedificiis aureis et argenteis incomparabiliter, illo edocente, fabricatis?

Inter quae praecipua fere non inmerito videri possunt basilica sanctae Dei genitricis Aquisgrani opere mirabili constructa [c. 26 Religionem Christianam, qua ab infantia fuerat inbutus, sanctissime et cum summa pietate coluit, ac propter hoc plurimae pulchritudinis basilicam Aquisgrani exstruxit auroque et argento et luminaribus atque ex aere solido cancellis et ianuis adornavit.] De aulis et cambris ut pro ligneo lapiregalibus, lapideum restitueret deis et ligneis suo iussu mirabiliter constructis?

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[What shall I say] Among these, the of his restoration most deserving of of cities and towns, mention are the and of others basilica of the Holy which he built Mother of God at where none had Aachen, built with been before? wonderful skill. of gold and silver With great piety buildings, built and devotion he in incomparable practiced the style under his Christian religion direction? in which he had been reared from infancy. For this reason he constructed a church of great beauty at Aachen and adorned it with gold and silver and lamps, and with railings and portals made of solid bronze. of the royal halls to rebuild it in and chambers, stone instead of wonderfully con- wood. structed of stone and wood at his command? De villis regalibus Inchoavit et pala- of the royal vills He began two lapideis antiqua tia operis egregii, constructed of palaces of beautipositione motatis unum haud longe stones removed ful workmanship et in decentioribus a Mogontiaco from their old site, — one not far from locis regali impe- civitate, iuxta vil- and finely rebuilt the city of Mainz rio decentissime lam cui vocabulum by the king’s in his villa called constructis? est Ingilenheim command in more Ingelheim. fitting places?

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Asser echoed for the ear.50 In his second question, the diction of Cyrreno mari usque ultimum Hiberniae finem

makes no sense to the eye. Yet to the ear it sounds like a twist on Einhard’s Pyrinei montis iugum et usque ad Hiberum amnem.

In the third, ab El patriarcha epistolas

makes no sense but sounds like epistolae ab eis.51

And I cannot help hearing in Asser’s incomparabiliter an anagram, an assonant and rhythmic echo, of Einhard’s opere mirabili. Deaf to such echoes, readers like Plummer and Stevenson did not understand what Asser meant by his rhetorical question about gold and silver buildings. Like Kershaw’s ‘harmonizing resonances,’ like Scharer’s Sedulius Scottus ‘patchwork,’ Asser’s allusive echoes are not grace notes, vain gestures, mere ornaments. As a rhetorical tactic they bring us close to the center of what Asser means by writing his Life in the first place, namely to invite comparison with Einhard’s Life, to bring it into play. Understanding what Asser means by his word aedificiis entails asking why he imitates Einhard, and thus what he means by participating in the Carolingian renovatio of hagiography.52 For, as Christopher Ricks puts it, ‘Readers always have to decide — if they accept that such-and-such is indeed a source for certain lines — whether it is also more than a source, being part not only of the making of the poem but of its meaning.’53 Hellmann showed that Einhard’s allusions to Suetonius are not ‘slavish’ imitation. Nor what is often called ‘influence.’ The root metaphor of ‘influence’ is astrological. Suetonius is not acting at a distance on Einhard. Einhard is not passive. He is actively choosing and creating 50 ‘legentibus vel etiam audire desiderantibus.’ WHS c. 16. On soundplay see Morse, Truth and Convention, p. 13. 51 On these two corrupt phrases see Plummer, Alfred, pp. 33–35; WHS, pp. 327–329; and Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 270, nn. 219, 220. 52 On which see Ganz, Corbie. 53 Ricks, Allusion, p. 4.

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imitative strategies for sound reasons. Suetonius’s text becomes part of the meaning of Einhard’s. The same can and now should be said of Asser’s agency: Einhard is not acting at a distance on passive Asser. It is, as scholars like Thomas Greene and Christopher Ricks have shown in analogous cases, the other way around. Asser is acting on Einhard. Asser’s gold and silver buildings actively bring Einhard into play so as to constellate these six rhetorical questions into a well-knit resonant chain at this juncture in the text, alluding, as a short unit, to a chunk, a longer unit, of Einhard’s Life, a rapid riff on the divisio of Einhard’s c. c. 15–17, treated as a cadential unit preparing for what comes next.54 Here it may be worth noting that in his Life of Wilfrid, Eddius Stephanus poses the following rhetorical question (at the end of his c. 22): ‘Porro beatae memoriae adhuc vivens gratia Dei Acca episcopus, quae magnalia ornamenta huius multiplicis domus de aureo et argento lapidibusque pretiosis et quomodo altaria purpura et erico induta decoravit, quis ad explanandum sufficere potest? Redeamus ad proposita.’ (‘Further, Bishop Acca of blessed memory, who by the grace of God is still alive, provided for this manifold building splendid ornaments of gold, silver, and precious stones; but of these and of the way he decorated the altars with purple and silk, who is sufficient to tell? Let us return to our subject.’)55 After his six rhetorical questions, Asser too returns to his subject: the culmination of Alfred’s intellectual development exemplified in his quest for a ratio fixa by which to recte dividere.56 The ways of alluding are innumerable. There is no gain in thinking any two authors allude the same way, for any given author can allude a dozen different ways. Even in a single work. Even in a short poem. To talk incisively about the poetics of Asser’s allusive gestures calls for a subtle, supple, patient discourse, willing to linger, to savor the sheer plaisir du texte.57 Plummer and Stevenson (and many readers since) have misunderstood Asser’s words when, to put it bluntly, they have been unwilling to suspend disbelief, join his game, play along, and applaud his best moves, to cheer his Celtic rhetoric and his Celtic imagination. Much may be forgiven? Whom has Asser wronged? Are we to sneer at rhetoric itself, or only the Celtic variety? For 54 On Einhard’s use of divisio à la Suetonius, see Townsend, ‘Suetonius.’ 55 Colgrave, Wilfrid, pp. 46, 47. (My italics.) Consider also I Cor. 3.12: ‘si quis autem superaedificat supra fundamentum hoc aurum argentum lapides pretiosos ligna faenum stipulam.’ 56 On which see Kalmar, ‘Recte dividas.’ See p. 192, n. 97 below. 57 Christopher Ricks’s invariably compelling yet always tactful study of Allusion to the Poets is confined to English poetry from Dryden to Yvor Winters: but what would be gained by assuming that Asser plays an allusive language-game any less subtle, nuanced, indeed poetic than that played by English poets?

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a Life innocent of rhetoric and devoid of imagination would be read by no one, and rightly so.58

Plagiarism Nowadays, literary allusion is a forgotten art. It used to go without saying that if you did not catch an allusion you missed the point of the poem — like missing the point of a joke.59 Clarifying the rules of the game of imitatio is necessary, but not sufficient, for must we not also enter, cheerfully, into the spirit of the game? Berschin shows over and over again how much room for play there was in the writing of a Life. Paschasius Radbertus makes the ludic dimensions of Life-writing an entertaining topic in the lively conversation that opens his Life of Wala.60 We misunderstand Asser’s words not merely when our attitude to Celts gets in the way but, more seriously, when we fail to understand what game he is playing with his echoes and allusions. V. H. Galbraith understood why Stevenson steadily downplayed the significance of Asser’s ‘debt’ to Einhard.

58 For everything to do with rhetoric and imagination in the writing of history, especially biography and hagiography, see Morse, Truth and Convention. 59 On the good light in which allusions should be seen, see Ricks, Allusion. On getting the point of a joke as a paradigm of literary scholarship, see Cottom, Text and Culture. 60 ‘Paschasius: Nunc autem novi in nostris lacrymarum miseriis multam quorumdam invidiam non defore, exsertisque brachiis objurare, maxime si adverterint, fabula de quo texitur. Severus: Hoc est quod supra notavi. Videris mihi quasi litargo pati. Nonnum dixiste morum imaginem te picturum, et quasi rei gestam historiam texere; nunc autem nobis fabulam adportas. Adeodatus: Mirum, Severe, quod tam assuetis uteris semper verborum acrimoniis. Nam mihi videtur fabulam dixisse, non tibi, sed illis quibus totum fabula est et ludus, quod veritate fulcitur. Historiam autem hujus tua in conscientia legis; unde non fabula tibi, sed veritas declaratur.’ Paschasius Radbertus, De Vita Walae, 1563B–C. (My italics.) ‘Paschasius: I know that now, amid the wretchedness of our tears, we will not want for envy from certain people who will reach out their arms and bind themselves by oath, especially if they realise who the subject of this story ( fabula) is. Severus: This is what I observed earlier — you seem to be suffering from drowsiness. Didn’t you say that you were going to paint a picture of his character and compose a history of actual events (rei gestae historiam), whereas now you are presenting us with a “story”? Adeodatus: It is astonishing, Severus, how you always resort to such harsh language. I do not believe that he was speaking to you when he used the word “story”, but to those for whom everything supported by the truth is a story and a joke. You, on the other hand, can read the history of this man in your conscience, which is why it is not a story, but the truth that is revealed to you.’ Tr. De Jong and Lake, Paschasius Radbertus, p. 57. (Translators’ italics.) For a rather different translation see Cabaniss, Charlemagne’s Cousins, pp. 86–87. Cabanniss translates ludus as ‘game’ rather than ‘joke.’

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Galbraith redefined this ‘debt’ as ‘theft’: the forger of the Life of Alfred was not imitating Einhard, he was plagiarizing him. Galbraith was convinced that when Stevenson was writing the two hundred pages of notes for his edition he suspected the forgery but suppressed his suspicions when he came to write the hundred pages of his introduction. Galbraith engaged with Stevenson as a professional peer. His deep and empathetic attention to the minute details of Stevenson’s mind offers an interesting case history of how exercising historical criticism at its most nitty-gritty level disciplines your imagination. Having weighed each of Stevenson’s notes with professional care, Galbraith concludes that anyone who likewise ‘takes the trouble to master the whole of Stevenson’s book’ will agree with him that the 1904 edition ‘is a sustained rearguard action in which every difficulty is looked firmly in the face, and then not so much explained, as explained away.’61 In short, Galbraith is criticizing Stevenson for a loss of nerve, a slackening of disciplinary vigilance.62 Galbraith’s Manchesterismus led him to enjoy looking out for clues to forgery.63 He found them in the way Asser’s echoes and allusions betray his closeness to Einhard. Can it be that Galbraith misunderstood Asser’s words? He didn’t miss the allusions, he harped on them. When he realized that the connection between the Life of Alfred and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne was tighter than Stevenson had allowed, he imagined the writer of the lost Cottonian manuscript, a historian in the eleventh century, rummaging through old manuscripts and saying ‘Eureka! I can use this Life of Charlemagne as a template for my imagined Life of Alfred, and pretend that it was written, not by me, but by someone at that time!’ In Galbraith’s hermeneutics, the evidence for the ‘dominating influence of Einhard’s Life upon the scope and treatment of Asser’s Life not only points clearly to an eleventh-century date for its composition, but also seems to have suggested the idea of fathering the work upon Leofric’s [viz. the forger’s] episcopal predecessor, bishop Asser.’64 Galbraith’s interpretation of passages situated in what I called the literary ecosystem dividing — and uniting — biography and hagiography is of particular interest for what it reveals about the disciplinary contrast between his and Charles-Edwards’s responses to Asser’s imitatio of Einhard. With this in mind, I propose to look closely now at Galbraith’s interpretation of Pivot 2 (WHS c. 73.) 61 62 63 64

Galbraith, ‘Who Wrote Asser’s Life?,’ p. 90. Hence Alfred P. Smyth’s admiration for Galbraith’s ‘courage.’ Alfred, p. xxxi, pp. 151–154. On Galbraith’s Manchesterismus see ch. 3, p. 117, n. 67 above. Galbraith, ‘Who Wrote Asser’s Life?,’ p. 118.

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But first let me pay warm-hearted tribute to Galbraith’s distinction as a historian, to his radical pedagogy, and to his incorrigible sense of humor. Galbraith was, famously, a historian whose outlook had been shaped by his time as an assistant keeper at the Public Record Office. […] In Galbraith’s writings on history and archives, there perhaps lie the seeds of a new type of history, a textually orientated history, in which the focus would be not on the attempt to discover an objective historical truth but rather on a more open-ended exploration of the way in which historical texts are preserved, used and perceived.65 Galbraith’s historical imagination was fired by manuscripts and the problems posed by them. […] Galbraith’s work on Asser is thus of interest because of the way it relates to his broader ideas on the relationship of records and history.66

As a teacher, nothing delighted him more than a student proving him wrong: He treated [Oxford] tutorials not as an occasion for conveying facts or conclusions but as a discussion between equals in which the established authorities were criticised and torn to pieces and alternative theories pieced together by joint work on the relevant documents.67

Here is how, eighty years old, he publicly describes his sixty-year relationship with his wife Ena: The precise literary parallel to our marriage, which neither Homer nor Vergil nor Dante nor Shakespeare could supply, I owe to the genius of 65 Here Prescott inserts the following thought-provoking footnote: ‘A rereading of the preface to The Study of Public Records, pp. v–vii, and An Introduction to the Study of History, esp. pp. 1–21, is instructive in this respect. They seem almost to look forward to a kind of wholly relativistic, textual history which Barthes or Foucault might have found sympathetic. Galbraith cites (Study of Public Records, p. vi) the remark of Sir Ernest Barker, “There is no end of the things that were, and there is no end of the stories which might be told about them. But are such stories history?” Galbraith answers this with a resounding “Yes.” Where Galbraith would doubtless have differed with Foucault is that Galbraith would have stressed the objectivity of the record and the spuriousness of Foucault’s archaeology of the intellect. But, on the other hand, Foucault’s fascination with archives and archival documents suggests that there might be more in common between them than might at first be imagined.’ Prescott, ‘Ghost,’ p. 283, n. 34. For more on this see Andrew Prescott, ‘Tall Tales from the Archives.’ 66 Prescott, ‘Ghost,’ pp. 259, 262. See also Sir Richard Southern’s jewel of a memoir, ‘Galbraith.’ 67 Hill, ‘Galbraith,’ p. ix.

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Charles Dickens. Mutatis mutandis — and there’s a lot to change — our present relationship is as near as makes no matter the same as that of Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet in Bleak House. Mr Bagnet was an ex-artilleryman, and Mrs. Bagnet ‘a soldierly-looking woman’; their idyll will be found in Chapter XXVII [an allusion well worth following up! — TK].68

And here is how, at the age of seventy-three, he establishes a dialogue with the reader of his Introduction to the Study of History: I commend this book to the Reader in the spirit of King James’s instructions regarding Guy Fawkes. ‘The gentler tortours are to be first usid unto him et sic per gradus ad ima tenditur. And so god speede your goode worke’.69

Because it contains his infamous case study ‘Who Wrote Asser’s Life of Alfred?’ this Introduction to the Study of History has been often cited, but little read. Why did Galbraith choose, at an advanced age, to present his doubts about Asser, not through the usual professional channels for such serious work, but in the form of an exercise for the interested reader, a didactic case history addressed to novices? The book is in three parts. The first two recycle a BBC Pamphlet on ‘The Historian at Work’ and his 1939 Edinburgh Inaugural Lecture on ‘Historical Research and the Preservation of the Past.’ The third part, ‘Research in Action,’ is where he invites his readers — as he did all his students — to join him ‘back-stage’ to work through the case of Asser’s Life.70 In framing this public confession of doubt as a didactic case, he was engaging with new young would-be historians. For when it came to Asser, Galbraith had given up on his contemporaries: In this state of mind, I thought it best simply to print, as an example to be shot down by all who read it, my examination of a well-worn problem. […] I shall have succeeded in my aim if this inquiry suggests how shaky are the foundations sustaining the confident narratives we write. […] Historical study to many of us is an expanding revelation whose ever-increasing fascination only deepens the conviction that one is still a beginner.71 68 Galbraith, ‘Afterthoughts.’ 69 Galbraith, An Introduction, p. 1. 70 ‘Undergraduates were delighted by his back-stage view of history, but it is to be remembered that back-stage is where the serious work of production goes on.’ A recollection of H. A. Cronne, quoted by Southern, ‘Galbraith,’ p. 180. 71 Galbraith, An Introduction, p. vi. I was twenty-four when he wrote to me after the publication of An Introduction to the Study of History: ‘No one, repeat No One has either accepted my paper on

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The role of historical imagination in medieval cartularies and chronicles resonated with its role in Galbraith’s own research and teaching. How well he understood — and taught his students to value — the imagination it took to forge a charter, or to write a history! And Galbraith’s own literary engagement with Asser’s Life was certainly creative. He read Asser’s Life as fiction created by rhetoric in the service of the imagination.72 For decades, he brooded on the burnt eleventh-century manuscript, and on how it came to be the source of a river of imagination flowing through chronicle after chronicle and even through a ‘large crop’ of forged charters purporting to be Alfredian.73 His approach to Alfred and Asser was not through a professional formation in Anglo-Saxon Studies, but, as it were, backwards, through his close scrutiny of post-Conquest cartularies and chronicles, their sources, their intertextuality, their textual communities — and, implicitly or explicitly, their image of Anglo-Saxon England. His procedure with respect to Asser thus resembled closely that of his magnum opus on The Making of Domesday Book, as described by Southern: He hoped to discover the purpose of the survey of 1086 by studying the way in which it had been used throughout the Middle Ages. […] With the help of the Pipe Rolls, he hoped to build up a picture of the continuing use of Domesday Book, and so to work back to 1086 and solve the problem of its designers’ intentions. […] His next phase of inquiry was to determine the purpose of the survey, not from its later use, but chiefly from the method and stages of its composition.74

In his 1949 Creighton Lecture on Historical Research in Medieval England, he similarly explored the way later chroniclers did or did not use Asser’s Life. And then, working backwards, he sought to identify the purpose and method of its original composition. He concluded that Asser this subject — I refer of course to reviewers: but equally no one (reviewers) has attempted to meet its arguments. They all sit on the fence, and by this time the iron must be entering into their souls. As usual, in fact, the O. E. people — philologists to a man, rather than historians, just “look the other way” and try to ignore it. But many of the younger dons are, I think, pretty well convinced, and in ten years or so, I believe the world will be pretending that they never have believed in it [viz. Asser] — but this will not happen here till Stenton, Dorothy Whitelock, and Florence Harmer are all dead!’ V. H. Galbraith, private communication, December 28, 1966. Cf. Prescott, ‘Ghost,’ pp. 284–285, nn. 46, 52, 55. 72 ‘As a biography of Alfred the Life is substantially genuine. […] But in so far as it is an autobiography of Asser, it is pure fiction.’ Galbraith, An Introduction, p. 104. 73 ‘The avidity with which the makers of forged charters in the eleventh and twelfth centuries turned to the Life has had the curious effect of making Stevenson’s book [viz his Introduction and Notes] the locus classicus for the study of forgery in that period.’ Galbraith, An Introduction, p. 109. 74 Southern, ‘Galbraith,’ pp. 185–186.

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drew his inspiration from Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, with whose achievements he rightly felt Alfred would bear comparison. For not only does he actually quote from Einhard’s preface (with two other side allusions) but his whole book is really an English echo of its exemplar. Alfred’s love of Saxon poems, his skill in hunting, his devotion to the ‘liberal arts’, especially reading and writing both for himself and his children, his wars, his alms to Rome and to poor Christians everywhere, his justice, his division of his revenue — for all these we have precedents and parallels in Einhard.75

The experience of detecting a forgery ‘makes a good detective novel.’76 You look for a motive. You suspect someone. You find a smoking pistol. You’ve proved your case. Find the original text which the forger used as a template and you have found the smoking pistol. But Galbraith never did stop reading Asser’s Life as a padded version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, while simultaneously seeing Einhard’s Life not as the padding but as the ‘dominating influence’ on its form and content. Galbraith’s inability, or unwillingness, to resolve this question of intrinsic genre may help explain his odd coupling of a metaphorical ‘echo’ with a metaphorical ‘exemplar’ to name what couples Asser’s Life to Einhard’s. Normally you don’t echo an exemplar. You copy it. You don’t allude to it. And when charter B uses the same formulaic phrases and controlling clichés as charter A you don’t say A is an exemplar, B a mere echo, therefore a forgery. On the contrary, a charter which does not echo its conventional predecessors raises your eyebrows. A forger prefers to model his work on a (hopefully authentic) template. Both the generic structure of his forgery and the texture of its language can be stolen from the real thing.77 This makes the discovery and identification of the model used by the forger more challenging and thus more exciting — especially when the suspect manuscript burned centuries ago. Where literary criticism recognizes allusion Galbraith sees plagiarism. Christopher Ricks has articulated the contrast neatly: ‘Allusion is posited on calling the earlier work into play whereas the one thing the plagiarist hopes is that the work will not enter our head. The alluder hopes that the reader will recognize something, the plagiarist that he will not.’78

75 Galbraith, Historical Research, p.108. 76 Galbraith, ‘Afterthoughts,’ p. 12. Cf. Prescott, ‘Ghost,’ n. 20. 77 Constable, ‘Forgery,’ pp. 1–41. 78 Ricks, Allusion, pp. 1, 251–252.

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Echoes Here, then, is Galbraith’s smoking pistol. It is what Plummer called a florid head-link.79 It is Asser’s Pivot 2. And the question now is: how does its meaning depend on whether Einhard ‘enters our heads’? 73. Igitur, ut ad id, unde digressus sum, redeam, ne diuturna enavigatione portum optatae quietis omittere cogar, aliquantulum, quantum notitiae meae innotuerit, de vita et moribus et aequa conversatione, atque, ex parte non modica, res gestas domini mei Aelfredi, Angulsaxonum regis, postquam praefatam ac venerabilem de Merciorum nobilium genere coniugem duxerit, Deo annuente, succinctim ac breviter, ne qua prolixitate narrandi nova quaeque fastidientium animos offendam, ut promisi, expedire procurabo.80

Here is how Galbraith uses this sentence to prove Einhard’s ‘dominating influence’ on Asser: What suggested the idea of telling the story through the mouth of bishop Asser? The ‘big idea’ could have been a stroke of Celtic genius on the author’s part; but it is more likely that the device was borrowed from another and more famous source. [He now introduces Einhard to his readers, quotes the opening of Einhard’s Preface, italicizing words about to be echoed by Asser in Pivot 2, and then continues:] In c. 73 of ‘Asser’ the author interrupts his translation of the Chronicle to explain his purpose in undertaking the work. It is the same as that of Einhard, and expressed in his very words: [Here Galbraith inserts Pivot 2, italicizing Asser’s echoes of Einhard.] The ut promisi (as I promised) is meaningless, for nowhere in the preceding narrative has he made such a promise. He seems, however, to have referred to it earlier in c. 21. [Here he quotes from Pivot 1, see below.] This passage, which also echoes the words of Einhard, was no doubt suggested by c. 4 of the Life of Charlemagne. There Einhard explains that he cannot, alas, write anything ‘de nativitate atque infantia vel etiam pueritia’ (‘about the birth and infancy or even about the boyhood’) of his hero, as no one survived who knew of them when 79 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 44–45. See ch. 3, pp. 127–128, n. 84 above. 80 WHS, p. 54. For translations by Galbraith and David Howlett see the next page. The contrast between these two ways of translating is my concern in this section. My reasons for putting ut promisi in italics will promptly come clear.

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he was writing. Regarding Alfred’s childhood, therefore, ‘Asser’ is ready to out-Einhard Einhard!81

And here is David Howlett’s visual display of the interwoven echoes and re-echoes that Asser uses to interlace Pivot 2 with his Pivot 1.82 Echoes of Einhard in italics; self-echoes in bold. c. 73 Pivot 2 Accordingly, in order that I may Igitur, ut ad id unde digréssus sum return to that point from which I rédeam digressed — and so that I shall not be compelled ne diuturna enavigatione portum to sail past the haven of my desired optatae quietis ommitere cógar, rest as a result of my protracted voyage — something, as far as my knowledge aliquantulum quantum notitiae permits, about the Life, behaviour, meae innotuerit de víta et móribus, equitable character, and in no small et aequa conversatione atque ex parte measure the accomplishments non modica res géstas of my lord Alfred, king of the domini mei Ælfredi Angulsáxonum Anglo-Saxons, régis, after the time when he married his postquam praefatam ac uenerabilem excellent wife from the stock of de Merciorum nobilium genere noble Mercians, cóniugem dúxerit, with God’s guidance, concisely and Déo annuénte succinctim ac breuiter briefly, so that I do not offend with ne qua prolixitate narrandi noua my protracted narrative the minds of quaeque fastidiendum ánimos those who are scornful of information offéndam of any sort as I promised ut promisi I shall undertake to say expedire procurabo.

81 Galbraith, An Introduction, pp. 104–106. 82 Slightly modified: I have used bold where Howlett underlined; tried to mark the English translation accordingly; and inserted ‘concisely and briefly’ for succinctim ac breviter. I have also, alas, collapsed the indentations bringing out the chiasmic rhythm of c. 73. This sentence is a crux of the Life, and David Howlett’s full analysis is worth digesting. Howlett, British Books, pp. 384, 386, 399–400, 402.

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c. 21.9–18 Pivot 1 But as in the manner of sailors I shall Sed ut more nauigántium lóquar, speak lest for too long committing the ship ne diútius nàuim úndis et uelaméntis to waves and sails concedéntes, and sailing quite far from the land et a terra longius énauigántes we be moved on a circular course for longum círcumferámur a long time among such terrible wars inter tántas bellòrum cládes and in year-by-year reckoning et annorum enúmeratiónes, to that which particularly inspired ad id, quod nos maxime ad hoc ópus me to this work incitávit, I think I should return nobis redeundum ésse cénseo, in other words, that some small scilicet aliquantulum, quantum account (as much as has come to my meae cognitióni innótuit: knowledge) of the infancy and boyhood of my de infantilibus et puerilibus dómini esteemed lord Alfred, king of the méi uenerabilis Ælfredi, AngulsáxoAnglo-Saxons, I consider should num régis moribus hoc in loco briefly be inserted at this point. breuiter inserendum ésse exístimo.

By way of comparison here is Galbraith’s plain English version (italics = echoes of Einhard): And so to return to the point, because otherwise my story will never reach harbor. As I promised, I am going to tell you what little I know about the Life, habits and character of my lord Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, and at least the principal events of his reign. I shall start from the time when he married my lady his wife, whom I have mentioned before, and who came of a noble Mercian family. I shall try with God’s help, to be brief, hoping not to try the patience of those who have no use for anything modern.83

Galbraith cuts Asser’s syntax into four shorter sentences, moving as I promised from the end to the beginning, far from breviter ne … offendam, (‘lest I offend’). David Howlett’s translation preserves the unusual syntax of Asser’s long sentence, and his coded layout is a guide to its poetic rhythmic play, a help to hearing how it sounds. Here you can see how tightly Asser interlaces echoes of Einhard’s words with echoes of his own words. It would be nice to 83 Galbraith, An Introduction, p. 105, n. 2.

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view a color-coded visual display of all four passages alluded to in Einhard, (Preface, cc. 4, 6, and 18) and all four nodes of allusion in Asser (a minor pivot at WHS c. 16, Pivots 1 and 2 at WHS c. 21 and c. 73, and an echo at WHS c. 81). It would help us chart the counterpoint of the rebounding echoes. For, yes, Asser echoes Einhard. He has done it before, in WHS c. 16, and he will do it again, in WHS c. 81. But he also echoes himself. And he echoes himself echoing Einhard. And Einhard’s words themselves were already echoes — of Sulpicius Severus, and Suetonius, and Cicero.84 In short, we are in John Hollander’s implicit echo chamber: ‘The reader of texts, in order to overhear echoes, must have some kind of access to an earlier voice, and to its cave of resonant signification, analogous to that of the author of the later text.’85 How persistently Asser echoes himself is noticed by anyone who reads him from beginning to end. It irritated Plummer, who called it ‘a tiresome trick of repeating a word or phrase, sometimes with a slight variation, at intervals, in some cases longer, in others very short.’86 Howlett’s close study of Asser’s use of chiasmic wordplay charts Asser’s self-echoes as tactics in a larger strategy. This self-echoing is a mechanism that rewards the attentive reader (or listener).87 If (as I did with misunderstanding his words) an author echoes someone else’s phrase early in his work intending to echo it again later, and thus develop it, we can call his first utterance a self-echo. In musing on Milton’s use of self-echoing, Hollander calls the initial utterance a ‘Vorklang, as it were, of an eventual echo, of a situation to which it will turn out to have alluded.’ So it may be more fruitful to comprehend Asser’s use of pre-echoes and post-echoes as typological thinking, as a variety of Auerbach’s prefiguration and fulfilment. As if the first pivot from annals to a childhood virtus, is a figura, and this second pivot is its fulfilment, revealing what was concealed in the gesture the first time around. Or is Einhard’s Vita Karoli the figura and Asser’s Vita Ælfredi the fulfilment, Alfred delivering what Charles promised? The Alfredian project revealing what was concealed in the Carolingian?88 84 Kempshall, ‘Ciceronian Models.’ 85 Hollander, Echo, p. 65. 86 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 47–48. 87 I thank my chum David L. Roberts for stimulating insights on this topic. 88 That rhetorical tropes can also participate in the typological play of figura and fulfilment has been noted by Hayden White: ‘Later events in the history of literature are to be viewed, in Auerbachian terms, as “fulfillments” of earlier ones. The later events are not “caused” by the earlier ones, certainly are not “determined” by them. Nor are the later events predictable on any grounds of teleology as realizations of earlier potentialities. They are related in the way that a rhetorical figure, such as a pun or metaphor, appearing in an early passage of a text, might be related to another figure, such as a catachresis or irony, appearing in a later passage — in a way

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Clichés Galbraith was less familiar with the controlling clichés that shape generic hagiographic Lives than with those that shape generic charters. But when reading a literary imitatio we must, Thomas Greene points out, ‘distinguish between the use of a single specif ic subtext and a topos that conventional repetition has removed from the purview of any one author or work.’89 Sallust’s characteristic use of Igitur at the beginning of a pivotal sentence was ‘a deliberate archaism for which the Elder Cato and earlier historians may have provided a model.’90 Sulpicius Severus, in turn, imitated Sallust, including his way of using Igitur.91 What begins as an allusive echo, indeed a full fledged imitatio of an older imitatio, is, in subsequent Lives, echoed and re-echoed so frequently that by Asser’s time it has become a hagiographic cliché: When, as often, we find a medieval biography beginning abruptly with the word Igitur (‘therefore’, ‘then’), it is fair to guess that its prototype, immediate or remote, is Sulpicius’s Life of St Martin. The Igitur is used in slavish imitation of the opening of the second chapter of Sulpicius.92

Berschin comments on eight interesting and illuminating ways of deploying this sallustischer Trommelschlag, ranging from Late Antiquity to the Twelfth Century Renaissance.93 The theme common to all these echoes, these more or less mechanical deployments of Sallust’s cliché, is one of pivoting, especially of pivoting back to the main direction of the narrative. In some Lives, Igitur is used at a pivotal point in the center of a Life, at a crux to mark a pivot analogous to Einhard’s and Asser’s pivots. Felix, for example, uses Igitur in c. 28 of his Life of Guthlac, to pivot, as he promised, to his depiction of Guthlac’s ortonomia vitae: that a premise of a joke is fulfilled in its punchline, or the “conflicts” in an opening scene of a play are fulfilled in its ending. The latter figure “fulfills” the earlier by repeating the elements thereof but with a difference.’ White, ‘Auerbach,’ p. 128. 89 Greene, Light in Troy, p. 50. 90 Ramsey, Sallust, p. 59. In Sallust, igitur ‘always stands f irst in its own clause except in interrogative sentences (e.g. 20.14, 51.43) where it is postpositive, which is the preferred classical usage.’ For examples see cc. 2.1, 4.1, 17.1, 24.1, 27.1, 28.1, 30.3, 50.1, and 54.1. 91 On Sulpicius Severus as christianus Sallustus, see Berschin, Biographie, I, pp. 195–211, especially I, p. 195, n. 1. 92 Peebles, Nicetas, p. 94. 93 Berschin, Biographie, V, p. 146 s.v. ‘Igitur als Anfangswort.’

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Igitur ut de sancti Guthlaci solitaria vita, sicut proposui, scribere exordiar, quae a frequentatoribus eius Wilfrido et Cissan audivi, eodem ordine, quo conperi, easdem res narrare curabo.94

Asser’s abrupt use of Igitur in the middle of the Life initiates the act of coming back from active to contemplative, exterior to interior life, from diachrony to synchrony, from horizontal to vertical, from prose to poetry, Martha to Mary. In the structure of Asser’s Life as a whole, this Igitur launches a long formal rhetorical gesture, call it a liturgical gesture, a traditional genuflection celebrating, for Asser and his textual community, the pivot from the narration of deeds towards a hagiographic core of the Life, WHS c. 74 (which, as Kershaw has now helped us see, depicts the dynamics of Alfred’s relationship to God). Asser brings the gesture to a satisfactory cadence with another cliché, breviter… ut promisi. Beloved of hagiographers, this brevitas/fastidium topos also had antique roots, as shown by Curtius in 1948.95 Asser invokes it ‘liturgically’ four times: first in a minor pivot at WHS c. 16, then to accompany Pivots 1 and 2, and then a sort of post-echo in WHS c. 81. In WHS c. 16, on Aethelwulf’s will, Asser uses an unexpectedly full invocation of brevitas to draw the line on what does not belong in this opusculo and to open up a brief discourse on how writing down a well performed divisio like Aethelwulf’s is good for the soul, and therefore definitely belongs in this Life: c. 16. Vixit ergo Aethewulfus rex duobus annis postquam a Roma pervenit; in quibus, inter alia multa praesentis vitae bona studia, cogitans de suo ad universitatis viam transitu, […] commendatoriam scribi imperavit epistolam: in qua […] pecuniarum, quae post se superessent, inter animam et filios et etiam nobiles suos, divisionem ordinabiliter literis mandari procuravit. De qua prudenti consideratione pauca de pluribus posteris imitanda scribere decrevimus, scilicet, quae ad necessitatem animae maxime pertinere intelliguntur. Nam cetera, quae ad humanam dispensationem pertinent, in hoc opusculo inserere necesse non est, ne fastidium prolixitate legentibus 94 ‘So to begin the account of Guthlac’s solitary life as I have proposed to do, I will seek to narrate the story as I heard it from Wilfrid and Cissa who were his frequent visitors, and in the order in which I learnt it.’ Colgrave, Guthlac, pp. 92, 93. On a ‘family resemblance’ between Felix’s ortonomia vitae and Einhard’s modus vitae, see below, p. 106, n. 108. 95 Curtius, ‘Brevity.’

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vel etiam audire desiderantibus procreaverit. Pro utilitate namque animae suae … (King Aethelwulf lived two years after he returned from Rome; during which time, among many other good undertakings in this present life, as he reflected on his going the way of all flesh, he had an […] advisory document drawn up […] [in which] he took care to have properly committed to writing a division […] of such money as should remain after his death between his soul, sons and his nobles. I have decided to record, for posterity to imitate, a few of the many aspects of this wise policy, in particular those which are understood to pertain principally to the needs of the soul. It is not necessary to mention the other details of his disposition to men in this short work, for fear its readers or those wishing to listen to it should find its verbosity distasteful.)96

Asser weaves into this discourse pre-echoes — highlighted in bold — of the long final passage of the whole Life (WHS cc. 98–106) in which he describes step by step how Alfred figures out a Boethian, indeed Pythagorean, ratio fixa to recte dividere his worldly goods and his time, beginning with an equal division between the active and the contemplative life, and ending with the Pythagorean proportion 6 : 8 : 9 : 12.97 Aethelwulf’s divisio prefigures Alfred’s, to which this passage ‘will turn out to have alluded.’ Both are good for the soul. Although the content of WHS c. 16 (bold) prefigures the end of the Life, the rhetoric (italics) prefigures Pivot 2: ne fastidium is a Vorklang of its future echo in our Igitur passage, to which it will turn out to have alluded. In Pivot 2, ut promisi directly follows breuiter ne qua prolixitate narrandi noua quaeque fastidiendum ánimos offéndam. In 1906 A. S. Cook read this as ‘I will despatch it concisely and briefly, as I promised.’98 So much for Galbraith’s ‘The ut promisi is meaningless, for nowhere in the preceding narrative has he made such a promise.’

96 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 72–73, who note that ‘these words echo the preface of Einhard’s Vita Caroli,’ (and see also p. 254, n. 139.) On what ordinabiliter pre-echoes, see ch. 5, p. 214, n. 44 below, and Kalmar ‘Recte dividas.’ 97 Cf n. 56 above. Kalmar, ‘Recte dividas.’ 98 Cook, Asser, pp. 34–35. So did L. C. Jane, in 1908: ‘And this, with God’s help, I will do shortly and in brief, as I have promised.’ Asser, p. 49. For Stevenson, that this witness thinks he ever promised to be brief is risible: WHS, p. lxxix, n. 1.

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Irony The echo-chamber intertwines Pivot 2 with Pivot 1 in which Asser first turned from the Chronicle’s annals to narrate, breviter, how young Alfred won the contest for the book. When Asser says (c. 21) ‘after all this enumeration of years I think it would be important to insert here what little I know of Alfred’s childhood and boyhood,’ he does it, as often noted, in language that echoes Einhard discoursing on this same topic. If we could ask Asser, ‘So which is it: are you hoping or are you fearing that we will catch this allusion and bring Einhard into the conversation here?’ Asser would reply, ‘Well, of course I’m hoping you will, because if you don’t, you’re going to miss the whole point.’ Because — and here the irony matters most — what Einhard actually says is ‘I think to include anything at all here about the birth, infancy, and childhood of Charles would be impertinent and absurd [ineptum].’99 Suetonius, however, considered these three topics not only pertinent but de rigueur. Einhard’s irony implies a critique of the Suetonian model he is imitating.100 The irony deepens when we consider the reasons Einhard gives for why he is not going to do what you are normally expected to do, what convention requires or at least encourages and authorizes you to do.101 ‘I’m not going to tell you stories about his childhood because no one wrote them down and no one is still around who remembers them.’ Very dry irony. His readers and listeners know — and Asser’s readers know, and we all know — that if Paulinus of Milano, for example, tells you that when Ambrose was a baby a swarm of bees went in and out of his mouth and then ‘flew to such a height that it was impossible for human eyes to see them,’102 it is hardly because someone witnessed the event and wrote it down, let alone purely because it happened, but because the story is a potent typological figura, a commonplace hagiographic virtus. ‘If this kid lives,’ prognosticates Ambrose’s father, ‘he’s going to be a great man some day.’ Paulinus’s story prefigures the ineffable sweetness of the adult Ambrose’s flow of words, thus fulfilling a figura in the Old Testament:

99 ineptum: impertinent, improper, tactless, tasteless, unfit, unsuitable. 100 See n. 109 below. 101 Occupatio is the technical term for this ironic rhetorical trope: you say what you are not going to say, you mention you will not deal with a topic which your listeners had every reason to expect you would. Morse, Truth and Convention, pp. 101, 160, 272, n. 28. 102 Hoare, Western Fathers, p. 151.

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Operabatur enim iam tunc Dominus in servulo sui infantia, ut inpleretur quod scriptum est: ‘Favi mellis sermonis boni.’103 Illud enim examen apum scriptorium ipsius nobis generabat favos, qui caelestia dona adnuntiaret et mentes hominum de terrenis ad caelum erigerent.104 (For our Lord, even when His servant was only an infant, was bringing about the fulfilment of the [OT] text: ‘Words that are good are as honey from a comb.’ For that swarm of bees was generating for us the honeycombs of his writings, which were to announce to men the gifts of heaven and raise their minds to heaven from earthly things.)105

The critique implicit in Einhard’s ironic and laconic occupatio goes something like this: ‘This Life is an icon, not a reliquary. I know relics and reliquaries. I know them inside out. I’ve written a book about them. Here I’m not playing that reliquarian game. I eschew hagiographic discourse. I’m writing a different and better kind of Vita. Forget typology and teleology. This is not a Saint’s Life. It’s an icon.’106 In response Asser doesn’t say ‘There are plenty of people around who tell stories about Alfred’s boyhood, Alfred is still alive and kicking, I was chatting with him just the other day about his childhood.’ Tacitly, implicitly, he says ‘What you refrain from doing, what you sneer at as senseless, we value as important because it will help me and my listeners understand what kind of man Alfred is, it will help us understand the modus that rules his life, that shapes how he lives it and how great he is. Your Life is not figural and typological and teleological. Mine is. Telling these boyhood stories is a good way of constructing a Life. A better way than yours. I have a good story to tell, better than Paulinus’s swarm of bees, and I’m going to be as typological and figural about it as possible; it shows, after all, why and how Alfred’s biliteracy outshines Charles’s illiteracy! So let me appeal to our listeners to judge between us: dear listeners, isn’t our way better than Einhard’s?’ The dry irony of Einhard’s use of occupatio spans the distance between his new kind of vita and the literary conventions of both vulgar hagiography and classical historiography. Asser’s Pivot 1 deepens the irony by alluding to Einhard’s second occupatio in which Einhard famously says (in his c. 6) ‘And on the other hand I am also not going to do the classical rhetorical 103 Prov. 16.24 (pre-Vulgate). See Navoni’s incisive comments in Paulinus, Sant’ Ambrogio, p. 55, n. 8. 104 Paulinus, Sant’ Ambrogio, p. 35. 105 Tr. Hoare, Western Fathers. 106 On Einhard’s iconismo see Vinay, ‘Eginardo,’

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exercise on Crossing the Alps, with all those descriptions of enduring all those rugged landscapes and all that. I’m not playing that game either.’ Why not? ‘Because my purpose in this Life is to record, not the incidents of the wars Charles waged, but the modus of his life.’ ‘A remarkable proposition,’ says the ever-irreverent Gustavo Vinay: Il proposito è notevole: le guerre e con esse, aggiungiamo noi, gli avvenimenti politici in genere, interessano Eginardo solo in quanto illuminano la vita di Carlomagno, dove è da rilevare una presa di posizione, non sappiamo fino a che punto consapevole, contro la storiografia letteraria ed il suo gusto ostentato per le descrizioni e le battaglie. Il fuoco della Vita dovrebbe essere Carlo rappresentato nelle sue fattezze spirituali e morali, intorno, a mo’ di esemplificazione, le sue ‘res gestae.’ Senonché, invece di una esemplificazione, abbiamo apparentemente una arbitraria giustapposizione: Eginardo non descrive le guerre perché gli ripugna la letteratura, viceversa le elenca perché gli paiono necessarie e, nell’esitazione, gli si trasformano tra mano in un bagaglio inerte. Ed ecco che il ‘vitae modus’ rischia di costituire un troncone a sé, ricacciando l’autore verso le formule agiografiche da cui aveva cercato di distaccarsi. Le vite dei santi sono precisamente condotte così: le ‘res gestae’ sono i miracoli a cui l’intervento soprannaturale conferisce una dignità indipendente dal taumaturgo; il ‘vitae modus’ sono le virtù dei santi conchiuse e valide entro i confini di una personalità che con le sue ‘res gestae’ ha un collegamento solo derivato. La Vita Karoli, cosí spoglia di miracolismo, sembra in tal modo adagiarsi su una posizione che è umanistica nella intenzione e nel quadro, agiografica senza santi nei termini concreti della sua impostazione. (Wars, and, we can add, politics in general, interest Einhard only inasmuch as they throw light on Charlemagne’s life. This shows Einhard taking a position (precisely how conscious we don’t know) against literary historiography and its ostentatious taste for descriptions and battles. Charles is to be the focus of the Vita, portrayed from the viewpoint of his spiritual and moral characteristics, alongside his res gestae by way of examples. But then instead of illustration we apparently have arbitrary juxtaposition. The wars seem necessary. He doesn’t want to describe them. So he lists them. And in this lack of resolution, they turn in his hands into an inert burden. And so this ‘vitae modus’ itself risks turning into a stub, driving the author back to the hagiographic formulas from which he had sought to detach himself. This is just how Saints’ lives are managed: ‘res gestae’ are miracles to which supernatural intervention confers a

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dignity independent of the wonder worker; the ‘vitae modus’ is the saint’s virtues, accomplished and valid within the confines of a persona only derivatively connected to his ‘res gestae.’ Shorn of miraculism, the Vita Karoli thus seems to settle comfortably into a position that is humanistic in its intentions and outline, yet hagiographic without saints in the actual terms of its implementation.)107

In other words, modus vitae may bear a high-toned Ciceronian or even Augustinian family resemblance to the hagiographer’s more familiar lex vitae, regula vitae, or ortonomia vitae, but don’t expect Einhard to tell you a story.108 And so, in Gustavo Vinay’s opinion, and in mine, Einhard does not, after all, succeed in communicating the modus of his hero’s life. Asser does. Asser’s re-invocation of the breviter topos in Pivot 1, echoing his own and Einhard’s, invites us to watch him do what Einhard did not: epitomize the modus of Alfred’s life in a typological figura, a memoria of Alfred’s childhood race for the book. Asser’s imitative strategy here is what Greene calls dialectical. His Life ‘makes a kind of implicit criticism of its subtexts, its authenticating models, but it also leaves itself open to criticism’ from the Einhardian spirit it invokes. It proves ‘its historical courage and artistic good faith by leaving room for a two-way current of mutual criticism between authors and between eras’109 — between, in this instance, the era of Charlemagne and Einhard, and that of Alfred and Asser. Brevitas does not, for Asser, exclude figural writing. It legitimizes it. So Galbraith is quite right: by telling us the fable of Alfred’s childhood race for the book Asser is indeed ready to out-Einhard Einhard! But we can now move beyond Galbraith’s exclamation mark at the end there, which, it is fair to guess, invites us to share an indulgent chuckle at such Celtic chutzpah.110 We are ready to out-Galbraith Galbraith! For if Berschin and Charles-Edwards are right, and Asser’s Life as a whole is not a mere echo but a successful literary imitatio of Einhard’s, then linking ut promisi in

107 Vinay, ‘Eginardo,’ pp. 302–303. (My translation.) 108 Not that he cannot when called for by the genre: see his skillful story-telling in Einhard, Translatio et miracula. Translated in Dutton, Translation and Miracles. On ortonomia vitae see above, p. 191, n. 94. 109 Greene, Light in Troy, p. 45. See also n. 100 above. 110 Leofric, Galbraith’s candidate for the forger, was not a Celt. Galbraith proposed him merely to provoke critical thinking. For he also wrote, tongue in cheek, ‘What suggested the idea of telling the story through the mouth of Bishop Asser? The “big idea” could have been a stroke of Celtic genius …’. ‘Who Wrote Asser’s Life?,’ p. 104.

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Pivot 2 with his four-fold111 invocation of the brevitas topos, far from being meaningless, may mean that Asser promises to do for Alfred what Einhard did for Charles — and then some. It is as if, by working ut promisi into this web of interlaced allusions, echoes, and clichés, Asser invites us to join him in his dialogue with Einhard about how to use a childhood story to represent the modus of Alfred’s life. To that story I now turn.

111 Whether the f inal echo, ne fastidium legentibus procreent in WHS c. 81, also functions ‘liturgically’ to cross a line, I leave as an exercise for the interested reader.

5

Win the Book From the reader’s point of view, what matters most about folktale is the close attention it demands. A few of the Grimms’ folktales would give good practice for reading Mark’s. There is no unnecessary digression in such stories. They are lean, close and complex in articulation, with a precision which we tend to associate with science rather than with art. They are almost formulaic. Everything in them matters and has functional relationship to every other thing. So every, even momentary, negligence in reading them is disabling. They should be read no faster than the pace of speech, and not once only. For they belong to the people clustered round the storyteller who brings out of his narrative treasure things new and old, rather than to the rapid browser in the armchair. — JOHN DRURY1

Abstract Is the oft-told tale of how young Alfred won his mother’s book too good to be true? A mere folk tale about a youngest son who alone succeeds in a quest? Or is it Alfred’s own childhood memory, an authentic relic of his psyche? Guided by the spirit of redaction criticism as practiced by biblical scholars in the second half of the twentieth century, this chapter is a close reading of the fable as parable, as a pericope which circulated orally before it was redacted by Asser. It concludes that Asser’s redaction condenses Alfred’s modus vitae and the curve of his destiny into a gem, a hagiographic figura too good to be false. Where does it find its typological fulfillment? Keywords: Alfred P. Smyth, psychohistory, Asser, Vita Alfredi, redaction criticism

1

Drury, ‘Mark,’ p. 403.

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH05

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Transcendental flotsam and jetsam ‘I find in Burke,’ wrote Emerson in his journal when he was twenty-three years old, ‘almost the same thought I had entertained as an original remark three years ago: that nothing but the moral quality of actions can penetrate through vast intervals of time.’ Nine years later, a month after marrying Lydia Jackson, he wrote: Do you see what we preserve of history? a few anecdotes of a moral quality of some momentary act or word, — the word of Canute on the seashore, the speech of the Druid to Edwin, the anecdote of Alfred’s learning to read for Judith’s gift, the box on the ear by the herdsman’s wife, the tub of Diogenes, the gold of Crœsus, and Solon, and Cyrus; these things, reckoned insignificant at the age of their occurrence, have floated, while laws and expeditions and books and kingdoms have sunk and are forgotten. So potent is this simple element of humanity or moral common sense.2

A folktale Once upon a time there was a king who had three sons… We know what’s coming. A task and a prize. The first son fails. Then the second son fails. And then the youngest son, perhaps by a wily stratagem, perhaps with the help of an attendant person, succeeds and wins the prize he desires and deserves — the princess, the crown. Switch genders: Once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters. King Lear. Once upon a time there was a queen who had three daughters. Cinderella. Once upon a time there was a queen who had seven sons. Alfred’s mother, almost.3 Attach the task to the prize: The queen showed her sons a beautiful songbook and said: ‘The first one to learn these songs gets a chocolate ice cream sundae.’ Or vice versa: ‘The first one to fold his laundry gets this lovely songbook.’ In one story the book is a task; in the other, a prize.

2 Perry, Emerson’s Journals, pp. 33, 95. 3 On the politics and prestige of maternal kinship in early medieval England, see now Traves, ‘Royal women.’

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These are plots familiar to us in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. What you earn is extrinsic to your task. I hold down a job to earn a salary — to buy beautiful expensive scholarly books and learn to read them at leisure. To win a heavenly crown, I run an earthly race. The story becomes more memorable when task and prize bond intimately, and most memorable when having done the task turns out to be the prize, when the quest turns out to be its own reward. Once upon a time there was a queen who showed her sons a beautiful songbook and said: ‘First one to sing this, gets it.’ The mother offers in the form of a prize the challenge of understanding and performing the prize itself. Progressive education!4 For if I haven’t done the task, what good does the prize do me? What is the book worth to me if I cannot sing the songs? When I sing to you, by heart, songs I have read in a book, isn’t my true prize now to be found no longer in the book but in my understanding, in your heart, in our sharing the book this way? This experience transforms for me the value of an unread book in my mother’s hands. The book as the wealth wisdom earns, the outward sign of inward grace: a Solomonic leitmotif of Alfred’s political thought.5 The rules of the game articulated by the queen are edifying. To understand her game, to understand the experience of winning by her rules, to understand the anecdote of Alfred’s learning to read his mother’s gift is to have learned the moral taught by the story-as-parable, for which Emerson’s moral common sense suffices. A parable So change the frame: The Kingdom of God is like unto a mother who shows her children a beautiful songbook and says: ‘Whoever learns these songs…’ Reframing this perhaps too familiar story as a parable opens up fresh ways of responding to it. A parable, unlike an allegory, has only one point. But what you think that point is tells you who you are. What you get from a good parable reflects back to you what you bring to it. Am I the ground on which the seed falls? If so, am I stony? Or am I the seed geworfen into the world, not 4 Teacher: Well, boys and girls, this is a hard problem, and whoever solves it gets a reward. Students: What’s the reward? Teacher: If you can solve this problem you get to solve an even harder problem. 5 Pratt, Alfred; Gautier, ‘Alfred et Salomon.’ And the cakes that baking earns? The task: learn to bake these cakes. The prize: you get to eat them. And to feed others.

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responsible for choosing the ground on which I fall? Or am I the sower, casting my pearls abroad to the world, let the chips fall where they may? This is a parable’s primary function: to wake us up, to help us experience the distance between our own way of life and the modus vitae of the Kingdom of God. Given a parable, therefore, interpreters will differ on its point. Consider how C. H. Dodd divides into three groups the scholarly interpreters of the Seed Growing Secretly (Mark 4.26–29). The Kingdom of God is like this: as if a man should cast seed on the ground, and go to sleep and wake night and day; and the seed germinates and grows, he knows not how. Spontaneously the earth bears fruit — first blade, then ear, then full corn in the ear. But when the crop yields, at once he applies the sickle, because the harvest has come. Broadly speaking, modern interpretation has followed one of three lines: (i) The Kingdom of God is like the seed: it is an inward germinal principle: ‘the Kingdom of God is within you.’ (ii) The Kingdom of God is like the whole process of growth. It is the divine energy immanent in the world by which the purpose of God is gradually achieved. (iii) The Kingdom of God is like the harvest. The sowing is, according to Dr. Schweitzer, ‘the movement of repentance awakened by John the Baptist and carried further by the preaching of Jesus’, and He Himself will be the Harvester when, very shortly, the Kingdom of God comes and He is revealed in his glory.6

The interpreter seeks to illumine the text. Yet the text, like a radiance, illumines the interpreter.7 The kingdom of Alfred With what, then, can we compare the kingdom of Alfred? What parable shall we use to illuminate it? The Kingdom of Alfred is like unto a mother who shows her sons a beautiful book of songs and says, ‘Whoever learns this first, I’ll give him it.’ And her 6 Dodd, Parables, pp 141–144. Dodd, finding, as always, the realized eschatology he brings to each parable, spells out his own, fourth, line of interpretation: yes, the Kingdom of God is like the harvest, but it is not a catastrophic event in the future. It is a present crisis. 7 Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, p. 40. Kermode is echoing Kafka.

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youngest son asks, ‘For true? You’ll really give that beautiful book to the first one of us to understand it and sing it to you?’ And the mother smiles and says, ‘Yes!’ And the youngest son takes the book from her hand and goes to a teacher and reads. And comes back singing the songs. He that hath ears to hear them, let him hear. What we get from this parable reflects back to us, and thus illumines and quickens, our own understanding of what literacy is, of what a book is for, of what you can do to it, of what it means to own it, of the value of knowing it by heart. Is the kingdom of Alfred like poetry, recited by heart? Or is it like a teacher who teaches us to read and sing? Or is it like a halo bright sent down from heaven’s light? The sweetest gift. A mother’s smile. Too good to be true It’s a good story. ‘Too good,’ said V. H, Galbraith, ‘to be true.’8 In 1995, Alfred P. Smyth characteristically devoted five pages to proving that it was originally a mere folktale, which Asser merely turned into a quintessentially hagiographic virtus. Since Asser paints his version of this story into his picture of Alfred as a pious wimp, and since Alfred was no such thing, the story is bogus, Asser is pseudo, and that’s that.9 Before and after it was first written down in Latin, this romantic story circulated on its own (in Latin and/or the vernacular) as an autonomous ‘aesthetic object,’ compact, vivid and distinct: in short, a pericope.10 As one of the three most popular Alfredian fables told in the romantic Englishspeaking world, it was known to every schoolboy from Emerson’s childhood in the United States in the early 1800s to mine in Australia in the 1950s, the other two being the equally romantic ‘box on the ear by the herdsman’s wife’ when he was down and out in Athelney,11 and then the king singing songs to his enemies incognito as a minstrel just before he beat them and saved us all. Each one dramatizes an ironic contrast between appearance and 8 Galbraith, Historical Research, p. 12. See also Galbraith, An Introduction, pp. 85–128. And yet, as William Ian Miller observes, ‘There is an unspoken sense that the truth value of a source varies inversely with how much pleasure it gives the reader. No pain, no gain. It is thus the case that bad literature has an easier time being seriously considered as a historical source than good literature. Most of the sagas are by this view too good to be true. […] Some topoi that no one suspected to have been anything but the stuff of literature have been shown to have very probably been matters of lived experience as well.’ Miller, Bloodtaking, pp. 45, 47. 9 Smyth, Alfred, pp. 181–185. 10 Via, Parables, p. x and passim. 11 On which see Martínez Pizarro, ‘Kings in Adversity.’ Cf. n. 5 above.

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reality. The protagonist’s secret identity, already known to us, is destined to be revealed to the other characters in a forthcoming Recognition Scene. Smyth’s identification of our pericope as ‘a version of an international folk-tale categorized as Youngest brother alone succeeds on quest’12 can be a first but hardly a final step in fruitful form criticism and narratological analysis. Indexing the type can enable us to value the fresh twist that this story gives to an old plot. Smyth compares it to a story told by Herodotus: When Heracles fathered three infant boys on a certain viper-woman in Scythia, he instructed her to set the boys a test when they grew up, to establish which one of them was fit to rule Scythia. The successful candidate had to try on a special girdle and to manipulate a bow. Eventually, of the three brothers, Scythes, the youngest, was the only one to pass the test and allowed to remain in Scythia, while his older brothers were banished.13

To come closer to the Alfredian plot, however, you need to make the girdle and the bow be the prize: the first to fit the girdle, the first to bend the bow, gets to wear the girdle and shoot the bow. And the youngest son would need to jump the gun, grab the bow from his mother’s hands before his older brothers even get their turn to try it, and then run off with it to a teacher to learn how to bend it. Ignore such details, and you risk missing the point.

Redaction criticism I have proposed the above easy exercises for the flight of our imagination in the hope of clearing the way to encounter Asser afresh, freed from the hangover of the Victorian Cult. In the refreshing spirit of open-minded redaction criticism as practiced by biblical scholars in the second half of the twentieth century, let me now greet Asser in his capacity as the first known redactor of this fable, this folktale, call it this pericope, so as to construe it in its oldest known Latin form.14 12 Smyth, Alfred, p. 182, citing motif # H.1242, III, p. 484 in Thompson, Motif-Index. For canonical examples, see Thompson, The Folktale. Smyth would have been better advised reading Frye, Fables of Identity. 13 Smyth, Alfred, p. 182. 14 ‘Redaktionsgeschichte was first applied to the Gospels in Germany in the 1950s. Under its influence, the evangelists ceased to be seen as mere compilers of traditional material and came

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At first, a pericope circulates orally, framed this way and that by the conventions of oral speech-genres. One day someone writes it up for the first time, framing the pericope (forever?) in a permanent linguistic form. As time goes by, others rewrite the story, over and over, reframing it to communicate their updated interpretation of what the story means so as to strengthen the life of their community of believers, their cult. Enter the critics. Source critics recover the original source of the oft-told tale; textual critics its original wording. Historical critics tell us the truth about its protagonist. And then form criticism shows us how this story’s moral enables it to float while laws and kingdoms sink. Ready now to ask what Asser means by telling this story, by redacting this pericope, we arrive at redaction criticism. We saw above how a typology internal to the Chronicle’s redactorial framework implicitly interprets the meaning of Remember the Pope as prefiguring its protagonist’s destiny. Now let’s study in detail how Asser’s redactorial framework interprets the meaning of this second childhood fable as epitomizing the modus of its protagonist’s life. We misread these stories unless we take account of the framework in which they are set. The framework is part of the meaning; and the recovery and proper understanding of this framework is accomplished by redaction criticism, which thereby clearly delineates the character of a particular literary genre whose conventions and setting were not previously appreciated.15

And so a next, and a rewarding, task is to turn our attention to how and why the redactor of the Life as we know it frames his Latin fable as a hagiographic virtus. Asser does not merely hand on this story, but by placing it in a particular context he is also its earliest exegete.16 Smyth is content — nay, eager — to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In chapter 6 instead to be seen as creative reshapers of tradition with consistent theological viewpoints of their own. It spread swiftly through the international community of gospel scholars, leavening the entire lump. And although the gospel scholar’s diet is now [1992] more varied than at any time in the past, redaction criticism remains the staple for most.’ Moore, Mark and Luke, p. 87. 15 Barton, Biblical Study, p. 55. 16 Here I echo Günther Bornkamm in his famous essay on Matthew’s redaction of the Stilling of the Storm: ‘Matthew is not only a hander-on of the narrative of the Stilling of the Storm but also its oldest exegete, and in fact the first to interpret the journey of the disciples with Jesus in the storm and the stilling of the storm with reference to discipleship, and that means with reference to the little ship of the Church.’ Bornkamm, ‘Die Sturmstillung,’ p. 55.

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we will see how by linking it redactorially to Alfred’s pilgrimage to Rome in his eleventh year and hence ceasing to be illiteratus in his twelfth year, Asser unfurls it as a figura to articulate and animate the inner typology, the modus, of Alfred’s life. By saving the typological bathwater, the redaction critic also saves the baby. Asser’s redactorial framework is not tepid water. Like the Gospels, it has an inner figural structure worth contemplating. To quote again Norman Perrin’s rule of thumb, ‘No interpretation of any pericope can be adequate that does not raise questions about the place and function of that pericope within the structure of the work as a whole.’17 So when Smyth pins this one down to the correct index-number (D.1819.4, ii. 334) for learning to read by magic in Thompson’s reference work and leaves it at that, he once again risks missing the point: the point of Asser’s Life as well as the point of his story. To cast this question of Asser’s point as a task for redaction criticism makes sense for several reasons.18 Firstly, it is proper now to read as closely as possible his Latin pericope without regard to Stevenson’s (or our own) conception of the Life as a whole.19 In common with both Fundamentalism and what used to be called the New Criticism, redaction critics rehabilitate seemingly trivial or bizarre details through a concern with every minute verbal nuance.20 Secondly, the redactor of the Life, whoever he may be, call him Asser for short, deserves the respect we now give to, say, the redactors we call Mark or Matthew. Like them, Asser deserves to be read on his own terms in the form in which he chose to write, and after several generations of being read mistakenly, Asser has earned the right to be read as a thoughtful and creative hagiographer.21 Thirdly, it will then prove gratifying to study how this redactor works his story into the tropics of his discourse without regard to Stevenson’s late 17 Perrin, ‘Evangelist as Author,’ p. 61. I quoted this above, ch. 2, p. 79, n. 33. 18 Two good textbook introductions to redaction criticism: Perrin, Redaction Criticism? and Gail P. C. Streete, ‘Redaction Criticism.’ See also Frank Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy. 19 Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s book Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu published in 1919 ‘cleared the way for considering the individual items without regard to the conception of the gospels as a whole.’ Rohde, Evangelists, p. 5. 20 Barton, Biblical Study, pp. 51–52. 21 My imitatio of Norman Perrin, who wrote ‘Mark is a significant and creative literary figure and deserves to be read in the form in which he chose to write rather than in a summary. Mark has the right to be read on his own terms, and after several generations of being read mistakenly, as a historian, he has earned the right to be read as a theologian. Our purpose is simply to point out that, from the viewpoint of redaction criticism, this is one way in which [Caesarea Philippi, Mark 8.27–30] should be read.’ Redaction Criticism? p. 53. Here ‘Mark’ refers to ‘the redactor of the Gospel according to Mark,’ not necessarily to a historical Mark.

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Victorian framework. Stevenson and his colleagues looked for a backbone in Asser’s text and saw one in the Cotton MS’s doubled chronological scaffolding, as if the Life were trying to be a chronicle twice over. Stevenson’s layout and apparatus reinforced this optical illusion, obscuring how Asser wove his material — including both Remember the Pope and our pericope — into his interlaced network of clichés, echoes, allusions, and figural tropes. If the Life has anything that can be called a backbone it is to be found not in its annorum enumerationes but in a novel typology that weds chronology to hagiography by pivoting them around one another. Asser experiments with developing a literary genre whose conventions and setting, closer to those of a gospel than a chronicle, have not been properly appreciated.22 Because it introduces actual annal dates in chronological order, his experiment is an aggiornamento of Einhard and Suetonius. But it is also a ressourcement of life-writing because its typologie interne is comparable to that of Sulpicius Severus’s Life of St Martin. And fourthly, when called into play, Stevenson himself can be greeted with no disrespect as a Redaktor among the redactors, as one of Asser’s peers, and the weighty scholarly scaffolding Stevenson constructed to enclose the Life within the Chronicle can be interpreted as a guide to the recovery and proper understanding, not of Asser’s original marriage of Anglo-Saxon history to Celtic hagiography, but of Stevenson’s own professional Sitz im Leben within the thousand-year-old cult of Alfred the Great, and thus of his calling to annul this morganatic marriage between hagiography and chronology, to discipline Celtic fancy by Anglo-Saxon fact. Those of us curious to recover and understand Asser’s point may now cast off the spell of Stevenson’s redactorial mediation, governed as it was by his ruling metaphor of the Chronicle as the reliable backbone flabbily fleshed out by Asser’s peculiar Latin prose: Anglo-Saxon as the trustworthy Container, Celt as the muddle-headed Thing Contained. In the spirit of redaction criticism let us unpin the wings of our imagination from the nails hammered into them by our well-meaning predecessors, and now listen, as if for the first time, to the canonical source of Emerson’s anecdote, first in the more or less idiomatic English of Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, and then in Asser’s idiomatic Latin.

22 See n. 15 above.

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The Poem Itself. 1a

2a

3a 4 5

One day, therefore, when his mother was showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry which she held in her hand, she said: Spurred on by these words, or rather by divine inspiration, and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter in the book, Alfred spoke as follows in reply to his mother, forestalling his brothers (ahead in years, though not in ability): Whereupon, smiling with pleasure she reassured him, saying: He immediately took the book from her hand, went to his teacher and learnt it. When it was learnt, he took it back to his mother and recited it.23

‘I shall give this book to whichever 1b one of you can learn it the fastest.’ ‘Will you really give this book to 2b the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?’

‘Yes, I will.’

3b

Just as Once upon a time… frames a folktale, and The kingdom of God is like unto a… frames a parable, so One day… is a delimitation marker that, to this day, frames a fable as an anecdote. So familiar is this short form invoked by One day that we have trouble even thinking of it as a literary genre. ‘To the twentieth century reader,’ says Joaquín Martínez Pizarro at the beginning of his gorgeous study of the early medieval origins of this kind of compact dramatic narrative in Latin, ‘the form that I am about to illustrate has become second nature and seems almost inevitable in narrative; it began to be used systematically in [Latin] literature in the sixth century A.D.’24 He investigates and explicates the rhetoric of the single scene, that is to say the craft, the narrative devices, the compositional techniques which writers use to knit speech-acts, gestures, simple actions, and a focal object into coherent micro-dramas, short yet pleasingly thorough, and thus memorable. ‘Brevity, syntactic and lexical simplicity, the co-ordination of speech with action and physical expression, these are new qualities in literary dialogue.’25 Through 23 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 75. 24 Martínez Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, p. 9. 25 Martínez Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, p. 87.

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close reading he elucidates many enlightening examples, from Gregory of Tours to Widikund of Corvey and beyond. Implicit in his analyses is an aesthetic criterion: the tighter the better. By this criterion Asser’s anecdote bears comparison with the best of them, thanks to its interplay of the dialogue, the smile, and the actions, all governed by a focal object, the book. In five sentences, three of which embody direct speech, he invites us to witness a complete drama with an intriguing beginning, an exciting middle, and a gratifying end. Each sentence interacts dynamically with each of the other four, rewarding close reading if not lectio divina. Translation unavoidably weakens the taut strength of the Latin.26 Anyone who has tried to translate a short form — a joke, say, or a sonnet — from one language to another knows how difficult it is to preserve the internal economy, the articulate energy of the original version.27 The plot, we trust, survives, but if, for example, the punch of the last line or couplet depends on rhythm or on idiomatic word-play, translation enfeebles it. Let us therefore listen with fresh ears to how it all sounds in the original Latin: 1a

2a

3a 4 5

Cum ergo quodam die mater sua sibi et fratribus suis quendam Saxonicum poematicae artis librum, quem in manu habebat, ostenderet, ait: Qua voce, immo divina inspiratione, instinctus, et pulchritudine principalis litterae illius libri illectus, ita matri respondens, et fratres suos aetate, quamvis non gratia, seniores anticipans, inquit: Ad haec illa, arridens et gaudens atque affirmans: Tunc ille statim tollens librum de manu sua, magistrum adiit et legit. Quo lecto, matri retulit et recitavit.28

‘Quísquis véstrum díscere cítius ístum códicem póssit, dábo ílli íllum.’

1b

‘Vérene dábis ístum líbrum úni ex nóbis, scílicet ílli, qui citíssime intellígere et recitáre éum ánte té póssit?’

2b

‘Dábo,’ infit, ‘ílli.’

3b

26 In Appendix A (pp. 225–227) below I offer, for ease of synoptic comparison, six English translations sentence by sentence. The average length of the six versions is 155 words. At 143 words long, Keynes and Lapidge’s is the briefest: the others range from 153 to 168 words. The Latin original is naturally more compact, only 104 words long. 27 Davie, Articulate Energy. 28 WHS, c. 23.

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As in the best parables each phrase interacts with each other and with the plot. Modify one and the energy ebbs, the syntax flags, the plot deflates. Lost in translation is the alliteration, the rhythm, the syntax: the poem itself. This small genre is, in its own way, woven as tight as a sonnet. Dilute the poetry and you feel the point dissolving. Plot and poetry strengthen one another in coherent idiomatic ways whose unavailability in poetic or prosaic English costs us the articulate energy of the Latin rhythm and poetic syntax that binds and fetters. The discourse developed by the poet and critic Donald Davie on varieties of poetic syntax illuminates the ways in which Asser’s strong redaction of this fable fuses its ‘curve of destiny’: For a verse is strong only if it has ‘strong sense’. Let syntax be never so close, unless it is truly carrying ‘weight of words’ it cannot be ‘strong’. To be ‘strong’, poetic syntax must bind as well as join, not only gather together but fetter too.29

Asser’s paragraph satisfies this Augustan criterion: close compact syntax packed with strong sense. This is a a rhetorical gem. Its facets reflect and refract one another. If this Latin pericope were all we knew of Asser, who among us could accuse its author of bad arrangement of material or obscurity of style?30 With the exception (as we shall see) of the flamboyant flourish in the second sentence, all is limpid and lucid. 1ab : 5ab Consider what binds the initial and final sentences. In early medieval historiography, notes Martínez Pizarro, a single scene is most commonly introduced ‘by a temporal clause with cum, dum, or tunc.’31 And many a jejune saint’s life is little more than a string of virtutes beginning ‘One day,’ quodam die. Here, Cum couples with quodam die to raise the curtain on a tableau beloved of Emerson and the Victorians. Swiftly, in twenty-one words, the first sentence shows us the dramatis personae in their family constellation looking at the focal object of the drama: a book. Cum helps the sentence nest three clauses so as to end with three verbs: habebat ostenderet ait. She holds the book, shows it, speaks about it. This battery of verbs directed at the focal object is lost in translation. We separate, in English, the verbs.32 29 Davie, Articulate Energy, p. 247. 30 See ch. 3, p. 155, n. 162. 31 Martínez Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, p. 64. 32 Compare the three-verb patterns in 2a respondens, anticipans, inquit; 3a arridens, gaudens, affirmans; 4 tollens, adiit, legit; 5 lecto, retulit, recitavit.

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The last of the five sentences, the punchline, is just six words: Quo lecto, matri retulit et recitavit. Alliteration, syntax, and rhythm converge to give the punchline its punch, bringing the mother, the book, and the youngest son back together again, and condensing the plot into the compact syntax of the initial Quo lecto and the final retulit et recitavit, whose rhythm and alliteration achieve an authentic cadence, free of cliché, packed with strong sense, resolving on the verb that the youngest son himself introduced into the story: recitare. Recitavit means we witness him crossing the finishing line at the head of the race by meeting the criterion he articulated for winning the game. He has earned the book. It is his, fair and square. The game has transformed a thing, the focal object of the initial tableau, into the formally patterned oral discourse of Anglo-Saxon poetry and the curtain comes down. The compact syntax and rhythm of Quo lecto is a popular delimitation marker for clinching the punchline of this kind of anecdote.33 The strong effect of the passive past participle in the ablative absolute can, in English, only be paraphrased. It is a favorite cliché, for example, of Paulinus of Milan who ends a dozen of his virtutes in his well-known Life of Ambrose with quo facto, quo viso, quo dicto, qua cognita, quo adcepto, and qua lecta.34 In order for the ablative absolute to bind well, there has to be a reference for quo. In Paulinus’s quo facto it is an action which binds, in quo dicto a speech, but here in quo lecto it modifes a thing, a book, the focal object around which the drama unfolds, and thus, at one remove, the action, the speech, and the smile as well. Quo lecto is not merely temporal (‘when the book had been read’). It encapsulates the pith of the plot: it tells us what state the book is now in. When the curtain went up it was not yet in this state. In the second sentence Alfred was illectus35 by the book. Now the book is lectus by Alfred.36 The drama has transformed the book: Alfred can now take the

33 Asser himself uses it to wrap up two other anecdotes by marking a cadential return of some sort: Quo facto, domus revertitur 7.12; Quo peracto, ad patriam suam remeavit 11.10. And he closes his account of the horn lantern’s candles with Quibus extinctis, aliae incendebantur 104.36. 34 Paulinus, Sant’ Ambrogio: Quo facto 54 3.4 [the bees]; quo viso 80 17.1, and 126 43.3; quo dicto 112 33.4, and 114 35.1 [very short, a quip]; qua cognita 94 25.2; quo adcepto 130 47.3 [death scene]; and qua lecta 134 49.1; see also qua sponsione iterata 90 23.3 and quo audito nomine 136 52.1. 35 J carried away / C allured / W, K, H attracted / S enticed. 36 ‘By Alfred?’ We, today, keep asking who in the preceding sentence read the book: Alfred or his teacher? We want to think it makes a difference to the point of the story, perhaps to the legitimacy of Alfred’s possession of the book. But what if the youngest son’s wily stratagem is to dissolve this distinction?

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book as read, quo lecto, and, by performing it as ‘a public, spoken act within a community,’37 possess it. 1ab : 3ab The bond between the first and third sentences is that between a call and its echo. The mother’s first speech is a call addressed to all her sons on an equal footing; her second, an echo addressed only to her youngest son. Her first speech is composed of one short rhythmical clause, Quísquis véstrum díscere cítius ístum códicem póssit, followed by an even shorter one with a cadential rhythm, dábo ílli íllum. The first clause defines the test, the second bestows the prize. What could be less obscure? The curves of both rhythm and syntax simultaneously epitomize the edifying rules of the game and the narrowing curve of its destiny, the plot of the drama we are about to see, which begins with the mother offering the book to all the sons in the second person plural quisquis vestrum, and will end with the mother giving it to just one of them in the future in the third person singular, dabo illi illum.38 This is the curve of destiny. The prize is offered to all. It is ‘destined’ to one alone. The mother’s first clause sets the book as a task: ‘the squiggles must be made to speak.’39 The second endows it with value as a prize. We are about to witness how the transformation of script to speech can legitimize the transfer of property in a race against time. The mise en valeur of the object is carried out by words said about the object or by dramatic action involving both words and gestures. In other words, things must depend on words and actions for their role, their central position. An object-focused episode is ultimately a subtype depending on the frame or context used to ‘animate’ the thing and bring it to the foreground. Compositionally the result is a very distinctive scenic type with a still, opaque centre around which words and movements gather to elicit and create meaning. 40

The dialogue which the mother opens in the first sentence and closes in the third can be recognized and appreciated as a little sub-game that 37 Howe, ‘Reading,’ p. 74. 38 The syntax of an idiomatic English translation brings the prize up ahead of the task, reversing ‘the curve of destiny’: I shall give this book [as a prize] to whichever one of you can learn it [as a task] the fastest. [K] Only by forfeiting colloquial idiomatic rhythm can a modern translator preserve the resonance of the mother’s temporal (and logical) order: ‘Whichever of you can soonest learn this volume, to him will I give it.’ [C]. ‘Whichever one of you can learn [this book] the fastest I shall give it to him.’ [H]. 39 Howe, ‘Reading,’ p. 63. 40 Martínez Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, p. 176.

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she plays with her youngest son, one of those familiar but tacit games that families know how to play without explicitly calling them games. 41 In that sub-game, the opening move is the mother’s f irst two-clause sentence, the middle-game is the youngest son’s two-clause question, and the endgame is her short two-word response dabo illi, echoing her already short cadential dabo illi illum. What the youngest son wins in this ludic exchange of speech-acts is the intimacy of her smile and the harmony of her echo, reciprocally reinforcing the validation he asked for. Since illum goes unheard in the echo dabo illi, the maternal curve of destiny already condensed into dabo illi illum is now sensed even more succinctly. Close and compact poetic syntax packed with strong sense again refract and reflect the dramatic irony, the kernel of the plot. Alfred’s initiative is about to turn illi, indirect object of the verb dabo, referring to whoever in the future will satisfy the criterion articulated by the dialogue, into ille in the next sentence, subject of three verbs, referring just to Alfred himself in the dramatic present moment. 1ab : 2ab Alfred’s question to his mother simultaneously advances the dialogue and thickens the plot. It governs the story by refining the logical structure of the game, enabling his unexpected and dramatic actions. The redactor frames Alfred’s question with a flamboyant twenty-five-word flourish, an exception to my remark that nothing in this paragraph can be removed without deflating the drama: Qua voce, immo divina inspiratione, instinctus, et pulchritudine principalis litterae illius libri illectus, ita matri respondens, et fratres suos aetate, quamvis non gratia, seniores anticipans, inquit. Like an impresario lecturing his audience on what we are about to see on his stage, the putatively omniscient voice of the redactor stipulates three motives for the youngest son’s decision to be the first to speak up, step ahead of his older brothers, take action, do the task, and win the prize: he is instinctus and illectus — note the untranslatable wordplay42 — instinctus both by his mother’s voice (or speech) and by divine inspiration, and illectus by the beauty of the book’s first letter. Just as some of the parables of Jesus improve when we free them from well-intended, yet ideologically saturated,

41 Although Eric Berne did so in Games People Play. 42 Odo of Cluny plays with the same word illectus to describe Gerald’s attraction to literacy: Ob hoc licet militaribus emineret officiis, delectatione tamen litterarum illectus; in illis voluntaria pigritia lentulus, in hujus sedulitate erat assuetus. Odo, Vita Geraldi in PL 133:645; V. Sitwell, ‘Odo.’ A little later he uses the term in its more libidinous sense: aut vulgaris amore laudis illectus. On Odo of Cluny and Asser playing variations on a common theme see, f irst, Smyth, Alfred, pp. 205–210, and then Nelson, ‘Masculinity.’

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interpretative redactorial comments by Mark or Matthew, 43 this story too gets tighter and better if we disengage it from this exegetical framework and set the play of our imagination free to muse on what makes the youngest son tick, what makes the mother smile, what his elder brothers feel about his competitive role in the family games, how his prompt question transforms the family constellation revealed when the curtain opened. But lest we rudely boo the impresario off the stage, let us appreciate, firstly, how he inserted immo divina inspiratione into the middle of Qua voce instinctus to tag his anecdote as a hagiographic virtus, simultaneously improving the wordplay on instinctus and illectus by fortifying the alliteration: immo, inspiratione, instinctus, illius (remember ‘dabo illi illum’ and ‘dabo,’ infit, ‘illi’), illectus, ita and inquit. That this may be a deliberate rhetorical effect rather than a happy accident is suggested by the pleasure the redactor takes, and gives, in analogous alliterative effects elsewhere in the Life, when he feels free to indulge his mannerist taste for what the Victorian scholars denigrated as Celtic rhetoric. 44 Secondly, he offers us here a welcome glimpse of his narrative theology: God enters the game not as a deus ex machina, not as a player, but through the spirit that weds the mother’s voice to the beauty of the calligraphy. Through these means, God, the instigator, lures Alfred into the true spirit of the game. 45 Thirdly, his contrast between age and grace bestows a halo on the protagonist about to speak. His phrase aetate quamvis non gratia seniores anticipans is a variation on a hagiographic cliché.46 The theme of the spiritually old youth, the puer senex topos, has deep roots in Epicurean and Stoic philosophy. ‘For 43 ‘Once the Gospel writers were acknowledged as theologians with their own agendas, interpreters of the parables had to separate the parables from their narrative contexts so that the parables could be heard to speak with voices different from those of the evangelists.’ Herzog, Parables, p. 42. 44 ‘Alliteration is a relation of sounds that links syllables in a kind of syntax unrecognizable by contemporary linguistics; it simultaneously links the ideas expressed in the words, though here it is natural to talk about the sounds.’ Robinson, English Prose, p. 55, n. 27. For example, Asser, pivots from his account of the Horn Lantern to his climactic final section on biliteracy and Solomonic justice as follows: His ita ordinabiliter per omnia digestis, dimidiam, sicut Deo devoverat, servitii sui partem custodire cupiens, et eo amplius augere, in quantum possibilitas aut suppetentia, immo etiam infirmitas, permitteret… c. 105.1–5. Ordinabiliter echoes c. 16 divisionem ordinabiliter literis mandari; see above ch. 4, p. 192, n. 96, and Kalmar, ‘Recte dividas.’ 45 For more on Asser’s theology of God as instigator of Alfred’s quest for outside help to fulfil his desires, expressed in Asser’s florid alliterative passage WHS c. 76.50–70, see below, ch. 6, p. 236 and n. 13. 46 Already invoked by the redactor in Pivot 1, introducing this pericope: acrescente infantiliis et puerili aetate, forma ceteris suis fratribus decentior videbatur, vultuque et verbis atque moribus gratiosior. WHS c. 22.4–7.

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Christians, it came to form part of a more general theory of aetates spiritales, according to which the virtues of each natural age might be available by grace, in a more or less spiritualized form, to the faithful regardless of years.’47 1b : 2b Meanwhile, back on stage, the interplay between the first and second speeches may be more tense than it f irst seems. The youngest son names the prize before the task, chiasmically reversing the order of the clauses, and repeats only three words: istum, illi, and possit. So if his eighteen-word question seems to echo his mother’s first ten-word sentence, it is not because it echoes her diction, syntax or rhythm. It is because his re-articulation of the rules of the game echoes the logic of his mother’s first speech. Most of his modifications are transparent, dabo → dabis, codicem → librum, quisquis vestrum → uni ex nobis (with perhaps a slight accent on uni: your prize is offered to all of us but will go to only one of us). As the criterion for success in the contest, citius is crucial: Alfred sharpens it to citissime. 48 Less transparent is the mutation of discere into intelligere et recitare eum ante te, and it is this twist that thickens the plot of the game we are about to witness being played out by a winner. A game which may have already, if Alfred’s ‘echo’ is in fact his cunning first move, begun. In preparation for this turning point in my explication de texte I playfully made my parable-version a story about musical literacy.49 I wanted at hand an example of a familiar kind of literacy in which legere is less than discere, in which merely reading something is less than learning it. Suppose you 47 Burrow, Ages of Man, p. 95, drawing on Curtius, European Literature, pp. 98–105, and especially on Gnilka, Aetas Spiritalis. 48 It is probably worth noting that Asser also uses this citius motif to shape his account of the battle of Ashdown (WHS cc. 37–39) when Alfred again jumps the gun to reach the battlefield sooner (citius WHS c. 37.12) than his last remaining older brother who is refusing to engage in battle until Mass is finished. The Vikings arrive at the battlefield citius than the Christians. So ante fratris adventum (WHS c. 38.8) Alfred rushes into battle. He steps ahead of his older brother, he takes action, he does the task, and the Christians win the contest. And the youngest son also ‘jumps the gun’ when in 853 he is anointed king by the Pope while his brothers are still alive. 49 Analogies between musical and medieval literacy have proved helpful to diverse scholars, including — more or less at random — Ian Robinson’s comparison of pre-modern punctuation to ‘editorial fingering suggestions’ for the pianist, in English Prose, p. 21 (see also p. 54); Ruth Morse’s comparison of sophisticated musical and rhetorical educations in Truth and Convention, pp. 81–82; and Herbert Grundmann: ‘Auch der musikalische “Laie” kann eine Partitur zumeist nicht lesen […] er muss sich hörbar vortragen lassen von Musikern wie der mittelalterliche Laie sich Bücher vorlesen oder Dichtungen vortragen liess von Klerikern, ohne sie selbst lesen zu können.’ Grundmann, ‘Litteratus-illiteratus,’ p. 4. ‘Even musically inclined “laity” cannot for the most part read a score […] one must, rather, have it presented aurally by musicians, just as the medieval laity, unable to read themselves, had books read out loud or poetry presented by clergy.’ Tr. Steven Rowan: Grundmann ‘Litteratus-illiteratus’ (2019), p. 70.

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have read a song in musical notation: can you claim to have already learned it if you are still unable to sing it? Reading the score may be necessary, but not sufficient. Some, like Ambrose, can read the score silently: they can simultaneously legere et intelligere without needing recitare. Their eyes run over the page, their voice and tongue are silent, yet their heart perceives the sense.50 Some, like Boniface’s young disciple Gregory (whose story becomes a focus of attention in chapter 6) can read aloud senselessly: legere et recitare without intelligere. Playing a Bach fugue correctly note by note without understanding what you are hearing is like reading a Latin liturgical text aloud correctly without, as Boniface puts it, being able to tell your own mother what it means in her own tongue. As the popular medieval proverb has it, legere et non intelligere negligere est. Reading without understanding is negligence.51 Your eyes run over the page, your tongue gives voice, but your heart does not care to perceive the sense.52 And, finally, some can intelligere et recitare without legere: they can sing (or play) music meaningfully by heart, but not by looking at the book. Their heart perceives the sense, their tongue gives it voice, but their eyes run over no page. Singing by heart is one thing, singing from a book another. This simple quasi-Augustinian three-fold schema may serve to register the thrust of the youngest son’s question and consider it as a tactical move in the game: scan the score with your eyes grasp the sense with your mind render it in sound with your voice

legere intelligere recitare

The plot hangs on sensing the pairwise interplay within the configuration of four verbs, four ways of possessing a book: learning it, reading it, understanding it, and performing it. One verb is spoken twice by the narrator but is not heard in the dialogue: legere. The other three verbs are spoken by the players: discere, intelligere, and recitare. Recitavit is also the narrator’s final word, the curtain-closer. As the criterion for winning the game, the youngest son’s question proposes pairing two of these 50 ‘Sed cum legebat, oculi ducebantur per paginas et cor intellectum rimabatur, vox autem et lingua quiescebant.’ Aug. Conf., VI.3.3. 51 Note the word play on nec-legere: reading and not understanding isn’t really reading. 52 Notker offers a better-known example: etiamsi non intellegerent, omnes in palatio lectores optimi fuissent. Meyer von Knonau, Notkerus Balbulus, 1.7, p. 7. ‘All those in the palace became excellent readers, even if they did not understand what they read.’ Tr. Thorpe, Einhard and Notker, p. 101.

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verbs in place of his mother’s one: understanding and performing the poems orally. Is he innocently rewording his mother’s original criterion? Or is he strategically revising the rules of the game, renegotiating the contract, so as to position himself to win by making room for a move which might otherwise have been judged illegal: getting coached by your teacher on legere, on how to decode the notation-system, how to run your eyes across the page, how to make the squiggles speak? Is Alfred’s question, in short, a wimp’s wily stratagem to let him run off stage and seek help from an attendant person? Or is he a would-be king, a little Solomon, already clarifying the just laws of his community? What we are seeing is a game played out in time. The drama is that of a player executing a move that wins him the prize. Is he about to make it? Or is this already it? 4 The fourth sentence seems the simplest of the five: Tunc ille statim tollens librum de manu sua, magistrum adiit et legit. Simple diction, grammar, and syntax make it the sort of decontextualized sentence you learn to translate early in high school Latin. Into twelve words the sentence packs three dramatic moves: the protagonist takes the book, goes to a teacher, and reads. 4 Tollens librum One thing this tolle, lege story is about is an exchange of property, a transfer of ownership. The book now changes hands: dramatic tension peaks. He has taken physical possession of the carnal book, but he has not yet won the spiritual prize. He holds the wealth but not yet the wisdom. For us the spectators, it is as if he has taken possession of the ball but has yet to score the goal, or as if he is running at the head of the race but has yet to reach the finishing line. 4 Magistrum adiit He withdraws from the playing field and goes to his teacher. We see the youngest son in control, not the attendant person whose help he chooses to seek. Again, progressive education: the transcendental Emersonian moral quality of the plot is sparked by the youngest son’s smart initiative, his inversion of the traditional, indeed institutionalized, power relationship between teacher and student. Most medieval stories about masters and students are, implicitly or explicitly, about how the teacher exercises strict authority to master his students.53 An interesting and pertinent exception is the popular fable of young Jesus mastering the magister who takes the ill-fated initiative of teaching him to read. Cum autem Jesus introisset scholam, ductus spiritu

53 On which see now Dumitrescu, Experience of Education.

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sancto accepit librum de manu […] et coepit legere.54 ‘You don’t even understand the beauty of the first letter,’ says little Jesus, and teaches Zachaeus, his teacher, allegorical interpretations of the geometrical construction of alpha: ‘pay close attention how it has sharp lines and a middle stroke, which you see sharpening, intersecting, joining, creeping out, drawing back, elevated, dancing, missile-bearing, three-marked, double-edged, same-formed, same-placed, same-kinded, raised, balanced, equallymeasured, equally-proportioned — such lines does the alpha have.’55 ‘Woe is me,’ says Zachaeus: Cum enim me putarem habere discipulum, inveni magistrum meum. ‘When I thought I had a student, it turns out I have found my magister.’56

Et legit And so we come to et legit. My father was fond of the joke about the student who cannot conjugate lego and is ordered by his teacher to memorize it backwards and forwards. Next day he comes in and recites: lego legis legit, legimus legitis legunt, ogel sigel tigel, sumigel sitigel tnugel. My father was quadrilingual but his knowledge of Latin probably did not extend beyond this joke. Et legit is, as even he knew, what you learn to translate in Lesson One: ‘and he reads.’ Why, then, has it become a notorious crux?57 Why has it proved so hard for translators to agree on the subject of the verb legit at 54 Ps.-Matthew 39.2, von Tischendorf, Apocrypha, pp. 238–239. On the apocryphal infancy fables in Anglo-Saxon England, see now Hawk, Apocrypha. 55 Translated from the original Greek by Aasgaard, Childhood of Jesus, pp. 236–237. On what it means, see Aasgaard’s interesting interpretation, pp. 143–146. 56 This is my mish-mash of two versions, the Greek Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Latin version of Ps.-Matthew 31 (p. 231). See also Ehrman, Lost Scriptures, p. 59. For a fourteenth-century(?) Ps.-Matthew see de Santos Otero, Los evangelios apócrifos, pp. 290–291. On the popularity of this apocryphal gospel in ninth-century Ireland and Wales, see Dumville, Apocrypha. 57 ‘Clearly, this is a primal scene of literacy. Alfred’s education in written English is played out in terms of a literal “mother tongue”: it is at his mother’s urging that he learns to read English. The word legit, a notorious crux in the passage, points to Alfred’s acquisition of a crucial literacy skill. Alfred legit (“reads”) the book to his teacher, although Asser has just told us that Alfred did not yet know how to read. This probably means that, rather than listening to his teacher read the book and memorizing it by ear, Alfred learned how to pronounce the letters he saw on the page with the teacher’s help; in other words, he learned the poems phonetically. He then presumably went away and practiced reading until he had the book memorized. This would accord with what we know of Latin teaching in monastic schools, where novices learned to read the Psalter phonetically before they knew the meaning of the words. […] Asser’s portrayal not only fulfils the hagiographical motif of childhood promise, but also forges links between

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the end of this sentence, at this point in this anecdote? In the twentieth century, disagreement among interdisciplinary scholars has made this et legit a polemical site of tense allegorical struggle over how literacy is always already imbricated in ideological positions attacked and defended.58 4 et legit In 1908, L. C. Jane added a direct object to et legit, making the verb transitive: and read it.59 Perhaps unknown to Jane, in 1906 A. S. Cook had already, although usually as literal as possible, preferred and learned it by heart.60 But in 1955 Dorothy Whitelock decided to save the plain sense of legit by sacrificing et: she made the magister the subject of the third verb in the sentence: he immediately went to his master who read it. This change from parataxis to hypotaxis transfers agency and authority from the youngest son to the magister, restores the traditional teacher/student hierarchy, and thus clots the ‘moral quality’ of the anecdote as a whole. Dorothy Whitelock was endorsing the so-called emendation of the text proposed fifty years earlier by her predecessor as the Life’s canonical redactor, W. H. Stevenson. In the nineteenth century (as we saw in chapter 3 above) whoever wrote about Asser’s Latin text sooner or later commented on this primal scene, this famous childhood fable, worrying away at the mystery of the historical Alfred’s childhood literacy and the meaning of et legit in this story. In his long four-page note,61 Stevenson brought together and critiqued the best that had been written about et legit in German by Pauli and Lappenberg and in English by Freeman, Green, and Stubbs. To flatten the vertical lift of this fable he then offered his own interpretation: et really means qui.62 The subject of the verb legit is no longer ille, the subject of tollens and adiit. Alfred didn’t read the book. The magister did. vernacular education and the traditions of Christian learning in England.’ Stanton, ‘Alfred,’ p. 121. See also Stanton, Translation, pp. 85–86. 58 When every utterance is theoretical and all theory is political, even this little ‘anecdote of a moral quality’ can be allegorized into a discourse on the implicit and explicit exercise of authority, on how power is displayed and performed, theorized, ritualized, romanticized, codified, sanctified, or opposed. In this spirit even Asser’s Life has been decoded, by Seth Lerer, as an allegory of its own processes of composition. Lerer’s quirky postmodern reading of our pericope makes the youngest son fail the task. Since Alfred merely memorizes and recites the poetry, Asser (according to Lerer) thinks Alfred does not deserve to own his mother’s book. He has not yet won it fair and square. Lerer, Literacy and Power, p. 68. 59 Jane, Asser. 60 On the fate of Cook’s translations see ch. 4, p. 163, n. 5 above. Because of the Covid pandemic I have still not been able to study the file on ‘The Cook Affair’ in the OUP archives. It’s probably juicy. 61 ‘This famous chapter, which is due entirely to the author, has been one of the main causes for the doubt thrown upon the authenticity or veracity of the Life.’ WHS, p. 221. 62 WHS, p. 221, n. 3.

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This pert strategy was skewed by at least three forces. Engaged in historical criticism, Stevenson gave more weight to the chronological question In what year did Alfred allegedly read this book? than to literary or narratological questions like What move does et legit represent in the structure of the game played out in this drama? What role does the attendant person play in this fable? As were one to insist on knowing in what year the Sower went out to sow, in what year he was born, and therefore how old he was when he allegedly sowed, before deigning to engage the parable as parable. Secondly, because he ignored Stubbs’ Gambit he held the veracity of this pericope accountable to the marginal Anno Ælfredi scaffolding. He corseted his understanding of Asser’s anecdotes and chronology by his tenacious belief in the illusory 848 birthdate as a hard fact. So he unnecessarily demands that this youngest son be less than f ive years old when he allegedly won this vernacular book. Finally, he was motivated to save the story from its charge of miracle and magic, and he thought et meant that what the infant did with his teacher’s help was supernatural. Dorothy Whitelock’s who and Stevenson’s qui secularize and flatten Asser’s et. This ‘emendation’ is motivated not by textual reasoning but by wishful thinking. And by ideology. In 1985 Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge were well aware of the already long controversy over et legit, and of the obsolescent fear that et is hagiographical while qui is not. One can safely wager that they pondered deeply before preferring and learnt it. Treating legere as an exact synonym of discere may help answer the historian’s question of what young Alfred and his teacher actually did with some book one day long ago, once upon a time. But it does render ‘somewhat murky’63 the youngest son’s modulation from discere to intelligere et recitare eum ante te. To a monolingual English reader of Keynes’ and Lapidge’s translation, the move the youngest son makes at the end of the fourth sentence, and learnt it, seems to satisfy the mother’s original criterion whichever can learn it fastest. ‘And learnt it’ would mean the game is over. He has crossed the finishing line. He has won the book. And so the curtain should come down, short-circuiting the curve of destiny and pulling the punch of the final sentence. As if understanding what you perform, reciting what you understand, is not a climax, just a coda.64 63 Howe, ‘Reading,’ p. 7. 64 The puzzle facing a literary translator of this Latin anecdote is how to deploy four English verbs whose configuration of narrative functions can be mapped one-to-one onto the dynamic configuration of discere, intelligere, recitare, and legere. And for the sake of the plot, this entails, as I have indicated above, preserving the chords they strike in twos and threes — the intervals, or ratios, or vectors that span the verbs. Whichever English verb we choose to translate the

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But then in 1995, Alfred P. Smyth launched his ad hominem attack on the triumvirate of Simon Keynes, Michael Lapidge, and David Dumville, whom he characterized as defending the heretical dogma of the current cult of Alfred the Great by continuing to accord canonical status to the Life ex cathedra.65 Not that he opposes our cult. On the contrary, he wants, as I put it in 1999, to purify it by purging it of Popery: no miracles, no monkish fables, no hagiography.66 Only a heretic can believe in the Life. And so when he comes to et legit, he insists on fidelity to the plain sense, and read, for the very reason that Stevenson resisted it, but now hoping to force us to admit that ‘in spite of constant and willful mistranslation by those who cling to the authenticity of Asser’67 the story is merely about learning to read by magic68 and therefore bogus. He despises both Stevenson’s qui and Keynes’ and Lapidge’s and learnt it as failures of nerve, cowardly cop-outs, dereliction of the duty to hold the horizontal line against vertical hagiography. He revives, in other words, the Manchesterismus of Howorth and Galbraith and remains faithful to the value-system of Stevenson and Plummer and their generation of historians.69 move represented by et legit should be one which preserves the drama of the game, has not been spoken in the dialogue, and binds the fourth and fifth sentences together through its past participle, quo lecto. Keeping the verb intransitive may help. Whether transitive or intransitive, ‘and studied’ sounds, to my mind, more idiomatic than ‘and learnt it,’ for who today still speaks of ‘learning a book,’ let alone of ‘repeating a book’ [ASC/DW]? Through a quite different line of argumentation, Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe arrives at the same suggestion, Visible Song, p. 81. Other possible intransitive verbs for this move include ‘and practised’ or ‘and rehearsed,’ either one of which neatly prepares the listener or reader for what happens in the final sentence, when Alfred finally satisfies his own criteria by performing the book. Parkes’s transitive verb is also attractive: ‘and perused it. Having studied it…’ Parkes, ‘Rædan, areccan, smeagan,’ p. 8. 65 Smyth, Alfred, passim, and especially ch.VI, ‘Asser: Battleground of Scholarship: Charnel Hous of Scholars,’ pp. 149 ff. 66 Kalmar, ‘No Mere Arthur,’ p. 4. 67 Smyth, Alfred, p. 185. 68 Thompson’s motif #D.1819.4, II, p. 334. See n. 12 above. 69 Smyth’s respect for Howorth (e.g. Alfred, pp. 152–154, 295–296) is misplaced. As I said in 1999, ‘Howorth was an iconoclast. Smyth is a believer. Howorth didn’t believe in Alfred. Smyth does. Anyone who reads his book can see that he is an earnest believer in Alfred. According to Howorth, the quest for the historical Alfred is a waste of time. According to Smyth, the quest for the historical Alfred was prematurely cut short by Plummer and Stevenson, who failed to hold the line against hagiography firmly enough to exclude Asser. According to Howorth there can be no such thing as an authentic life of Alfred, since Alfred is a mere Arthur, a figment of the imagination, who should be banished from the pages of history to the pages of romance. Asser is, therefore, entirely bogus. Smyth, on the other hand, claims to have himself written an authentic Life of the historical Alfred. Anyone who believes in Asser is, for Howorth, a mere dreamer; for Smyth, a heretic.’ Kalmar, ‘No Mere Arthur,’ p. 5.

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But thanks to its first redactor, the line that separates history from hagiography runs right through the heart of the Life. Trying to map it is like trying to draw a fractal, for it even runs, as we have just seen, right through this anecdote between qua voce and instinctus, and here again, between et and legit, just as it runs through the middle of Remember the Pope between to cyninge and gehalgode in the Chronicle, and between unxit and regem in the Life.70 This is the kind of situation Frank Kermode had in mind when he said: We now have before us a problem which so fascinated Erich Auerbach that he made it the center of his work. He greatly admired the realism of the gospels, and saw in them the origin of that sermo humilis which, over the centuries, was to be the bearer of later realism. But he knew also that the evangelists, and Christian interpreters for an exceedingly long time after them, were obsessed by typology, by figura, which is found in the gospels, in easy coexistence with history-like narration.71

Guided so far by the spirit of redaction criticism, I have taken care to write my explication de texte in such a manner that at no point does it depend on Asser’s identity or on his relationship to the historical Alfred. If the subject of et legit is merely a generic youngest son dubbed ‘Alfred,’ what can this figura, this fable, possibly tell us about his historical namesake Alfred of Wessex when he was alive, not yet a king, nor yet a character in a popular romance, let alone the Founder of the British Empire? Biblical redaction criticism deals fair and square with the corresponding question: if the protagonist of a fable redacted by, say, Mark is merely a generic holy man dubbed ‘Jesus,’ what can it possibly tell us about his historical namesake Jesus of Nazareth when he was alive, not yet crucified, let alone Our Savior risen from the dead?72 On this issue Perrin does not beat around the bush:

70 Ch. 2, pp. 83–84 above. 71 Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, p. 104. 72 Redaction criticism does not ‘pose the historical question how the events reported by the synoptists actually happened, but attempts to understand how the evangelists understood them and therefore described them.’ Rohde, Evangelists, p. 16. Rohde concludes his book by observing: ‘Nor should the charge be levelled that redaction criticism excludes the problem of the historicity of what is reported. It does this quite deliberately, in order to be able first of all to grasp fully the evangelists’ purpose in producing their account and what they intended to impart’ (p. 258).

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The real cutting edge of the impact of redaction criticism is the fact that it raises very serious questions indeed about that which normally motivates Life of Jesus research: Life of Jesus theology. It raises above all the question as to whether the view of the historical Jesus as the locus of revelation and the central concern of Christian faith is in fact justifiable, and it raises this question because it shows how truly foreign such a view is to the New Testament itself. […] In this respect the problem is the same whether the figure be Jesus, Julius Caesar, or Socrates [or Alfred — TK]; we have to set out on a ‘quest’ of the historical figure. […] It is at this point that redaction criticism makes its impact, for it reveals to us how very much of the material ascribed to the Jesus who spoke in Galilee or Judea must be in fact ascribed to the Jesus who spoke through a prophet or evangelist in the early church. […] It is this aspect of the Gospel narratives which redaction criticism so clearly reveals. It makes clear the fact that the voice of the Jesus of the Gospels is the voice of living Christian experience, and that the evangelists and the tradition they represent are indifferent as to whether this experience is ultimately related to anything said or done in Galilee or Judea before the crucifixion.73

Whenever in this chapter I have allowed myself to refer to ‘Alfred’ so far, it has been on the understanding that I am naming the youngest son who wins the book, not necessarily his historical namesake, so that whatever this reveals so far about the fable itself remains valid even if Alfred never existed. If, on the other hand, we could come to know that the first to tell this story was actually its protagonist, it would not cease to be a parable. And then a revised and improved psychological conjecture akin to Plummer’s becomes yet more attractive. If, as Richard Abels conjectures,74 the protagonist of this fable is also its author, if Alfred was the source of this tale, if he favored casting himself in the role of this beloved youngest son who alone succeeds in this quest for this book, then it will turn out that in this chapter we have already been contemplating Alfred’s psyche, savoring intimately the interior of his existential self-understanding, his dreamwork, call it his soul. If this is an authentically Alfredian parable, a ruling metaphor of his philosophy of life, of his Lebensstil, of his modus vitae, then the transcendental, universal, eternal common sense of Everyman, which Emerson found in it, here takes 73 Perrin, Redaction Criticism, pp. 69, 72–74. 74 ‘The tale sounds as if it were based on a genuine childhood memory of Alfred. […] The “memory” of this competition was both thus a demonstration of Alfred’s innate love of learning and a harbinger of what was to come.’ Abels, Alfred, pp. 56–57.

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the particular shape which moral common sense took for Alfred himself when he was a child, an adolescent, an adult, and a mature old man, when he was at Rome, when he was at Athelney, and when he was conversing with his circle of fellow-intellectuals. If so, then, like Remember the Pope, this too is a fable that Alfred made up. Indeed, a fable that made Alfred up. A second candidate for an authentic Alfredian relic, contained in a verbal reliquary composed by Asser to bind the plots of both childhood fables to a single protagonist between them: the man whose life you are being told. So I am content to conclude that although for some the youngest son’s race for the book is a trivial fable too romantic to be true, nevertheless it is, for Asser and for those ‘clustered round him’ whether or not they include Alfred himself, a transcendental figura too good to be false. What such a figura prefigures, says R. A. Markus, ‘becomes part of the sense — let us, in line with modern usage, call it “typological” — of the prefiguring.’75 The redactor’s framework, says John Barton, is ‘part of the meaning’ of a pericope.76 A pre-echo, says Hollander, is a ‘Vorklang, as it were, of an eventual echo, of a situation to which it will turn out to have alluded.’77 And what is alluded to, says Christopher Ricks, becomes ‘part not only of the making of the poem but of its meaning.’78 What did this story really mean to Asser? And what did it mean to whoever first told it? And, even more, what did it mean to its protagonist? Especially if he was also the protagonist of Remember the Pope. Especially, above all, if the first redactor of both these childhood fables was not Asser but Alfred himself? If, that is to say, both really are Alfred’s long-term early autobiographical memories? If Alfred was the first to tell them to himself as well as to others, what sense did they make to him, what echoes did they find in his inner life before — as well as after — he translated Latin, before — as well as after — he became King? And what does that tell us about history and psychology and hagiography? How is the meaning of Alfred’s life part of the meaning of this game, this race for a book? Where does this game find the echo that becomes part of its sense? What, in short, fulfils this figura? In my final chapter I present an account of my personal quest for a way to answer this question. But first let me try and do justice to Asser’s way. 75 Markus, Signs and Meanings, p. 8. 76 See p. 205, n. 15 above. 77 Hollander, Echo, 65. Quoted in ch. 4, p. 189, n. 85 above. 78 Ricks, Allusion, p. 4. Quoted in ch. 4, p. 178, n. 53 above.

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Appendix A Six translations of Race for the Book79 1a J C W K H S

1b

Cum ergo quodam die mater sua sibi et fratribus suis quendam Saxonicum poematicae artis librum, quem in manu habebat, ostenderet, ait:

Now it chanced on a certain day that his mother showed to him and to his brothers a book of Saxon poetry, which she had in her hand, and said, Now on a certain day his mother was showing him and his brothers a book of Saxon poetry, which she held in her hand, and finally said: When, therefore, his mother one day was showing him and his brothers a certain book of Saxon poetry which she held in her hand, she said: One day, therefore, when his mother was showing him and his brothers a book of English poetry which she held in her hand, she said: One day, therefore, when his mother was showing [to] him and his brothers a [certain] English book of poetic art which she held in her hand, she said When therefore on a certain day his mother showed a certain book of Saxon poetry which she had in her hand, to him and to his brothers she said:

‘Quisquis vestrum discere citius istum codicem possit, dabo illi illum.’

J C W K H S

“I will give this book to that one among you who shall the most quickly learn it.” ‘Whichever of you can soonest learn this volume, to him will I give it.’ “I will give this book to whichever of you can learn it most quickly.” ‘I shall give this book to whichever one of you can learn it the fastest.’ “Whichever one of you can learn [this book] the fastest I shall give it to him.” ‘I will give this book to whichever of you is able to learn it the sooner.’

2a

Qua voce, immo divina inspiratione, instinctus, et pulchritudine principalis litterae illius libri illectus, ita matri respondens, et fratres suos aetate, quamvis non gratia, seniores anticipans, inquit:

J

C

Then, moved at these words, or rather by the inspiration of God, and being carried away by the beauty of the initial letter in that book, anticipating his brothers who surpassed him in years but not in grace, he answered his mother and said, Stimulated by these words, or rather by divine inspiration, and allured by the beautifully illuminated letter at the beginning of the volume, spoke before all his brothers, who, though his seniors in age, were not so in grace, and answered his mother:

79 J: Jane, Asser. C: Cook, Asser. W: Whitelock, Chronicle. K: Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred. H: Howlett, British Books. S: Smyth, Asser.

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H

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3a J C W K H S

3b J C W

King Alfred the Great, his Hagiogr aphers and his Cult

And moved by these words, or rather by divine inspiration, and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter of the book, Alfred said in reply to his mother, forestalling his brothers, his elders in years though not in grace: Spurred on by these words, or rather by divine inspiration, and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter in the book, Alfred spoke as follows in reply to his mother, forestalling his brothers (ahead in years, though not in ability): Spurred on by her voice, or rather by divine inspiration and attracted by the beauty of the initial letter of the book, replying thus to his mother and forestalling his brothers (ahead in years, though not in ability) he said, Alfred, prompted by this utterance, or rather by Divine inspiration, and enticed by the beauty of the initial letter of the book, replying to his mother, he said — anticipating his brothers, who were senior in age though not in grace –

‘Verene dabis istum librum uni ex nobis, scilicet illi, qui citissime intelligere et recitare eum ante te possit?’

“Will you of a truth give that book to one of us? To him who shall soonest understand it and repeat it to you?” ‘Will you really give that book to that one of us who can first understand and repeat it to you?’ “Will you really give this book to one of us, to the one who can soonest understand and repeat it to you?” ‘Will you really give this book to the one of us who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?’ “Will you really give this book to the one of us [that is], to him who can understand it the soonest and recite it to you?” ‘Will you truly give this book to that one of us who can understand it the soonest and read it aloud before you?’

Ad haec illa, arridens et gaudens atque affirmans:

And at this she smiled and was pleased, and affirmed it, saying, At this his mother smiled with satisfaction, and confirmed what she had before said: And, smiling and rejoicing, she confirmed it, saying: Whereupon, smiling with pleasure she reassured him, saying: Whereupon she, smiling and rejoicing, and promising, said, At this, smiling and rejoicing, and reassuring him she said:

‘Dabo,’ infit, ‘illi.’

“I will give it to him” ‘Yes, that I will.’ “To him will I give it.”

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K H S

‘Yes, I will.’ “I shall give it to him.” ‘Yes, I will give it to him.’

4

Tunc ille statim tollens librum de manu sua, magistrum adiit et legit.

J C W K H S

Then forthwirth he took the book from her hand and went to his master and read it; Upon this the boy took the book out of her hand, and went to his master and learned it by heart. Then taking the book from her hand he immediately went to his master, who read it. He immediately took the book from her hand, went to his teacher and learnt it. He immediately took the book from her hand, went to his teacher and learnt it. Then, immediately, taking the book from her hand, he went to his tutor and read it.

5

Quo lecto, matri retulit et recitavit.

J C W K H S

and when he had read it he brought it back to his mother and repeated it to her. whereupon he brought it back to his mother and recited it. And when it was read, he went back to his mother and repeated it. When it was learnt, he took it back to his mother and recited it. When it was learnt, he took it back to his mother and recited it. And when it was read, he took it back to his mother and read it aloud.

III The Curve of Destiny: The Works

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Cross the Border The two stories reflect light upon each other, — and ’tis a pity they should be parted. — LAWRENCE STERNE I am concerned here with typology as a mode of thought and as a figure of speech. I say ‘and’ because a mode of thought does not exist until it has developed its own particular way of arranging words. — NORTHROP FRYE The author of the Vita Alfredi deserves the last laugh, both on those who have impugned his veracity and on those who have defended it by appealing to the shortcomings of his native culture. He knew exactly what he was saying when using the words ‘legere’, ‘recitare’ and ‘interpretari’ over the course of the king’s pursuit of learning, and he meant exactly what he said. He made that the major Leitmotif of his hero’s life, its critical turning point the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year in which the Carolingian empire succumbed. Insofar as it was his manifested learning that marked out King Alfred from any other ruler of his time or anywhere near it, he was entirely right to do so. —PATRICK WORMALD1

Abstract Did Alfred know Latin well enough to translate it? Asser says yes. Malcolm Godden now says no. This chapter begins with a close reading of how Asser blends hagiography and chronology in his account of the day Alfred began to translate at sight. It ends with a schematic analysis of how literacy and bilingualism intersect. This helps us chart how Asser played what de Lubac calls a ‘game of figures’ to create a typologie interne of Alfred’s 1

Wormald, ‘Living with Alfred,’ p. 39.

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH06

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adult biliteracy, in which what happened on St Martin’s Day 887, the day Alfred’s biliteracy campaign was born, simultaneously fulfills what the childhood fable of his contest for his mother’s book and the fable of his pilgrimage to Rome jointly prefigured. Keywords: medieval biliteracy, Alfredian translations, language border, Asser, Vita Alfredi

The Pope and the Book The time has come to take stock of where, after its twists and turns, my line of inquiry has landed us. We have come a long way since the Dean of Ely’s thrill of emotion in 1901. We opened the old reliquary that sparked that thrill and by tracing a popular medieval fable back to its earliest written source in the Chronicle we found what an Alfredian relic might actually look like. Alfred himself may be the original source of the fable. Interpretations of that fable about the Island King who sends his Youngest Son to the Holy City to be blessed by the High Priest have, to tell the truth, been steeped in Catholicism and nationalism and imperialism and other such lamentable fetishisms. The legend is mythical, archetypal, folkloric, hagiographic, typological. Pure romance may, nevertheless, be an authentic relic of how Alfred chose to remember the Pope and the curve of his own destiny. Now we have in the fable of the Youngest Son’s Race for the Book a contrasting answer to what such a relic might look like. Yes, it might look like a laconic sliver of typology slipped into an Old English annal. But it might also look like a radiantly hagiographic childhood miracle enshrined in a sesquipedalian Latin Vita. The critic naturally asks: are they linked by nothing more than the fact that the protagonist of each fable is dubbed ‘Alfred’? Asser redacts these two fables to typify Alfred as a youngest son favored by his parents. My aim in this chapter is to understand how and why he then links these two figurae into a coherent hagiographic account of Alfred’s biliteracy. They are to reflect light upon each other. I want to analyze how Asser seeks to contain the modus of Alfred’s vita by bonding these two childhood ‘types’ within a typology whereby the adult ‘antitype’ that fulfils the one simultaneously fulfils the other. The challenge is to see Asser’s typology steadily and to see it whole — from his point of view. This will entail coming to grips with what is nowadays called biliteracy. In the Chronicle, Remember the Pope is about the Holy City

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and the Island Kingdom, about Church and State. In the Life it becomes a story about biliteracy as well: Alfred goes to Rome in his eleventh year and in his twelfth year he is no longer illiteratus. We will need to understand how, for Asser and Alfred, uniting bilingualism and literacy bears fruit. For, to quote Nicholas Howe, It may well be that the distinction between vernacular and Latin is at least as consequential for studying reading in Anglo-Saxon England as is the more obvious distinction between orality and literacy. For this distinction determined the sociolinguistic character of the community, especially in matters relating to its members’ communicative responsibilities.2

Legere et interpretari simul Eodem quoque anno [887 ad] saepe memoratus Aelfred, Angulsaxonum rex, divino instinctu legere et interpretari simul uno eodemque die primitus inchoavit. Sed, ut apertius ignorantibus pateat, causam huius tardae inchoationis expedire curabo. Nam cum quodam die ambo in regia cambra resideremus, undecunque, sicut solito, colloquia habentes, ex quodam quoddam testimonium libro illi evenit ut recitarem.3 (It was also in this same year that by divine inspiration Alfred, king of the Anglo-Saxons, first began to read and translate simultaneously on the very same day. But that this may be clearer to those who are uninformed, I shall take pains to explain the reasons for this long delay in beginning. One day we were sitting together in the king’s chamber talking on all kinds of subjects as usual, and, as it happened, I read him a quotation out of a book.)4

We saw in chapter 4 how Asser coordinates two florid redactorial head-links to manage his pivots from chronology to hagiography. Those two head-links echo and allude to one another internally, and to Einhard externally. Now, in fulfilment of his promise, they both ‘turn out to have alluded’ to this, his third and decisive rhetorical pivot. But this time in place of a florid headlink he deploys the seemingly trivial markers eodem anno, divino instinctu, and quodam die (‘in the same year,’ ‘by divine inspiration,’ 2 Howe, ‘Reading,’ p. 70. 3 WHS, cc. 87–88. 4 Translation: my cocktail of Cook, Keynes and Lapidge, and a dash of schnapps.

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and ‘one day’) as signals to help you pivot with him, once and for all, to hagiography. eodem anno: ‘This same year’ corresponds to þy ilcan geare, the chronological formula used in the Chronicle to knit an event into an annal. Here Asser uses it to frame legere et interpretari simul as the last of the four historical events contained in the final annal of his chronological scaffolding, thus giving closure to his enumeratio annorum, his horizontal enumeration of year after year, and freeing him to devote the rest of his work to an uplifting climax.5 As if various equally noteworthy things took place that final year. The enemy left Paris. Five kings divided the kingdom of Charles the Fat. Alfred sent alms to Rome. And he began to translate at sight. The startling effect this must have had in its original context is easy for us to overlook. Check what Asser says against what Einhard says and you appreciate his work all the more. But Asser will not, at this juncture, expect you to check Latin against Old English. He does not expect the Old English voice of the Chronicler to ‘enter our heads’ the way Einhard’s Latin voice should in Asser’s first two pivots. Asser is not echoing or alluding to the Chronicle. He is not speaking in Latin to people who want to separate the wheat from the chaff, who want to know what is ‘from the Chronicle’ and what is merely ‘due to Asser.’ We, on the other hand, recognize how unlikely it is that the date a king first begins to translate at sight would ever be deemed ‘knot-worthy’ enough to be threaded into an annal in the Chronicle.6 Besides, we know that the Old English annal for 887 ad actually concludes with the alms to Rome. So legere et interpretari simul is not ‘from the Chronicle.’ It is ‘due to Asser.’ It may be chaff. And what’s more, the Chronicle’s narrative of Alfred’s life does not, for us, end in 887. On the contrary, it widens into the fuller story of Alfred’s reign in the 890s, written with a vigour, and a freshness, and a life worthy of the temper and the spirit of a king whose deeds they record, and which at least serve to mark the gift of a new power to the English language.7 So we can soon tell that here Asser is composing a new — and a very long8 — annal for us to appreciate. It has an ad date. Yet it is already hagiography. The pivot has already begun. divino instinctu: To make this clear, not to us but to his original audience, Asser inserts divino instinctu between eodem anno and legere et interpretari 5 6 7 8

On the coherence of Asser’s final chapters, see Kalmar, ‘Recte dividas.’ See above ch. 2, p. 81. See ch. 1, p. 31, n. 10. Exercise for the interested reader: where does this annal end?

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simul. What he has just redacted as chronicle he at once reframes as a hagiographic virtus, a miracle, a revolution.9 God never enters an annal in the Old English Chronicle, not like this. When the Christians are winning, Asser does, one must admit, redactorially pepper his Latin annals with divino nutu, divino concilio, divino iudicio, so mechanically that he seems to suffer from a sort of pious tic to which it would be churlish to draw attention. (When the pagans are winning, it’s diabolico instinctu.) Here, however, the phrase divino instinctu is neither pious pepper nor chaff. It is a technical term, an indication of his redactorial, call it now his theological, framework. In the Life, he uses the phrase twice only. First, to tag the Race for the Book as a hagiographic virtus, and now to allude to God’s role as the instigator who first lured Alfred into the spirit of the race for the book in his childhood, who inspired him to negotiate the rules of the game, take the book from his mother’s hand, read it with his magister, and win it fair and square. As I wrote above, God entered that game not as a deus ex machina, not as a player, but through the spirit that wedded the mother’s voice to the beauty of the manuscript’s initial letter.10 And it is through the redactor’s own voice reading to Alfred, now in Latin, that God is about to lure the youngest son, now a king, to throw himself into an advanced bilingual transform of that childhood contest.11 As a child he bridged literacy and orality. In Rome he bridged Latin and Old English. As an adult he now bridges Latin literacy and vernacular orality. This metaphor of a double bridge is aptly invoked by Thomas Charles-Edwards: The concept of wisdom as the proper end of a Latin education underlies Asser’s Vita, only it is modified to include the study of vernacular as well as Latin texts. Alfred crossed two crucial bridges on his journey to wisdom: from an appreciation of orally performed poetry to a desire to own and to master a book in which such poems were written; and, secondly, from the vernacular to Latin, to the language in which, for western Europeans, were to be found the intellectual riches of Antiquity, both pagan and Christian, and also the works of such earlier English scholars as Bede, for whom the king had a particular reverence.12 9 Cf. Daniel Donoghue on Cædmon’s vernacular hymn: ‘In the seventh century it was revolutionary — or to use a term more congenial to the time, it was miraculous.’ Old English Literature, p. 59. 10 Ch. 5, p. 214, n. 45. 11 ‘If you can solve this problem you get to solve an even harder problem.’ ch. 5, p. 201, n. 4 above. 12 Charles-Edwards Wales, p. 463. Of the countless explorations of this doubled bridge-crossing, see especially that of Stanton, ‘Alfred.’

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In an earlier florid passage (best read viva voce to savor how and why Asser plays with speech sounds) he explicates his theology of God as instigator of Alfred’s lifelong quest for attendant persons to help him fulfill his desire to win the game. Sed Deus, Qui est semper inspector internarum mentium, meditationum et omnium bonarum voluntatum instigator, necnon etiam, ut habeantur bona desiderata, largissimus administrator, neque enim unquam aliquem bene velle instigaret, nisi et hoc, quod bene et iuste quisque habere desiderat, largiter administraret, instigavit mentem eius interius, non extrinsecus, sicut scriptum est, ‘Audiam, quid loquatur in me dominus Deus.’ Coadiutores bonae meditationis suae, qui eum in desiderata sapientia adiuvare possent, quo ad concupita perveniret, quandocunque posset, acquireret; qui subinde — velut apis prudentissima, quae primo mane caris e cellulis consurgens aestivo tempore, per incerta aeris itinera cursum veloci volatu dirigens, super multiplices ac diversos herbarum, holerum, fruticum flosculos descendit, probatque quid maxime placuerit atque domum reportat — mentis oculos longum dirigit, quaerens extrinsecus quod intrinsecus non habebat, id est in proprio regno suo. (But God, who is always the inspector of the internal thoughts of our minds, and the instigator of all good desires and meditations, and also — so that these good intentions may be fulfilled — a most generous overseer, for he would never inspire [instigaret] a man to aim at the good unless he also amply supplied that which the man justly and properly wished to have, stimulated [instigavit] King Alfred’s intelligence from within, not from without, as it is written, ‘I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me.’ He would avail himself of every opportunity to acquire helpers in his good designs to aid him in his strivings after wisdom, and enable him to fulfill his wishes; so, like the prudent bee, which, rising in summer at early morning from her beloved cells, steers her course with rapid flight along the uncertain paths of the air, and descends on the manifold and varied flowers of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, essaying that which most pleases her, and bearing it home, he directed the eyes of his mind far afield, seeking without what he had not within, that is to say, in his own kingdom.)13 13 C. 76.50–70. This translation is my ad hoc blend of those by Cook, Alfred, p. 40; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 92; and Howlett, British Books, pp. 416–417. On Aldhelm’s De Virginitate as the locus classicus for this alliterative simile of the clever bee, see Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, pp. 258–259, n. 161. On Asser’s alliteration, cf. ch. 5, p. 214, n. 44 above.

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This is not God the Father. It is the Holy Ghost present and active in the midst of creation, the creator spiritus who, by kindling our senses, infusing our hearts with love, and enriching our lips with speech, gives us the grace and the courage to choose our true vocation. The childhood miracle is not that God gave Alfred some sort of super-power to magically memorize a written vernacular text: it is that young Alfred’s soul thrilled with the desire to own that book by winning that contest according to those rules. Here, likewise, the same miracle is not that God gives Alfred the skill to translate: it is that Alfred, a layman, yearns to own the Latin book by reading it aloud to his community, to edify and entertain his listeners not in Latin but in his and their native tongue. I find it striking when serious scholars whose sanity no one would question still feel the need to assert that Alfred’s achievement is not supernatural. Not really divino instinctu.14 Secularizing it, however, doesn’t have to mean flattening its audacious novelty. In other words divino instinctu marks legere et interpretari simul as the spiritual and historical fulfilment of what intelligere et recitare prefigured. It offers an answer to questions posed at the end of my previous chapter: ‘Where, then, does this pericope as redacted here by Asser find the echo that becomes part of its sense? To what will it turn out to have alluded? What fulfils it? How is the meaning of Alfred’s life part of the meaning of this game? What did this story really mean to Asser?’ What Asser is about to tell us, and the way he tells it, is part of his spiritual exegesis of the Race for the Book.15 He is counting on us to remember that parable. He trusts it will have ‘entered our heads.’ And our hearts. The youngest son who was the first to understand the Old English poems and recite them to his mother and brothers now takes it into his head to be the first king to legere et interpretari simul. This phrase becomes part of the meaning of the Race for the Book, its true punchline, as if the first punchline, retulit et recitavit, is now understood to have pre-echoed this historic resolution to which, in hindsight, it turns out to have alluded. Retulit et recitavit turns out to have been what classical musicians call a deceptive cadence. The perfect cadence resolves on legere et interpretari simul. And vice versa. It is as if the king is still inspired by the beauty of the script, by the sibling rivalry, by his mother’s smile. 14 See for example Anlezark’s admirably nuanced commentary in Alfred, ch. 3, especially p. 82. For another example see p. 241 n. 30 below: ‘This appears to refer to a miraculous occasion…’ Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 28. 15 See ch. 5, p. 205, n. 16 above.

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quodam die: What happens quodam die can transcend chronology. Its timeless moral quality may help it float, while laws and kingdoms sink. Quodam die is a delimitation marker which, like divino instinctu, Asser employs twice only, and for the same reason: first to frame the Race for the Book as a hagiographic virtus, and now to clinch his typology. What happens when Alfred, divino instinctu, begins to legere et interpretari simul, and what happened when he, divina inspiratione instinctus, won the Race for the Book are chronologically distant from one another. Hagiographically they are adjacent. This quodam die picks up where the first left off. What happens next unveils the destiny, the deeper meaning, of intelligere et recitare, and et legit, and retulit et recitavit in Asser’s redaction of the Race for the Book. Hagiography is Asser’s synchronic antidote to chronology, to the diachronic parade of events. When Alfred conceives the desire to educate, that’s when he truly wins his race for the book. His eye now runs over the Latin page, his heart perceives the sense, but the tongue that gives it voice is not the Roman tongue of the fathers, the lingua romana: it is, again, or still, the tongue of the mothers.16 It is as if he can travel to Rome, inwardly not outwardly, interius non exterius, and return with the meaning of the Latin book in his mind. He can discere, legere, intelligere, interpretari, and recitare. If learning a book, reading it, understanding it, and performing it are four ways of possessing it, translating it is now one more.17 He will do more than read the Latin book. He will deserve it. He will own it fair and square. He will make it his. And ours. This is how hagiography can contain chronology. Donald Wilcox has shown why and how ‘for historians before Newton, the time frame did not include a group of events; a group of events contained a time frame.’18 Asser’s redactorial deployment of eodem anno, divino instinctu, and quodam die is a strategic move in the game he plays to let hagiographic time contain a chronological framework. Here, in microcosm, is that balance which Einhard aims at and Asser achieves, between synchrony and diachrony. ‘Pivot’ is my shorthand term for what Berschin calls a genre-shift, a Paradigmenwechsel.19 16 ‘We can avoid the controversies about how, when, and why spoken Latin stopped and Romance began by referring to the form spoken in the early Middle Ages as simply the lingua romana.’ Smith, After Rome, p. 24. For a thought-provoking discourse on ‘father’ tongue and ‘mother’ tongue see Ong, Orality and Literacy, pp. 112–115, and Illich and Sanders, Alphabetization, p. 146. 17 See ch. 5, p. 216 above. And on translating legere, intelligere, recitare in pairs see ch. 5, p. 220, n. 64. 18 Wilcox, Times Past, p. 9. 19 See above ch. 4, p. 169, n. 28.

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In one genre you are to understand Asser’s story literally, as a hard fact, as the last of four historical events that occurred in 887 ad. Pivot to the other genre and you understand it typologically: one day Alfred takes the book to his magister et legit, one day he begins to legere et intepretari simul. From God’s point of view they are synchronous, one and the very same day. By fulfilling the figura the story does not cease to be historical fact. It comes true. Not just literally true. Spiritually true. resideremus: The first quodam die raised the curtain on the tableau of the mother and her sons gathered around an English book. Retulit et recitavit brought that curtain down. This quodam die raises it on a tableau of the redactor and the youngest son, now a king, chatting with one another on stage about a Latin book. The impresario has stepped into his tableau to address us in the first person plural: resideremus. ‘One day we were sitting.’ He means ‘Alfred and me.’ The redactor has turned into the attendant person who helps the hero in his quest, like the magister who helps young Alfred win the book, like the High Priest who anoints him in the Holy City. Asser will now prove that the pericope which he himself redacted at the beginning of the Life is indeed a figura too good to be false. For when the youngest son, now king, begins to legere et interpretari simul, that figura turns out — thanks to Asser’s own rhetorical tropes — to have also prefigured what Asser himself, now Alfred’s magister, is doing right in front of our eyes, no longer by redacting something but by taking action within his story to shape the curve of its destiny, its typological and historical fulfilment. illi recitarem: Alfred’s mother finds her echo in Asser. As Alfred’s mother is to Old English, so is Asser to Latin. Like her, he holds a book. Alfred reads the vernacular book aloud to his mother. Asser reads the Latin book aloud to Alfred. In the first person singular, Asser’s illi recitarem, ‘I read aloud to him,’ echoes and fulfils the crucial significance of recitare and recitavit. What the youngest son does to Old English, Asser does to Latin. Here again we are too jaded to appreciate how boldly Asser pushes the conventional boundaries of a hagiographic Life by casting himself as a character in his own typology. ‘In so far as it is an autobiography of Asser,’ said Galbraith, ‘it is pure fiction.’20 Fact, fiction, or metafiction, call it what you will, we can still benefit from continuing to read it as literature.21 Like a case history by Freud, it doesn’t cease to be literature merely because of this first person plural, ‘me, and the protagonist of my story.’ The story became hagiography without ceasing to be a final annal. Now it becomes 20 Galbraith, An Introduction, p. 104. See ch. 4, p. 184, n. 72 above. 21 Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography.

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autobiography without ceasing to be hagiography.22 And without ceasing to be autobiography it nevertheless fulfils a typology. This is a new type of case history, a paradigm shift in life-writing. In Kuhn’s sense, not in Berschin’s. I wonder whether we can find any earlier hagiographer writing about how he helps his still living saint perform the very miracle he undertakes to enshrine. This is why I said that Asser, and Alfred, and those around them, may well have felt themselves the avant-garde of the future.23 No doubt I can keep on asking narratological questions of the sort posed in my previous chapters. What move does legere et interpretari simul represent in what game Asser and Alfred are playing? Is this yet another vapid instance of Learning to Read by Magic?24 Of the Miraculous Acquisition of Latinity?25 Or is opting for the vernacular again the youngest son’s wily stratagem, still revising the rules of the literacy game by renegotiating the customary acquisition of Latinity so as to make room for a move which might otherwise be called foul, namely playing in the wrong key, reading Latin aloud in English?26 All the same, it would be perverse for me to continue pretending that this is all merely about Alfred’s legendary namesake. For as soon as I ask Asser ‘What role do you play in this story you are telling us?’ I must also ask him ‘Who, indeed, are you?’ And then the crux of the matter can no longer be postponed: have we, after all, really been listening, all along, to the voice of the true Asser, talking with the true Alfred? Was their friendship really this intimate? So I must stop referring to Asser as ‘the redactor,’ stop pretending that I am still doing redaction criticism. The day Alfred began to read Latin aloud in Old English to Asser is as famous — and as controversial — as the day he sang the Old English poetry book by heart to his mother and for similar historical and ideological reasons. Patrick Wormald quite rightly called this 22 On the effect of this égographie, ‘cette écriture du je qui prend en charge le récit et qui se désigne comme étant Asser lui-même’ (‘this writing of the ego which takes charge of the story and which designates itself as being Asser himself’) see Veyrard-Cosme, Vita Beati Alcuini, p. 180. 23 Ch. 4, p. 169 and n. 29 above. 24 Thompson’s motif #D.1819.4, II, p. 334. See above Ch. 5, p. 221, n. 68. 25 Cooper-Rompato, Tongues. 26 ‘Alfred’s proposal was unusual in promoting literacy in the vernacular first and only afterwards in Latin. For us today the reasonable progression begins with reading and writing our native tongue before applying those skills to a foreign language, but for centuries the standard sequence was always Latin first and foremost, especially when it was part of the training in religious orders (as it nearly always was). Skills for reading and writing the vernacular were added later, if at all. But an important element in Alfred’s innovation was to extend the benefits of literacy beyond the ranks of the clerics, which was, again, unusual if not unprecedented for this period.’ Donoghue, Old English Literature, p. 106.

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‘perceptibly the thematic fulcrum of the Life.’27 Asser’s hagiography irradiates the birth of Alfred’s biliteracy campaign. Anyone seriously studying what the Victorians called Alfred’s Works, the translations still attached to the author-function ‘Alfred,’28 has had to account for the scope and limits of Alfred’s personal participation in the historic project, and hence to explicate and critique, one way or another, this passage, including Asser’s hagiographic typology as well as his chronology and his autobiography. The historian’s question of what, if anything, actually happened becomes more urgent. At the same time the psychological question of whether we can commune with Alfred’s interior life becomes more hopeful. By substituting psychology for typology, we may be able to convert Asser’s spiritual insight into our psychological insight.29 After all, if Alfred and Asser really did sit around playing with their literacies and their languages like this, it takes no wild flight of frolic fancy to imagine them conversing about how Alfred won his first poetry book, how he first heard people chatting in the lingua romana on his way to Rome, and what the Pope said to him in Latin when he got there. If today there is, among historians, a consensus on the historicity of this passage, it’s probably well represented by Keynes and Lapidge: This appears to refer to a miraculous occasion when the king suddenly learned how to read Latin and translate it into English, but to judge from Asser’s further elaboration of the point (chapters 88–9) the reference is rather to an occasion when he resolved to perfect these skills for himself as a means of instructing others. If so, it may have been at about this time that Alfred decided to involve himself personally in a general scheme to produce translations of selected Latin works, for the instruction of all.30

But did Alfred know Latin? Well enough to translate it? That’s the question. Was he bilingual? Was he litteratus? Malcolm Godden speaks for those who say no: But then in chapter 87 Asser reports a dramatic change in the king’s situation. In the year 887, […] he says Alfred ‘first began by divine inspiration both to read (Latin) and translate on one and the same day’. […] The 27 Wormald, ‘Living with Alfred,’ p. 19 28 Ch. 1, p. 47, n. 49. 29 Cf. ch. 2 p. 85 above: ‘By substituting psychological for spiritual understanding, Plummer frees [Remember the Pope] from rigid chronology and redeems typology’s vertical lift.’ 30 Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 28. Cf. above p. 237 n. 14.

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episode seems to record the moment when Alfred acquired the skills to translate himself and the desire to use those skills to educate others. And in dating that transformation in skills and concerns to 887, Asser’s account gives time for them to have developed sufficiently for Alfred to launch the programme with his own full-scale translation in the 890s. The account thus appears to chime remarkably neatly with the evidence of the prefaces to the vernacular texts of the period. The situation is not as staightforward as it seems, however, and the modern interpretations of Asser’s words are not necessarily the right ones. As a number of scholars have pointed out, Asser’s account of Alfred’s progress towards literacy and Latinity is bewilderingly contradictory.31

The chronological bewilderment is easy to remedy. Play Stubbs’ Gambit. Let Asser’s timeline untangle. When we let go of the axiom that Asser thought Alfred was born in 849 we come closer to at least one historical fact, namely the chronological order in which the Alfredian reliquaries were actually produced. The ‘long delay’ between the day Alfred first began to legere et interpretari simul and 893 dissolves and need chafe us no more.32 The sociocultural function of Asser’s hagiography becomes less bewildering when we set Asser free to pioneer the cult of Alfred by enshrining Alfred’s biliteracy in an inaugural reliquary, namely the Life, in 889, to be followed, not preceded, by the Chronicle and the Works.33 Harder to diagnose, and therefore harder to remedy, is the bewilderment caused by the ways we do or don’t talk to one another about biliteracy. How are we to compare what we know today with what Alfred and Asser knew about language and translation and bilingualism and literacy? Let alone 31 What I call a cult Godden calls a panegyric tradition. What I call reliquaries from the cult of Alfred — the Chronicle, the Life, and the Works — he calls stories from Alfred’s court. Where I look for a relic he looks for a core of possible historical truth. ‘Three key Alfredian texts were issued in or around the year 893: Asser’s Life of King Alfred, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and the prose preface to the Old English Pastoral Care. […] But how much of this testimony [about Alfred as ruler, warleader, saint, scholar, and educator] is fact and how much myth or spin has always been difficult to tell. […] In the attempt to reconcile the stories and establish a core of possible historical truth, it is easy to distort what the accounts actually say and to miss their particular narrative logic, their often highly creative and individual constructions of the king’s life and achievements and their imaginative re-use of literary traditions. […] There is a fair amount of common ground. […] But on all these subjects they show striking differences, which seem to reflect different agendas and perspectives, or a different take on a panegyric tradition.’ Godden, ‘Stories,’ p. 123. 32 See ch. 3, p. 132, n. 94 and p. 154, n. 160 above 33 Why 889, not 887? Because the events in annal 887 didn’t end until early 889: Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred, p. 267, n. 205.

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Latinity and alliteration. How shall we secure enough common ground with the furniture of Asser’s peculiar intellect to determine whether Alfred did or did not have skills about which we ourselves hold such essentially contested opinions? When we take it for granted, for instance, that two languages can share one literacy between them, when we talk about distinct literacy skills which can be separately acquired, developed, measured, combined, and perfected in one language and then ‘applied’ to a different one, we count on a conceptual framework shared by many modern but by few medieval educators. The assumption that the scope and precision of Asser’s ninth-century Welsh Latin discourse can be accurately mapped onto ours bedevils our attempts to understand him on his own terms.34 We know what languages are, and what translation is. This axiom is hard to relinquish. Our propensity, naturally enough not always conscious, is to project onto ninth century Wales and Wessex the entanglement of intimacy and power in the politics of identity, which snags us at the conjunction of bilingualism and literacy. Malcolm Godden rebukes those of us who look beyond the ‘normal meaning’ of such words as illiteratus, legere, recitare, intelligere, and interpretari.35 But what, let me ask, is the normal meaning of, say, ‘Latinity’? Godden knows what he means by it, but in this context it doesn’t follow that the rest of us do.36 And the normal meaning of ‘literacy’ is even more elusive. The sociolinguistic character of literacy interacting with Latinity in ninthcentury Wales and Wessex remains an enduring brainteaser, an enigma. As long as we rely on notions of literacy and bilingualism as two distinct and unproblematic unitary practices, as two known constants, we will surely skew Asser’s concept of Alfredian translation implicit in his typological use of interconnected terms like illiteratus, legere, recitare, intelligere, interpretari, and then blame Asser for our bewilderment. 34 ‘A major difficulty in getting a handle on the sort of changes being described in the Alfredian texts is that the processes involved are so different from those with which our own education familiarizes us. […] We need always to remember that our ultra-literate culture can never give us more than the faintest conception of how much could once be done in vernaculars by tongue and brain without recourse to writing.’ Wormald, ‘Living with Alfred,’ pp. 37, 39. 35 ‘Many key passages are ambiguous and can be (and have been) translated in several different ways. Some sort of sense can be made in places by assuming that verbs like legere and recitare do not mean what they normally mean (in Asser’s Life as well as in other writers), or that a distinction is being assumed but not articulated between reading English and reading Latin, but it is hard to be convinced. It is tempting to abandon the situation as hopeless.’ Godden, ‘Stories,’ p. 127. 36 On Latinity as a cultural practice, see Farrell, Latin, and Copeland, Rhetoric, pp. 103–107.

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We misunderstand Asser’s words when we try to map them one at a time onto English words, when we disregard their intra- and intertextual echoes and f igural connotations, when we fail to enter into the spirit of the game Asser plays with his own allusive alliterative Latinity, his own hybrid Celtic-Carolingian literacy. We have seen how our ideologies skew even the normal meaning of et legit.37 Even the normal meaning of igitur is, as we have seen above, a poor guide to what he means by using it liturgically.38 Asser’s Alfred goes to Rome in his eleventh year for, as Stubbs put it, ‘education at an age at which he is likely to profit by it.’39 In his twelfth year he ceases to be monolingual.40 He crosses the language border between lingua tedesca and linga romana, between ‘Germanic’ and ‘Romance’ vernaculars. He is no longer illiteratus, illatinate. He experiences Latin in its natural habitat, as the living language of a speech community. This experience may well have been a valued goal, not a side-effect, of his pilgrimage. Let us envision a bright young fellow on the cusp of manhood, with intellectual appetites, indeed with metalinguistic curiosity, coming back from Rome knowing Latin as a language in which the Pope and many other people, from all walks of life, actually chat with one another, for small talk and gossip as much as for sacred rituals, aware also of how his experiential knowledge of free-range, organic, vernacular Latin in its natural habitat sets him apart from those back home who can draw on no such experience, who know only book Latin, only in the hothouse of the monastic classroom. Asser distinguishes between literatus and illiteratus, between latinate and illatinate. We distinguish between language and literacy: between the monolingual/bilingual border on the one hand, and the literate/illiterate border on the other. Are they the same border? If not, how do they intersect? If what makes Asser’s account bewildering is our lack of a commonly shared terminology to describe and analyze the ways in which literacy and bilingualism intermingle and unite then the remedy is to develop a discourse on biliteracy capable of giving them equal weight without subordinating one to the other. My present task is to chart Asser’s typology of Alfred’s biliteracy. To wiggle through the modern tangle of terminologies, dichotomies, frameworks, discourses, disciplines, and ideologies which are currently being brought 37 And see also ch. 5, p. 220, n. 64, above. And see again p. 238, n. 17 above. 38 See ch. 4, p. 191 above. 39 Stubbs, Gesta Regum, p. xli, quoted ch. 3, pp. 138-139 and n. 110 above. 40 See ch. 3, p. 139 n. 112 above.

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to bear on biliteracy, 41 what I need now is something as elementary as Earle’s quipu. 42 Something as simple as Charles-Edwards’s metaphor of the two bridges Alfred had to cross on his journey to wisdom. A hip-pocket map to help us see, firstly, whether when we say ‘literacy’ or ‘Latinity’ or ‘translation’ we are even talking to one another about the same thing, and secondly whether Asser and other ninth-century intellectuals are talking to one another about the same thing as we are, and if not, what to do about it. So I will once again proceed schematically, by redacting and diagramming an eighth-century pericope, a representative anecdote about adult biliteracy in its natural habitat outside the classroom, namely the story I promised to come back to about what happened when young Gregory met Boniface, with Gregory typifying literacy and Boniface typifying bilingualism. 43

From Bonifatian to Alfredian biliteracy The story goes that the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface has been traveling around converting the pagans. 44 He comes to an Abbey on the Mosel. He sits down for dinner with the Abbess. They call for a lector. Young Gregory is brought in. He’s fourteen or fifteen. A bright fellow, still in lay garb, still, as we are about to see, thinking like a child, but on the cusp of adulthood. Datum est liber, he’s given the book. He reads it fluently. In Latin. Bene legis, says Boniface, si intelligis quae legis.45 You read well, son — if you understand what you’re reading. Gregory still thinks like a child and speaks like a child. He thinks he knows perfectly well what he’s reading. Dic mihi quomodo intelligis quae legis, says Boniface. Tell me how you understand what you’re reading. 41 For a succinct overview of alphabetic, functional, and sociocultural biliteracy, see Kalmar, ‘Literacy.’ 42 See ch. 2, p. 79, n. 32, and p. 81 above. 43 See above, ch. 5, p. 216, and n. 51. (This Gregory is not Gregory the Great.) 44 Liudger, Vita Gregorii, pp. 67–68. For more on this story see Berschin, Biographie, III, pp. 41–43; Wood, The Missionary Life, p. 107; Smith, After Rome, pp. 40-41. 45 Cf. the Ethiopian Eunuch: ‘Accurrens autem Philippus, audivit eum legentem Isaiam prophetam, et dixit: Putasne intelligis quae legis? Qui ait: Et quomodo possum, si non aliquis ostenderit mihi? Rogavitque Philippum ut ascenderet, et sederet secum.’ ‘And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.’ Acts 8.30–31 (King James Version).

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Gregory goes back to the beginning and starts reading it all over again. In Latin. No, no. Boniface interrupts this liturgical recitation. That’s not what I’m talking about. He reasons with Gregory as adult to adult, secundum ordinem rationis. You sure can make those squiggles talk Latin! You can recitare. Your eyes run over the page and your tongue gives voice. But that’s not what I mean by intelligere. Does your heart perceive the sense? Can you make the squiggles speak your own tongue? Non ita, fili, quaero, ut mihi dicas modo lectionem tuam, sed secundum proprietatem linguae tuae et naturalem parentum tuorum locutione lectionem tuam edissere mihi. I’m asking whether you can tell me and your grandmother here, the Abbess, what your Latin lectio says, in your own natural idiom, in the common tongue of your familia. Oh no, says Gregory, starting to realize he’s out of his depth. I can’t do that. Would you like me to show you? asks Boniface. I sure would! says Gregory. Well then, start again at the beginning. And read it slowly. Bit by bit. And watch me. Young Gregory starts reading aloud again, in Latin. And Boniface does what today we call simultaneous translation. Whatever Gregory preaches in Latin, Boniface preaches libera voce in the Germanic vernacular of those gathered at the dinner table. Boniface thus injects into Gregory’s understanding of literacy a new dimension, a new vector: bilingualism. And an existential choice: opt for the vernacular. Gregory emerges from this rite of passage no longer a child. He understands his vocation as a missionary.

A game of figures Draw a language border

In the USA today: let this line be the border between Spanish and English. In England after the Conquest: between English and French. Before the Conquest: between the vernacular and Latin.

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Bilingualism OE

Latin

For Asser, between illiteratus and literatus:

illiteratus

literatus

In theory any two languages are of equal value. In practice one language is always inferior to the other. The very idea of a language border is irrefrangibly ideological, which is to say psychological, social, political, spiritual. No language border can actually be a straight line. Each is a sort of ecosystem, a zone of contact between two speech communities. Within that hybrid zone of language-mixing and code-switching more than can ever be accurately mapped takes place. So we draw a straight line to represent just the idea of a language border. This is a figura:

Cross the language border

To cross, for the first time, the border between two speech-communities is to go through a complex rite of passage. A missionary or anthropologist beginning to learn a hitherto unwritten indigenous language. A Mexican crossing into the United States. 46 Alfred on his way to Rome.

46 For a detailed comparison between the missionary and the Mexican migrant, see Kalmar, ‘Making It Legal: The Social Construction of Hybrid Alphabets,’ Illegal Alphabets, ch. 5.

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Distinguish the literacy border from the language border Draw a line in a different dimension:

Let this be the border between letters and sounds, between literacy and illiteracy, between Beowulf and oral epic: speech script

Literacy

Sociocultural literacy studies have taught us to visualize this border, likewise, not as a dichotomy but as an ecosystem, a contact zone where speech communities interact with textual communities and with one another in sites of potential struggle and fertility. This line represents the idea of literacy. We now have two figurae. Cross the literacy border

To become a member of a textual community by crossing this border for the first time is to participate in a different but equally complex rite of passage. In this downward direction it can represent the missionary reducing speech to script by creating an orthography for that hitherto unwritten tongue. Or a student in a classroom writing down words spoken by a teacher. Or a scribe writing down Alfred’s spoken words. In the opposite direction it can represent recitavit: what young Alfred does to the book. It’s what Gregory does well: give voice to a written text:

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When, in this situation, Boniface crosses from Latin to the vernacular, he is showing Gregory how to interpetari:

Gregory can already make the squiggles speak:

He can legere et recitare. But he needs Boniface to interpretari for his familia, for his vernacular speech community. Compound the two borders OE spoken

Latin spoken

OE written

Latin written

Here is young Alfred reciting written poems on the Old English side of the language border.

We would call him literate; Asser says he is still illiteratus.

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Here now is Gregory doing it on the litteratus Latin side:

Here’s Boniface crossing the language border on the oral side of the literacy border:

And here is a diagonal border-crossing:

Let this diagonal represent the idea of biliteracy. It is a double border-crossing. It simultaneously crosses Charles-Edwards’s two bridges. Mortensen calls it a double decodification.47 It is, to my mind, a figura that resolves the tension between the vertical and the horizontal figurae. It fulfils what each of them prefigures.

47 ‘A primary reception of Latin literature might very well have been an oral paraphrase or a translation into vernacular. Such a process needed highly trained people for a double codification — into Latin and into writing — and a double decodification — from written Latin into spoken vernacular.’ Mortensen ‘Medieval Latin,’ pp. 137–138.

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And that, according to Asser, is what, divino instinctu, Alfred did when he first decided to legere et intepretari simul, crossing both the language and the literacy border at the same time. Let this diagonal represent the advanced bilingual transform of the childhood contest.

childhood

adulthood

Typologie interne legere Gregory Literacy

interpretari Boniface Bilingualism

simul Alfred Biliteracy

interpretari legere

ul si m

By relabeling the legs we can also use this little triangular quipu to diagram how Asser constructs a typology which compounds literacy and Latinity: lingua romana Remember the Pope

figura

type

t it

t

e

en

yp

lm

type

an

lf i

re rp te in l et i mu s

fu

e

figura

er

recitavit Win the Book

l eg ta ri

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Neither of Asser’s two prefigurative ‘types’ comes from the Bible. Both are internal to the Life. But if we want to grasp how Asser’s mind works, if we want to understand his hagiographic account of Alfredian biliteracy on his own terms, if we want to enter into the spirit of the game he plays with his echoes and allusions and figurae and typology and imitatio, we do need to honor the intimate theological connection between biblical typology and Asser’s novel typologie interne. We need to read not only Erich Auerbach and Hayden White and Northrop Frye and Frank Kermode but also the Jesuits Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou. For to discourse on early medieval typology is to discourse on theology. The Dominican Aidan Nichols puts it strongly: ‘Where typology is suppressed, the art of the Church ceases to be legible, and the capacity to write theology withers away.’48 On this issue, let us listen to the voice of Henri de Lubac winding up his magisterial Histoire et Esprit and about to launch his even more magisterial Exégèse médiévale: Aussi parle-t-on plus volontiers aujourd’hui de typologie. C’est là un néologisme, usité depuis un siècle à peine. Mais il est heureusement trouvé. Car, depuis saint Paul, partout dans l’exégèse traditionelle il était question de ‘types’, c’est-à-dire de figures, et l’on y rencontre une fois ou l’autre ‘sens typique’ pris comme synonyme de sens mystique ou allégorique, ou encore, comme disait Pascal, de sens f igurative. Il présente aussi le mérite d’écarter nettement, au moins d’intention, toute la paille antique du grain de l’exégèse chrétienne, ce que ne faisait pas par lui-même le mot d’allégorie. Il a toutefois l’inconvénient de porter reference uniquement à un résultat, sans allusion à l’âme, au ressort intime du processus qui l’opère. Son acception apparaît aussi peut-être trop restreinte, car il ne correspond rigoureusement qu’au premier des trois sens que la division classique énumère à la suite du sens littéral ou de ‘l’histoire’. La typologie se donne ainsi un objet fort étroitement circonscrit. Elle laisse en tout cas hors de ses perspectives les explications les plus proprement spirituelles. Sérieuse lacune, dont il y a lieu de craindre qu’elle ne soit quelquefois voulue. Ceux qui ont les premiers mis en avant la ‘typologie’ ont fait choix d’un terrain solide, mais ils l’ont trop reserré. On ne devra pas s’y tenir trop exclusivement si l’on veut éviter de réduire la doctrine profonde et hardie d’un saint Paul a un jeu, même authentiqué, de figures.

48 Nichols, ‘Theology,’ pp. 55–56. Quoted by Heintz in his valuable ‘Introduction,’ p. xvi, n. 17.

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(We speak more readily today of typology. That is a neologism, in use for scarcely a century. But finding it was fortuitous. For, ever since Saint Paul, everywhere in traditional exegesis, there have been references to ‘types,’ that is, to figures, and occasionally we encounter ‘typical sense,’ taken as a synonym for mystical or allegorical sense or also, as Pascal said, for figurative sense. It also offers the merit of clearly discarding, at least by intention, all the old chaff from the grain of Christian exegesis, which the word allegory did not by itself do. It has the disadvantage, nevertheless, of bearing reference solely to a result without alluding to the soul, to the inner spirit of the process that carries it out. […] Typology thus gives itself a very narrowly circumscribed subject. In any case, it leaves outside its perspectives explanations that are most properly spiritual. A serious lacuna that there is reason to fear may at times be deliberate. Those who have been the first to emphasise ‘typology’ have made a choice of solid ground, but they have made it too narrow. We should not confine ourselves to it too exclusively if we want to avoid reducing the profound and bold doctrine of a Saint Paul to a game of figures, even if a genuine one.)49

Jean Daniélou distinguished between allegory and typology more stringently than his former teacher de Lubac. But this does not affect their fundamental principle that typological understanding is intrinsically Christological: The aim of typology is to seek for correspondences between events, institutions, and persons of the Old Covenant and those of the New Covenant, inaugurated by the coming of Christ and to be consummated at the Parousia. […] There will be a Christic typology, an ecclesial typology, a mystical typology, an eschatological typology, corresponding to Christ in his historical existence, in his life in the Church, in his union with the soul, in his Parousia.50

The application of the types of the Old Testament to the interior life of the Christian ‘takes on a marked development in the thought of the Alexandrines from Clement to St Gregory of Nyssa and St Ambrose.’51 Jacques Fontaine has explicated in exquisitely nuanced detail how this development of an interior 49 De Lubac, History and Spirit, p. 441. A different translation (worth consulting) in de Lubac, Scripture, pp. 15–16. 50 Daniélou, ‘Typologie,’ pp. 199–200, tr. and cited by Heintz in his Introduction to Daniélou, Shadows, p. xix, nn. 29, 30. 51 Daniélou, Shadows, pp. 287–288.

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typology played out in Sulpicius Severus’s Vita Martini. To christianize Latin biography, Sulpicius Severus developed a ‘quadruple typology’: prophétique, christique, martyrologique, and ascétique.52 A type in the Old Testament finds its antitype not in the New Testament but in Martin’s interior life — typologie prophétique. So does a type in the Gospels — typologie christique. This shades over to a typologie à la fois christique et apostolique, because Martin’s life also fulfils the type of an Apostle. Pushed beyond the reach of this complex quartet of typologies, Sulpicius Severus has to decide what to do about the fact that his Martin, his protagonist, is not a prophet, not an apostle, but a soldier. So he transforms the template of biblical typology into a typology of Martin’s interior life, the typologie interne to which I have alluded so frequently above: Cette hantise des correspondances typologiques a même été poussée jusqu’à un point très curieux. Pour satisfaire aux exigences d’une apologie qui s’avérait surtout délicate dans la justification des longues années de service militaire, mais aussi pour respecter cette invariable constance de caractère qui était une norme ancienne de la biographie grèco-romaine, Sulpice Sévère s’est efforcé de construire une typologie interne à la vie de Martin, particulièrement entre les années antérieures et les années postérieures à sa ‘conversion’ de 356. Sa militia terrestre devient ainsi le ‘type’ prophétique de sa militia ascétique. L’affrontement final avec Julien trouve son ‘antitype’ dans la dernière prière de Martin mourant à son imperator céleste. […] Même si cette ‘typologie martinienne’ relève des artifices littéraires de la composition, il n’en est pàs moins vrai que ceux-ci révèlent ainsi un mécanisme essentiel de la stylisation biographique dans la Vita Martini: comme si les années de service militaire avaient été dans la Vie de Martin une sorte d’Ancient Testament personnel, et de préparation à l’avènement total du Christ dans sa vie. (This obsession with typological correspondence has even been taken to a very curious point. To satisfy the demands of an apology which proves to be delicate above all in the justification of the long years of military service, but also to respect that invariant constancy of character which was an antique norm of Greco-Roman biography, Sulpicius Severus does his best to construct a typology interior to the life of Martin, particularly between the years before and after his ‘conversion’ in 356. His terrestrial 52 Sulpicius Severus, S. Martini, pp. 127–132. It’s interesting to contrast this with Daniélou’s quartet.

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militia becomes thus the prophetic ‘type’ of his ascetic militia. The final confrontation with Julian finds its ‘antitype’ in the last prayer of the dying Martin to his celestial imperator. […] But although in its composition this ‘Martinian typology’ may come under the category of literary devices, it is no less true that these thus reveal an essential mechanism of the biographical stylization of the Vita Martini: as if the years of military service had been in the life of Martin a sort of personal Old Testament, a preparation for the complete advent of Christ in his life.)53

When Frank Kermode says the evangelists and their interpreters were ‘obsessed’ by typology and figura, the verb ‘obsessed’ is not surprising.54 But Fontaine is steeped in réssourcement and the nouvelle théologie of Daniélou and de Lubac. So it strikes me as odd when Fontaine characterizes typological thought as an obsession. Fontaine calls it hantise. As if typology haunted Sulpicius Severus. But isn’t that rather like saying rhyme haunted Dante, gravity obsessed Newton? I’d rather say Asser, and Sulpicius Severus, and other serious medieval hagiographers committed themselves to playing the game of figures in the spirit preached by de Lubac. Sulpicius Severus plays it with wit, logic, and panache, and by extending it to reach the interior life of Martin he is playing the game in good faith. Asser, like Sulpicius Severus, is playing for keeps. Jacques Fontaine wonders whether Sulpicius Severus got it right: is his Martinian typology merely a creation of the hagiographer’s literary skill? Or does it provide a clue to how Martin himself made sense of his militia? Did Martin feel that his life as a bishop fulfilled his life as a soldier? Is this typology authentic?55 In Asser’s case the corresponding question becomes even more intriguing. Was the historical Alfred the source not only of Asser’s stories but also of his typology? If the childhood stories are Alfred’s own memories, then Asser’s typologie interne may indeed be authentic, may preserve the inner shape of Alfred’s auto-hagiography. Asser’s Vita may hold what it claims to hold: a memoria of Alfred’s modus vitae. For Asser is telling us his opinion of the inner process that carried out Alfred’s interior typology, as Sulpicius Severus told us his opinion of Martin’s. 53 Fontaine, ‘La valeur littéraire,’ pp. 131–132. (My translation.) Already quoted in part in ch. 3, p. 157, n. 166 above. 54 Kermode, Genesis of Secrecy, p. 104. Quoted above, ch. 5, p. 222, n. 71. 55 See Fontaine’s ch. 4–5 on ‘La valeur spirituelle’ and ‘La valeur historique,’ in Sulpicius Severus, S. Martini.

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Can any typology tell us what type of person Alfred really was? Is this particular typology originally ‘due to Alfred’? Or is it just a rhetorical device ‘due to Asser’? Is it merely a reliquary’s mechanical brace? Or is it truly, as Patrick Wormald would have it, a major Leitmotif of Alfred’s life, the relic which Asser’s reliquary was rightly designed to contain? Can it tell us what Alfred himself chose to make of his childhood memories? Does it preserve a ruling metaphor of his existential self-understanding, his Traumwerk? Is Asser’s typology an authentic relic of the contours of Alfred’s mode of thought and experience and action, the modus of his life? Or is it nothing more — which is also to say nothing less — than a relic of the contours of a Welsh intellectual’s mode of thought? Did Asser get it right? Did he know Alfred’s personal private parables and pericopes, his typologie interne? Did Alfred experience life as a game? A contest? A prize? Whoever first understands and performs the prize wins it? Is this what made him tick? And was the prize a crown? Or a book?

7

Win the Crown Let us first consider how close we can come to an understanding of what made King Alfred tick. — SIMON KEYNES1 How could we possibly have any real evidence for the personality of a Dark Age king, for his psychology, for his self? — JANET NELSON2 I have often had the fancy that there is some one myth for every man, which, if we but knew it, would make us understand all he did and thought. — W. B. YEATS3 For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes — not that you won or lost — but how you played the Game. — GRANTLAND RICE Let us consider the sorts of remarks which are found in descriptions of games. — STANLEY CAVELL 4

Abstract Can we find in the Old English translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy an authentic relic of the contours of Alfred’s thoughts about predestination and free will? This chapter offers a close reading of a 1 Keynes, ‘Tale of Two Kings,’ p. 208. 2 Nelson ‘Did Charlemagne Have a Private Life?,’ p. 15. (Italics original.) 3 Yeats, ‘At Stratford-on-Avon.’ 4 Cavell, Claim of Reason, p. 305.

Kalmar, Tomás: King Alfred the Great, his Hagiographers and his Cult. A Childhood Remembered. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023 DOI: 10.5117/9789463729611_CH07

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paragraph comparing life to a race for a golden crown. The first one to reach it wins it. This bears a startling similarity to the game young Alfred played to win his mother’s book. If Alfred is the author of all three fables — this philosophical fable, the fable of the youngest son who wins the book fair and square, and the fable of Alfred’s papal anointing, then we can get much closer to understanding what made Alfred tick than we thought. If not, what then? Keywords: Malcolm Godden, V. H. Galbraith, psychohistory, The Old English Consolation of Philosophy

Winning and losing Young children perceive a game as fair only as long as they perceive themselves able to get whatever prize it is that the game or anybody else offers. Young children don’t really understand the idea of winning and losing. To a young child, a game is a source of fascination. If there is such a thing as winning, and winning is to be considered such a wonderful experience, then, whoever is playing should win. Later on, making a game fair will mean making sure that everyone has the same chance to win. We learn that the only thing we can reasonably guarantee each other is that we will all be playing by the same rules, all have the same opportunity to win. It is this concept which allows us to develop a functioning play community. But for young children, if it is the rule of the game that only one child gets to be first, the game is considered fair only by the child who becomes first.5

Equal opportunity It’s often said — both in defense and in criticism — that equality of opportunity is the weakest form of egalitarianism. The strongest form would be equality of outcome. And it’s obviously true that a world in which everyone was required to finish the race at the same time would be very different from a world in which everyone was required to start it at the same time.6 5 DeKoven, The Well-Played Game, p. 29. (Italics original.) 6 Michaels, Diversity, p. 132.

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Five or six winners There’s a custom among the Estonians that after a man’s death he lies indoors uncremated among his relatives and friends for a month. Sometimes two. As long as the corpse is lying indoors, it’s customary to drink and gamble until the day they cremate it. On the very day on which they intend to carry the dead man to the pyre, they divide his property, whatever’s left of it after all that drinking and gambling, into five or six lots, sometimes more, depending on how much there is. They place the biggest lot about a mile from the settlement, then the second biggest, then the third, until it’s all distributed within the mile, so that the smallest lot is closest to the place where the dead man lies. The men who have the fastest horses in the country all gather at a point about five or six miles from the property and then all of them gallop towards it. Whoever has the fastest horse gets to take the first and largest lot, and then one after another until it’s all been taken. He who rides to the one furthest from the starting line, nearest to the settlement, gets to take the smallest lot. Then each of them rides on his way with his lot, all of which he gets to keep.7

Agón vs alea Agón. — Tout un groupe de jeux apparaît comme competition, c’està-dire comme un combat où l’égalité des chances est artificiellement créée pour que les antagonistes s’affrontent dans des conditions idéales, susceptibles de donner une valeur précise et incontestable au triomphe du vainqueur. Il s’agit donc chaque fois d’une rivalité qui porte sur une seule qualité (rapidité, endurance, vigueur, mémoire, adresse, ingéniosité, etc.), s’exerçant dans des limites définies et sans aucun secours extérieur, de telle façon que le gagnant apparaisse comme le meilleur dans une certaine catégorie d’exploits. Alea. — C’est en latin le nom du jeu de dés. Je l’imprunte ici pour désigner tous jeux fondés, à l’exact opposé de l’agón, sur une décision qui ne dépend pas du joueur, sur laquelle il ne saurait avoir la moindre prise, et où il s’agit par conséquent de gagner bien moins sur un adversaire que sur le destin. Pour mieux dire, le destin est le seul artisan de la victoire 7 Godden, Orosius, pp. 44–47. This well-known passage inserted into the OE translation of Orosius has been often translated and anthologized. I have abridged and modif ied Fell’s translation in Lund, Two Voyagers, p. 23.

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et celle-ci, quand il y a rivalité, signifie exclusivement que le vainqueur a été plus favorisé par le sort que le vaincu. L’agón est un revendication de la responsabilité personnelle, l’alea une démission de la volonté, un abandon au destin. […] L’agón est l’alea traduisent des attitudes opposées et en quelque sorte symétriques, mais ils obéissent tous deux à une même loi: la création artificielle entre les joueurs de conditions d’égalité pure que la réalité refuse aux hommes. Car rien dans la vie n’est clair, sinon précisément que tout y est trouble au départ, les chances comme les mérites. Le jeu, agón ou alea, est donc une tentative pour substituer, à la confusion normale de l’existence courante, des situations parfaites. Celles-ci sont telles que le rôle du mérite ou du hasard s’y montre net et indiscutable. Elles impliquent aussi que tous doivent jouir exactement des mêmes possibilités de prouver leur valeur ou, dans l’autre échelle, exactement des mêmes chances de recevoir une faveur. De l’une ou de l’autre façon, on s’évade du monde en le faisant autre.8 (Agón. A whole group of games would seem to be competitive, that is to say, like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the winner’s triumph. It is therefore always a question of a rivalry which hinges on a single quality (speed, endurance, strength, memory, skill, ingenuity, etc.), exercised, within defined limits and without outside assistance, in such a way that the winner appears to be better than the loser in a certain category of exploits. Alea. This is the Latin name for the game of dice. I have borrowed it to designate, in contrast to agón all games that are based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary. More properly, destiny is the sole artisan of victory, and where there is rivalry, what is meant is that the winner has been more favored by fortune than the loser. Agón is a vindication of personal responsibility; alea is a negation of the will, a surrender to destiny… Agón and alea imply opposite and somewhat complementary attitudes, but they obey the same law — the creation for the players of conditions of pure equality denied them in real life. For nothing in life is clear, since everything is confused from the very beginning, luck and merit too. Play, whether ágon or alea, is thus 8 Caillois, Les jeux, pp. 50, 55–57, 59–60.

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an attempt to substitute perfect situations for the normal confusions of contemporary life. In games, the role of merit or chance is clear and indisputable. It is also implied that all must play with exactly the same possibility of proving their superiority, or, on another scale, exactly the same chances of winning. In one way or another, one escapes the real world and creates another.)9

No winners The comparison of the life of man to a race, though it hold not in every part, yet it holdeth so well for this our purpose, that we may thereby both see and remember almost all the passions before mentioned. But this race we must suppose to have no other goal, nor other garland, but being foremost, and in it: To endeavour, is appetite. To be remiss, is sensuality. To consider them behind, is glory. To consider them before, is humility. To lose ground with looking back, vain glory. To be holden, hatred. To turn back, repentance. To be in breath, hope. To be weary, despair. To endeavour to overtake the next, emulation. To supplant or overthrow, envy. To resolve to break through a stop foreseen, courage. To break through a sudden stop, anger. To break through with ease, magnanimity. To lose ground by little hindrances, pusillanimity. To fall on the sudden, is disposition to weep. To see another fall, is disposition to laugh. To see one out-gone whom we would not, is pity. To see one out-go whom we would not, is indignation. To hold fast by another, is to love. To carry him on that so holdeth, is charity. To hurt one’s-self for haste, is shame. Continually to be out-gone, is misery. 9 Caillois, Games, pp. 14, 17–19.

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Continually to out-go the next before, is felicity. And to forsake the course, is to die.10

One winner Someone hangs a golden crown at the end of a racecourse. Many runners gather to race on an even footing. Whoever reaches the crown first gets to keep it. Even though it’s destined to just one of them, each one wants to be the first to reach it and own it. That’s what we all do in our actual lifetime. We hurry. We run. We all want that one thing that matters most. It’s meant to be for all of us. Not just one of us.

Race for the crown Here in the original Old English (with spaces between the phrases) is what I paraphrased just above as ‘One winner’: Mon hehð ænne heafodbeag gyldenne æt sumes ærneweges ende færð ðonne micel folc to and yrnað ealle endemes þa ðe hiora ærninge trewað and swa hwelc swa aerest to þæm beage cymð þonne mot se hine habban him. Ælc wilnað þæt he scyle ærest to cuman and hine habban ac anum he þeah gebyreð. Swa deð eall moncynn on þis andweardan life irnað and onettað and willniað ealle þæs hehstan godes ac hit nis nanum anum men getiohhod ac is eallum monnum11

This passage is unfamiliar, unanthologized. It would make a good idiomatic gobbet to interpret cold turkey, ‘sight unseen,’ in an introductory course in Old English. It may not be easy to understand at first sight, let alone to legere et interpretari simul. Our eyes can scan the script, our tongues can give it voice on the principle of one letter, one sound, but can our hearts grasp the sense? So for those who know no Old English, and for those whose Old English may be rusty, I start by offering this initial word-by-word crib in nineteenth century style:

10 Hobbes, Human Nature, pp. 59–60. 11 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, ch. 37 (I.347). More accessible in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library edition, Irvine and Godden, OE Boethius, p. 302.

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And for the sake of idiomatic syntax, here it is en face, phrase by phrase, numbered for ease of commentary: A golden crown is hung

1a

at the end of a racecourse. A great crowd goes there and all start level, those who believe they can run and whoever reaches the crown first gets to keep it for himself. Each one wants to be the first to come and get it even though it gebyreð just one. So does everyman in this present life, run and hasten and all seek the highest good yet it isn’t getiohhod for/by a single individual but for/by all men.

1b 2a 2b 2c 3a 3b 4a 4b 4c 5a 5b 6a 6b

Mon hehð ænne heafodbeag gyldenne æt sumes ærneweges ende. Færð ðonne micel folc to and yrnað ealle endemes þa ðe hiora ærninge trewað and swa hwelc swa aerest to þæm beage cymð, þonne mot se hine habban him. Ælc wilnað þæt he scyle ærest to cuman and hine habban ac anum he þeah gebyreð. Swa deð eall moncynn on þis andweardan life, irnað and onettað and willniað ealle þæs hehstan godes ac hit nis nanum anum men getiohhod ac is eallum monnum.

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Who wrote this passage preserved in the Old English version of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae? My three modern versions of the Old English — a colloquial paraphrase, a literal interlinear gloss, and an en face bilingual translation — are meant to bring into relief nuances that any thoughful reader will want to ponder upon first looking into it. I want to respond to it as I did to Alfred’s Race for the Book: first as a decontextualized pericope, an autonomous aesthetic object, compact, vivid and distinct, before grappling with the question of how to identify its author.12 An unhoused relic of someone’s mind. Probably the hardest thing to preserve in any modern translation is the way the author trusts idiomatic syntax and vernacular rhythm to integrate these dozen clauses by communicating the tension in the overall curve of destiny which starts off with a golden crown at the end of a racecourse and ends up with one person owning that crown. It is now, thanks to Janet Bately and Bruce Mitchell, more widely understood that dividing an Old English paragraph into what we think of as sentences ‘destroys the flow of both prose and verse.’13 In Old English prose ‘the unit is not the phrase or the sentence but the paragraph or even larger sections.’14 A helpful way to experience the rhythm of this vernacular paragraph is to give it voice by reading it aloud. Not liturgically, as if reciting scripture. Conversationally, preferably off by heart, as if you’re telling somebody something. Grant that we shall never recover ‘the timing and intonation patterns of OE with sufficient accuracy to decide the exact relationship between OE paragraphs (as we shall do better to call them) and MnE sentences.’15 But if you give it a try, you may sense an initial cadence at ende (1ab), then a strong rhythmic and syntactic cadence (with a rare touch of alliteration) at þonne mot se hine habban him (2a–3b), a third — a cursus velox? — at anum he þeah gebyreð (4a–c), and a full and final cadence at eallum monnum (5a–6b). The passage begins with mon and comes to a rest at monnum. Experienced cumulatively, these four waves communicate the coherence of a single thought in a well-wrought paragraph, a gestalt in Herbert Read’s mystical sense:16 12 Here I am echoing and alluding to ch. 5, p. 203, n. 10 above. Via, Parables, p. x and passim. 13 Mitchell, Invitation to OE, p. 21. 14 Bately, Literary Prose, quoted and explored in detail by Mitchell, OES, § 1881 = 1.770–771. For an extreme case, see my analysis of the syntax of the West Saxon Regnal List in Kalmar, ‘And Then What?’ For more on this issue see Ian Robinson’s gracious study of the syntax of medieval and modern idiomatic prose rhythm, English Prose, especially pp. 66–69. 15 Mitchell, OES, § 1881 = 1.771. 16 I call Herbert Read mystical, as Paull Franklin Baum did in 1952, ‘cautiously, but in no pejorative sense.’ Baum, Prose, p. 63.

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Prose rhythm does not trip along in metrical feet, as verse does, but sweeps on in longer units. The paragraph is, indeed, the first complete and independent unit of prose rhythm. The sentence has rhythm, but a prose all sentences, even if these are in themselves perfectly rhythmical, is not perfect prose. The sentences must be dissolved in a wider movement and this wider movement is the rhythm of the paragraph — a rhythm that begins with the first syllable of the paragaph and is not complete without the last syllable. With the last syllable the rhythm ends and there is a rest.17

And again: Rhythm is not an a priori construction. It is not an ideal form to which we f it our words. Above all it is not a musical notation to which our words must submit. Rhythm is more profound than this. It is born, not with the words, but with the thought, and with whatever confluence of instincts and emotions the thought is accompanied. As the thought takes shape in the mind, it takes a shape. It has always been recognized that clear thinking precedes good writing. There is about good writing a visual actuality. It exactly reproduces what we should metaphorically call the contour of the thought. The metaphor is for once exact: thought has a contour or shape. The paragraph is the perception of this contour or shape.18

Whoever he may have been, the author of this Old English relic, this gobbet, this similitude, call it this fable, communicates the contours of his thought by his lucid articulation of the logic and ethos of his game, by the tension between his simple rule that the golden crown is simultaneously both prize and finishing line and his psychological principle that although we all know only one of us will satisfy the criterion for winning the prize nevertheless we can all imagine being that one. For Hobbes, by way of contrast, life is a race with no beginning and no end. No prize, no finishing line, no other garland but being foremost. You are always already nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. You did not all start together and none of you will ever win fair and square. The race never ends, it’s all Geworfenheit, all middle, all muddle. When you drop out of the race you die and there’s no crown waiting for you at the end, corruptible or incorruptible, whatever St Paul might claim. 17 Read, Prose, p. 61. On gestalt see p. 60. 18 Read, Prose, p. 61. (Italics original.)

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In Paul’s race, by way of further contrast, your incorruptible crown is your reward for managing to keep running all the way to the end, not for coming first.19 If you want to be a Christian you are not to imagine you can win your heavenly crown only if everyone else fails, for you are not meant to be competing against them all. You are not to win at their expense. Their loss is not your gain. Their gain is not your loss. The voice of Calvin on this point: Paul borrows a similitude from the race-course. For as in that case many descend into the arena, but he alone is crowned who has first reached the goal, so there is no reason why any one should feel satisfied with himself on the ground of his having once entered upon the race prescribed in the gospel, unless he persevere in it until death. There is, however, this difference between our contest and theirs, that among them only one is victorious, and obtains the palm — the man who has got before all the others; but our condition is superior in this respect, that there may be many at the same time. For God requires from us nothing more than that we press on vigorously until we reach the goal. Thus one does not hinder another: nay more, those who run in the Christian race are mutually helpful to each other. So run Here we have the application of the similitude — that it is not enough to have set out, if we do not continue to run during our whole life. For our life is like a race-course. We must not therefore become wearied after a short time, like one that stops short in the middle of the race-course, but instead of this, death alone must put a period to our running.20

Victor Pfitzner: There is no trace of any interest on the part of Paul to picture the life of the Christian as a contest or struggle. […] Paul replaces the Agon of virtue with the Agon of faith.21 And Anthony Thiselton: The climactic statement that only one receives the prize has nothing to do with any theology of exclusivism or elitism, but serves as part of the analogical picture which provides the setting for the notion of urgency 19 I Cor. 9.24. 20 Calvin, Commentaries on Paul. 21 Pfitzner, Paul and Agon, pp. 138, 194.

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and strength of motivation which leads the athlete to surrender lesser goods in order to attain the higher goal.22

What counts in our Old English similitude, on the contrary, is whether you won or lost. Not how you played the game. There’s no middle, no muddle. It begins with where, in space, and when, in time, the race will end. I want to suspend disbelief. Let me imagine that this similitude is, in its own way, as serious, as durchgedacht, as Hobbes’s, or Paul’s, that this succinct philosophical fable crystallizes someone’s vision of fate and free will, that this figura from an Alfredian work satisfies John Middleton Murry’s romantic, hagiographic, psychological criterion: The critic, in search of a quotation, looks for one that shall be completely congruous to his harmonized experience of the author’s work. […] He looks for some conjuncture, some incident in the work of a great writer which was so precisely fitted to his complex mode of experience that it served in the office of a prism: through it the whole spectrum of his emotions is suddenly concentrated into a ray of intense, pure light — the perfect condensation of a whole universe of experience into a dozen lines, or a hundred words.23

Commentary 1a mon ‘one’: The impersonal construction mon hehð excludes answers to such otherwise interesting questions as who calls the race, who places the crown there, who made it, for whom, in what style, out of what materials, on what model. This helps give the paragraph the concision and precision of a schematic diagram. Nothing relevant is excluded. Nothing irrelevant is included. What is relevant is when, where, how, and why the race ends. And how it begins. Not how far you run, how much time you take, what happens to you along the way, how hard you try, how passionately you desire the gold, how fervently you endure the agón. Not your passions. Not your virtue. Not how you play the game. 1b ærneweg ‘runway’: This schematically reduces space-time to a single linear dimension. Like Hobbes’s similitude it maps our lives onto points confined to moving forward on a line. It linearizes both space and time. 22 Thiselton, Corinthians, p. 709. 23 Murry, Style, p. 31.

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Linearization is always just another theoretical fiction, a mathematical idealization of reality. 1ab heafodbeag gyldenne → ende ‘golden crown → end’: The golden crown is the focal object around which the paragraph unfolds. It is the first thing mentioned in the opening words and is then mentioned four times more. It is the object of the verbs hehð (1a) and habban (4b) and the subject of gebyreð (4c) and finally (if the golden crown is ‘the highest good’) nis/is getiohhod (6a/b). Like one of the fetishes that changes hands in Romola, this crown thus functions as the protagonist of a moral fable.24 At the beginning of the paragraph it is already the end. And by the end it has become the property of one person. Since the rule passes ownership to him, he alone merits it. If reaching the crown first is an outward sign of inward grace, of fortune’s favor, then, like the Race for the Book, this game, this Race for the Crown, is a ritual legitimization of the transfer of property in a race against time. The golden crown marks the end point where today we would draw a finishing line orthogonal to the runway, This makes the game a little different from what we picture today as a race. For it’s not as if nowadays the first to break a thread strung across a finishing line gets to keep the broken thread, let alone as if desiring to own such a trivial material prize is what motivates the runners to compete for it in the first place. You don’t posess a finishing line by crossing it, but you own this crown by reaching it. It’s like a ‘winning post’ or ‘whippy’.25 In an ordinary race you want to run across the finishing line ahead of the other runners. Here you don’t. You want to stop at the prize, touch it, and keep it. Once the crown is touched, the game is over, and then it’s ‘all in, the whippy’s taken, one, two, three.’ It’s pointless for anyone to keep on running towards the goal, let alone to cross some line. The goal has been taken, the line has disappeared. The spell is broken. In Hobbes’s philosophy, it’s pointless to stop running. His similitude is an allegory in the narrowest sense: it maps a one-to-one correspondence 24 See above, ch. 1, pp. 28-29. 25 ‘“Whippy” is a contraction of “whipping post”,’ writes John Moxon, of Northmead. ‘When we played hide-and-seek, usually referred to as simply “hidings”, a person was selected to be “in”, who then had to stand at the whipping post with eyes covered and count to 100. On reaching 100, the one in would shout “Coming, ready or not” and then search for the others. On seeing one, the person’s name would be shouted and then a race to the whipping post would follow. Whoever got there f irst would touch the post and say: “All in the whippy’s taken, one, two, three.” If it was a hider, the one in would remain in, if the other, the one found would then be in.’ Anon., ‘Column 8,’ Sydney Morning Herald, December 31, 2010, https://www.smh.com.au/ national/nsw/column-8-20101230-19azu.html.

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between twenty-five situations in the middle of a race and his twenty-five passions. There’s no crown to take. For him it’s as if life can be compared to a game of chess which we must suppose to have no other goal but to keep moving the pieces around on the board until you die. There’s neither opening nor endgame. No closure, no checkmate, only the middle game. For our Anglo-Saxon philosopher, on the other hand, it’s as if life can be compared to a game of chess in which the opponent’s king is a piece of gold. The game ends when you take it off the board and keep it. But only if you can take it according to the rules. One day, when my son Christopher was ten, we substituted a couple of Pepperidge Farm Chess Cookies for a piece and a pawn. Whoever took an opponent’s cookie legally got to eat it. It changed the dynamics of the game. It concentrated our attention wonderfully. It motivated us no little and quite some. It helped me understand this Old English similitude. 2c þa ðe hiora ærninge trewað ‘those who believe in their running’: In Hobbes’s race you don’t choose to run. The idea of a free self is imaginary: A wooden top that is lashed by the boys, and runs about sometimes to one wall, sometimes to another, sometimes spinning, sometimes hitting men on the shins, if it were sensible of its own motion, would think it proceeded from its own will, unless it felt what lashed it. And is a man any wiser, when he runs to one place for a benefice, to another for a bargain, and troubles the world with writing errors and requiring answers, because he thinks he doth it without other cause than his own will, and seeth not what are the lashings that cause his will?26

Trewað is a powerful verb, cognate with ModE truth. I am tempted to unpack this as those who vow to run truly. But what could that mean? The only way to opt out of Hobbes’s game is by dying. Here, on the other hand, you must first choose whether or not to throw yourself into the spirit of the game in good faith, whether or not to freely entrust your fate to your running under these conditions. 3ab swa hwelc swa → him ‘whoever → him’: A succinct rhythmical clause, swa hwelc swa aerest to þæm beage cymð (‘whoever reaches the crown first’) defines the test and a cadential clause with a balancing rhythm, þonne mot se hine habban him (‘gets to keep it for himself’) bestows the prize. The curves of both rhythm and syntax encapsulate the logic and ethos of the game and the narrowing curve of its destiny, the plot of the drama which, 26 Molesworth, Hobbes, V, p. 55. Quoted in part by Tuck, Hobbes, p. 47.

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again, begins with the crown being offered to all the runners, micel folc, and ends with it belonging to a single individual, him. The rule that governs the game shapes the curve of destiny that transforms ‘whoever’ into ‘him.’ The prize is offered to all on an equal footing. It goes to one alone. 3a ærest ‘first’: A qualitative (‘earliest’), not a quantitative criterion. No scoring. No coming second or third. No measuring time, distance, speed. No breaking a previous record. No setting a new one. None of that counts. 4c gebyreð → 6a getiohhod ‘behooves’ → ‘imagined’: It’s not easy to find two Modern English verbs that capture how the tension between gebyreð and getiohhod suffuses the paragraph to shape the curve of destiny. Gebyreð in the present tense names the relationship between the crown and the one and only winner. The crown gebyreð the winner. The winner merits the crown. How you translate gebyreð will reflect how you think personal responsibility interacts with surrender to destiny, how you believe fate and justice play out in our shared life, how much alea you want to mix into your agon. Hit gebyreð him can often just mean ‘it happens to him, it falls to his lot.’ If you gamble, if you savor surrendering to destiny, to alea, then you are free to say gebyreð means it just so happens that the person who gets the crown is a lucky bastard favored by fortune. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Whereas if you think the runners control the outcome of a race, if you believe the winner merits the crown, if you favor agon over alea, then you may prefer to take hit gebyreð him in the sharper sense of ‘it rightfully belongs to him, fair and square,’ as when an Old English legal document confirms that such-and-such a property gebyreð so-and-so, or when Jesus says ‘Wist ye not that my Father’s business me gebyrað?’27 (It’s easier in German. The crown gebührt ihm. It’s his due. The glass slipper gebührt Cinderella. It belongs to her alone.) Getiohhod names the relationship between the ‘highest good’ and every living soul. What gebyreð is to the winner, getiohhod is to all the runners. The crown gebyreð the winner but it is getiohhod to, or by, or for, everyone. Tiohhian can bear a wide range of senses, depending on the context: allot, appoint, assign, consider, destine, determine, intend, purpose, resolve, suppose, or just plain ‘think.’28 Everyone — including the one who is ‘destined’ to win — thinks they will win the crown. One of them turns out to be 27 ‘Ða cwæð his modor to hym; Sunu, hwi dydest þu unc ðus. þin fæder and ic sarigende þe sohton; Ða cwæð he to hym. hwæt is þæt gyt me sohton: nyste gyt þæt me gebyrað to beonne on þam ðingum ðe mines fæder synt [Luke 2.49].’ Liuzza, Gospels, p. 104. Vulgate: ‘nesciebatis quia in his quae Patris mei sunt oportet me esse.’ (My italics.) 28 OE Thesaurus, 06.01.07.06.01|02, 06.02.06|14.02 v, 10.03.07.01|10 v. As we shall see Godden and Irvine add the sense of ‘to determine.’

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right. Everyone imagines their ‘highest good.’ It’s imagined by all to be for all, not just one. For example, when Wisdom first appears to Boethius in the Old English version, he tells him his disciples have torn his teaching to pieces where they teohhodon þæt he hine eallne habban sceoldon, ‘they had considered that they had him complete.’29 Godden and Irvine comment that here teohhodon means ‘they thought that they had him complete (but did not in fact).’30 This makes good sense of getiohhod in our passage as well: every runner thinks that he will get the crown but may not in fact get it, yet each one is determined to have it all. And the same may be said of ‘the highest good.’31 5a Swa deð eall moncynn ‘So does all mankind’: Here we have an application of the similitude. These final clauses postulate an analogy between real life and the idealized schematic game, between the hehste good, the summum bonum, the ‘highest good,’ call it salvation, and the golden crown. Swa deð eall moncynn resembles the formula swa deð ælc mann þe þysne sealm singð, ‘so does each person who sings this psalm,’ used, in various forms, to frame the succinct tropological exegesis of a psalm’s ethical dimension, to pivot from the literal to the moral sense of each particular psalm for every individual Christian.32 Tropological interpretation, to quote Ryan McDermott, ‘sets up a correspondence between this present life and the preceding text to reconcile the literal and the spiritual senses’ — in this case, the spiritual, call it now the psychological, sense of this race for a golden crown. It ‘merges the eternal and mystical calling of the soul with the historical specificity of practical action.’33 We are all like the runners in this race. We keep running as fast as we can, betting we can reach that one thing that, to each of us, matters most. The ‘highest good’ is getiohhod not just to that one among us who will, in the course of chronological time, actually reach the golden 29 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, I.245, tr. II.6. Cf. ‘they had determined to have all of him,’ tr. Irvine and Godden, OE Boethius, p. 14. 30 Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius II.6, n. 1. (My italics.) 31 The collocation in our paragraph of getiohhod with eall moncynn and andweardan life and willniað and hehstan god and eallum monnum is ‘pre-echoed’ in Prose 12: ‘Everyone wants to cuman to anum ende, come to a single end. Everyone tiohhað that whatever he loves above all other things is the best for him, that it is the highest good in this present life, the hehste good þises andweardan lifes, everyone wilnað to get it and tiohhað that when he gets it he can be very happy.’ Godden and Irvine, OE Boethius, I.435–439; Irvine and Godden OE Boethius, pp. 134–159. 32 ‘Each prose psalm is preceded by an Introduction that states a guiding theme for the psalm, expressed in multiple levels of interpretation’ of which the fourth is ‘a moral interpretation, applying the theme […] to any contemporary man who finds himself in an analogous situation.’ O’Neill, Psalms, pp. 23–24. 33 McDermott Tropologies, p. 6.

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crown but to all of us. Nonetheless we all run as if we believe we are the one to whom it rightfully belongs, gebyreð. Considered as a decontextualized unit of prose, an unhoused relic, this Race for the Crown is an intelligent work of the imagination. It’s not about something that happened once upon a time, or quodam die, or in such and such a year. It’s in the present tense, it’s about something that happens all the time.34 It’s not a narrative, it’s a theoretical, indeed a utopian, fiction.35 A philosophical fable. A map from God’s point of view of the game of life played out in human time and space. A diagram, a figura, of the narrowing curve of destiny. An image of the idea of a race, viewed objectively, theoretically, theologically, from God’s timeless angle of vision, outside time and space. God knows to whom the crown belongs, gebyreð. You can say he already knows ‘in advance’ who is ‘destined’ to win the race. Each runner is, nevertheless, responsible for betting he can run faster than everyone else.

When I was young When I was young I was convinced that throughout his life Alfred treasured his memory of how he won the race for the book. In 1962 Robert Brentano, my beloved teacher at UC Berkeley, arranged for me to meet his beloved teacher Galbraith, whom he had invited to come to Berkeley for a year.36 I was twenty-one. Galbraith was seventy-four. I was determined to prove to Galbraith that what he claimed was too good to be true was actually Alfred’s childhood as Alfred himself remembered it. We met. Within minutes we were wrangling about et legit. It was love at first sight. I insisted that despite Stevenson’s qui, the subject of legit was Alfred, not the magister. This thrilled Galbraith because he was sure he could now rapidly persuade me that Asser made stuff up, and didn’t really know Alfred personally. No infant could have read the book like that! I in turn was sure I could now persuade Galbraith that it was not Asser but Alfred who made it up — who told Asser ‘Then I took the book from my mother’s hand, went to the teacher and read it.’ This proved that Asser did so too know Alfred! I invoked the authority of 34 Note that to connect it to its original ‘reliquary’ it is framed as a þeaw, a game customarily played not only by the Romans in the past but still today ‘by many nations,’ on mangeum þiodum. Irvine and Godden, OE Boethius, p. 302. 35 On agón and alea as the creation of utopian conditions denied in real life, see above, pp. 259–261, nn. 8, 9. Caillois, Games, pp. 14, 17–19. 36 For Brentano’s richly nuanced memories of Galbraith see his 2000 Presidential Address to the Medieval Academy of America, ‘Preferences in History.’

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Viennese Depth Psychology on successful youngest sons, their dreams and childhood memories.37 We wrangled passionately and incisively. Galbraith walked over to a large plate window overlooking Berkeley and the Bay. He gazed out the window, silent and pensive. After a few minutes he turned back and proposed that we meet every fortnight to keep on wrangling for the rest of the semester. He pumped my hand warmly up and down, and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye prognosticated, ‘One day, Kalmar, you’re going to write a big fat book proving that Galbraith is all wrong. But you’re going to have to learn a lot of strict historical criticism to do it!’ After he returned to Oxford, he supervised my Berkeley senior honors thesis. In those days we still took it for granted that the best place to look for a true relic of Alfred’s mind was in the Works, in passages where the Old English translator ‘breaks free’ of the Latin. Since the Old English translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is all about the mystery of predestination and free will, it seemed reasonable to search there for evidence of a youngest son’s ‘guiding fiction’ of the curve of destiny. I was looking for a figurative ‘addition’ or ‘expansion’ to help me clinch my argument with Galbraith, to prove my thesis that the race for the book was Alfred’s intimate childhood memory. I wholeheartedly embraced Plummer’s conviction that the clearest insight into Alfred’s own character and mode of thought is to be found not where he agrees with Boethius but where he modifies or expands Boethius’s original Latin: If anyone will look through the additions made by Alfred to the text of the Boethius, which are very conveniently distinguished by italic type in Mr Sedgefield’s handy rendering of Alfred’s version into modern English, he can hardly fail to notice how many of them consist in metaphors and similes; often of great interest and beauty. Even where the simile was suggested by something in the text or commentary which Alfred had before him, it is often developed at much greater length. This is a point of some interest, because it shows that Alfred’s mind was of the class which delights in parable and figure, and makes it not unreasonable to look for deeper meaning in what he wrote and wrought.38

Plummer’s footnote pointed me to this passage (p. 161 onwards) in John Earle’s quintessentially reliquarian book on the Alfred Jewel as an authentic Alfredian relic: 37 Ansbacher, Individual Psychology, pp. 350–365, 376–383. 38 Plummer, Alfred, p. 183, n.1. Cf. above ch. 2, p. 85 and n. 54.

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Is there any reason to think that Alfred had an aptitude and a fondness for allegory? This question has been to me an admirable guide in observations on the extant writings of the king. It would be easy to show, by examples drawn from his writings, that he had a marked fondness for imagery and parable, that his habit of mind inclined to all figures of analogy and similitude. It was not a previous knowledge of these in the writings that led me to look for them in the Jewel, but reversely. I am not aware that anyone had called attention to this characteristic in the writings: I do not think I apprehended it from any other source than the Jewel itself. In regard to this particular feature, the Jewel has (for me) thrown light on the writings, and these again have reflected illustration back upon the Jewel. I hope this explanation may make it easier for some to think that the imagery of the Jewel is a strong indication that Alfred of Wessex was the designer.

I set out to work my way through Sedgefield’s helpful list of these figurative additions and expansions.39 One of them was about life as a race. Not for a book. For a crown. I was electrified by the uncanny resemblance between the youngest son’s race for the book and this race for the crown. I am not in the least ashamed to confess I felt a thrill of emotion akin to that felt by anyone in the olden days upon discovering a true relic of a beloved Saint. Proof that Race for the Book was Afred’s private parable, his personal pericope, a ruling metaphor of his modus vitae. The rule that governs the race for the book, jointly formulated by the mother and the youngest son, governs the race for the crown. The rules are isomorphic. In both cases, the interplay of merit and chance, of agón and alea, is equally clear and indisputable. Both begin by showing the prize to the competitors. In one case it’s ‘First one to sing this, gets it’; in the other it’s ‘First one to reach this, gets it.’ The rule transforms ‘whoever’ into ‘him.’ It’s as if Race for the Crown diagrams the plot of Race for the Book by stripping it down to an x-ray of its anatomy. Task and prize bond intimately: book and crown are simultaneously prize and endpoint. In both cases one clause sets the focal object as the task, the next endows it with value as the prize, guaranteeing that the prize is justly offered to all on an equal footing although it is justly destined to one alone.

39 Sedgefield, Alfred’s Old English, and Alfred’s Version.

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As much in the Old English as in the Latin the curves of rhythm and syntax epitomize the edifying rules of the game and the narrowing curve of its destiny:40 Quisquis vestrum whoever Swa hwelc swa citius first ærest istum codicum the prize to þæm beage discere possit learns/reaches cymð dabo illi illum gets it þonne mot se hine habban him

When I started writing my honors thesis I sent Galbraith this proof that the Latin Race for the Book and the Old English Race for the Crown are isomorphic, and thus began our intimate and lively correspondence, to which Andrew Prescott refers in his Foreword. In May 1964, after he had read the penultimate draft of the thesis, he reported that I had in large part converted him to my high opinion of the Race for the Book. 41 Here is what really persuaded him: I was delighted by your treatment of the Youngest Son theme. I am myself a 7th son — and can testify warmly to the essential truth of nearly all you say on the subject. In this section — for once — I feel Psychology and plain History work hand in hand. 42

Now I am old, older than Galbraith was then, and my thesis that the Race for the Book and the Race for the Crown are equally authentic relics of Alfred’s psyche seems to have lost its major premise. Alas! What was axiomatic — Alfred translated Boethius — has become problematic. What was then an axiom has now become quod erat demonstrandum, the theorem to be proved. It was already understood by the late Victorian scholars that if any particular addition turns out to be a translation of a Latin gloss, it ceases to be a reliable clue to the contours of Alfred’s own philosophy. Plummer: The interesting fact, that many of the additions in Alfred’s Boethius, especially those of a distinctly Christian character, are not really due 40 Ch, 5, p. 212 1ab : 3ab, and n. 38. 41 See Andrew Prescott’s Foreword, p. 13, above. 42 Private correspondence, May 9, 1964. About the OE Translations, he candidly described himself as ‘unpardonably ignorant.’

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to Alfred himself but to glosses and commentaries which were used by him or his learned assistants, was first pointed out by Dr. Schepss in a very suggestive article in the Archiv für’s Studium der neueren Sprachen. […] Till this field has been fully explored, we incur the danger of citing as specially characteristic of Alfred something which he only borrowed from others. 43

In the decades since then, the vast and tangled corpus of Latin glosses in manuscripts of the Consolatio philosophiae has been thoroughly explored. And in their monumental edition of the Old English Boethius, Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine have now tracked down, in Latin glosses and commentaries, the sources of so many additions that it has become controversial to continue believing Alfred wrote anything at all. Not only did he not translate Boethius’s Latin, he also was not the author of any of the similitudes and additions, the metaphors and allegories. The onus of proof has shifted to those of us who still want to believe that Alfred wrote something.44 Here is how, in ten words, Boethius alludes to the agón motif: Rerum etenim, quae geruntur, illud, propter quod unaquaeque res geritur, eiusdem rei praemium esse non iniuria videri potest, uti currendi in stadio, propter quam curritur, iacet praemium corona. Sed beatitudinem esse id ipsum bonum, propter quod omnia geruntur, ostendimus; est igitur humanis actibus ipsum bonum veluti praemium commune propositum. 45 (The fact is, for all actions that are undertaken, that particular thing for the sake of which any individual action is undertaken can be seen, not without cause, as the reward of the action, just as the crown for which the race is run lies as the reward for running on the track. But we have shown that happiness is the Good itself; the Good is the very thing for the sake of which all actions are undertaken; therefore it is the Good itself that has been placed before human actions as if it were their common reward.)46 43 Plummer, Alfred, pp. 180–181. 44 Discenza and Szarmach’s Companion to Alfred provides a comprehensive detailed guide to the state of the controversy in the year of its publication, 2015. 45 Boethius, Consolation, IV.3. Boethius may actually be alluding to Aristotle: ‘And just as at the Olympic games the wreaths of victory are not bestowed upon the handsomest and strongest persons present, but on men who enter for the competitions — since it is among these that the winners are found, — so it is those who act rightly who carry off the prizes and good things of life. ’ Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1099a, I.8, p. 13. 46 Boethius (tr. Relihan), Consolation, p. 100.

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Race for the Crown expands uti currendi in stadio, propter quam curritur, iacet praemium corona, ‘the prize a man competes for is said to be the reward.’47 My faith that this ‘expansion’ captures the contours of Alfred’s thought now needs to be justified. Yes, it is figurative, yes it ‘expands’ a point made in the Latin. But, no, it does not necessarily follow that it was expanded by Alfred, who therefore thought this was what life is like. 48 Kurt Otten’s richly rewarding study of König Alfreds Boethius appeared in 1964. 49 His holistic approach to syntax and stylistics enthralled me. Otten showed me, in patient and abundant detail, how Alfred’s mode of thought manifests itself at every level from macro- to microcosm, not just where he ‘breaks free’ of the Latin by writing similes and metaphors that find no warrant in Boethius, but in the very grain of his idiomatic Old English even when as literal as can be. I yearned to look with Otten’s philologically sensitive eye at how Alfred, over and over again, transforms what Boethius is saying, to see and hear, in these minute nuances of what look like accurate translations, the contrasts between the contours of Boethius’s Latin thoughts and Alfred’s Old English thoughts — between, in particular, their respective philosophies of destiny and free will, Fortuna and wyrd. The ethos of winning the crown and the book ‘fair and square’ illuminated, for me, the pages devoted by Otten to ‘Verdienst und Werkgerechtigkeit’ and ‘Wyrd — Fatum (Fortuna).’ ‘Alfred,’ wrote Otten in his final English summary, ‘distinguishes clearly between “vainglory” and that glory which has been earned rightly.’50 Could I dare to claim that what Race for the Crown and Race for the Book have in common epitomizes Alfred’s theology of justification by works? Would I ever dare claim that Alfred was more Pelagian than Augustinian?

Scylla and Charybdis I was young then. Now I am old, and I cannot invoke Otten’s authority, not only because his kind of stylistics is too pre-postmodern for words, but 47 Boethius (tr. Green), Consolation, p. 63. Cf. ‘The crown of victory is the purpose of running on the racetrack, and therein lies the reward.’ Boethius (tr. Walsh), Consolation, p. 77. 48 Godden and Irvine have not found a Latin source prior to the late ninth century. But they do point us to some intriguing parallels with an eleventh-century exposition of I Cor. 9.24 by Othlonus of Ratisbon. OE Boethius, II.437–438. 49 ‘The best book yet [viz. 1986] written on any of Alfred’s translations.’ Frantzen, Alfred, p. 63. 50 Otten, Alfred’s Boethius, p. 284. (My italics.)

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because his line of argument, like mine, has lost its major premise. The un-Boethian Weltanschaung of the Old English Boethius so tactfully and convincingly elucidated by Otten may be someone else’s, not Alfred’s.51 Otten may be right about the Weltanschaung, but wrong about whose it is. I still want to play my own figural game in good faith, to understand and validate the isomorphism, the resonance, between Win the Book and Win the Crown. I must navigate between two seductive syllogisms, between the Scylla of Otten’s Alfred wrote it all, therefore he wrote this and the Charybdis of Godden’s Alfred wrote none of it, not even this little paragraph. To steer between them, I articulate as narrowly as possible the theorem I aim to prove. Not Alfred translated Boethius. Instead just Alfred wrote Race for the Crown. To prove this more elementary theorem, I rely on a lemma: Whoever composed Remember the Pope and Race for the Book also composed Race for the Crown. Whoever first told one of these fables also told the other two. It will only remain to prove: no one but Alfred could be that person. The proof of the theorem, for better or for worse, is a crude reductio ad absurdum. If not Alfred, then who? There are those who cannot bring themselves to believe that a stouthearted Anglo-Saxon King unafraid to tread on the entrails of the dying could have known quite as much as the translator of Boethius obviously does about the chitinous murmur of Latin glosses in the margins of Carolingian manuscripts of the Consolatio. The logic of my situation thus comes to resemble what I said at the beginning of this book about believing that a reliquary may, after all, enshrine a fragment of the true Cross, about the very possibility of ever discovering an authentically Alfredian relic: ‘As long as there has existed, somewhere, sometime, at least one authentic relic, the historicity of the Beloved Person cannot be destroyed merely by disproving the authenticity of this or that reputed relic.’52 I can cheerfully grant you that often the author-function dubbed ‘Alfred’ is not really Alfred, that not every old relic contained in the Works is his, not every paragraph preserves a true taste of Alfred’s mind, his burning words. But quite possibly at least one of them does? Or can you prove that not even that much is possible? Prove to me beyond a shadow of doubt that Alfred didn’t, at the very least, write Race for the Crown or else I’m happy to suspend disbelief and entertain 51 It may be the Weltanschaung of a group: see Pratt, Alfred, pp. 264–307. 52 Ch. 1, p. 33 and cf. n. 13.

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the possibility that he did. Yes, to believe that Alfred did write something takes, in the end, an irreducible leap of faith. But to believe that Alfred could never have written Race for the Crown also, in the end, takes a leap of faith — in the opposite direction. Is that leap any shorter? Is this little relic authentic? Is it Alfredian? Is ‘Alfred’ Alfred? That’s the question driving my reliquarian inquiry towards its final conclusion. An authentic Alfredian relic might look like a laconic entry in a chronicle. It might look like a virtus in a Vita. Might it not also look like a paragraph in a vernacular magnum opus? Better still, might it look like the theme on which all three of these ‘relics’ are variations? This isn’t a question about Alfred and Boethius. It’s a question about the family resemblance between three fictions, three figurae, three fables: the fable of the son crowned by the high priest in the holy city, the fable of the favored youngest son who wins the contest for his mother’s songbook, and the fable of life as a race for a golden crown. Were these three fables the work of the same fabulist? And if so is that Alfred or somebody else? This is like the question provoked by parables attributed to Jesus: is there a small set of parables whose inner figural structure is similar enough to warrant claiming that they were composed by the same author, whether Jesus or someone else dubbed ‘Jesus’? Do our three ‘Alfredian’ fables bear enough structural similarity to support the hypothesis that they are three expressions of the same psyche, the same life-project, the same existential self-understanding? So I return to Remember the Pope. Our narratives, as James Hillman wisely puts it, tend to become the ego’s trip: ‘The hero has a way of finding himself in the midst of any story. He can turn anything into a parable of a way to make it and stay on top.’53 And when I ask the protagonist of Remember the Pope, ‘Do you live your life like this race for a golden crown?’ I hear him reply, ‘Indeed I do. I’m so glad you noticed. I won the race against time for the right to wear my golden crown and be the king. My crown was getiohhod to all of us — I mean, of course, to those of us whose kin goes back to Cerdic and Woden — but it gebyreð me. I knew I’d be the first to reach it, ahead of all the others, and I’ve proved I was right.’ To which I immediately object, ‘No, Alfred, you are not the first. You are, on the contrary, the last. In your West Saxon King List and again in your Chronicle it so happens that you have to wait until everyone else has

53 Hillman, Healing Fiction, p. 25.

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had their turn, until the cookie crumbles. First your father has to die. Then each of your older brothers. One at a time. As it so happens, you come last.’ ‘Aha!’ says my Alfred, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘but you see, I don’t wait my turn do I? I jump the gun!54 Granted, I was literally the last of my brothers to take the throne. But spiritually, I was the first of us to reach the crown in 853 when the Pope anointed me king in Rome. I’ve earned my golden crown fair and square. If I wear it on my head it’s because I have proved I deserve to. It rightfully belongs to me, first and foremost. Chronologically I came last. Spiritually — or, as you like to put it nowadays, psychologically — I came first. I won. Es gebührt mir.’ Not that the creative work of linking the three fables figurally was necessarily conscious. If their author was playing his own typological game of figures at a subconscious level deeper than conscious artistry, then what the links reveal is his psyche.

Envoi In each of the three fables a prize offered to all belongs rightfully only to the one who first reaches it. If Alfred is indeed the original author of all three, along with their dynamically interacting prefigurations and fulfilments, if he is a romantic liar, it is because this is how he chooses to give meaning to his life. This is his modus vitae. Nowadays we construe our childhood memories psychologically. The typological work done in Alfred’s day by the Spirit is done today by the Psyche. All of us are the authors, not just the protagonists, of our childhood fables. We each draw our curve, live it, and prove it was drawn by destiny. To extinguish every last spark of romance from how Alfred experienced his own life wie es eigentlich gewesen is to throw out the historical baby with the spiritual bathwater. Yet one does ask what if Jesus is the author of none of his parables? So if Alfred is the author of none of his fables, what then? This tantalizing question naturally remains for the infidel sceptic to ponder.

54 And don’t forget Ashdown, ch. 5, p. 215, n. 48 above.



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Index A Abels, Richard, 83, 90–2, 223 Aelred of Rievaulx, 73–6, 79, 89 Æthelweard (Ethelwerd; chronicler), 72, 97, 122 Æthelwulf (Alfred’s father), 31, 71, 73, 83, 93, 139, 191–2 Alexander, R. C., 112 Alfred, King and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 31–4, 67–8, 84–5, 89–93 as author of his hagiography, 91–2, 232, 255, 274–5, 278–80 biliteracy, 46, 141, 194, 232–3, 241–5, 250–1 Gregory’s Pastoral Care, 36, 37–8, 132–3n94 literacy, 130–1, 139n, 218–19, 218n57 translations, 39n29, 40, 46, 93, 132n94, 142, 241 as translator of Boethius, 275–9 Alfred Jewel, 36, 37–8, 273–4 Alfred Jubilee celebration (1849), 40, 43–5, 53–4 Alfred Millenary (1901), 31–2, 34–6, 86–7, 143 Alfred’s birth date Giles’ ‘Harmony of the Chroniclers’, 97–101 ideological struggle over, 96–7 Plummer’s choice of 848, 145–53 Stubbs’ earlier date, 135–41 see also Athenæum controversy Alfred’s childhood contest for the book and Alfred’s literacy, 218–21 alternative translations of, 225–7 analysis of Asser’s account, 208–18 Asser’s account of, 193, 196 Bishop Clifford’s interpretation as parable, 129–31 as folktale, 203–4 as parable, 202–3 Alfred’s Papal anointing (853 AD) account in Aelred’s Genealogia, 73–7 Alfred as source of fable, 68, 90–2 Herbert Thurston’s affirmation of, 86–8 mocked by David Hume, 71–2 Plummer’s theory on, 82–6, 89–90 recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 68, 71, 79–82 as told in Asser’s Life of Alfred, 71, 76 alliteration, 211, 214n44, 236n23 ‘Anglo-Saxon’, as generic term for the English, 50 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Parker Chronicle) Alfred’s anointment by the Pope, 68, 71, 76, 79–82, 83, 89 Earle on chronology in, 78–9 lack of birthdate for Alfred, 98–9 migration myth, 81n37 Plummer’s edition (1899), 47, 142, 145–7

read as literature, 81 as reliquary, 31, 38–9, 67–8 West Saxon Regnal List, 145–7, 151–3 Anlezark, Daniel, 132–3n94 Arendt, Hannah, 144 Arnold, Matthew, 175 Asser’s Life of Alfred Alfred’s biliteracy, 233–45 Alfred’s birthdate, 129–35 Alfred’s literacy, 206 Alfred’s pilgrimage to Rome, 71, 76 allusion and echoes in, 174–80 and the Athenæum controversy, 115–34 authenticity questioned, 99, 134–6 see also Wright, Thomas Celtic roots, 165, 179–80 clichés in, 190–2 Cotton MS, 207 and Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, 169–74, 175–9, 180–1, 184–9, 193–7 et legit interpretations, 218–22 Gautier’s edition (2013), 165, 165n14 Giles’ defence of, 100–1, 102 and hagiography, 125, 127–34, 156–7, 167–9, 178, 207, 221–2, 233–4, 238–42, 255 Lingard’s defence of, 99–100 literary value, 165–9 Penguin Classics edition (1983), 162–5 and redaction criticism, 204–7 rhetoric, 174, 175–7 structure, 173 Stubbs’ treatment of, 134–41 translation by A. S. Cook, 163n5, 192, 219, 225n79 use of irony, 193–7 and William of Malmesbury, 135–6 see also Stevenson, William H. edition (1904) ‘Astronomer’, Life of Louis the Pious, 140 Athelney, 107 Athenæum controversy and Alfred’s birthdate, 116, 129–34 and Asser’s authenticity, 124–9 compared to a chess game, 115 and the death of Halfdene, 115–16, 118–21 influence of, 134 Lingard’s dictum, 121–4 Auerbach, Erich, 77, 80, 222 Austin, Alfred, England’s Darling, 88 B Bann, Stephen, 73n15 Barton, John, 128, 224 Bately, Janet, 264

304  Berschin, Walter, 167–9, 180, 190, 238 Bertram, Charles, medieval forgery, 73, 73n15 Besant, Sir Walter, 143 Biblical criticism, 204–7 bilingualism, 233, 243, 245–6, 246–7 Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 257–8, 262–4, 267–72, 273, 275–8 Bonaparte, Felicia, 29n Boniface, 245–6, 248–250 Bornkamm, Günther, 205n16 Bosworth, Joseph, 48–9n55, 65 Brentano, Robert, 95, 272 Brooke, Christopher, 127 Buckland, Dr William, 108 Burton, Pierre-André, 76n21, 77n25 Byrhtferth of Ramsey, 72 C Caillois, Roger, 259–61 Calvin, John, 266 Campbell, Alistair, 146 Catholic Hierarchy in England, restoration of (1850), 105, 107 Cavell, Stanley, 257 Cerdic, 81n37, 82 Charles-Edwards, Thomas, 171–4, 181, 235 chess, strategy, 115n66 Cicero, 189 Cistercian affective theology, 75 Clifford, Bishop William anti-infallibilism, 103–4, 106, 107, 110–11 consecrated Bishop by Pius IX, 106 family background, 104–5 President of the Somersetshire Archaeological Society, 108–9 and site of Battle of Edington, 108–9 and Ubbo’s burial place, 113–14 Ubbo’s burial place, 113–14, 119 see also Athenæum controversy Collingwood, W. G., Ruskin Relics, 27–8 Collins, Wilkie, No Name, 26–7 Combwich, Somerset, 114 Comte, Auguste, 29, 34–6, 37 Conybeare, Edward, 86n57 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 31 Cottonian Library, destroyed by fire (1731), 143 court culture, West Franks and West Saxons, 167 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 168, 191 Cynric, 81n37, 82 Cynwith, Battle of, 110, 113–14, 118, 120 Cziekowski, Frederick J., 107 D Daniélou, Jean, 251, 253, 254 Davie, Donald, 210 DeKoven, Bernie, 258 Dixon, Ella Hepworth, 30 Dodd, C. H., 202

Donoghue, Daniel, 235n9 Dumville, David, 165, 221 E Earle, John, 48n, 78–9, 81, 142, 152, 273–4 Edington, Battle of, location of battlefield, 108–9 Einhard, Vita Karoli (Life of Charlemagne), 129, 156–7, 168, 175–9, 184–9, 193 Eliot, George, Romola, 28–31 Ely, Dean of see Stubbs, Charles W., Dean of Ely Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 200, 201, 223 Erasmus, on St Jerome, 38, 48, 83 Ethelwerd see Æthelweard F Felix, Life of Guthlac, 190–1 fetishism, 29, 30, 32, 34–5, 37, 67, 154, 232, 268 figura, 193–4, 196, 206, 222, 224, 239, 247, 250 Fontaine, Jacques, 80, 157, 253–5 Foot, Sarah, 82 Foucault, Michel, 47, 182n65 Fox, Samuel, Metres of Boethius, 48–9n57, 53, 56n84, 59, 59n92, 62–3, 64 Frantzen, Allen J., 47 Freeland, Jane Patricia, 74n16 Freeman, Elizabeth, 75–6 Frye, Northrop, 80, 231 G Galbraith, V. H. on Alfred’s winning the book, 203, 275 on Asser’s inauthenticity, 40n30 on Asser’s Life as fiction, 239 on Asser’s Life of Alfred, 272–3 on Asser’s use of Einhard, 184–9, 196 as historian, 182–3 and plagiarism in Asser’s Life, 180–1 Gautier, Alban, 156n164, 165 Giles, John Allen and the Alfred Jubliee (1849), 43 and Alfred’s birthdate, 134 forging of marriage certificate, 101–2 ‘Harmony of the Chroniclers’, 48n, 97–101, 110 his brother Charles Edmund, 108n Jubilee Edition of the Whole Works of King Alfred the Great (1852), 40, 45–51, 54–6, 60, 97 Latin and Greek scholarship, 51–2 Life and Times of King Alfred the Great, 59 Gladstone, William Ewart, Expostulation, 107, 114–15, 115n65 Godden, Malcolm, 46, 132n94, 231, 241–2, 242n31, 243, 259n7, 269, 276 Gospels, 213–14, 214n43, 222–3, 253 Greene, Thomas, 179, 190, 196 Gregory (in Liudger, Vita Gregorii), 216, 245–6, 248–9 see also bilingualism Grimm, Jakob, 61

305

Index

Grimm Brothers, 62, 70 Gross, John, 36 H hagiography and chronology, 78–82, 238–9 function of, 157 and history, 75–7 Halfdene, 115, 118, 120 Halphen, Louis, 170–1 Harding, John Antony, 107 Harrison, Frederic, 34–8, 143 Hellman, Siegmund, 156, 171, 178 Henry of Huntingdon, 72, 97 Herodotus, 204 Higgins, John, 165 Hillman, James, 279 Hobbes, Thomas, 261–2, 265, 268, 269 Hollander, John, 189, 224 Howe, Nicholas, 82, 233 Howlett, David, 165, 187, 188, 189, 225n79 Howorth, Henry and Alfred’s birthdate, 97 and Asser’s authenticity, 134–6 background and career, 116–17 scepticism over Alfred, 221n69 see also Athenæum controversy Hume, David account of Alfred’s pilgrimage to Rome, 71–2, 76, 83, 91 aversion to hagiography, 78 I imitatio, 156–7, 161, 168–72, 180, 181, 190, 196 Irvine, Susan, OE Boethius, 269, 276 J James, Henry, The Awkward Age, 27, 28 Jane, L. C., 219, 225n79 Jesus, Alfred compared to, 34, 68, 89n68, 130, 213, 217–18, 222–3, 279, 280 John of Wallingford, 72 John of Worcester (‘Florence’), 72, 97, 98n, 101, 121, 122 Jones, Chris, 48, 58n89, 66 Judith (daughter of Charles the Bald), 139 K Kemble, John Mitchell, 48n, 61–2 Kermode, Frank, 77n27, 222, 254 Kershaw, Paul, 166, 178 Keynes, Simon on the Alfred Jubilee (1849), 40n31, 43–4 on Alfred’s anointment by the Pope, 88–9 on Alfred’s biliteracy, 241 and Alfred’s literacy, 220–1 on Alfred’s ‘proverbs’, 59n91 and Alfred’s race for the book, 225n79 on the cult of Alfred, 47, 72, 257

Keynes and Lapidge, translation of Asser’s Life (1983), 88–9, 122, 162–5, 164n8, 220–1, 225n79, 241 Kirby, J. E., 136 Kuhn, Thomas, 169n28, 240 Kuttner, Stephen, 111 L language borders, 244, 246–50 Lapidge, Michael see Keynes and Lapidge Lappenberg, J. M., 118, 124 Lavelle, Ryan, 109, 112 Leo IV, Pope, 76–7, 79–80, 83, 84, 87–8, 90, 91 Lerer, Seth, 219n58 Liebermann, Felix, 84 Lingard, John on Asser’s Life of Alfred, 99–100, 122–4, 142 History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 99 literacy, 132n93, 203, 215, 218n57, 219, 231, 233, 236, 240, 242–51 Logan, Peter Melville, 34 Lubac, Henri de, 35n16, 231, 251–3, 255 M Manchesterismus, 117, 117n67, 125, 181, 221 Mann, Thomas, 70 Manning, Cardinal Henry, 103, 106, 107 Mark (Evangelist), 202, 206, 206n21, 214, 222 Markus, R. A., 224 Martin, Henri, 174 Martínez Pizarro, Joaquín, 208–9, 210 Mayor, John E. B., 73n15 McDermott, Ryan, 269 Michaels, Walter Benn, 258 Miller, J. Hillis, 29n Milton, John, 189 Mitchell, Bruce, 146, 264 Momma, Haruko, 48 Month, The (Jesuit journal), 86–7 Morris, Richard, 66n115 Mortensen, Lars Boje, 250 Moxon, John, 268n25 Murry, John Middleton, 267 N Nelson, Janet, 80, 84n51, 87n62, 88, 257 Newman, John Henry, 33–4, 102–3, 104, 110, 114–15 Nichols, Aidan, 252 Noble, Thomas, 171 O O’Camb, Brian, 59n91 Otten, Kurt, 277–8 P Page, John R., 107 Papal Infallibility, 103–4, 106, 107, 110–11 see also Clifford, Bishop William

306  parables, 201–2, 213–14, 237, 256, 273–4, 279–80 Paris, Matthew, 72 Parker Chronicle see Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Paschasius Radbertus, Life of Wala, 180, 180n60 Paul, St, 265–6 Pauli, Dr, 118, 119, 124 Paulinus of Milano, 193–4, 211 Penguin Classics, 162 Perrin, Norman, 79, 206, 206n21, 222–3 Pfitzner, Victor, 266 Pius IX, Pope, 102, 104, 105–6 Plummer, Charles on Alfred as source of Papal anointment fable, 81, 82–6, 89–90, 92–3 and Alfred’s birthdate, 96, 141–53 on Asser’s Life of Alfred, 128, 131, 174–5, 189 edition of Anglo-Saxon chronicle, 142, 145–7 edition of Asser’s Life (1889), 47, 78n31, 164n8, 166 faith in Alfred as author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 67–8 Ford lectures (1901), 47–8, 67, 68, 82, 142 and OE translation of Boethius, 273, 275–6 on paucity of historical evidence for Alfred, 155–6 Pratt, David, 46n47 Prescott, Andrew, 182n65, 275

Sot, Michael, 171 Southern, Richard, 184 Spelman, Sir John, Life of Ælfred the Great, 59–60, 59n91, 60n98, 62, 92n73 St Albans, School of, 72 Stephanus, Eddius, Life of Wilfrid, 179 Sterne, Lawrence, 231 Stevenson, William Henry on Alfred’s anointment by the Pope, 72–3, 88, 93 and Alfred’s birthdate, 96, 150n147 and Alfred’s literacy, 219–20 on Asser’s use of Celtic rhetoric, 175 edition of Asser’s Life (1904), 48, 122, 125, 128, 134, 154–6, 163n5, 164, 166, 181, 206–7 on Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, 170 Stubbs, Bishop William on Alfred’s anointment by the Pope, 87 and Alfred’s birthdate, 96, 134–41, 147–50, 154, 244 Stubbs, Charles W., Dean of Ely, 31–2, 33, 34, 37, 67–8, 142 Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 169–70, 178–9, 189, 193 Sulpicius Severus, Life of St Martin, 169, 189, 190, 207, 253–5, 255 Sydney University, 44–5

R Radice, Betty, 162 Ramsay, Sir James, 150 Read, Herbert, 264–5 redaction criticism, 204–7, 222–3, 222n72 reliquaries as Containers, 32–4 texts as, 38–40 see also Victorian reliquarianism Rice, Grantland, 257 Richard of Cirencester, Speculum Historiale, 73 Ricks, Christopher, 178, 179, 179n57, 185, 224 Rieu, E. V., 162 Robinson, Ian, 215n49 Ross, Angus, 41 Russell, Dr, 52–3

T Thiselton, Anthony, 266 Thomson, Ebenezer, 55n83 Thorpe, Benjamin, 48n Thurston, Herbert SJ, 86–8, 154 Toynbee, Arnold J., 70–1, 77 Tremp, Ernst, 140 Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 117n67 Tupper, Martin and the Alfred Jubilee, 43 editor of The Anglo-Saxon, 50 improvised versifying, 63n110 and the Jubilee Edition of Alfred’s Works, 51 ‘Metrical Translation of King Alfred’s Poems’, 48–9 poetry of, 41–3 stammer, 40, 42, 54, 67 translation of Alfred’s poems, 54–5, 56–61, 62–7 translations, 52–3 Proverbial Philosophy, 42–3

S Sallust, 190 Scharer, Anton, 167, 171, 178 Sedgefield, Walter J., 274 Sedulius Scottus, 167 Simeon of Durham, 97, 98n, 101, 122 similitudo, 75, 76 see also Cistercian affective theology Simmons, Clare, 49 Smyth, Alfred P., 132, 132–3n94, 203–4, 205–6, 221, 221n69, 225n79 Society of Antiquaries, 61 Somersetshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, 108

U Ullathorne, Bishop William, 103, 104 V Vatican Council I (1870), 102, 104, 106 Veyrard-Cosme, Christiane, 171 Victorian reliquarianism, 26–31, 67 Vinay, Gustavo, 195–6

307

Index

W Wantage, 40, 53 Weld, Cardinal Thomas, 105 Weld, Thomas, the Elder, 104–5 Welsh medieval culture, 171–2, 243 Whitaker, Rev. John, 112 White, Hayden, 189n88 Whitelock, Dorothy, 132–3n94, 219, 220, 225n79 Wilcox, Donald, 238 William of Malmesbury, 72, 135–6, 138 William of Sudbury, 73

Willis, N. P., 41 Winchester Cathedral, 31 Wiseman, Cardinal Nicholas, 111 Woolley, Rev. John, 44, 45n Wormald, Patrick, 84, 156n164, 174, 231, 240–1, 243n34, 256 Wright, Thomas, 48n, 99–100, 119 Y Yeats, W. B., 257 Young, Robert, 50–1