The Anglo-Saxons: The World through their Eyes 9781407312620, 9781407322766

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Contributors
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: Chosen People in their Place
Chapter 1: Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks
Chapter 2: Bede’s Vision of an English Britain
Chapter 3: The Sense (or Absence) of Place in Bede
Part II: Life in Anglo-Saxon England
Chapter 4: Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England
Chapter 5: The Complexities of the Simple Comb
Chapter 6: Dwarves, Nosebleeds and a Scurvy Horse: some uses of manuscripts in late Anglo-Saxon England
Chapter 7: The Liturgy and the Laity
Part III: Beyond the Shore
Chapter 8: The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times
Chapter 9: Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles
Part IV: The Mediterranean and Beyond
Chapter 10: Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps
Chapter 11: The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata
Chapter 12: Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni
Chapter 13: Speaking Beyond the Light: experience and auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum
Part V: The North, The Universe
Chapter 14: Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion
Chapter 15: The Creation Riddle and Anglo-Saxon Cosmology
Appendix
Index of Persons and Places
Index of manuscripts

Citation preview

The Anglo-Saxons: The World through their Eyes Edited by

Gale R. Owen-Crocker Brian W. Schneider

BAR British Series 595 2014

ISBN 9781407312620 paperback ISBN 9781407322766 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407312620 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

This book is dedicated to Blake Malcolm Whatson, first grandson of Brian Schneider, born on Sunday 9 February 2014

Contents List of Illustrations.................................................................................................................................iii List of Tables..........................................................................................................................................iii Contributors...........................................................................................................................................iv Abbreviations........................................................................................................................................vii Introduction.............................................................................................................................................1 Gale R. Owen-Crocker The University of Manchester Part I Chosen People in their Place.........................................................................................................5 1. Bede’s Use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks......................................................... 7 Luca Larpi, The University of Manchester 2. Bede’s Vision of an English Britain..................................................................................................17 Nicholas J. Higham, The University of Manchester 3. The Sense (or Absence) of Place in Bede.........................................................................................23 Christopher Grocock, Independent scholar Part II Life in Anglo-Saxon England.................................................................................................... 31 4. Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England...................................................................................................33 Debby Banham, University of Cambridge 5. The Complexities of the Simple Comb............................................................................................. 49 Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler, Independent scholars 6. Dwarves, Nosebleeds and a Scurvy Horse: some uses of manuscripts in late Anglo-Saxon England................................................................................................................ 55 Donald G. Scragg, The University of Manchester 7. The Liturgy and the Laity................................................................................................................. 61 Joyce Hill, University of Leeds Part III Beyond the Shore.....................................................................................................................69 8. The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times..................................................................................................... 71 Mateusz J. Fafinski, Humboldt Universität, Berlin 9. Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles..................................................................................79 Jill Frederick, Minnesota State University Moorhead Part IV The Mediterranean and Beyond...............................................................................................87 10. Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps......................89 Michael King, Down County Museum 11. The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata................................................................................. 103 Marilina Cesario, Queen’s University Belfast

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12. Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni..................................................... 111 Katherine Barker, Bournemouth University 13. Speaking Beyond the Light: experience and auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum.................................................................................. 129 A. J. Ford, Church of England Part V The North, The Universe....................................................................................................... 139 14. Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion................................................................ 141 Frank Battaglia, College of Staten Island, City University of New York 15. The Creation Riddle and Anglo-Saxon Cosmology...................................................................... 149 Erin Sebo, Queen’s University Belfast Index of Persons and Places................................................................................................................ 157 Index of Manuscripts.......................................................................................................................... 162

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List of Illustrations Fig. 5.1 Single-sided simple combs of triangular, rectangular and round-backed form from Lackford, Suffolk (after Lethbridge 1951) Fig. 5.2 Single-sided simple combs from Spong Hill (after Riddler and Trzaska-Nartowski 2013, fig 2.55) Fig. 5.3 Dimensions of early Anglo-Saxon single-sided simple combs (Length vs Height) Fig. 5.4a Functional single-sided simple comb, Loveden Hill, Lincolnshire Fig. 5.4b Functional single-sided simple comb, Highdown, Sussex Fig. 10.1  Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps (© Trustees of the British Museum) Fig. 10.2   The curved end of one half-clasp (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.5B © Trustees of the British Museum) Fig. 10.3   Schematic drawing of the boars on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps Fig. 10.4a   The serpents on one shoulder-clasp (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.4B, Sutton Hoo © Trustees of the British Museum) Fig, 10.4b   The boar crests/two-headed serpent along the curved edge of one shoulder clasp Fig. 10.4c    A filigree serpent on the Milton Brooch (Victoria and Albert Museum M109-1939) Fig. 10.5a    Boar-head hanging-bowl escutcheon, Sutton Hoo ship burial (after Bruce-Mitford 1983) Fig. 10.5b    Boar head in relief on eyebrow of the Sutton Hoo helmet (reconstruction after Bruce- Mitford 1978) Fig. 10.5c    The gilded copper alloy boar figurine with garnet inlaid eyes, Benty Grange helmet, Derbyshire Fig. 10.5d    Design on a bronze die for stamping foil for helmet decoration, Torslunda, Öland, Sweden Fig. 10.5e   Boar-heads in cloisonné work on a pendant from Womersley, Yorkshire and on a disc- brooch from Faversham, Kent (after Speake 1980) Fig. 10.6a   The central pine-cone and steps design on one shoulder-clasp Fig. 10.6b   Roman pine-cone finial from a tomb-monument found near Inveresk Roman fort, Scotland (NMS FV 31) Fig. 10.7   Stone pine-cone on the summit of the so called tomb of Galla Placidia, Ravenna (5th century AD) Fig. 10.8a   Pine-cone fountain and cantharus design found on mosaics in the baptistery of the Episcopal Church, Stobi, Macedonia Fig. 10.8b   Pine-cone fountain and cantharus design from an apsed room, Stobi, Macedonia Fig. 10.9    The 1st century AD bronze Pigna fountain, formerly re-used in the atrium of St Peter’s, Rome, now located in the Cortile della Pigna (Photo: Anna Fox) Fig. 10.10a  Roman bronze pine-cone fountain re-used in Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen Fig. 10.10b The Fountain of Life design interpreted on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps Fig. 12.1 An Algerian sole-ard closely resembling Roman design and harnessed for working with a single animal, re-drawn from K. D. White, Greek and Roman Technology (London, 1984), 59; Fig 49 Fig. 14.1 The bog shrine at Forlev Nymølle, find concentration 9 (after Sanden and Capelle, Guder, Fig. 90) Fig. 14.2 Drilled bone-tempered sherd from Gudme area (after Stilborg, Shards, Fig. 49) Fig. 14.3 Large stones from find concentration IV, Forlev Nymølle, where human shoulder-blade was found (after Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle’, p. 154, Fig. 8) Fig. 14.4 Wooden staves shaped by a tool from find concentrations III (a), one of a pair, and VII (b), Forlev Nymølle (after Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle’, p. 179, Fig. 28 c-d)

List of Tables

Table 1.1 Table 1.2 Table 11.1

‘Gildasian’ entries in CM Chronological Table: Bede HE I.2-24 Parallels between Aldhelm’s Scylla riddle, Ovid, Vergil and other classical authors

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Contributors

Debby Banham is an Anglo-Saxon historian based in Cambridge, where she teaches for various departments of the University. She has also taught for Birkbeck College in London for the past twenty years. Her main research interests are in Anglo-Saxon medicine, diet and food production. She is currently finishing a book on Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming with Dr Rosamond Faith, the culmination of many years’ work. Previous publications include Monasteriales indicia: the Anglo-Saxon monastic sign language (AngloSaxon Books, 1990) and Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England (Tempus, 2004).

Katherine Barker is an historical geographer with an interest in the early medieval; a University of Birmingham graduate with an MA from UCL. Following publication of original work on Sherborne’s early ecclesiastical estate she was appointed part-time tutor with the then Bristol University Extra-mural Department where she worked with Mick Aston. A founder-member of the Society for Landscape Studies with Della Hooke, in 1992 she was appointed Senior Lecturer at the then new Bournemouth University. Between 2003-11 she was Hon. Editor of the DNHAS Dorset Proceedings, launching the Dorset County Boundary Survey in 2006. In 2005 she convened a Sherborne conference to mark the 1300th anniversary of the founding of the bishopric. Since then she has engaged in a re-reading, re-translation and re-thinking of first bishop Aldhelm’s hitherto largely neglected literary corpus.

Frank Battaglia is Professor of English at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. He is working on a book titled BEOWULF: the war god goes to church. In ‘The Matriliny of the Picts,’ Mankind Quarterly 1990, he offered a method for discerning matrilineal social organization in the spatial distribution of households in a landscape.

Marilina Cesario is Lecturer in the Earliest English Writings and Historical Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast. She has published articles on the Latin and English traditions of the Revelatio Esdrae, on wind and sun prognostications, natural phenomena in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and on manuscripts. She has edited with K. Prietzel a special issue on Holy and Unholy Appetites in Anglo-Saxon England. A Collection of Studies in Honour of Hugh Magennis (English Studies, 2012). She is currently working on a monograph on the Signs of the Weather in Anglo-Saxon England which is sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust.

Mateusz Fafinski studied history, literature and classics at the universities of Toruń (Poland), Poznań (Poland), Faroe Islands, Leeds (UK) and at Humboldt University in Berlin (Germany). His main research interests are centred on the problems of migration, cultural exchange and creation of cities in the early Middle Ages. He also works on the popularization of new technology in historical and archival sciences and the problems of reconstructing the historical space. He worked at the National Museums of Scotland and is currently living in Berlin preparing a study on the interactions between the Baltic and the Anglo-Saxon world. He translates and edits historical books.

A. J. Ford is a priest in the Church of England serving his title in the parish of St George, Jesmond, in the Diocese of Newcastle. Before ordination he worked in the Palaeography Room at Senate House Library, University of London. During that time he wrote a Manchester doctorate on the manuscripts of the Wonders of the East. He is currently working on a project exploring the theology and practise of prayer in the medieval tradition. 

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Jill Frederick is Professor of English at Minnesota State University, Moorhead. She has presented and published on Anglo-Saxon saints’ lives, the Exeter Book riddles, and the Bayeux Tapestry.  Recent publications include ‘Slippery as an Eel:  Harold’s Ambiguous Heroics in the Bayeux Tapestry’ (New Research on the Bayeux Tapestry: The Proceedings of a Conference at the British Museum, ed. M. J. Lewis, G. R. Owen-Crocker, and D. Terkla (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011) and ‘Confessional Discourse in an Old English Life of Saint Margaret’ (The Power of Words: Anglo-Saxon Studies Presented to Donald G. Scragg, ed. H. Magennis and J. Wilcox (Morgantown:  West Virginia University Press, 2006).

Christopher Grocock read Latin and French at Royal Holloway College, University of London, and then studied medieval Latin epic for his PhD at Bedford College, University of London. From 1993 to 1996 he was Project Director of the Bede’s World Museum, Jarrow. After working as a museums consultant and freelance lecturer he has gradually been absorbed by teaching, and now works in the Classics Department of Bedales School, Steep. He is the editor of Ruodlieb (Aris and Philips, 1985); Gilo of Paris’ Historia Vie Hierosolimitane (Oxford, OMT, 1997; with Elisabeth Siberry); Apicius (Prospect Books, 2006; with Sally Grainger); and Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow (Oxford: OMT, 2013, with Ian Wood). This last volume contains editions, translations and commentary on Bede’s Homily i. 13 on Benedict Biscop, Historia Abbatum, Epistola ad Ecgbertum Episcopum, and the anonymous Vita Ceolfridi. He has written several articles on the history and Latinity of the medieval period, and has been a regular contributor to MANCASS conferences since 2006.

Nicholas J. Higham is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manchester, having retired in 2011 from his post as Professor of Early Medieval and Landscape History. Throughout his career he has focused on the insular Middle Ages, working across the disciplines primarily of archaeology and history. His most recent books are The Anglo-Saxon World (Yale U. P. 2013) with Martin J Ryan, and the edited Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint: Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conferences (Shaun Tyas, 2013). Earlier books include the jointly edited volumes Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England and Place-Names and Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape (both with Martin J. Ryan, Boydell Press, 2011) and the singly authored A Frontier Landscape: The North West in the Middle Ages (Windgather Press, 2004). He also has recently published essays in Ecclesiastical History Review and Early Medieval Europe.

Joyce Hill is Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds. She was formerly Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, in which capacity she was one of the founders of the annual Leeds International Medieval Congress. She was the university’s first woman Pro-Vice-Chancellor and has been a member and chair of panels for the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Deputy Chair of the Council’s Research Committee, and is currently a member of its Strategic Review Group. She has given the Toller and Jarrow lectures, and the Gollancz lecture at the British Academy, the published version of which, in the Academy’s Proceedings, won a prize from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists in 2005. In addition, she has published on Old Icelandic and Anglo-Latin literature, and Old English heroic poetry. Her edition of Widsith, Waldere, Deor and The Finnsburg Fragment in Old English Minor Heroic Poems has been reprinted many times and is now in its third edition with PIMS.

Michael King studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University, followed by MAs in Early Medieval Archaeology at Durham University and Museum Studies at Leicester University. His subsequent career in museums has included posts as Assistant Keeper of Human History at Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Curator of North-east Fife District Museum Service, Museum Collections Coordinator for Fife Council and (currently) Curator of Down County Museum in Northern Ireland. He was a member of the UK Museums Accreditation Panel from 2007 to 2012. He takes a particular interest in early medieval Insular art and archaeology, and is currently implementing a plan to conserve and protect the Downpatrick High Cross by moving it to a new specially constructed gallery in Down County Museum, where it will form the nucleus of a display on early Christian Down.

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Luca Larpi studied at the University of Pisa, where he graduated in Classics in 2005 with a thesis on the historical value of Gildas Sapiens for the study of end of Roman Britain. He then moved to Manchester (UK) for a PhD in History, under the joint supervision of Nicholas Higham and David Langslow. An updated version of his doctoral thesis has been recently published with the title Prolegomena to a new edition of Gildas Sapiens, De excidio Britanniae (Sismel – Edizioni del Galluzzo 2012). He is currently involved in the project ‘I sign therefore I am’, funded by the Welcome Trust and based at the University of Manchester, aimed to investigate the social status of the medici in early Medieval Italy.

Gale R. Owen-Crocker (editor) is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at The University of Manchester, UK and Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. She directed a 6-year AHRC-funded Project ‘The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing’ http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk/ , completed in 2013. She co-founded and co-edits the interdisciplinary journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles, and is a general editor of the series Medieval and Renaissance Dress and Textiles. Her most recent books are Kingship, Legislation and Power in Anglo-Saxon England and Royal Authority in Anglo-Saxon England (both ed. with Brian W. Schneider, 2013); The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers, Variorum Collected Studies Series (2012); An Encyclopaedia of Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c.450-1450 (ed. with Elizabeth Coatsworth and Maria Hayward, 2012); and The Material Culture of Daily Living in Anglo-Saxon England (ed. with Maren Clegg Hyer, 2011).

Ian Riddler and Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski are graduates of the University of East Anglia and the University of Durham and they work as freelance archaeologists who specialise in the study of objects and waste of antler, bone, horn and ivory. They deal with material of all periods but have a particular interest in Anglo–Saxon finds and their relationship with contemporary objects and waste of skeletal materials from Ireland. They are currently preparing a monograph on objects and waste from Ipswich for publication and are writing a volume on Combs and Comb–Making in Viking and Medieval Ireland for the National Museum, as well as completing a number of studies for archaeological monographs produced by the National Roads Authority in Ireland.

Brian W. Schneider (editor) is the author of The Framing Text in Early Modern English Drama (2011) and a number of articles. Entering academic life after retiring from a business career, he was awarded a John Bright Fellowship in 2003, was runner-up in the Louis Martz Essay Competition in the same year, and has been part-time research/administrative assistant on three grant-funded, Anglo-Saxon-related research projects at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan Universities, including the five-year Lexis Project which ended in 2013. He also took on a management role in three MANCASS conferences, including the conference that led to this volume.

Donald G. Scragg is Emeritus Professor of Anglo-Saxon Studies at the University of Manchester, and has published widely on English up to 1100. His major works include editions of The Battle of Maldon and the Vercelli Homilies, and in 2012 he published the reference book A Conspectus of Scribal Hands Writing English, 960-1100. In 1984 he initiated discussions relating to the foundation of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies which came into being in the following year, and he was its first Director until his retirement in 2005.

Erin Sebo has taught at Monash University (Melbourne), University College Dublin, and Trinity College, University of Dublin and she is currently Lecturer in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Historical Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast. Among other things, she has published on Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon cosmology, ancient and medieval riddling, and the Child Ballads. Currently, she is in the process of publishing her translation of Symphosii Scholastici Aenigmata.

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Abbreviations AA Auctorum Antiquissimorum ASE Anglo-Saxon England ASPR The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, A Collective edition, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, 6 vols (New York and London, 1931-53) BAR British Archaeological Reports BS British series, IS International Series CBA Council for British Archaeology CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina Dorset Procs The Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society EE Bede Epistola ad Ecgbertum EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile EETS os Early English Text Society, original series EETS ss Early English Text Society, supplementary series HA Bede Historia Abbatum HE Bede Historia Ecclesiastica MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PL Patrologia Latina RIB Roman Inscriptions of Britain, ed. R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright

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Introduction Gale R. Owen-Crocker

Some Anglo-Saxons may never have left the estate or village where they were born, seeing nothing but the sky, the fields, woods and waterways and the buildings and gardens of their neighbourhood. Most of their artefacts were made locally, though some foreign goods might come their way by trade or visitors. Originally their religious beliefs, and the rituals associated with them, came from their Germanic homeland; but the institution of the Christian Church exposed initially the élite and, with the establishment of the parish system, the rest of the population, directly and indirectly to a wider outside world. Founded by missionaries variously from Ireland, Gaul and Rome, the Anglo-Saxon Christian Church was the conduit not just for theology, liturgy and the architecture of its buildings, but for material goods including metalwork and silks, also cultural innovations in the form of music and stories. By the later Anglo-Saxon period, the laity, obliged to attend church, at least occasionally, to listen to sermons, present themselves for confession, take part in festivals and arrange for baptism and last rites for their families, were inevitably drawn in, to some extent, to the cosmopolitan culture of their religion.

bishops and abbots; royal brides and their households; Frisian merchants. Some went home again, many did not. However, the Anglo-Saxons have not left us a coherent written social history of themselves. The following essays demonstrate that they were remarkably reticent about everyday matters such as where and how they grew their vegetables (Banham, 4) and the need to comb their beards (Trzaska-Nartowski and Riddler, 5)! It is only through their writings on other subjects – such as church history and liturgy – and through the -ologies and -ographies of modern academic scholarship – archaeology, iconography, codicology, palaeography – that we are able to gain insights into their lives and minds. It takes informed imagination to construct a biography of an Anglo-Saxon codex, pausing on the marginal scribbles to the primary, scholarly text (Scragg 6); and empathy to appreciate the frustration and anxiety of a priest administering the last rites to a patient who thinks that if he takes the Eucharist and survives he is banned from meat and sex for the rest of his life (Hill 7)! The meticulous examination of a tiny comb to test whether it has been used or is only a dummy (Trzaska-Nartowski and Riddler 5), and the vision that sees in a small section of filigree a representation of a pine cone, and thus Christ as the Fountain of Life (King 10) are just two examples of the inspiration and detailed research which lies behind all of these chapters.

Some monks and nuns were geographically confined to their monasteries from childhood; yet they lived part of their lives in a world that was foreign, not just in terms of the Latin of their religious services, but in the intellectual world of the books which they, with the privilege of education, could read. Along with biblical and patristic texts they absorbed medical lore, prognostics, computus, history and geographical knowledge of people and places they would never see, and which in some cases, did not really exist. Exposure to books brought the remote past into proximity and the exotic into the mind’s experience.

The papers published here are developed from presentations made at a Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Conference entitled ‘The Anglo-Saxons in their World’ held in 2010. An eclectic collection of studies drawing on Latin, Old English and Old Norse texts, artefacts and archaeology, some shed light on the way the AngloSaxons saw themselves: the universe of which they were part (Sebo 15), the geography of their land and relation to other peoples of mainland Britain (Larpi 1, Higham 2, Grocock 3), the sea around them (Frederick 9), and the organization of the English Church, its education (Barker 12) and promotion of the written word (Scragg 6). Some, following the Anglo-Saxon gaze abroad, look eastwards, to trade through Frisia (Fafinski 8), and above all to the liturgical and intellectual influence of the Frankish church (Hill 7), Rome, southern Italy and the lands east of the Mediterranean (King 10, Cesario 11, Ford 13), including the Arab world (Barker 12). Only Grocock (3) glances west to Iona, and while Battaglia (14) and to a lesser extent King (10) consider Scandinavia, it is in the context of the migration, not the later Viking period, which was not represented at the conference.

Yet, many English people travelled. They made physical journeys on foot, horseback and ship, perhaps in litters and carts. They carried tents, they stayed overnight in religious establishments. Merchants, diplomats, warriors, royal brides, pilgrims and scholars and their entourages (to name only a selection) visited the length and breadth of England and travelled abroad for their diverse purposes. They risked their lives to do so, and, having survived the journey, often stayed months and years in the foreign place, fulfilling their allotted tasks but also absorbing alien culture in a way that is impossible in today’s flying visits to cities that are becoming increasingly standardised in terms of their food, dress and use of English. Many people made repeated journeys; some returned home bearing books, paintings, metalwork, textiles, knowledge of foreign languages and memories of foreign buildings and customs. Foreigners also came to England: missionaries,

We have grouped the papers into five themed sections: ‘Chosen people in their place’; ‘Life in Anglo-Saxon 1

Gale R. Owen-Crocker England’; Beyond the shore’; ‘The Mediterranean and beyond’; and ‘The North, The Universe’, though other connections may be found. Two focus largely on early archaeology (Battaglia 14, Trzaska-Nartowski and Riddler 5) and King’s study is also of an archaeological find. A majority of papers relate to the intellectual climate of the early Christian period in England (Larpi 1, Higham 2, Grocock 3, King 10, Cesario 11, Barker 12 and to some extent Sebo 15). Several take evidence from later AngloSaxon manuscripts (Scragg 6, Hill 7, Frederick 9, Sebo 15). Fafinski attempts a chronological sweep beginning in the Roman period, and Banham from the seventh century to the eleventh.

Christopher Grocock demonstrates and discusses the geographical limitations of Bede’s prose writing. Bede’s prose descriptions of place are spare, confined to practical detail. As Grocock points out, Bede’s models, Biblical and classical history, did not provide precedent for description of places, and the geographical experience of the monastic scholar himself was limited. Yet he was undoubtedly familiar, through his reading, with the Latin locus amoenus tradition and did indeed utilise it in his poetry. Apparently he simply rejected it as unsuitable for his prose works. Debby Banham too searches for natural description in writings by Anglo-Saxons in pursuit of information about the gardens and orchards which undoubtedly existed in Anglo-Saxon England. She also finds a curious lack of information from the Anglo-Saxons themselves about both physical and aesthetic aspects of what must have been an everyday experience. Banham considers the limited evidence for garden (as opposed to field) cultivation, orchards, plants known in England, tools, gardening and diet, particularly monastic meals in view of Benedictine prohibitions on meat. As Grocock notes with Bede’s venture into locus amoenus in poetry, Banham finds the limited Anglo-Saxon sorties into aesthetic description stem (via Bede) from continental writings. Genuine consciousness of gardens and gardening, even for medicinal purposes, seems to have come only late in the Anglo-Saxon period, inspired by the continental Benedictine Reform and (in Domesday Book) by the Norman requirement of a census. Thus conscious attention to something that may have been an unremarked part of English life came only with the exposure of the Anglo-Saxons to a wider world.

Contextualisation and synopses of the papers, in order of appearance, follow: Bede, a Northumbrian monk who never journeyed far, but is acknowledged as one of Western Europe’s greatest historians, exemplifies the power of the intellectual travel provided by Christian scholarship. Bede is recognized today as the source of our received ‘history’ of the early Anglo-Saxon era: the migration, the conversion and the early kingdoms. The first three papers in the following book demonstrate the extent to which the view of the world that Bede projected in his historical writings was governed by Christianity: his judgement of kings was governed by their morality and the reward/punishment they merited; and his view of the English people was coloured by the concept of divine favour which he believed was granted to them, while they behaved according to Christian principles. Luca Larpi shows that Bede’s picture is an artful adaptation of his sources, particularly Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae. The Anglo-Saxons’ predecessors, the Britons, are recognised by Bede as immigrants, rather than indigenous. Bede presents them as a people who had declined into heresy and hence were architects of their own eclipse by the Angles and Saxons. He evidently manipulates dates to give an absolute chronology for fifth-century Britain and the transfer of power from the British to the AngloSaxons. Building on Gildas’s suggestion that the Saxons were instruments of divine wrath against the Britons, Bede develops the moral failings of the Celtic people and builds up the re-birth of Christianity in Britain under the AngloSaxons from the inspiration of Pope Gregory.

Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler similarly deal with something which must have been part of everyday life for the Anglo-Saxons but is rarely mentioned in texts of the Anglo-Saxon period. The comb is an artefact type which survives in considerable numbers but the majority of finds date to the pre-Christian, pre-literate centuries, deriving from pagan graves, including cremations. Combs must have been used, not just for tidying and styling the hair, but for keeping it free of parasites, and for removing the tangles and foreign bodies which inevitably lodged in it as a result of farm work, such as the husks and dust from threshing. However, the presence in cremations of some small, simple combs which have long been considered non-functional and therefore categorised as symbolic, complicates the picture of the surviving artefacts. TrzaskaNartowski and Riddler establish that the miniature combs are all of the simple, not composite type, and that from the evidence of wear patterns on the teeth, some such combs had in fact been used over considerable periods of time. These small, functional combs were found with adults, whereas, at Spong Hill at least, the non-functional, symbolic examples accompanied infants and children who were presumably too young at death to own a comb.

Nicholas J. Higham examines Bede’s view of the English domination of the other peoples of Britain – Picts, Scots and Britons – as it developed during the course of composing his historical works. Bede saw the English as rapidly establishing dominance over the other nations, a success sanctioned by God, particularly granted to Christian kings who had received Roman missionaries, and climaxing in the archbishopric of Theodore. In his lifetime Bede had seen the loss of territory to the Picts, which he attributed to the moral failings of King Ecgfrith; but he confidently expected the Anglo-Saxons to recover their superiority over the other peoples of Britain in the future, with God’s favour.

Books are also artefacts, and as Donald Scragg describes, were not only valued for their primary texts. Scragg demonstrates this by the example of Oxford, Bodleian 2

Introduction Library MS Auctarium F. 3. 6, a large, professionallywritten text of works by, or associated with, Prudentius. The manuscript was prepared with the intention that extensive commentary and glosses would be copied into the margins. In addition the book became a repository for a variety of other notes: charms – against a dwarf and nosebleed; a possible quotation from an Old English poem; and other, legible but now incomprehensible scribbles, as well as a formal inscription recording Bishop Leofric’s bequest of the book to Exeter and a curse against anyone who removed it. Thus attention to the biography of the book, rather than just to the scholarly material within it, sheds light on the lives of the individuals who owned and wrote in it.

elegies, which speak emotively of bleak loneliness and bitter cold weather. Jill Frederick discovers a contrasting approach in Old English riddles, especially those which have (sometimes contentiously) been interpreted as signifying ‘Ship’. She finds in them the same kind of positive imagery that is associated with the hall in Old English poetry: the ship is a focus of fellowship, a refuge, a swift and graceful thing, a steed that will carry its passengers to a safe place. It reminds us that many travellers did journey successfully, carrying with them not only useful foodstuffs and artefacts, but ideas. Michael King’s startling re-interpretation of the shoulder clasps from the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial suggests just such an importation of continental, Christian theology and graphic symbolism, which has here been integrated with Germanic images of boar and serpent to produce a luxurious item of military regalia designed for a newly converted AngloSaxon king. Interpreting the central filigree between the boar images as a pine cone, a design famously used as a fountain head in Rome and elsewhere, King sees the images on the ends of the shoulder clasps as depicting the Christian Fountain of Life, from which issue the rivers of Paradise, at which birds, serpents, and the Germanic boar, drink. Such an acculturation of the Christian into the pagan, the integration of Christian imagery into the work of a native goldsmith, reinforces and develops the eclecticism already demonstrated by clearly Christian objects found in the essentially non-Christian ship funeral mound at Sutton Hoo. It shows how the eyes of the AngloSaxon élite were opened up intellectually, spiritually and visually by the arrival of Christian missionaries from the Mediterranean.

In a world in which the written word was in the hands of ecclesiastics, evidence for the life of the laity is rare. Joyce Hill explores certain details in Old English prose texts to tease out facts concerning lay participation in religious ceremonies. Her paper focuses on Rogationtide, a late spring or early summer festival preceding Ascentiontide, when there were three days of outdoor processions with relics; on Candlemas, when the congregation bore lighted candles in church; on Palm Sunday when the laity were given, and carried, palm twigs; and on Good Friday, when the laity participated in venerating the cross. She also considers the rituals for baptism; ministry to the sick and dying, with its potential for misunderstandings; and occasions when lay folk crowded together in the hope of healing from a saint. For priest and bishop, such occasions were a time of responsibility and anxiety that rituals were carried out correctly. For the laity, who did not necessarily attend religious services very often, these occasions brought a close association with their local church, an opportunity to contemplate the spiritual, and the excitement of participation in dramatic ceremonies.

Marilina Cesario’s study of Aldhelm’s Latin riddle on the classical monster Scylla demonstrates the erudition of the seventh- to eighth-century bishop and his circle. Her detailed survey of the various versions of the myth in the works of classical writers suggests that, although Aldhelm may have taken his version from a lost commentary on Ovid, he is more likely to have blended material from different sources. He may have used not only the sixth- to seventhcentury scholar Isidore of Seville, but the classical authors Vergil and Ovid. The investigation suggests that he may have been familiar with parts of Ovid’s Metamorphoses not previously known to have been available to the AngloSaxons. The riddle also indicates that Aldhelm was testing his readers’ knowledge of Greek, a rare educational skill in Anglo-Saxon England.

England’s major rivers, and the towns which grew up around them, were the conduit for both travellers and goods. Turning from the spiritual to the mercantile, Mateusz Fafinski considers York as a commercial centre and international port, beginning in Roman times, continuing through its decline through flooding and the withdrawal of the Roman legions and its redevelopment and relocation, first to Fishergate, then to Coppergate, in the Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Viking periods. The author argues that the chief geographical areas of overseas trading remained the same throughout these political, ethnic and social changes in York; though in the earlier medieval period there was a Frisian colony in York and trade with Frisia was of major importance, while the Viking occupation opened up new trade routes with Scandinavia, leading further afield to Byzantium and the Near East. Pottery, cloth and coins and foodstuffs are among the commodities examined.

Katherine Barker also focuses on Aldhelm, in a wideranging paper that discusses the organization, location and furnishing of religious establishments in south-west England under the influence of Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury from 668-690, a Byzantine Greek familiar with Syrian culture. She identifies the powerful influence of Theodore’s teaching through Aldhelm’s references to silk and purple, light and incense, antiphonal chant, musical instruments and their place in the liturgy; and his knowledge of the Saracens.

In Anglo-Saxon times, any travel abroad, and much travel from place to place in England, necessitated taking ship, with all the discomforts and hazards inevitable in that experience. Our modern perception of Anglo-Saxon attitudes to sea travel is largely coloured by the Old English 3

Gale R. Owen-Crocker Beyond the Mediterranean lay ‘the East’ where, according to scholarly tradition, marvels were located, marvels ranging from speaking trees to monstrous races, grotesque concatenations of human and animal parts, often gigantic, always uncivilized. Alan Ford explores the differences between prose texts of Anglo-Saxon England which enumerate monsters. Taking his title ‘speaking beyond the light’ from a mistranslation of Latin in the Old English Letter of Alexander to Aristotle, he demonstrates that the Liber Monstrorum reflects and adapts classical and patristic discussion on the veracity of marvels and the relation of authority to reason and experience. The Wonders of the East, on the other hand, lacks any such framework. Ford argues that each of the three surviving manuscripts of the Wonders text takes its authority from its context: in MS Tiberius B.v, a matter of computus; in Bodley 614, a twelfth-century manuscript, the geographical and astronomical material popular in the scholasticism of its time; and in MS Vitellius A.xv simply the wonders that are beyond human experience.

in the form in which it has survived it is evidently crafted by a Christian, the passage has caused a large amount of critical discussion. Although the manuscript of Beowulf is dated on palaeographic grounds to within fifty years of AD 1000, the date of the poem is highly contentious. Battaglia favours an early date. Drawing on Danish archaeology and the language of the poem, he suggests that the reference in the text to pagan rituals recalls cannibalistic practices associated with female-centred fertility beliefs which, by the sixth century, were disparaged, harking back to a much earlier version of the poem than the one that survives today. The final paper in the collection looks at the biggest picture of all: Anglo-Saxon concepts of the Creation and its creator. Erin Sebo compares Aldhelm’s Latin riddle De Creatura with the Old English Exeter Book Riddles 40 and 66 and the fragmentary Riddle 93 of about 300 years later. She argues that while Aldhelm viewed Creation in terms of its opposites, the expanded translation in Riddle 40 ‘blunts’ Aldhelm’s dichotomies with extensive description of the world and transforms his view of the relationship between the Creator and his creation. She sees the shorter Riddle 66 as expressing a new conception of creation, and mapping its structures; and the fragmentary Riddle 93 as concerned with the attributes of creation. The comparative exerecise thus reveals the changing Anglo-Saxon view of the universe.

Frank Battaglia looks in another direction, northward. He also looks back in time, in his discussion of a passage in the Old English poem Beowulf where the narrator condemns the Danish people for worshipping in heathen temples. Since the poem is set in pre-Christian times, but,

4

Part I Chosen People in their Place

5

Chapter 1 Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks Luca Larpi then of the empires which ruled Judea (Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt and Rome). For each ruler, Bede gave the length of his/her reign, the annus mundi (AM) of the end of his/her influence and the main events which occurred under his/her rule. This practice of equating AM with the year in which a reign ended went back to the Roman Empire and continued to be used in the Byzantine Empire.4

Bede (c. 672-735) was the first author to make extensive use of Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae (henceforth DEB), both in the Chronica Maiora (CM), AD 725, and the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (HE) AD 731.1 He was also the first scholar to interpret Gildas’s historical account in order to give an absolute chronology for the events of fifth-century Britain, and his reading of DEB has long influenced the study of the Dark Ages, particularly its chronology.2 In this paper it will be argued that the chronological framework within which Gildas’s narrative was inserted into the CM was later modified by Bede to address the different needs of the HE. The Chronica Maiora

The system, however, is not as rigid as it might appear, as it has long been recognised that Bede was more interested in the total length of the ages than in giving the precise date of each event.5 It is with this in mind that we must turn to the entries regarding the history of Britain and specifically those taken from Gildas Sapiens.6

The so-called Chronica Maiora was chapter 66 of Bede’s De temporum ratione (AD 725), a treatise concerning the measurement of time and the construction of a Christian calendar (computus).3 For the backbone of CM’s chronological framework Bede used regnal years, first of the leaders of Israel (Patriarchs, Judges and Kings) and

Bede betrayed a particular interest in the history of his own island. At least 30 entries refer to the British Isles, one in the Fifth Age (§ 253: Caesar’s expedition to Britain), the rest in the Sixth. They represent circa 5% of the whole CM.7 Of these references, eight come from the ‘historical introduction’ of DEB.8

  Kenneth Harrison, The framework of Anglo-Saxon History to AD 900 (Cambridge, 1976), p. 76. 5   See, for example, Charles W. Jones, Saints’ Lives and Chronicles in Early England (New York, 1947), p. 26: ‘Bede derived the structural principle behind the exposition of the sixth age from his sources. Not only did he note the reigns of the emperors according to the Mundane Era, which he inherited from Jerome and Isidore, but he grouped notations of events under those names without attempting to assign a date to them – a clear indication that he regarded exact chronology as unessential, if not superfluous.’ 6   Before the analysis, a methodological premise must be made, since it is not always easy to calculate the exact year of the events mentioned by Bede. First of all, the date at which he reckoned the year to begin is still debated. Secondly, he was not always coherent in dating the events he recorded. On the basis of these difficulties, I propose to follow three criteria in calculating Bede’s dates. First, I have assumed that the AM years given by Bede correspond both to the end of a reign and to the beginning of the next one, deliberately ignoring the exact month in which the ruler changed: so, for example, I take AM 2890 as the end of the reign of Saul and the beginning of the reign of David. Second, in order to calculate a specific regnal year, I count from the year following the access to power of the ruler, so that, for example, the18th year of the reign of Diocletian will be AM 4256 (4238 + 18), the 23rd year of the reign of Theodosius will be AM 4400 (4377 + 23) et cetera. Third, I subtract 3952 (Bede’s AM of the Incarnation) from the AM at issue to calculate the annus Domini from the annus mundi: so, Vespasian reigned from AD 69 to AD 79 (AM 4021-4031) and Zeno from AD 475 to AD 492 (AM 4427-4444). 7   This percentage was calculated from the number of the entries of the actual text of the CM, without the eight entries of the Introduction and the entries 594-615. 8   The references are: §§ 406, 461, 473, 474, 483, 484, 489 and 504. Molly Miller, who wrote in 1975 what is still the only article fully dedicated to the problem of Bede’s use of Gildas, ignored §§ 406, 473 and 484: Molly Miller ‘Bede’s use of Gildas’, English Historical Review 90 (1975), 24161, at p.241. 4

  Gildas Sapiens, De Excidio Britanniae, ed. Michael Winterbottom (Chichester, 1978); ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH: AA 13, Chr. Min. III (Berlin, 1898), pp. 3-85. Bede, Chronica Maiora, ed. Charles W. Jones, Bedae de temporum ratione liber, in CCSL 123B (Turnhout, 1977), pp. 461-544; ed. Theodor Mommsen, MGH: AA 13, Chr. Min. III (Berlin, 1898), pp. 299-306; tr. Faith Wallis, Bede. The Reckoning of Time (Liverpool, 2004). Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1991); tr. Leo SherleyPrice (London, 1955). 2   For an introduction to Bede and his History, see: Wilhelm Levison, ‘Bede as Historian’, in Bede, his Life, Times and Writings, ed. A. H. Thompson (Oxford, 1935), pp. 111-151; Robert W. Hanning, The Vision of History in Early Britain (New York and London, 1966), pp. 63-90; Roger D. Ray, ‘Bede, the Exegete, as Historian’, in Famulus Christi, ed. G. Bonner (London, 1976), pp. 125-140; David P. Kirby, ‘King Ceolwulf of Northumbria and the Historia Ecclesiastica’, Studia Celtica 14/15 (1979-80), 168-173; Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, ‘Bede, the Irish and the Britons’, Celtica 15 (1983), 42-52; Judith McClure, ‘Bede’s Old Testament Kings’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald et al. (Oxford, 1983), pp. 76-98; Alan Thacker (1983), ‘Bede’s Ideal of Reform’, in Ideal and Reality, ed. Wormald et al. pp. 130-153; James Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 1-47; Walter A. Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (Princeton, 1988), pp. 235-328; Benedicta Ward, The Venerable Bede (London and New York, 1990), pp. 41-110; John M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. An Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1991); Nicholas J. Higham, (Re-)Reading Bede. The Ecclesiastical History in context (London and New York, 2006). 3   De Temporum Ratione was recently analysed by Faith Wallis (see Note 1), whose work I follow here. 1

7

Luca Larpi The ‘Gildasian’ entries of CM are organised as follows: Table 1.1 ‘Gildasian’ entries in CM CM Entry

Chronological References

AM

AD

DEB

§ 406: Alban, Aaron, Julius

Diocletian’s persecution

4256-4265

304-313

§ 10

§ 461: Picts & Scots

After Maximus’s rebellion

§ 14

§ 473: 1st British appeal

Reign of Theodosius

4338-4349

386-394

Honorius and Theodosius II

4362-4377

410-425

§ 15

§ 474: 2nd British appeal § 17-18 § 483: Aëtius ter consul

23rd year of Theodosius II

4400

448

§ 20

§ 484: Vortigern After Aëtius 4400-4403 448-451 § 23 Before death of Theodosius II § 489: Coming of the Saxons

Marcian and Valentinian III

4403-4410

451-458

§ 491-492: Germanus

Before death of Valentinian

ante 4410

ante 458

§ 504: Ambrosius Aurelianus

Reign of Zeno

4427-4444

475-492



§ 23

§ 25

taken as a terminus post quem.12 Bede then inserted the first two British appeals to the Romans into the joint reign of Honorius and Theodosius II (AM 4362-4377, § 473-4). Again, the chronology of the event is not clear and nothing can be deduced from the context.

The first information drawn from DEB concerns the martyrdom of three British saints, Alban, Aaron and Julius. In the CM Bede was dependent exclusively on Gildas, while in the Historia he would have access to another source, as we shall see. Gildas was not specific about when exactly these three martyrs died, and he only suggested that the martyrdoms could have taken place during Diocletian’s persecution.9 In contrast, Bede had no hesitation in dating these deaths to the persecution of the time of Diocletian and Maximian.10 The deaths of Alban, Aaron and Julius are mentioned after the retirement of Diocletian and Maximian in the second year of the persecution (§ 403) and the death of Constantius at York (§ 404).

The way that the third British appeal is described offers more opportunities for precise dating (§ 483). In DEB 19, Gildas had said that the people of Britain asked for help of a certain Roman called Agitius, who received the appellative ter consul. Bede identified this figure with the general Aëtius and dated his third consulship to the twenty third year of the reign of Theodosius II (AM 4400). The validity of this identification has been debated for a long time.13 To my knowledge, the most persuasive explanation of the ‘Gildasian’ spelling can be found in the Addenda to Wallace-Hadrill’s Commentary on Bede’s Historia:

Bede did not follow Gildas’s description of Magnus Maximus, but preferred Orosius’s more positive portrait.11 However, he agreed with DEB when he came to describe the effects of Magnus Maximus’s rebellion in entry 461: Britain, without troops, was first attacked by Picts and Scots. This entry is recorded under the reign of Theodosius, immediately after the death of Maximus in the third year of the revolt. Bede did not give any precise length for Pictish and Scottish raids, mirroring Gildas’s vagueness, but, as in DEB, the beginning of Maximus’s rebellion could be

The spelling of Agitius is not a serious problem if we may allow for the influence of Vulgar Latin: to avoid hiatus a j sound (as English y in yet) was sometimes introduced, so that Aetius might be pronounced Ajetius. This j could be spelt with a g ... The first -i- in Agitius (rather than Agetius) may be explained

  DEB 10: Supra dicto ut conicimus persecutionis tempore.   CM 406: [Haec persecutio] nam et oceani limbum transgressa Albanum, Aaron et Iulium Britaniae cum aliis pluribus viris ac feminis felici cruore damnauit. 11   Compare Orosius, Historia adversus paganos VII.34, 9-10, ed. M. P. Arnaud-Lindet (Paris 1991), Vol. I, p. 95, with DEB 13, ed. Winterbottom, pp. 32-33.

  See CM 461: [Britanniam] multos per annos obprimunt (‘They oppressed Britain for many years’). 13   See, for example: David Dumville, ‘The chronology of De Excidio Britanniae, Book I’, in Gildas: New Approaches, ed. Michael Lapidge and David Dumville (Woodbridge, 1984), pp. 61-84, at 67-68; Michael E. Jones, ‘The appeal to Aetius in Gildas’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 32 (1988), 145-8.

9

12

10

8

Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks either by the Vulgar Latin confusion of short i and long e or by the influence of British final -i- affection which occurred c.500.14

foreign people, being stronger, conquered the whole island for a long time’. Here Bede modified Gildas’s account, which never openly mentioned any final victory, let alone one of the Saxons.17 This is the last reference to the British people in CM. Subsequent entries concerning Britain focused on the beginning and the development of the Anglo-Saxon Church.

Recently, Ian McKee suggested a Gallic influence as an explanation for this spelling.15 Whatever its origin might be, it is clear that the g was inserted to form a dieresis. Confirmation of this can be found in DEB itself, c.13, where, according to my examination, the oldest manuscript preserved (London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius A.vi, s. X) spelt the name of the city of Aquileia as Aquilegia. This confirms that the sound g was indeed introduced to avoid hiatus: Gildas was, therefore, certainly referring to Aëtius, just as Bede assumed.

To sum up: as Gildas did not give any reference to an absolute chronology in the ‘historical introduction’ of DEB, Bede had to construct a succession of British events coherent both with Gildas’s narration and with the general pattern of CM. It is now time to turn to the Historia ecclesiastica, in order to verify whether he kept the same structure in his later work.

Thanks to his identification of Agitius with Aëtius, Bede could date the third appeal to the Romans to AM 4400. The invitation, the coming and the rebellion of the Saxons follow (§§ 484 and 489). An important innovation is presented by entry 484, which contains the name of the British ruler who invited the Saxons to Britain, Vertigernus.16 Entry 489 is a summary of DEB 23: like Gildas, Bede too described the adventus as two events, first the arrival of three ships and then the coming of an exercitus fortior. The entry is recorded under the reign of Marcian and Valentinian III (AM 4403-4410) and does not receive any closer dating. His terminus post quem is clearly the third consulship of Aëtius (AM 4400), the terminus ante is the coming of Germanus (§§ 491-492), since the so-called ‘Alleluia Victory’ (a battle against an army of Picts and Saxons fought and won by the Britons under the leadership of Germanus) required the Saxons to be on the island and already having rebelled against the Britons.

The Historia ecclesiastica The Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (AD 731) was written as an insular supplement to the history of the universal Church composed by Eusebius. This agenda implied two tasks: in order to portray the Anglo-Saxons as the new ‘chosen people’, Bede needed to discredit the Britons, who were Christianised much earlier than them; in order to offer himself as the historian of the English people, he had to accommodate but also in some sense invalidate the work of the ‘historian of the Britons’, Gildas Sapiens. In Gildas’s view, the Britons were God’s chosen people in the British Isles and the pattern of their entire history was ruled by God’s benevolence or wrath: in every British success or defeat God was testing the fidelity of His followers, exactly as He tested Israel’s faith long before (DEB 26). DEB was a warning to the secular and ecclesiastical élites of the Britons, who, in forgetting God and His law, were risking the terrible consequences of His rage. Bede, on the contrary, believed that the Lord tested the Britons long enough and found them hopelessly rebellious and unfaithful. The history of their ‘fall’ is narrated in the first book of HE (chapters 1-22), a section which is carefully structured.18

Entries 491-2 summarise the story of the coming of St Germanus told by Constantius in the Vita Germani. Bede did not mention the second visit of the bishop of Auxerre, but narrated his death at the court of Valentinian. So the terminus ante quem should be the last year of the reign of Valentinian, AM 4410. The last reference drawn from DEB is the mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, during the reign of Zeno (AM 4427-4444). In entry 504 Bede summarised quickly the warfare between the Britons and the Saxons after the first British victories under the lead of Ambrosius:

Bede started to challenge Gildas from the very beginning of the work. The first chapter of the Historia is a geographical introduction on the British Islands and their people. Writing such a section could be problematic for someone like Bede, who wanted to assert the primacy of the Anglo-Saxons as the legitimate rulers of Britain, since the only insular source he could rely on, Gildas’s DEB, was naturally favourable to the Britons. As a matter of fact, despite the frequent raids of barbarian people, Gildas implied that Britain belonged only to the Britons.

Ex eo tempore nunc hi, nunc illi palmam habuere, donec aduena potentior tota per longum potiretur insula. ‘From then on at one moment the Britons, at another moment the Saxons had the palm of victory, until the

  Wallace-Hadrill, Commentary, p. 211.   Ian McKee, ‘Gildas: Lessons from History’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 51 (2006), at p. 23. 16   For the implication that could derive from the presence of the name of Vortigern in Bede’s account, see L. Larpi, Prolegomena to a new edition of Gildas Sapiens ‘De excidio et conquestu Britanniae’ (Florence, 2012), pp. 45-51 14 15

  DEB 26: Ex eo tempore nunc ciues, nunc hostes, uincebant … usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis, nouissimae ferme de furciferis non minimae stragis. 18   Ward, Bede, pp. 116-118; Wallace-Hadrill, Commentary, p. 6. See also the chronological table below. 17

9

Luca Larpi appears also in CM, is the Liber pontificalis.21 The way in which Bede concluded this chapter (‘the Britons preserved the faith which they had received, inviolate and entire, in peace and quiet’) implies that together with the king all the Britons converted to Christianity. For Bede, then, British Christianity was ‘properly launched by papal mandate to a king’.22 Lucius was presented as the model of a virtuous king, which contrasted with the current rebellious behaviour of the Britons.23 Moreover, the way Lucius is described suggests that, in Bede’s eyes, mentioning the positive figures of the British past could become a way to condemn the heretical deeds of contemporary Britons.

While Bede admitted that the British people were the first inhabitants of Britain, he added that they were settlers from abroad: In primis autem insula Brettones solum, a quibus nomen accepit, incolas habuit; qui de tractu Armoricano, ut fertur, Brittaniam aduecti australes sibi partes illius uindicarunt. ‘To begin with, the inhabitants of the island were all Britons, from whom it receives its name; they sailed to Britain, so it is said, from the land of Armorica, and appropriated to themselves the southern part of it.’ (HE I.1, tr. Colgrave and Mynors)

HE I.7 narrates the martyrdom of St Alban, dated during the persecution of Diocletian, as in CM. However, the passage is amplified here, with the help of an early version of the Passio Albani, the insertion of two current English names for St Albans (Uerlamacaestir and Uaeclingacaestir) and a reference to the existence on the site of a church and a cult associated with the martyr. Some scholars suggest that Alban could be seen as the British Moses: they both converted late in life, challenged the authorities, were followed by the crowd and crossed the water without getting wet; moreover, Alban made a spring spurt from the hill as Moses made honey flow in the desert.24 In this view, Alban was the hero who freed his people from pagan servitude and should be seen in the context of the Old Testament, while Gregory the Great, who re-founded Christianity in Britain, was a New Testament figure, the equivalent of St Paul.

Bede, therefore, portrayed the Britons as immigrants, exactly like the Anglo-Saxons, and also as settlers only of the southern part of the island: as a consequence, their status was considerably reduced.19 Bede followed Orosius in describing Caesar as the first Roman who made an expedition to Britain (HE I.2) and Claudius as its conqueror (HE I.3), giving for both events the exact year ab urbe condita in parallel with the incarnational year. Claudius’s conquest is described as follows: Hoc autem bellum quarto imperii sui anno conpleuit, qui est annus ab incarnatione Domini quadragesimus sextus; quo etiam anno fames grauissima per Syriam facta est, quae in Actibus Apostolorum per prophetam Agabum praedicta esse memoratur.

Until this point Bede followed the chronological framework of CM, even if there are some differences between the AD years provided here and the equivalent AM dating of CM. After the death of Magnus Maximus (HE I.9), however, he made some important changes to the sequence of events. In CM Bede followed Gildas when he associated the retreat of the armies from Britain, which precipitated the first raids of the Scots and the Picts, with the rebellion of Magnus Maximus. He dated this event under the reign of Theodosius (AM 4338-4349) and the first two appeals to the Romans to the joint reign of Honorius and Theodosius II (AM 43624377). In the Historia, on the other hand, Bede chose to describe another rebellion which occurred in Britain shortly before the end of the Western Empire: first Gratian, a British citizen, then Constantine III, a ‘worthless soldier’, became emperors against the rule of Honorius (HE I.11). He dated these events to the reign of Honorius and Theodosius II, two years before the sack of Rome: the AD date given is 407. The plunder of the Eternal City coincided, in Bede’s eyes, with the end of the Roman occupation of Britain: ‘after this the Romans ceased to rule in Britain, almost 470 years after Gaius Julius Caesar had come to the island’.

‘[Claudius] brought the war to an end in the fourth year of his reign, that is in the year of the Lord 46, the year in which occurred the very severe famine throughout Syria, which, as is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, was foretold by the prophet Agabus.’ (HE I.3, tr. Colgrave and Mynors) Bede is referring here to Acts 11.27-29, where the first preaching of the Gospel to the Gentiles in Antioch is described, and with this reference – in the words of Diarmuid Scully – he ‘associates the Roman conquest of Britain with the period when Christianity first became available to the Gentile world of which the island was a constituent part’.20 Gildas was vague when he spoke of the arrival of Christianity in Britain and contented himself with dating the event to the reign of Tiberius (DEB 8). In HE I.4, however, Bede introduced the legend of Lucius, Brittaniarum rex, who was said to have written a letter to Pope Eleutherius asking to become a Christian, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. The source for this story, which

  Wallace-Hadrill, Commentary, p. 11; Colgrave and Mynors, Ecclesiastical History, p. 24, n.2. 22   Wallace-Hadrill, Commentary, p. 11. 23   Higham, English Empire, p. 28. 24   Jacques Elfassi, ‘Germain d’Auxerre, figure d’Augustin de Cantorbéry. La réécriture par Bède de la ‘Vie de saint Germain d’Auxerre’, Hagiographica 5 (1998), 37-47. 21

  Nicholas J. Higham, An English Empire (Manchester, 1995), pp. 18-21.   Diarmuid Scully, ‘Bede, Orosius and Gildas on the early history of Britain’, in Bède le Vénérable entre tradition et postérité, ed. Stéphane Lebecq, Michel Perrin and Olivier Szerwiniack (Lille, 2002), pp. 30-42, at 40. 19 20

10

Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks both in CM and in HE.28 However, in some passages of HE he seems to have implied an earlier date: in HE I.23 and HE V.23 he offered about AD 445; in HE II.14 about 446 or 447. It is clear that Bede looked upon the dating ‘as a mere approximation’.29

It was only in chapter 12 that Bede described the withdrawal of the Roman armies from the island and went on assembling in the same section events that in CM he described in different entries: the first raids of Picts and Scots, the two appeals to the Romans, the final farewell of the Romans, the new raids of the barbarians and their consequences.25 The source for this information remains Gildas, ‘corrected’ here and there by some additions made by Bede himself.

The first Saxons arrived in Britain in three warships, invited by Vortigern (here Vurtigernus) as mercenaries. From their first appearance, Bede highlighted their valour in battle against the weakness of the Britons. Other warriors came to form an inuincibilis exercitus (‘invincible army’) and obtained a grant of land and regular pay. Until this point Bede was following mainly Gildas’s account, with the exception of inserting the name of Vortigern. Now he made what has been defined as ‘perhaps his most important contribution to the history of the invasions’, dividing the invading races into Angles, Saxons and Jutes and naming their first leaders, Hengist and Horsa.30 Non mora, the invading people decided to attack the Britons and they made a temporary treaty with the Picts. This last information was not contained in DEB and ‘seems to be a direct result of Bede’s attempt to bring Germanus’s “Alleluja Victory” into place in his historical narrative’.31

CM recorded under the same entry (§ 483) the new raids of Scots and Picts after the Romans left Britain, the appeal to Aëtius and the first victories of the Britons, while entry 484 contained the mention of British victories, the period of opulence and the invitation to the Saxons: all these took place during the reign of Theodosius II (AM 43774403). In HE Bede expanded this sequence of episodes. As already seen, he mentioned the Picts and the Scots (DEB 19) in chapter 12, that is, still under the reign of Honorius and Theodosius II. In chapter 13, under the reign of Theodosius II, he recorded first the mission of Palladius to Ireland, mentioned before the new attacks in the Chronica (§ 482), and then the British appeal to Aëtius (DEB 20). Bede followed Gildas in saying that the Britons did not manage to obtain any help from the Roman general, but he felt the need to explain this fact, drawing from Marcellinus Comes information about the struggle against the Huns and the famine of Constantinople.26

The rebellion of the Saxons was carefully introduced by Bede through a comparison with the destruction of Jerusalem by the army of Nebuchadnezzar, narrated in 2 Kings 25: 8-10: Siquidem, ut breuiter dicam, accensus manibus paganorum ignis iustas de sceleribus populi Dei ultiones expetiit, non illius inpar qui quondam a Chaldaeis succensus Hierosolymorum moenia, immo aedificia cuncta consumsit. Sic enim et hic agente impio uictore, immo disponente iusto Iudice, proximas quasque ciuitates agrosque depopulans ...

HE I.14 opens with the description of the terrible famine described by Gildas in DEB 20: the fact that Bede defined it as fames sua suggests that he was not linking this event with Marcellinus’s famine but was aware that they were separate events.27 In this section, Bede described the British victories and the subsequent period of prosperity (DEB 21), followed by a terrible plague (DEB 22) and the inviting of the Saxons into the island (DEB 23). The chapters HE I.13-14 are registered under the reign of Theodosius II, whose accession to power is dated here in AD 423: the third consulship of Aëtius occurred in the twenty third year of his reign (AD 446). All the following events seem to have happened between this last date and the first year of the reign of Marcian and Valentinian III (AD 449).

‘To put it briefly, the fire kindled by the hands of the heathen executed the just vengeance of God on the nation for its crimes. It was not unlike that fire once kindled by the Chaldeans which consumed the walls and all the buildings of Jerusalem. So here in Britain the just Judge ordained that the fire of their brutal conquerors should ravage all the neighbouring cities and countryside ... ’ (HE I.15, tr. Colgrave and Mynors)

Chapter 15 is of particular importance for the plan of the whole first book of HE, since it introduces the English race for the first time. Bede was facing two problems here: first, he had to find a date for an event which Gildas mentioned without any chronological reference; second, he had to explain and somehow justify the rebellion of the Saxons against the Britons and to present them not as half bestial barbarians, as Gildas did, but as the true people of God, already chosen even if still pagan. At first sight, Bede dated the coming of the Saxons to the reign of Marcian

The argument that saw the Saxons as the instrument of divine wrath was first introduced by Gildas, who compared the rebellion of the Germanic people to the Assyrians (DEB 23), bringing ‘fire of rightful punishment’ to the cities of the rebellious Britons (DEB 24).32 However,   See CM, §§ 488-9: AM 4403-4410; HE I.15: AD 449-456.   Colgrave and Mynors, Ecclesiastical History, p. 49 n.3. 30   Colgrave and Mynors, Ecclesiastical History, p. 50 n.1. 31   Miller, Bede’s use, p. 255. 32   Gildas also established an analogy between the current state of Britain and Jerusalem’s sack by the Babylonians in DEB 1, where he echoed Jeremiah’s Lament: see Nicholas J. Higham, The English Conquest. Gildas and Britain in the fifth century (Manchester, 1994), pp. 67-89. 28 29

  See HE I. 12 and CM, §§ 461, 473, 474, 483.   Marcellinus Comes, Chronicon, edited by T. Mommsen, MGH: AA 11, Chronica Minora II (Berlin, 1894), pp. 39-108, at 81-2. 27   Patrick Sims-Williams, ‘The settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle’, ASE 12 (1983), 1-41, at p. 19 n.77. 25 26

11

Luca Larpi of Mount Badon ... in about the forty-fourth year after their arrival in Britain’. (HE I.16, tr. Colgrave and Mynors, my italics)

this comparison acquired new meanings in the context of HE: while Gildas mentioned the Saxons by name only once, in DEB 23, recognising grudgingly their role in the providential history of the Britons and then omitting virtually every direct reference to them, Bede built an entire work in their praise. In this light, Gildas’s portrait of the Saxons became an ‘own goal’, since it allowed Bede to subvert its meaning, using it against the cause of the Britons.33

This new rendering of DEB 26 still puzzles modern scholars. The issue is to understand whether Bede was using a version of DEB which has not been preserved, as Arthur De La Borderie believed in 1885, or whether he was reconstructing a passage of Gildas’s account which was already corrupted in the eighth century, as Theodor Mommsen suggested in 1898.34 However, De La Borderie’s suggestion seems questionable. The fact that the surviving manuscripts of DEB are particularly in conflict here implies that the passage was problematic almost from the beginning, whether because of an early corruption or as an unfortunate result of the obscure style of Gildas himself, and this favours the second hypothesis: the best solution seems to take Bede’s circiter not as a reference to AD 500, but as a declaration of uncertainty.35

In CM, Bede registered the visit of Germanus and the ‘Alleluja Victory’ immediately after the coming of the Saxons, under the reign of Marcian and Valentinian III (§ 491, AM 4403-4410), before the death of Aëtius (§ 493), while Ambrosius Aurelianus was recorded much later, under the reign of Zeno (AM 4427-4444). In HE, however, he changed the sequence: now Ambrosius preceded the coming of Germanus and they were both mentioned under the reign of Marcian and Valentinian, dated here between AD 449 and AD 456. As we shall see, this modification has a specific meaning.

The British successes under the leadership of Ambrosius found an echo in the way the Britons reacted to the arrival of the followers of the heresy of Pelagius into the island. After mentioning the heretical bishop Agricola at the beginning of chapter 17, Bede wrote:

Compared to CM, the references to both Ambrosius and Germanus were amplified here. In HE I.16 Bede followed Gildas closely, portraying Ambrosius as a Roman, not a Briton, under whose leadership the Britons achieved their first victories. The fact that Ambrosius is labelled as Roman could parallel Germanus’s portrait as a victorious military leader, stressing that the Britons won only under the leadership of someone from the Continent and implying their foolishness in Bede’s time, when they refused to follow the Roman Church.

Verum Brittanni, cum neque suscipere dogma peruersum gratiam Christi blasfemando ullatenus uellent neque uersutiam nefariae persuasionis refutare uerbis certando sufficerent, inueniunt salubre consilium, ut a Gallicanis antistitibus auxilium belli spiritalis inquirant. ‘The Britons had no desire at all to accept this perverse teaching and so blaspheme the grace of Christ, but could not themselves confute by argument the subtleties of the evil belief; so they wisely decided to seek help in this spiritual warfare from the Gaulish bishops’. (HE I.17, tr. Colgrave-Mynors)

The climax of British revenge was reached in the battle of Badon, mentioned by Gildas but not by Bede in CM. In HE Bede introduced a significant change, which is worth commenting on. Speaking about Badon, Gildas had written: Ex eo tempore nunc ciues, nunc hostes, uincebant … usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis … quique quadragesimus quartus ut noui orditur annus, mense iam uno emenso, qui et meae natiuitatis est.

Bede had two accounts of the beginning of Germanus’s mission to Britain. Prosper wrote that Germanus was sent by the Pope himself to fight the Pelagians, while Constantius claimed that the Britons sought help in Gaul and that Germanus was consequently chosen to defend the true faith. As earlier with King Lucius, Bede deliberately chose the version of Constantius’s Vita Germani in order to show

‘From then on victory went now to our countrymen, now to their enemies ... This lasted right up till the year of the siege of Badon Hill ... That was the year of my birth; as I know, one month of the forty-fourth year since then has already passed’. (DEB 26, tr. Winterbottom) In the Historia, Bede wrote:

  Arthur De La Borderie, ‘La date de la naissance de Gildas’, Revue Celtique 6 (1883-85), 1-13, at p. 11; Mommsen, Gildas, p. 8. 35   Another opinion was suggested by Patrick Sims-Williams, who believed that Bede, having placed Ambrosius’s victory in the reign of Zeno (which was dated in the Chronica to AM 4427-4444, that is AD 475-492), ‘must have supposed’ that the battle of Badon occurred about AD 500 (Sims-Williams, ‘Settlement’, p. 20). As a consequence, the statement about the forty-fourth year after the adventus is the result of a calculation starting from c. 456, the end of the reign of Marcian: 500-456 = 44 years. The fact that the same number occurs in Gildas and in Bede should be interpreted, then, as a mere coincidence. This explanation, however, is unconvincing, based as it is on the assumption that Bede had a particular year in mind when he was dating the battle of Badon. 34

Ex eo tempore nunc ciues nunc hostes uincebant usque ad annum obsessionis Badonici montis ... quadragesimo circiter et quarto anno aduentus eorum in Brittaniam. ‘From that time on, first the Britons won and then the enemy were victorious until the year of the siege   See Goffart, Narrators, p. 302.

33

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Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks how the morality of the current generation of Britons was corrupt, compared with the behaviour of their forefathers.36

But the divine care did not, nevertheless, desert its own people, which it foreknew. (HE I.22, trans. Foley and Higham 2008)

Therefore, HE I.17-21 is borrowed from the Vita Germani of Constantius of Lyon almost word for word.37 In the new context of the Historia, the story of the mission of Germanus acquired a new meaning, since the bishop appeared as the precursor of Augustine of Canterbury. Bede highlighted the parallelism between the two figures very carefully.38 Both the missionaries became instruments of God’s judgment, the first as a war leader (who guided the Britons against the Saxons), the second as a prophet (who announced to the Britons their defeat at Chester). The message of Bede is clear: the Britons could succeed in war only under the leadership of a continental saint of the orthodox Church, or a Roman, as Ambrosius Aurelianus.

Trent Foley and Nicholas Higham noticed that Bede here was paraphrasing Paul, Romans 9: 2, where the apostle declared that, although they appeared to be rejected in favour of the Gentiles, the Jews will be brought back by God into the fold of redemption.40 According to these scholars, Bede was drawing a parallel between the Gentiles and the Anglo-Saxons and between the Jews and the Britons, leaving the possibility open for a new conversion of the oldest Christian people of the island. Conclusion The comparison between the chronological frameworks into which Bede inserted the ‘Gildasian’ quotations reveals significant differences between CM and HE. The focus of the first work was not on fifth-century Britain and Bede contented himself with registering the events related to the British people without important modifications to Gildas’s account. In contrast, the chronology of HE became one of the tools Bede used to discredit the Britons and the sequence of the events was consequently changed. By making Germanus (and not Ambrosius Aurelianus, as in CM) the last leader under whom the Britons obtained a victory against their enemies, Bede was exemplifying the cause of their fall: as the Jews refused to recognise the Son of God, it was their lack of will in following the leaders of the orthodox Church that ultimately doomed the British people.

In CM, the last record of the Britons concerned a success: however, the impact of this was reduced by the comment on the final victory of the Saxons. In HE Bede even deprived the Britons of this final positive note by changing the chronological structure of his history. The invitation to Germanus to preach against the Pelagians was the last good action of the British people: ‘in spite of St. Germanus’s visit, the British did not abstain from wickedness, and even compounded their sins’.39 This was made clear in chapter 22, where Bede described the civil wars fought amongst them and their perverted behaviour. He wrote: Qui inter alia inenarrabilium scelerum facta, quae historicus eorum Gildus flebili sermone describit, et hoc addebant, ut numquam genti Saxonum siue Anglorum, secum Brittaniam incolenti, uerbum fidei praedicando committerent.

This, however, would have been impossible without Gildas’s contribution, since it was his criticisms of his countrymen that laid the foundations of Bede’s portrayal of the Britons as a sinful and wicked people, unworthy of God’s favour. In this view, just as Gregory the Great, the pope who re-founded Christianity in Britain, was the new St Paul, so the Anglo-Saxons were the new Gentiles: even if originally pagan, they became the new Israel and were consequently purged of all attribution of bestiality and barbarism.

‘Among other unspeakable crimes, recorded with sorrow by their own historian Gildas, they added this – that they never preached the Faith to the Saxons who dwelt among them.’ (HE I.22, trans. L. Sherley-Price 1955) Interestingly enough, however, this condemnation is somewhat softened by the way Bede concluded the chapter:

  Constantius, Vita Germani, edited by W. Levison, MGH: Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum VII, Berlin 1920, pp. 225-83. Prosper of Aquitaine, Epitoma Chronicon, edited by T. Mommsen, MGH: AA 9, Chronica Minora I (Berlin, 1892), pp. 385-499, at 472. 37   Elfassi, ‘Germain d’Auxerre’, pp. 38-40. 38   Higham, English Empire, pp. 35-36. 39   Goffart, Narrators, p. 302. 36

  W. Trent Foley and Nicholas J. Higham, ‘Bede on the Britons’, Early Medieval Europe 17 (2008), pp. 154-85, at 170. 40

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Luca Larpi Table 1.2 Chronological Table: Bede HE 1.2-24

HE I, Chapters

Chronological references

AD

Chronica (AD)

DEB

2.

Caesar in Britain

693 ab urbe condita 60 BC

3.

Claudius in Britain

798 ab urbe condita 46 (AD 45)

4.

Marcus Aurelius 156 (AD 161-180)



Conversion of Lucius

5. Severus 189-206 (AD 194-211)

Severus’s wall

6. Diocletian 286-306 (AD 286-306) Persecution (AD 304-313) 7. Albanus, Aaron, Julius § 406 § 10 8.

End of persecution

Death of Costantius (AD 307)

Constantine (AD 307-338)

9. Gratian 377-383 (AD 380-386) Magnus Maximus § 13 10.

Arcadius and Onorius 394-407 (AD 397-410)

Pelagius 11.

Honorius and Theodosius II 407 (AD 410-425)



Gratian (Britain)



Alani, Suevi, Vandals



Constantine III



‘2 years before Rome’s sack’

407

Sack of Rome

1164 ab urbe condita

409



End of Roman Britain

‘almost 470 years from Caesar’

12.

First raids of Picts and Scots

§ 461 (AD 386-394)

§ 14

1st appeal: turf wall

§ 473 (AD 410-425)

§ 15

2nd appeal: stone wall § 474 § 17-18 Again Picts and Scots § 19 13.

Theodosius II 423-449 (AD 425-451)



Palladius in Ireland

8th year of Theodosius

14

431

Bede’s use of Gildas: two different chronological frameworks Aëtius ter consul

23rd year of Theodosius

446

§ 483 (AD 448)

§ 20

Attila

Famine in Constantinople

14. Famine in Britain British victories § 21 Abundance Plague § 22 Vortigern § 484 (AD 448-451) 15.

Marcian and Valentinian III

§ 23

449-456 (AD 451-458)

Coming of the Saxons § 489 § 23

Saxons, Angles, Jutes



Hengist and Horsa



Treaty between Picts and Saxons

Saxon Rebellion § 23 16. Ambrosius Aurelianus § 504 (AD 475-492) § 25 Badon ‘c.44 years after Saxons’ adventus’ § 26 17.

Agricola the Pelagian

18. Germanus and Lupus § 491-2 (ante AD 458) 19.

Germanus visits Albanus’s tomb

20.

Germanus and the fire

21.

‘Alleluja Battle’

22.

2nd visit of Germanus



Germanus in Valentinian’s court



Death of Germanus



Death of Aëtius



Death of Valentinianus



End of Western Empire

23.

Civil wars in Britain

24.

Mauritius 582

6th year of Marcian

Augustine 14th year of Mauritius ‘c.150 years from Saxons’ adventus’ 15

455

596

Chapter 2 Bede’s Vision of an English Britain Nicholas J. Higham In recent decades, scholars have generally approached early Anglo-Saxon England from the perspective of the geographical spread of such supposedly diagnostic features as the distribution of tribal names recorded in nearcontemporary literature,1 pre-Christian, ‘Anglo-Saxon’ cemeteries,2 or place-names recorded in Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica.3 On these criteria, early Anglo-Saxon England focused on eastern England, with the addition of the Upper Thames Valley, and otherwise faded out gradually westwards. However, Bede was no archaeologist and none of these representations effectively mirror his conceptualisation of the Angles seu Saxones in Britain. This was less spatially framed than socio-politically, with the Anglo-Saxons constituting the upper layer in an insular ethnic hierarchy and all the other peoples of Britain – the Britons, Scots and Picts – subservient to them. This essay sets out to explore Bede’s vision of the English in Britain, the extent to which his position alters from one work to another, the reality behind Bede’s perceptions and how these engage with his understanding of the relationship between man and God.

he positioned as the second foundational event in English history, using language to link together what he considered two absolutely seminal events. His earliest treatment of this issue in the ‘Lesser Chronicle’ illustrates this neatly: there are only two ‘English’ entries, one being ‘The race of the Angles comes to Britain’ and the other ‘The Saxons in Britain receive the faith of Christ’.9 Bede included far more material in his ‘Greater Chronicle’, written c. 725, introducing the Angles in the joint reign of Marcian and Valentinian:10 The people of the Angles or Saxons were conveyed to Britain in three long-ships. When their voyage proved a success, news of them was carried back home. A stronger army set out which, joined to the earlier one, first of all drove away the enemy they were seeking [the Picts and Scots]. Then they turned their arms on their allies [the Britons], and subjugated almost the whole island by fire or sword, from the eastern shore as far as the western one, on the trumped-up excuse that the Britons had given them less than adequate stipend for their military services.

Bede positioned the ‘English Arrival’ in Britain as central to insular history, famously referring to it in the Ecclesiastical History as the adventus Anglorum.4 He was conscious of dating methods from the Creation and from Rome’s foundation and in three passages he used years since the adventus, so treating this event as an insular equivalent of these two universal foundational stories. Gregory was pope ‘around 150 years after the arrival of the English’,5 King Edwin accepted baptism ‘in the year of our Lord 627 and about 180 years after the coming of the English to Britain’,6 and the present, 731, was ‘about 285 years after the coming of the English to Britain’.7 Adventus was also, of course, used by Bede of the ‘arrival’ of the Holy Spirit,8 so making connections with the English conversion which

Bede had clearly by now discovered Gildas, whose account he here simplified and developed. Winterbottom’s translation reads: In just punishment for the crimes that had gone before, a fire heaped up and nurtured by the hand of the impious easterners spread from sea to sea. It devastated town and country round about, and, once it was alight, it did not die down until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue. 11 The totality of these events conveyed by Gildas’s highly rhetorical passage was carefully retained by Bede, enabling him to establish this as the inception of the English domination of Britain. Gildas’s account then underpinned his next comment on the issue, in the reign of Zeno (474-91):

  See, for example, David Brown, Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1987), p. 13; Lloyd and Jennifer Laing, Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1979), map 2 on p. 92. 2   As John Hines, ‘Philology, Archaeology and the adventus Saxonum vel Anglorum’, in Britain 400-600: Language and History, ed. A. Bammesberger and A. Wollmann (Heidelberg, 1990), pp. 17-36 at 34-36; Ken Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire (Stroud, 2000), p. 11. 3   David H. Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford, 1981), map 41 on p. 30, which is then re-printed in Bede: The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins (Oxford, 1994), p. xxxvii. 4   Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969: henceforth HE). The actual phrase occurs for the first time in HE, I.23, but Bede used comparable language from I.15 onwards. 5   HE I.23. 6   HE II.14. 7   HE V.23. 8   HE IV.24. 1

  De Temporibus, ed. C. W. Jones and T. Mommsen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 123c (Brepols, 1975), pp. 579-611 at 610-11: Anglorum gens in Brittaniam venit; Saxones in Brittania fidem Christi suscipiunt. For discussion, see N. J. Higham, [Re-]Reading Bede: the Ecclesiastical History in Context (London, 2006), pp. 113-14. My thanks to Martin Ryan for the translation. 10   Chronica Maiora, ed. T. Mommsen, MGHistorica, AA Tomus XIII, Chronicorum Minorum Sæc. IV, V, VI, VII, III (Berlin, 1898), pp. 223-333 for the year 4410. 11   Gildas, De Excidio Britonum, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom (London, 1978), p. 27, XXIV.1. 9

17

Nicholas J. Higham Each of these episodes in the Ecclesiastical History develops the rhetoric of divinely sanctioned English dominance of Britain and several motifs are shared: each is linked with missionary enterprise performed by exemplary foreign priests triumphantly leading an eager English people through baptism to faith; all feature virtuous and brave kings and each also refers to English kings feared by or with dominion over the other peoples of Britain. This dominion has parallels with that earlier enjoyed by the Romans: the language of imperium was used in the HE in both Roman and English contexts;15 bishops came from Rome to both Edwin and Oswiu;16 both received papal letters;17 Edwin was associated quite explicitly with symbols of Roman authority,18 and the use of barbarus (‘barbarian’) in the final example of the other peoples of Britain underlines Bede’s positioning of the English in an insular context as the new Romans.19 Just as Roman protection of and dominion over other peoples in the past was vouchsafed by God, so too is English dominion over the other peoples of Britain in the present, but only so long as they remain worthy of divine favour and obedient to the Lord. It was the Britons who provided the counterexample of a once obedient, Christian people sustained by martyrdom, which had strayed into the cesspits of immorality and lost sight of God. In consequence they had given up divine protection and been subjected to another people through the will of the Lord.20 Put simply, Bede’s message in the Ecclesiastical History to the Northumbrian secular élite who were its intended audience is, ‘be good and do good and God will make you the dominant people of Britain once again; be bad and do bad and the Lord will forsake you, leading to subjugation by your enemies’. The positive message is offered quite explicitly by Bede in the context of King Edwin, whose ‘earthly power had increased as a portent that he was to become a believer and have a share in the heavenly kingdom’.21 It is difficult to imagine how the link between the good behaviour of a king and divine support could be made much clearer using examples from English history.

Under the leadership of Ambrosius Aurelianus – a man of modest means who alone of the mighty Romans had survived slaughter by the Saxons in which his parents, who had worn the purple, had been killed – the Britons goaded the victors to battle and defeated them. And from that time, first one side then the other gained the victory, until the incomers, being the stronger, gained possession of the whole island for a long time.12 Gildas is here again rewritten, interpreted and developed, with victory quite explicitly going to the Saxons.13 The ‘Greater Chronicle’ therefore dealt with the adventus in two passages. In the first the Saxons ‘subjugated almost the whole island by fire or sword’; in the second the Britons fought back but the Saxons proved ‘stronger’ and ‘gained possession of the whole island for a long time’. Both passages introduce the concept of an Anglo-Saxon people active across and quickly becoming dominant over the whole of Britain and it seems reasonable to suppose that, in substance if not in detail, this effectively encapsulates Bede’s vision of his people’s past. What did Bede mean by the ‘long time’ to which he referred in this passage? His wording implies that it had ended before the time of writing, c. 725, as is confirmed by his commentary on the present in HE V.23 which he wrote no later than 731: here the Picts and Scots were at peace with the English but not subject to them and he divided the Britons between those who were under English rule and those who were not; clearly, Bede did not see the AngloSaxons as totally dominant throughout all Britain at this point, even though he believed they had been in the past. Whereas in the Greater Chronicle Bede introduced English domination of Britain in the fifth century, in the Historia Ecclesiastica he built up his picture of Anglo-Saxon hegemony more slowly, using it as an indicator of God’s especial favour towards particular kings. So King Edwin, in II.9, was portrayed as the first English ruler to hold sway over the Britons as well as the English, then King Oswald, in III.6, was the first to have dominion over the Britons, Picts and Irish in Britain, as well as the English. Oswiu then enjoyed even greater power than his brother for a time,14 though Bede was less inclined to trumpet his successes or apply praise language to him. The final pinnacle of success was achieved with the arrival of Theodore as archbishop of the whole English church in 669, with Oswiu still on the throne of the Northumbrians (he died the following year), when (in HE IV.2) he proclaimed:

Bede was less explicit when it came to giving examples of bad behaviour and its consequences but these do occur and it may be helpful to examine one in some detail. Bede made it clear that the reigns of Edwin and then Oswald were uniquely blessed by the Lord but he was far more ambivalent regarding Oswiu, who had both slain and married within his own close kin.22 As the king who had steered Northumbria   For Roman imperium, see HE, I. 3. The connection between Roman and English imperium is made in N. J. Higham, An English Empire: Bede and the Early Anglo-Saxon Kings (Manchester, 1995), pp. 9-40. 16   HE II.9; IV.1. 17   HE II.17; III.29. 18   HE II.16. 19   HE IV.2. 20   HE I.22. 21   HE II.9. 22   HE III.14 refers to warfare against his own son, Alhfrith, and nephew, Oethelwald, either or both of whom may well have been killed, and he was certainly credited with the murder of his cousin, Oswine. For the marriage, see HE III.15: his bride, Eanflæd, was Oswiu’s close kin through his mother, who was either sister or half-sister to King Edwin, her father, so well within the prohibited degrees. This may have caused the distance between Oswiu and Aidan that Bede reflects but does not explicitly report: N. J. Higham, The Convert Kings: Power and Religious 15

Never had there been such happy times since the English first came to Britain; for having most brave and Christian kings, they were a terror to all the barbarian nations, and the desires of all men were set on the joys of the heavenly kingdom of which they had only lately heard …   Chronica Maiora for the year 4444.   See Luca Larpi, ‘Bede’s use Gildas’ in this volume. 14   HE II.5. 12 13

18

Bede’s Vision of an English Britain back to the Catholic Church, though, and as one who had at the end of his life collaborated with the blessed Theodore, Oswiu escaped explicit censure. It was his son and heir, Ecgfrith, who emerged as the principal example of a Northumbrian king who had failed to listen to the Lord and Bede presented evidence that the Northumbrians had in his reign started off down the road to losing God’s favour. Their dominion over the north was lost in 685, when Ecgfrith was defeated and killed by the Picts and the northern peoples all regained their independence, with the Picts acquiring what had until then been Northumbrian territory.23 Bede was just entering his teens at this date, so could presumably remember it about as well as someone in their late fifties in 2010 (the date of writing this) can/could remember the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. It clearly made a profound impact on him and his fellow Northumbrians at the time and the consequences were certainly dire. Bede told the story of the loss of Fife with considerable feeling:24

for some considerable time.26 While Bede could assert with confidence in 731 that the Firth [of Forth] was the boundary between Pictish and English territory, that it would become so may well have been quite unclear in 685 when the total loss of Ecgfrith’s army left the whole of northern Bernicia vulnerable to attack. Trumwine’s retirement from the vicinity of Edinburgh suggests that in this crisis the Northumbrians were less than confident of retaining even northern Lothian. This was also a crisis for the Catholic Church: Wilfrid’s pan-Northumbrian diocese had been sub-divided by Theodore in the late 670s, establishing Bosa at York, Eata at Hexham and Eadhæd at Lincoln. Hexham was then subdivided once more in or about 681 to establish Trumwine as bishop with responsibilities stretching northwards from the Firth of Forth.27 Bede portrayed him as a bishop appointed to the Picts but this may well merely reflect Fife having become Pictish territory post-685. Previously, the area was arguably one of shifting tribal identities in which both Pictish and British ethnicities were at this date giving way to English under the joint pressure of political/territorial domination and religious colonialism. Trumwine’s mission was to a community overseen to an extent at least by English estate holders and his task was to suppress Scottish and/or British heresy and secure the area for Catholicism, in so doing extending the effective authority of Theodore at Canterbury.28 It was characteristic of Ecgfrith’s reign that political and religious authority went hand in hand: Bosa had been trained under his sister and mother at Streanæshalch and both Trumwine and Eadhæd were men closely associated with the royal dynasty who retired from their dioceses when their political master lost control of them. From Bede’s perspective, the collapse of Trumwine’s Romanist bishopric was a serious setback for the Catholic Church, from which recovery only occurred with the conversion of the Pictish king Brude to Catholic practices under the persuasion of Bede’s own abbot, Ceolfrith, via the letter which he reconstructed in the Historia (V.21).

Where very many among the people of the English were either slaughtered by the sword or enslaved, or escaped by flight from the land of the Picts, even the most reverend man of the Lord, Trumwine, who had accepted the episcopacy over them, retired with his people, who were in the monastery of Abercorn, positioned in a region of the English but close to the firth which divides the lands of the English and the Picts. Wheresoever he could he commended [his followers] to friends in monasteries, while he himself selected a place to stay in the oft-mentioned monastery of brethren and sisters of God, which is called Streanæshalch; there with a few of his followers he lived for very many years a life of monkish rigour of value not only to himself but also to many others; when he died he was buried in the church of the blessed Peter the apostle with the honour due to his life and rank. This was told, of course, with all the benefits of hindsight There is no particular reason to suppose that Fife had been held by the Picts in the generation before 685. The Pictish heartland lay further north around the Moray Firth and Ecgfrith had already defeated the Picts early in the 670s and re-established his father’s earlier ‘overkingship’,25 so this was arguably an acquisition on their part of new territory, or territory over which they had not had control

In the HE responsibility for the collapse of Northumbrian hegemony was laid squarely on the shoulders of King Ecgfrith but Bede’s case did not rest on the sort of military, political or ideological factors that we might use today to explain, for example, problems experienced by the US and its allies in bringing the war in Afghanistan to a successful close. Rather, he offered a series of moral failings across the 670s to ’80s, opening with Ecgfrith’s expulsion of the reverentissimus antistes Wilfrid (though this was not linked causally) and culminating in his despatch of an army to

Affiliation in Early Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1997), p. 230. 23   HE IV.26. 24   HE IV.26. 25   The Life of Bishop Wilfrid by Eddius Stephanus, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927), XIX. For ‘overkingship’, see J. Campbell, ‘Bede’s Reges and Principes’ (Jarrow, 1979); Barbara A. E. Yorke, ‘The Vocabulary of Anglo-Saxon Overlordship’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in History and Archaeology 2 (1981), 171-200; P. Wormald, ‘Bede, the Bretwaldas and the Origins of the Gens Anglorum’, in Ideal and Reality in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Society, ed. P. Wormald, D. Bullough and R. Collins (Oxford, 1983), pp. 99-129; D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings (London, 1991), pp. 14-20; S. Fanning, ‘Bede, Imperium and the Bretwaldas’, Speculum 66 (1991), 1-26; Higham, An English Empire, passim. Bede’s standard term for a powerful king is rex and for a minor king princeps; although he never used imperator of English kings in the HE, he did use the term imperium of the authority of over-kings.

  See the discussion of these very difficult sources by James E. Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland: Scotland to 795 (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 202-3. 27   His location at Abercorn has interesting parallels with the earlier foundation of Rochester on the east bank of the river Medway as the bishopric for West Kent, west of the river. 28   Theodore arguably took a catholic view of the extent of his authority in Britain to include the Picts, Scots and Britons, given that their clergy were deemed heretical by the Romans. Wilfrid similarly also saw himself as wielding authority across the whole of the north: The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, LIII. 26

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Nicholas J. Higham History to attract extended condemnation from Bede.31 Post 642, however, Bede found ever less to commend in the leaders of secular society, restraining his use of the language of praise as regards kings and directing it primarily towards members of the clergy, including all of bishops Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Egbert, John of Hexham and Theodore. In the recent past, such clerics were pretty well the only good examples he was prepared to offer his readers. In contrast, he had little that was positive to say about even learned Christian kings such as Aldfrith of the Northumbrians and the only royal figures who earned significant praise were those who left England to travel to Rome, such as Cenred of the Mercians and Offa of the East Saxons (in V.19). There are no more great English kings ruling Britain in the last few decades covered by Bede. His message to the secular community in the present would seem to be that they should emulate the behaviour of their clerical counterparts, as well as the great kings of two or three generations ago, but not the kings of the present or recent past.

ravage the innocent Irish in 684 against the advice of St Cuthbert:29 in Bede’s view, it was the curses of the suffering Irish which were heard by God and which led directly to Ecgfrith’s death in battle the following year. Bede adhered, therefore, to a model of historical causation in which military victory and so ‘overkingship’ was gifted by God to those kings whose obedience to His design warranted it. This was an Old Testament view of kingship, as exemplified by the mixed fortunes of Saul and David. As Bede made clear in his Preface, the primary purpose of the Historia Ecclesiastica was to offer examples of both good and bad behaviour capable of spurring his contemporaries to adopt the good and avoid the bad. Should the Northumbrian leadership in the present make the necessary changes, then Bede was suggesting that they would regain the undivided protection of the Lord and so re-establish the Northumbrians (and so the English) as God’s Chosen People within Britain, bringing to heel the Britons, Picts and Scots (and in the process perhaps overturning also the current Mercian ‘overkingship’ of southern Britain).

Clearly, in both the Greater Chronicle and the Ecclesiastical History, Bede’s portrayal of the English dominance of Britain was dependent on his rhetorical needs. That said, it seems fair to suppose that there was a significant degree of English hegemony exhibited in different ways across the previous three centuries or so: Bede did not construct his picture from nothing at all. English dominance would have begun via war bands taking plunder from the Britons, just as Gildas depicted,32 and he hinted at some sort of treaty settlement which may have apportioned an area of dominance to the Saxons.33 As English kingship developed in the late sixth and seventh centuries, so such relationships became regularised to an extent. Tribute payments offered a partial alternative to plundering and/or the seizure of territory, though both clearly continued.34 As Bede was well aware, Northumbria was expanding northwards and westwards in the late sixth and seventh centuries, with direct control of territory reaching eventually to the west coast at least as far north as Ayr and up the east coast to the Firth of Tay. In 680 Northumbria was clearly the most powerful kingdom in northern Britain and seemed set on a process of expansion which might eventually be expected to incorporate the other peoples within a single kingship.35 In 684 Ecgfrith attacked Ireland; in 685 he was apparently bidding to take in further territory to his own kingship beyond the Tay when he was unexpectedly killed, leading to the permanent loss of Fife and a retrenchment of Northumbria back to the Firth of Forth.36 Further south, the Mercians and West Saxons suffered no comparable setbacks as they tightened their grasp on ‘British’ territory and took

Bede’s treatment of this subject in the Greater Chronicle therefore offers a concise and simple model of English domination of all Britain established already in the fifth century, which lasted ‘a long time’ but was lost before the present, probably but not explicitly in 685. Unlike Gildas’s The Ruin of Britain, the Greater Chronicle makes it quite clear that the Saxons won ‘the war of the Saxon federates’, the result of which Bede never explicitly stipulates elsewhere. In the Ecclesiastical History, however, Bede provides a far more nuanced model designed to set out the value of obedience to the Christian God rather than just tell the story of English history. The moral high ground belongs initially not to the Saxons, who were still pagan, or the Britons, whom Bede depicts as immoral and fast losing divine protection, but to the distinguished outsiders, Ambrosius Aurelianus and St Germanus, who personify Roman, Christian virtues.30 It then shifts to the Roman Gregory, whom Bede introduced with great solemnity in I.23 as ‘a man distinguished both in doctrine and in action’, who was ‘prompted by divine inspiration’ to send his mission to England and ‘blessed’. The Roman Augustine was reverentissimus (I.28) but English figures only attract such clear signs of Bede’s approval gradually, the first being the English Deiran ‘overking’ Edwin, and the second the Bernician ‘overking’ Oswald, both of whom Bede depicted ruling many different peoples and leading their own English compatriots into baptism. It is through such figures as Edwin and Oswald that Bede was seeking to develop the Anglo-Saxons as the natural successors to the Romans as the rulers of Britain, so as quasi Romans themselves. The forces of Satan might assail such men and even gain temporary success but God’s champions would ultimately succeed, as did Oswald, ‘a man beloved of God’, by defeating and killing the British tyrant Cædwallon, who is the only figure in the whole of the Ecclesiastical

  HE II.20; III.1.   De Excidio Britonum, XXIV, XXV. 33   De Excidio Britonum, X.2. 34   Tribute was probably common-place although it is rarely explicitly referred to: it occurs in HE I.34 in the context of Æthelfrith’s conquest of the northern Britons, and II,5 of Oswiu’s conquest of the Picts and Scots, as well as in The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, 20, of Ecgfrith’s victory over the Mercians. 35   The Northumbrian kings should be seen as much a part of Scottish history as English: Fraser, From Caledonia to Pictland, p. 229. 36   HE IV.26. 31 32

  HE IV.12; 26.   HE I.16; 17-21.

29 30

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Bede’s Vision of an English Britain ever more under their own direct control.37 Clearly, Bede was right to view the English as conquerors of both territory and people: this comes over best in his Greater Chronicle, where he simplified the chronology of English dominance, interpreting the Gildasian story so as to back-date conclusion of the process to the fifth century, claiming that the Saxons ‘being the stronger, gained possession of the whole island for a long time’.38

about 550. This is also the commonest date for the inception of the more historical sections of various royal genealogies, excluding Kent’s, which may have historical elements marginally earlier. Ida, the founder of the Bernician dynasty, was dated to the 540s by Bede,44 and the East Anglian dynasty traced their founder to about the same period.45 It has often been suggested that the more successful English kingships were those with access to British territory, which they could raid and/or eventually incorporate into their own kingdoms. In a sense, it was their dominance of the other peoples of Britain that provided the more powerful English rulers of the seventh century with the resources and reputations to exercise superiority over their English neighbours.

This is far distant from current archaeological interpretations of the foundation of England, which generally prefer a more ‘farmer’ and less ‘warrior’ view of both settlements and cemeteries.39 The argument that the weapon-sets deposited in so many male graves (and a few female) in the later fifth and sixth centuries are indicative primarily of internal tribal status has much to commend it, based as it is on the observation that such finds accompanied individuals to the grave who were either too elderly or too young to have been able to use them effectively.40 That does nothing to contradict, however, the sense in which early Anglo-Saxon England was made up of a whole series of local or regional societies which were bristling with weapons and in which the right to own and use them was a fundamental divide between free society and the unfree.41 That the Britons were termed wealas – ‘foreigners’, ‘slaves’ – makes the connection between ethnicity and social status effectively, for slaves were not entitled to own or use weapons. Even before kingship emerged in the late sixth century, AngloSaxon society had a considerable capacity for war via the war-band, which may have recruited not just locally from fellow tribesmen but also more widely, bringing in a variety of exiles and adventurers.42 It seems very likely that it was successful war leadership from which kingship eventually evolved, since it was only that which could provide the capital necessary to maintain a permanent war band. This process is visible in the archaeological record in the emergence of ‘princely’ burials in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, but slightly earlier in the written sources. Procopius seems to have believed that there were Anglian and Frisian kings in Britain worthy of the name in the 540s,43 and Bede suggested in his famous list of imperium-wielding kings incorporated into HE II.5 that there had been two prior to Æthelberht of Kent in the late sixth and early seventh centuries, so imagined ‘overkingship’ stretching back to

England began in the context of raiding and land-taking, therefore, and expanded through warfare and the sociopolitical dominance that resulted. While it would be wrong to argue that every English ceorl was, had been or was about to be an active warrior, it is equally misleading to see the early English as peaceful country folk with their eyes turned down to where they were busily cultivating the soil. Bede’s vision of an English Britain reflected processes of warfare, albeit overlain by the historical modelling of a deeply committed Christian theologian who was uncomfortable with the resultant violence and bloodshed. His Ecclesiastical History refers to numerous English raiding armies, and even the occasional British one, active deep in the territory of their neighbours. Even Archbishop Theodore seems to have interested himself in such issues: the disciple who set down his views on matters of penance after his death included the instruction that a third of the tribute taken from a defeated king should be given to the Church or the poor.46 War, raiding and tribute payment were facts of life in early AngloSaxon England, both between English kingdoms and others, and these were necessarily three of the basic mechanisms driving forward the spread of Anglo-Saxon dominance across Britain. From the seventh century onwards, clerical authority was added to the mix, providing an ideological component. Although several non-English tribal kingships survived the processes of English conquest in the western and northern peripheries of Britain – so in what were later known as Cornwall, Wales and Scotland – it may well not have been clear that they would in the early eighth century, when Bede was considering how best to frame his historical writings. Looking back across the previous three centuries, he believed that English domination of Britain had been achieved already in the fifth century, then allowed to slip in 685, due to God’s anger at Ecgfrith. In the present, therefore, it remained a work in progress which depended most of all on successful recovery of the moral high ground. When reviewing the power and authority vested in the Mercian and Northumbrian kingships and their Catholic bishops in the 730s, Bede can be forgiven if he supposed that full English domination would be re-imposed in the near future, provided only that God was willing.

  Nicholas Brooks, ‘The Formation of the Mercian Kingdom’, in The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, ed. S. Bassett (Leicester, 1989), pp. 159-70; Barbara Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London, 1995), pp. 52-84. 38   See note 10 above. 39   See, for example, Stanley West, West Stow: The Anglo-Saxon Village, I, East Anglian Archaeology 24 (1985), pp. 167-70. 40   Heinrich Härke, ‘Warrior Graves? The Background of the AngloSaxon Weapon Burial Rite’, Past and Present 126 (1990), 22-43. 41   See, for example, the Laws of Ine, XXIX, which provides penalties for the loan of weapons or a horse to an esne (unfree servant), the implication being that an unfree man would not otherwise have access to weapons: Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann, I (Halle, 1903), 88123, at p. 102. A translation is provided by Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents I (2nd ed., London, 1979), 398-407 at p. 402. 42   As HE III.14, in the case of King Oswine. 43   Procopius, History of the Wars, books III and IV, ed. and trans. Henry B. Dewing (London, 1916), IV.20, 8, on which see Averil Cameron, Procopius (London, 1985), p. 214. 37

  HE V.24, under the year 547, claiming that he reigned for 12 years though the biblical number necessarily makes the detail suspect. 45   HE II.15, naming Wuffa as Rædwald’s grandfather. 46   Medieval Handbooks of Penance, ed. John T. McNeill and Helen M. Gamer (New York, 1938), VII.2, at p. 190. 44

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Chapter 3 The Sense (or Absence) of Place in Bede Christopher Grocock My initial thoughts on the issues discussed in this paper arose from re-reading passages which I have looked at on numerous occasions while editing the Historia Abbatum and reading other Bedan texts that mention specific locations. In all of these there is a notable lack of precise detail or description, and the observation became a query that would not disappear. Shortly after I began the more detailed study of the texts on which this paper is based, Nick Higham remarked to me that the absence of detailed landscape description is common in historians of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages; and while I find no reason to disagree with this judgement, as far as prose writers are concerned, this is not necessarily the case in verse. Thus I begin with a brief exploration of the use made in verse writing of the locus amoenus topos, derived from Antiquity, by Bede and his contemporaries and successors, before examining some passages of Bede’s prose work, to see how his style accords with late antique Christian writers generally and how it contrasts with the ‘jewelled style’, in which lots of topographical detail is included; and I conclude with some suggestions why Bede’s practice in his historical writing is limited in detailed depictions of place.1 Against this, the evidence of Bede’s own practice in his verse writing makes it clear that an absence of landscape description in his prose is not the result of an inability to write accurate and detailed description. Thus other reasons must be sought; in particular, a consideration of how some attitudes Bede displays towards certain types of ‘ideal monastic landscape’ may have affected his practice, is revealed by examining some selected short passages from the Historica Ecclesiastica and the Historia Abbatum. A brief examination of some later writers’ work may help to understand Bede’s own particular stance in this regard, as there is evidence that they synthesized styles or ‘registers’ of expression which are kept apart by Bede in prose and verse.

so heavenly minded that he overlooked such detail (other writers seem to include some); it might explain his specific interest in holy places, adapting Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis and commenting on the symbolic detail of Old Testament in De Tabernaculo and De Templo. This also shows that Bede was not opposed to description per se. His education as a writer lies in the world of Late Antiquity, where description of places and buildings, especially but not exclusively in poetry, was highly developed: in Vicky Gunn’s words, ‘Bede’s reading acculturated him into a world of patristic thinking, which was itself acculturated into the literary culture of Antiquity.’2 The limitations of historical prose writing in the early Middle Ages pose a difficulty for our understanding of the sites they mention. Someone who only read the texts and had not actually visited Wearmouth and Jarrow, walked around the ruins, and latterly read through the reports published by Professor Rosemary Cramp, would arguably actually have very little visual picture of WearmouthJarrow or of its place in the landscape. Of course, it could be argued that this is not actually important: Ian Wood has related to the author that on one occasion he offered to take a notable early medieval historian to look at the extant sites of Wearmouth-Jarrow, as the scholar in question had never been there, but that the offer was met with a polite refusal on the grounds that the topography of a place can teach us nothing about the early medieval world. Certainly, the distance in time from the seventh and eighth centuries to our own age poses problems, not least for the interpreters of sites such as Wearmouth and Jarrow, and it is also true that without the historical records about such sites, in large part contemporary accounts, we would be able to learn little about the social and political world in which they emerged; but it still seems odd that so little detail in terms of location and landscape description is to be found in Bede’s prose accounts (or at least that it seems to be kept to the bare minimum). A better understanding of the approach which Bede takes might help us to use his writings as historians and early medievalists more sensibly – and to obviate unfounded criticism of Bede for omission of details we might like him to have included (or accuse him of inaccuracy or speculation).

The question of audience also needs to to be taken into account: there may have been little point including detailed depictions of places with which an audience was acquainted on a daily basis; conversely, in an age before accurate illustrations or maps, let alone Google Earth, it would have been pointless to describe places which the monastic audience, constrained by the vow of stabilitas, could never have visited. Furthermore, the events described in Bede’s historical works are clearly Christian history, and the actions of individuals take precedence over locations, as we shall see. It might therefore be argued that Bede was

2   V. Gunn, Bede’s Historiae: genre, rhetoric and the construction of Anglo-Saxon church history (Woodbridge, 2009), p. 17; on Bede’s education, cf. G. H. Brown, Bede the Educator (Jarrow Lecture, 1996), pp. 1-4; D. Schanzer, ‘Bede’s Historiography: a neglected source of the style of the Historia Ecclesiastica’ in Source of Wisdom: Old English and early Medieval Latin studies in honor of Thomas D. Hill, ed. C. D. Wright, F. M. Biggs and T. N. Hall (Toronto, 2007), pp. 329-52; on literary style in Late Antiquity, see E. R. Curtius (trans. W. R. Trask) European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London, 1953); M. Roberts, The Jewelled Style (New York, 1989).

  My thanks are due to Professors Ian Wood and Nick Higham for some thought-provoking comments and general encouragement in the writing of this paper, and to Professor Gale Owen-Crocker, Dr Brian Schneider and Mr Mike Lambert for invaluable guidance in the editorial process.

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Christopher Grocock The locus amoenus tradition

frequently in his de Arte Metrica; Michael Lapidge comments that ‘Bede has a comprehensive knowledge of earlier Latin verse, and he was greatly indebted to Vergil, Juvencus, Caelius Sedulius and Arator’,6 and ‘one has only to read a few lines of the metrical Vita S. Cudbercti to see that the model which guides Bede’s sense of style and hexametrical composition is Vergil.’7 However, as to the topos of the locus amoenus itself, Bede makes no mention of it in his de Schematibus et Tropis, where we might expect to find it. Given the essentially Christian aims of all Bede’s educational texts, this might not be surprising, once we take into account the function of the locus amoenus as a ‘place of ease’ on earth, described in elaborate and luxuriant terms.8 Bede knew of it, but used it sparingly and with sensitivity, and above all in accord with his profoundly Christian intentions as a writer and educator, as will be made clear by comparing another poem by Vergil, Eclogue I, and the way in which Bede adapted it for his own specific purposes.9 Curtius affirms that ‘from the first century of the Empire to the time of Goethe, all study of Latin literature began with Vergil’s first eclogue’, and while Lapidge lists only one citation of Eclogue I.60 in the metrical Vita Cudbercti, at l. 885, Bede’s poem De Die Iudicii shows a wider knowledge of the classical source.10 The poem by Vergil opens as follows:

The topic of the locus amoenus (‘beautiful place’) as a place of fancy, idealized in the imagination, is discussed in detail by Curtius in European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, and its reception both in Bede and in AngloSaxon literature has been explored at length by Catherine Clarke; in particular she gives some considered attention to Bede’s overview of the island of Britannia as ‘the Edenic Island’.3 I do not want to focus altogether on these places of the imagination, but rather on specific real instances of description of places in Bede – places to which we could actually go if we wanted to (though there are some which we would be hard put to locate accurately). That said, it is worth considering the locus amoenus topos to begin with, before we look at Bede’s actual practice when he talks about some real places. The presence and function of descriptions of place in the classical tradition may be illustrated from a classical source to begin with: the ekphrasis in Aeneid i. 159-169 as the stragglers of Aeneas’ fleet make landfall: est in secessu longo locus: insula portum effecit obiectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto 160 frangitur inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos. hinc atque hinc uastae rupes geminique minantur in caelum scopuli, quorum sub uertice late aequora tuta silent; tum siluis scaena coruscis desuper, horrentique atrum nemus imminet umbra. 165 fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum; intus aquae dulces uiuoque sedilia saxo, Nympharum domus. hic fessas non uincula naves ulla tenent, unco non alligat ancora morsu.4

Tityre, tu patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi siluestrem tenui musam meditaris auena; nos patriae fines et dulcia liquimus arua: nos patriam fugimus: tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra formosam resonare doces Amaryllida siluas. ‘Lying under the covering of this spreading beech, Tityrus, you reflect on the muse of the woods on your slender pipe; we have left the borders of our fatherland and our sweet fields; we have fled from our fatherland – you, Tityrus, dozing in the shade, you teach the woods to resound the lovely Amaryllis.’

‘There is a place in a deep-set bay; an island blocking the entrance makes a broad harbour, on which every wave coming in from the deep is broken and splits itself, lapping gently on the broad shore. On both sides towering crags, twin outcrops, loom threateningly skywards, and far and wide under their heights the seas are quiet and safe; above and beyond this is a backdrop thick with woods, a dark grove looming with a frightful gloom. Under the overhanging brow of the cliff is a cave, with crags hanging down; within, sweet waters and places to rest on the living rock, the home of nymphs. Here no chains hold fast the weary ships, no anchor ties them with its curving bite’.5

Curtius calls the first line the ‘motif of bucolic repose’, and Bede was perfectly familiar with it, as the opening lines of his poem De Die Iudicii reveal: inter florigeras fecundi cespitis herbas, flamine uentorum resonantibus undique ramis, arboris umbriferae maestus sub tegmine solus   M. Lapidge, Bede the Poet (Jarrow Lecture, 1993), p. 13, with ref. to N. Wright, ‘Bede and Vergil’, Romanobarbarica 6 (1981-2), 361-79. 7   M. Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), p. 108; Lapidge’s book contains the most recent and by far the most accurate summary of Bede’s use of Vergil, at pp. 226-7. 8   Curtius, European Literature, pp. 193-200: the sub-heading to section 4 of chapter 10 is Rhetorical Occasions for the Description of Nature; to section 5, The Grove; to section 6, The Pleasance; note also Curtius’s comments at p. 195: ‘the ideal of this late rhetorical poetry is richness of décor and an elaborate vocabulary’, and p. 198: ‘the locus amoenus’ is seen to be established as ‘a clearly defined topos of landscape description’. 9   Brown, Bede the Educator, pp. 11-12, notes Bede’s recognition of ‘the beauties of secular learning’ and ‘an occasional sigh at the loss of forbidden treasures’ on Bede’s part. 10   Curtius, European Literature, p. 190; Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Library, p. 226. 6

This is one of the finest examples from the classical tradition: Vergil’s description of a locus amoenus is detailed enough to be evocative but is also elusive. Bede clearly had knowledge of the epic master, and cites Vergil   Curtius, European Literature, pp. 192-201; C. A. M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England 700-1400 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 7-27 (the citation is the title of her first chapter, at pp. 7-35). 4   Vergil text from P. Vergili Maronis Opera, ed. R. A. B. Mynors, Oxford Classical Texts (Oxford 1969). 5   This and all subsequent translations are by the author unless otherwise stated. 3

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The sense (or absence) of place in Bede dum sedi, subito planctu turbatus amaro, carmina prae tristi cecini haec lugubria mente …11

undis, bis renudato litore contiguus terrae redditur …

‘among the flower-bearing grasses of a lush meadow, branches rustling all around with the breath of the winds, while I sat sad and lonely under the covering of a shady tree, suddenly overwhelmed by a bitter lament, I sang these gloomy songs from my sad mind.’

‘The king gave him a place for his episcopal see on the island of Lindisfarne … as the tide ebbs and flows, this place is surrounded twice daily by the waves of the sea like an island and twice, when the shore is left dry, it becomes attached again to the mainland …’.14

In this rare instance of ‘Bede singing the blues’, the Vergilian original is adapted very subtly; two lines of more detailed description than Vergil includes come before the first real reminiscence of the classical poem, and even then only two words are copied slavishly, as patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi becomes arboris umbriferae maestus sub tegmine solus; and rather than one sad character addressing a more fortunate comrade, Bede turns the poem into an introspective meditation on the sad state of the human condition. The Old English version of the Latin poem by Bede is also well-known and has rightly been called ‘one of the best-known examples of the locus amoenus in medieval literature … ’.12

Bede’s interest in tides and times is well-known from the De Tempore and De Temporum Ratione, and it is this rather than description of the actual spot which predominates here.15 There is some more obvious geographical interest in the topography of the area occupied by the Picts, described in HE III.4, and of the size of Iona: uenit de Hibernia … Columba Britanniam, praedicaturus uerbum Dei prouinciis septentrionalium Pictorum, hoc est eis quae arduis atque horrentibus montium iugis ab australibus eorum sunt regionibus sequestratae. ‘Columba came from Ireland to Britain … to preach the word of God to the kingdoms of the northern Picts which are separated from the southern part of their land by steep and rugged mountains.’

It is clear, then, that Bede was familiar with the locus amoenus tradition and was able to adapt it and use it for his own purposes, at least in verse: but what about prose? In his 1987 Jarrow Lecture, David Parsons refers to a number of examples of descriptive writing from saints’ lives and from Bede, and notes in particular a fine piece of writing from Venantius Fortunatus C. iii. 12 which fits the locus amoenus topos very nicely.13

neque enim magna est, sed quasi familiarum quinque, iuxta aestimationem Anglorum. ‘It is not a large island, being only about five hides in English reckoning.’ There is a good deal of detail on the constitution of the community in the rest of HE III.4, and on the character of Aidan in 5, but that is all. In HE III.25, on Finan’s church, the writing is more architectural than descriptive of location:

Accounts of specific places in Bede When we turn to descriptions of specific locations which occur in Bede’s narrative we will search in vain for such depictions of place. For example, Bede mentions Hi (Iona) in HE III.3, 4, and 5 – but his focus is on the minutiae of the ecclesiastical calendar in chapter 4, and such physical description of Lindisfarne as we do find is included in the course of a charming, delicate portrayal of Oswald acting as interpreter for Aidan:

Finan … in insula Lindisfarnensi fecit ecclesiam episcopali sede congruam; quam tamen more Scottorum non de lapide, sed de robore secto totam composuit, atque harundine texit; quam tempore sequente reuerentissimus archiepiscopus Theodorus in honore beati apostoli Petri dedicavit. Sed et episcopus loci ipsius Eadberct ablata haundine, plumbi lamminis eam totam, hoc est et tectum, et ipsos quoque parietes eius, cooperire curavit.

rex locum sedis episcopalis in insula Lindisfarnense … qui uidelicet locus accedente ac recedente reumate bis cotidie instar insulae maris circumluitur   Bede, Liber hymnorum rhythmi; variae preces 14, ed. J. Fraipont, CCSL CXXII (Turnhout, 1955). 12   Citation from Daniel Anzelark, in his review of C. Clarke, Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England, 700 – 1400 (Cambridge, 2006), The Review of English Studies 58 (236) (2007), 554-555, where the reviewer draws attention to the Old English poem Judgement Day II, ‘translated from the Latin poem attributed to Bede, but omitted by Clarke’; res.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/58/236/554 accessed 11.03.2010. The Old English version is edited by Graham D. Caie, The Old English Poem ‘Judgement Day II’: A critical edition with editions of ‘De die iudicii’ and Hatton 113 Homily ‘Be domes doege’, AngloSaxon Texts, 2 (Cambridge, 2000), reviewed by Frederick M. Biggs in The Modern Language Review, www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/ summary_0286-3419498_ITM (accessed 07.03.2010). 13   D. Parsons, Books and Buildings: architectural description before and after Bede (Jarrow Lecture, 1987), pp. 11-14. 11

‘Finan … constructed a church on the island of Lindisfarne suitable for an episcopal see, building after the Irish method, not of stone but of hewn oak, thatching it with reeds; later on the most reverend Archbishop Theodore consecrated it in honour of the blessed apostle Peter. It was Eadbercht, who was   Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969). All subsequent translations of the HE are taken from this version. 15   W. M. Stevens, Bede’s Scientific Achievement (Jarrow Lecture, 1985), pp. 11-14. 14

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Christopher Grocock bishop of Lindisfarne, who removed the reed thatch and had the whole of it, both roof and walls, covered with sheets of lead.’

Bede’s taste, at least if the length of his description is any guide’.17 Bede certainly dwells on it at length, but it is the spiritual and moral challenge it poses – with biblical support brought in to underline the point – hence the use of bold typeface in the extract. It is also worth noting that even in the longer passages noted by Parsons, the length is frequently made up of divinely-prompted human saintly activity, not natural features of landscape (and Parsons wisely focuses on architectural description – of which there is at least some, as we have seen.)

The building is mentioned because of its peculiarity, no doubt – but we are left in darkness about its size, location, or the actual topography of the island. The same is true of the translation to Lindisfarne of Aidan’s remains, slightly earlier in HE III.17: interiecto tempore aliquanto, cum fabricata esset basilica maior, atque in honorem beatissimi apostolorum principis dedicata, illo ossa eius translata, atque ad dexteram altaris iuxta uenerationem tanto pontifice dignam condita sunt.

A similar emphasis is to be found in Bede’s account of Mayo, HE IV.4: Colmanus … inuenit locum in Hibernia insula aptum monasterio construendo, qui lingua Scottorum Mag éo nominatur; emitque partem eius non grandem ad constituendum ibi monasterium a comite ad cuius possessionem pertinebat … quod uidelicet monasterium usque hodie ab Anglis tenetur incolis. Ipsum namque est quod nunc grande de modico effectum Muigéo consuete uocatur, et conuersis ad meliora instituta omnibus egregium examen continet monachorum, qui de prouincia Anglorum ibidem collecti ad exemplum uenerabilium patrum sub regula et abbate canococo in magna continentia et sinceritate proprio labore manuum uiuant. (my emphasis)

‘Some time afterwards, when a larger church had been built there and dedicated in honour of the most blessed chief of the apostles, his bones were translated to it and buried on the right side of the altar, with the honour due to so great a bishop.’ How much larger was it? Did it replace the same building that Finan built, or a later one? Was it built near, on top of, or what …? This frustration is true of most architectural depictions; Parsons, commenting on the description of St Brigid’s church at Kildare in the Vita of Brigid by Cogitosus says ‘as is so often the case, one really needs the building in order to interpret the text.’16

‘Colman … found a place suitable for building a monastery on the Irish mainland called in the Irish tongue Mag éo (Mayo). He bought a small part of the land from the chief to whom it belonged … this monastery is still occupied by Englishmen; from small beginnings it has now become very large and is commonly known as Muig éo (Mayo). All these monks have adopted a better Rule and it now contains a remarkable company gathered there from England, living after the example of the venerable fathers under a Rule, having an abbot elected canonically, in great devotion and austerity and supporting themselves by the labour of their own hands.’

As a better specimen of a description of place, Ian Wood suggested Lastingham, in HE III.23, where Cedd chooses a site for his monastery, a gift from Oethelwald, sub-king of Deira: fauens ergo uotis regis antistes elegit sibi locum monasterii construendi in montibus arduis ac remotis, in quibus latronum magis latibula, ac lustra ferarum, quam habitacula fuisse uidebantur hominum; ut, iuxta prophetiam Isaiae, ‘in cubilibus, in quibus prior dracones habitant, oriretur uiror calami et iunci’ id est fructus bonorum operum ibi nasceretur, ubi prius uel bestiae commorari, uel homines bestialiter uiuere consuerant. (my emphasis)

I argue that the last section shows Bede’s real interest, hence the use of bold again. Of the location itself there is no detail at all about what made it ideal – lush pasture, or tough terrain like Lastingham, above. Perhaps this omission was (if the present landscape is any clue to the past one) because the monastic rath at Mayo lay in lush pastureland.

‘So, in accordance with the king’s desire, Cedd chose himself a site for the monastery amid some steep and remote hills which seemed better fitted for the haunts of robbers and the dens of wild beasts than for human habitation; so that, as Isaiah says, “in the habitations where once dragons lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes”, that is, the fruit of good works shall spring up where once beasts dwelt or where men lived after the manner of beasts.’

The same lack of detail is true of more obvious examples such as his own monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in HA1: Biscopus cognomento Benedictus, aspirante superna gratia, monasterium construxit in honore beatissimi

Parsons comments that ‘the site at Lastingham … was far from idyllic, and its negative aspects appear more to   Parsons, Books and Buildings, p. 21.

  Parsons, Books and Buildings, p. 12.

16

17

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The sense (or absence) of place in Bede apostolorum principis Petri, iuxta ostium fluminis Wiri ad aquilonem …

Petri, ipse thure incenso et dicta oratione ad altare pacem dat omnibus, stans in gradibus, turribilum habens in manu. Hinc fletibus uniuersorum inter laetanias resonantibus exeunt; beati Laurentii martyris oratorium, quod in dormitorio fratrum erat obuium, intrant; uale dicens ultimum…

‘The pious servant of Christ Biscop, also called Benedict, was inspired by the grace from above and built a monastery in honour of Peter, the most blessed prince of the apostles, next to the mouth of the river Wear on the northern bank … .’18

‘And so at first light mass was sung in the church of Mary, the blessed mother of God and virgin forever, and in the church of the apostle Peter; it was the fourth of June, a Thursday; those present took communion, and preparations for going were immediately made. All assembled at the church of the blessed Peter; he himself lit the incense, said a prayer at the altar, and shared the peace with everyone, while standing on the steps with the thurible in his hand. Then with the sound of weeping mingling with their praise they all went out; they went into the oratory of the blessed martyr Laurence, which faced the brothers’ dormitory, and he said his final farewell … .’

This detail about the northern bank is repeated at the end of HA 4; detail of materials and activity used to build the church at Wearmouth are included in HA 5, and a few tantalizing details are included in HA 6: Quintum picturas imaginum sanctarum quas ad ornandam ecclesiam beati Petri apostoli, quam construxerat, detulit: imaginem uidelicet beatae Dei genetricis semperque uirginis Mariae, simul et duodecim apostolorum, ducto a pariete ad parietem tabulato praecingeret; imagines euangelicae historiae quibus australem ecclesiae parietem decoraret; imagines uisionum apocalipsis beati Iohannis, quibus septentrionalem aeque parietem ornaret.

This is a carefully-paced, moving depiction of Bede’s abbot and teacher Ceolfrid saying goodbye to WearmouthJarrow for the last time; what the modern scholar might yearn for is missing: dimensions, materials, and precise locations are all absent. The same is true of the topography of In Gyruum/Gyrwe/Jarrow; there is no mention of its siting at all in the HA. This is quite in keeping with other early medieval writers – one might compare Constantius of Lyon’s Vita Sancti Germani, for example – but it is a marked contrast to some poetic treatments, such as Aethelwulf’s description of the church in De Abbatibus:19

‘Fifth, he brought with him paintings of holy images to decorate the church of the blessed apostle Peter which he had built: there was an image of Mary, the blessed mother of God and virgin forever, together with the twelve apostles, with which he encircled the middle apse of the church; the painted boards stretched from one wall to the other. There were images of the gospel stories with which he adorned the south wall of the church, and images of the visions of the apocalypse of the blessed John with which he similarly decorated the north wall.’

Despite the archaeological explorations carried out on this site, we do not even know where this building was! The same is true of much of the detail in HA 17:

XIV De abbate et sacerdote digno Sigbaldo 431-446 quartus adest pastor praeclaro nomine Sigbald presbyter; hic cellam multis donaribus auxit atque deo dignam studiosus condidit aulam. haec est illa domus, quam mater numinis alti 435 incolitans seruat uasti sub culmine caeli, cui conpacta nitet prepulchris mensa tabellis, porticus in medio, sanctique fronde coronant, dum buxis claudent pretiose munera uitae. occidua nitidi splendunt in parte ministri, qui modulis culmen caeli concentibus ornant. omnes ast sancti medii pauimenta sacelli sruantes colitant per tempora cuncta maniplis innumeris; ningent uocitati ad uota piorum, quos meritis cupiunt semper defendere sanctis, si uite ad palmam certant properare fideles. cetera per templum numeret quis lumina cuncta, quae temploque polo rutilant per gaudia uera?

Cantata ergo primo mane missa in ecclesia beatae Dei genetricis semperque uirginis Mariae, et in ecclesia apostoli Petri, pridie nonae Iunias, quinta feria, et communicantibus qui aderant, continuo praeparatur ad eundum. Conueniunt omnes in ecclesiam beati

‘The fourth [abbot] was a pastor of famous name, a priest Sigbald. He enriched the cell with many gifts, and in his zeal built a church worthy of God. This is the house which the mother of the exalted divinity inhabits and occupies beneath the vast dome

Further description is found in HA 9: Nam et tunc dominicae historiae picturas quibus totam beatae Dei genetricis, quam in monasterio maiore fecerat, ecclesiam in gyro coronaret, adtulit. ‘On this occasion he brought the pictures of the story of the Lord with which he decorated the church of the blessed mother of God which he had built at the larger monastery, placing them in a circle.’

  Text and translation of the Historia Abbatum here and below from Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow ed. and trans. C. W. Grocock and I. A. Wood, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 2013). 18

  Text and trans from Aethelwulf, De Abbatibus, ed. A. Campbell (Oxford, 1967). 19

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Christopher Grocock of the sky. Built into it there is an altar, which is distinguished by very lovely pictures, in the midst of a portico, and the holy men crown it with foliage when they reserve in the pyx the precious, lifegiving gift. On the west side are conspicuous those resplendent ministers who make the high heaven lovely with concerted melody. All the saints haunt the midmost floor of the church, and occupy it at all times, mustering in countless troops. They come down like snow when summoned to [respond to] the prayers of pious men, whom they wish ever to defend by their pious merits, if they strive faithfully to press on towards the palm of life. For the rest, who should number all the lights throughout that church, which shine in the church and overhead to our true delight?’

historians; where detail of actual places is found, for example in the gospel of John, it is surprising).21 4. The monastic ideal Bede wishes to celebrate is an ‘inner life’, not the physical realities of the landscape encountered ‘outside’ the life of the mind and of prayer. Catherine Clarke comments, ‘Like Bede’s Life of Cuthbert and Evagrius’s Life of St Antony itself, Felix’s Life of St Guthlac is often read as a symbolic, allegorical text in which the exterior transformation of a landscape represents the inner spiritual transformation of the individual’.22 Clarke also refers to numerous examples of this, including the ‘elegy’ to the Palace School at Aachen by Alcuin, and the Conflictus Veris et Hiemis also attributed to him. But perhaps the best example of this is Fredegar (pseudoAlcuin), O mea cella:

Now granted that this is verse and not prose, it is still much closer to the ‘jewelled style’ and to the traditions of Late Antiquity rather than to anything seen in Bede’s historical writing. The same delight in detail almost for its own sake, is found in the description of the chalice, the lead roof, and the bells, in lines 447-454:

O mea cella, mihi habitatio dulcis, amata, semper in aeternum, o mea cella, uale. undique te cingit ramis resonantibus arbos, siluula florigeris semper onusta comis. prata salutiferis florebunt omnia et herbis. quas medici quaerit dextra salutis ope. flumina te cingunt florentibus undique ripis, retia piscator qua sua tendit ouans. omiferis redolent ramis tua claustra per hortos, lilia cum rosulis candida mixta rubris. omne genus uolucrum matutinas personat odas, atque creatorem laudat in ore Deum.

presbyter iste deo concessit plurima dona: aureus ille calix gemmis splendescit opertus, argentique nitens constat fabricatus maclis, quem dedit ille pius magnae genetricis ad aulam; plumbea sarta tegunt case cum culmina summae, nec minus ex cipro sonitant ad gaudia fratrum aenea uasa cauis crepitant quis pisula sistris. ‘That priest gave many gifts to God. That golden chalice, which he gave in his piety to the church of the great mother, gleams, being covered with gems, and shines, being made with markings of silver. While leaden pieces keep the roof of the church in repair, there also resound to the delight of the brothers metal vessels of copper: these have clappers ringing in hollow rattles.’

‘O my cell, my beloved dwelling place, sweet to me, farewell for eternity, o my cell. On every side trees surround you with resounding branches, a little woodland always laden with a covering of blossom. All the meadows will bloom with health-giving plants, which the right hand of the doctor seeks to aid health. Rivers surround you on every side with their flow’ry banks, where the happy fisherman holds out his nets. Your cloisters are filled with the scent of the fruit-bearing branches through the gardens, and white lilies mingled with red roses. Every kind of bird hymns its morning songs, and praises its creator God … Why should we wretches love you, fleeting world? You always flee from us, rushing headlong everywhere’.23

Here too there is detail in excess of Bede’s descriptions of buildings, for example at Wearmouth-Jarrow. Some possible reasons for this dichotomy of styles are: 1. Bede is writing ‘serious history’ and not idealized rhetorical prose (pace Roger Ray; it is worth noting that Vicky Gunn finds topoi of other kinds in Bede’s narrative);20

After a considerable length, the sentiment towards the end resembles that pioneered by Bede in the de Die Iudicii which we looked at above:

2. Bede is writing spiritual history in which rhetoric should not intrude; 3. Bede is writing in a historiographical tradition going back to the classical world in which specific detail about specific places is not included, since it would not mean much to the readers anyway (this is true of most biblical narrative and of classical and late classical

  Compare for example Gwyn Morgan’s comment on Tacitus’ description of battles: ‘He certainly refused to fuss about terrain, but why should he have, when most of his readers were likely as ignorant of the area being described as were the troops trudging or fighting their way across it, had no atlases to consult, and almost certainly did not care anyway?’ G. Morgan, 69 A.D.: the year of four emperors (Oxford, 2006), p. 10. 22   Clarke, p. 33. 23   Text from The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, ed. F. J. E. Raby (Oxford, 1959), no. 80. 21

  R. Ray, Bede, Rhetoric and the creation of Christian culture (Jarrow Lecture, 1997), pp. 14-16; Gunn, Bede’s Historiae, pp. 154-5. 20

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The sense (or absence) of place in Bede nos miseri, cur te fugitiuum, mundus, amemus? tu fugis a nobis semper ubique ruens.

in this volume (pp. 61-7). This unfamiliarity was even more pertinent to Bede himself: Audiuimus enim - et fama est - quia multae uillae ac uiculi nostrae gentis in montibus sint inaccessis ac saltibus dumosis positi, ubi numquam multis transeuntibus annis sit uisus antistes qui ibidem aliquid ministerii aut gratiae caelestis exhibuerit; quorum tamen ne unus quidem a tributis antistiti reddendis esse possit immunis. (my emphasis)

‘Why should we wretches love you, fleeting world? You always flee from us, rushing headlong everywhere.’24 Further examples of description in verse may be found in Alcuin’s poem on bishops and kings of York, and there examples in Old English too, such as The Ruin. Another reason for an absence of detailed descriptions of location may be that Bede was not necessarily fully aware of details of topography of his own region: how much had he travelled, after all? Two examples from the Epistola ad Ecgbertum show this limitation quite well; first, EE 5:

‘For I have heard – and it is common gossip – that many of our race’s villages and hamlets are located in out-of-the-way, hilly places and thick woodland, where in the passage of many years a bishop has never been seen who might have set forth any kind of heavenly grace, and yet not one of them is able to be exempt from paying tribute to the bishop.’25

Et quia latiora sunt spatia locorum quae ad gubernacula tuae diocesis pertinent, quam ut solus per omnia discurrere et in singulis uiculis atque agellis uerbum Dei praedicare, etiam anni totius emenso curriculo, sufficias, necessarium satis est, ut plures tibi sacri operis adiutores asciscas, presbyteros uidelicet ordinando atque instituendo doctores qui in singulis uiculis praedicando Dei uerbo et consecrandis mysteriis caelestibus, ac maxime peragendis sacri baptismatis officiis, ubi opportunitas ingruerit, insistant.

The emphasised sections point out what might otherwise escape our notice – subject to a vow of stabilitas, Bede certainly travelled, but on limited occasions and to only a small number of places. Conclusion Bede’s own testimony is that his interest was semper aut legere aut discere aut docere; perhaps interest in the landscape did not figure for someone who always had his nose in a book, and whose mind was focused on the schoolroom and the chapel. This, as much as a wish to adhere to the tradition of Late Antique historiography, may explain his choice in knowing how to describe places in detail, but not to do so in prose. Citing Servius’s Commentary on Vergil vi. 638ff. Curtius comments that ‘“Lovely places” are such as only give pleasure, that is, are not cultivated for useful purposes’ (loca solius uoluptatis plena … unde nullus fructus exsolvitur).26 Given his praise of Lastingham, and his comments about the efforts made by the community at Mayo, perhaps that was reason enough for Bede not to make use of the locus amoenus tradition in his prose writing. That he could have done but chose not to seems beyond question.

‘Furthermore because the places in the diocese you guide are too widespread for you to be able to travel through them all and preach the word of God in every single hamlet and farmstead, even making use of the course of a whole year, it is absolutely necessary that you should acquire several helpers for yourself in your holy labour, that is, by ordaining priests and appointing teachers who in each little village can set about preaching God’s word and celebrating the mysteries of heaven, and especially carrying out the duty of holy baptism when opportunity arises.’

The point rammed home here is the widespread nature of communities within the diocese, unknown to all but a few itinerant clergy; the importance of baptism in the early medieval church is highlighted by Joyce Hill in her paper   Text and translation from Bede’s Epistola ad Egbertum Episcopum, in Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, ed. Grocock and Wood. 26   Curtius, European Literature, p. 192. 25

  Text from Bede, Liber hymnorum rhythmi; variae preces 14, ed. Fraipont. 24

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Part II Life in Anglo-Saxon England

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Chapter 4 Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England Debby Banham The ‘worlds’ of different Anglo-Saxons, in the multifarious senses addressed in this volume, must have varied a great deal, according to where and when they lived, their social status, whether they were ecclesiastics or laypeople, and, especially, their degree of education. But for all of them, whatever the outer reaches of their universe, much of its core will have been concerned with food production. Some of them may have had little to do with farming, but I would venture to suggest that every single one of them saw food growing in gardens, and perhaps orchards, around them on a daily basis. Gardens and orchards provide many of the treats and flavourings that add interest and variety to a mainly cereal-based diet such as most Anglo-Saxons consumed, and, even if this was not their purpose, must have offered visual pleasure when fruit trees were in blossom, or a neat row of leeks was freshly hoed. In a world that was in many ways, and for most people, tough and utilitarian, gardens and their produce must have provided, even for the people who worked in them, a rare opportunity to indulge the senses of taste, smell, sight, and perhaps touch and, with more garden birds than we now enjoy, hearing, too.

historians have nothing to go on for our period.4 Harvey himself considered it a question ‘of vital importance: to what extent were mediaeval gardens directed to aesthetic ends?’5 and spent much of his Mediaeval Gardens trying to answer it. With this overwhelmingly aesthetic focus, few garden historians, not surprisingly, have found anything to say about Anglo-Saxon England. Of other works that might seem to be relevant, Sylvia Landsberg’s The Medieval Garden (which is mainly about designing ‘recreated’ gardens) says nothing of the period, other than to cite Harvey’s use of Ælfric,6 and Teresa McClean only ‘makes occasional forays … into the pre-Conquest period’,7 while Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, introducing the Dumbarton Oaks volume on Medieval Gardens, states that it was ‘the limitation imposed by the evidence’ that ‘caused the focus to be on the later middle ages’.8 But it is this last collection which contains the only really scholarly article in print on early medieval gardens, by Dom Paul Meyvaert.9 Here we may have another clue to the neglect of our period by garden historians: it is not just the evidence that is lacking, but the skills and experience to deal with it. It takes a scholar like Meyvaert, already au fait with the relevant sources, to make the information they contain more widely available and interpret it for those who are not expert in the early Middle Ages.

It may seem strange, therefore, that Anglo-Saxon gardens have received virtually no scholarly attention over the years, either from Anglo-Saxonists or from garden historians. An honourable exception among the latter was the late John Harvey, who in his Mediaeval Gardens discussed the Nomina herbarum in Ælfric’s Glossary, as well as some additional scraps of information from early medieval England.1 He also suggests the reason for this virtually total neglect of Anglo-Saxon gardens by garden historians: they see garden history as a branch of the history of art, or, more precisely, of architecture. Harvey’s own publications are overwhelmingly concerned with the built environment, and only five (out of nearly forty) with gardens.2 It is the aesthetic aspects of gardens that primarily concern garden history.3 Because, as Harvey stated in his Restoring Period Gardens ‘we have no information on the form and content of Anglo-Saxon gardens’, garden

Even among early medievalists, however, gardens have not always received the attention one might expect. The recent volume on Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden has three Anglo-Saxon articles, but none of them in fact deals with gardens.10 Why Anglo-Saxonists have had so little to say about the gardens of the culture and society they study is not completely clear, but perhaps partakes  John Harvey, Restoring Period Gardens (Princes Risborough, 1988), p. 20. 5  Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens, p. 2. 6  Sylvia Landsberg, The Medieval Garden (London, 1995), p. 7. 7 Teresa McLean, Medieval English Gardens (London, 1981), p. 11. 8 Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, ed., Medieval Gardens, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture IX (Washington DC, 1986), p. 3. 9 ‘The Medieval Monastic Garden’, pp. 23–53, does not confine itself to the period covered here, and has little to say about England, but nevertheless provides more information on early medieval gardens than any other publication in English to date. 10  Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden, ed. Peter Dendle and Alain Touwaide (Woodbridge, 2008). The Anglo-Saxon articles are: Maria Amalia D’Aronco, ‘Gardens on Vellum: Plants and Herbs in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’ (pp. 107–27), Philip G. Rusche, ‘The Sources for Plant Names in Anglo-Saxon England and the Laud Herbal Glossary’ (pp. 128–44) and Marijane Osborn, ‘Anglo-Saxon Ethnobotany: Women’s Reproductive Medicine in Leechbook III’ (pp. 145–61). Dendle’s own paper, ‘Plants in the Early Medieval Cosmos: Herbs, Divine Potency, and the Scala natura’ [sic]’ (pp. 47–59) also draws upon Anglo-Saxon texts, but is no more concerned with gardens than the others. 4

 John Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens (London, 1981, revised paperback edn. 1990), pp. 3–4, 34–6 and 52. 2 Of 42 ‘items’ under Harvey’s name in the Cambridge University Library catalogue, six concern garden history (including the two editions of Mediaeval Gardens). 3 Harvey has a story of an eminent garden historian saying, of a small plot of land attached to a house, and used for family leisure and growing food, ‘But it isn’t a garden,’ on the grounds that it had not been designed, and its main function was not aesthetic; Mediaeval Gardens, p. x. Michael Conan’s ‘From vernacular gardens to a social anthropology of gardening’, in idem, ed. Perspectives on Garden Histories, Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture XXI (Washington DC, 1999), pp. 181–203, which might be expected to broaden the debate, is nonetheless mainly about aesthetics, and the aesthetic reactions of scholars to gardens whose purposes may be purely utilitarian. 1

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Debby Banham The form of gardens

of some of the same prejudices: gardens were ‘just’ for growing stuff. They had no aesthetic, let alone intellectual or spiritual, content, no political significance. They were irrelevant to the formation of identities or controversies about doctrine. They played no part in the unification of England or the struggle against the Vikings (except of course in that the people who did all those things had to be fed). The relative dearth of information about early medieval gardens in England may also have deterred AngloSaxonists from studying them. In particular, the contrast with the rich nexus of sources from Carolingian Francia is both striking and, for the Anglo-Saxonist, dismaying: from a few decades around AD 800, the student of continental gardens has a prescriptive source from central government in the list of plants in Charlemagne’s Capitulare de uillis, a visual source from a monastic milieu that displays both form and content (that is, both layout and plant names) in the magnificent St Gall plan, and a poetic source, the Hortulus of Walahfrid Strabo, that conveys a real delight in garden plants, as well as some sense of actually working in a garden.11 The Anglo-Saxonist, by contrast, must piece together a picture from scraps, and from sources of which the main concern is very distant from horticulture.

To start with the aspect of most interest to traditional garden history, it has to be conceded that the evidence for the layout of Anglo-Saxon gardens is exiguous in the extreme. We have no plans of Anglo-Saxon gardens to put alongside the St Gall plan, with its medicinal herbularium and kitchen hortus, and combined orchard and graveyard, all labelled in hexameter verse. The earliest surviving garden plan from England is that of Christ Church, Canterbury, in the Eadwine Psalter, c. 1150.13 This provides neither the names of plants nor the shape of the herbarium, only its position in a courtyard; in fact the plan’s main interest is in the monastery’s drains. From before the Conquest we have no garden plans of any kind. Nor do written sources shed any light on layout. Attempts to ‘recreate’ Anglo-Saxon gardens have adopted various plans, often a cruciform one (as for instance at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge), which is certainly plausible in general terms, but supported by no specific Anglo-Saxon evidence.14 Thus for the form of Anglo-Saxon gardens, we are left, like the designers of recreated gardens, to our imagination, and we may wonder if this dearth of evidence is in itself significant: does it suggest that layout was not something that mattered very much to Anglo-Saxons? Even their contemporaries on the Continent do not seem to have been especially concerned with the physical form of gardens. The only early medieval source which tells us about layout is the St Gall plan, but the relationship between this document and the facilities of any real monastery is unlikely to be a close one.15 Neither the draughtsman of the Capitulare de uillis nor Walahfrid mentions layout: what matters to them is what grows in the garden.16 Meyvaert shows that real monastic gardens, in sharp contrast to the regular layout of the St Gall plan, might be crammed in wherever there was space in the precincts, and this was no doubt true in Anglo-Saxon England, too.17

This article is therefore a preliminary survey. It draws on a range of written sources, as well as the visual arts and linguistic and archaeological evidence, to establish what can currently be said about Anglo-Saxon gardens. Some potential sources of information have no doubt been overlooked. This survey cannot hope to be exhaustive, nor is it possible in the present state of our knowledge to reach firm conclusions. We can nevertheless explore the evidence for the existence and characteristics of AngloSaxon horticulture, addressing issues such as the form of Anglo-Saxon gardens, what was grown in them, the relationship between gardens and orchards, or between horticulture and field cultivation, the possibility of social distinctions, or of a specific monastic horticulture, how gardens were cultivated, and finally the vexed question of their purpose.12

The one aspect of form which does seem to have been significant to the Anglo-Saxons (and more widely) is enclosure. The Old English words for garden and orchard, discussed below, are compounds of tun (wyrttun, leactun,

  The Capitulare has recently been reprinted and translated (into French) by Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, ‘Capitulaire De villis et curtis imperialibus (vers 810–813): Texte, Traduction et Commentaire’, Revue historique 607 (1998), 643–89, with the plant list at p. 652, translation pp. 665–6; the plan is most accessible to Anglophone readers in Walter Horn and Ernest Born, The Plan of St Gall, 3 vols (Berkeley, 1979) despite concerns about the accuracy of this monumental publication, or the abridged version by Lorna Price, The Plan of St Gall in Brief (Berkeley, 1982); the Hortulus is most recently edited and translated (into German) by Hans-Dieter Stoffler, Der Hortulus des Walahfrid Strabo: aus dem Kräutergarten des Klosters Reichenau (Sigmaringen, 1996) while the English translation of Raef Payne and Wilfred Blunt, Hortulus (Pittsburgh, 1966), retains its value. Harvey’s table, Mediaeval Gardens, pp. 168–80, provides a useful comparison of the plants mentioned by each of these sources. The proposition of Günter Noll, ‘The origin of the so-called Plan of St Gall’, Journal of Medieval History 8 (1982), 191–240, that the Plan came from Canterbury, has not met with scholarly approval, despite being re-examined by Maria Amalia D’Aronco, ‘The Benedictine Rule and the care of the sick: the St Gall Plan and Anglo-Saxon England’ in The Medieval Hospital and Medical Practice, ed. Barbara S. Bowers, AVISTA 3 (Aldershot and Burlington VT, 2007), pp. 235–51. 12  For viticulture, see below, p. 40 11

 Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.17.1, fols. 284v–285r. The plan is shown in monochrome by Harvey, pp. 68–9. For a description of the manuscript, see Teresa Webber, ‘The Bible and its Study: from the Cloisters to the University’ in The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production in the Medieval West, ed. Paul Binski and Stella Panayotova (London, 2005), pp. 75–117, no. 25, at 90–2. 14  The garden at Lucy Cavendish was established in 1986 by Dr Jane Renfrew with other members of the college’s then Garden Committee, using a list of plants based on my own research. It can be visited at any reasonable time, and an explanatory leaflet is available from the porters’ lodge at the college. 15 See Meyvaert, ‘The Medieval Monastic Garden’, pp. 33–5, for some discrepancies between the plan and the documentary evidence for monastic diet in ninth-century Francia, and for references to earlier work on the relationship between the plan and monastic reality. 16 See Stoffler, Der Hortulus, p. 23, for what the poem does tell us about the physical form of the garden envisaged, and pp. 24–6 for an attempt to reconstruct its layout, based on the St Gall Plan. 17  ‘Monastic Gardens’, p. 35. His evidence comes mainly from thirteenthcentury accounts, but it is unlikely that the organisation of gardens had become less systematic over the centuries. 13

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England æppeltun) or geard (ortgeard, wyrtgeard). Both these words can of course have a wide variety of meanings, but the main idea that underlies them all is of closing off an area, generally for human use, from the surrounding unenclosed expanse (feld). There is no direct connection with the biblical hortus conclusus,18 but all these terms partake of the ancient conception of garden as a protected enclave in which plants too tender or precious for field cultivation can be nurtured, a vision in sharp contrast to the modern ideal of sweeping lawns and extensive vistas. Anglo-Saxon gardens would certainly need to be literally enclosures: medieval fields might be vast expanses without hedge or fence,19 but near dwellings there would have to be barriers to keep livestock and crops apart, as well as to give shelter to the plants. Whether in rural settlements or in towns, there would always be animals around, not to mention people and weather, from which plants needed to be protected.

of Roman defences and masonry buildings would have provided shelter for more delicate plants. They would also have presented a serious obstacle to agricultural methods such as ploughing or harrowing, so any such cultivation must have been closer to gardening than to farming. We might expect to find more evidence for gardens in urban than in rural contexts, which afforded more space for agriculture, but the existence of town fields should remind us that there was not such a difference between urban and rural life in the Middle Ages as in later centuries.25 One of the earliest Anglo-Saxon lawcodes, that of Ine of Wessex (688–726), is famously concerned with enclosure, with keeping animals and plants apart, and what to do if the requisite fencing fails, either due to human neglect or to the vicious character of the livestock. Clause 42 deals explicitly with arable crops, as well as grass or hay (æceras oððe gærs), not gardens or orchards, but Ine 40, on a ceorles worðige, may refer to the enclosed area around a peasant farmer’s homestead, and thus include damage to gardens and orchards among its concerns, although no such details are given.26 Later codes no longer concern themselves with the cultivation of plants, although livestock remain a major concern, and it must still have been necessary to keep the two apart.

From the seventh century onwards, ditches or fences are often in evidence on Anglo-Saxon habitation sites.20 At Cowdery’s Down, the seventh-century settlement site on the Hampshire Downs, the openings in the fences around the houses seem to be only about the same width as the doorways in the houses themselves, too narrow for a cow or even a sheep to pass through.21 The plots around the houses are unlikely, therefore, to have been paddocks for livestock; the fences must have been for keeping large animals out, not in. In other words, the enclosures at Cowdery’s Down were most likely gardens or orchards, and this must also be true at other Anglo-Saxon habitation sites where small enclosures are in evidence close to houses.22 The urban backyards of York are often said to have been shockingly squalid in the ninth to eleventh centuries – indeed, this is the reason so much valuable organic material has been preserved from them – but these damp conditions must also have been ideal for plants to grow in, and there is some evidence for cultivated ones, as well as weeds.23 The ‘dark earth’ found in the early Anglo-Saxon levels of many former Roman towns is also considered by many to have been the result of deliberate cultivation, rather than mere urban decay,24 and the ruins

The word tun (‘enclosure’) is used as a prefix in plant names, in the same way as we might use the word ‘garden’, for instance tuncærse, ‘garden-cress’, and tunnæp, ‘garden turnip’. The tun involved is presumably an enclosure for growing things, rather than a town or village, although the former must frequently have been within the latter.27 The point here seems to be to distinguish cultivated from wild plants,28 rather than horticultural from agricultural crops, since neither cress nor turnip was grown in fields in the Middle Ages. A further aspect of form on which we can perhaps shed some light is subdivision, into beds. The only text where OE bedd as a simplex means ‘garden bed, area for growing plants’ is the Exeter Book onion riddle, discussed below, but in the Old English Herbarium, wyrtbedd is used to describe Kenward and Hall, Biological Evidence, pp. 438–46, at 441. 25   The best documented medieval town fields are those of Cambridge; see Catherine P. Hall and J. R. Ravensdale, The West Fields of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1976). That fields already existed at Cambridge before the Conquest is demonstrated by the burgenses’ complaint in Domesday Book that they now had to lend the sheriff their ploughs much more frequently than in the time of King Edward; see Domesday Book: Cambridgeshire, ed. Alexander Rumble (Chichester, 1981), pp. [10–11]. 26   Ine 40 and 42, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 3 vols (Halle, 1903–16), vol. 1, 107. 27 Discussed in D. A. R. Banham, ‘The Knowledge and Uses of Food Plants in Anglo-Saxon England’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1990, pp. 212–13 and 202. There I speculated that OE tunnæp might be the origin of modern English ‘turnip’, although the OED’s earliest citation for ‘turnip’ is 1533. Tunnæp is found only in the Lacnunga, ed. Edward Pettit, Anglo-Saxon Remedies, Charms and Prayers from British Library MS Harley 585: The Lacnunga, 2 vols (Lampeter, 2001), vol. 1, p. 70, with discussion, vol. 2, p. 169. 28 A wilde næp, wild turnip, is attested (in a recipe in Wellcome MS 46, ed. Arthur S. Napier in ‘Altenglische Miscellen’, Archiv 84 (1890), 325), but not wild cress. Tuncærse may however be contrasted with watercress, wyllcærse etc.

  Song of Songs 4.12. Although these too must have needed some barriers to unauthorised entry. See now Susan Oosthuizen, ‘Anglo-Saxon fields’, in The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, ed. Helena Hamerow, David A. Hinton and Sally Crawford (Oxford, 2011), pp. 377–401. 20 Helena Hamerow, Early Medieval Settlements: The Archaeology of Rural Communities in Northwest Europe, 400–900 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 97–9. 21 See M. Millett and S. James, ‘Excavations at Cowdery’s Down, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 1978-81’, Archaeological Journal 140 (1983), 151-279, at pp. 192–61, esp. figs 27, 30, 32 and 38, and, for discussion of fences, pp. 202–3 and 209. 22 For a wide-ranging and thought-provoking discussion of enclosures within (and around) Anglo-Saxon settlements, see Andrew Reynolds, ‘Boundaries and settlements in later sixth to eleventh-century England’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 12 (2003), 98–136. 23 See H. K. Kenward and A. R. Hall, Biological Evidence from 16–22 Coppergate, Archaeology of York 14.7 (1995), pp. 736–9. 24 See for instance Martin Henig, ‘The fate of late Roman towns’ in Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, ed. Hamerow et al., pp. 515–33, at 522. At York, deposits of the same period were considered to be the result of natural silting; R. A. Hall, ‘Archaeological introduction’, in 18 19

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Debby Banham where some plants (rosemary and beowyrt) may be found growing.29 In one case, ‘on wyrtbeddum’ translates hortis.30 A ‘plant-bed’ might therefore be a whole garden in itself, but beds devoted to particular plants might presumably be combined into a single garden. On the other hand, in view of Meyvaert’s comments on the St Gall plan, they might be scattered throughout a property, fitted in wherever there was space, and not gathered together into one place. This need not conflict with the need for protection; each bed could be fenced separately, or they might be within a larger enclosure, whether monastic, seigneurial (tun is often translated ‘estate centre’ uel sim.),31 or forming part of a farmstead, village or town. Even where beds of various plants (whether mixed or separate) were grouped together, nothing as neat as the St Gall plan’s ideal layout need be envisaged; they could be of irregular shapes and sizes, and, especially where space was at a premium, squashed together without intervening paths or other demarcation.

property,33 and scholars have noticed more recently that Bata’s writings also borrow heavily from the work of others. His colloquies draw extensively on the Colloquy of his teacher, Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham, as well as the same author’s Glossary.34 It has not helped Bata’s reputation, either, that his Colloquies include long lists of abusive epithets, but this ‘humour’ now leads some scholars to suspect that his colloquies may give us a more authentic glimpse into a monastic schoolroom than more respectable teaching texts.35 That does not make them unproblematic to use, however. For instance, in Colloquy no. 25, the master asks the boys if they have a garden, viridarium.36 Yes, they reply, and after a couple more exchanges (for which see below) he asks them what grows in it. Both good plants and bad, they answer, and go on to recite a list of plant names lifted almost word for word from the Nomina herbarum in Abbot Ælfric’s Glossary.37 Bata’s Colloquy therefore has little authority for the contents of eleventh-century monastic gardens (let alone any others). The proviso boni generis et mali suggests the author himself had some qualms about presenting his list as the contents of a garden. He does add a few plants of his own, turnip (rapa), madder (rubia), hellebore (elibore) and savory (saturagia), and omits mandrake (mandragora) from the Glossary’s list. He also divides off part of the list as ‘those vegetables which can be eaten nearly every day, if they’re cooked: cabbage, parsley, mallow, thyme (or chervil), celery, garlic (or leeks), mint, dill, and savory’ (not turnip, apparently). It may be that these were the plants he thought were really likely to be grown in contemporary gardens, or worth growing in them.

We cannot be sure that there were no carefully laid out, attractive looking gardens in Anglo-Saxon England. For those who had the leisure, and commanded the labour, to consider such things, such a garden might be desirable. But we have no evidence for such desires on the part of Anglo-Saxons; it can hardly be said that the Anglo-Saxon upper classes took a keen interest in how their food was produced or their land worked.32 And even on large estates or in monasteries, as Meyvaert points out, such a garden could hardly account for all the horticultural crops that were needed, and the majority of them are likely to have been produced on a much more ad hoc basis, where and when the constraints of seasons and soils allowed. The plants grown

Fortunately, in the light of the reservations expressed above, we do not rely entirely on Ælfric Bata for our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon garden plants. There is other written evidence, there is now a good deal of archaeological evidence, and there is linguistic evidence. To turn first to written witnesses, there is Bata’s own source, Ælfric’s Glossary, which contains not only the Nomina herbarum already mentioned, but also a Nomina arborum.38 But it has to be remembered that these are vocabulary lists, drawn up to help monastic schoolboys learn the names of plants they might come across. Or, at least, whose names they might come across. It is very unlikely that Ælfric’s pupils would have known all the plants on the list in real life, let alone seen them in gardens. Almost certainly we have a combination of plants the boys may have seen growing, in the monastery garden, in the fields or in the open countryside, with others they might see at table, and

For the plants grown in Anglo-Saxon gardens we have a wider range of sources. Perhaps surprisingly, there is one written source that explicitly lists the plants purportedly growing in a garden. This is one of the Colloquies of Ælfric Bata, dating from the early eleventh century. Bata has had a bad press, both from contemporaries and in modern scholarship: in his own day, he had to be disciplined by St Dunstan, according to Osbern’s Life of that saint, for despoiling Christ Church, Canterbury, of its

Chapters 81 and 7, respectively, in The Old English Herbarium and Medicina de quadrupedibus, ed. Hubert Jan de Vriend, EETS os 286 (Oxford, 1984), pp. 120 and 50. Beowyrt has been translated variously ‘lemon balm’ and ‘sweet flag’; see de Vriend, p. 289. Bedd is also compounded with the names of various wild plants in place-names and charter-bounds, and must therefore cover natural groupings of a single plant, in the same way as words like cærsing, which are often translated into modern English with the word ‘bed’, in this case ‘a cress-bed’. 30 Chapter 81. For chapter 7, the Latin version printed by de Vriend does not include this information. There is in any case no reason to suppose that the Old English was translated from any of the Latin versions that survive. 31  See Rosamond Faith, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (Leicester, 1997), p. 163. 32 For some discussion of this point, see Debby Banham, ‘Race and tillage: Scandinavian influence on Anglo-Saxon agriculture?’ in Anglo-Saxons and the North, ed. Matti Kilpiö, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka, Jane Roberts and Olga Timofeeva (Tempe AZ, 2009), pp. 165–91, at pp. 165–6. 29

See David W. Porter’s ‘Introduction’, at pp. 2–3, in Anglo-Saxon Conversations: the Colloquies of Aelfric Bata, ed. Scott Gwara and trans. David W. Porter (Woodbridge, 1997), for this episode, and for Bata’s biography more generally. 34 Porter, ‘Introduction’, p. 6, in Anglo-Saxon Conversations, ed. Gwara and Porter. 35 See Porter, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–2. 36 Anglo-Saxon Conversations, ed. Gwara and Porter, pp. 158–9. 37 Ælfrics Grammatik und Glossar, ed. Julius Zupitza (Berlin, 1880, reprinted Hildesheim, 2001), pp. 310–1. 38 Ælfrics Grammatik, ed. Zupitza, pp. 312–3. 33

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England others again they would only read about, in the Bible or other texts. These lists also bear a close relationship to other glossaries that survive from Anglo-Saxon England, the Laud and Durham herbal glossaries (both in fact preserved in twelfth-century manuscripts) especially, but also the batches of plant-names found in nearly all AngloSaxon glossaries.39

some doubt in the last case, the first two present no such problems, and are found, usually together, in practically every other medieval plant list. They occupy the top two beds in the St Gall herbularius, form the subjects of stanzas xv and xxi of Walahfrid’s Hortulus, and head the list in the Capitulare de uillis.43 Walahfrid’s verses show he values both plants for their appearance, perfume and Marian associations (although he does also mention medicinal uses for the lily). Their Marian symbolism, going back ultimately to Song of Songs 2:1, ‘I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys …’, was certainly known in educated circles in early medieval England, if not very highly developed.44 Ælfric himself describes Mary as ymbtrymed mid rosan and lilian, ‘garlanded with roses and lilies’ in his homily on the Assumption.45 Whether this motif was associated with real plants growing in actual gardens is however another matter. We shall explore below such evidence as there is for aesthetic appreciation of gardens in Anglo-Saxon England.

Taking all these caveats into account, however, it is worth looking at the plants Ælfric lists. His Nomina herbarum begins, after the general ‘herba, gærs oððe wyrt’ with ‘allium, leac’, which, as we shall see, made a major contribution to early medieval diet, and was grown in gardens. The list also includes plants such as ‘sinitia, grundeswelige’ (senecio, groundsel), which grow wild in the British Isles, and would normally be regarded as weeds (although in this case, as in several others, there are medical uses).40 These no doubt gave rise to Bata’s cautionary ‘generis … mali’. Ælfric does not include major arable crops such as cereals in his Nomina herbarum, so it may be that those cultivated plants he does list would be found in gardens in his time. Of those plants that can be confidently identified, there are none that could not possibly be grown in England, and the presence of many in the Anglo-Saxon period is confirmed by archaeobotanical evidence.41 Only two are unlikely to have been cultivated here: mandragora and ‘ciminum, cymen’, but even cumin was grown in England in the later Middle Ages.42

Perhaps significantly, there is no gardener among the workers impersonated by Ælfric’s pupils in his Colloquy,46 and no discussion of a garden, and when one of the boys is asked, in his own persona, what he eats, he refers only generally to holera, ‘vegetables’, rather than enumerating them by name.47 It does not seem that Abbot Ælfric, unlike his alumnus Bata, considered it important for his pupils to be able to discuss in any detail the plants produced around them and served in their refectory.

A few plants are listed that would nowadays be counted as ornamentals: ‘lilium, lilie, rosa, rose, uiola, clæfre’. Although the Old English gloss (‘clover’) gives rise to

A little more information is given by the roughly contemporary Monasteriales indicia, where leeks are given a sign of their own, as are peas and beans.48 Here the beans would be what are now called field beans or horse beans, Vicia faba, as none of the other ‘Old World’ beans will grow in the British climate, and the peas would be the type now known as field peas, garden peas being a later development.49 These signs are likely to reflect what

For a recent discussion of botanical glossary material, and references to editions, see Rusche, ‘The sources for plant names’. 40 It is the subject of chapter 77 of the Old English Herbarium, ed. de Vriend, pp. 116–18. 41 The standard work on Old English plant names is Peter Bierbaumer, Der botanische Wortschatz des Altenglischen, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main, 1975–9); his definitions, although unfortunately not his discussion, are now available online as part of the Dictionary of Old English PlantNames, at http://oldenglish-plantnames.uni-graz.at. A good deal of work has also been conducted under the auspices of the Anglo-Saxon PlantName Survey (ASPNS) directed by Dr Carole Biggam at the University of Glasgow, and I should like to thank Dr Biggam for her comments on an earlier version of this paper. For discussion of some of the difficulties and complexities involved in establishing the meaning of these names, see Antonette diPaolo Healey ‘Perplexities about plant names in the Dictionary of Old English’, Inge B. Milfull, ‘Pulege and psyllium: Old English plant-names in p- in the Oxford English Dictionary’, and Ulrike Krischke, ‘On the semantics of Old English compound plant names: motivations and associations’ (covering many examples from the Nomina herbarum), all in Old Names, New Growth: Proceedings of the Second ASPNS Conference, University of Graz, Austria, 6–10 June 2007, ed. Peter Bierbaumer and Helmut Klug (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), pp. 99–120, 121–43 and 211–78, respectively. See also Ulrike Krischke, The Old English Complex Plant Names: a linguistic survey and a catalogue (Frankfurt am Main, 2013). 42 Susan Francia, ‘The use of trade accounts to uncover the importance of cumin as a medicinal plant in medieval England’ in Critical Approaches to the History of Western Herbal Medicine: from Classical Antiquity to the early Modern period, ed. eadem and Anne Stobart (London, 2014) pp. 11-28. For a discussion of Anglo-Saxon ideas about the mandrake, see Anne van Arsdall ‘Exploring what was understood by mandragora in Anglo-Saxon England’ in Old Names, New Growth, ed. Bierbaumer and Klug, pp. 57–74. She believes (p. 71) that the occurrence of mandragora in Ælfric’s Nomina herbarum is evidence that it was in fact grown in Anglo-Saxon England. 39

Price, The Plan of St Gall in Brief, p. 33 (the transcription in this instance is accurate), Stoffler, Hortulus, pp. 138–40 and 148–50, Magnou-Nortier, ‘Capitulaire’, p. 652. 44 For the Marian interpretation of the Song of Songs in Anglo-Saxon England, see Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 227–9. Standing primarily for purity, the lily could also be associated with Christ himself, as in The Prose ‘Solomon and Saturn’ and ‘Adrian and Ritheus’, ed. J. E. Cross and T. D. Hill (Toronto, 1982), p. 29. 45 CH I.30, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, First Series: Text, ed. Peter Clemoes, (Oxford, 1997), p. 433. He goes on to explain that ‘the flowers of the rose, with their red colour, symbolise martyrdom, and the lilies, with their whiteness, symbolise the radiant purity of perfect virginity’. Possibly connected is the use of lily and rose to divine the sex of an unborn child in the birth prognostics in BL Cotton Tiberius A. iii (s. xi m.), Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900–1100, ed. László Sándor Chardonnens (Leiden: 2007), p. 244. 46 Nor in the list of occupations in his Glossary, Ælfrics Grammatik, ed. Zupitza, pp. 301–3. 47 Ælfric’s Colloquy, ed. G. N. Garmonsway (Exeter 1991), p. 46. He does list fabas, beans, but these were almost certainly a field crop. 48 Signs 59 and 62–3, Monasteriales indicia: the Old English Monastic Sign Language, ed. and trans. Debby Banham (Pinner, 1990), p. 32. 49 Broad beans are also Vicia faba, but again a more modern variety. Field peas probably started out as a garden crop, but were relegated to the fields when the more delicate-flavoured garden peas became available in the sixteenth century. 43

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Debby Banham was really eaten in Anglo-Saxon monasteries, as they have clearly been selected, not merely copied, from the Cluniac source material: millet, for instance, and lentils are on the Cluny and other continental sign-lists, but omitted from the Old English Indicia.50 Beans are more likely to have been grown on a field scale, but peas and leeks were certainly garden crops.51 Monasteries could of course have been buying in food, especially in the later period, as local markets developed, and many would be receiving food rents from their estates, but none of the recorded food rents includes vegetables. It is likely therefore, that most Anglo-Saxon monasteries grew their own vegetables. The Benedictine ideal of self-sufficiency, with mill, garden, water and all necessary resources within a single enclosure, must have been followed by many reformed houses to a greater or lesser extent, while earlier ones may have been forced to be self-sufficient by the difficulties of obtaining food from further afield.52

centuries.57 The evidence already presented shows that leeks were a popular, or at least common, vegetable elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon England, too. The ubiquity of leeks is easy enough to understand: as an extremely hardy plant, they would be available fresh throughout the year, as long as the ground was not frozen too hard to dig them up. Early medieval cooking methods are also likely to have favoured robust vegetables (in terms of both texture and flavour) over more delicate ones.58 However, we need not imagine the Anglo-Saxons with nothing but leeks to flavour their briw (pottage).59 OE leac has a wider semantic range than modern English ‘leek’; it could include garleac, ‘garlic’, and ynneleac, ‘onion’, as well as a number of other compounds the meaning of which is less certain.60 In Ælfric’s Glossary, Latin allium, which should mean garlic, is translated leac (see above). Ælfric also translates both caepa (onion) and porrum (leek) as lec/leac within one section of his Grammar.61 It appears that the distinction between these plants, with their unrelated Latin names, was not of great significance to the grammarian. Onions and garlic would be available either fresh or dried through most of the year, while perennials like chives and Welsh onions (either or both of which may be designated by one or more of the leac compounds) will sprout when the weather is even slightly favourable. So the whole range of leac vegetables would be extremely valuable to the Anglo-Saxons.

Some evidence for the contents of Anglo-Saxon gardens can be gleaned from Old English vocabulary. Latin hortus is often glossed wyrttun, literally ‘plant-enclosure’, but also leactun (or forms thereof), ‘leek-enclosure’. The Lindisfarne Gospels (still probably dated somewhere around AD 700, glossed s. x) consistently give lehtun for hortus, as do usually the Rushworth or Macregol Gospels (also glossed in s. x), but Corpus 140 (s. xi 1, Bath) uses wyrtun.53 This seems to be the more common term, also used by the Old English Herbarium (in addition to wyrtbedd, cited above).54 Ælfric gives wyrtun for uiridarium in his Glossary, and orcerd (see below) for ortus, and ‘ortus, orceard oððe wyrtun’ in the Grammar.55 It seems that lehtun was preferred in Northumbria, or at least in Anglian dialects, and wyrttun elsewhere.56 But we should not imagine a strict north–south divide in this matter, with Northumbrian gardeners foreshadowing the leek society enthusiasts of the nineteenth and twentieth

One of these vegetables, usually described as an onion, is of course the subject of one of the best known riddles in the Exeter Book.62 I am a wonderful creature, a joy to women, useful to people living nearby. I harm no-one among the town-dwellers except my killer alone. My stalk is tall and upright, I stand in a bed, rough somewhere underneath. Sometimes dares a quite cute peasant’s daughter, a high-spirited girl, to grasp at me, rushes at me when I’m red, grabs my head, puts me away in a safe place. At once she’ll feel her meeting with me, she who confines me, the woman with plaited hair: the eye will be wet.

  See Banham, Monasteriales indicia, pp. 13 and 70.   See Banham, Food Plants, pp. 165–82. Meyvaert, ‘Monastic gardens’, p. 34, cites the absence of ‘broad’ beans (Vicia faba) from its gardens as evidence for the St Gall plan’s divergence from monastic reality, but a more likely explanation is that they were a bulk crop, grown in the fields. 52   A late-Anglo-Saxon market in agricultural, if not horticultural, products is presupposed by the Ely Farming memoranda, Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J Robertson (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1956), p. 252, where money is provided to buy ‘bean-seed’. For the monastic ideal of self-sufficiency in relation to gardens, see Meyvaert, ‘Medieval monastic gardens’, pp. 27–8. For England, see John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), pp. 196–9, on monastic enclosures, and the likelihood that they included gardens, and pp. 252–4 for the availability of food crops from their endowments. Among the few personal possessions the Venerable Bede gave away on his deathbed were peppercorns, showing that imported foods did reach early Anglo-Saxon monasteries, but also how precious these were; Charles Plummer, Bedae Opera historica (Oxford, 1896), p. clxiii. 53   See W. W. Skeat, The Holy Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions (Cambridge, 1871–87), Luke 13:19, and John 18:1 and 19:41. For CCCC 140, see also Old English Version of the Gospels, ed. R. M. Liuzza, EETS os 304 and 314 (Oxford, 1994 and 2000), pp. 131, 194 and 199. 54   For instance chapter 5 on henbane, The Old English Herbarium, ed. de Vriend, p. 48. 55   Ælfrics Grammatik, ed. Zupitza, pp. 318 and 28, respectively. 56   I should like to thank Dr Alaric Hall for this insight. The Macregol gloss is partly Mercian, so leactun may not be confined entirely to Northumbria. 50 51

  For some of the growing methods adopted by such obsessives, see for instance Arthur J. Simons, The New Vegetable Grower’s Handbook (revised edition of The Vegetable Grower’s Handbook, 2 vols, 1945; Harmondsworth, 1962), pp. 205–12. 58   See Debby Banham, Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud, 2004), pp. 24–5. 59   Although they were apparently essential to the continental warmosium, which seems to have been a rather similar concoction: see Mayvaert, ‘The medieval monastic garden’, pp. 34–5. 60   For some attempts to disentangle this complexity, see Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 184–91. 61   De numero, ed. Zupitza, p. 86. 62   Riddle no. 25 in the edition of George Philip Krapp and Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, The Exeter Book, Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records 3 (New York, 1936), p. 193; my translation. I am of course aware of the problems of ‘reading off’ aspects of the Anglo-Saxons’ environment from their literature (as discussed by Jennifer Neville, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 10–13), but this riddle only works if certain characteristics are commonly attributed to its subject. 57

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England This plant, as well as being red, and rough underneath, is described as ‘standing in a bed’: stonde ic on bedde. As mentioned above, this is the only instance in an Old English text of bed in the sense of modern English ‘flowerbed’, but this meaning is essential to the extended double entendre on which the riddle depends, and must therefore represent a more widespread usage. The Exeter Book has another onion riddle,63 incorporating some of the same motifs, and also one on a ‘one-eyed garlic-seller’,64 but this belongs to a well-known Latin tradition, and is thus not evidence for the existence of such persons in Anglo-Saxon England. Riddle 25, on the other hand, although some of its elements, notably the ‘biter bit’ motif, are found elsewhere, appears to be an independent composition, and may therefore tell us what the Anglo-Saxons believed about onions (or possibly garlic): they were upright and rough underneath, presumably with rootlets, they might be red, they made you cry, and they grew in gardens.

Secular gardeners, if indeed there were such people (there is none in the Rectitudines, and the Gerefa has no gardener among his smeawyrhtan, skilled workers)69 seem to have taken much less interest in horticultural food crops. The Gerefa is responsible for planting a wyrtun, but the only horticultural crops mentioned among his responsibilities are textile and dye-plants: flax, madder and woad.70 This is no surprise, considering the long series of towtola, textile tools, also listed in the text.71 The Gerefa is clearly a man in charge of a substantial establishment, and, while the provision of fine and coloured fabrics evidently forms an important part of his responsibilities, vegetables seem to be beneath his notice. This bias no doubt reflects the interests of his employers, keen to display their wealth and taste on their sleeves, as it were, but not interested in the mere fruit and vegetables that the garden might contribute to their diet.72 Orchards

Unfortunately we do not have Old English riddles about other garden vegetables, but we need not assume that no others were grown: in addition to tuncærse and tunnæp, mentioned above, archaeobotanical and linguistic evidence suggests cabbage, or rather kale (closer to the wild form), as a likely candidate, as well as beets and maybe radishes and parsnips and/or carrots, all possibly grown for their leaves rather than roots.65 Beans, as we have seen, were probably grown on a field scale, but peas seem to have been less common, and are certainly a less robust plant, so they too are likely to have been grown in gardens.66 Plants that we would call herbs and spices, rather than vegetables, must also have been grown in gardens rather than in the fields. All the familiar culinary herbs, parsley, mint, sage, thyme and mustard, were known in Anglo-Saxon England, but all the actual evidence for their use is in medicine.67 This is at least partly due to the nature of the evidence, however: we have medical texts from Anglo-Saxon England, but no cookbooks.68 It is hard to imagine that the flavouring properties of these plants would be lost on the Anglo-Saxons, especially in the case of mustard. Apart from mint and mustard, these herbs are of Mediterranean origin, so they may not have been very widely grown, whatever their use. We shall see some evidence below for monastic gardens, and it is possible that monastic kitchens used a wider range of flavourings than the laity, in order to add interest and variety to an overtly abstemious diet. Monastic gardeners may therefore have been pioneers in growing what would have been regarded as exotic crops by their secular counterparts. Monastic writers certainly show more interest in horticultural crops than lay authorities.

The word ‘orchard’ is an interesting one. It is derived from Latin hortus, or its stem, and OE geard (or its Germanic ancestor). There is a Gothic analogue, so this may be a very old word. Already in its earliest occurrences in Old English, it is spelt with a c, and presumably pronounced much as it is today, suggesting that its components were no longer transparent to English speakers. The question is, though, what did it mean? There is no inherent reason why a ‘garden yard’ should mean a place for growing fruit. Hortus could mean a fruit-garden, but it could equally well be a pleasure-garden or kitchen garden. Ælfric, as we have seen gives ‘hortus, orcerd’, but ‘pomerium, æppeltun’, suggesting that he did not think an orcerd was (only) for growing fruit. On the other hand, his wyrtun translates uiridarium. It appears that he intended to make some distinction between the three, but it is not very clear what he thought differentiated them. In the Old English Pastoral Care, however, orcgeard and æppeltun are clearly equated: ‘ðu ðe eardað on freondes orcgearde’ (Song of Songs 8:13, ‘Quae habitas in hortis’ in the Vulgate) is explained as meaning ‘sio halige gesomnung Godes folces, ðæt eardað on æppeltunum’ (‘the holy congregation of God’s people that dwells in orchards’).73 Æppeltun is literally ‘apple-enclosure’.74 But it could mean an enclosure containing trees other than apples, as is clear from Ælfric’s Homily for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, where he explains Matthew 7:16 (‘Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of   Gerefa 16, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze, vol. 1, 455.   Gerefa 9-12, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze, vol. 1, 454. 71   Gerefa 15, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze, vol. 1, 455. 72   Robin Fleming, ‘The new wealth, the new rich and the new political style in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Norman Studies for 2000 (2001), 1–22, maintains that late Anglo-Saxon wealth was displayed in new ways at the table as much as on the body, but her evidence for dietary practices is largely post-Conquest. 73   Chapter 49, King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, 2 vols, ed. Henry Sweet, EETS os 45 and 50 (Oxford, 1871), vol. 1, 381. 74   As for instance in Ælfric’s Glossary, Ælfrics Grammatik, ed. Zupitza, p. 318, where it comes between ‘ortus, orcerd’ and ‘uiridarium, wyrtun’. 69 70

  No. 65 in Krapp and Dobbie, p. 230.   No. 86 in Krapp and Dobbie, p. 238. 65   See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 196–226. For the food plants grown in Anglo-Saxon England, see now Lisa Moffett, ‘Food plants on archaeological sites: the nature of the archaeobotanical record’, in The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, ed. Hamerow et al., pp. 346–60. 66   See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 175–9. 67   See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 226-48. 68   I plan to publish soon on those preserved in the medical literature under the title ‘The Earliest English Culinary Recipes’. 63 64

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Debby Banham thistles?’ in the Authorised Version) by saying ‘ne mænde ure drihten bi þisum wordum ða treowa þe on æpeltune weaxað … ac … gesceadwisan men’ (by these words our Lord did not mean the trees that grow in the orchard, but sentient people).75 Presumably he was imagining an orchard in a far-off land; grapes may have been grown in England in his time, but not figs.76 In his description of Egypt in De temporibus anni, however, Ælfric wrote ‘on middan urum wintra beoð heora feldas blowenda ‫ך‬ heora orcyrdas mid æpplum afyllede’ (‘in the middle of our winter their fields are blooming and their orchards filled with apples’).77 This translates Bede, De temporum ratione xxxv, but the second half of Bede’s sentence reads ‘et syluas fertur habere pomis onustas’ (‘and it is said to have woods laden with fruit’).78 If Ælfric misinterpreted Bede’s words, this was presumably because, for him, fruit was more likely to come from orchards than woods; if he changed the wording deliberately, that was no doubt to fit his audience’s assumptions, along the same lines. In either case, the change is evidence for the common cultivation of fruit trees in England in his time (although it would be unwise to conclude that they were not being grown in Bede’s Northumbria; he was after all writing about a faroff land).

very much towards the south and the west.82 However, fruit trees do appear in place names both further east and further north, for instance in the latter-day ‘garden of England’, Kent, and in Yorkshire. I have speculated elsewhere that fruit trees were only remarkable enough to appear in place names in districts where they were rare,83 but the widespread occurrence of names in æppel, for instance, does not seem to bear this out. As Hooke points out, charter bounds often mention special features of such trees which made them good markers, the most frequent being ‘hoar’, or grey, apple trees, usually supposed to be clothed in lichen. Even when no such feature is mentioned, there may have been something that drew attention to the trees, perhaps just their number in some cases. She also draws attention to the fact that such features are rarely specific to cultivated trees:84 a crab apple is certainly as likely to grow lichen as a cultivated one. It would be very interesting to be able to distinguish cultivated from wild apples in our evidence, since it is now known that the two are not at all closely related, apples having been first domesticated in central Asia, and all cultivated varieties being derived from those early domesticates, with minimal genetic contribution, if any, from European crabs as cultivation moved west.85 But, occasional references to suræppel or swete apuldre apart,86 crab-apple and cultivated apple are referred to by the same Old English names. This probably means that they looked much more similar than crabs and cultivated apples do today: the virtues of the cultivated fruit would lie in its eating qualities, flavour (sweet as opposed to sur) and perhaps juiciness, rather than features such as size that are apparent to sight alone. This is in contrast to fruits such as plums where the wild and cultivated forms, though more closely related, do look very different (see below).

The fruit trees noted by Della Hooke in the boundary clauses of Anglo-Saxon charters are more likely to have grown in woods or hedgerows than in orchards, although she does have one example of a boundary that goes through an orchard.79 As she remarks, this is hard to explain.80 A few other orchards appear in charter bounds, and there are also four pre-Conquest ‘orchard’ place-names.81 All of them are in the west of England, one in the well-known modern fruit-growing area of the Vale of Evesham. All the charters are for ecclesiastical beneficiaries, but this does not necessarily indicate a special interest in orchards on the part of the Church, merely in preserving documents. But even trees in hedgerows and woods may have been cultivated species or varieties, deliberately planted. This is after all an economic use of land, allowing people to grow fruit (as long as it is not too vulnerable to predation) without taking up valuable space near their houses. Hooke gives a map of fruit trees and orchards in pre-Conquest charter-bounds and place names, and again the emphasis is

Other fruits likely to have been grown in Anglo-Saxon orchards are those that have signs in the Monasteriales indicia: pears, plums and cherries.87 Other evidence for cherries is not very strong,88 and they are not the easiest fruit to grow in Britain, so they may have been confined to the more privileged sections of society, and once again, monastic horticulture may have been in the vanguard. Of soft fruits, most were not taken into cultivation until quite   Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 248, fig. 19.   Banham, ‘Food Plants’, p. 116. 84 Della Hooke, ‘Trees in Anglo-Saxon charters: some comments and some uncertainties’, in Old Names, New Growth, ed. Bierbaumer and Klug, pp. 75–97, at p. 79. 85   Cultivated apples, according to the genetic evidence, are derived from Malus pumila, from central Asia, not from the wild Malus sylvestris of Europe; see Barrie E. Juniper and David J. Mabberley, The Story of the Apple (Portland OR, 2006), pp. 46–56. 86   For instance in a charter of Æthelheard of Wessex (S. 255, AD 739, Crediton, Devon, Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. W. de Gray Birch, 3 vols (London, 1885–99), vol. 3, 667, no. 1331), on suran apuldre, or one of Eadwig (S. 586, AD 956 for 959, land on the River Nadder, Wiltshire, Codex diplomaticus aevi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble, 6 vols (London 1839–48), vol. 3, 454, bounds of no. 479), to þare swete æpuldre, or Bald’s Leechbook II.12, (ed. T. O. Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, vol. 2 (London, 1865), p. 190), sure æppla. 87   Banham, Monasteriales indicia, pp. 34–6. Sloes are also given a sign, but these are more likely to have been collected from the wild. 88   See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, p. 123. 82 83

  Malcolm Godden, ed., Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, the Second Series: Text, EETS ss 5 (London, 1979), p. 236. 76   For viticulture, see Tim Unwin, ‘Saxon and early Norman viticulture in England’, Journal of Wine Research 1.1 (1990), 61–75, and Della Hooke, ‘A note on the evidence for vineyards and orchards in Anglo-Saxon England’, ibid., 77–80, as well as Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 139–45. 77  Aelfric’s De temporibus anni, ed. Heinrich Henel, EETS os 213 (Oxford, 1942), p. 40. 78   Bedae venerabilis Opera, pars vi, Opera didascalica, vol. 2, ed. C. W. Jones, CCSL 123B (Turnhout, 1977), p. 395. 79   Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape (Woodbridge, 2010), 246; S. 459, AD 940, Liddington, Wiltshire, The Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey, ed. S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters 5 (Oxford, 1996), no. 11, pp. 45–7. 80   Hooke, ‘A note on the evidence’, p. 79. 81   Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 245–55. She lists one other orchard in a Wiltshire charter, and two in Worcestershire. The place names are also in the west of England, two in Somerset, and one each in Devon and Dorset. 75

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England being able to interpret ecclesia in quite a sophisticated manner, the translator (whatever his or her relationship with King Alfred) seems to have taken Gregory’s allegorical gloss on Song of Songs 8:13 in a very literal sense. The translator is not providing a description of Anglo-Saxon propagation practices, but does show where impan were thought to belong, and why.96 Whether they are envisaged as being grafted onto stocks, or cuttings taking root in the ground, however, is not clear.

recently, but it is likely that strawberries were grown in gardens. Large numbers of their seeds have been found on urban sites,89 and they are not the kind of plant that would survive easily in the busy (by early medieval standards) streets of tenth-century Winchester or York, so if they were growing within the towns, they must have had human protection. On the other hand, they could have been gathered from the wild outside the town. Raspberries, however, must have been cultivated, as they are found, also in large numbers, well south of their natural range.90

The boys in Ælfric Bata’s Colloquies have a good deal to say about their orchard, pomerium. To begin with, they are asked whether they have a pomerium siue hortulum, which could mean ‘an orchard or a garden’, or, more likely in the light of what follows, could be two alternative words for orchard. Then they are asked when they were there. They might be expected to sense trouble on the horizon, but instead they answer blithely that ‘We were there yesterday, and we played there, and gathered ourselves lots of apples, to eat and to keep’. Immediately the interlocutor asks whose permission they had to go there, and then by whose permission they collected all those apples. They claim the gardener’s and the teacher’s. Finally they are asked what trees grow in the pomerium, and they reel off a list of trees suspiciously similar to the one in Ælfric’s Glossary, admitting that they cannot translate them all into English.

It is not clear how advanced Anglo-Saxon fruit-growing was. There is no evidence that different varieties were recognized in England, in contrast to the nine types of apple and seven of pear listed in the Capitulare de uillis.91 The varieties of all temperate tree fruits depend on grafting, since they are clones, and do not come true from seed. It is likely that most Anglo-Saxon fruit trees were seedlings, of variable quality and characteristics, as continued to be the case for centuries, but the technique of grafting may also have been known. In the Gerefa, the eleventh-century treatise on the duties of a steward, the second in the list of seasonal tasks for the spring, immediately after ploughing, is impian.92 OE impe/a is a young plant or shoot, so impian could also mean to plant out seedlings. However, the later history of the verb is against this (see OED sv.), and, in the Gerefa, this task is among those (including also sowing beans, setting out a vineyard, ditching, and cutting back the game hedge) that belong to the early spring, and can be carried out when the weather is still wintry. They are followed by another group introduced by the phrase ‘and quickly after that, if the weather is suitable’: setting out madder, sowing linseed and woad, planting out the garden. Impian, then, presumably does not also mean planting out; grafting, which needs to be done after the sap begins to rise but before the weather gets too warm,93 fits much better.

Many of these trees would certainly not grow in an orchard, and some not in Britain at all, but that was of course not Ælfric’s intention when he drew up his Nomina arborum. Here the actual tree-names (other nouns related to trees are also listed) are as follows: buxus box, fraxinus æsc, quercus vel ilex ac, taxus iw, corilus hæsel, fagus boctreow, alnus alr, laurus lawerbeam, malus apeldre, pinus pintreow … pirus pyrige, prunus plumtreow, ficus fictreow, ulcia holen, populus byrc, palma palmtwiga, Sabina savene, genesta brom, cedrus cederbeam, cypressus næfð nænne engliscne naman, sentes þornas, … ramnus fyrs, spina þorn, vepres bremelas, abies æps, olea vel oliva elebeam, morus morbeam, vitis wintreow, salix wiðig …

We unfortunately have no information about how this procedure was carried out in Anglo-Saxon England, but the Old English Pastoral Care does locate impan in æppeltunum: ‘Ðæt is sio halige gesomnung Godes folces, ðæt eardað on æppeltunum, ðonne hie wel begað hira plantan ‫ ך‬hiera impan, oð hie fulweaxne beoð’ (‘That is the holy congregation of God’s people that dwells in orchards, when she tends her plants and shoots well, until they are fully grown’).94 This translates Gregory’s ‘Ecclesia quippe in hortis habitat, quae ad uiriditatem intimam exculta plantaria uirtutum seruat’ (‘Surely the Church, which preserves the carefully tended shoots of virtues for their most profound freshness, dwells in gardens’).95 Despite

Bata reproduces these, apart from cedrus and cypressus, and adds cornus and, as a synonym for uepres, tribulos. Even so, this would make a strange orchard, in any country. None of these trees are actually mentioned in the Colloquy’s narrative, and the only orchard crop we hear of is apples. The boys do not even pick a few pears for variety’s sake. Thus we can be pretty sure that, even in the Colloquy, the list of trees serves solely as a vocabulary exercise, and we are no better informed about what, other than apples, really grew in Anglo-Saxon orchards.

  See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 124–6.   See Banham, ‘Food Plants’, pp. 128–9. 91   Magnou-Nortier, ‘Capitulaire’, p. 652. The types include what are probably regional varieties, as well as early and late ones and keepers. 92   Gerefa 12, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze vol. 1, 454. 93   The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening, 4 vols, ed. Mark Griffiths (London, 1992), vol. 4, 635–6. 94   Chapter 49, ed. Sweet, vol. 1, 381. 95   Regula pastoralis III.25, in Grégoire le grand, Règle pastorale, ed. Bruno Judic, Floribert Rommel and Charles Morel, 2 vols, Sources Chrétiennes 381–2 (Paris, 1992), vol. 2, 432. 89 90

The pomerium, and the question of who was there when and under what circumstances, recurs in Bata’s Colloquy   Apart from these two references, I have found no other instance of either the noun or the verb. 96

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Debby Banham 28, which starts with the master asking who stole the monastery’s apples the day before. Two boys are blamed, and one of their accusers claims that they were in the orchard at dawn the previous day, stole lots of apples, stuffed their clothes with them, and then hid them in their boxes. The dialogue then deteriorates into a slanging match, as it frequently does, but it is interesting that the association of boys with orchards seems to have been as worrying to adults in the eleventh century as more recently.97 Neither of these episodes come from Bata’s main sources, Abbot Ælfric or the De raris fabulis complex,98 so it may be that here he presents us with stories at least based upon real Anglo-Saxon life, or real Anglo-Saxon assumptions about the behaviour and tastes of children.99

illustrations are found in the slightly later Old English Hexateuch, where we see Adam digging again while Eve wields a mattock, and Cain digging with a spade while another man uses a mattock.103 In British Library MS Cotton Julius A. vi, also from the early eleventh century, a calendar scene for March shows men digging, raking and sowing.104 Whether these images represent horticulture is not clear; the assumption that digging always means a garden, and that fields are always ploughed, in other words that the technique of breaking the soil distinguishes horticulture from agriculture, is based on modern practice. But I think it extremely unlikely that such a rigid distinction applied in the early Middle Ages. In many parts of the British Isles, people went on cultivating fields with the spade (as well as the plough) right up until the introduction of tractors, and there remain ‘spade-cultures’ (and ‘hoe’, or rather mattock, cultures) in the world today, where no ploughs are in use.105 None of the late Anglo-Saxon illustrations cited above have a background that suggests a garden is intended, rather than a field, so we have to be cautious about assuming that anything they show is specific to gardens (or orchards), rather than common to cultivation in general.

Horticultural techniques Written sources tell us virtually nothing about the practicalities of Anglo-Saxon horticulture. In fact, it is not until the thirteenth century that gardening emerges into the light of literacy in England.100 Even on the Continent, Meyvaert laments the failure of texts to pass on the vast fund of practical knowledge that must have existed. But, as he says, this must have been passed on orally, ‘much as the melodies of the liturgy were transmitted before the invention of musical notation’.101 Like cookery, gardening must have been overwhelmingly the province of people who could not read, and thus an unpromising subject for instructional writing. Unfortunately for us, no Anglo-Saxon monk (or nun) thought to jot down any ‘garden notes’ for those few of his brethren who shared his interests, or, if he did, his notebook has not survived.

Nonetheless, we can be confident that the tools shown would be in use in gardens, if not restricted to them. All the pictures show a single-sided spade, wooden with an iron shoe to cut into the soil. Mattocks are also shown, and, in the calendars, a rake. This latter tool is also the subject of an Old English riddle in the Exeter Book.106 These tools and others are named in the Gerefa, the eleventh-century text which sets out the duties of the reeve in charge of an estate, but which draws heavily on the glossary tradition. Some of the Gerefa’s tola are hapax legomena (so little interest does Anglo-Saxon literate culture normally take in such matters), and thus hard to translate with any confidence, but among them are: ‘mattuc … weodhoc, spade, scofle, wadspitel, berwan, besman, bytel, race, geafle’ (‘mattock … weed-hook, spade, shovel, woad dibber, barrow, besom, mallet, rake, fork’),107 any of which might have been used

Pictorial sources are slightly more revealing, with all the usual caveats about their sources and the fact that they depict almost exclusively biblical or otherwise ‘historical’, not contemporary, scenes or figures. Although there are no garden plans from Anglo-Saxon England, we do find pictures of people doing what may be horticultural tasks: for instance, there are men digging in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 11, of around the millennium, including Adam delving while Eve spins, and Cain and (possibly) Adam digging while Abel tends his sheep.102 Similar

  BL, Cotton Claudius B. iv, fos 7v and 8r; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 315; facsimile: The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch: British Museum Cotton Claudius B. iv, ed. C. R. Dodwell and Peter Clemoes, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18 (Copenhagen, 1974); digital images available on the British Library website, under Digitised Manuscripts, http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_ Claudius_B_IV. 104   Folio 4r; Gneuss, Handlist, no. 337; the Julius calendar pictures are reproduced in the facsimile of Cotton Tiberius B. v, An Eleventh-Century Miscellany: British Library Cotton Tiberius B. v, Part I, together with leaves from British Library Cotton Nero D. ii, ed. P. McGurk, D. N. Dumville, M. R. Godden and A. Knock, EEMF 21 (Copenhagen, 1983), plate IX. Tiberius B. v has a partly rearranged version of the same picture (in colour), also on fol. 4r; its calendar illustrations are closely related to those of Julius. See also Catherine E. Karkov, ‘Calendar illustration in Anglo-Saxon England: realities and fictions of the Anglo-Saxon landscape’ in The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Nicholas J. Higham and Martin Ryan (Woodbridge, 2010), pp. 157–67. 105   See The Spade in Northern and Atlantic Europe, ed. Alan Gailey and Alexander Fenton (Belfast, 1970), and Polly Hill, Dry Grain Farming Families: Hausaland (Nigeria) and Karnataka (India) compared (Cambridge, 1982), for examples. 106   No. 34 in Krapp and Dobbie. 107   Gerefa 15, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze, vol. 1, 455. 103

  The decline of British fruit production may mean that scrumping is now neither as common or as worrying to adults as it was in my own childhood, but we can suppose a tradition of some 950 years, at least. 98   For the sources of Bata’s colloquies, see Porter’s Introduction to Gwara and idem, Conversations, at pp. 19–21. 99   The Rule of St Pachomius forbids monks to gather either fruit or vegetables without authorisation, but there is unlikely to be a direct textual connection; see Pachomiana Latina, ed. A. Boon (Louvain, 1932) nos 71 and 77. 100   Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens, p. 74, gives Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, despite the loss of its section De orto, as the first English text to give any practical information. 101   ‘Monastic gardens’, p. 31. 102   At pp. 45 and 49; Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A List of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe AZ, 2001), no. 640; facsimile: The Caedmon Manuscript of Anglo-Saxon Biblical Poetry: Junius XI in the Bodleian Library, ed. Israel Gollancz (Oxford, 1927), also A Digital Facsimile of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11, ed. Bernard J. Muir, CD Rom (Oxford, 2004). 97

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England arripuisset ingentem, quatenus properanter domini sui expleret iussionem’ (‘she had pulled up a huge stake in order to hurriedly carry out her employer’s instructions’). Even though the poor woman was doing this at the behest of her employer, she was severely (and divinely) punished: ‘manus eius tam firmiter adhesit ligno quod tenebat auide et unde herbas euellere desiderabat illicite, ut nullus hominum quolibet conamine stipitem a manu mulieris potuisset dirimere’ (‘her hand stuck so firmly to the wood she was eagerly holding, and with which she intended to unlawfully lift the plants, that no-one could remove the post from the woman’s hand, no matter how hard they tried’). Eventually, after much repentance and prayer, she was released, so the ending was happy and the lesson learnt, but for those of us curious to know how, and with what tools, vegetables were normally gathered in the period, the harvest is meagre, unless everyone just grabbed the nearest stake.

in the garden and orchard he was evidently responsible for. In Ælfric’s Glossary we find only ‘uanga uel fossorium, spadu’ (spade),108 although he lists many agricultural tools. Carole Morris’s work on wooden artefacts from archaeology has produced evidence for mattocks, a spade, and possible rake-heads from pre-Conquest England.109 The spade, from York, is symmetrical, unlike those in the manuscript illustrations;110 Morris does however show several asymmetrical spades from contemporary Scandinavia.111 All her pre-Conquest iron spade shoes are round, like those in the manuscripts, while those of other shapes appear only from the thirteenth century.112 Digging forks appear to be unknown from early medieval England, although they did exist in Ireland.113 The Gerefa also lists some horticultural tasks among the seasonal labours the steward supervises: in spring, in addition to impian (grafting? discussed above p. 41), once the weather improves, he can plant out madder, sow linseed and woad seed, and plant the garden. In summer the only horticultural job listed is weodian, weeding, and in autumn, apart from bringing in crops, which presumably includes garden ones, there is only wad spittan, planting out woad, no doubt using the wadspitel listed among his tools. Winter is the time for orceard ræran, setting up an orchard, even in miclum gefyrstum, great frosts.114 There is not a great deal of detail here on how any of the plants were cultivated: woad was evidently sown in a seedbed and then planted out in its permanent positions (it is biennial or perennial), while madder, a perennial grown from root cuttings, is only planted. Whether leeks were also transplanted, or how any other vegetable was to be raised, is evidently a matter that could be left to the workers.

High and low status, lay and ecclesiastical gardens Much of our evidence for Anglo-Saxon gardens comes from ecclesiastical, and especially monastic, sources, raising the question of whether their views can be applied to AngloSaxon horticulture as a whole, or should be regarded as specific to the milieu in which they were written. Some of the plants listed would certainly be difficult to cultivate, either because they are not frost hardy (cumin), or unreliable in the British climate for some other reason (cherries), or because they are small and easy to trample on (for instance strawberries, but also some of the herbs). It has to be asked whether peasants, hard-pressed by labour services and food rents for their landlords, as well as producing their own food, would have the time or energy to devote to such high-maintenance crops, which would not make a major contribution to their nutrition.116 This might not mean they did not garden, however. In the Domesday Book, that excellent compendium of odd bits of evidence for all kinds of things quite different from whatever King William commissioned it for, we find sporadic references to gardens.117 These are rare, however, and I suspect that if a person held other land in the same place, their garden was normally considered too insignificant to list. Most of those recorded belong to cottars and bordars, included, probably, because gardens were all the land these people had. At Holywell, near Oxford, for instance, there were twenty-three homines who seem to have gardens only. Other peasants listed without land, or without ploughs, might also have had gardens, even where these are not mentioned, and this could also apply to ‘landless’ labourers before the Conquest. The less land one has, after all, the more likely one is to exploit it intensively, and the more likely one is to concentrate on ‘high-value’ crops.118

I have only been able to locate one narrative episode set in England that involves horticultural labour: a miracle in the Liber Eliensis concerning a maid who tried to harvest vegetables in the garden on a Sunday, ‘in horto colligere hollera Dominica die’, which apparently occurred in or before the reign of Eadred (946–55).115 This maid, however, was not using the proper tool for the job, and never got as far as actually digging anything up: ‘sudem   In the section Nomina domorum, Ælfric’s Grammatik, ed. Zuptiza, p. 318. 109   Carole A. Morris, ‘Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Woodworking Crafts’, PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1984, vol. 1, 11–26, and vol. 2, figs 8, 11–14 and 16. 110   Carole A. Morris, Wood and Woodworking in Anglo-Scandinavian and Medieval York, The Archaeology of York 17.3 (2000), pp. 2315–16. 111   Morris, ‘Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Woodworking’, vol. 2, figs 11, A75, and 12, A84–7. 112   As Morris points out, this distinction applies only to those examples with good dating evidence. Undated objects in all three categories also exist. Morris, ‘Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Woodworking’, vol. 1, 11–12. 113   Morris, ‘Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Woodworking’, vol. 2, fig. 14. 114   Gerefa 12, 9, 10 and 11, respectively, ed. Liebermann, Gesetze, vol. 1, 454. 115   The story comes from a lost source, the Exortatio sacerdotis, apparently assembled in Eadred’s reign: Liber Eliensis, I.48, ed. E. O. Blake, Camden third series 92 (London, 1962), p. 59. See also Simon Keynes, ‘Ely Abbey’ in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg (Oxford, 1999), pp. 166–7. 108

  See Faith, English Peasantry, pp. 76-8 et passim, for labour services.   Conveniently listed by H. C. Darby, Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 135–6. 118   Compare the tomatoes and herbs grown on balconies by modern flatdwellers; few would try to grow staple crops such as potatoes under such circumstances, but they may improve the quality of their diet considerably. 116

117

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Debby Banham Someone who had no fields, or shares in common fields, on which to grow cereals or other bulk crops (and we can take this as the definition of ‘landless’ in the Middle Ages) might be able to produce enough leeks, or other wyrta, to flavour what cereals they could obtain, even on a patch too small to figure as a hortus in Domesday.

Conquest source.121 Pre-reform horticulture at Ely, if on a less grand scale, is attested to by the miracle of the maid digging vegetables on a Sunday, already cited. Entirely pre-Conquest sources, however, do not as far as I can see attribute large-scale garden projects to their protagonists, at Ely or elsewhere.

One is also prompted to ask whether the lay aristocracy, with their preference for hunting and a high-animal protein diet, would invest much of their servants’ labour in mere wyrta. As we have seen, no gardener is listed among the singulares personae of the Rectitudines, or the specialist workers the Gerefa needs to look after. The Gerefa himself is responsible for setting out gardens, orchards and vineyards, and for planting and sowing various plants that were presumably grown in gardens (the sowing of arable crops is omitted, as presumably too well known). The physical work must have been done by slaves or wagelabourers, or by tenants as part of their labour services; in any of these cases, no specialist knowledge can have been required beyond what they had acquired in looking after their own gardens.

The purpose of Anglo-Saxon gardens The question of purpose is not only difficult to answer, but arguably fairly meaningless: in many cases, perhaps the majority, as with most modern gardens, the purpose was simply to grow plants in a more protected environment than was afforded by field cultivation. Whether visual pleasure, or the production of food, or medicines or dye-plants, or making money, or enjoying the sun on one’s back, or not letting that odd bit of land stand idle, was foremost in the minds of the people who owned, established or worked those gardens would probably have been hard even for them to determine at the time. How many gardens have a single overall purpose at the present day? But we can perhaps excavate some of the reasons Anglo-Saxons gardened.

But monastic gardeners, especially if, after the reform, their establishments took the Benedictine prohibition on carnes quadrupedum seriously, would have the motivation to produce fruits, vegetables and herbs to add flavour and variety to a largely vegetarian diet. An ascetic way of life need not mean eating like a peasant, after all. Thus we do not have to imagine that the plants listed by the Monasteriales indicia, or even the two Ælfrics, were growing on every peasant croft, to accept that they were genuinely grown in England, and probably eaten by the authors of the texts. The plants given signs in the Monasteriales indicia may likewise represent those genuinely grown in AngloSaxon monastic gardens. In the twelfth century there is evidence for the transmission of special plants between monastic communities,119 presumably in the persons of their gardeners, but it is hard to know whether we should imagine this already happening in our period, or whether it should be seen as a post-Conquest innovation. The possible cultivation of flowering plants at nunneries is considered below.

Some of the purposes of a garden can plausibly be extrapolated from the uses of the plants grown in it. In most cases, the majority of those plants were probably destined to be eaten, and thus the purpose can be said to be to produce food. The same would be true of orchards. There may have been a small number of gardens where a higher proportion of plants were used in medicine, or for textiles and dyeing, possibly to a degree that would justify describing the gardens themselves as medicinal or dye-plant gardens. The Gerefa might seem to be in charge of the latter type, but it may simply be the plants used in making fine clothing were accorded greater importance by his employers than those that went into their pot, or indeed potions. As the reeve is more than once exhorted to keep his lord’s interests uppermost in his mind at all times, such priorities would inevitably be reflected in the way he organised his work. There is no specific garden where we can be sure of the proportion of plants intended for different uses, and thus assign an overall purpose to the garden itself.

Evidence for the deliberate promotion of horticulture in Anglo-Saxon monasteries is relatively hard to come by. When the monastery at Ely was refounded or reformed, in c. 970, the provost, Leo (or Leofwine), was particularly known as a terre cultor. He laid out hortos … et pomeria around the church, and, according the Liber Eliensis, considered that an important and venerable place looked more attractive surrounded by trees.120 This latter comment, however, may be the twelfth-century compiler–translator’s gloss on the story, even if its core comes from a pre-

In one case, however, we do appear to have a reference to a medicinal garden. This is in the same passage from Ælfric Bata’s colloquies already cited, with due circumspection, above. Between establishing the existence of the viridarium and listing the plants in it, Bata has his boys say something quite remarkable, that the garden is looked after by the gardener, hortulanus, who is also a medicus. Evidence for such a physician-gardener is otherwise unknown. Although Meyvaert could adduce evidence that early medieval continental monastic gardeners might be

See Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens, pp. 54–8. Liber Eliensis II. 54, ed. Blake pp. 123–4. This was during the time of Abbot Brihtnoth, but, pace various works on garden history, it was not Brihtnoth himself who laid out the gardens, or to whom the opinion is attributed. 119

120

 Dorothy Whitelock, in her Foreword to Blake’s edition, suggests that this part of book II ‘uses vernacular sources’, by implication preConquest, like the Libellus Æthelwoldi which underlies chapters 1–49. 121

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England members of the community, rather than servants,122 there is no comparable evidence from England: when ecclesiastics are said to have worked in gardens, it is part of a general statement designed to emphasize their humility. Abbot Eosterwine of Wearmouth (682–6), for instance, is said to have worked ‘gladly and obediently’ in ‘the bakehouse, the garden, the kitchen’, as well as milking the ewes and cows.123 In the tenth century, Æthelwold, while dean of Glastonbury, ‘ran no risk of pride, but set those under him such an example of humility that he worked daily at manual labour, tilling the garden and preparing fruit and vegetables of different kinds for the brothers’ mid-day meal’.124 In both cases, ‘working in the garden’ is clearly seen as an act of self-abasement on the part of an ecclesiastic. In both cases, too, gardening is associated with food production, not with medicinal plants. The only monastic medic we know of in Anglo-Saxon England is Abbot Baldwin of Bury St Edmunds, in the reign of the Confessor, and we hear nothing of gardening in his case.125

In view of the images presented of Eosterwine and Æthelwold above, one purpose might be suggested for gardens in Benedictine houses: to allow the inmates to demonstrate their humility by engaging in manual labour. Another function for gardens in monasteries where Benedictine dietary regulations were taken seriously would be to provide culinary interest for those who had given up (or been forbidden) the animal foods valued by them and their secular counterparts. The Rule allows, to augment the two cooked dishes of cereals or pulses, fruit or nascentia leguminum ‘new shoots of vegetables’, that is to say fresh vegetables or salads.129 However, it is not clear how seriously the Rule’s dietary provisions were taken in England, even in the tenth and eleventh centuries. A boy in Ælfric’s Colloquy (playing himself, this time) says that he still eats meat because he is a child ‘living under the rod’ (sub uirga degens),130 implying that those under the Rule would eschew it. But Æthelwold was praised by his biographer for avoiding meat (except when he was ill and Archbishop Dunstan insisted), as if this were remarkable.131 We cannot therefore assume that all reformed monks, or even all reformed monasteries, were vegetarian, and for the period before the reform this seems even more unlikely.132 Nevertheless, the evidence we have for monastic gardening does all come from the period of the reform, and this difference need not be dismissed out of hand as a function of greater literacy and greater survival of sources. It seems eminently plausible that, with greater interest being taken in the Rule, a desire to practice self-sufficiency, to engage in manual labour, and to subsist on a largely vegetarian diet gave rise to a renewed interest in gardening. Despite the absence of evidence for English knowledge or circulation of for instance, the Hortulus, information about gardening (new plants, new techniques) may also have reached the English Church via its reforming contacts on the Continent.

All this being the case, it is a matter of great interest whether any credibility can be attached to Bata’s physiciangardener. The idea must have come from somewhere, and since there is no obvious literary source for such a figure,126 the choice is between real life and Bata’s own imagination (or perhaps those of his pupils). The boys also say that the hortulanus is the abbot’s (or possibly the prior’s) doctor, but will treat anyone who asks him, and is not English or Greek (the alternatives suggested by the master), but francigena, French. The implications of all this, then, if Bata can be relied upon, are that a monastic garden in eleventhcentury England, possibly at Canterbury, was being run by an educated man, a foreigner, someone who might be expected to possess a very sophisticated understanding of contemporary medicine.127 Despite the very mixed list of plants provided in the colloquy, this would presumably be at least to some extent a medicinal garden. Whether such facilities existed earlier in the period, or indeed anywhere else in England, is even more difficult to tell.128

There are other questions we can ask about purpose. For instance, were there market gardens, cultivated in order to sell their produce and thus make a living indirectly, instead of simply eating it? At the time of the Domesday inquiry, the Abbot of Ely held four gardens within the town of Cambridge,133 which were clearly not the mere vegetable patches of otherwise landless peasants. These could have been used to provision the monastery, but 15 miles seems a long way to go to pick vegetables. On the other hand, that depends on what was being grown: it might have been a crop that was stored for the winter, such as peas, which could be harvested on a single trip to Cambridge. Or it might not have been food at all, but a textile crop such as hemp or flax. Whatever the crop,

 ‘Monastic gardens’, pp. 28–9. Bede, Historia abbatum, chapter 8, ed. Plummer, Opera historica, pp. 371–2. For a discussion of attitudes to manual labour in pre-reform English monasticism, see Sarah Foot, Monastic Life in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 600–900 (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 211–6. The references in Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens, p. 35, to Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics who hortus coluit etc. are all to later medieval texts, and some are untraceable. 124 Wulfstan, Vita Æthelwoldi 9, ed. Michael Lapidge and Michael Winterbottom, Wulfstan of Winchester, The Life of Æthelwold (Oxford, 1991) pp. 14 and 16; my translation. As the editors point out, the foods the future bishop is said to have prepared are modelled on Benedictine Rule 39 (see Benedicti Regula, ed. Rudolphus Hanslik, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 75 (Vienna, 1960), p. 99), showing the ideological intention of the hagiographer’s claim. 125 See Debby Banham, ‘A millennium in medicine? New medical texts and ideas in England in the eleventh century’ in Anglo-Saxons: Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart, ed. Simon Keynes and Alfred P. Smyth (Dublin, 2006), pp. 238–9, and, for his career more generally, Antonia Gransden, ‘Baldwin, Abbot of Bury St Edmunds, 1065–1097’, AngloNorman Studies 4 (1982 for 1981), 65–7 and 187–95. 126  The work of Ellis Peters being ruled out on chronological grounds. 127 See Banham, ‘A millennium in medicine?’ for changes in English medicine at this time. 128 Meyvaert, ‘Monastic gardens’, pp. 39–41, attributes the origins of the monastic herb garden to the Carolingian reforms, which would suggest a beginning in the tenth century in England. 122 123

  Benedicti Regula 39, ed. Hanslik, p. 99.   Ælfric’s Colloquy, ed. G. N. Garmonsway (Exeter, 1991), p. 46. 131  Chapter 30, ed. Lapidge and Winterbottom, p. 46. Cf. Benedicti Regula 36, ed. Hanslik, p. 96. 132  See Foot, Monastic Life, pp. 232–9, for a discussion of pre-reform monastic diet. 133  We learn this not from Great Domesday Book, but from the abbey’s own record of its returns, the Inquisitio Eliensis, printed in Inquisitio comitatus Cantabrigiensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton (London, 1876), p. 21. 129 130

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Debby Banham it could have been sold, rather than carted back to Ely. These could have been market gardens, or the abbot may have been renting them out (one is said to be unoccupied in 1086), in either case making money for the monastery, but contributing to the nutrition of the townspeople, rather than the monks. The Domesday gardens mentioned so far are all called hortus or hortulus, which terms, as we have seen, might also mean an orchard. Some of these may have been fruit gardens, but there are also a few records that are definitely orchards: ten acres ad faciendum pomerium at Nottingham, for instance. A virgultum at Exeter could be an orchard or a tree-nursery. Either could have been a commercial operation. These too are in or at towns, with greater opportunities for trade than in the country, and where small plots of land were more likely to be valuable enough to merit the Domesday commissioners’ attention.

English monks leading austere ‘ancient’ lives, or sharing his own preference for valleys full of birdsong? The opinion attributed to Leofwine at Ely would take ‘modern’ views back into the twelfth century, and perhaps this as far as we should expect them to go, in the absence of firm pre-Conquest evidence. We have even less evidence for Anglo-Saxon lay tastes, but before the end of the eleventh century William Rufus is said to have got into the nunnery at Wilton to see Edith of Scotland on the pretext of admiring the ‘roses and other flowering plants’.137 Is this an excuse that would have worked before the Conquest? Can we imagine Harold Godwinesson asking to see someone’s flowers? And would any such plants have been found before the Conquest, even at Wilton? The aristocratic nuns and retired ladies of this royal foundation and finishing school for future queens and saints are perhaps more likely than any other AngloSaxons to have indulged such refined tastes,138 but even here we have no pre-Conquest evidence.

The interests of the higher echelons of society bring us to the rather fraught question of whether there were pleasure gardens in Anglo-Saxon England, gardens the primary purpose of which was aesthetic, or even symbolic. An extremely rare piece of evidence for Anglo-Saxon pleasure in gardens comes from the tenth-century Macregol Gospels gloss to John 18:1, where hortus is glossed not lehtun, as at John 19:41 and Luke 13:19, but ‘fæger gewyrtun’ (‘a lovely garden’), and the Latin offers no basis for the aesthetic valuation. A single adjective is not much on which to base our assessment of a cultural preference, indeed, Old English writers in general are not enthusiastic about plants or gardens. In fact, ‘literary’ writers rarely mention cultivated plants at all: wild plants, such as the briars of the Wife’s Lament, are invoked to symbolise danger, remoteness, neglect, but the human comforts they contrast with are not those of the garden or fields, but the hall.134 Words such as wynwyrta (‘pleasant plants’), and descriptions of flowery meads, or rustling branches, normally translate Latin originals.135 That these originals might themselves be written by Anglo-Saxons show that pre-Conquest English writers were not incapable of creating such ‘flowery’ passages, but rather that these were not a traditional feature of their vernacular literature. But it does leave wide open the question of how susceptible they themselves were to such pleasures.

Our lists of plants do not allow us to identify anything that can only have been grown for its aesthetic or symbolic value. None of the plants mentioned in Ælfric’s Nomina herbarum was without some kind of use: even the lily and the rose appear occasionally in early medieval medical texts.139 These two are perhaps the plants most likely to have been grown for their appearance, however, or indeed their scent, or of course their association with the Virgin Mary.140 Walahfrid Strabo’s Hortulus shows that at least some people took pleasure in both aesthetic and spiritual aspects of gardens in the early Middle Ages, even if the gardens themselves were primarily utilitarian. For a discussion of this episode, which she places in 1093 at Wilton, rather than the conventional 1092 at Romsey, see Emma Mason, King Rufus: The Life and Murder of William II of England (2nd edn., Stroud, 2008), p. 117. The source is Herman of Tournai, De restauratione Sancti Martini, printed as notes to Eadmer, Historia nouorum III, Anselmi opera II, ed. J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina 159 (Paris, 1854), cols 427-30, at col. 429D, where neither Edith nor her nunnery is named. Herman’s knowledge of English gardening must in any case have been slight. 138 For the role of Wilton in producing well educated women suited to life in high places, see Stephanie Hollis, ‘Wilton as a centre of learning’, in Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s ‘Legend of Edith’ and ‘Liber confortatorius’, ed. Stephanie Hollis et al. (Turnhout, 2004), pp. 307–38. For its royal connections, and wealth, see Sarah Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols (Aldershot: 2000), vol. 2, 221–41. In this respect, Romsey, although less well attested, did not differ greatly from Wilton; see Foot, Veiled Women, vol. 2, pp. 149–55. See also Julia Crick, ‘The Wealth, Patronage and Connections of Women’s Houses in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Revue bénédictine 109 (1999), 154–85. 139 The lily has a chapter to itself in the Herbarium (109, ed. de Vriend, p. 152), while the rose appears a number of times, for instance in chapters 100 and 101 (ed. de Vriend, pp. 144 and 148), usually in the guise of rosewater. 140 Depictions of the kind shown by Harvey, Mediaeval Gardens, with the Virgin sitting in a garden, are however unknown in Anglo-Saxon art. Only in two illustrations is she shown holding a flower, rather than the more frequent palm of victory: see Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin, pp. 142–78, esp. pp. 171–2 and plate xii. The only representation I know of in Anglo-Saxon art of a virgin holding an identifiable flower shows not Mary, but Æthelthryth, with a gilded lily, in the Benedictional of St Æthelwold, British Library, MS Additional 49598, fol. 90v, reproduced in The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, ed. Janet Backhouse, D. H. Turner and Leslie Webster (London, 1984), plate vi. See also The Benedictional of Æthelwold, ed. Robert Deshman, Studies in Manuscript Illumination 9 (Princeton NJ 1995). 137

Meyvaert quotes a thirteenth-century letter contrasting ‘modern’ delight in natural and cultivated beauty with the preference of the ‘ancient fathers’ for ‘desert regions’.136 Some Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics (Æthelwold springs to mind) no doubt shared the tastes of the desert fathers, with their suspicion of any kind of pleasure or ease, but one wonders how recently this ‘modern’ delight was supposed to have originated. Did the letter-writer imagine earlier For discussion see Neville, Representations of the Natural World, esp. pp. 86–8 on The Wife’s Lament. 135 These are all found in the introductory passage to Judgement Day II, ed. Graham D. Caie, The Old English Poem ‘Judgement Day II’ (Cambridge, 2000), translating Bede, De die iudicii, lines 1–4, but arguably misinterpreting some of his imagery; discussed by Neville, Representations, pp. 110–11. 136 ‘Monastic gardens’, pp. 42–3. The letter-writer was Gilbert of Hoyland. 134

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Lectun and Orceard: a preliminary survey of the evidence for horticulture in Anglo-Saxon England However, Walahfrid’s poem is well known partly because it is exceptional. Turning to Anglo-Saxon authors, we find frequent enough use of natural imagery to depict pleasure in both this world and the next, but very rarely does this relate to a real Anglo-Saxon garden. Most of it is fairly conventional, drawing either on the biblical ideas outlined above or the classical locus amoenus tradition.141 Aldhelm makes various plants the subject of his enigmata, often dealing with their symbolism, and sometimes their appearance, but there is no reason to think what he wrote was based on his own experience, rather than on literary models.142 Nor, as befits a churchman, does he seem to take pleasure in plants for their own sake. The only Old English riddles on plants deal with onions and garlic, as cited above, and the pleasures they invoke are neither aesthetic nor spiritual. We never hear of an Anglo-Saxon walking in a garden just because they liked it, or for spiritual nourishment or enlightenment. Ælfric Bata includes gardens, hortuli, among other landscape features that uirescunt at the onset of spring in his Colloquia difficiliora 11.143 But they are not mentioned again as he develops the theme: his bees fly through the fields, arua, to find flowers,144 and in a similar motif in Colloquia difficiliora 7, where the bees are metaphorical, the location of the ‘many-coloured flowers’ is unstated.145 Having summoned up the idea of gardens from his literary training, he takes it no further, nor is a teaching text, arguably, the place for such flights of fancy.

always refer to places or events outside England, or else are found in texts, translated from Latin, which themselves come from overseas, or, in many cases, both. The Old English versions of Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, for instance, are full of references to gardens and gardeners, most entertainingly exemplified by the story of ‘The nun who bit the lettuce’.146 In this, the unfortunate nun ‘eode in þone wyrttun. þa geseah heo ænne leahtric’ (‘was walking in the garden, when she saw a lettuce’). Her mistake was not in helping herself to the lettuce, but that she ‘forgeat, þæt heo hine mid Cristes rodetacne gebletsode’ (‘forgot to bless it with the sign of Christ’s cross’), and as a result she was possessed by a devil. The devil claimed the fault was all on the nun’s side, since he was simply sitting on the lettuce, and by implication doing no harm, when com heo ‫ ך‬me bat (‘she came and bit me’), but fortunately this did not save him from being exorcised. The garden here is almost unnoticed, a taken-for-granted background to a very mundane series of events (until the devil appears), but whether it was equally unremarkable to the Anglo-Saxon audience, and whether the same series of events would have been as routine in England as in Italy, it is hard to say. Likewise, there are many gardens and orchards in the prognostics that first appear in English manuscripts in the eleventh century.147 These too circulated all over Europe but, like the Dialogues, originated in the Mediterranean cultural ambit, and share the assumptions of that culture about what, for instance, people might dream about.148 If Anglo-Saxons dreamt about walking in an orchard,149 it would presumably have the same import (trouble) as the same dream dreamt elsewhere, but we may wonder whether they are as likely to have had such dreams as people living closer to where the dreambooks were first developed. Perhaps more helpful would be the advice that ‘Mona se ðridda weorcu onginnan na gedafanaþ … wyrttun na saw þu for þi ydela wyrta beoð accennede’ (‘The third [day of the] moon is never suitable for beginning tasks … never sow a garden, because useless plants will grow’), but we have no record of anyone following it in Anglo-Saxon England.150 Whether such arcane knowledge had any impact on horticultural practice, in England or elsewhere, we may in any case wonder.

Conclusions In this paper I have set out the evidence for Anglo-Saxon gardens that has come to hand over the years in the course of research on a number of related topics, such as medicine, diet and farming. It makes no claim to being the last word on the subject; it is a collection of data rather than a considered synthesis, offered in the hope that others will be able to add to it from their own areas of expertise. Eventually it may be possible to construct a rounded picture of horticulture in pre-Conquest England which will answer some of the questions raised above, and perhaps others which I have hesitated to tackle in the present state of knowledge. At that stage we may hope to persuade garden historians that there is something in our period worth studying.

In the present state of our knowledge, the conclusion must, I think, be that while the Anglo-Saxons undoubtedly, and probably ubiquitously, grew food and other plants in what we would call gardens and orchards, this may be something they were only themselves beginning to pay attention to in the tenth and eleventh centuries, when most of our sources originate. Although the evidence for

In closing, and perhaps as an antidote to excessive optimism, it seems only fair to present some evidence for lack of interest in gardens on the part of Anglo-Saxon writers. In searching for horticultural references in Old English, it has become clear to me that such citations almost

Bischof Wærferths von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen, ed. Hans Hecht, 2 vols, Bibliothek der angelsächsichen Prosa 5 (Leipzig, 1900 and Hamburg, 1907), vol. 1, 30–1. 147 Listed and discussed by Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 26–62. 148 Dreambooks are edited by Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 297–329. 149 Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 314 (Tiberius A. iii, 30r) and 325 (Titus D. xxvi, 14r). 150 Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 406 (Tiberius A. iii, 33r).

See the contribution of Christopher Grocock to this volume (pp. 23-9). Pace M. L. Cameron, ‘Aldhelm as naturalist’, Peritia 4, 1985, 117–33, who saw him as a Gilbert White avant la lettre (p. 133), and attributes everything not traceable to a known source or model to the poet’s own ‘close observation of nature’ (p. 118). For an extended discussion of the sources and models for Aldhelm’s poetry, see Andy Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 126–224. 143 Anglo-Saxon Conversations, ed. Gwara and Porter, p. 188. 144 Ibid., p. 190. 145 Ibid., p. 186. 141

146

142

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Debby Banham such changes is slight, this may also be a period when new knowledge about horticulture, new techniques and perhaps new plants were coming into England. One route, if not the only one, by which such knowledge entered Anglo-Saxon culture was almost certainly provided by the continental contacts of English ecclesiastical reformers. As in many other areas of life, the European continent was the part of the Anglo-Saxons’ world from which new things and ideas were likely to come.

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Chapter 5 The Complexities of the Simple Comb Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler The small series of single-sided simple combs of antler and bone, most of which have been recovered from Early Anglo-Saxon cremation graves, have intrigued scholars for over a century. Yet, despite much speculation over their possible significance as symbols of larger, composite combs, few of these small, simple combs have actually been studied in any detail. The results of an examination of some of these combs are presented here. It reveals that there is more to them than has previously been realised, and they are not simply token grave-goods intended to accompany the deceased into the afterlife.

The third form of simple comb is the most numerous, with around fifty examples discovered to date, almost all of which have come from cremation graves of the Early Anglo-Saxon period. All of the combs are single-sided and they are generally considered to have been added to graves as a part of the burial ritual, because they appear to most scholars to have no practical purpose. They have not always been appreciated as objects in their own right. Thus Reginald Smith saw these combs, alongside other items, as ‘make-believe furniture supplied by undertakers of all ages’ and this statement set the tone for future research.5 In dealing with the single-sided simple combs from the mixed rite cemetery at Abingdon, Edward Leeds described them as ‘totally unpractical’ and ‘some of them very pretty toys, others slightly larger, but with unserviceable teeth’ and he regarded all of them as having a purely funerary purpose.6 Similarly, the two simple combs from Caistor-by-Norwich were described by Barbara Green as ‘too small for use’.7 Recent texts have been more complementary about them, whilst still emphasising their symbolic nature or lack of functional purpose. This is the case with combs from the cemeteries of Cleatham, Highdown and Kingsworthy.8 Arthur MacGregor summarised these combs succinctly as:

In studies of combs a fundamental differentiation is made between composite and simple. Composite combs have several components, including tooth segments, end segments and connecting plates, fastened together and secured by rivets usually made of metal and, within AngloSaxon England, these are almost invariably made of iron. Simple combs, in contrast, ‘consist of a single large piece of antler, bone or ivory, the teeth being cut with the grain of the material’.1 Three principal forms of simple comb occur in Anglo-Saxon England. The most prestigious are the Mediterranean elephant ivory double-sided simple combs, best exemplified by the example found in the coffin of St Cuthbert, as well as a comb mentioned by Bede as a gift given by Pope Boniface V to Queen Ethelburga of Northumbria.2 Few of these have ever been found by archaeologists in England and they remain a very rare form of comb. They are related to a series of combs of Byzantine origin, also made of ivory, commonly described as ‘liturgical’ combs, although it is by no means certain that they performed this specific function. This sequence of Byzantine combs has been studied by Janusz Górecki, in relation to an example found at Ostrowa Lednicki in Poland.3 The earliest of these combs go back to the fifth century, although many are of eleventh-century or later date.

diminutive one-piece combs which were made specifically as tokens for deposition with the dead. While some of these have been manufactured with a certain amount of care, the majority were only roughly shaped. The coarsest examples are indeed much too crude to have served any practical purpose.9 The focus on coarse and crude examples of the comb type, lacking any functional purpose, has tended to pervade the corpus as a whole, so that on occasion every example of the comb type is considered in the same way. Thus Sam Lucy has referred to ‘single-piece non-functional miniature versions (of combs) made of bone or antler’.10 Tom Lethbridge provided a detailed argument for their

The second form of simple comb is almost as rare in English contexts, if much less prestigious, and it consists of practice pieces for comb makers. Some of these are composite combs, but there are also exercises in the cutting of teeth made with single segments of antler or bone, including an unpublished example of Middle Saxon date from Canterbury.4

  Reginald Smith, ‘Anglo-Saxon Remains’, Victoria County History, Suffolk, Volume I (London, 1911), p. 335. 6   E. T. Leeds and D. B. Harden, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Abingdon, Berkshire (Oxford, 1936), p. 25. 7   Barbara Green, ‘The Grave Goods from the Cremations’ in The AngloSaxon Cemeteries of Caistor-by-Norwich and Markshall, Norfolk, ed. J. N. L. Myres and Barbara Green, Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 30 (London, 1973), p. 97. 8   Kevin Leahy, ‘Interrupting the Pots’. The Excavation of Cleatham Anglo-Saxon Cemetery, North Lincolnshire, CBA Research Report 155 (London, 2007), p. 204; M. Welch, Early Anglo-Saxon Sussex, BAR, BS 112 (Oxford, 1983), p. 110; J. N. L. Myres, A Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Pottery of the Pagan Period (Cambridge, 1977), p. 5. 9   Arthur MacGregor, Bone, Antler, Ivory and Horn. The Technology of Skeletal Materials since the Roman Period (London, 1985), p. 78. 10   Sam Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death (Stroud, 2000), p. 60. 5

  Patricia Galloway, ‘Note on descriptions of bone and antler combs’, Medieval Archaeology 20 (1976), 154-6. 2   Peter Lasko, ‘The comb’, in C. F. Battiscombe, ed., The Relics of Saint Cuthbert (Oxford, 1956), pp. 336-55. 3   Janusz Górecki, Rzežbiony Grzebień z Ostrowa Lednickiego próba Interpretacji, Studia Lednickie 6 (2000), 13-44. 4   Christopher Sparey-Green, pers. comm. 1

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Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler symbolic value, in discussing the single-sided simple combs from Lackford in Suffolk: The comb in particular had to be deliberately ‘killed’. As the original belief grew weaker, small dummy or token copies were put in the urns as symbols of the real things. These were often very roughly made. The original purpose had been forgotten. Since dummies were already being made before the Anglo-Saxons left their homeland, it is clear that the belief was very ancient.11 More recently, Howard Williams has refined this argument and added a significant social dimension to it, whilst following the general consensus that all of these combs are symbols. He describes them as ‘miniature combs that could not have had any practical use and therefore could be interpreted as symbolic objects, perhaps made especially for the funeral’.12 To be fair to Leeds, Lethbridge and others, the symbolic interpretation of these combs inevitably stems from their presence within early Anglo-Saxon cremation graves, where ‘miniature’ toilet implements have also been found, and it is understandable therefore that they have generally been regarded as nonfunctional items. In analysing toilet implements from cremation graves, Williams has critically examined and developed these arguments. He noted recently that ‘the choice to place toilet implements in early Anglo-Saxon cremation graves was more than a utilitarian practice’. Significantly, he has observed that there is no clear size distinction between ‘miniature’ and ‘full-sized’ toilet implements and that many of the miniatures may well have been functional items.13 The impractical nature of these single-sided simple combs has been stressed for the best part of a century and clearly underpins arguments concerning their symbolic nature. But is it actually correct to suggest that most or all of these combs are coarse, crude and unsuitable for use, or is there more to them than this single, simplistic interpretation implies? What of the combs ‘manufactured with a certain amount of care’? Do these differ from the remainder, or should they all be given the same interpretation?

Figure 5.1 Single-Sided Simple Combs of triangular, Lackford, Suffolk (after Lethbridge 1951)

rectangular and round-backed form from

directly reflect the shapes of contemporary composite combs, whilst the others have no parallels in these sequences. Triangular and round-backed forms provide roughly two-thirds of the sample. Rectangular combs represent 18%, with ogival providing 8% and trapezoidal 6%. The distribution of the forms across each cemetery varies markedly and each group needs to be considered in its own terms. Single-sided simple combs of triangular form dominate at the Spong Hill cemetery, providing the majority of the simple combs recovered there (Fig. 5.2), and the same domination can be seen with the triangular composite combs from that cemetery, which easily exceed other forms by number. The ratio of simple forms accurately reflects that of the single-sided composite combs in the cemetery, but with one important exception: there are no single-sided simple versions of barred zoomorphic combs.14 These composite combs first emerged in the fifth

A sample of 49 early Anglo-Saxon single-sided simple combs, recovered from fourteen cemeteries and one settlement, forms the basis for this study. They occur in a variety of shapes and sizes. Five main forms can be identified, which can be described as triangular, roundbacked, ogival, trapezoidal and rectangular; most of these forms can be seen within combs from the Lackford cemetery (Fig. 5.1). The triangular and round-backed forms   T. C. Lethbridge, A Cemetery at Lackford, Suffolk. Report of the Excavation of a Cemetery of the Pagan Anglo-Saxon Period in 1947, Cambridge Antiquarian Society. Quarto Publications, New Series 6 (Cambridge, 1951), p. 13. 12   Howard Williams, ‘Material Culture as Memory: combs and cremation in early medieval Britain’, Early Medieval Europe 12 (2003), 86-128. p. 107 13   Howard Williams, ‘Transforming Body and Soul: toilet implements in early Anglo–Saxon graves’, Anglo–Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 14 (2007), 66 and 76–77. 11

  Ian Riddler and Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski, ‘Artefacts of Worked Bone and Antler’ in C. M. Hills and S. Lucy, Spong Hill, Part IX: Chronology and Synthesis, McDonald Institute Monographs (Cambridge 2013), pp. 14

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The Complexities of the Simple Comb disparity in ratios between the simple and the composite combs is marked. Early Anglo-Saxon single-sided simple combs are small. The majority extend from 15mm to 45mm in length and up to 50mm in height. Beyond this group lie a small number of larger size, 50 - 80mm in length and 32 - 57mm in height (Fig. 5.3). Two large combs have over twenty teeth but most have between four and seventeen, spaced at between three and seven per centimetre, with the majority set at four to six per centimetre, thereby reflecting the nature of tooth values of contemporary composite combs. At Spong Hill, for example, the majority of composite combs have three to six teeth per centimetre, and only a dozen combs have more than seven per centimetre, with the finest teeth (found on just three combs) cut to nine per centimetre.17 Eleven of the single-sided simple combs have suspension holes, whilst a comb of ogival shape from Abingdon has three closely-spaced perforations placed towards the apex. These are likely to be decorative, given that similar groups of three perforations occur as a part of the decorative scheme of some composite combs, albeit of a slightly later date.18

Figure 5.2 Single-Sided Simple Combs from Spong Hill (after Riddler and Trzaska-Nartowski 2013)

The most characteristic element of a comb, however, is not its shape or size, but its teeth. The teeth of single-sided simple combs have seldom been discussed, although they are the best indication of whether a comb has actually been used. To a certain extent, the assumption that these combs merely fulfilled a symbolic role has diminished interest in them as objects in their own right. However, when they are examined in any detail, it becomes clear that some of these combs have actually been used. Unworn teeth often retain the saw marks from their cutting and file marks from their finishing, and in many cases they are blunt at their ends. Combs with slight wear have rounded ends to the teeth and a few lateral lines or notches across them, often located at their upper end. Subsequently, that wear develops into a pronounced series of lateral lines (defined here as some wear) and onwards to beading and consequent shortening of the teeth (considerable wear). Wear is often most pronounced at the centre of a comb and may be more evident on one side than the other. The single-sided simple combs from Highdown, Loveden Hill and Spong Hill have been examined by the authors and they can be separated into two groups, representing functional and symbolic combs, on the basis of the wear of their teeth. The same division into two groups has been extended to other combs of the sample. Viewed with these two categories in mind, these combs become more interesting.

century, somewhat later than triangular or round-backed composites (which go back to the third to fourth centuries), and they are complex and distinctive, with a design that is an impressive admixture of late Roman and Germanic components. Four groups of barred zoomorphic combs can be identified at Spong Hill, where this comb type is particularly common. This part of Norfolk may have been a centre for their production, although some of the combs buried in the cemetery could have originated on the Continent.15 It is surprising that there are no simple combs from Spong Hill that resemble barred zoomorphic combs, given the popularity of the comb type within the cemetery. In a broader, northern European perspective, the only simple comb that resembles a barred zoomorphic comb at all comes from the cemetery at Issendorf, Landkreis Stade. It was recovered from a cremation grave that contained the remains of an adult male and the comb includes two affronted beasts, set above a row of teeth.16 At Lackford in Suffolk, the relationship between simple and composite combs is different. The seven simple combs from the cremation cemetery consist of two triangular, two round-backed and three rectangular examples (Fig. 5.1), whilst triangular combs once again dominate the composite sequence. Even though less care in the recovery of objects was taken with the Lackford excavation, the

All of the rectangular combs of this survey may be regarded as symbolic. They have blunt teeth, sometimes very short in length and occasionally cut to different tooth values, even across a small length (Fig. 5.1). They are undecorated

92-155. 15   Riddler and Trzaska–Nartowski, ‘Artefacts’, pp. 118-125. 16   M. Weber, Das sächsische Gräberfeld von Issendorf, Landkreis Stade. Teil 2, Studien zur Sachsenforschung 9.2 (Oldenburg, 2000), p. 61; M. Weber, Das sächsische Gräberfeld von Issendorf, Landkreis Stade. Teil 5. Die Brandgräber der Grabungen 1969–1979. Katalog der Funde, Studien zur Sachsenforschung 9.5 (Oldenburg, 2004), pp. 135–6 and taf. 78.2050d.

  Riddler and Trzaska–Nartowski, ‘Artefacts’, table 2.25.   They occur on double-sided composite combs from Easton Maudit (unpublished) and Sancton, for example: J. N. L. Myres and W. H. Southern, The Anglo-Saxon Cremation Cemetery at Sancton, East Yorkshire, Hull Museum Publications 218 (Hull, 1973), fig. 41.7. 17 18

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Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler 80

70

60

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50

40

30

20

10

0 0

10

20

30

40

50

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Figure 5.3 Dimensions of Early Anglo-Saxon Single-Sided Simple Combs (Length vs Height) (Fig 5.2). This seldom extends to the level of considerable wear, as seen with some contemporary composite combs, but wear is a direct reflection of use and human head hair would have been combed more often than beard or moustache hair. Experimental work shows that a comb, of whatever type, needs to be used for a number of years before it reaches the stage of some wear, and the Highdown comb had clearly been in use for some time before it was deposited in a grave. The Abingdon comb may have been in use for as long as a decade before its deposition.

and only one of the group of nine has a suspension hole. At the other end of the spectrum, round-backed combs (Fig. 5.4a) are largely functional, and only three of the fourteen examples can be described as symbolic. Three of them are decorated and one has a suspension hole. The largest group of combs, those of triangular shape, include both functional and symbolic examples in roughly equal measure. Six of the nineteen combs are decorated and five have suspension holes. All of those with suspension holes, and most of the decorated combs, belong to the functional group.

There are few obvious social correlations between these combs and their users, but that is a reflection in part of the lack of detailed osteological information for early AngloSaxon cremation cemeteries. Moreover, as noted above, it is important to deal with each cemetery in its own terms. In considering five of the nine single-sided simple combs from Spong Hill, Williams noted that they were mainly found with infants.19 When all nine simple combs from Spong Hill are considered, those of symbolic type do correlate well with infants, but the functional combs were buried with three adults, a subadult and one individual of indeterminate age.20 The correlation between symbolic simple combs and infants does not work at all with the mixed rite cemetery at Kingsworthy in Hampshire, where none of the combs could be described as functional, but the four cremation graves that included them were the burials of subadults or

Thus the shape of a single-sided simple comb does not, in itself, determine its nature, with the exception of the rectangular examples, none of which could have functioned as a comb. These form a part of the roughly made, crude combs with unserviceable teeth described above, but symbolic combs only represent half of the entire sample. A comb from Highdown (Fig. 5.4b) serves as a good illustration of a functional single-sided simple comb. Although small, its surviving teeth show traces of some wear and its closest parallel lies with a comb from Abingdon, the teeth of which show considerable wear. Both combs include suspension holes. These combs were clearly used in daily life, despite their small size, and the most likely function would be as combs for facial hair, particularly beards and moustaches, or possibly for use with infants or children. At least three of the combs from Spong Hill are also functional and show traces of wear

  Williams, ‘Material Culture’, p. 109 and table 3.   Riddler and Trzaska-Nartowski, ‘Artefacts’, pp. 132–133.

19 20

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The Complexities of the Simple Comb

Figure 5.4 Functional Single-Sided Simple Combs: A: Loveden Hill, Lincolnshire, B: Highdown, Sussex adults, with no infants present.21 However, the report on the cremated bone from Kingsworthy is remarkably terse and was compiled before modern standards of cremation bone osteology came into practice.22 Moreover, the burial rite at Kingsworthy is distinctly different from Spong Hill and the large cremation cemeteries of eastern England. Single-sided simple combs have been found alongside razors, tweezers and miniature shears in cremation urns from Abingdon, Baston, Caistor-by-Norwich, Spong Hill and Wallingford, and these are objects conventionally associated with males.23 The association lies with both functional and symbolic combs. Functional combs have also been found in cremation graves with glass beads and brooches, both at Spong Hill and elsewhere, but neither of these classes of grave-good has been found with symbolic combs.24 There is a sense, therefore, that the single-sided symbolic comb was a male attribute, sometimes buried with infants, as part of a grooming set. The functional comb, however, occurs in graves of both male and female gender.

As noted above, Lethbridge felt that these ‘miniature’ combs were being made on the Continent before the AngloSaxon migrations. In fact, they are not common finds on the Continent at all, although there are at least four examples from the cemetery at Issendorf, Landkreis Stade, and a few others are known from Frisia.25 Ten single-sided simple combs were recovered from the settlement at Feddersen Wierde, near Bremerhaven, although these consist mainly of small horn combs from contexts assigned to the first century AD, and there are just two antler examples, one of which can be placed, on typological grounds, to the third to fourth centuries.26 There are earlier single-sided simple combs on the Continent, extending back to the third century AD, but these are much larger combs intended for daily use, largely produced before the composite comb had come into prominence, and they should be distinguished from the ‘miniature’ series considered here.27 Small single  Weber, Das sächsische Gräberfeld von Issendorf, Landkreis Stade. Teil 2, p. 61; Anna Roes, Bone and Antler Objects from the Frisian Terps (Haarlem, 1963), pp. 6-7 and pl. I.5-6. 26   K. Struckmeyer, Die Knochen– und Geweihgeräte der Feddersen Wierde. Gebrauchsspurenanalysen an Geräten von der Römischen Kaiserzeit bis zum Mittelalter und ethnoarchäologische Vergleiche, Studien zur Landschafts- und Siedlungsgeschichte im südlichen Nordseegebiet 2 (Rahden, 2011), p. 86. 27   S. Thomas, Studien zu den germanischen Kämmen der romischen Kaiserzeit, Arbeits- und Forschungsberichte zur Sachsischen Bodendenkmalpflege 8 (Dresden, 1960), pp. 56-61; Helga SchachDörges, Die Bodenfunde des 3. bis 6. Jahrhunderts nach Chr. Zwischen unterer Elbe under Oder, Offa-Bücher 23 (Neumünster, 1970), p. 101; J. Ilkjaer, ‘Die Kämme aus Illerup’ in J. Ilkjaer, ed., Illerup Ådal 3. Die Gürtel. Bestandteile und Zubehör, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications XXV.3 (Århus, 1993), pp. 284-90. 25

  S. C. Hawkes and G. Grainger, The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Worthy Park, Kingsworthy, near Winchester, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 59 (Oxford, 2003), p. 188. 22   Hawkes and Grainger, Worthy Park, p. 188. 23   Williams, ‘Material Culture’, p. 111; Leeds and Harden, Abingdon, pl. III.9 and 13; P. Mayes and M. Dean, An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Baston, Lincolnshire, Occasional Papers in Lincolnshire Archaeology and History 3 (Sleaford, 1976), fig. 7.8a; Myres and Green, Caistor-byNorwich, p. 194; E. T. Leeds, ‘An Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Wallingford, Berkshire’, Berkshire Archaeological Journal 42 (1938), 93-101; J. D. Richards, The Significance of Form and Decoration of Anglo-Saxon Cremation Urns, BAR, BS 166 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 126-8. 24   Riddler and Trzaska-Nartowski, ‘Artefacts’, p. 133. 21

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Nicola Trzaska-Nartowski and Ian Riddler sided simple combs may not have been produced in any numbers before the fifth century, although the poor survival rate of antler and bone objects from western Germanic cremation cemeteries needs to be borne in mind. Few combs identifiable to any type have come from these cemeteries.28 The same problems may beset simple combs from Early Anglo-Saxon inhumation graves. Unlike composite combs, under adverse burial conditions, they would leave no trace behind whatsoever. It is possible, therefore, that they are under-represented in inhumation graves. The Anglo-Saxon sequence may largely be of fifth-century date, although a comb from Abingdon was found in a cremation with part of a square-headed brooch of Hines Group VII, and others have also been given a sixth-century date.29 Accordingly, the majority of single-sided simple combs from English contexts can be placed in the fifth century, with some extending into the early part of the sixth century.

to being scaled down to a miniature. One important difference between triangular, semi-circular and barred zoomorphic combs is that the first two forms have much longer traditions of manufacture and use, extending back to the third century AD, whilst the barred zoomorphic comb was developed in the fifth century. It is possible, therefore, that early Anglo-Saxon single-sided simple combs echo the traditions of the Germanic past, as well as functioning as practical implements. The barred zoomorphic comb, which originated in the area of the North Sea littoral, was a relative newcomer, as well as being a comb that mixed both Germanic and late Roman elements in its design. As such, it had fewer of the credentials appropriate to a craft based fundamentally on a concept of Germanic tradition and for that reason, it may not have been replicated in miniature, as either a functional or a symbolic comb. Tradition was enormously important in comb-making and the barred zoomorphic comb was the only entirely new form to emerge across the fifth century in Anglo-Saxon England. All other comb forms looked back to a Germanic or a late Roman past, developing designs based on third- or fourthcentury exemplars. It is possible, therefore, that a sense of tradition concerning a real or perceived Germanic past led to the exclusion of any single-sided simple copies of barred zoomorphic combs in England. As far as comb-making was concerned, Anglo-Saxons of the fifth century worked as much in a traditional Germanic world, as within an AngloSaxon world.

A decorated single-sided simple comb of triangular form was found in a fifth-century context at the early Anglo-Saxon settlement of West Stow in Suffolk.30 Its presence there is perfectly understandable, given that it is a functional comb with rounded ends to its teeth and a suspension hole at the apex. It has usually been assumed that the symbolic comb was a representation of a larger, composite example but, as noted above, only two of the five known forms reflect the shapes of contemporary composite combs. They can now be viewed rather as symbols of contemporary single-sided simple combs, which were small but practical toilet devices used in daily life.

A close examination of early Anglo-Saxon single-sided simple combs has revealed that they include both functional and non-functional examples. The latter can therefore be viewed as symbolic versions of a functional comb type, produced specifically for burial. The evidence from Spong Hill suggests that non-functional single-sided simple combs were prepared for the burial of infants or children, who may not have reached an age at which they would have obtained their own comb. Functional single-sided simple combs, in contrast, were buried with subadults and adults of both male and female gender. They are the only combs to be found in some cremation graves, but are accompanied by composite combs in other graves. Combs of various types, both simple and composite, were present in early Anglo-Saxon England and they may have been used in different ways, but the essential point is that single-sided simple combs were present in graves because of their utility, and not because of their lack of utility.

The small single-sided simple comb emerged in the fourth or fifth century as a practical implement and not as a scaleddown symbolic miniature. The continental examples noted above are triangular and semi-circular or round-backed in form, accurately reflecting the shapes of both earlier and contemporary combs. At the same time, there were few attempts to reflect the form of barred zoomorphic combs, even though these were common combs of the fifth century.31 125 triangular composite combs have been identified from the Spong Hill cemetery, but there are also forty five barred zoomorphic combs, a figure equal to the combined total of single-sided semi-circular and doublesided composite combs, the two other main classes of comb from the cemetery.32 Yet there is not a single miniature comb reflecting this composite type. Why should this be the case? On a purely practical level, the complex constructional techniques of the barred zoomorphic comb are less suited

Acknowledgements

  Noted for example in Schach-Dörges, Bodenfunde, pp. 100-1; Klaus Raddatz, Sörup I. Ein Gräberfeld der Eisenzeit in Angeln, Offa-Bücher 46 (Neumünster, 1981), pp. 35-6; Martina-Johanna Bode, Schmalstede. Ein Urnengräberfeld der Kaiser- und Völkerwanderungszeit, OffaBücher 78 (Neumünster, 1998), p. 98. 29   John Hines, A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-Headed Brooches (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 67-76; Myres, Corpus, p. 5. 30   Stanley West, West Stow. The Anglo-Saxon Village, East Anglian Archaeology 24 (Gressenhall, 1985), fig. 135.4. 31   Catherine M. Hills, ‘Barred zoomorphic combs of the Migration Period’ in Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Essays presented to J. N. L. Myres, ed. V. I. Evison (Oxford, 1981), pp. 96-125. 32   Riddler and Trzaska-Nartowski, ‘Artefacts’, table 2.20. 28

Gale Owen-Crocker kindly invited us to the conference in Manchester, where a first version of this text was given. She has been immensely helpful throughout the whole process. We are grateful to Sam Lucy and Catherine Hills for allowing us to work on the combs from Spong Hill and for providing us with a wealth of useful information. Professor Howard Williams and Rachel Jones kindly read the text and greatly improved it with their comments. Any outstanding errors remain our responsibility.

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Chapter 6 Dwarves, Nosebleeds and a Scurvy Horse: some uses of manuscripts in late Anglo-Saxon England Donald G. Scragg In any literate society, books will have a great variety of uses, and it is beyond the scope of this brief essay to examine all of the customs and practices relating to books amongst the Anglo-Saxons. Instead, I will focus on some of the by-ways of the use of the written record in the Anglo-Saxon world as illustrated by a single manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auctarium F. 3. 6. This book contains a large collection of Latin texts, all of them either composed by or associated with Prudentius, a fourthcentury poet born in Spain, whose works were very popular in Anglo-Saxon England, especially his extended allegory Psychomachia, in which the seven virtues do battle against the seven vices.1 Copies of all of Prudentius’ works were available in Anglo-Saxon England,2 though there are more surviving copies of the Psychomachia (twelve in all, dated before 1100) than of any other.3 Auct. F. 3. 6 is one of only two surviving English manuscripts of the period to contain the full corpus of Prudentius’ works, the other being the mid-tenth-century Durham Cathedral Library B. IV. 9, although there is evidence to suggest that there were many more. Some of this evidence is presented below. The textual tradition represented by all of these manuscripts goes back to books imported from the Continent early in the tenth century (or at the end of the ninth) such as the ninth-century French manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 223, which was certainly in England by the early tenth century when Latin glosses in an Anglo-Saxon hand were added to it.4

some English glosses, although there are many more of the latter in Auct. F. 3. 6 than in Durham. The glosses, which are almost always interlinear, were allowed for in the preparation of both manuscripts because the pricking created widely spaced lines where glosses could be written above the texts. Both manuscripts have a Latin commentary in the margin, although this is occasional in Durham whereas it is much more consistent in Auct. More importantly, in Durham, the marginal commentary has been squeezed in alongside the text, while in Auct. F. 3. 6 the pages were ruled to allow for a commentary in wide outer margins: the writing space (in some quires ruled for two columns where the verse is in short lines and in others for one longer line) is 116mm across with a further 46 mm (plus any now cut off by modern binders) for the commentary. In other words, the Auctarium manuscript was prepared with the understanding that both heavy glossing and a commentary would be included. Given that two scribes wrote the Latin text without break and another, contemporary with them, added the Latin glosses and commentary, it is clear that this is a manuscript that was copied in its entirety, glosses, commentary and all, from an existing manuscript. Auct. F. 3. 6 was made at an unknown centre7 during the high point in the production of manuscripts surviving from Anglo-Saxon England, the first half of the eleventh century. As noted above, as well as the extensive glossing in Latin there are some English glosses, fifty-one in all. Forty-eight of these were written by the scribe who wrote the original Latin glosses, and hence they are integral to the text as copied from the archetype. The reason for the glossing scribe switching languages needs exploration. There is no sign that he added the English entries later than those in Latin but every indication that he copied his material in one stint, yet whenever he wrote English it is clear that he was aware of having done so in that he changed his letter forms in these glosses in accordance with the practice of his day, using caroline script for Latin and insular for the vernacular. In other words, he was conscious in both instances of which language he was using. For the reasons for the change of language we must look elsewhere in the manuscript. A fourth hand, again contemporary with the first three, worked over the early

The Durham manuscript is closely linked textually with CCCC 223 in that its text derives ultimately from it or from an ancestor of it,5 but Auct. F. 3. 6 belongs to a different tradition since its readings are occasionally crucially distinct and like those in other manuscripts.6 Nevertheless, there are links between Auct. F. 3. 6 and Durham which suggest that ultimately they belong to a common tradition of manuscript presentation of Prudentius in England. Both contain texts heavily glossed in Latin, and both have   For an excellent analysis of the Psychomachia and its textual history in Anglo-Saxon England, see Gernot R. Wieland, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts of Prudentius’s Psychomachia’, Anglo-Saxon England 16 (1987), 213-31. 2   Cf. the Index to Helmut Gneuss, Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A list of manuscripts and manuscript fragments written or owned in England up to 1100 (Tempe AZ, 2001). 3   Gneuss, Handlist, is more up-to-date on details of all the Prudentius manuscripts in England than Wieland, ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’. 4   See Neil Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), no. 52, p. 92, Gneuss, Handlist, no. 70, p. 34. 5   See Wieland, ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, pp. 218-220. For the most recent discussion of the Durham glosses and a full bibliography, see Sarah Larratt Keefer’s chapter in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile, Vol. 14 Manuscripts of Durham, Ripon, and York, with descriptions by Sarah Larratt Keefer, David Rollason and A. N. Doane (Tempe AZ, 2007). 6   See Wieland, ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, pp. 218-20. 1

  Wieland, ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, p. 216, states that the Auctarium manuscript was ‘written at Exeter’ (in which he is followed by Catherine Karkov, ‘Broken bodies and singing tongues: gender and voice in the Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23 Psychomachia’, Anglo-Saxon England 30 (2001), 115-36, at p. 117, which also dates the manuscript wrongly as mid-eleventh century). Wieland’s assumption must be wrong, since in the early eleventh century, Exeter had few monks and no library, and therefore no facilities for making a book as elaborate and accomplished as Auct. F. 3. 6. 7

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Donald G. Scragg part of the manuscript, correcting errors in the text and adding further Latin glosses to passages that originally had been left unglossed. Amongst these is a single gloss in English. It is clear from other Prudentius manuscripts that glosses were frequently copied from one manuscript to another,8 and again it is likely that the fourth copyist found the additional glosses, Latin and English, in a single source. But two more glosses in English were added in a yet different (and slightly later) hand, on folios 64 recto and 98 verso, the considerable distance between them suggesting that they were written by a reader rather than a copyist, a probability supported by the fact that they are in the margins rather than interlinear. These two glosses perhaps provide the most significant clue to the mixture of Latin and English forms elsewhere in the glossing of this manuscript. The Prudentius texts exist within a long line of successive copying. During that history, glosses have been added periodically, some in Latin, others in English, either from a variety of written sources or by individual readers attempting to understand a difficult text and pass on his or her understanding to others. The popularity of Prudentius, particularly as a school text, meant that its readers frequently needed both glosses and a commentary, and a substantial tradition of both of these had grown up in England between the copying of Durham in the mid-tenth century and the making of Auct. F. 3. 6 three-quarters of a century later.

this type of secret writing does not occur. In other words, there were at least two methods of glossing absorbed into a single glossing exercise, with one gloss (at least) added by someone working with an alternative type of glossing, one which only allowed access to restricted readers (i.e. those who could translate the code). There may be many other such layers of glossing now hidden from us in what is undoubtedly a composite glossed text. In Auct. F. 3. 6, in short, we have one glossed manuscript remaining to us, but close examination shows that it is merely the tip of an iceberg of numerous glossed manuscripts of Prudentius which must have existed during the late Anglo-Saxon period. I turn now from the main text of the manuscript to late additions, all made during the middle fifty years of the eleventh century, from the creation of the book in the 1020s to its last entry which is datable by internal evidence to the 1070s. They occur on the opening two leaves of the first quire which contains a brief introduction in Latin to Prudentius. This introductory material is on the verso of the first leaf (now paginated fol. ii), the recto of the second leaf (now paginated fol. iii) and the first two lines of the verso of the second leaf. The Latin text relating to Prudentius is written within the normal writing space, leaving blank the wide margin which is elsewhere used for the commentary but which was here unnecessary. It follows that there was ample space on these two leaves for later writers to add material: the whole of the first blank recto page, the margin of the following verso and the next recto, and all but two lines of the next verso. Three of these four pages have English additions. At the head of the opening leaf, following a line and a half of Latin, is the heading to a charm wið þone dworh ‘against a dwarf’. Dwarves, like elves and other supernatural creatures, were considered pernicious, and a charm against them was an important talisman; hence a number survive in Latin and English. In Auct F. 3. 6 the full text reads

A clear sign of the accretion of glosses during the earlier history of Auct. F. 3. 6 occurs within the initial batch of glosses written amongst the Latin by the first glossing scribe. Amongst the forty-eight instances is the word wealdun glossing praesint, but which has consonants substituted for its three vowels, f for e, b for a, wynn for u, hence it is written wfbldwn.9 This type of ‘secret’ writing is far from unknown in eleventh-century English, particularly but not wholly in marginalia. It is especially associated with the Worcester scribe Coleman (probably the monk who wrote Bishop Wulfstan II’s biography soon after 1095) who signs some of his manuscript annotations with the name cplfmbn.10 It would appear that whoever first introduced the wealdun gloss into the Prudentius text which was eventually copied into Auct. F. 3. 6 was working by a different system from whoever was responsible for the other English glosses in that first tranche in which

wið þone dworh on an oflætan writ ‘against a dwarf, write on a single Communion wafer’. Ker calls this a nonsense charm,11 in which case it would be like many other magical charms surviving in Old English as what follows below shows. Its latest editor emends it,12 although an understanding of eleventh-century grammar suggests that it makes perfect sense as it stands.13 It may be that what should be written on the wafer has been omitted, or that the act of writing on the wafer was thought sufficient in itself. The view that the charm is inadequate probably stems from the existence of a longer version

  Wieland, ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, has a detailed analysis of the glosses tradition in the various surviving Prudentius manuscripts. 9   A complete list of the English glosses in Auct. F. 3. 6, together with the Latin terms glossed, can be found in Arthur Sampson Napier, Old English Glosses: chiefly unpublished (Oxford, 1900), pp. 211-12; wealdun is his gloss 38. Napier also prints the six English glosses in Durham Cathedral Library B. IV. 9 on p. 213. 10   He signed his name in a note in the margin of a copy of the English version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in Cambridge University Library Kk. 3. 18, and again in the margin of the homiliaries in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 178, and in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 113 (where the form is cplfman). There are also further marginalia in these and other manuscripts in the same handwriting which are not signed. For details, see N. R. Ker, ‘Old English Notes signed “Coleman”’, Medium Ævum 18 (1949), 29-31. For another manuscript in which secret writing comparable with that in wealdun is used in English – and then explained in Latin and English – see BL, Cotton Vitellius E. xviii, mid-eleventh century from Winchester. 8

  Ker, Catalogue, p. 354.   G. Storms, Anglo-Saxon Magic (The Hague, 1948), no. 77, reads ‘… on iii oflætan writ’. 13   There is a grammatical problem in the uninflected use of an. As a qualifying adjective in a prepositional phrase, it should be inflected ane if the noun is in the accusative case or anre if it is dative. It is not clear if the noun oflætan, which is feminine, is accusative or dative. But by the middle of the eleventh century, such erratic grammatical forms are, if not commonplace, certainly not unparalleled. 11

12

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Dwarves, Nosebleeds and a Scurvy Horse: some uses of manuscripts in late Anglo-Saxon England Gif men ierne blod of nebbe to swiðe

of it elsewhere. Amongst the large collection of medical recipes in BL, Harley 585 there occurs:

‘If someone has blood running from his nose too heavily’.20

wið dweorh man sceal niman VII lytle oflætan, swylce man mid ofrað, and writan þas naman on ælcre oflætan: Maximianus, Malchus, Iohannes, Martimianus, Dioisius, Constantinus, Serafion

The text continues on the next line with the phrase Ssume þis writað ‘people write this’ (the intial s is repeated, the first being upper case; cf. horsse in the text), which suggests that whoever copied this charm into Auct. F. 3. 6 found it in written form elsewhere.21 The rest follows after the sign of the cross, and consists of odd English words, runic and other magic symbols and sheer nonsense words; in other words the whole piece is a magical incantation which was presumably seen as a last resort in a medical emergency.22 It reads:

‘against a dwarf one must take seven small Communion wafers, such as one uses in the offering, and write on each wafer these names …’. The item continues at some length,14 but this passage is sufficient for comparison with the Auctarium charm. The saints’ names in Harley 585 appear to be taken at random, and it is at least as likely that the longer version is a late expansion of an earlier one (preserved in Auctarium) as that the shorter version is an abbreviated form, though the possibility that the Auctarium version is merely a memorandum cannot be entirely discounted.

ærgrin thonn struht fola . ærgren tart strut onn tria enn wiathu morfona onn hel ara carn leow gruth ueron . lll . fil cron diw . [d-rune] . inro cron ær crio ær mio ater leno ge horsse ge men blod seten Apart from the last six words which can be translated ‘a means of staunching blood for horses and men’ (which is not marked off by punctuation from the rest), the passage makes no coherent sense. There are some words which might be seen as English, such as thonn (variant of þonne) ‘then’, but it is doubtful if this is what is meant. Other English words, e.g. ær, make no sense in the context, and onn hel almost certainly is not intended to mean ‘in hell’. It is noticeable that the English character thorn is avoided, th being used throughout, perhaps to give the uninitiated the sense that the words involved are Latin, which does occasionally use th. Runes were felt to have magical powers, hence the use of the d-rune (which usually has the name dæg, which it might stand for in another context although probably not here). The three successive single tall minims with a cross-stroke through them presumably form another pseudo-magical symbol rather than roman iii or a triple sign of the cross. Nonsense charms frequently include superstitious recitations, such as the singing of parts of the Mass (especially the Pater Noster), or the mixing of ingredients in a vessel with religious associations such as a church bell, and although neither is used here, there are incantatory phrases like the rhyming ær crio ær mio. Leaving aside the meaningless nature of the whole,

The writing of the dwarf charm in the Prudentius manuscript is in line with the use of books as repositories in the late Anglo-Saxon period for what were considered useful pieces of information, however irrelevant those may have been to the principal content of the volume. Hence there are legal documents written in bibles, both Latin and English,15 as well as homiliaries,16 sermons squeezed into blank spaces in a gospel book, a copy of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and a cartulary,17 and charms such as the Auctarium one quoted above added to a variety of English and Latin manuscripts.18 The writer of the dwarf charm was not alone, moreover, in using Auct. F. 3. 6 in this way. On fol. iii verso in the blank space after the end of the Latin introductory matter to the Prudentius there is what Ker calls another nonsense charm by a different hand.19 Although this one truly is nonsensical, it occupies the borderland between a charm and a medical recipe, in that its heading suggests that it is intended to work for the stemming of a nosebleed:   For the full text, see The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records VI (New York and London, 1942), pp. 121-2. For text and facing translation, see Louis J. Rodrigues, Anglo-Saxon Verse Charms, Maxims and Heroic Legends (Pinner, 1993), pp. 140-1. 15   In a Latin gospel-book, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 286, there are two charters added in English in blank spaces. Similarly in an English gospel-book, there are lists of relics and manumissions added to the Bath Gospels, now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 111 and 140. 16   Cf. the palimpsest charter on fol. 321 recto of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 198. 17   A sermon has been added on blank leaves between Mark and Luke in the Bath Gospels, while there are a number of sermons in the margins of the Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41 version of the Bede, and one added to the first of two Worcester cartularies in BL, Cotton Tiberius A. xiii, a sermon which Archbishop Wulfstan later altered by making numerous small additions between the lines. 18   For example, a charm to recover lost cattle was added in a blank space in a Latin miscellany of ecclesiastical law associated with Archbishop Wulfstan, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 190, pp. 1-294, and an English manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41, has charms in the margins (including three to recover cattle), some in English and some in Latin. For other charms, see the index in Gneuss, Handlist. 19   See Ker, Catalogue, pp. 354-5. 14

  For a full recent full account of medicine in the period, see M. L. Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 7 (Cambridge, 1993). For a facsimile of fol. iii verso of Auct. F. 3. 6, see Frank Barlow, Kathleen M. Dexter, Audrey M. Erskine and L. J. Lloyd, Leofric and His Times (Exeter, 1972), Plate VI. 21   Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, p. 137, suggests that this phrase implies that the copyist doubts the efficacy of the remedy, but it seems to me that the most that can be deduced along these lines is that the writer had not tried the remedy himself. The fact that the phrase is found in the same recipe elsewhere (see below) indicates to my mind that it is the writing that is important, and that the charm was not transmitted by word of mouth. 22   For a Latin charm for nosebleed, see the marginal entry in the twelfthcentury English manuscript Oxford, St John’s College 17, fol. 175r. On magical elements in Anglo-Saxon medicine, see Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, pp. 130ff. For use of magical signs and runes in an amulet, see Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England, ed. Oswald Cockayne, 3 vols, Rolls Series 35 (London, 1864-66), II, 140. 20

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Donald G. Scragg most of the individual words consist of series of letters that make no semblance of sense in any language, although the sequences, significantly, are English-looking to the extent that they follow the pattern of consonants or consonant clusters and vowels of English words.

parchment here has deteriorated in later centuries, rather than posing problems when the words were inscribed. On the face of it, scurfede hors is a reflection on an incalcitrant animal, ‘scurvy horse’, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective as a term of abuse is not recorded until the sixteenth century, although the noun ‘scurf’ does appear in Old English (as sceorf or scurf) as a disease of men and animals. There are medical recipes recorded elsewhere in Old English for scurfede, i.e. skin which is ‘scurfed’ or ‘scaly’, and it is possible that another medical entry was begun and abandoned here. However, the placing of the two words without any introduction suggests that the single phrase was all that was ever intended, and we should probably classify it as one of many scribbles which occur throughout Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, many of which have a meaning which is no longer completely recoverable. In this case it is probable that the writer is cursing the fact that he has a diseased horse, and it is just possible that the shaky writing is the result of the entry being made whilst the writer was on horseback.

A book such as this copy of Prudentius was certainly owned by a cleric, and, given its size and date and the professionalism of its execution, it was probably made at a major, probably monastic centre, although it may not have remained there. Since monasteries had to deal with the sick, and clerics had access to books and writing materials, it follows that written medical recipes were regularly collected by monks, and this is probably the explanation for the entering of the two charms in Auct. F. 3. 6. Incantations such as the nosebleed recipe are not uncommon in AngloSaxon medical records, and in fact a group of recipes and charms for a nosebleed occurs in the largest and bestknown collection of medical recipes surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period, generally called Bald’s Leechbook (BL, Royal 12 D. XVII, mid-tenth century), including a charm that is very close textually to the Auctarium one.23 Bald’s Leechbook was copied by a scribe who entered a set of annals relating to the tenth century in the Parker Chronicle,24 a manuscript which was almost certainly then at Winchester,25 in a major monastery, probably the Old Minster. If Bald’s Leechbook was written there,26 it is possible that whoever copied the nosebleed charm into Auct. F. 3. 6 was working at Winchester too, although since there is a century or more between the copying of Bald’s Leechbook and the writing of the charm in Auctarium, there may have been many copies between the two, if indeed the Bald’s Leechbook version is the archetype of Auctarium as its textual closeness might suggest. The text and glosses, both Latin and English, of the Prudentius offer no assistance, however, in establishing a location for Auct. F. 3. 6,27 and the brief additional entry of the nosebleed charm by a very poor and untrained hand hardly gives ground for its ascription to any major monastic house. Further speculation on the origin of the manuscript is not therefore possible on present evidence.

Together with notes of ownership, which obviously relate to the books in which they were written, there are Old English scribbles of many sorts, unrelated to content, in manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon period. Some are personal comments, such as the wish to return to Christ Church, Canterbury, for Christmas found in the Royal Psalter,28 some are injunctions to a pen or reminders to its wielder, such as writ þus ‘write thus’ in London, Lambeth Palace Library 237 and other manuscripts;29 and the perhaps related phrase geþafa nu ‘suffer now’ in the margin of Lincoln Cathedral 182.30 There is one scribble which appears to be a quotation from a poem, possibly Beowulf: hwæt ic eall feala ealde sæge at the foot of a page of BL, Harley 208,31 while yet others are odd words, such as wið ‘against’ in the margin of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Barlow 35, with no apparent meaning at all (but which may be the beginning of an incomplete charm, many of which begin in this way). Perhaps the closest parallel to scurfede hors is the single word fotgewædu ‘footwear’ on an otherwise blank final page of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 326, a manuscript which contains, amongst other Latin pieces, a copy of Aldhelm’s De virginitate which, like the Prudentius in Auct. F. 3. 6, has many English glosses and clearly had many English readers.32 Indeed, the best that we can hope to deduce from most of these jottings is the extent of the readership of manuscripts in the late Anglo-Saxon period, particularly readers with pens in their hands.

Apart from the charms, there is one other entry in English on the volume’s opening leaves which is unrelated to the content of the work as a whole. It consists of a single phrase written in the margin of line 16, halfway down fol. ii recto and reads scurfede hors. The writing is poor, with the letters of uneven size and the penmanship shaky. This may be because the parchment is rough and corrugated at this point and writing proved difficult, but it is much more likely, in view of the quality of the parchment elsewhere in the book and the fact that this is the opening leaf, that the

  See The Salisbury Psalter, ed. Celia Sisam and Kenneth Sisam, EETS os 242 (London, 1959), p. 53. 29   Other examples are cited by Kenneth Sisam, Studies in the History of Old English Literature (Oxford, 1953), pp. 110-11. 30   I suggest that this is related to the ‘write thus’ phrases since some of these indicate that the scribes involved will be beaten if they write badly. See Sisam, op. cit. But there are also indications elsewhere of cold and cramp affecting scribes, and it may be a complaint against these. 31   Four of the six words are comparable with Beowulf, line 869: ‘se ðe ealfela ealdgesegena’, and they certainly scan and alliterate. See Ker, Catalogue, p. 229. 32   For the glosses, see Napier, Old English Glosses, pp. 151-2. 28

  The text is in Cockayne, Leechdoms, II, 54, and reprinted in Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine, p. 137. 24   See Ker, Catalogue, p. 333. 25   See Gneuss, Handlist, no. 52. 26   Scribes were mobile, of course, so just because the Parker Chronicle was written at Winchester, we cannot be sure that all of the same scribe’s work was made at the same place. 27   See Wieland,‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, pp. 228-9. 23

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Dwarves, Nosebleeds and a Scurvy Horse: some uses of manuscripts in late Anglo-Saxon England The last late entry on the opening leaves of Auct. F. 3. 6 relates to ownership of the book and to its history beyond the Anglo-Saxon period, and it includes a reference to Bishop Leofric. Leofric, bishop of Devon and Cornwall in plurality from 1046, moved his episcopal sees from Crediton in Devon and St Germans in Cornwall to the former Benedictine monastery at Exeter in 1050, a site which was by that date impoverished and virtually without occupants.33 Leofric filled the new establishment with regular canons, and gave the foundation many gifts, including a large bequest of books at his death in 1072. The entry in Auct. F. 3. 6 makes clear that this manuscript was part of that bequest, and is similar in wording to those in other surviving books with an Exeter provenance. The inscription, written in four lines of Latin and repeated in four lines of English (and hence intended for a wide range of readers), follows the charm on fol. iii verso. It contains a note of the benefaction, and a malediction against its misappropriation. The English version reads:

The book was thus part of Leofric’s library before it was bequeathed to Exeter (where it remained until it was given to the Bodleian Library in 1602). Where Leofric obtained it is not clear. He was King Edward the Confessor’s chancellor before he was given episcopal status, and must have travelled with him a great deal. In contrast with the other occasional entries in the manuscript, this note is written in a beautiful hand, unlike the same inscriptions in other books of Leofric’s bequest34 which are sometimes poorly written.35 Once again, the entry affords us a tantalizing glimpse of the history of the volume, and shows Leofric’s assessment of the importance of Prudentius. To sum up, in the fifty years between the writing of Auct. F. 3. 6 in the middle of the first half of the eleventh century and its being made part of the cathedral library at Exeter in 1072 a series of additions were made to the manuscript similar to those which we find in a great many English books of the period. Glosses were added to the Latin, notes or records were made in blank spaces, and an enigmatic phrase was written in the margin. Books in the eleventh century, in other words, were like books today – not kept sacrosanct nor pristine but seen as usable material objects which give us, in the twenty-first century, a valuable insight into the culture of the Anglo-Saxon world, a world which was, above all, a literate one.

ðas boc gef leofric bishop into sancte petres mynstre þær his biscopstol is his æfterfiligendum to nitweorðnysse. ‫ ך‬gif hig hwa ut ætbrede. hæbbe he ece geniðerunge mid eallum deoflum. Amen ‘Bishop Leofric gave this book to St Peter’s monastery where his episcopal see is for the use of his successors. And if anyone removes it, may he have eternal punishment with all devils. Amen.’

  See Frank Barlow in Barlow et al., Leofric and His Times, pp. 9-10. There are also details of Leofric’s Exeter foundation in the introduction to The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, ed. R. W. Chambers, Max Förster and Robin Flower (Bradford, 1933). See also ‘Exeter’ in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. ed. Michael Lapidge, John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2014). 33

  Details can be found in the introduction to The Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, ed. Chambers et al pp. 10-11. 35   See, for example, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 708. 34

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Chapter 7 The Liturgy and the Laity Joyce Hill With these words the Old English Martyrology describes the practices associated with the observation of Rogationtide, the three days preceding the movable feast of Ascension.3 The practice originated in Vienne in the Rhône valley under bishop Mamertus (c. 461-75) as a form of collective expiation in response to a particular series of calamities, but it became established as an annual observance within the Frankish Church as a collective expression of penitence and intercession against calamities, which came particularly to be associated, over the centuries, with intercession against the calamity of a poor harvest. From the Frankish Church it spread to the Anglo-Saxon where, following Frankish practice, the three days were called the Major Litanies. The significance, or perhaps one might more fairly say the social impact, of these three days within the annual cycle of the Church’s year in Anglo-Saxon England generated many homilies, both from the various anonymous homilists and from Ælfric, so much so that it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that homilies for these pre-Ascension Litany or Rogation Days are over-represented within the surviving corpus, especially in comparison with the supply for some of the more obviously major universal feasts of the church.4 This

Ymb þas dagas utan, hwilum ær, hwilum æfter, beoð þa þry dagas on ðæm Godes ciric ond Cristes folc mærsiað Laetanias, þæt is þonne bene ond relicgongas foran to Cristes uppastignesse. On ðæm ðrym dagum sceolon cuman to Godes cirican ge weras ge wif, ge ealde men ge geonge, ge þeowas ge ðeowenne, to ðingianne to Gode, forðon ðe Cristes blod wæs gelice agoten for eallum monnum. On ðæm þrym dagum Cristne men sceolon alætan heora ða woroldlican weorc on ða þriddan tid dæges, ðæt is on undern, and forð gongen mid þara haligra reliquium oð ða nigeðan tid, þæt is þonne non. Đa dagas syndon rihtlice to fæstenne, ond þara metta to brucenne ðe menn brucað on ðæt feowertiges nihta fæsten ær eastran. Ne bið alefed on ðyssum dagum ðæt mon blod læte, oððe æsnungdrenceas drince, oððe aht feorr gewite for woroldlicre bysgunge fram ðære stowe ðe he sceal Gode ætþeowian. Đas ðry dagas syndon mannes sawle læcedom ond gastlic wyrtdrenc; forðon hi sendon to healdanne mid heortan onbryrdnesse, þæt is mid wependum gebedum ond mid rumedlicum ælmessum ond fulre blisse ealra mænniscra feonde, forþon ðe God us forgyfeð his erre, gif we ure monnum forgeofað.1 ‘Around those days, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, are the three days on which the churches of God and the people of Christ celebrate the Litanies, that is, the prayers and processions of relics before Christ’s ascension. On those three days there shall come to God’s church men and women, old and young, male and female servants, in order to make intercession to God, because Christ’s blood was shed for all people alike. On those three days Christian people shall leave their worldly labours at the third hour of the day, that is at the time of Terce [9.00 a.m.], and to go forth with the relics of the saints until the ninth hour, that is the time of None [3.00 p.m.]. Those days are rightly to be kept for fasting, and for the use of those foods which people use during the forty day fast before Easter. It is not permitted on those days for anyone to let blood or to take purging drinks, or to travel at all far on worldly business from the place where he must serve God. Those three days are a medicine for man’s soul and a spiritual potion; they are therefore to be kept with compunction of the heart, that is, with tearful prayers and with generous alms and with full benevolence towards all human enemies, because God will give up his wrath against us, if we give up ours towards other people’.2

unless otherwise indicated. I have translated ‘relicgongas’ as ‘processions of relics’ (in the plural because in this instance it refers to a procession held three times, on three successive days) since that is the logic of the compound; it is also clear from continental and Anglo-Saxon practice, including this very passage, that relics were taken around in procession, on Rogation/Litany Days: see Joyce Hill, ‘The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England: terminology, texts and traditions’, Early Medieval Europe 9 (2000), 211-46. The word occurs only in the Old English Martyrology, in the singular in the account of the Rogation Day of April 25 (see below p. 62), and in the account quoted here of the three Rogation Days before Ascension Day. Herzfeld, in his translation of the Martyrology, rendered ‘relicgonge’ (p. 62) as ‘visiting relics’ (p. 63), and ‘relicgongas’ (p. 72) as ‘visits of relics’ (p. 73): An Old English Martyology, ed. George Herzfeld, EETS os 116 (London, 1900). But the key point is that the relics are taken out and processed around the area. The second element in the compound reflects the vernacular name for the Rogation/Litany Days, which is Gangdæg/ Gangdagas. This captures the particular aspect of these days that made a big impression on the ordinary people: for them they were distinctive in being the days of processions, of going about. 3   For the evidence underlying the account in this paragraph of the ultimately Frankish three-day observance that preceded Ascension, and the Roman one-day observance on April 25, see Hill, ‘The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England’. 4   The popularity of homilies for this observance is evident from Eleven Old English Rogationtide Homilies, ed. Joyce Bazire and James E. Cross (Toronto, 1982). Hill, ‘The Litaniae maiores and minores in Rome, Francia and Anglo-Saxon England’, pp. 215-16, lists Ælfric’s Rogationtide homilies: he evidently felt that the these days needed ample provision since he wrote nine homilies in all, distributed across both series of Catholic Homilies and the Lives of Saints, and provided some supplementary material when he was doing some reworking later. See also N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. 529. As Mary Clayton has pointed out, ‘Homiliaries and preaching in Anglo-Saxon England’, Peritia 4 (1985), 204-42, at p. 224, the stress on Rogationtide as a season for preaching was found also in some of the compilers of Carolingian homiliaries.

  The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, ed. Christine Rauer, Anglo-Saxon Texts 10 (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 9496. 2   This translation and all others throughout this article, are my own 1

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Joyce Hill popular Anglo-Saxon – ultimately Frankish – observance existed alongside another similarly organised litany day on the fixed date of 25 April. This was a Roman tradition, also known, confusingly, as the Major Litany, and it too had a similar purpose, originating in a response, under Pope Gregory the Great, to external calamity, which was countered by collective penitence and intercession in association with relics. Anglo-Saxons knew of this Roman observance, and indeed the Martyrology has an entry for it:

‘Then he saw a very large crowd, as on the Rogation Days, and they were all clad in snow-white garments’. If we may judge from the ample response of the homilists and the evidently impressive participation of the local communities, these days loomed large in the calendar of the secular church.7 The three-day Rogationtide observance gives us a glimpse of several aspects of the Anglo-Saxon secular church: the importance of relics, their local availability and ‘ownership’, the significance and practicalities of penitential behaviour, the fostering of spiritual compunction, and community appeal through social engagement and participation at all levels. Because of the rich and complex corpus of surviving written texts, penance has in recent decades been a fruitful area of research, generating a valuable and still growing body of publications.8 I therefore leave that on one side, and focus instead on the laity’s local experience of interacting with the liturgy of the secular church across the year and at the two key points of infant baptism and impending death. Special episcopal ceremonies, which many people would never witness at all, and which, in any case, are less intimate than the aspects I consider here, will be left out of account. The evidence is not new; rather, I shall be bringing together some of the small and telling details that can be teased out from texts the attention of which is really focused elsewhere. My intention is to stimulate the imagination in thinking about the impact of the church on the laity and – where we can glimpse it – their reactions and level of understanding.

On ðone fif ond twentegðan dæg ðæs monðes bið seo tid on Rome and on eallum Godes ciricum seo is nemned Laetania Maiora, þæt is þonne micelra bena dæg. On ðæm dæge eall Godes folc mid eaðmodlice relicgonge sceal God biddan þæt he him forgefe ðone gear siblice tid and smyltelico gewidra, and genihtsume wæstmas, ond heora lichoman trymnesse. Đone dæg Grecas nemnað zymologesin, þæt is þonne hreowsunge dæg ond dædbote.5 ‘On the twenty-fifth day of the month there is in Rome and in all God’s churches the festal-tide that is called Laetania Maiora, that is, the day of great prayers. On this day all God’s people, with a humble procession of relics, shall entreat God that during the year he may grant them a peaceful period and fair weather and sufficient crops and health of their bodies. The Greeks call this day Zymologesin [correctly, Exomologesis] that is, the day of repentance and penance’. However, this is rather different in tone and detail from the Martyrology’s description of the three Litany days before Ascension. There is the explicit initial reference to Rome, which has a distancing effect; there is a bookish element in the provision of Greek terminology as well as Latin; and there is altogether less circumstantial detail about the realities of daily life and how it is impacted by the Rogation/Litany observance. The Martyrology’s account of the three days before Ascension, by contrast, has no display of learning beyond the standard Latin name for these days, but instead offers careful, practical advice about penitential practices, and at the same time manages to be suggestive of a rather jollier social occasion, with six hours off work, and a complete turn-out by the local community for an outdoor procession with relics on three days in late spring or early summer. Indeed, large crowds were so commonplace for this pre-Ascension observance that the size of the Rogationtide crowd is used in the Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia to indicate the vast number of people he sees in his other world, assembled on a beautiful and fair field suffused with sweet odour:

According to Bede, in his letter to Archbishop Egbert of York, written in 734, the most lax ‘attendees’ at church would put in an appearance only at Christmas, Epiphany and Easter.9 In his supplementary homily De Doctrina Apostolica, Ælfric focused on the frequency with which communion should be received – which is of course a different matter from simple attendance – specifying the following minimum: lines 11-12. See also, Milton McC. Gatch, ‘Piety and liturgy in the Old English Vision of Leofric’ in Words, Texts and Manuscripts: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Culture Presented to Helmut Gneuss on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Michael Korhammer, with the assistance of Karl Reichl and Hans Sauer (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 159-79. 7   See further M. Bradford Bedingfield, The Dramatic Liturgy of AngloSaxon England (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 191-209. 8   It is not possible here to itemise the extensive work on penance in AngloSaxon England. Useful entry points are Allen J. Frantzen, The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick NJ, 1983) and Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900-1050 (Woodbridge, 2001). For more recent scholarship see, for example, Brad Bedingfield, ‘Public penance in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 31 (2002), 223-255; Sarah Hamilton, ‘Rites for public penance in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in The Liturgy of the Late Anglo-Saxon Church, ed. Helen Gittos and M. Bradford Bedingfield, Henry Bradshaw Society Subsidia 5 (London, 2005), pp. 65-103; Sarah Hamilton, ‘Remedies for “Great Transgressions”: penance and excommunication in late Anglo-Saxon England’ in Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Francesca Tinti (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 83-105; Catherine Cubitt, ‘Bishops, priests and penance in late Saxon England’, Early Medieval Europe 14 (2006), 41-63. 9   Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. Arthur West Haddan and William Stubbs, 3 vols (Oxford, 1869-78), III, 314-26, at p. 323.

Þa geseah he swyþe mycele weorud swylce on gangdagan, ‫ ך‬þa wæron ealle mid snawhwitum reafe gescrydde.6   The Old English Martyology, ed. Rauer, p. 86.   A. S. Napier, ‘An Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia’, Transactions of the Philological Society 26 (1907-10), 180-88, at p. 182, 5 6

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The Liturgy and the Laity Eawfæste men magon gan to husle be Godes leafe Sunnandagum on Lenctenfæstene, and on ðam þrim Swigdagum, and on Easterdæge, and on þam Þunresdæge on þære Gangwucan, on ðam dæge þe Crist to heofenum lichamlice astah, and on Pentecosten, and on ðam feower Sunnandagum þe beoð æfter þam feower Ymbrenfæstenum.10

first of the three Rogation Days), and midsummer day, which is 24 June and, in the Christian calendar, the feast of John the Baptist: And riht is þæt preostas folc mynegian þæs þe hi Gode don sculon to gerihtum on teoþungum and on oðrum þingum. And riht is þæt man þisses mynegige to eastrum, oðre siðe to gangdagum, þriddan siðe to middan sumera þonne bið mæst folces gegaderod. 13

‘Devout people can receive communion by God’s leave on the Sundays of the Lenten fast and on the three Silent Days, and on Easter Day, and on the Thursday in Rogation Week, on the day on which Christ bodily ascended to the heavens, and on Pentecost, and on the four Sundays which are after the four Ember Fasts’.

‘And it is right that priests remind people about what they must render to God as dues in tithes and in other things. And it is right that they be reminded of this at Easter, a second time on the Rogation Days, a third time at midsummer, when most of the people is assembled’.

By the ‘silent days’, Ælfric means the triduum in Holy Week: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday’.11 The Thursday in Rogation Week12 is Ascension Day itself, as the following phrase makes clear. The four Ember Fasts are Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, Holy Cross Day (14 September), and the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after St Lucy’s Day on 13 December, which are taken as a single group. The Sunday after Ash Wednesday is, however, included anyway since it is the first Sunday of the Lenten Fast. What the list shows is the importance of penitence within the minimal observance, and the centrality of Easter. Christmas and feasts associated with it are not included. This makes very good sense from Ælfric’s Eucharistic viewpoint here: if there is a choice to be made, it is the Holy Week and Easter period that takes precedence theologically, since this embraces the institution of the Eucharist on Maundy Thursday and the redemptive creedal sequence of Crucifixion (Good Friday), Descent into Hell (Holy Saturday) and Resurrection (Easter Sunday). But Bede’s comment on what choices the laity actually made in his day indicates that Christmas mattered to them just as much as Easter, although without engaging in the preparation for the latter in Lent and Holy Week, the observance of Good Friday itself, Christ’s subsequent bodily Ascension, or the fulfilment of the redemption at Pentecost, celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles. In other words, what Bede testifies to are the two ‘popular peaks’ for church attendance that persist today, together with Epiphany which, in celebrating the coming of the Magi, is still very much part of Christmas. Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, written for the clergy between 1004-6 and 1008, assume that most of the people will assemble in church at Easter, the Monday before Ascension (i.e. the

These days of presumed good attendance must, however, reflect the reality of social practice because the comments about when it would be most appropriate for the reminders to be given, occurring only in the expanded version of chapter 54 in the eleventh-century Oxford Bodleian MS Junius 121, are additions which are independent of the legal obligations that Wulfstan then immediately lists: namely, the various tithes and other dues that are to be paid fifteen days before Easter (plough-alms), at Pentecost (tithe on newborn livestock), on St Peter’s Day (29 June: Peter’s Pence), All Saints’ Day (1 November: tithe on crops, including uncultivated products), Martinmass (11 November: a general church due), and payment three times a year for the provision of candles for the church, on the Vigil of Easter, the Vigil of Candlemas (1 February), and the Vigil of All Saints’ Day (31 October). The most participatory days – in addition to the Rogation Days which have already been discussed – were Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday and Good Friday when, unusually, everyone present took part in the distinctive ritual of the day.14 There appears to be no common vernacular term for Ash Wednesday, but all of the other days that are marked out by special lay participation have vernacular names alongside their technical Latin ones. The vernacular Gangdagas for the Rogation Days captures what for the laity was the most striking element: the going about in procession. Candelmæsse/Candelmæssedæg for the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on 2 February, seizes upon the drama of the lighted candles in church, which the Latin In Purificatio Sanctae Mariae does not. Palm sunnandæg is admittedly simply a rendering of the Latin Dominica Palmarum, but even this is telling, because the Latin itself reflects the noteworthy feature of the day’s ritual – the carrying of palms – and consequently so does the vernacular term, simply by the act of translation. As a name it is thus parallel to Candlemas, even though it is arrived at by a different route: what the two names have

  The Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, ed. John C. Pope, 2 vols, EETS os 259, 260 (Oxford, 1967-68), II, 628. 11   Joyce Hill, ‘Ælfric’s “Silent Days”’, Leeds Studies in English, 16 (1985), 118-31. 12   Ælfric’s use of ‘Gangwuce’ for Rogation Week (with clear reference to the three-day observance in Ascension Week, rather than the essentially Roman one-day observance on April 25) is yet another instance of the impact of the procession of relics on secular society, since the vernacular term, which literally means ‘Walking (in this context, Processional) Week’, parallels the vernacular ‘Gangdagas’ as the way of referring to the Rogation Days and supports my interpretation of ‘relicgongas’ and ‘relicgonge’ in the translations on pp. 61 and 62 above and as argued in note 2. 10

  Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. Roger Fowler, EETS os 266 (London, 1972), p. 13 §54 and pp. 37-38 for a discussion of the Junius 121 expansion. 14   On these special days, see Bedingfield, The Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 50170. 13

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Joyce Hill in common with each other, and with Gangdagas for the Rogation Days, is the popular response to the distinctive liturgical event, in which the laity take part. Good Friday, in Old English Langafrigedæg, ‘Long Friday’, again reflects popular perception, it being a day of liturgical solemnity, with extended (‘long’) rituals. Its Latin name is Parasceue which, as Anglo-Saxon clerics knew, and sometimes explained, meant ‘preparation day’, but this was not what the laity seized upon; they, once again, were more inventive, in capturing something of the way the day made its impact on them. The fact that only some liturgical days have their own vernacular names tells us about their importance in the world of the laity; the nature of these vernacular terms tells us even more about how these days were popularly perceived and recalled.15

stock of lights. Perhaps this is why Ælfric made it clear that the candles must still be burning as they are handed over: it was, of course, necessary for the symbolism, but perhaps some of the members of the congregation, and maybe even some priests, might have thought that letting them continue to burn was an extravagance. The Pastoral Letter shows that Ælfric, and indeed Wulfstan, on whose behalf he was writing, were both anxious to get this right: the instruction provided is entirely about managing these practicalities. The Letter shows a similar concern with managing the participatory practicalities of Ash Wednesday.18 The priest must bless ashes, sprinkle them with holy water, and then use them to make a sign of the cross on his own head before ashing all the people who are present. This is to be done before he goes in procession to celebrate the mass. A glance at Wulfstan’s homilies would lead us to infer that another distinctive feature of Ash Wednesday which concerns the laity was the formal exclusion of those guilty of particularly grave sins, to be readmitted in what must have been an impressive ceremony for the Reconciliation of Penitents on Maundy Thursday, for which he provides a vernacular homily.19 But these solemnities, striking though they might have been, were an episcopal privilege, and so would have been witnessed rarely. In any case, it is probable that these paired ceremonies of Ash Wednesday and Maundy Thursday were introduced into Anglo-Saxon England by Wulfstan himself, and it is quite likely that they were not practised outside his episcopal jurisdiction, so that consideration of their details falls outside the scope of this paper.20 The nature of the laity’s participation on Palm Sunday exactly parallels that of Candlemas, except that, as we learn from Ælfric’s First Series Palm Sunday homily, the palm twigs are blessed and then distributed to the people, rather than the people bringing their own, as they do with the lights.21 The Pastoral Letter again voices an underlying concern that the participatory practicalities should be properly managed.22 Of equal concern for all three festivals is that the priest should understand the symbolism, presumably so that it can be explained to the congregation – something that Ælfric of course does in his own homilies.

At Candlemas (the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, on 2 February), the lay-folk bring their own lights to the church, where they are blessed and then carried around the church buildings while a specified song is sung. It is clear that the congregation is expected to join in the singing because, as Ælfric says in a revealing aside in his First Series Catholic Homily for this day: … þeah ðe sume men singan ne cunnon hi beron þeahhwæðere þæt leoht on hyra handum.16 ‘… although some people do not know how to sing, they can nevertheless carry the light in their hands’. We learn a little more from his Second Old English Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan, where he is careful to specify (because it is unusual) that both ordained and lay carry the candles in procession and sing praises; he then goes on to explain that the candles, still burning, are to be handed to the masspriest after the gospel, during the offertory hymn.17 On a winter’s day it must have been quite a sight – a more concentrated illumination of the gloom than most people would ever otherwise see from year to year, a vivid means of drawing the congregation into Simeon’s celebration of the Christ-child (referred to within the day’s lection as ‘lumen ad revelationem gentium’, ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles’ (Luke 2:32)), culminating in a heightening of the relationship between Christ and the candles by their being offered to the priest as part of the offertory at the same time as the bread and wine are offered for consecration. In practical terms it was another means by which the laity made an offering to the Church since they brought their own candles, so that they were thus contributing to the church’s

On Good Friday, as described in the Regularis Concordia, there is the Deposition and Visitation enactment, highly sophisticated in its symbolic meaning.23 But for the laity, who are expressly catered for even within this monastic   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 214-17, §§179-80.   The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Dorothy Bethurum (Oxford, 1957), Homily XV, pp. 236-38. 20   Bedingfield, ‘Public penance in Anglo-Saxon England’, p. 237. 21   Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The First Series, ed. Clemoes, p. 297 (Homily XIV, Dominica Palmarum). 22   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 216-17, §181. 23  Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nationis Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque: The Monastic Agreement of the Monks and Nuns of the English Nation, translated from the Latin with Introduction and Notes by Dom Thomas Symons (London, 1953), pp. 44-45 (Deposition) and pp. 49-50 (Visitation). This edition is used in preference to that of Thomas Symons, Sigrid Spath, Maria Wegener and Kassius Hallinger in Corpus Consuetudinum Saeculi X/XI/XII Monumenta non-Cluniacensia, ed. Kassius Halinger, Corpus Consueteudinum Monasticarum VII/3 (Siegburg, 1984), pp. 61-147, because it is far more widely available, with more accessible explanatory notes and a facing translation. 18 19

  See further, Joyce Hill, ‘Naming the Liturgical Year: reflections on vernacular practice’ in Phases of the History of English: Selection of Papers Read at SHELL 2012, ed. Michio Hosaka, Michiko Ogura, Hironori Suzuki and Akinobu Tani, Studies in English Mediaeval Language and Literature 42 (Frankfurt, 2013), pp. 25-45. 16   Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The First Series: Text, ed. Peter Clemoes, EETS ss 17 (Oxford, 1997), p. 257 (Homily IX, In Purificatione Sanctae Mariae). 17  Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics in altenglischer und lateinischer Fassung, ed. Bernhard Fehr, Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 9 (Hamburg, 1914), reprinted with a Supplement to the Introduction by Peter Clemoes (Darmstadt, 1966), pp. 214-215, §178. 15

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The Liturgy and the Laity consuetudinary in the firm assumption that they will be present, the participation is the physical act of honouring the cross by kneeling before it and kissing it:

sacraments, baptism and the ministry to the sick (mass and extreme unction), are by nature more individual, and it is to these I now want to turn.

Nam salutata ab abate uel omnibus cruce, redeat ipse abbas ad sedem suam usque dum omnis clerus ac populus hoc idem faciat.

In his First Latin Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan, Ælfric stated that children should not be left unbaptised for longer than seven days.28 But when he came to redraft this in Old English, perhaps with the benefit of some suggestions from Wulfstan, the firm specification of seven days is changed to the more flexible ‘swa raþe swa mon raþost mæge’, ‘as soon as one can’, an adjustment that, significantly, was kept by Wulfstan when he made further substantial modifications of his own to this Old English text.29 The fact that the change was made and that Wulfstan carefully retained it is all the more revealing in the light of his specification of a seven-day limit in his own regulatory Canons of Edgar.30 For both men seven days was probably the normative position. There were variations, however: the Northumbrian Priests’ Law sets a time-limit of nine days, but this is a minor variation, which is still dependent on the underlying assumption there was easy access to a priest.31 The pragmatic adjustment to ‘as soon as possible’ in both vernacular versions of the First Pastoral Letter reminds us that, whatever positive implications we might unconsciously draw from the dramatised congregation in Ælfric’s homilies, whatever might have been the actual experience of those living near monasteries or the betterfounded churches in the areas of greatest ecclesiastical organisation, and whatever regulations are set down in documents which use normative criteria, there would have been many whose access to a priest could not be guaranteed on a week-by-week basis, even early in the eleventh century. And so what a responsibility it was when a newborn seemed likely to die, not least because heavy penalties were set for those who allowed this to happen with the child unbaptised.32 We find a hint of what must have been a recurrent anxiety on the part of the laity in Ælfric’s Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige, where there is a reference to presumably sickly infants being taken to priests so that they can be baptised in haste in order not

‘And when the Cross has been venerated by the abbot and the brethren, the abbot shall return to this seat until all the clergy and the people have done in like manner’.24 Of course, few laity would ever have witnessed the enactment of the Deposition and Visitation since, despite the fact that the Regularis Concordia points to the value of this practice ‘ad fidem indocti uulgi ac neophytorum corroborandam’, ‘for the strengthening of the faith of unlearned common persons and neophytes’,25 not many people were in easy reach of a religious community where there would have been enough personnel and enough experience of managing ritual to carry it out effectively, and there would have been few, if any, local churches where it was a feasible option. Indeed, it was probably not even enacted in small monastic communities. Certainly Ælfric does not retain it in his Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, despite his education at Winchester and his intense familiarity with the Regularis Concordia, which is evidenced throughout this work. Instead, there is a much simpler veneration of the cross, which corresponds to the laity’s act of kissing the cross in the Regularis Concordia (although the mode of veneration is not actually specified, presumably because it was so well known as to be taken for granted).26 The implication is that this was the default position for Good Friday for religious and laity alike. At the heart of these services marked out by special community participation in the ritual is the sacrament of the mass, with the laity being able to come forward and receive the host, which they can also do, of course, on other days. Ælfric’s Pastoral Letters for Wulfsige, Bishop of Sherborne, and for Wulfstan, which the two bishops issued in their own names, are insistent that this sacrament must only take place in the church building, except in the case of sickness; and that mass must not be celebrated in people’s houses, nor in return for payment, as some richer members of society evidently tried to arrange as a means of appropriating special benefit for themselves.27 But some

67-81. 28   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 53 §163. 29   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 130-131 §177, with Wulfstan’s adaptation being the text printed by Fehr as D. On the relationship between Ælfric’s First Old English Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan and Wulfstan’s subsequent reworking, see Joyce Hill, ‘Authorial adaptation: Ælfric, Wulfstan and the Pastoral Letters’ in Text and Language in Medieval English Prose: A Festschrift for Tadao Kubouchi, ed. Ako Oizumi, Jacek Fisiak and John Scahill (Frankfurt, 2005), pp. 63-75. 30   Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, p. 5 §15 (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 121). The copy of the Canons in Cambridge Corpus Christi College MS 201 specifies a maximum of thirty-seven, but this may be the result of scribal interference, producing xxxvii by a conflation of the lower number with the xxx prescribed in the Laws of Ine, and which was still remembered, although this longer period must have reflected the difficulties of a period of very limited ecclesiastical provision much closer to the time of conversion: see Councils and Synods with Other Documents Relating to the English Church: I, AD 871-1204. Part I: 8711066, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett and C. N. L. Brooke (Oxford, 1981), p. 319, note 2. 31   Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, p. 455 §10. 32   Councils and Synods, ed. Whitelock, Brett and Brooke, pp. 454-55 §§ 8, 10, 10.1;

  Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. Symons, p. 44.   Regularis Concordia, ed. and trans. Symons, p. 44. 26   Ælfric’s Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, ed. Christopher A. Jones, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 24 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 132, and commentary on p. 198. 27   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 16 §§69-70 (Brief I, Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige); p. 60 §23, p. 64 §61 (Brief 3, Second Latin Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan); pp. 186-87 §§110-114 (Brief III, Second Old English Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan). On the relationship between the Second Latin and Second Old English Pastoral Letters for Wulfstan, see Joyce Hill, ‘Author and audience in Ælfric’s Second Pastoral Letter for Wulfstan’, in Fact and Fiction: From Middle Ages to Modern Times. Essays Presented to Hans Sauer on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday – Part II, ed. Renate Bauer and Ulrike Krischke (Frankfurt, 2011), pp. 24 25

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Joyce Hill to die as heathens.33 When they are baptised in church, however, the ritual is quite elaborate and it requires a further commitment in that the child is then to be dressed in white, and to be brought back to the church for mass every day for the next seven days, unwashed (meaning that their heads must not be washed, in order to preserve the sign of the cross).34 What was needed to complete the initiation into the church was confirmation and, if a bishop were present, this could come immediately after the baptism in what was in effect a continuous ritual. This is what is implied in Wulfstan’s homily on baptism: but of course, he was a bishop, so that is what we would expect, if he were present.35 Even so, he is realistic in the Canons of Edgar where, in the very sentence that sets the normative limit of seven days for baptism, he merely expresses the hope that no one will be without the bishop’s confirmation for too long, ‘… and þæt ænig man to lange unbiscopad ne wyrðe’.36 In his Pastoral Letters, however, directed at priests, he makes no reference to it at all. It was baptism, after all, that was absolutely crucial and the sacrament for which the priests were responsible; the delay before episcopal confirmation became available would have been highly variable, and one must wonder whether some people ever received it at all, notwithstanding the fact that Ælfric, in his First Series Catholic Homily for Pentecost, assumes that the episcopal laying on of hands does indeed take place.37

Second Letter for Wulfstan makes it clear that this is not the case: they may, without harm, receive communion as often as may be necessary, even on a daily basis.39 But in the Old English version what was evidently a major lay anxiety is dismissed in rather more vigorous language: Sume seoce synd swa dysige, þæt he ondrædað him, þæt hi sceolan swyltan sona for ðam husle. Ac we secgeað to soþan, þæt he ne swylt na for þy … 40 ‘Some sick people are so foolish that they fear that they shall die immediately because of the host (i.e. because they have received the host). But we say in truth that he will certainly not die because of this …’. Priests had to counter this superstition; they also had to overcome misunderstandings about extreme unction. These are addressed with particular care in the First Old English Letter for Wulfstan, although there is no reference to them in the Latin version.41 This suggests that Ælfric, as a monastic mass-priest, was not aware of these problems in the pastoral context of the secular church and that he was alerted to them by Wulfstan when he asked Ælfric to redraft the Latin letter. Indeed, Wulfstan retained all of these additions when revising the vernacular version, and even added some phrases for clarification and emphasis. One of these lay misapprehensions was that anointing with oil in the sacrament of extreme unction equated to ordination. It was also evidently necessary for priests to reassure the laity that, if one received extreme unction once and then recovered, it was perfectly permissible to receive it again later, as many times, indeed, as the threat of death warranted. Yet another problem was that there were those who were reluctant to receive it in case they recovered, in the belief that this would then preclude their having the benefit at the moment of their actual last breath. A further cause of reluctance was the belief that, once having been anointed, they would not thereafter be able to eat meat; and yet another that, if they recovered after anointing, they would not be able to resume marital relations. The significance of such problems in the pastoral context is further emphasised by the fact that Ælfric returned to some of them in his Second Latin Letter for Wulfstan.42 It seems that management of the sick and dying caused considerable difficulty, not least because of lay misconceptions – and in fact also some confusions on the part of the priests about the order in which things should be done, and how to cope with those who could not swallow. 43 That these were persistent

As for what happened in the yet more individual circumstances of the sickbed, the Pastoral Letters offer some intriguing signs of misunderstanding. There were evidently those (priests among them) who believed that hosts reserved from the Easter consecration were more efficacious than those freshly consecrated — and of course it was the reserved host (but reserved for at most three weeks, as Ælfric makes clear) that was taken to the bedside of the sick.38 Another misapprehension on the part of some laity was that, if they received the host when sick, they would die immediately. The Latin version of Ælfric’s   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 16 §71.   The baptismal rituals are set out in some detail in Ælfric’s Second Latin and Old English Letters for Wulfstan, the space devoted to it reflecting its importance for priestly ministry: Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 58-59 §§5-8, p. 60 §19, p. 65 §§64-67 (Brief 3: Latin); pp. 148-49 §§5-8, pp. 152-53 §18, pp. 188-89 §§116-19 (Brief III: Old English). See Bedingfield, The Dramatic Liturgy, pp. 171-90, and, for the earlier Anglo-Saxon period in particular, Sarah Foot, ‘“By water in the spirit”: the administration of baptism in early Anglo-Saxon England’ in Pastoral Care Before the Parish, ed. John Blair and Richard Sharpe (Leicester, 1992), pp. 171-92. 35   The Homilies of Wulfstan, ed. Bethurum, Homily VIIIc, pp. 175-84. 36   Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar, ed. Fowler, pp. 4-5 §15. This phrase is in both manuscripts edited by Fowler. 37   Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies. The First Series, ed. Clemoes, pp. 36364, Homily XXII, lines 252-255, where the reference to ‘bishoping’ and the resulting gift of the sevenfold gifts of the spirit are clear allusions to confirmation. On bishops and confirmation, see Mary Frances Giandrea, Episcopal Culture in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, 2007), chapter 4, especially pp. 103-104. Confirmation is also discussed in association with baptism by Bedingfield and Foot: see note 34 above. 38   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 62-63 §§44-50 (Brief 3: Second Latin Letter for Wulfstan), pp. 178-81 §§86-92 (Brief III: Second Old English Letter for Wulfstan). The Latin letter specifies that the host may be reserved only for a maximum of three weeks, but the Old English letter sets an upper limit of two. 33 34

  Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 60 §§17-18. Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 150-51 §§14-15. In my translation the emphatic ‘certainly’ reflects the stress in the Old English conveyed by the double negative ‘ne … na’. 41   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 132-33 §§179-81 (Brief II) with Wulfstan’s revised version being Fehr’s MS D. 42   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 59 §§12-13. 43   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, pp. 19-21 §§84-92 (Brief I: Pastoral Letter for Wulfsige); pp. 130-31 §178 (Brief II: First Old English Letter for Wulfstan) with Wulfstan’s revised version being Fehr’s MS D, with no equivalent in the corresponding Latin letter); pp. 59-60 §§9-11, 15-16 (Brief 3: Second Latin Letter for Wulfstan); pp. 148-53 §§9-13, 16-17 (Brief III: Second Old English Letter for Wulfstan). 39 40

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The Liturgy and the Laity problems is suggested by the fact that they are addressed in the Letter for Wulfsige as well as those for Wulfstan. Again, it is telling that, in the Wulfstanian letters, there is more detail in the Old English than in the Latin, and there is further reinforcement by Wulfstan himself. On the positive side, however, the Red Book of Darley and British Library Laud Misc. 482 show how immediate the engagement of the individual was expected to be in these circumstances, since they preserve for us the necessary basic exchange between priest and penitent in the vernacular, pragmatically rendering into Old English the essential parts of the wording of the Latin liturgy.44

In the quasi-judicial world of the penitential and of ecclesiastically driven law, and in the economic environment of landholdings, tithes and other dues, the Church pervaded all aspects of life. Since these aspects are documented, we can study them. We can also examine the Church’s organisation, funding, patronage, hierarchies and general management. But it is much harder to penetrate the clerical and often predominantly monastic bias of our texts to glimpse aspects of the life of the Church as experienced by most of the laity. Recent work on pastoral care, necessarily dealt with from a mainly clerical perspective, following the nature of the sources themselves, can, if we invert the perspective, give us some insights into the experience of the laity. Here, I have simply brought together a few specific instances in some of the primary texts where those insights are to be found. Of course, inferences, and even direct statements, have to be handled with caution, particularly when the informational sources are top-down, instructional, regulatory, and thus potentially normative, drawing upon textual traditions of authority, reform and enforcement, rather than being contingent responses to directly observed reality. However, where homilies directly comment upon what congregations normally do — as opposed to directing them what to do — I think it is reasonable to take the comments at face value. And while the Pastoral Letters are in essence regulatory texts drawing in part at least upon textual traditions, I think we can place some reliance on what they say if details in the Latin are preserved when the letters are very carefully refashioned in Old English, or when details are changed or elaborated in the reconsidered context of the vernacular version. In the case of the First Letter for Wulfstan, there is the further validation, as I have previously indicated, that Wulfstan himself subsequently went through Ælfric’s Old English text and made extensive changes of his own. Furthermore, one text often validates another, if we read across from letter to letter and from homily to letter. The details are small and few, but I hope that it has been useful to bring them to mind as a contribution to an examination of the Anglo-Saxons and their world.

I began this discussion with crowds and relics at Rogationtide. The other tantalising scene of the laity crowded together informally in an ecclesiastical setting is that of the infirm pilgrims in the burial ground of Old Minster Winchester, who were there in the hope of benefitting from St Swithun’s healing powers. According to Ælfric, who must often have seen this for himself, the crowd was so great that one could hardly get into the building.45 Relics, pilgrimage, and, as we have seen, processions, were powerful points of interaction for the laity, embodying social as well as religious experience. One has only to think of Wilfrid’s’s relic-crypts in Ripon and Hexham, the design of the crypt at Repton, the possibility that the wooden platform which ran around the outside of the western end of Deerhurst church was for the exposure of relics on special occasions, and of course the veneration of the many Anglo-Saxon saints and the efforts expended in promoting their cults. Even so, at the village level churches had their practical uses. As the Pastoral Letters show, they were used for safe storage, of vessels of all kinds, tools, and grain.46 Obviously this was not acceptable, but it was done, nevertheless, and while it is not an example of the interaction of the laity with the liturgy, it is a revealing glimpse of the relationship of the local community to the building that they clearly thought of as theirs.

  Helen Gittos, ‘Is there any evidence for the liturgy of parish churches in late Anglo-Saxon England? The Red Book of Darley and the status of Old English’ in Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Tinti, pp. 63-82, at p. 78. 45   Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. Walter W. Skeat, EETS os 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881-1900; reprinted as 2 vols, 1966), I, 450, lines 151-52. 46   Die Hirtenbriefe Ælfrics, ed. Fehr, p. 65, §72 (Brief 3: Second Old English Letter for Wulfstan); pp. 188-89 §115 (Brief III: Second Old English Letter for Wulfstan). There is a slight variation between the items listed in the Latin and Old English versions so that they are to some extent independent witnesses to this problem. 44

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Part III Beyond the Shore

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Chapter 8 The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times Mateusz J. Fafinski The origins of York demonstrate a repetition of a well known Roman pattern: starting its career as a military site, a colony grew quickly on the opposite bank of the River Ouse, sporting elaborate wharfs and becoming a hub of prosperous and far-reaching trade. Although York was a major centre of commerce and trade activity from Roman times, and benefited from its strategic position, to pinpoint and describe this activity is difficult; few written sources are available and though the amount of archaeological evidence is huge, it is often difficult to interpret.

commodities of the trade were tin and copper exported and wine and olive imported. Merchants from York did not only look to the south of Gaul. From the inscription on a stone found in a postmedieval lime-kiln at Clementhorpe, part of York, we learn about a certain Lucius Viducius Placidus, originating from Rouen. He is probably the son of the Placidus known from an inscription found in Colijnsplaat in the modern southern Netherlands, dedicated to the goddess Nehalennia. Chastagnol suggested that this might be a trace of a prosperous company, whose founder – the father – was still a tribe-citizen of Veliocasses (a tribe centred in Rouen) and the son, judging from his full trianomina, a Roman citizen. But for us, the most important fact is that even if he did not move to Eboracum, he was at least strongly connected with the colonia, as he founded an arch and a vaulted passage there. His prosperity might have been due to the wine and pottery trade from the Rhineland.4

Research on travel and commerce in York in this period is additionally challenging because of the variety of sources involved. For the Roman period, inquiry into inscriptions is needed and these have to be correlated with written and archaeological sources. In the period of economic decline, after the Roman withdrawal, environmental data becomes increasingly vital and finally research into early medieval centres in Fishergate and Coppergate needs careful consideration of (especially) numismatic sources, pottery, textiles and metalwork (and here the similarity of styles in the Viking oikumene [lit. ‘the inhabited world’, in this case meaning the world known and frequented by Vikings] is very important). Because of all this it is difficult to obtain a coherent and complete picture. In this piece I search for processes and trends rather than simply list facts.

It is difficult to establish what were the direct trade links of Eboracum – they appear to be vast in volume, but, judging from the evidence we have, which is only fragmentary (the majority of the inscriptions which give us the most interesting details were found by chance and in re-used contexts) the links centred on the shores Gaul and Frisia. As to the materials traded, in addition to already mentioned pottery, wine and non-ferrous metals, probably military exports, played a large part. We know from the Edict of Diocletian that wool and textiles were among the main exports of Roman Britain and these could have been textiles used by the army. The waterside granary on the River Foss is also attested, though for its interpretation we can rely only on the environmental data and we have no textual information about the possible imports or exports of grain.5 It might have been used for the needs of the military garrison or for storage of grain from the surrounding area and it could have boasted its own jetty with a crane to facilitate the handling of goods on site.6 Milne has pointed out that the distinction between military and civilian functions of Roman harbours is vague if not completely irrelevant.7 Even if the granary served

The beginnings Let us begin with an unusual traveller, traversing both time and space from third-century Eboracum to the mouth of the river Garonne, to Burdigala, present-day Bordeaux: the traveller is a piece of millstone grit from Northern England. Its place of origin could have been one of the Roman quarries of this material in the Pennines.1 It bears a dedicatory inscription to the goddess Tutela Boudiga written by Marcus Aurelius Lunaris, who was a seuir Augustalis of the coloniae of York and Lincoln. Upon the start of his voyage he vowed to build an altar if he enjoyed safe passage. He built such an altar in Burdigala. It includes a consul date, so we can firmly establish the chronology of this piece – it was dedicated in the year 237. Next to the inscription a boar is carved; this may represent the emblem of Roman York – Eboracum.2 The stone is material proof of a route mentioned already by Strabo, connecting Britain and the mouth of the Garonne.3 Most probably the main

  André Chastagnol, ‘Une Firme de commerce maritime entre l’île de Bretagne et le continent Gaulois a l’époque des Sévères’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 43 (1981) 63-66, pp. 64-65. 5   Harry K. Kenward and D. Williams, Biological evidence for the Roman warehouse in Coney St (York, 1979); Gustav Milne, The Roman Port of London (London, 1985), p. 68. 6   R. A. Hall, ‘The waterfronts of York’, in Waterfront Archaeology. Proceedings of the Third International Conference, Bristol, 1988, ed. G. L. Good, R. H. Jones and M. W. Ponsford (York 1991), pp. 177–84, 177. 7   Gustav Milne, ‘Maritime traffic between the Rhine and Roman Britain: a preliminary note’ in Maritime Celts, Frisians and Saxons, ed. S. McGrail (London, 1990), pp. 82-84. 4

  D. P. S. Peacock, ‘The Roman Millstone Trade: A Petrological Sketch’, World Archaeology 12 (1980), 43-53, p. 43. 2   Paul Courteault, ‘An Inscription Recently Found at Bordeaux’, The Journal of Roman Studies 11 (1921), 101-107, p. 107. 3   The Geography of Strabo, ed. and trans. Horace Leonard Jones, 8 vols (London 1917-1932), 2 (1922), 253. 1

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Mateusz J. Fafinski primarily military functions it could also have an important role in the civilian merchant activity for the colonia. A large number of goods from the coastal trade conducted (at least partially) by the military may have entered into local circulation via the colonia.8

dedicatory statue of Britannia around Micklegate Bar (the inscription is in Latin).14 One inscription in Coptic/Greek on a gold leaf, bearing the curious text: ΦNHB NNOΥΘI – The Divine Lord – may be an early example of a Christian dedication.15 There are at least two inscriptions in Greek (both on a bronze plate) signed by a certain Demetrius.16 They could refer to the voyage of Demetrius, mentioned by Plutarch in his work Περὶ τῶν Ἐκλελοιπότων (On the Obsolescence of Oracles). This Demetrius was supposed to examine islands surrounding Britain on the bidding of Vespasian; York may have been the base for his voyages or he could simply have passed through the colonia on his way.17

The evidence of indirect trade links, however, is impressive. The catalogue of amphorae found in the Roman context of the colonia reveals imports of amphorae of the North African, Southern Spanish, Rhodian, ‘black sand’ (probably Campanian) and of course Italian type. ‘Carrot type’ amphorae, which probably originated from the Levant, were also found. The most frequent is the Dressel 20 type – amphorae produced in the southern Spanish province of Baetica and used for transporting oil, an enduring pottery type used from the first to the third centuries. There was only one sherd of a successor type – Dressel 23 – found. This type was possibly in use as late as the sixth century.9 Although this ware may have been imported directly, a firm attestation is not possible. The general pottery finds indicate similar contacts and these are also attested in food remains found at the so called ‘General Accident’ site, including olives, figs and additionally (as an indication of some short-distance trading) crabs from the Yorkshire coast. During the excavations at Wellington Row the percentage of pottery sherds coming from outside Britain rises from 25% for layers of second to early third century and reaches 36% for the layers from the third century.10 Textile findings from the Roman sewer system on Church Street seem to confirm those assumptions. Excavations there have produced silk fragments coming from Chinese raw material, but spun in the empire, although with a peculiar, non-Syrian pattern the origin of which is difficult to pinpoint.11

From the inscriptions we can also obtain an occasional international flavour – such as the one found near the Holy Trinity church, to the ‘African, Italian and Gallic Mother Goddess’, the only dedication to an African Goddess in Britain.18 While this does not prove the existence of a cult of that goddess in Eboracum, it gives a feel of the multicultural and international character that may have been present in the colonia. The list of provincial governors of Britannia Inferior, a province created in 214 with York as its capital, gives us an interesting cohort of names, including Marcus Antonius Gordianus, a governor in 216 and later emperor Gordian I in 238, coming from Cappadocia.19 Others are more difficult to describe, but might have included people from Lycia, Ostia and Greece.20 Such a wide variety of origins was not, of course, unusual at this time in the Roman Empire and one may speculate that the officials in York may have come from every corner of the Empire. Towards the end of Roman period evidence of the travels of Church officials can be found. Although not mentioned in the inscriptions, a bishop from York identified as Eborius was signatory of the synodial documents and travelled with bishops from London and Colchester to the synod of Arles in 314.21

Another important material processed in York was jet, excavated in Whitby and exported widely to other parts of the Empire. It might have been shipped raw, in lumps found on site in Whitby, but numerous finds of worked objects in York seem to support the thesis that there was an important jet craftsmanship centre there, which exported jet in a processed form.12

A crisis?

People also travelled through or visited York on matters unconnected with trade.13 Probably the most famous of those were Septimius Severus in the years 209-211 and Constantius and his son Constantine the Great in 306, but from the inscriptions found, others are also attested. A certain Nikomedes, a freedman from Greece, erected a

The fourth century brought a general crisis in the economic life of the British provinces and in the foreign trade conducted via urban centres in Britain. There is strong archaeological evidence from the excavations in Hungate from the 1951-52 season that the port of York had largely silted over by that time; but perhaps the evidence

  Stephen Rippon, ‘Coastal Trade in Roman Britain: the investigation of Crandon Bridge, Somerset, a Romano-British transshipment port beside the Severn estuary’, Britannia 39 (2008) 85-144, p. 86. 9   Jason Monaghan, The Roman Pottery of York (York, 1998), p. 968. 10   Patrick Ottaway, Roman York (Stroud, 2006), p. 107. 11   Arthur MacGregor, Finds from a Roman Sewer System and an Adjacent Building in Church Street (York, 1976), p. 15. 12   Malcolm Todd, ‘Jet in Northern Gaul’, Britannia 23 (1992), 246-248, p. 246. 13   A very good account of the travels in the late antiquity can be found in M. A. Handley, Dying on Foreign Shores. Travel and Mobility in the Late-Antique West, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 86 (Portsmouth RI, 2011).

14

  [Inscriptions on stone, ed. R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright] Roman Inscriptions of Britain, ed. R. G. Collingwood and R. P. Wright, 2 vols (Oxford, 1965-1983), RIB 643. 15   RIB 706. 16   RIB 662, 663. 17   Plutarch’s Moralia, ed. and trans. Frank C. Babbitt, Phillip H. De Lacy et al., Loeb Classical Library,10 vols (London, 1927-1976), 5 (1936), 403. 18   RIB 653. 19   Ottaway, Roman York, p. 83. 20   Anthony Birley, People of Roman Britain (Berkeley CA, 1980), p. 42. 21   S. N. Miller, ‘The British Bishops at the Council of Arles (314)’, The English Historical Review 42 (1927), 79-80, p. 79.

8

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The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times for a total decline has been exaggerated. The tripartite transition from Roman into sub-Roman and then AngloSaxon settlement is difficult to assess, but there is enough archaeological evidence to see that the site was never fully abandoned and subsequent settlements took place in the context of the previous ones. Indeed, H. G. Ramm wrote that the question asked should not be how or when Roman York ended but how and when did it cease to be Roman?22

inscriptions27 that going through the waterway was not a straightforward matter even in the heyday of merchant activity at York and that ships needed guidance at least from the point when they entered the Ouse from the Humber estuary. Annual winter flooding, which changed the watercourse, silted it and annually shifted the rivershallows, would have made river traffic nearly impossible even at the best of times. Moreover the bridge connecting the fortress and colonia was destroyed around the end of the fourth century and was not rebuilt. Flooding also affected other ports in the area like Brough-on-Humber. These conditions show that the economy of the region suffered a major blow; but local economic systems do not disappear without a trace and overnight. The paucity of evidence does not prove a lack of any commercial activity in the area. Late fourth- and early fifth-century archaeology shows buildings covered with the so-called dark earth deposits, which might have resulted from garbage deposits and indicate a more sparsely populated town, with garbage being thrown into those buildings that fell into disuse.28

Maritime activity could have been ‘defeated’ by natural phenomena. The slow silting over of the port (a process which occurred also in fourth-century London) has been already mentioned; but probably the most disastrous events were frequent floods, which coincided with rising of the sea level and backing up of rivers. The main Roman wharf was probably flooded already at the beginning of the fourth century and this particular area was not reused until the beginning of the tenth. The period of probable flooding coincided with the climate change present in the other parts of the Roman world, including the Mediterranean and even the Caspian Sea.23

The history of York after the probable flooding suffers from a lack of firm written sources and problematic interpretation of the archaeological ones, so the precise facts are difficult to establish. Certainly the evacuation of Roman legions must have had a profound impact on the economy and international links of the region, but the paucity of sources available makes it difficult to assess the extent of that impact. Roman authority probably slowly devolved into the hands of local rulers and did not necessarily end in an abrupt way. Similar logic might be applied towards trade conditions.

The flooding did not affect the fortress and the colonia – the highest levels of water found are around 35ft (circa 10.7m) while the colonia and fort were situated around 3536ft (circa 10.7m to 11m), additionally protected by the walls.24 One has to be cautious about the flooding theory giving a complete answer or a complete picture. To what extent the man-made structures provided shelter from this natural catastrophe or even what the exact extent of such a phenomenon was, is unknown, but the economic and demographical situation probably rendered their manning and repairing not viable in the long-term. Nevertheless, the occupation of both sites probably continued, although on a much-diminished scale and with a steadily changing character, slowly losing its predominantly urban feel.

The evidence of continuity of settlement is further suggested by a number of cemeteries around the fortress and by supposed continuous maintenance of some of the principia buildings. The cemeteries may well have had some form of continuity of association with their Roman counterparts but such evidence is speculative.29 Welsh literary sources like Annales Cambriae also apparently attest at least some (presumably British) rulers on the site.30 Overall, the trade conditions must have been poor at the time and although there are clues pointing towards continuity, conclusions remain speculative.

Thus overseas trading was in these circumstances nearly impossible or at least infrequent. In the colonia North Gaulish grey pottery and even a piece of African red slip ware were found.25 For the first time pottery from the Yorkshire Dales is attested and there is an increase in Lower Nene Valley ware26 – its appearance may have been connected with a need to compensate for a shortage of imports with locally produced work. Its lower quality might not only reflect the lower standards of the production, but also much lower expectations of the population, which in turn suggests a sign of social change.

  RIB 653.   Ottaway, Roman York, p. 148. 29   Ottaway, Roman York, p. 150. 30   The evidence is debatable and relies on the correlation between the name of the father of Peredur, whose death is recorded by Annales Cambriae s.a. 580 and the Welsh name for York; if the Welsh romances are taken into account purely as place-name evidence, then it is possible to correlate the Peredur son of Elifer with Peredur fab Efrawg (Old Welsh: York; which is in itself an error of attributing a place as a name of the father); this would hint that the local Welsh dynasty connected with the area of York was still in existence (which does not, of course, mean still in power), although the almost purely linguistic basis for this assumption makes it debatable and in need of further analysis. See Annales Cambriae, ed. John Williams (London, 1860), s.a. 580, p. 5; J. T. Koch, ‘Peredur fab Efawg’ in Celtic Culture: a historical encyclopedia, ed. J. T. Koch (Santa Barbara CA, Denver, CO, Oxford, 2006), pp. 1437-8. 27 28

In addition the problem of navigation becomes even more important than in the Roman era. We know from the testimony of the military river pilots on the Ouse in the   H. G. Ramm, ‘The end of Roman York’ in Soldier and Civilian in Roman Yorkshire, essays to commemorate the nineteenth centenary of the foundation of York, ed. R. M. Butler (Leicester, 1979), p. 179. 23   Michael E. Jones, The End of Roman Britain (New York, 1996), p. 200. 24   Ramm, ‘The end of Roman York’, pp. 181-2. 25   J. R. Perrin, Roman Pottery from the Colonia: 2 (York, 1990), pp. 2689. 26   Perrin, Roman Pottery, pp. 256-7. 22

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Mateusz J. Fafinski The moving centre: Frisians

from a typical continental vicus Fresonum.37 This seems plausible, but the extent to which the Frisians shared the same situation, especially in the terms of equal treatment under the law as local citizens (as again Bullough sees it)38 is problematic. The text gives us evidence of some judicial exemptions of the Frisian community on the one hand and on the other displays their presumably peculiar position in the system of wergild as they are not afraid of local justice but of ‘iram propinquorum interfecti iuuenis’39 – ‘the wrath of the kindred of the slain young man’. Therefore, some kind of royal, or at least authoritative, patronage over the wic must have existed already, even if its character was largely informal and not codified as in the later, continental vici. The date of the first abandonment of the Fishergate colony roughly corresponds with the date of the departure of Frisian merchants from York according to the Life of St. Liudger.40 All this builds up substantial evidence for a vibrant Frisian colony there, which engaged in both trade and craft activities.41

York emerges again as an ecclesiastical and administrative centre from the year of Edwin’s baptism in 627. It seems that the fortress was the site of government and cathedral while some settlement and ecclesiastical occupation continued on the site of the colonia; but the centre of commercial activity must have been located somewhere else. Its existence is attested in written sources, like the poem of Alcuin De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, where the poet speaks of York as a ‘haven for ocean-going ships from the farthest ports’.31 This description appears to be a conscious parallel to Bede’s description of London,32 so perhaps the prosperity of York at this time allowed for such a comparison. Another source, which speaks about the commercial area in York, is an episode from the Life of St. Liudger concerning a murder committed by a certain Frisian merchant in York and subsequent fleeing of his compatriots.33 It also demonstrates the presence of the most important trade agents of the period: Frisians.

Moving on to the contacts of this settlement, we can start with pottery. York was probably the port through which Tating wares and pottery from northern Francia reached Northumbria.42 Pottery from the site of Fishergate included Ipswich ware, but in scarce amounts, ranging from 5% to 6% of the finds.43 The so-called ‘black-burnished wares’ found in large quantity were identified as coming to York through Quentovic. Other large amounts include pottery from Ghent and Mayen wares from Rhineland. Again these imports seem to have come to York through a Frisian medium, which supports the notion that Fishergate was a Frisian colony. Only one sherd of a glazed ware was found in a stratum dating from the later eighth century.44 This kind of ware is usually associated with Muslim Spain, which at least indicates an indirect trade link with that area, although the appearance of that find may have been accidental, thus diminishing its usefulness in research about trade contacts.

Recent finds confirm water-based activity in the Yorkshire region. The finding of the early medieval logboat and trackway in Welham Bridge is particularly important. The boat has been radiocarbon dated to c. AD 455 (+/- 155 years).34 The trackway and the boat may well have been connected somehow to the Bursea trading post on the River Foulnes, which in itself would demonstrate continuity with the Roman period.35 The use of water tracks and the maintained navigability of rivers form a vital part of evidence and assessment of trade at this period, because of the importance of redistributing goods and travel in the hinterlands. Also, the higher efficiency of waterways was a major factor in the development of trade activity at this period, including the low-volume hinterlands exchange, vital for the local economy. The site of such merchant and trade activity in York for this period has been pinpointed by the excavations on Fishergate in the 1985-86 seasons as occupying the site between the rivers Foss and Ouse. Previously it had constituted a farming area of the Roman colonia.36 It is believed that this was one of the wics of Anglo-Saxon England, although Bullough suggests that this was actually a Frisian colony, albeit established on a different basis

Three very early golden tremisses struck in York, dated around 64045 may also indicate early trade contacts (although silver coinage would have been much more convincing as the golden coins may have simply been indicators of status). This stands in opposition to the view of Maddicott who excluded the city as a possible entrypoint to Northumbria for mid-seventh-century plague,   Donald Bullough, Alcuin: achievement and reputation (Leiden, 2004), p. 161. 38   Bullough, Alcuin, p. 161. 39   Die Vitae Sancti, ed. Diekamp, p. 17. 40   Dominic Tweddle, Joan Moulden and Elizabeth Logan, Anglian York: a survey of the evidence (York, 1999), p. 138. 41   For a moment setting aside the discussion about the meaning of the word ‘Frisian’, summarised in S. Lebecq, ‘On the use of the word “Frisian” in the 6th-10th centuries written sources: some interpretations’ in Maritime Celts, Frisians and Saxons, ed. S. McGrail (London, 1990), 85-90. 42   J. G. Hurst, ‘The Wharram research project: results to 1983’, Medieval Archaeology 28 (1984), 77-111, p. 82. 43   A. J. Mainman, Pottery from 46-54 Fishergate (York, 1993), p. 568. 44   Mainman, Pottery, pp. 570-5. 45   R. A. Hall, ‘York 700-1050’ in Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 7001050, ed. R. Hodges and B. Hobley (London: 1988), p. 128.

  Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings, and Saints of York, ed. and trans. Peter Godman (Oxford: 1983), p. 5. 32   Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. Judith McClure and Roger Collins, trans. Bertram Colgrave (Oxford, 1999) p. 74. 33   Die Vitae Sancti Ludgieri, ed. Wilhelm Diekamp (Münster: 1881), p. 17. 34   A. Hall, B. R. Gearey, H. Kenward, Ö. Akeret, J. Carrott, J. Mant, D. Jaques, K. Johnson, ‘Evaluation of biological remains from excavations at Welham Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire (site code: ERYMS 2004.19)’, Palaeoecology Research Services Report 2004/74, p. 2. 35   Lemont Dobson, ‘Time, Travel and Political Communities: transportation and travel routes in sixth- and seventh-century Northumbria’, A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe 8 (June 2005), §7. 36   Nicola S. H. Rogers, Anglian and Other Finds from 46-54 Fishergate (York, 1993), p. 1206.

37

31

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The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times The moving centre: Anglo-Scandinavians

settling rather on some monastic port and arguing that there must have been little commercial activity in the town.46 Although the monastic communities may well have had larger and more widespread connections at the time, still York was important enough to attract traffic that could have brought the plague. This same plague, however, could help to explain why activity was so scarce at the end of the century. Slightly later numismatic evidence, a Frisian sceat from the so called primary series, dated around 705-715, found in the Coppergate excavations, suggests early contacts with Frisia, perhaps already in the age of the merchant terpen and beach markets.47 This is a bold assumption, but the area could well have been in the Frisian zone of interest from the very early period of Anglo-Saxon presence. Small finds, like, for example, Frisian combs, also seem to uphold this thesis. The dating of this coin correlates also with the end of Kentish monopoly of the continental trade.48

With the Viking conquest (although the process of shifting the commercial importance might have started shortly before) York’s centre of commerce moved again. This time it seems that an area of previous industrial activity around Coppergate started to play an important trade role as the Fishergate colony declined. The last coin found in the Fishergate deposits is from the reign of Æthelberht of Wessex (reign 860-865).50 The area of Coppergate was probably deserted from the fifth century and reoccupied shortly after the Viking conquest, somewhere around the mid-ninth century. The Coppergate area had a strong on-site industry, thus its volume of exports might have been much greater then that of the previous settlement. Textile production is of particular interest here: a number of workshops were found around Coppergate. Judging from the materials used, the existence of trade in raw materials was essential for the industry. Wool and flax were acquired locally as well as dyeplants, but madder, for example, may have been imported from Northern France. Clubmoss, essential for mordanting, was imported from Scandinavia or Germany. There is also evidence of working with silks on the site (22% of the woven textiles from the Coppergate site were silk).51 Local workers made the garments on site using imported silk material – like the cap made from textile identified as being Byzantine silk.52 This demonstrates that York had its place in the network of commodities traded ‘from the Varangians to the Greeks’ route.53

When we examine the trading network of York one thing is striking: the primary areas of direct trade contact (northern Gaul/Francia, Rhineland) stay roughly the same from Roman times till the Viking conquest. Yet, although in the discussion about settlement, the more-or-less continuous existence of occupation can be confidently argued, the decline of overseas commercial contacts if not complete, then at least serious, is also evident. In the re-emerging of the trade links nature plays an important role, in the same way that it caused the decline in the sub-Roman period. Winds must have been an important factor – it is easier to sail from the aforementioned regions to York than from any other location, and winds and currents help travellers following a route close to the coast.49 But one should not forget the main trade agents of the region and the impact they had – the Frisians. Apart from natural factors, the revival of the trade routes seems to be mainly due to them. By entering the markets of Northern Gaul they in a way ‘inherited’ the knowledge of previous trade routes and being acquainted with the Anglo-Saxons probably even before the migration only helped to re-establish them. Also the factor which allowed them to establish their monopoly – sixth-century Slavic tribes interrupting the old trading routes from Scandinavia to Byzantium – proved to be one of the reasons for their success in York. When again the need for those imported commodities produced on the Continent arose in a greater volume, Frisians found themselves virtually the only importers of them between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Cloth, similar to textiles discovered among grave-goods from Birka, has been found – perhaps a trace of a trade route stretching as far as Hedeby and maybe even further up, to the Baltic. While this could simply be a stylistic similarity, with no evidence of direct trade contacts,54 it could equally be interpreted as evidence of contacts or visits of itinerant craftsmen. The links between southern Scandinavia and York become more evident later on with the emergence of Danelaw, including even certain similarities between the grave styles.55

  Richard A. Hall, ‘The decline of the Wic’ in Towns in Decline, AD 1001600, ed. Terry R. Slater (Aldershot, 2000), pp. 120-36, 126. 51   Penelope Walton Rogers, Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York: the Small Finds 17.11 (1997), pp. 1825-6. 52   Penelope Walton, Textiles, Cordage and Raw Fibre from 16-22 Coppergate, The Archaeology of York: the Small Finds 17.5 (1989), p. 419. 53   The phrase comes from the chronicle originated in Rus’, Powiest’ wriemiennych let, also known as the Primary chronicle. A debate has ensued whether the term actually means a trade route or is just a geographical description. For the arguments in this debate, see Dennis Ward, ‘From the Varangians to the Greeks and Other Matters’ in Gorski Vijenac: a garland of essays offered to Professor Elizabeth Mary Hill, ed. R. Auty, L. R. Lewitter and A. P. Vlasto, Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association (Cambridge, MA, 1970), pp. 303-21. 54   Walton, Textiles, Cordage, p. 333. 55   Mary Alexandra McLeod, ‘Viking age urbanism in Scandinavia and the Danelaw: a consideration of Birka and York’ unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1999, p. 262. 50

  J. R. Maddicott, ‘Plague in seventh-century England’, Past and Present 156 (1997), 7-54, p. 29. 47   E. J. Pirie, Post-Roman Coins from York Excavations 1971-81 (York, 1986), p. 51. 48   Mark Gardiner, ‘Continental trade and non-urban ports in midAnglo-Saxon England: excavations at Sandtun, West Hythe, Kent’, Archaeological Journal 158 (2002), 161-290, p. 276. 49   M. O. H. Carver, ‘Pre-Viking traffic in the North Sea’ in Maritime Celts, Frisians and Saxons, ed. S. McGrail (London, 1990), pp. 117-25, 120. 46

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Mateusz J. Fafinski It is also worth noting here that Coppergate might have been the place of the manufacture and trade of the famous pallia Fresonica (the debate as to exactly what this cloth was in nature is not yet resolved),56 and it seems highly probable that it was so. This would have connected York to a wide network of recipients of this particular commodity and given it an important place in the international trade systems of the time.

world. These largely supplemented the previous Frisian contacts. Metalworking from the period provides interesting evidence to confirm this. During the excavations in Dublin some sherds were found which are strikingly similar to the parting vessels63 found on the Coppergate site in an AngloScandinavian context.64 This could be nothing more than a coincidental similarity, but given the stylistic resemblance, these may well have been York exports or materials made by itinerant craftsmen, who visited the Coppergate colony or originated from there.

This amount and variety of production must have spurred a lively trade – reflected perhaps in the name ‘Market Shire’ given to the adjacent zone before Doomsday, as the area could well have been the centre of the commercial activity already in Anglo-Scandinavian times (though later known as ‘the Pavement’, it nevertheless maintained its primarily commercial role).57 Even if it was only the surplus of the production that was designated to be sold (so that the production for trade was not the main aim of the settlement) it still demonstrates that the economic pattern set in the early Anglo-Scandinavian period proved to be long lasting.

Just before the Norman Conquest, when this part of the story of York’s international contacts draws to an end, two reeves of Harold Godwinesson were present in the city and some additional commerce-connected activity is recorded near the river Foss.65 Economic conditions therefore must have been propitious. A settlement in transition Defining the nature of York in transition is problematic. It is tempting to call a site with such a lively commercial activity an ‘emporium’. But Samson argues persuasively that an emporium is a coastal hamlet with an important economic role66 – more or less like a Frisian terp. York was a much more complicated organism. It did not lose its urban functions throughout the period (the word ‘functions’ is used here, because during the crisis period of the fifth and sixth centuries there was certainly some activity on the site, which upheld those functions, but the site itself was not necessarily urban in character). And it was certainly more than just a place of meeting for merchants. The functions included being a place of exchange, possibly a focus point of local authority, a manufacturing centre, a shelter for the local population in times of distress. Throughout the sixth century it certainly played a much diminished role, but there is no definitive argument (taking into account both archaeological and written data) that there was no occupation and no continuity. As is shown by, for example, the poem of Alcuin, it was considered as an urban centre and any perceived break in continuity might have been a result of the general crisis, which affected the area, in conjunction with a series of natural phenomena. York certainly retained its position as a point of reference for the local population.

Coppergate was a site of considerable minting activity during the Anglo-Scandinavian and later periods. Two dies were found, one of Athelstan (reign 924/925-939) and one for St Peter’s pence.58 The foreign finds were also interesting – beside Carolingian and Scandinavian they included one Arabic dirham from the beginning of the tenth century.59 Such coins were generally not accepted at the time south of the Humber60 – but merchants using this kind of currency may therefore have been attracted to York.61 The evidence of merchant activity is supplemented by finds of scales (four of them discovered on the Coppergate site) and weights.62 Anglo-Scandinavian York was a part of wider, Scandinavian trading system in a similar way that the Fishergate wic was part of the Frisian network. This network came into existence with the discovery of two new trading routes from Scandinavia – one leading to England from Norway through the Shetlands and the second from Sweden via the Dnieper and Volga rivers to Byzantium and the Muslim

  The debate centres around the question of whether the pallia were ready-made cloaks (e.g. Henri Pirenne, Medieval Cities: their origins and the revival of trade (Princeton NJ, 1980), p. 33; The Cambridge Economic History of Europe: trade and industry in the Middle Ages, ed. Michael Moïssey Postan and Edward Miller (Cambridge, 1987), p. 624) or whether the word was just an umbrella term for a type of cloth (e.g. William H. TeBrake, ‘Ecology and economy in early medieval Frisia’, Viator 9 (1978), 1-31, p. 25; Dirk Jellema, ‘Frisian trade in the Dark Ages’, Speculum, 30 (1955), 15-36, p. 32). 57   Walton, Textile Production, p. 1826; George Sheeran, Medieval Yorkshire towns: people, buildings and spaces (Edinburgh: 1998), p. 35. 58   Pirie, Post-Roman Coins, pp. 33-43. 59   Pirie, Post-Roman Coins, p. 55. 60 The ‘generally’ might be highly disputable. The extent of the prohibition depends on the enforcement of Athelstan’s law establishing single, centrally-controlled currency in his kingdom, see The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. and trans. F. L. Attenborough, (Cambridge, 1922) pp. 134-5. 61   Pirie, Post-Roman Coins, p. 77. 62 Patrick Ottaway, Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: finds from medieval York (York, 2002), pp. 2952-5. 56

  Parting vessels are a type of ceramic containers used for purification of gold (especially removal of copper and silver residues) by a process involving usage of salt. For a detailed description of the aforementioned process, including the chemical reactions involved, see Justine Bayley, ‘Medieval precious metal refining: archaeology and contemporary texts compared’ in Archaeology, History and Science: integrating approaches to ancient materials, ed. Marcos Martinón-Torres and Thilo Rehren (Walnut Creek CA, 2008), pp. 141-5. 64   Justine Bayley, ‘Anglo-Saxon Non-Ferrous Metalworking: a survey’, World Archaeology 23 (1991), 115-130, p. 123. 65   Hall, ‘York 700-1050’, p. 130. 66   Ross Samson, ‘Illusory emporia and mad economic theories’ in AngloSaxon Trading Centres: beyond the emporia, ed. M. Anderton (Glasgow, 1999), pp. 75-90, 84. 63

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The Moving Centre: trade and travel in York from Roman to Anglo-Saxon times In assessing trade and commercial activity we must remember that these are activities in permanent transition. Even a cursory look at the shifting of the York merchant centre at the time from colonia on the bank of the Ouse, to Fishergate and then to Coppergate with probable markets and places of less vibrant activity in the area, reveals that the economy of the city did what was essential to its survival: it adapted. Adaptation might be due to natural circumstances, like the changing water levels of the Ouse and Foss, encouragement from authorities or proximity of craft centres; but was it also in answer to demand? The economy of York of this period was not a stable entity – it was, as I have argued, a process. In earlier interpretations, ceasing of activity in certain areas or silence in the sources about it were interpreted as total breaks. In fact, the period up to 1066 saw York in nearly constant internal economic transformation, while retaining some recurring characteristics – like jet processing in a fashion similar to the Roman practice.67 Sometimes external trade routes proved to be more stable than commercial zones inside the area of the city, understood as involving different centres to which the focus point of York’s settlement shifted throughout the period of this study.

Wool for garments came from sheep pastured in the nearby hills. At times, as in the case of Dales ware appearing in the time of economic decline at the end of the Roman period, the hinterland was broadening its support by commodities which would not have found their way into the urban market in better periods. Research in places like Wharram Percy and Cottam shows that more work is needed on the Anglo-Saxon settlements in the York environs especially during the seventh and eight centuries.69 Projects like the Viking and Anglo-Saxon Landscape and Economy Project, which started from the The York Environs Project, offer a very good opportunity to bridge this gap in our understanding, so vital for the understanding of the trade and economic activity of this period.70 Because of so many gaps in our knowledge we catch only a glimpse of the enterprise present in the urban area of York during the period. When the hinterland was not able to provide enough surplus for the craftsmen and merchants, trade in the commercial zones shifted or shrank, adjusting to that fact. Even a short-lasting disappearance does not necessarily mean a decisive break, if after that time a similar pattern of trade contacts is resumed. Invasion, natural disaster on a large scale, or change of authority or population (which is really rarely complete or definitive) does not mean that everything has to be learned from the beginning – it is more a matter of adaptation and transition to a new form of knowledge (sometimes done through and with the help and participation of external actors, like the Frisians). This transition of knowledge is the key to understanding the phenomenon of York. To a certain extent it took the form of a moving centre – York can be therefore be seen as an entity which adapted its ‘centre of gravity’ to the changing circumstances.

It seems a truism to emphasise the amount of information which is missing, lost or not recorded, but in the case of research into trade and commerce we can never overemphasise this lack of evidence. The kinds of activity I have described, or surmised, represent the busy, but difficult to distinguish, background of every successful centre. Often neglected in interpretation is the problem of the hinterland and economic background. For example the food supply of the Fishergate colony was extremely monotonous: the bones found are of only a couple of types of animals, mainly cattle (consisting 82% of the meat weight) and some sheep; there is almost no wild game.68 There was no elaborate food like the Yorkshire coast crabs known from the Roman colonia. However, Frisians (as judged from the excavation of their dwellings on the Continent) did not eat crabs at the time. (They do now.)

At a time of constant changes in the urban area, commercial activity, trade links with the hinterland and at least some of the routes of far-trading seem to be recurring throughout the period. Economic and social history must then conclude that this change was actually a way of preserving links. What adapts, survives.

  J. D. Richards, ‘Anglo-Saxon settlements and archaeological visibility in the Yorkshire Wolds’ in Early Deira: archaeological studies of the East Riding in Yorkshire, in the fourth to ninth centuries AD, ed. H. Geake and J. Kenny (Oxford, 2000), pp. 27-39, 27. 70   J. D. Richards, ‘The York Environs Project: an early medieval town and its hinterland’ in The Development of Urbanism from a Global Perspective, ed. P. J. J. Sinclair (Uppsala, 1996), pp. 1-9. 69

  Ottaway, Craft, Industry, p. 2745.   Richard L. Kemp, Anglian Settlement at 46-54 Fishergate (York, 1996), p. 74. 67 68

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Chapter 9 Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles Jill Frederick where for us the ruler of heaven has made room, the holy one on the heights where he ascended to heaven’.5

Many readers of Old English poetry have acknowledged the generally hostile quality of the sea and the treacherous nature of ocean-going set out in that poetry. We have only to turn to such works as The Wanderer (in which the sea is hrimcealde, ‘rime-cold’)1 and The Seafarer (whose narrator travels on the atol yþa gewealc, ‘the terrible tossing of the waves’),2 or to consider the bonechilling quality of Beowulf’s watery contest with Breca3 for examples of the physical and emotional hardships of such journeys. While many more such references exist in the poetic canon, perhaps the quintessential locus for the image of the Anglo-Saxons’ distrust and fear of the sea occurs in lines 850-866 of Christ II, which presents the metaphor of life as a journey over difficult seas, always, however, with the possibility of safe haven at its end:

The quality of the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and the sea seems to parallel the way the Anglo-Saxons viewed the natural world in general, an understanding that has been most thoroughly addressed in Jennifer Neville’s study, Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, in which she succinctly asserts For Old English poets, mountains, ocean, forests and caves do not connote the delightful escape that they do for Byron, but rather fear and emptiness;[fn] the overwhelming presence of the natural world represents an appalling human absence.[fn] Thus mountains appear dark and oppressive,[fn] the ocean inspires fear not exhilaration,[fn] forests are empty of joy [fn] and caves are full of weeping not contemplation.6

Nu is þon gelicost swa we on laguflode ofer cald wæter ceolum liðan geond sidne sæ, sundhengestum, flodwudu fergen. Is þæt frecne stream yða ofermæta þe we her on lacað geond þas wacan woruld, windge holmas ofer deop gelad. Wæs se drohtað strong ærþon we to londe geliden hæfdon ofer hreone hrycg. Þa us help bicwom, þæt us to hælo hyþe gelædde, godes gæstsunu, ond us giefe sealde þæt we oncnawan magun ofer ceoles bord hwær we sælan sceolon sundhengestas, ealde yðmearas, ancrum fæste. Utan us to þære hyðe hyht staþelian, ða us gerymde rodera waldend, halge on heahþu, þa he heofonum astag. (ll. 850-66)4

A reversal of this trope seems to exist in the riddles, however, a counter to this melancholy perspective. Four of the ninetyfive or so riddles found in the Exeter Book (numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 19, 32, 36, and 64)7 have all been solved as ‘ship’ at one time or another, albeit with no strong consensus among those who have tried to identify the riddle creatures.8 Such solutions are never a certainty, of course, but these four riddles unquestionably have language and strategies in common suggesting that their answers, as well as their literary and linguistic strategies, merit consideration as a category: in general, they make little use of sea imagery and other references to water, instead construct their objects by incorporating images of human society and land motifs. The representations of the riddle objects, expressed in a remarkably joyful manner, create human presence, order, and civilization in the middle of Neville’s terrifying natural void.

‘Now it is most like as if we sail in ships on the floodwaters, over cold water, through the wide sea, in water horses, guide the water-woods. That is a dangerous current of waves beyond measure that we move in here, through this weak world, the windy seas over the deep path. The plight was strong before we had sailed to land over the rough ridge. Then help came to us, that led us to a safe harbour, God’s spirit-son, and gave us a gift that we should know over the ship’s boards where we could secure the sound-horses, the old wave-steeds, fast to an anchor. Let us to that harbour,

In fact, while the four riddles have been solved as ‘ship’, they offer another expression of what Kathryn Hume has termed the idea-complex of the hall.9 In her 1974 article, Hume sets out the cluster of ideas that defines this construct, ideas that celebrate the hall as ‘a circle of light and peace enclosed by darkness, discomfort and danger’.10   All translations from the Old English are my own unless otherwise noted.   Representations of the Natural World in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 27 (Cambridge, 1999), p. 38. 7  The texts of all Exeter Book riddles cited in this essay are taken from Krapp and Dobbie, pp. 180-210 and 229-43, and follow the numbering of this edition. 8   See Donald K. Fry, ‘Exeter Book Riddle Solutions’, Old English Newsletter 15.1 (Fall 1981), 22-33, for a complete bibliography of solutions to 1980. 9   Kathryn Hume, ‘The Concept of the Hall in Old English Poetry’, ASE 3 (1974), pp. 63-74. 10   Hume, ‘Concept of the Hall’, p. 64. 5 6

  The Exeter Book, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, ASPR 3 (1936), l. 4b on p. 134. 2   Exeter Book, ed. Dobbie, l. 5a on p. 143. 3   Klaberʼs Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, ed. R.D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2008), ll. 544-548 4   Exeter Book, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, pp. 26-27. 1

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Jill Frederick It is not the building itself, however, but the society it contains that defines the hall ‘as a small realm of protection and warmth’.11 Hume observes: ‘All the ceremony and ritual, all the elaborate beauty of hall-treasures and decorations, the music and the stories of past heroes impose pattern and order on hall-life, making it strikingly different from the chaos outside’.12 She further notes that ‘the hall is poetically equivalent to the mondream [human pleasure] it encloses’,13 created by the hall’s central attributes, ‘gift-giving, loyalty and wynn [joy]’.14 A fusion of just such images and motifs bind together these four riddles, thereby creating a contrast between the explicit sense of an ordered society embodied (quite literally) in the ship and its surrounding turmoil, the sea on which it sails and other overwhelming natural forces like wind and foul weather. The ship, then, becomes a safe haven on the sea, a means of assuaging, however temporarily, the solitary existence and sense of exile enforced by an ocean journey.

searoceap swifan, swiþe feran, faran ofer feldas. Hæfde fela ribba; muð wæs on middan. Moncynne nyt, fereð foddurwelan, folcscipe dreogeð, wist in wigeð, ond werum gieldeð gaful geara gehwam þæs þe guman brucað, rice ond heane. Rece, gif þu cunne, wis worda gleaw, hwæt sio wiht sie. ‘This earth is adorned with various customs, decorated with wonders. I saw a rare device turn on its journey, grind against the grit, travel exulting. That rare creature had neither hands nor eyes, shoulders or arms; on one foot it had to glide, that artful device, to travel quickly, to travel over fields. It had many ribs; its mouth was in its middle. Useful to humans, it carries provisions, works in fellowship, brings in food, and yields to men every year tribute that people enjoy, both powerful and humble. Explain if you can, wise and learned in words, what this creature is’.

This is no small metaphor when we consider, for instance, the image and implications of the cosmic hall constructed by Caedmon’s Hymn,15 that of the so-called ‘Creation Lyric’ in Beowulf,16 or the temporary haven provided for the sparrow in the story of Edwin’s conversion.17 Even as Hugh Magennis’s study, Images of Community in Old English Poetry, acknowledges that ‘the poetry presents a highly abstracted and idealized image of Anglo-Saxon social life’,18 its explication of the poetic canon demonstrates that the social system of the hall and its values expressed in the poetry remained relevant until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period (as exemplified, for instance, in The Battle of Maldon).19

This riddle arguably contains the most abstract content of the four under discussion here in that it lacks some of the mass of physical detail possessed by the other texts; the weight of its description rests on the object’s motion and its absence of features. Nevertheless, the physical details present a living object that at its core seems very like one of the monstrous races: it has only one foot on which to travel, no other limbs and no eyes, but a multiplicity of ribs and a mouth in its middle. Despite its ungainly appearance, however, its overall affect is remarkably benign and emphasizes the sense of community embodied by the hall, an ironic contrast with the marginality and Otherness of the monstrous races. The central characteristic of this creature revolves around its utility and more, the pleasure the speaker takes in that utility, especially its graceful movement.

However, the language and presentation of all four of the riddles solved as ‘ship’ create difficulties beyond the intentional conundrum set up by any riddle. Riddles 19, 64, and 36 are particularly challenging, as Riddle 19 and 64 contain runes, and line 5 of Riddle 36 contains a sequence of apparently nonsense letters and symbols. Consequently, I begin with Riddle 32 because first, it lacks the cryptic alphabets of the other three, and second, it is one of two with greatest consensus for its solution as ‘ship’:20

For instance, line 4 of the riddle acknowledges the creature travels giellende, a term suggesting exultation, while line 7 describes it as having to glide, swifan, and to move swiftly, swiþe feran. Its elegance is enhanced by its usefulness to people (l. 9 explains it is moncynne nyt), since it carries provisions, works in fellowship, brings in food, and yields tribute to men (ll. 10-13). In other words, this object embodies all the significant characteristics – albeit in brief – of the hall’s social dynamic. Words and phrases such as foddurwelan, folcscip, wist in wigeð, and werum gieldeð/gafol create a sense of plenty and security at odds with the fear of the sea generally found in the poetry. In his commentary on this riddle, Craig Williamson notes the importance of ships to Anglo-Saxon England,21 but in the poetry their utility often seems overshadowed by the anxiety aroused by the prospect of the sea-journey. Consider, for instance, the flat statements offered in Maxims I, ‘Fus sceal feran fæge sweltan/ ond dogra gehwam ymb gedal sacan/ middangeardes’ (‘The one eager to travel must perish, fated to die, and each day

Is þes middangeard missenlicum wisum gewlitegad, wrættum gefrætwad. Siþum sellic ic seah searo hweorfan, grindan wið greote, giellende faran. Næfde sellicu wiht syne ne folme, exle ne earmas; sceal on anum fet   Hume, ‘Concept of the Hall’, p. 69.   Hume, ‘Concept of the Hall’, p. 66. 13   Hume, ‘Concept of the Hall’, p. 67. 14   Hume, ‘Concept of the Hall’, p. 68. 15   The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. with trans. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1969), V. 24. 16   Beowulf, ed. Fulk et al, ll. 90b-98. 17   HE, II. 9-11. 18   Hugh Magennis, Images of Community in Old English Poetry, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 18 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 36. 19   Magennis, Images of Community, pp. 197-200. 20   Other solutions include ‘wagon’, ‘millstone’, and ‘wheel’. 11

12

  Craig Williamson, The Old English Riddles of the ‘Exeter Book’ (Chapel Hill, 1977), p. 236. 21

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Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles struggle concerning earth’s plight’).22 and in Solomon and Saturn II the even blunter assertion: ‘Dol bið se ðe gæð on deop wæter’ (‘He who goes on deep water is a fool’).23 Riddle 32 obviously lacks the sense of doom associated with travel in general, and ocean-journeys in particular.

by alliteration.27 Others besides Williamson have also solved the riddle as ‘ship’, but his explication of the text most efficiently accounts for the particulars of the riddle, a reading that the analysis here emphasizes and supports.28 The deletion of line five not only allows the riddle a greater sense of unity but also gives it an overall shape that follows the same patterns as in the other riddles under discussion here. Again, the ship is a kind of hall. The collection of figures it contains, set out in lines 8-11a, explains the challenge presented by lines 1-7 and suggests the same kinds of hall-joys Hume sets out in her construct: it bears and is created by the likenesses of horses, dogs, birds, women and men, as succinct a definition of the social group as could be wished. In addition, the language describing the motion of the object on the water suggests a kind of weightlessness, even buoyancy, at odds with the oppressive quality of the journey seen elsewhere in Old English poetry. For instance, as is frequently the case with riddle creatures, it is wrætlice wundrum gegierwed (‘curiously adorned with wonders’, l. 2), but more to the point it also is constructed primarily of creatures noted for their speed and utility to men: horses, dogs, and birds. Here again we see a ship described in terms of a human community, not only as a companion animal but also as providing a place for those companions. Moreover, this sense of speed suggests not so much the need to arrive quickly as it emphasizes the elegance of the movement, the harmony of an organized and productive society.29

On its surface, the object of Riddle 36 is just as physically awkward as Riddle 32, with a structure also defined by a collection of creatures: Ic wiht geseah on wege feran, seo wæs wrætlice wundrum gegierwed. Hæfde feowere fet under wombe ond ehtuwe monn · h · w · M · wiif · m · x · l kf · wf · hors · qxxs ufon on hrycge; hæfde tu fiþru ond twelf eagan ond siex heafdu. Saga hwæt hio wære. For flodwegas; ne wæs þæt na fugul ana, ac þær wæs æghwylces anra gelicnes horses ond monnes, hundes ond fugles, ond eac wifes wlite. Þu wast, gif þu const, to gesecganne, þæt we soð witan, hu þære wihte wise gonge. ‘I saw a creature, curiously adorned with wonders, travel along the way. It had four feet under its belly and eight over its back; it had two wings and twelve eyes and six heads. Say what it might be. It travels the water-ways; it was not only a bird but there was of each the likeness of a horse and a man, a hound and a bird, and also a woman’s countenance. You know, if you can say, that we know the truth, how the creature’s custom might go’.

Unlike the arcane line of Riddle 32, the runes of Riddle 19 cannot be set aside as irrelevant; they create the very structure of the creature under consideration: Ic on siþe seah  s R hygewloncne, heafodbeorhtne, swiftne ofer sælwong swiþe þrægan. Hæfde him on hrycge hildeþryþe  nægledne rad  Widlast ferede rynestrong on rade rofne         For wæs þy beorhtre, swylcra siþfæt. Saga hwæt ic [hit] hatte.

And on its own terms Riddle 36 certainly seems even more problematic than Riddles 19 and 64, the two containing runes, since its line 5 contains a puzzling series of words and letters:

h

monn h w M wiif m x l kf wf hors qxxs Williamson notes, ‘The cryptic line has only made solving the riddle more difficult’24 and John Niles quotes A. J. Wyatt’s observation, ‘This is one of the riddles that one wishes at the bottom of the Bay of Portugal’.25 Although Dietrich and Tupper outlined a code represented in this string of letters, allowing each of them to derive his solution,26 Williamson agrees with Krapp and Dobbie’s approach: they choose to avoid the difficulty altogether by concluding that line 5 is merely a scribal interpolation, extraneous to the text, since lines 4 and 6 are held together

‘I saw on the journey a proud horse [s r o h], brightheaded, swift, run quickly over the fertile plain. It had battlepower on its back, a man [n o m], a warrior [a g e w] rode the nailed creature. It travelled a wide path, swift-flowing on the noble way, the hawk [c o f o a h]. The journey was the brighter for such a journey-vessel. Say what I am [it is] called’.

  Exeter Book, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, p. 341.   In spite of the difficult line, other solutions to the riddle have included ‘sow and five pigs’, ‘man+woman+horse’, ‘two men+woman+horses+dog+bird on ship’, ‘waterfowl hunt’, ‘pregnant horse+two pregnant women’, and ‘hunting’. 29   Williamson’s commentary on this riddle presents the ship as a cargo vessel, propelled by both oars and sail (OE Riddles, pp. 250-1), an image that works particularly well with the idea of communal and harmonious activity.

  Exeter Book, ed. Krapp and Dobbie, p. 157, ll. 27-29a.   The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, ed. Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, ASPR 6 (1942), p. 39, l. 225. 24   Williamson, OE Riddles, p. 249. 25   J. D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 13 (Turnhout, 2006), p. 87. 26   F. Dietrich, ‘Die Rätsel des Exeterbuchs: Würdigung; Lösung und Herstellung’, Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum 11 (1859), 448-90; F. Tupper, Jr., The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Boston, 1910). 22

27

23

28

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Jill Frederick loss than in the poem The Wanderer, which begins by emphasizing the separateness of the speaker, who describes himself as anhaga, one who dwells alone (l. 1).34 The anhaga of The Wanderer is modcearig, weary at heart (l. 2b), and travels winter-cearig, winter-sad (l. 24), over the ocean’s wræclastas, exile-paths (l. 5); in his isolation what he remembers, what both torments and propels him, is the happiness of his time in hall society at the knee of his lord. And in his despair, he asks this famous set of questions that echo the same litany of losses set out in ‘The Father’s Lament’ and ‘The Lay of the Last Survivor’:

Citing Förster’s line of reasoning in his edition of the Exeter Book, Williamson explains that in Riddle 19 ‘each group of runes is to be transliterated and read backwards’, so that the anagrams spell out hors [horse], mon [man], wega [warrior], and haofoc [hawk]. 30 Riddle 19 has had similar solutions to those of Riddle 36, and while only Williamson has solved the riddle as ‘ship’,31 here, as in his commentary on Riddle 36, he recognizes the intellectual limitations of multi-part solutions.32 He points out for instance that Trautmann’s ‘horse man servant hawk’ is ‘little more than a restatement of the literal terms of the riddle’, and agrees with Kock, who ‘points out that the descriptive HORS hidden in simple runic disguise is not likely to be the solution of the riddle’.33

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa? Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas? Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga! Eala þeodnes þrym!

Along with Riddle 32, at its core Riddle 19 offers the fundamental attributes of the working hall, laid out in several well-known poetic passages. The section of Beowulf known as ‘The Father’s Lament’ enumerates by negation some of what makes the Anglo-Saxon hall the pleasant haven it must have been:

‘Where have the horses gone? Where have the heroes gone? Where is the treasure-giving? Where has the feasting gone? Where are the hall-joys? Alas, the bright cup! Alas, the warrior! Alas the lord’s glory!’ (The Wanderer, ll. 92-95b)

Gesyhð sorhcearig on his suna bure winsele westne, windge reste, reot[g]e berofrene; ridend swefeð, hæleð in hoðman; nis þær hearpan sweg, gomen in geardum, swylce ðær iu wæron.

It is not necessarily the ocean’s dangers the traveller here feels most keenly but his separation from human society, the loss of the shared life of the hall.

‘He looks sorrowing at his son’s dwelling, the winehall all in waste, the empty space, dreary and bereft; the horsemen are sleeping, the warriors in their graves; there is no sound of the harp, no games in the yard as there once were’. (Beowulf, ll. 2455-58)

In the same way, the narrator of The Seafarer emphasizes the pain he experiences alone on the water, how he … earmcearig iscealdne sæ winter wunade wræccan lastum winemægum bidroren …

The same kind of catalogue appears in the Beowulf-poet’s ‘Lay of the Last Survivor’, where he mourns the loss of seledreamas (‘hall-delights’):

‘weary-hearted endured the ice-cold sea, in the winter the exile’s path, deprived of friendly kin …’ (14-16).

Næs hearpan wyn, gomen gleobeames, ne god hafoc geond sæl swingeð, ne se swifta mearh burhstede beateð.

And as in The Wanderer, the effect of the speaker’s isolation is intensified by the backdrop of the pitiless sea, always described in terms of cold, misery, and the terrible battering by the waves. The emphasis both poems place on the cold and darkness of the ocean stands in contrast with the light and warmth, figurative and literal, of the hall.

‘No harp-joy, play of the glee-wood, no good hawk soars through the hall, nor does the swift horse stamp in the courtyard.’ (Beowulf, ll. 2262b-2265a). Nowhere, however, is the grief of isolation and exile depicted more vividly and with a more aching sense of

Clearly, the riddles solved as ‘ship’ seem to have transferred the positive attributes of the hall to the riddle object. But in addition to these kinds of basic characteristics of hall life, the diction of Riddle 19 also implies the more ephemeral quality of communal happiness often associated with the hall. The object is ‘bright-headed’ and runs over a ‘fertile plain’; its ‘wide path’ is also a ‘noble way’. Perhaps even more important, the quality of the object enhances the quality of the journey: For wæs þy beorhtre,/ swylcra siþfæt (‘the

  Williamson, OE Riddles, p. 188.   His reading has been defended, however, by Hans Pinsker and Waltraud Ziegler in the most recent scholarly edition of the riddles, Die altenenglischen Rätsel des Exeterbuchs (Heidelberg, 1985), p. 181, and further supported by Mark Griffith, ‘Riddle 19 of the Exeter Book: SNAC, an Old English Acronym’, Notes and Queries n.s. 39 (1992), 15-16. Jonathan Wilcox includes an analysis of the riddle in his article, ‘Mock Riddles in Old English: Exeter Riddles 86 and 19’, Studies in Philology 93 (1996), 180-87. See also Roberta J. Dewa, ‘Runic Riddles in the Exeter Book’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 39 (1995), 26-36. 32   These include ‘horse+man+wagon+hawk’, ‘falconry’, ‘horseman and hawk’, ‘horse+man+servant+hawk’, ‘writing’, and ‘hunting’. 33   Williamson, OE Riddles, p. 187. 30 31

  Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Oxford, 1898), s.v. anhaga. 34

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Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles journey was the brighter, the expedition of such things’, ll. 8b-9a). Griffith’s analysis of Riddle 19’s runes argues that they create the acronym, snac, a word meaning a fast ship,35 a refinement of Williamson’s solution that endorses the lightness of being and swiftness of the object.

Neb wæs min on nearwe, ond ic neoþan wætre, flode underflowen, firgenstreamum swiþe besuncen, ond on sunde awox ufan yþum þeaht, anum getenge liþendum wuda lice mine. Hæfde feorh cwico, þa ic of fæðmum cwom brimes ond beames on blacum hrægle; sume wæron hwite hyrste mine, þa me lifgende lyft upp ahof, wind of wæge, siþþan wide bær ofer seolhbaþo. Saga hwæt ic hatte.

Riddle 64 also makes extensive use of runes to create its mystery and its physical structure: Ic seah  ond  ofer wong faran, beran ; bæm wæs on siþþe hæbbendes hyht  ond  swylce þryþa dæl,  ond  Gefeah  ond  fleah ofer   ond  sylfes þæs folces.

‘My nose was in narrowness, and I from beneath the water, with the stream flowing under, with the mountain streams quickly sank, and in the sound arose over the design of the waves, near to a sailing wood with my body. I had a living spirit, when I came from the bosom of the sea and those timbers in black clothing; some of my decorations were white, which raised me, living, up high, the wind from the waves, afterwards widely carried over the seal’s bath. Say what I am called’.

‘I saw a horse [w and i] travel over land, carry a man [b and e]; for both on the way was the hope of raising a hawk [h and a], also a share of power, the warrior [þ and e] rejoiced, the falcon [f and æ] flew over the ship’s wake [ea s and p] of the people itself’. Like Riddle 19, it too has been solved as ‘ship’ only by Craig Williamson,36 and its runic sections create the same challenges as Riddle 19, perhaps more so as the meaning of the last rune, peorð, according to Bosworth-Toller, is ‘doubtful’.37 In his commentary on Riddle 64, Williamson explains how to read the runes; he uses ‘the system first outlined by Hicketier (Anglia x, 597ff.), [where] the initial letters of the words indicat[e] the disguised characters’. This process then elicits the words WIcg, BEorn, HAfoc, ÞEgn, FÆlca, EASPor.38 Again embedded in the image of the object are significant attributes of the great hall: people and the idea of loyalty evinced in words like wicg and þegn, nobility and play, given the terms for hawk, hafoc and fælca. And again the poem employs diction suggesting lightness of being at odds with the general Anglo-Saxon notion of travel (e.g. gefeah, rejoiced, and fleah ofer, flew over).

The details constructing the creature create a benign picture, with no suggestion of attack or a sense of bleak exile. The diction, in fact, creates a vibrancy and quickness that parallels the speed and grace attached to the ships in Riddles 19, 32, 36 and 64. The object of Riddle 16, with its undisputed solution of ‘anchor’, sets up an image that stands firm in the midst of the water’s turmoil, acknowledging that if it falters, it will not see its homeland again. Only in standing firm against the battle of waves and wind will it triumph: Oft ic sceal wiþ wæge winnan ond wiþ winde feohtan, somod wið þam sæcce, þonne ic secan gewite eorþan yþum þeaht; me biþ se eþel fremde. Ic beom strong þæs gewinnes, gif ic stille weorþe; gif me þæs tosæleð, hi beoð swiþran þonne ic, ond mec slitende sona flymað, willað oþfergan þæt ic friþian sceal. Ic him þæt forstonde, gif min steort þolað ond mec stiþne wiþ stanas moton fæste gehabban. Frige hwæt ic hatte.

While these four riddles create most directly the image of ship as hall, other riddles in the Exeter Book also suggest that the perspective on ships and the sea outlined above is not anomalous. As a group (numbered by Krapp and Dobbie as 10, 16, 33, 70, and 74), their solutions revolve around objects associated with ships and sea-faring. They seem to emphasize further the contrast between the hall-like communal safety and security of the ship against the rigours of the water on which they sail and the cruelty of exile from the human community. While only Dietrich has solved Riddle 10 as ‘ocean furrow’ or ‘ship wake’,39 its other tentative solutions also associate it with the sea or with water:40

‘Often I must battle with the waves and fight with the wind, together for the battle, when I depart to seek the design of the earth on the waves; the homeland is strange to me. I will be strong in the strife, if I stay still; if I fail in this, they will be stronger than I, and soon drive me away in pieces, will bear me off so that I must make peace. I resist that from them, if my tail endures and stones can hold me firm and solid against them. Learn by asking what my name is’.

  Griffith, ‘Riddle 19’, p. 15.   Other solutions include ‘ring-tailed peacock’, ‘snake eating a bird’, ‘horseman and hawk’, ‘horseman’, ‘horseman+hawk+servant’, ‘falconry’, ‘writing’, and ‘hunting’. 37   Bosworth and Toller, s.v. peorð. 38   Williamson, OE Riddles, p. 325; see also Dewa, ‘Runic Riddles’, pp. 31-33. 39   ‘Die Rätsel des Exeterbuchs: Verfasser; Weitere Lösungen’, Zeitschrift für Deutsches Alterthum 12 (1865), 232-52. 40   These include ‘barnacle goose’ (the consensus opinion), ‘anchor’, 35 36

This language echoes lines 862-5 of Christ II that detail how help comes to lead travellers to a safe harbour, where ‘waterlily’, and ‘baptism’.

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Jill Frederick they can tie their sundhengestas, ‘sound-horses’, their ealde yðmearas, ‘old wave-steeds’, to a steady anchor. In Riddle 16, we see the same image, the speaker as an exile on the sea, with the voyage as a battle.

picture, a creature standing in opposition to the sense of community and safety set up by the image of the ship. It assails that sense of security, emphasizing the terror of exile laid out in The Wanderer and The Seafarer:

Riddle 70 presents the greatest difficulty for the argument here insofar as no details connect the object directly with the sea or even water in general:

Wiht cwom æfter wege wrætlicu liþan, cymlic from ceole cleopode to londe, hlinsade hlude; hleahtor wæs gryrelic, egesful on earde, ecge wæron scearpe. Wæs hio hetegrim, hilde to sæne, biter beadoweorca; bordweallas grof, heardhiþende. Heterune bond, sægde searocræftig ymb hyre sylfre gesceaft: ‘Is min modor mægða cynnes þæs deorestan, þæt is dohtor min eacen up liden, swa þæt is ældum cuþ, firum on folce, þæt seo on foldan sceal on ealra londa gehwam lissum stondan’.

Wiht is wrætlic þam þe hyre wisan ne conn. Singeð þurh sidan. Is se sweora woh, orþoncum geworht; hafaþ eaxle tua scearp on gescyldrum. His gesceapo dreogeð þe swa wrætlice be wege stonde heah ond hleortorht hæleþum to nytte. ‘The creature is wondrous to him who does not know its custom. It sings through its sides. The neck is crooked, crafted with cleverness; it has two spans, sharp in shoulders. Its shape endures what so wonderfully stands by the way high and bright of countenance, useful for men’.

‘A wonderful creature came travelling along the way, comely from the keel called out to the land, resounded loud; its laughter was terrible, dreadful in the place, its edges were sharp. It was fierce, slow in sea combat, bitter in battle work; it carved the shield-walls, hard-ravaging. Bound with hate-runes, it spoke artfully about its own creation: ‘‘My mother is of woman-kind the dearest, she is my daughter grown up vast, as it is known to people, men among their folk, that she must in each of all the lands on earth stand in grace’’’.

Further adding to its difficulty, J. C. Pope and Craig Williamson perceive this riddle as two, solving the first (lines 1-4) as a lyre, and the second, lines 5-6, as a lighthouse.41 Taking the riddle in its entirety, however, it has in common with the other riddles associated with the sea language that defines it as social: it sings, it is high and bright of countenance, and is useful to men, providing a sense of stability along the road.

There is agreement on the solution of Riddle 33, ‘an iceberg’.43 In this instance, while the creature is conventionally wrætlicu, wondrous, it is a destructive wonder: it has sharp edges, is fierce and bitter in battle work, powerful enough to carve shield walls, hardravaging. Perhaps most frightening, the creature laughs a terrible, dreadful laughter. Magennis has discussed the different types of laughter in Old English poetry,44 and the laughter of the riddle creature falls assuredly in the category expressing ‘triumph, hostility, and scorn’.45 Magennis points out particularly that lines 3-4 of Riddle 33 evoke the same kind of ‘gloating anticipation’ found in Grendel’s interior laughter (þa his mod ahlog; Beowulf, l. 730) as the monster advances on Heorot.46 The iceberg too is monstrous, singular in the way that Grendel is singular, linked not to a community but only to an equally monstrous, perhaps even incestuous, mother. In attacking

The object of Riddle 74, solved as ‘figurehead’ by Williamson,42 is constructed of elements that suggests the hall, perhaps the cosmic hall since it evokes air, earth and water: Ic wæs fæmne geong, feaxhar cwene, ond ænlic rinc on ane tid; fleah mid fuglum ond on flode swom, deaf under yþe dead mid fiscum, ond on foldan stop, hæfde ferð cwicu. ‘I was a young woman, a grey-haired lady, and a solitary man at one time; I flew with the birds and swam in the water, dived dead under the waves with the fish, and stepped onto the land, had a living spirit’. Its people – woman, lady, man – and activities – flying with the birds, swimming with the fish – suggest a communal spirit even as it finally finds its proper home, stepping onto the earth.

  W. S. Mackie defines it somewhat more broadly, as ‘ice’ (The Exeter Book, Part 2, ed. W. S. Mackie, EETS, os, 194 (London, 1934); Gregory Jember’s reading is the odd one out, ‘the archetypal feminine’ (Gregory K. Jember, The Old English Riddles, A New Translation, Denver CO, 1976). Although Krapp and Dobbie print Riddles 68 and 69 as two separate texts, Williamson sees them as one, which he also solves as iceberg. Nevertheless, these lines provide very little in the way of descriptive detail. 44   Hugh Magennis, ‘Images of Laughter in Old English Poetry, with Particular Reference to the “Hleahtor Wera” of The Seafarer’, English Studies 3 (1992), 193-204. 45   Magennis, ‘Images of Laughter’, p. 195. 46   Magennis, ‘Images of Laughter’, p. 196. 43

In contrast to the other riddles, Riddle 33, solved by consensus as ‘iceberg’, provides the other side of the   Other solutions present the creature as a musical instrument: ‘shepherd’s pipe’, ‘rye flute’, ‘harp’, ‘hurdy-gurdy’, and ‘organistrum’. 42   Other solutions include ‘cuttlefish’, ‘siren’, ‘water’, ‘swan’, ‘soul’, ‘rain’, ‘writing’, and ‘sea eagle’. 41

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Ships and the Sea in the Exeter Book Riddles those travelling in ships, this creature takes pleasure in the combat it presses upon them and exults in their fear.

What these four riddles demonstrate, then, is another way of conceiving a significant aspect of the AngloSaxon physical world, a window on lives lived closer to the bone than we can possibly imagine, but lives that recognized the potential for pleasure in the most straitened of circumstances. Ultimately, however, it seems to me – as I have suggested elsewhere – that it is not the solutions to the Exeter Book riddles that are important but rather their language and the structures they use to create their putative solutions: ‘No matter how straightforward a riddle appears, its presumed solution does not answer an implicit question so much as interpret a social or cultural construct embedded in the text’.48 Whatever these riddles may signify in terms of their metaphorical objects, they all have in common the cluster of words that gathers together the physical components of the order and pattern of hall life and its human community that pushes away the chaos and the dark. In much the same way that the iconic story of Edwin’s sparrow emphasizes the momentary warmth and light of the hall, the respite it provides from the cold and fear, these poetic texts create not just a mode of transportation, a sea-horse, the yðmearas and sundhengestas described in Christ II, but a safe haven, a sea-house.

It makes sense that Anglo-Saxon ship imagery would employ the communal imagery of the hall. These were small boats, no matter what their function, on large waters. It does not require a maritime background to understand that of necessity, seafaring had to have been a strenuously collective effort. Maintaining the ship – following protocols for watches, repairs, daily chores – connected the lives of the men on board. The ocean would have been a harsh adversary under the most benign of circumstances, and the ship’s crew would have had to pull together – literally and figuratively – to survive, never mind to triumph, whether on a sailed ship or one propelled by oars.47 Illustrations from the Bayeux Tapestry provide some visual confirmation of the group effort involved. In the first panel of the Tapestry, as Harold departs for France, his men carry animals, a hawk and a hound, on board, as other men work the oars. Cargo ships especially would have required such a collective effort, loading, unloading, and monitoring supplies during the voyage. Later in the Bayeux Tapestry, as William moves his troops to England, the Norman ships depict men and horses, an enterprise which would certainly have required considerable vigilance and cooperation. Line 9 of Riddle 32, which explains its creature’s ‘muð wæs on middan’, suggests the holds of cargo ships presented on the Tapestry.

  See Marijane Osborn, ‘The Two-Way Evidence in Beowulf Concerning Viking-Age Ships’, American Notes and Queries 13.2 (2000), 3-6, for a brief overview of the chronology of oared and sailing vessels in AngloSaxon England.

  Jill Frederick, ‘At Cross Purposes: Six Riddles in the Exeter Book’ in Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Karen Louise Jolly, Catherine E. Karkov, and Sarah Larratt Keefer, Medieval European Studies 9 (Morgantown VA, 2008), pp. 49-76 at 50.

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Part IV The Mediterranean and Beyond

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Chapter 10 Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps Michael King ac se hwita helm hafelan werede, se þe meregrundas mengan scolde, secan sundgebland since geweorðad, befongen freawrasnum, swa hine fyrndagum worhte wæpna smið, wundrum teode, besette swinlicum, þæt hine syðþan no brond ne beadomecas  bitan ne meahton.

gold, garnet and millefiori glass shoulder-clasps, unique in their type, shape and decoration, each set measuring less than 12cm in length when fully assembled.4 They were found close together towards the west end of the burial chamber inside the ship, in a central position close to, but not adorning, the upper body of the dead king, assumed to have been buried there, according to current thinking, between c. 595 and 640.5 Each of the curved clasps consists of two halves, joined by a hinge, into which slotted a gold pin, attached to the clasp by a short chain. Ten staples on the back of each half-clasp then allowed them to be attached to a protective garment, by lacing or stitching.6

‘To guard his head he had a glittering helmet that was due to be muddied on the mere-bottom and blurred in the upswirl. It was of beaten gold, princely headgear hooped and hasped by a weapon-smith who had worked wonders in days gone by and embellished it with boarshapes; since then it had resisted every sword’. 1

The clasps were made from gold, plate garnets (possibly from Sri Lanka) backed by box-gridded gold foil, millefiori glass, and blue glass (Fig. 10.1). The ornamentation can be divided into two zones: a rectangular panel and a rounded terminal, very similar on each of the four half-clasps. Each of the rectangular panels consists of an inner field containing a pattern of three lines of five stepped rhomboid cloisons filled alternately with garnet inlay and chequered millefiori glass, separated by larger stepped rhomboid cloisons filled with garnet inlay alone. Around this field is a border of interweaving garnet-inlaid Style II animals with blue glass eyes, enclosed by lidded gold cells.

A question The Beowulf story includes a number of references to helmets ornamented with boar-imagery, which would be considered appropriate headwear for an early Anglo-Saxon warrior or king going into battle.2 The inclusion of bronze boar-heads in relief on the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet appears to fit these later literary references, and it might be assumed that boar-imagery should be regarded as having a totemic significance relating to warfare, tribal identity or the hunt.3 However, when considering the unique pair of intersecting boars on the shoulder-clasps found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, the question arises: what are the boars actually doing? The aim of this paper is to offer an interpretation of what they might be doing and why, and to suggest that the subordinate creatures in filigree around the boars are joining in the same activity. Although the boars stand out in this tour de force of early Anglo-Saxon metalwork quite brilliantly, I believe that there is more to this image than meets the eye. In venturing to understand the meaning of the image, I shall consider analogues identified in Sweden, Macedonia, Apulia, Rome and Syria/Palestine. I shall start in East Anglia and return there for my conclusion.

The curved ends of the clasps each display a remarkable pair of intersecting boars, with rear legs, backs and heads formed out of individually shaped plate garnets, and shoulders made from chequered blue millefiori glass (Figs 10.2, 10.3). Tiny sections of plate garnet are used for the jaws, front legs, crests and tails of the boars, while on one half-clasp boar-tusks made of blue glass survive intact. A central lozenge in the design is lidded with gold on three of the half-clasps, while zoomorphic gold filigree fills the spaces beneath the boars, and sets the shoulder-clasps

  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 523-35.   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1 (1975), 196; figs 111, 126-7. Although J. P. C. Kent (ibid. pp. 588-607) offered a terminus post quem for the burial of c. 625 using the coin evidence, G. Williams has now revised this to c. 595, suggesting that the burial could date roughly to any time within the four decades following the arrival of St Augustine in Kent; see G. Williams, ‘The circulation and function of coinage in conversion-period England’ in Coinage and History in the North Sea World c. 500-1250, Essays in honour of Marion Archibald, ed. B. Cook and G. Williams (Leiden, 2006), pp. 145-92. 6   Bruce-Mitford saw the shoulder-clasps as fastening the two parts of a leather cuirass, and offered the statue of the Emperor Augustus from Porta Prima, now in the Vatican Museum, as an example of how the clasps could have been worn; but see Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps’, pp. 98-101, for a reappraisal of the evidence and a cogent argument for seeing the shoulder-clasps as fastening a linen chest protector worn over a mail shirt. For Anglo-Saxon chain mail see Carla Morini, ‘OE Hring: Anglo-Saxon or Viking Armour?’ Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 13 (2006), pp. 155-72. 4 5

The shoulder-clasps Among the remarkable finds made in the royal ship-burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in July 1939 were two sets of   Beowulf, lines 1448-1454 from Beowulf and Judith, ed. Elliott van Kirk Dobbie, ASPR 4, New York, 1953, p. 45; and Seamus Heaney, Beowulf: a new translation (London, 1999), p. 48. 2   Beowulf, ed. Dobbie, lines 303-6 (p. 11), 1112-13 (p. 35), 1286-7 (p. 40), 1327-8 (p. 41). 3   R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, The Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 vols (London, 1975-83), 2 (1978), 168-71; figs. 124, 126-7; Noël Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps and armour’ in Intelligible Beauty: Recent Research on Byzantine Jewellery, ed. Chris Entwistle and Noël Adams (London, 2010), pp. 83-112, at 102-3. 1

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Fig 10.1 The Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps (© Trustees of the British Museum).

Fig 10.2 The curved end of one half-clasp (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.5b; © Trustees of the British Museum).

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Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps apart from other material from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial.7 I shall focus particularly on the curved ends of the clasps and the symbolism depicted within them. In particular, before considering the boars, I shall examine the other creatures depicted on the clasps and what they can tell us about the composition.

It is also possible to identify a two-headed serpent along the crests of the two boars on all the clasps, with the tiny rectangular cells of the crests also forming the serpent’s scaly body, and the boars’ tails doubling as the serpent’s two heads, each with a central eye, lidded with gold on three of the halfclasps (Figs 10.2, 10.4b). This simple type of serpent-head can be found on other Anglo-Saxon metalwork of the seventh century, such as on the filigree serpents of the Milton Brooch (Fig. 10.4c).13

Birds Angela Evans has proposed that the shoulder-clasps were made in an East Anglian workshop.8 While the clasps were an Anglo-Saxon creation, the zoomorphic filigree located between the heads and legs of the boars appears to have a Scandinavian ancestry.9 Although Bruce-Mitford described the filigree animals on the shoulder-clasps as ‘snake-like creatures’, there is, however, a case for interpreting the opposed animals between the boars’ heads and front legs on one half-clasp as birds (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv. 5b), with beaked heads seen in profile and bodies outlined by filigree.10 On this half-clasp, the beaks of these gold filigree birds point upwards, and they appear to have wings infilled with granular filigree, and to be perching on steps. These birds do not resemble the more common predatory type of bird, usually identified as an eagle, found on other items of metalwork from the shipburial, such as the purse mount, and if they are indeed birds, they must for the time being remain unidentified.11 The creatures in the same position on the opposing half-clasp (Inv. 5a) appear to represent serpents rather than birds, but they too point their heads upwards.

There can be little doubt that the over-arching two-headed serpent surmounting the Sutton Hoo helmet had a protective function, in both a practical and a symbolic sense. Rupert Bruce-Mitford has convincingly identified this D-sectioned tubular iron crest inlaid with silver wire as the wala surmounting a helmet described in Beowulf in lines 10304.14 George Speake has attributed a symbolic protective role to two-headed serpents in cloisonné work encircling coin-pendants from Bacton in Norfolk and Forsbrook in Staffordshire, which he dates to the same period as the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.15 The two-headed serpent is well-represented in early Germanic art, and appears to have been associated with death.16 Its role in protecting warriors against death, as seen on the Sutton Hoo helmet, transferred to Christian apotropaic imagery during the conversion, as can be seen from a bronze seventh-century Visigothic belt-plate, found in the region of Seville, which depicts a two-headed serpent over-arching and protecting the head of Daniel in the lions’ den.17 However, the Germanic two-headed serpent symbol, used here and at Sutton Hoo for divine protection, was subsequently renounced by the Church, and transformed into a symbol of evil, as on fol. 172v of the eighth-century Northumbrian manuscript, Durham B.II.30, known as the ‘Durham Cassiodorus’, where the scaly two-headed beast is trampled on by King David, in the guise of Christ the Warrior.18

Serpents Serpents also appear on the other set of clasps (BruceMitford’s Inv.4).12 Between the front legs of the boars is a coiled-up serpent with a tulip-shaped head, opening its mouth upwards and sticking out its tongue, while to either side a smaller knotted serpent points its open mouth directly downwards, onto the gold frame of the rectangular panels below (Fig. 10.4a). As in the case of the birds on the other set of clasps, the serpents on each half-clasp are slightly different. The significance of the open mouths of the serpents on this set of clasps will be returned to later.

  Compare the garnet serpent-heads of the clasps with the filigree serpent-heads on the Milton Brooch in the Victoria and Albert Museum, M109-1939. 14   R. L. S. Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, Sutton Hoo and other discoveries (New York, 1974), pp. 210-13. 15   George Speake, ‘A seventh-century coin-pendant from Bacton, Norfolk, and its ornament’, Medieval Archaeology 14 (1970), 1-16, at pp. 11-12. It is possible that the protective nature of the two-headed serpent can be traced back to the two-headed amphisbaena, the skin of which Claudius Aelian describes, in the second century AD, as offering protection against creatures that kill, not by biting, but by striking (not only wild beasts, but also men, can strike and kill): see Aelian, On Animals, Vol. II, trans. A. F. Scholfield (Harvard, 1959), ch. 8. 8. 16   See for example the two-headed serpents carved on the lids of Alemannic wooden coffins found at Oberflacht, Germany, pictured in Guida alla Sezione Altomedievale, Civico Museo Archeologica Milano, ed. S. Masseroli and T. Tibiletti (Milan, 2011), p. 32. 17   G. Ripoll Lopez, ‘Symbolic life and signs of identity in Visigothic times’ in The Visigoths from the Migration Period to the seventh century: an ethnographic perspective¸ ed. Peter Heather (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 403-430, 423-4; fig. 11-7. Is it possible that Isidore of Seville, who was familiar with the amphisbaena, might have understood the symbolism of this buckle-plate, which had belonged to a Christian and was found near Seville? See Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, 2006), ch. XII.iv.20, p. 256. 18   Richard N. Bailey, The Durham Cassiodorus, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 1978), p. 11. 13

  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 537.   Angela Evans, ‘Shoulder-clasps’ in The Making of England: AngloSaxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London, 1991), pp. 29-30. 9   I am grateful to Niamh Whitfield for giving me the benefit of her close studies of these filigree creatures and related references. See N. Whitfield, ‘Filigree animal ornament from Ireland and Scotland of the late-seventh to ninth centuries: its origins and development’ in The Insular Tradition, ed. C. E. Karkov, M. Ryan and R. T. Farrell (New York, 1997), pp. 2189; K. H. Nielsen, ‘Style II and the Anglo-Saxon elite’ in The Making of Kingdoms. Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10 (1999), 185-202. 10   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 529-30; fig. 386. 11   See George Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford, 1980), p. 81. In Anglo-Saxon ornament of the fifth to seventh centuries, George Speake has identified the eagle, or predatory bird with a curved beak, as a protective creature, like the boar and the serpent. See Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 508-12, fig. 375 for the Sutton Hoo purse mount. 12   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), fig. 386. 7 8

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Fig 10.3 Schematic drawing of the boars on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.

Fig 10.4a The serpents on one shoulder-clasp (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.4b).

Fig 10.4bThe boar crests/two-headed serpent along the curved edge of one shoulder-clasp.

Fig 10.4c A filigree serpent on the Milton Brooch (Victoria and Albert Museum, M109-1939).

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Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps Although the two-headed serpent was later relegated from overhead to underfoot, we should bear in mind its protective nature in Germanic art of the early seventh century.19 The question arises: what is the over-arching two-headed serpent protecting on the shoulder-clasps? We shall return to this question shortly.

10.5b).24 Chaney has constructed a case for the boar as a royal Anglo-Saxon cult animal, a symbol of fertility and protection which, if correct, may explain its occurrence on the belongings of the king buried in Mound 1.25 The three-dimensional boar figurines surmounting the helmets from Benty Grange in Derbyshire and Wollaston in Northamptonshire, both found in high status burials, have been interpreted as cult symbols intended to give the wearer strength and protection in battle. The gilded copper alloy boar figurine with garnet eyes found on a helmet in a richly furnished burial in a mound at Benty Grange in 1848 (Fig. 10.5c)) probably dates to the mid-seventh century (the nasal guard on the helmet bears a cross).26 The Wollaston helmet was found in 1997 in the grave of a man aged under twenty-five, and was probably also buried under a mound in the seventh century.27 Although the poem Beowulf in its surviving form was evidently written down much later, probably in a monastery, it still preserves the memory of the boar-helmet in five places in the text.28 Both gilded boar figurines surmounting helmets, like the Benty Grange example, and relief images of boars, as seen for example on the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet, are mentioned.

Animals Niamh Whitfield has also identified filigree bipeds on the same set of half-clasps that feature the birds described above, located between the rear legs of one boar and the head of the other (Bruce-Mitford’s Inv.5).20 These bipeds, again varying slightly on each half-clasp, have a pearshaped or elongated head with a large eye, a serpentine neck and body, and a hip from which a single leg emerges. Although it is not possible to identify the species of this creature, it is clearly neither a bird nor a serpent, and it must for the time-being remain an animal of indistinct species. Like the serpents described above, the heads of these animals cross over their bodies. Egon Wamers has recently emphasised the apotropaic nature of the serpentine, and often knotted, Style II creatures found decorating Christian artefacts of this period.21 The appearance of three types of filigree creature on the shoulder-clasps – creeping creatures, winged fowl and beasts of the earth – also reminds us of the three types of beasts first created by God, according to Chapter 1 of Genesis:

There are depictions of warriors wearing boar-helmets from several Swedish sites, pre-dating Sutton Hoo: for example on a bronze die for stamping foil for helmet decoration from Torslunda on the island of Öland (Fig. 10.5d), and on a decorative bronze panel on the helmet found in grave 7 at Valsgärde.29 Wamers has pointed out that the naturalistic boars seen in these depictions and on a number of small gold-foil boar figures from Bornholm are independent of Style I, and so cannot be used to demonstrate an older tradition of Germanic boar representation, leading to his conclusion that the boar in Style II originates from classical or early medieval Mediterranean art.30

God also said, ‘Let the waters bring forth the creeping creature having life and the fowl that may fly over the earth under the firmament of heaven’. And God created the great whales and every living and moving creature which the waters brought forth according to their kinds and every winged fowl according to their kind. [...] And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and cattle and every thing that creepeth on the earth after its kind. And God saw that it was good.22

The use of intersecting boars in cloisonné work on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps is unique in early AngloSaxon metalwork. George Speake has identified boarheads in cloisonné work on a pendant from Womersley in Yorkshire, and on a disc-brooch from Faversham in Kent, probably associated with the same workshop that produced the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps (Fig. 10.5e).31 However, neither the boar-heads on items of cloisonné metalwork

Boars Boars and boar heads are found decorating a number of artefacts from the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, including, in addition to the shoulder-clasps, the helmet and three hanging-bowl escutcheons (Fig. 10.5a).23 Of special interest are the boar heads in relief which decorate the ends of the eyebrows of the Sutton Hoo helmet (Fig.

  See note 3 above.   William A. Chaney, The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 1970), pp. 121-7. 26   Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, pp. 223-52. 27   Sonja Marzinzik, The Sutton Hoo Helmet (London, 2007), pp. 40-2. Kevin Leahy has suggested that a silver gilt mount in the shape of a boar’s head, with garnet eyes, found at Horncastle may also have adorned a helmet; see Kevin Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), pl. 16. See also Jennifer Foster, ‘A boar figurine from Guilden Morden, Cambridgeshire’, Medieval Archaeology 21 (1977), pp. 166-7. 28   See notes 1 and 2 above; for an English translation see Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney (London, 1999), lines 303-6 (p. 12), 1112-3 (p. 36), 1286-8 (p. 43), 1327-8 (p. 44), 1450-3 (p. 48). 29   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), figs. 156b and 164f. 30   Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace’, p. 173. 31   Speake, ‘Seventh-century coin-pendant’, pp. 5-8; fig. 4. 24 25

  Speake, Anglo-Saxon Animal Art, p. 86.   Whitfield, ‘Filigree animal ornament’, p. 221, pl.11.2. 21   E. Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace: Salin’s Style II on Christian objects’, Proceedings of the British Academy 157 (2009), 151204, at p. 182. 22   The Vulgate Bible, 1, The Pentateuch, Douay-Rheims translation, ed. Swift Edgar (Harvard, 2010), Genesis, 1:20-21, 24-25, pp. 4-7. See Wamers, ‘Behind Animals, Plants and Interlace’, pp. 159-60. 23   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial, 3 (1983), pp. 217-9, for the boar head escutcheons. 19 20

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Fig 10.5b Boar head in relief on eyebrow of the Sutton Hoo helmet (reconstruction after Bruce-Mitford, 1978).

Fig 10.5a Boar-head hanging-bowl escutcheon, Sutton Hoo ship-burial (after Bruce-Mitford, 1983).

Fig 10.5c The

gilded copper alloy boar figurine with

garnet inlaid eyes,

Benty Grange helmet, Derbyshire.

Fig. 10.5d Design

on a bronze die for stamping foil for

helmet decoration,

Torslunda, Öland, Sweden.

nor the boar figurines on helmets prepare us for the two intersecting boars on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps. While the Benty Grange boar figurine is a naturalistic three-dimensional model, the Sutton Hoo boars intersect in an impossible manner. There is no explanation from the analogues for why the front leg of each boar is raised up in the air, and why, instead of looking ahead fiercely, the Sutton Hoo boars bow down their heads so that they are touching the golden ground below (Figs 10.2, 10.3).32

Fig. 10.5e Boar-heads in cloisonné work on a pendant from Womersley, Yorkshire (left) and on a disc-brooch from Faversham, Kent (right) (after Speake, 1980).

  Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), fig. 390.

32

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Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps found on tremisses issued in Merovingian Gaul.35 Six gold tremisses, possibly ranging in date from 585 to 625, from the hoard found in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, show this device, four displaying a cross on steps, and two a croix ancrée.36 The use of this design can also be seen on the gold solidus of the emperors Heraclius and Heraclius Constantine of 613-32, used upside-down as a pendant cross in the Wilton Cross, found in Norfolk.37 The Wilton Cross has been claimed as a product of the Sutton Hoo workshop, while the ‘cross on steps’ design was later re-used as a reverse design for an Anglo-Saxon solidus produced in south-east England in the mid-seventh century.38 In an ingenious manner, the stepped cloisons containing garnet and chequered millefiori inlay in the rectangular panels of the shoulder-clasps appear to echo the ‘cross on steps’ design when viewed from all angles. As Gale-Owen-Crocker and Win Stephens have recognised, the millefiori inlay sections are carefully positioned with a cross design, occasionally orientated as a saltire or Chi, in their centre (Fig. 10.1).39 A stepped cloison of this shape, containing a garnet inlay, can be seen at the very centre of a mid-seventh century cross-pendant found in Canterbury in 1982, underscoring the deliberate Christian symbolism of this device in this context.40

If these boars are meant to follow in the footsteps of the protective, royal boars of early Anglo-Saxon, and indeed early Scandinavian, military tradition, why do they adopt the postures they do, and what purpose do they serve? The boars’ posture Let us take the raised front leg as a starting–point for examining the strange posture of the beasts (Figs 10.2, 10.3). Each hoof is stepped, in the same manner as the rear hooves, while a pine-cone shape in gold filigree is created between the front legs of the two boars. The pine-cone is treated differently on each pair of clasps (Fig. 10.1). On one pair the pine-cone displays horizontal filigree decoration (Bruce-Mitford Inv. 5), while on the other a serpent is coiled up below it and its head reaches up in front of the pine-cone shape, with its mouth open and tongue sticking out (Mitford Inv. 4; Figs 10.6a, 10.4a). Also distinctive is the lozenge shape that surmounts each pine-cone, lidded with gold on three-half-clasps, and filled with a garnet on the fourth, which appears to represent the central focus of the image. The boars’ stance seems to have been determined by the need to create the raised pine-cone shape between the front legs, and the narrow stepped hooves appear to have been deliberately shaped to create a set of filigree steps leading up to the pine-cone. The granulation of the horizontal filigree work within the pine-cone shapes on two of the half-clasps mimics the appearance of a real pine-cone (Fig. 10.6a).

Pine-cones Symbolic pine-cones can be seen in Late Antique mosaic depictions of fountains, at which harts drink, following the words of Psalm 42:1: ‘as the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God’.41 In the fifthcentury tetrachonchal baptistery of the Episcopal Church in Stobi, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia Secunda, the floor mosaics around the circular piscina are decorated with four eschatological and eucharistic compositions. In the SE panel an antlered hart and a doe approach a central cantharus to drink, while two does are

In the Roman period the pine-cone was commonly used in the round to mark graves (Fig. 10.6b) and in relief to decorate sepulchral monuments throughout the empire.33 Pine-cones were associated with the cults of Attis, Cybele and Isis, and symbolised death and rebirth, as they contained the seeds of new life. In the fifth century, a marble pine-cone was used to symbolise immortality in a Christian context, at the summit of the central tower of the tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Fig. 10.7).34 The pinecone in the centre of the design on the Sutton Hoo clasps echoes the form of pine-cones used on Roman and Late Antique monuments, and is in effect part of a ‘negative’ image, in gold filigree, of the more easily recognised boars above.

  The cross on steps design itself probably relates to the cross with a stepped base set up by Theodosius II in 417 at the altar of the True Cross in Constantine’s Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem. See Jane Hawkes, ‘The road to Hell: the art of damnation in Anglo-Saxon sculpture’ in Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly, ed. E. Mullins and D. Scully (Cork, 2011), pp. 23042, at p. 232. 36   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 1 (1975), nos. 13-16, 24-5; 620-3, at pp. 631-2. 37   Angela Evans, ‘The Wilton Cross’ in The Making of England: AngloSaxon Art and Culture AD 600-900, ed. Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (London, 1991), pp. 27-8. 38   Anglo-Saxon Coins, ed. T. R. Volk (Cambridge, 1985), no. 3, p. 23. 39   For the millefiori glass crosses in the chequerboard panels of the clasps see Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Win Stephens, ‘The cross in the grave: design or divine?’ in Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown, ed. C. Karkov, K. Jolly and S. Keefer, The Santa Crux Halig Rod Series, Volume 1 (Morgantown, WV, 2007), 117-37, at pp. 129-31. 40   Martin I. Taylor, The Cradle of English Christianity (Canterbury, 1997), p. 10. Already by the early sixth century stepped cloisons were being used to decorate Christian artefacts, such as the gold paten from Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire), see J. Lafaurie, ‘Le trésor de Gourdon (Saône-et-Loire)’, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France (1958-60), pp. 61-75. 41   Bible quotation taken from The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, Authorised King James Version (London and New York, 1949). 35

The steps beneath the pine-cone may have been inspired by a late sixth-century coin reverse showing a ‘cross on steps’, originating in the Byzantine Empire, and later

  For a Roman sepulchral pine-cone monument from Scotland (Fig. 10.6b), see L. J. F. Keppie and Beverly J. Arnold, Corpus Signorum Imperii Romani, Great Britain,Vol. I, Fasc. 4: Scotland (Oxford, 1984), no. 59, Pine-cone finial (p. 21, pl. 19). For a sepulchral monument decorated with pine-cones in relief see D. J. Smith, Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne: An Illustrated Introduction (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1974), no. 17, Tombstone from Carlisle (p. 15). 34   Roberta Michelini, ‘Pigna marmorea sulla sommità del tetto’ in Il mausoleo di Galla Placidia a Ravenna, ed. Clementina Rizzardi (Modena, 1996), pp. 210-12. 33

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Fig 10.6a The central pine-cone and steps design on one shoulder-clasp.

Fig 10.6b Roman pine-cone finial from a tomb-monument found near Inveresk Roman fort, Scotland (NMS FV 31).

Fig 10.7 Stone pine-cone on the summit of the so-called tomb of Galla Placidia, Ravenna (5th century AD).

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Fig 10.8a Pine-cone fountain and cantharus design Episcopal Church, Stobi, Macedonia.

Fig. 10.8b Pine-cone fountain and cantharus design from an apsed room, Stobi, Macedonia.

seen in the NW panel.42 In the NE and SW panels peacocks, symbols of Paradise and resurrection, flank a cantharus.43 In each of the four mosaic compositions, the fountainhead takes the form of a pine-cone, showing its distinctive seeds, from each side of which a stream of water flows in an arc into the cantharus below (Fig. 10.8a).44 Also, in each case, waterfowl flank the cantharus and arch their necks upwards to catch droplets of water from the Fountain of Life, an apt image repeated around the central piscina, which offered new life through baptism.

Double-tiered fountains with the same symbolic meaning are depicted around the baptismal font in the mosaic pavement of the Late Antique baptistery at Ochrid in Macedonia, where they are flanked by stags, birds, sheep and gazelles. Streams of water pour from a pine-cone at the top of each fountain into a circular basin on a pedestal, and then overflow into a lower basin, before running through small holes to form a stream around the baptismal font.47 A more recent discovery of a mosaic depicting two antlered harts drinking from a cantharus, in excavations on the site of the church of S. Maria in Canosa, Apulia, suggests that the symbolism of the pine-cone fountain was also known and used in south-eastern Italy by the sixth century.48

found on mosaics in the baptistery of the

Ernst Kitzinger recorded a similar mosaic composition in an apsed room in the building he described as the ‘Summer Palace’ at Stobi, which he dated to the fifth century.45 Either side of the pine-cone fountain and cantharus are an antlered hart and a waterfowl, and the symbolism is emphasised by the location of the mosaic next to an actual fountain in the centre of the floor. In this case, four streams of water flow from the pine-cone fountain-head, symbolising the four rivers of Paradise (Fig. 10.8b).46

These mosaics were meant as visions of Paradise, or Eden, as described in the Book of Genesis, where God created beasts of the sea, air and earth (Genesis 1:30) and a fountain that watered the whole face of the ground, and fed its waters into four rivers (Genesis 2:6-10). St Ambrose called the fountain in Eden fons vitae aeternae

  A cantharus was a pool which marked the centre of a courtyard in imperial and Late Antique Rome. See Margaret Finch, ‘The Cantharus and Pigna at Old St Peter’s’, Gesta 30/1 (1991), 16-23. 43   James Wiseman and Djordje Mano-Zissi, ‘Excavations at Stobi, 1971’, American Journal of Archaeology 76/4 (1972), 422-4, figs 41, 42 and 47; James Wiseman and Djordje Mano-Zissi, ‘Excavations at Stobi, 1972’, American Journal of Archaeology 77/4 (1973), 398-99. 44   Pine-cones flanked by peacocks are also found on at least one capital from the nave colonnades of the fifth-century basilica of Bishop Philip at Stobi; see R. F. Hoddinott, Early Byzantine Churches in Macedonia and Southern Serbia (London, 1963), p. 166, pl. 38e. 45   Ernst Kitzinger, ‘A Survey of the Early Christian Town of Stobi’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 3 (1946), 81-161, at p. 138. 46   An antlered hart and doe are also shown drinking from four streams, representing the four Rivers of Paradise, on the side of the fifth- or early 42

sixth-century silver reliquary found at Ain Zirara in Numidia. See Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Aldershot, 1988), pp. 259-60, fig. 168. 47   Tania Velmans, ‘Quelques versions rares du thème de la fontaine de vie dans l’art paléochrétien’, Cahiers archéologiques 19 (1969), 29-43 at p. 34, figs 4-6. 48   Roberta Giuliani and Danilo Leone, ‘Scavi archeologici 2009-10 nell’area di Piano S. Giovanni a Canosa di Puglia’, Tu in Daunios, 8 (January 2011), 2-4; Roberta Giuliani and Danilo Leone, ‘La cattedrale paleocristiana di S. Maria a Canosa: Nuovi dati sullepavimentazioni musive’, in Proceedings of XVI Colloquium of Italian Association for MosaicStudy and Preservation, Palermo, 17-20 March 2010 (Tivoli, 2011), pp. 219-42. Although the mosaic has been damaged, the outline of the pine-cone fountain-head can still be made out.

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Michael King and identified it with Christ, sapientia and the fons gratiae spiritalis.49 Certainly, by the end of the fifth century, the pine-cone had made the transition from being a pagan symbol of death and rebirth to being one of the images used to depict the Christian Fountain of Life. It is therefore possible to apply a Christian interpretation of the pine-cone to the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.

‘at St Peter’s fountain with the square colonnade’, Pope Symmachus ‘provided marble adornments, including mosaic lambs, crosses and palms’, sometime between the years 498 and 514.56 Although there is no evidence that Symmachus was responsible for moving the pigna, he did enclose the atrium, which suggests that the massive bronze pigna had already been moved before the physical barrier around the atrium was constructed.57 It is arguable that a Roman monument of such importance would not have survived intact, had it not been preserved by the Roman Church at an early date.58

The Pigna As the mission that brought Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England came from Rome, it is necessary to consider the possibility that the pigna (Italian for pine-cone), an 11-foot high massive bronze pine-cone of the first century AD, had been installed in the cantharus in the atrium in front of Old St Peter’s by the time that the shoulder-clasps were made, and was influential in their design (Fig. 10.9).50 The general consensus among scholars is that this monumental fountain-head was removed from the precinct of the Serapaeum, near the Pantheon, in the Campus Martius, to the atrium in front of Old St Peter’s in the early medieval period.51 The pigna still gives its name to a Piazza and the rione or ward of Rome where is it is said to have originally stood. The author of the twelfth-century Mirabilia Urbis Romae believed, mistakenly, that the pigna once stood on the summit of the Pantheon above a statue of Cybele, suggesting perhaps an ancient, but misunderstood, association of the monument with this area of Rome.52

Drawings and frescoes of this monument surviving from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries show a square tabernacle protecting the pigna, formed by eight porphyry columns, which were probably installed in the papacy of Stephen II (752-7).59 The tabernacle over the pigna was ornamented with four bronze peacocks brought from the second-century tomb of Hadrian, now the Castel S. Angelo.60 The peacocks were chosen for re-use on this working fountain to evoke the same symbolism of Paradise and resurrection that earned them a place in the fifth-century mosaics depicting the Fountain of Life in the baptistery of the Episcopal Church at Stobi.61 Margaret Finch has seen the pigna as coming to represent the hub of Christendom for the faithful, the equivalent of the omphalos at Delphi in the classical world.62 Possibly in imitation of this Roman symbolism, a much smaller Roman bronze pine-cone fountain, only 91cm tall, was re-used at Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen, and ornamented around the base with the names and personifications of the four Rivers of Paradise (Fig. 10.10a).63 This symbolic Roman bronze pine-cone may owe its re-use to the respect paid by the Carolingian court to the archetypal pigna fountain of Old St Peter’s, located at the centre of the

The first reference to a four-columned cantharus by Paulinus of Nola, in the late fourth century, does not mention the pigna, but it could, nevertheless, have been moved to Old St Peter’s at an early date, given the records of Christian Roman emperors closing and pulling down pagan temples in the late fourth century and the early fifth century.53 Not long after Paulinus’ death in 431, a mosaic of God being adored by the twenty-four elders was added to the east façade of St Peter’s, offering a vision of the celestial Eden.54 Evidence from the eighth century suggests that the atrium was known as ‘paradise’, and it is possible that the incorporation of the pigna in the cantharus was part of a papal vision of the atrium that is much earlier.55 The Liber Pontificalis records that

used; see Krautheimer, Rome, Profile of a City, pp. 51-2. 56   The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis), The Ancient Biographies of the First Ninety Roman Bishops to AD 715, trans. Raymond Davis, Translated Texts for Historians, 6 (Liverpool, 2010), p. 44. 57   Richard Gem (pers. comm.) has pointed out to me that installation after this date would not have been impossible: through the portals, the use of cranes or by a breach in the wall. 58   Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 18. In 663 the Emperor Constans II dismantled all of Rome’s bronze decorations, including the bronze tiles from the roof of St Mary ad martyres (the Pantheon), and sent them to Constantinople, see Davis, Book of Pontiffs, p. 70. 59   Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, pp. 17-18. 60   S. R. Pierce, ‘The Mausoleum of Hadrian and the Pons Aelius’, Journal of Roman Studies 15 (1925), 75-103. Lanciani describes the fountain as a ‘masterpiece’ of the time of Pope Symmachus, and relates how in 1613 Pope Paul V melted down two of the peacocks, with the dome, pediments and dolphins that decorated the cantharus, to provide bronze for the casting of a statue of the Madonna for S. Maria Maggiore; see Rodolfo Lanciani, Pagan and Christian Rome (London, 1892), pp. 134-6. 61   Peacocks can also be seen decorating the gable-ends of the basilica of Old St Peter’s on the earliest surviving representation of the building, in an eleventh-century Farfa manuscript, reproduced in P. Harbison, Pilgrimage in Ireland: the Monuments and the People (London, 1991), p. 16, fig. 7. 62   Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 20. The tomb of Christ in Jerusalem was also referred to as the navel of the world by Early Christian writers, for example Eucherius in his letter to Faustus, probably dating to between 414 and 449; see John Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades (Warminster, 1977), v 134, p. 55. 63   Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 22.

  P. A. Underwood, ‘The Fountain of Life in manuscripts of the gospels’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950), 43-138, at p. 47. 50   For St Augustine’s mission, see Richard Gameson, ‘Augustine of Canterbury: context and achievement’ in St Augustine and the Conversion of England, ed. Richard Gameson (Stroud, 1999), pp. 1-40. 51   Finch, ‘Cantharus and Pigna’, p. 18. 52   R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, Codice topoggraphico della città di Roma (Rome, 1946), III, 44-45 and 430. 53   Paulinus; Epistula, III, 13, in W. de Hartel, Corpus Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (1894), pp. 94-5. For the destruction of pagan temples, see Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire (Harvard, CT, 1993), pp. 758. Krautheimer notes the suppression of paganism in Rome in 395 and a decree providing for the conversion of the temples to new uses in 408; See Richard Krautheimer, Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308 (Princeton, NJ, 1980), pp. 36-9. 54   Herbert L. Kessler and Johanna Zacharias, Rome 1300: On the Path of the Pilgrim (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 191. 55   J. C. Picard, ‘Les origines du mot Paradisus-Parvis’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 83 (1971-2), 159-86. It is possible that the removal of the pigna to St Peter’s was linked to the great papal building programme of the period 432-461, when classical spolia were often re49

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Fig 10.9 The 1st century AD bronze Pigna fountain, formerly re-used in the atrium of St Peter’s, Rome, now located in the Cortile della Pigna (Photo: Anna Fox). Christian world, and alerts us to the possibility of other symbolic references to the pigna in early medieval art.64 The critical question is whether the pigna could have been moved prior to the fashioning of the Sutton Hoo shoulderclasps and therefore have been included in their decoration, as a symbolic Christian image referring to the shrine of St Peter, founder of the Roman Church. In short, it is possible that at some time in the fifth or early sixth century, the Roman Church appropriated the image of the pine-cone fountain as the Fountain of Life, and co-ordinated the removal of the massive bronze pigna fountain from a pagan temple precinct to Old St Peter’s, to mark the burialplace of St Peter and provide a symbolic centre-piece for the atrium, which later became widely known by the name ‘paradise’. The pigna could theoretically have been in place before the Roman mission to Kent in 597. However, the pine-cone may well have been significant to the AngloSaxons as a symbol of resurrection through familiarity with the general Christian symbolism of the Fountain of Life that we have observed in Late Antique Stobi, Ochrid Fig 10.10a Roman bronze pine-cone fountain re-used in Charlemagne’s palace chapel at Aachen.

  Einhard records that Charlemagne brought marble columns from Rome and Ravenna for his cathedral at Aachen. See Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth, 1969, reprinted 1983), p. 79. 64

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Fig 10.10b The Fountain of Life design interpreted on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps.

and Canosa. Although the argument for the influence of the pigna on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps is attractive, because St Augustine’s mission originated in Rome, there is currently no solid evidence to prove that it was in place in the atrium of Old St Peter’s before their manufacture.65 The Fountain of Life If we nevertheless consider the general symbolism of the Fountain of Life in relation to the Sutton Hoo shoulderclasps, it is possible to see how the central inlaid garnet shapes above the pine-cone, flanked by the millefiori front haunches of the boars, create the effect of water gushing from a fountain, with a golden lozenge as its spout (Fig. 10.10b). The crests of the intersecting boars create the impression of four streams of water, representing the four Rivers of Paradise, cascading outwards from the centre of the image. In the spaces between the front legs and heads of the boars on two of the clasps, it is also possible to see that the gold filigree birds point their beaks upwards, as if they are drinking the water falling from the fountain, or blue droplets underneath the main jets of water, represented by the chequered millefiori glass inlay. The birds, although of indistinct species, remind us of the waterfowl and peacocks approaching the pine-cone fountains on the mosaics at Stobi, where they reach forwards to catch droplets from the Fountain of Life. We also have an explanation of the bowed heads of the boars themselves, since they are clearly drinking the water that has fallen from the fountain, which is represented by   For what it is worth, the form of the pine-cone on the shoulder-clasps resembles more the shape of the pigna than that of the round-topped mosaic pine-cones at Stobi. 65

the golden ground, or rather a pool or cantharus below. In contrast to the boars with closed mouths decorating the pendant from Womersley and the brooch from Faversham, the additional cloisons between the jaws of the boars on the shoulder-clasps show that their mouths are open (Figs 10.3, 10.5e).66 They are in effect bowing down before Christ and drinking from the fons vitae. The bodies of the boars also cross over, forming a symbolic Chi shape, that evokes the name of Christ.67 The vertical filigree shown within the body of the steps on one set of clasps gives the impression of water from the fountain flowing down the front of the steps into the shallow cantharus below, where the boars are drinking (Fig. 10.6a). The posture of the boars, with only the tips of their stepped hooves touching the ground, finds an intriguing parallel on two fragments of a marble transenna panel from Palestine or Syria, upon which two harts are depicted in relief, lowering their heads to drink from the Four Rivers of Paradise emanating from a hill, upon which stands the cross of Golgotha.68 Like these antlered wild   Speake, ‘Seventh-century coin-pendant’, fig. 4.   Paired creatures are commonly found crossing each other’s bodies in Early Christian art to form a cross or Chi symbol, for example paired fish on a mosaic in the narthex pavement in the large basilica at Heraclea Lynkestis in Macedonia, and on the much later Cross of SS Patrick and Columba at Kells; see Henry Maguire, Earth and Ocean: The Terrestrial World in Early Byzantine Art (Philadelphia, PA and London), fig. 48; Peter Harbison, The High Crosses of Ireland, An Iconographical and Photographic Survey, 3 vols (Bonn, 1992), 2, fig. 346. 68   Age of Spirituality. Late Antique and Early Christian art, third to seventh century, Catalogue of the exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, November 19, 1977, through February 12, 1978, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, NJ, 1979), nos 577-8, at p. 638. The fragments of the transenna panel are now in different museums, the left-hand section is in the Baltimore Museum of Art (54.108), and the right-hand section (extensively trimmed) is in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection, Washington 66 67

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Besette swinlicum: sources for the iconography of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps harts or stags from the forest, the boars would normally be regarded as fierce (and highly dangerous) creatures. Yet the tiptoe stance of the boars on the clasps shows them balancing carefully on the steps of the Fountain of Life to drink from its waters, evoking the same sense of careful reverence as the harts on the transenna panel fragments, gingerly approaching the central cross of Christ to drink from the Rivers of Paradise issuing from its base.69 If we then re-examine the half-clasps with gold filigree serpents, it appears that the knotted serpents between the back haunches and heads of the boars have their heads pointing downwards with open mouths – in the same manner as the boars beside them –­ and that they too are drinking water that has fallen from the fountain (Fig. 10.4a). The central serpent, coiled up in front of the steps and the pine-cone, has its mouth pointing upwards and its tongue sticking out, as if it is trying to taste the water at the apex of the fountain above. We have seen how the serpent functioned as a protective creature in early AngloSaxon art, but here we see its transmutation into a creature seeking the Fountain of Life – a worshipper of Christ – on the shoulder-clasps. According to Physiologus, the way in which the serpent sloughs off its skin makes it symbolic of resurrection.70 This meaning may also have been present in the mind of the designer. There seems, therefore, adequate supporting evidence to see the imagery arrayed on the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps as representing an Anglo-Saxon vision of Paradise, in which the Fountain of Life, issuing forth the Four Rivers of Paradise, is adored by serpents, birds, and animals, representatives of the beasts of water, air, and earth created in chapter 1, verses 20-25, of the Book of Genesis (Fig. 10.2).71 Whereas we might expect harts drinking from the fountain in the Mediterranean regions, they are replaced here by boars, the familiar protective beasts that appear to be associated with early Anglo-Saxon royalty. Here then is my answer to the question posed at the outset: the boars are drinking from the Fountain of Life. The Sutton Hoo king: a lapsed Christian? There is other evidence of Christian influence in the burialchamber in the Sutton Hoo ship-burial. Two silver spoons inscribed with the names of Saul and Paul, probably conjointly symbolising the conversion of St Paul on the road to Damascus, may have been baptismal gifts to the man buried in Mound 1, perhaps from the Pope himself, a bishop, or a sponsoring Christian king.72 As the spoons D.C. (36.44). 69   This tiptoe stance can also be seen in the depiction of an incised hart on the Pictish symbol stone found prior to 1865 in digging a knoll known as Cnoc-an-Fruich near Grantown, Scotland; see The Pictish Symbol Stones of Scotland, ed. Iain Fraser (Edinburgh, 2008). This stone is now in a fine display in the Museum of Scotland (NMSX.1B.10). 70   Physiologus, trans. Michael J. Curley (Austin, TX and London, 1979), p. 16. 71   The Vulgate Bible, 1, The Pentateuch, Douay-Rheims translation, ed. Swift Edgar (Harvard, 2010), Genesis,1:20-21, 24-25, pp. 4-7. 72   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 3.1 (1983), 125-46. See also

do not match, the sponsor went to some trouble to make up the pair, to imbue them with symbolic power before presenting them to the king, who was later to be buried with them in Mound 1. The spoons probably meant something to the buried king, and suggest he may have been baptised. In addition, it is possible that the great gold buckle from the ship-burial, ornamented with zoomorphic interlace, was a Christian reliquary, in a way that has been proposed for the silver buckle from Crundale in Kent.73 The latter is ornamented with a fish, a common Christian symbol. Neither the silver spoons nor the buckle establish, of course, that their owner died a Christian. Ship-burial in a mound, as opposed to burial inside a church, rather suggests that he did not.74 That the Sutton Hoo king did not die a Christian, however, does not mean that he was never baptised, and in this connection it is worth recalling Bede’s description of a well-known baptism and apostasy: … Redwald had in fact long before this received Christian Baptism in Kent, but to no good purpose; for on his return home his wife and certain perverse advisers persuaded him to apostatize from the true Faith. So his last state was worse than the first: for, like the ancient Samaritans, he tried to serve both Christ and the ancient gods, and he had in the same temple an altar for the holy Sacrifice of Christ side by side with an altar on which victims were offered to devils.75 A royal baptism, carried out by a Roman bishop, makes a very plausible occasion for the creation of a unique pair of gold, garnet and millefiori glass shoulder-clasps, depicting an Anglo-Saxon vision of the Christian Paradise, for a newly converted king, even if that king later reverted to his old pagan religion. An Anglo-Saxon depiction of Paradise? A closer look at the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps, in the light of the imagery of the Christian Paradise described above, strongly suggests that they were made by a craftsman who was familiar with the protective beasts of the early Anglo-Saxons, but who worked with members of the Roman mission with a deep knowledge of Early Christian symbolism.76 The iconography of the shoulderD. A. Sherlock, ‘Saul, Paul and the Silver Spoons from Sutton Hoo’, Speculum 47/1 (1972), 91-5. 73   Bruce-Mitford, Sutton Hoo Ship-Burial 2 (1978), 556-60. Wamers has recently described the Sutton Hoo gold buckle as a ‘Style II-ornamented private reliquary’; see Wamers, ‘Behind animals, plants and interlace’, p. 187. 74   Bruce-Mitford, Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, pp. 23-5. See especially Martin Carver, Sutton Hoo: Burial Ground of Kings? (London, 1998), p. 165. 75   Bede, A History of the English Church and People, trans. Leo SherleyPrice (Harmondsworth, 1955, reprinted 1983), II.15, p. 130. 76   Bede records that the original Roman mission sent with Augustine included 40 members, and no doubt this number increased as the mission spread its influence: Sherley-Price, Bede, History, I.25, p. 69.

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Michael King clasps subtly subjugates Anglo-Saxon protective creatures, the boar and serpent, to the power of Christ, the Fountain of Life, from which these beasts now symbolically drink. The symbolism of the clasps suggests that members of the Roman mission worked closely with an Anglo-Saxon craftsman of immense skill to create a symbolic ‘Venn diagram’, in which elements of the old and new religions were ingeniously inter-connected and overlapped in two dimensions, while clearly showing Christ, the fountainhead, supreme at the centre, represented by a lozenge symbol surmounting the pine-cone.77 At first glance, the boars and serpents on the shoulderclasps appear to perpetuate older apotropaic imagery, with Swedish connections, found on royal items in the burial, such as the Sutton Hoo helmet, with the boars pivotal to the entire design of the rounded terminals of the clasps. Attention to detail shows, however, that these beasts were symbolically subdued and employed to protect the Fountain of Life, a raised pine-cone fountain surmounted by a lozenge-shaped fountain-head, which was ingeniously framed by their own contorted bodies. The beasts appear in a scene evoking the Paradise of Genesis, in which the iconography shows boars and serpents supplementing their traditional protective role with their new role as

supplicants, and accompanied by birds, reminding us of the peacocks and waterfowl often seen approaching the Fountain of Life in Late Antique art. If it could be established that the fountain image is actually modelled on the pigna placed in the atrium of Old St Peter’s, then the boars are not only protectors of Christ, but protectors of St Peter, the founder of the Church of Rome. By extension, this role, as defender of the Christian faith, would also be expected of their owner – the king buried in Mound 1.78 In the imagery of the clasps, is it perhaps possible to pick up echoes of Gregory the Great’s advice to his missionaries, to turn temples into churches and celebrate holy days with feasts, replacing the pagan sacrifice of animals to idols?79 The intricate design of these items of Anglo-Saxon regalia, rooted in the Germanic-Byzantine world and appropriate to a military commander, is a triumph in the accommodation of the beasts of early Anglo-Saxon royal and military tradition within the Christian universe, with the Church of Rome at its hub.80 If accepted, this interpretation of the Sutton Hoo shoulder-clasps transforms their significance, as they are possibly the first items from the ship-burial to show highly sophisticated Christian symbolism being used by an Anglo-Saxon craftsman, and being displayed on his person by an Anglo-Saxon king.81

  An expectation that he appears to have failed to live up to, given his pagan ship-burial. 79   Sherley-Price, Bede, History, I.30, pp. 86-7. 80   For the arguments for classical continuity and the European and Byzantine military context for the clasps, see Adams, ‘Rethinking the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps’, pp. 101-3. 81   Thanks are due to Gale Owen-Crocker, Niamh Whitfield, Richard Gem, Richard Sharpe, Pamela King and Martin Henig for references and advice on various subjects. The ideas in this article would never have come together without a number of guided visits to Rome and Ravenna, expertly facilitated by Éamonn O’Carragáin, and guided by Tom Brown in Ravenna, and to them I am most grateful. I would like to thank Jim Parish for advice on the presentation of this paper prior to my participation in the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies conference in March 2010, Patrick Devlin for help with Italian translations, and Tanya O’Sullivan for constant encouragement; any errors are my own. 78

  Hilary Richardson, ‘Lozenge and Logos’, Archaeology Ireland, 36, vol. 20, no. 2 (summer 1996), 24-5; Janina Ramirez, ‘Sub culmine gazas: the iconography of the Armarium on the Ezra Page of the Codex Amiatinus’, Gesta 48/1 (2009), 1-18, at pp. 5-6. 77

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Chapter 11 The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata Marilina Cesario Alone and quiet, I heard the washing of the waves; I saw the evening fall on cloud wretched Enna, the twilight come forth upon Scilla and Cariddi, and as I looked my last look towards the Ionian Sea, I wished it were mine to wonder endlessly amid the silence of the ancient world, today and all its sound forgotten. (G. Gissing, By The Ionian Sea, 1901). 1

first written source which describes Scylla, although the story probably already existed in oral form. Homer tells of Odysseus armed with two spears and seeking to attack Scylla, a monster with six heads and twelve feet, concealed in a cave, snatching dolphins, dogs, and ketoi from the sea. Scylla is described as a Hydra-like creature with the voice of a whelp.4

During his journey through the south of Italy, which he documents in By the Ionian Sea, George Gissing found himself mesmerized by the immensity, wildness and beauty of the stretch of water between Calabria and Sicily. The Strait of Messina is the setting of many mythical stories, which tell of fearful monsters, men-eating sirens, and fairy enchantresses. The name which arouses the greatest terror or compassion is that of Scylla.

There is no ambiguity concerning Scylla’s deadliness and her terrifying shape. For Homer, she is clearly not part of the natural world, and even the gods cannot defeat her; she has no human feelings and her main purpose is to plague mankind.5 Against her there is no defence, and

Scilla, a small Calabrian town, is built on a rock. Here dwelt the Homeric giant and repellent barking monster known as Scylla who, especially on stormy nights, would leave her cave in order to hurl passing ships onto the coast and devour their sailors. Scylla was terrifying herself, but she had a partner. Those who escaped her clutches were at risk from another monster, Charybdis, who lived on the other side of the Strait, under a cliff, and would swallow ships and sailors to spew out their remains. Pliny the Elder remarks: ‘In eo freto est scopulus Scylla, item Charybdis mare verticosum, ambo clara saevitia’ (‘In these Straits is the rock of Scylla and also the whirlpool of Charybdis, both notoriously treacherous’).2 This essay focuses on the Scylla myth as it appears in Aldhelm’s Enigmata (no. 95).3 It discusses, through an investigation of the classical sources from which Aldhelm drew his inspiration, whether the Anglo-Saxon poet remained faithful to his fontes, or whether he was ready to modify them according to his own audience. Representations of Scylla in the works of classical writers As a first step towards addressing these issues it is helpful to trace the evolution of the Scylla myth in the works of classical writers from which the Anglo-Saxon riddle derives. It is impossible to date with certainty when the Scylla myth came into being. Homer’s Odyssey is the   G. Gissing, By The Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy (1901, repr. South Carolina, 2009), p. 67. 2   Text and translation from Pliny, Historia Naturalis, Vol. 3, Libri VIIIXI, ed. H. Rackham (Cambridge MA and London, 1940), VIII.87, pp. 65-6. 3   I use the numbering of Aldhelm’s riddles as it appears in Aldhelm The Poetic Works, ed. M. Lapidge and J. L. Rosier (Cambridge, 1985). 1

  “‘On the other side are a pair of cliffs … Half-way up the cliff is a murky cave, facing North-West to Erebus, and doubtless it is past this, Odysseus, that you and your men will steer your vessel. A strong man’s arrow shot from a ship below would not reach the recesses of that cave. Inside lives Scylla, yelping hideously; her voice is no deeper than a young puppy’s, but she herself is a fearsome monster; no one could see her and still be happy, not even a god if he went that way. She has twelve feet all dangling down, six long necks with a grisly head on each of them, and in each head a triple row of crowded and close-set teeth, fraught with black death. Sunk waist-deep in the cave’s recesses, she still darts out her head from that frightening hollow, and there, groping greedily round the rock, she fishes for dolphins and for sharks and whatever beast more huge than these she can seize upon from all the thousands that have their pasture from the queen of the loud-moaning seas. No seaman ever, in any vessel, has boasted of sailing that way unharmed, for with every single head of hers she snatches and carries off a man from the dark-prowed ship. You will see that the other cliff lies lower, no more than an arrow’s flight away. On this there grows a great leafy fig-tree; under it, awesome Charybdis sucks the dark water down ... No, keep closer to Scylla’s cliff, and row past that as quickly as may be; far better to lose six men and keep your ship than to lose your men one and all.” So she spoke, and I answered her: “Yes, goddess, but tell me truly – could I somehow escape this dire Kharybdis and yet make a stand against the other when she sought to make my men her prey?” So I spoke, and at once the queenly goddess answered: “Self-willed man, is your mind then set on further perils, fresh feats of war? Will you not bow to the deathless gods themselves? Scylla is not of mortal kind; she is a deathless monster, grim and baleful, savage, not to be wrestled with. Against her there is no defence, and the best path is the path of flight. If you pause to arm beside that rock, I fear that she may dart out again, seize again with as many heads and snatch as many men as before. No, row hard and invoke Crataeis; she is Scylla’s mother; it is she who bore her to plague mankind; Crataeis will hold her from darting twice”’. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. W. Shewring, with an introduction by G. S. Kirk (Oxford, 1980), XII.128, pp. 144-5. 5   ‘“So I spoke, and at once they obeyed my words. I had stopped short of mentioning Scylla, an inexorable horror; the crew in fear might have left their oars and huddled down inside the hold … So with much lamenting we rowed on and into the strait; this side lay Scylla; that side, in hideous fashion, fiendish Charybdis … We had looked her way with the fear of death upon us; and at that moment Scylla snatched up from inside my ship the six of my crew who were strongest of arm and sturdiest. When I turned back my gaze to the ship in search of my companions, I saw only their feet and hands as they were lifted up; they were calling to me in their heart’s anguish, crying out my name for the last time. As when a fisherman on a promontory takes a long rod to snare little fishes with his bait and casts his ox-hair line down in to the sea below, then seizes the creatures one by one and throws them ashore still writhing; so Scylla swung my writhing companions up to the rocks, and there at the entrance began devouring them as they shrieked and held out their hands to me in their extreme of agony. Many pitiful things have met my eyes in my toilings and searchings through the sea-paths, but this was most pitiful of 4

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Marilina Cesario the best strategy is flight. The etymology which derives Scylla from skylax was first suggested by Homer himself, when he compared Scylla’s ghastly voice to that of a newborn puppy (σκύλαξ), and it is repeated in several late grammatical sources.6

postrema inmani corpore pistrix delphinum caudas utero commissa luporum. praestat Trinacrii metas lustrare Pachyni cessantem, longos et circumflectere cursus, quam semel informem vasto vidisse sub antro Scyllam et caeruleis canibus resonantia saxa.11

σκύλαξ or Latin canis is often used to describe shameless, wicked and quarrelsome people, especially women. An example is Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, where Clytemnestra is described as ‘A hateful bitch who licked her master’s hand. With what monster shall I compare her, a twoheaded vicious viper (amphisbaena), a Scylla dwelling in the rocks, the bane of mariners ...’.7 Clytemnestra is an example of destructive female malice; so is Scylla.8

‘Scylla guards the right shore, insatiable Charybdis the left ... But Scylla lurks unseen in a cavernous lair, from which she pushes out her lips to drag ships on to the rocks. Her upper part is human, a girl’s beautiful body down to the privates; below, she is a weird sea-monster, with dolphin’s tail and a belly of wolverine sort. It is advisable to fetch a long compass, although it protracts the voyage, and sail right round the Sicilian cape of Pachynum, a southernmost mark, rather than to set eyes on that freakish Scylla within her cavern vast or the rocks where her sea-blue hounds are baying’.

The development of Scylla in Greek art is quite different. Here she is not the ferocious and supernatural creature described by Homer: she is now a hybrid being, half woman half fish, often with one or more dog heads protruding from her waist.9 As Philip Hardie notes, ‘her physical appearance is quite dissimilar from the Homeric source; it is only the detail of the dogs that are attached to her human body that reminds us of Homer’s description’.10 Nothing in these scenes seems to match the intense malevolence of Homer’s monster. In fact this Scylla even appears kind and benevolent, although the dogs protruding from her waist probably hint at her bark-like voice and wildness as described in the Odyssey. Scylla clearly combines a canine and a marine element symbolizing the dangers of sea journeys. She is also portrayed as a dangerous enchantress, who belongs neither with gods nor humans. Vergil reflects artistic representations of Scylla as a personification of the dangers of the sea, whose charm and beauty disguise its lethal potential. In the Aeneid, she is human, a fair-bosomed maiden, down to the waist, but below a sea-dragon with dolphins’ tails joined to a belly of sea- blue hounds:

Vergil associates Scylla with dogs, canibus, and latrantibus inguina monstri (howling monsters girt around her waist), perhaps evoking the Homeric pun on Scylla and skulax (σκύλαε), ‘dog’, ‘puppy’. She is not merely the monster of the Odyssey, but a hybrid creature that forces together opposites: she is at once human and bestial, attractive and repulsive, beautiful and ugly. She still hides in a cave and is a threat to mariners, but she is presented more sympathetically and lyrically. Alongside the sea-monster, there developed romantic variants of the myth, such as that of Scylla, daughter of Nisus. Vergil himself in Eclogue 6 makes Solinus sing of Scylla, child of Nisus: Quid loquar aut Scyllam Nisi, quam fama secuta est candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris Dulichias uexasse rates et gurgite in alto a! timidos nautas canibus lacerasse marinis? ‘Why tell how he sang of Scylla, daughter of Nisus, of whom is still told the story that, with howling monsters girt about her white waist, she harried the Ithacan barques, and in the swirling depths, alas! Tore asunder the trembling sailors with her sea-dogs?’12

Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum inplacata Charybdis obsidet, ... at Scyllam caecis cohibet spelunca latebris ora exsertantem et navis in saxa trahentem. prima hominis facies et pulchro pectore virgo pube tenus, all”’. Ibid. XII.217-59, p. 148. 6   See Dictionnaire Étymologique de la Langue Grecque, ed. Émile Boisacq (Heidelberg and Paris, 1916), s. v .‘σκύλαζ’. 7   Aeschylus, Agamemnon, ed. J. D. Denniston and D. Page (Oxford, 1957), 1230-34, p. 47. 8   Another reference to Scylla appears in Aeschylus’s Choephori (613-22), where Scylla is the daughter of King Nisus who had a golden or purple lock of hair (depending on the source) on which his life and kingdom depended. Scylla cut off his hair while he was sleeping. This is the earliest extant appearance of the story. While in later accounts Scylla betrays her father because she is in love with Minos, here she is bribed with a golden necklace which symbolises erotic love; Aeschylus, Choephori, with an introduction and commentary by A. F. Garvie (Oxford, 1986), p. 212. 9   For artistic representations of Scylla, see George M. A. Hanfmann, ‘The Scylla of Corvey and her Ancestors’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41, ‘Studies on art and archaeology in honour of Ernst Kitzinger on his seventy-fifth birthday’(1987), 249-60. See also B. Andreae, L’Immagine di Ulisse. Mito e Archeologia (Turin, 1983), and Domenico Vasconi, Il Mito di Scilla e Cariddi nell’Odissea (Milan, 1890). 10   See P. Hardie, ‘The self-divisions of Scylla’, Trends in Classics 1 (2009), 118-47.

Although Vergil identifies this Scylla with the Homeric monster, he significantly refers to this character as the daughter of Nisus (Scyllam Nisi, 74). He thus conflates the Homeric Scylla with Scylla, the daughter of the Megaran King Nisus, who is well known for betraying her father, whose magic purple or golden lock she cut off and handed over to Minos, who at that time was besieging her city. Minos rejected her because of her treachery and sent her back to her own country. She is then metamorphosed into

  Text and translation are taken from The Aeneid of Vergil, ed. and introduction by T. E. Page (London, 1894), III. 426-31, p. 435. 12   Text and translation from Vergil, Eclogues. Georgics, Aeneid I-VI, ed. H. Rushton Fairclough, revised by G. P. Goold (Cambridge MA and London, 1916, repr. 1999), Eclogue 6, 74-9, pp. 66-7. 11

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The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata the bird ciris, as narrated by Vergil in Georgics I,13 Ovid in Metamorphoses VIII14 and Pseudo-Vergil in Ciris.15

in days to come we may be a song for men that are yet to be.19

The conflated version of Scylla from Eclogue 6, which explains the Homeric sea monster as the product of the transformation of Nisus’s daughter, becomes popular in the Augustan period,16 although Callimachus’s Hecale, frag. 90, may offer evidence for the existence of combined accounts of Scylla already in the Hellenistic period: ‘Scylla shameful woman with a name that is not a lie cut the purple lock’.17 This must be a reference to Scylla’s cutting of Nisus’s lock, thus identifying the named character (Scylla) with the Megaran princess. The phrase ‘with a name that is not a lie’ clearly suggests an etymological pun on Scylla’s name and implies a connection between the character’s name and the bitch-like lasciviousness which leads her to cut her father’s lock and betray her homeland.18 Callimachus referred to Scylla as a ‘shameful woman’ or a ‘prostitute’ because she offered herself to Minos. The association of a disgraceful woman with a dog goes back to Helen’s self-condemnation in Book VI of the Iliad:

Classical writers deliberately conflated the Homeric monster with the Megaran princess who betrayed her father either out of greed or love for Minos (according to the different versions of the story). There are minor disagreements, but most writers portray a negative character who, led by insane and uncontrollable passion, betrays her country. Her punitive transformation into a bird, a monster or a rock is a recurrent element. This is how Minos addresses Scylla upon learning of her disloyalty in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: ‘Certe ego non patiar Iouis incunabula, Creten, qui meus est orbis, tantum contingere monstrum’(‘I certainly shall not allow Jove’s cradle, Crete, which is my world, to be touched by so great a monster’).20 The reference to monstrum possibly foretells the dire consequences of Scylla’s treachery, and her transformation into a terrible monster, the Homeric Hydra-like creature with six dogs’ heads.

O Brother of me that am a dog, a contriver of mischief and abhorred of all, I would that on the day when first my mother gave me birth an evil stormwind had borne me away to some mountain or to the wave of the loud-resounding sea, where the wave might have swept me away or ever these things came to pass. Howbeit, seeing the gods thus ordained these ills, would that I had been wife to a better man that could feel the indignation of his fellows and their many revilings. But this man’s understanding is not now stable, nor ever will be hereafter; thereof I deem that he will even reap the fruit. But come now, enter in, and sit thee upon this chair, my brother, since above all others has trouble encompassed thy heart because of shameless me, and the folly of Alexander; on whom Zeus hath brought an evil doom, that even   ‘Apparet liquido sublimis in aere Nisus et pro purpureo poenas dat Scylla capillo: quacumque illa levem fugiens secat aethera pinnis, ecce inimicus, atrox, mango stridore per auras insequitur Nisus; qua se fert Nisus ad auras, illa levem fugiens raptim secat aethera pinnis’. (‘Nisus is seen aloft in the clear sky, and Scylla suffers for the crimson lock. Wherever she flees, cleaving the light air with her wings, lo! savage and ruthless, with loud whirr Nisus follows through the sky; where Nisus mounts skyward, she flees in haste, cleaving the light air with her wings’). Text and translation from Vergil, Georgics, ed. Rushton Fairclough, I. 404-10, pp. 126-8. 14   Ovid, Metamorphoses 5-8, ed. and trans. D. E. Hill (Warminster, 1992), VIII.150-151, p. 86. 15   See Ciris: a poem attributed to Vergil, ed. R. O. A. M. Lyne (Cambridge, 1978). 16   For classical conflations of the Scylla stories, see Irene Peirano, ‘Mutati Artus: Scylla, Philomena and the end of Silenus’ song in Vergil Eclogue 6’, Classical Quarterly 59.1 (2009), 187-95. 17   Callimachus, Hecale, ed. with introduction and commentary A. S. Hollis (Oxford, 1990), p. 278. See also Callimachi Fragmenta nuper reperta, ed. Rudolf Pfeiffer (Bonn, 1921), p. 34. 18   O’ Hara cites examples which suggest considerable Vergilian interest in Callimachean etymologizing: the latter poet’s borrowings or reworkings are extensive, creative, varied, not limited to programmatic passages, and often crucial for understanding the details or significance of a particular word or passage. See James J. O’Hara, ‘Callimachean influence on Vergilian etymological wordplay’, The Classical Journal 96 (2001), 369400. 13

Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata Greek mythology, through the works of classical and medieval writers, seems to have appealed greatly to the Anglo-Saxons, particularly in seventh-century Wessex and Canterbury, where pagan writers were part of the monastic syllabus.21 We are informed in Aldhelm’s letter to Leuthere, bishop of Wessex, that Latin poetry played a significant role in the curriculum at the school of Canterbury run by Theodore and Hadrian. According to Michael Herren: Pagan poets such as Vergil and Ovid would have evoked an unfamiliar world to barbarians educated in Christian schools in the early Middle Ages. Access to the Latin pagan poets would have been limited to a tiny number of churchmen with highly developed literacy skills because of many archaic Latin forms and grammatical conventions.22 No doubt commentaries and early Latin-Old English glossaries proved useful tools for Anglo-Saxon readers in the understanding of classical texts. Works like Servius’s Commentaries on Vergil, Orosius’s Historia Adversus Paganos (Book XVI), St Augustine’s De Civitate Dei (XVI.8) and of course Isidore’s Etymologiae, all containing lists of literary monsters and mythological material, were widely available. Scylla was still regarded as an important mythological character in the medieval period. References to her, whether in her monstrous shape or as a beautiful maiden, appear in many medieval authors, including

  The translation is taken from The Iliad of Homer, ed. Andrew Lang, Walter Leaf and Ernest Myers (London, 1914), VI. 344-59, pp. 122-3. 20   Text and translation are taken from Ovid, Metamorphoses 5-8, ed. Hill, VIII.99-100, pp. 108-9. 21   See Medieval Mythography (From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, AD 433-1177), ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville FL, 1994). 22   Michael W. Herren, ‘The Transmission and Reception of GraecoRoman Mythology in Anglo-Saxon England 670-800’, ASE 27 (1998), 87-103, at pp. 87-8. 19

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Marilina Cesario Servius, Fulgentius, Pseudo-Hyginus, Sallust, Isidore, Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin, and in the Liber Monstrorum.23

‘Look, the Fates gave me the name of dogs – thus does the language of the Greeks render it in words – ever since the incantations of dread Circe, who stained the waters of the flowing fountain with her words, deceived me. Weaving words, the cruel witch deprived me of thighs together with shins, and calves together with knees. Terrified mariners relate that, as they impel their ships with oars and cleave the sea, sweeping along the mighty waves while the tempest rages, where the broad blade of the oar runs through the water, they hear from afar the howling offspring that barks about my loins. Thus the daughter of Titan [Circe] once tricked me, so that I should live as an exile – deservedly – in the salt waves’.

Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, had an excellent knowledge of Vergil’s three major poems as well as Isidore’s Etymologiae, which he used for his Enigmata. Among mythical creatures, including the Minotaur, the Unicorn, and Colossus, Aldhelm devotes a riddle to Scylla, which reads: Ecce, molosorum24 nomen mihi fata dederunt (Argolicae gentis sic promit lingua loquelis), Ex quo me dirae fallebant carmina Circae, Quae fontis liquidi maculabat flumina verbis: Femora cum cruribus, suras cum poplite bino Abstulit immiscens crudelis verba virago. Pignora nunc pavidi referent ululantia nautae, Tonsis25 dum trudunt classes et caerula findunt Vastos verrentes fluctus grassante procella, Palmula qua remis succurrit panda per undas, Auscultare procul, quae latrant inguina circum. Sic me pellexit dudum titania proles, Ut merito vivam salsis in fluctibus exul.26   Michael Lapidge argues for a connection between the Liber Monstrorum and the Enigmata. See M. Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber Monstrorum and Wessex’, Studi Medievali 23 (1982), 151-92. Mercedes Salvador-Bello claims that ‘riddle collections could have been arranged according to some structural principle’ and that ‘the majority of the topics contained in section 3 of Aldhelm’s Enigmata seem to comply with the wonder category. Three motifs of this section (night, Scylla and elephant) similarly occur in the Liber Monstrorum’. See M. Salvador-Bello, ‘Patterns of compilation in Anglo-Latin Enigmata and the evidence of a source collection in Riddles 1-40 of the Exeter Book’, Viator 43, no.1 (2012), 339-74. 24   Interestingly Aldhelm prefers molosorum to canes. Molossus is a type of dog (mastiff) famed for its strength and ferocity. See Vergil, Georgics: ‘Nec tibi cura canum fuerit postrema, sed una velocis Spartae catulos acremque Molussum pasce sero pingui’ (‘Nor let the care of dogs be last in your thoughts, but feed swift Spartan whelps and fierce Molossians alike on fattening whey’), cf. Rushton Fairclough, Vergil, Georgics, III.405, pp. 204-5; Horace, Satires: ‘Terrified, they flew around the dining room, and terror grew as the great mansion echoed with the sounds of baying coming from Molossian hounds’, The Satires of Horace, trans. A. M. Juster (Philadelphia PA, 2008), II. 6.173-5, p. 105; and Lucretius, De Rerum Natura: ‘irritata canum cum primum magna Molossum mollia ricta fremunt duros nudantia dentis, longe alio sonitu rabie restricta minantur, et cum iam latrant et vocibus omnia complent’. Cf. Lucretius De Rerum Natura V, ed. and introduction by C. D. N. Costa (Oxford, 1984), V. 1063, p. 35 (‘Fierce mastiffs, when they show their teeth and grin, first grumble, in another kind of voice, then when enraged they bark with hideous noise’). The translation is taken from Lucy Hutchinson’s translation of Lucretius De rerum natura, ed. H. De Quehen (London, 1996), p. 169. 25   Tonsa is a calque of Greek χείζ (ciris), and the Latin diminutive tonsilla refers to the sea-bird into which Scylla is metamorphosed. Tonsa is a poetic and less used synonym for remus which was coined by Ennius. In this sense the word is used by Vergil in Aeneid, see The Aeneid, ed. with introduction and commentary by J. W. Mackail (Oxford, 1930), VII.28, p. 258 and in Georgics, see Rushton Fairclough, ed. Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid 1-IV, I.71, p. 102. Also tonsa is linked to tondere (to cut). Ovid playfully combines the various meanings of tonsa when he describes the Megaran Scylla’s transformation into a ciris: ‘In avem mutate vocatur/ Ciris e a tonso est hoc nomen adepta capillo’ (‘Changed into a bird, she was called ciris, and she acquired this name from the cutting of the hair’), Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. Hill, VIII.150, p. 239. See Sebastiano Timpanaro, ‘De ciri, tonsillis, tolibus, tonsis et de quibusdam aliis rebus’, Nuovi Contributi di Filologia e Storia della Lingua Latina, ed. Sebastiano Timpanaro (Bologna, 1994), pp. 87-164. It is interesting to note that Aldhelm uses remis two verses below with the meaning of ‘oar’. 26   Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald (Berlin, 1919), p. 142. The 23

Here Aldhelm alludes to the story of the [beautiful] maiden Scylla, who was loved by the hybrid sea-god Glaucus. Enraged at her refusal, Glaucus turned to Circe, daughter of the Titan, for help. Circe in turn out of jealousy of Glaucus poisoned the pool in which Scylla was bathing, and through magic incantations Scylla’s loins were turned into barking monsters. The tale is told most fully by Ovid in Metamorphoses XIII.730-XIV.74.27 Shorter versions of the story appear in later commentaries, including Servius’s Commentarii in Vergilii Aeneidos libros,28 Fulgentius’s Mitologiae,29 and Pseudo-Hyginus, who devotes a fable to it.30 James H. Pitman argues that Aldhelm ‘is certainly following Ovid here’ (Metamorphoses, 14.40-67),31 whereas Andy Orchard points out that the etymology deriving Scylla from skulax, ‘is not found either in Ovid or in Isidore’ but it is rather ‘a reflex of the sort of glossing from Greek which formed part of the range of studies available at the school at Canterbury, and for which we have ample evidence elsewhere’.32 In the first two lines, Ecce, molosorum nomen mihi fata dederunt (Argolicae gentis sic promit lingua loquelis) (‘Look, the Fates gave me the name of dogs – thus does the language of the Greeks render it in words’), Aldhelm etymologizes Scylla’s name; it is clear that the translation is that of Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier, Aldhelm The Poetic Works, p. 91. 27   The Scylla-Glaucus story was first mentioned by the Greek poetess Hedyle who lived in the third century BC. Unfortunately no manuscripts of her poem survive. However, Athenaus mentions her Scylla poem in The Deipnosophists: ‘But Hedylus of Samos (or Athens) declares that Glaucus cast himself into the sea through love of Melicertes; and Hedyle, this poet’s mother, who was the daughter of Moschine, the Attic poetess of iambic verse, records the poem entitled Scylla (Σκύλλης) that Glaucus, in love with Scylla, entered her cave carrying gifts, either cockleshells from Erythraen crag, or the still wingless young of halcyons – toys for the nymph before whom he was diffident. But even the Siren, virgin neighbour, pitied his tears; for she was swimming back to those shores and the borders of Aetna’. Cf. Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists, trans. C. Burton Gulick, 7 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1927), III, Book VII.297b, pp. 330-2. 28   Maurus Servius Honoratus, In Virgilii Carmina Commentarii, ed. George Thilo and Hermann Hagen (Leipzig, 1881), III.420, p. 134. 29   Fulgentius the Mythographer, trans. Leslie George Whitbread (Columbus OH, 1971), II.9, pp. 74-5. 30   Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae or Genealogiae, The Myths of Hyginus, ed. and translation by Mary Grant (Lawrence KS, 1960), CXCIX, p. 14. 31   J. H. Pitman, The Riddles of Aldhelm (New Haven CT, 1925), p. 78. 32   A. Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm (Cambridge, 1994), p. 149.

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The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata wordplay molosorum nomen alludes to the Greek word skulax, ‘puppy, ‘whelp’, as in Homer and Vergil. Isidore in his description of Scylla in the Etymologies does not explore this question. Aldhelm may have found the Greek etymology in a source which has not survived, or deduced it from the similarity between the name Scylla and the Greek skulax (dog). Aldhelm plays on the etymology of a name in other riddles, including Riddles xviii, the ‘ant-lion’, xxxv, ‘the night-raven’, xxviii, ‘the minotaur’, xliii, ‘leech’, l, ‘milfoil’, li, ‘heliotrope’, and lxviii, ‘trumpet’. Speaking of Aldhelm’s interest in etymology, Nicholas Howe notices that ‘Aldhelm’s practice is all the more intriguing because very few of the enigmata are difficult to solve, even without their titles … the mystery of the enigma is also the important clue. The title word or phrase offers in the obvious sense a solution but in a more esoteric, linguistic sense it may also present a riddle of its own. Since some riddles lead the reader into questions of naming and etymology, Aldhelm frequently calls attention to the problem of the nomen, usually in Latin but sometimes in Greek’.33 Etymological riddles, then, would have the function of testing the linguistic knowledge of their readers.34 It is likely that Aldhelm expected his audience to provide the Greek skulax for molosorum nomen and consequently recognise the word-play. Aldhelm was among those very few Anglo-Saxon clergymen who were familiar with Greek and arcane vocabulary.35 Scylla’s narrative voice conveys an intense and personal cri de coeur, especially at the beginning of the riddle when she expresses her own plight. She clearly attributes it to the Fates (fata) who gave her the name Scylla, almost as if her name could define her personality. There is a clear appeal to tradition at the beginning of the riddle where ‘Scylla’ is replete with ominous meanings which indicate the ethical or physical nature of its bearer. By suggesting the etymology of her name at the beginning of the narrative, Aldhelm is disclosing her true character to the reader. The etymologizing of Scylla’s name in forms of her moral identity is found in Greek and Latin authors. Ovid himself alludes to the Homeric etymology of the name Scylla in Metamorphoses VII.62-5: Quid quod nescioqui mediis concurrere in undis dicuntur montes ratibusque inimica Charybdis nunc sorbere fretum, nunc reddere, cinctaque saevis Scylla rapax canibus Siculo latrare profundo?

  Nicholas Howe, ‘Aldhelm’s Enigmata and Isidorian Etymology’, ASE 14 (1985), 37-59, at pp. 1-2. See also riddle no. 86 (Aries), where the reader is expected to be familiar with the different meanings of the Latin word aries. 34   As Patrizia Lendinara suggests, ‘the purpose is didactic, the emphasis linguistic’. Patrizia Lendinara, ‘The world of Anglo-Saxon Learning’ in The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge, pp. 264-81, at 277. 35   See M. Lapidge, ‘The hermeneutic style in tenth-century Anglo-Latin literature in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 4 (1975), 67-111. 33

‘In the open sea, Charybdis’ whirling waves that suck and spew to sink the ships she hates, and greedy Scylla, girt with savage hounds baying beside the seas of Sicily?’36 In the description of the sea-monster, Aeete’s daughter in addressing Medea, explicitly draws the reader’s attention to canes (dogs) with which she is girt.37 In Aldhelm’s riddle, Scylla’s monologue continues by telling how Circe, jealous of her, threw magic herbs into the flowing fountain in which she was bathing, and muttered a baffling assortment of magic incantations. By these carmina the maiden was metamorphosed so that the upper part of her body remained that of a woman, while she was deprived of her legs. Mariners were terrified by the barking sound issuing from her loins. The Scylla-Glaucus-Circe version of the myth seems to derive from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is the first complete account in Latin. Michael Herren states: ‘If Aldhelm knew Ovid directly such knowledge would have been unique in his period. There are no full manuscripts of the Metamorphoses prior to the eleventh century, with only fragments and scattered quotations surviving from the Carolingian period’.38 There is a prose paraphrase of the Metamorphoses by Lactantius Placidus probably designed as a schoolbook, and there are notes and comments on Ovidian works from the ninth century onwards. As Andy Orchard points out ‘All of Ovid’s major works had separate circulation for most of the medieval period, and the lines of transmission are rather confused’.39 It is true that the two oldest manuscripts of the Metamorphoses belong to the second half of the eleventh century. Where did Aldhelm then take the story from? Later Ovidian commentaries such as those of Fulgentius and PseudoHyginus do not give the complete account contained in the riddle. Michael Lapidge and James L. Rosier, although not entirely convinced, argue that, if there is a source, that must be Ovid’s Metamorphoses.40 Furthermore, Andy Orchard   Metamorphoses, ed. Hill, VII.62-5, pp. 70-1.   Ovid shows a great interest in the etymology of proper names. See Andreas Michalopoulos, Ancient Etymologies in Ovid’s Metamorphoses: a commented lexicon (Leeds, 2001); James J. O’Hara, True Names: Vergil and the Alexandrian tradition of etymological wordplay (Ann Arbor MI, 1996); Danielle Porte, L’étiologie religieuse dans les Fastes d’Ovide, Collection d’etudes anciennes (Paris, 1985), and C. Tsitsious-Chelidoni, ‘Nomen Omen: Scylla’s eloquent name and Ovid’s reply (Met. 8, 6-151)’, Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici, 50 (2003), 195-203. 38   Herren, ‘Transmission and reception’, p. 90, n.17. According to John Richmond, ‘In the fourth and fifth centuries efforts were made in aristocratic circles at Rome to prepare corrected editions of the classical Latin authors; little is known of the effects of these efforts. Nothing else survives of the direct transmission of Ovid before the Carolingian Renaissance’; John Richmond, ‘Manuscript traditions and the transmission of Ovid’s works’ in Brill Companion to Ovid, ed. Barbara Weiden Boyd (Leiden, 2002), pp. 443-83, at 447. 39   Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, pp. 145-46. J. D. A. Ogilvy states that Ovid’s Metamorphoses were ‘probably the source of a good deal of Aldhelm’s knowledge of mythology’. See J. D. A. Ogilvy, Books Known to the English 597-1066 (Cambridge MA, 1967), p. 212. 40   ‘It is difficult to know where Aldhelm found the story, if not in Ovid: no other Latin source earlier than Aldhelm contains precisely the 36 37

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Marilina Cesario

Aldhelm (Scylla)

Ovid Methamorphoses, Amores and Epistolae

fallebant carmina Circae (v.3)

Ter noviens Carmen magico; demurmurat ore Circe ... (Met. XIV. 58)

Carmina Circae quae fontis maculabat flumina verbis (vv.3-4)

Carmine dicto pectora fluminibus iubeor supponere ... (Met. XIII.952-3)

flumina verbis (v. 4)

flumina nomen (Met. XIII. 898)

Femora cum cruribus ... (v.5)

corpus quaerens femorum crurumque pedumque Cerbereos rictus ... invenit (Met. XIV. 64-65)

Vergil

Irata Circem fontem ... (Serv., comm. Aen. III. 420)

Timidas nautas canibus lacerasse marinis? (Eclogue 6)

Pavidi referent ululantia nautae (v.7)

Caerula verrunt; tonsae (Aen. III. 208 and VII. 28.X 299)

caerula findunt (v.8)

verrimus ... aequora remis (Aen. III 668 aequora verrunt; and V. 290)

Palmula qua remis (v. 10) Cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris (Met. XIV. 61) quae latrant inguina circum (v. 11)

cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris. (Aen. III 556); and candida succinctam latrantibus inguina monstris (Eclogue 6, 74-77)

Premit rabidos inguinibusque canes (Am. 3.12.21) Scylla feris trunco quod latret inguine monstris (Epistulae ex Ponto, IV.x.25)

Titania proles (v. 12)

Others

Scylla latrans infirma inguinum (Catullus, Carmen 60)

titadinis (Met. XIII. 968); quanta sit herbarum, Titani, potentia nulli... (Met. XIV.14)

Table 11.1 Parallels between Aldhelm’s Scylla riddle, Ovid, Vergil and other classical authors in The Poetic Art of Aldhelm argues that ‘the subjectmatter [in the Scylla riddle] is drawn from Ovid, fleshed out with further material from Isidore and (presumably) the Canterbury classroom, whilst the diction is borrowed from the same passage of Ovid, together with a number of further echoes from the verses of (for example) Vergil, Sedulius and Venantius Fortunatus’.41 It is difficult to prove information which he includes’. See Lapidge and Rosier, Aldhelm The Poetic Works, n. 85, p. 254. 41   Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, p. 149.

that Aldhelm knew Ovid directly; however, apart from the content of the riddle, which accords with Ovid’s account, there are verbal similarities which seem to point to a certain degree of indebtedness to Ovid. Parallel phrasing between the Metamorphoses and the Scylla riddle have been pointed out by Ehwald in his edition Aldhelmi Opera, Lapidge and Rosier in Aldhelm the Poetic Works and by Orchard in The Poetic Art of Aldhelm.42 See Table 11.1.   Ehwald in Aldelmi Opera, p. 142 and Lapidge and Rosier in Aldhelm the Poetic Works, p. 105. See also Orchard in The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, 42

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The Myth of Scylla in Aldhelm’s Enigmata

It is striking that Aldhelm refers to Circe as Titania proles rather than the more common epithet Solis filia as it appears in Pseudo-Hyginus’s Fabulae and in Fulgentius’s Mitologiae. As far as I know, Ovid’s Metamorphoses is the only extant source in which the witch is called Titadinis. This might be coincidence, but it might equally well indicate indebtedness to the same narrative material used by Ovid. Sailors terrified by the maiden girt with barking dogs (‘Pignora nunc pavidi referent ululantia nautae,/ Tonsis dum trudunt classes et caerula findunt/ Vastos verrentes fluctus grassante procella,/ Palmula qua remis succurrit panda per undas/ ... quae latrant inguina circum’) occur in Isidore’s Etymologiae: Scylla quoque feminam capitibus succinctam caninis, cum latratibus magnus, propter fretum Siculi maris, in quo navigantes verticibus in se concurrentium undarum exterriti latrari aestimant undas, quas sorbentis eastus vorago conlidit.43 ‘People tell of Scylla as a woman girded with the heads of dogs, with a great barking, because of the Straits of the sea of Sicily in which sailors, terrified by the whirlpool of waves, rushing against each other, suppose that the waves are barking, waves that the chasm with its seething and sucking brings into collision’. This follows Sallust and Vergil. However, Aldhelm’s riddle does not derive entirely from Isidore, as one might have expected, since it shares linguistic details with Vergil’s Aeneid and Eclogue 6 and Ovid’s Metamorphoses which the Etymologiae does not contain. It seems, then, that Herren and Richmond were right when they suggested that Aldhelm may have known fragments of Ovid. Fragments have survived, from the ninth and tenth centuries, containing between them most of the poem to VIII.104 but nothing after. I would argue that Aldhelm may have been familiar (also) with at least Books VII, VIII, XIII and XIV of the Metamorphoses, which would mean that more than a few scattered fragments were available to him. Ovid’s popularity in the Middle Ages is widely attested, and copies of his Metamorphoses may well have been available in Aldhelm’s time. Further verbal reminiscences (particularly from Books XIII and XIV) may appear in other Enigmata, including Riddles xxi ‘lima’ (file) and xxv ‘magnes ferrifer’ (magnet), and xxviii ‘The Minotaur’, but this needs a more detailed investigation.44 pp. 148-9, who points out verbal parallels between the Metamorphoses and Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate. 43   Cf Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi, Etymologiarum sive originum, libri xx, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), XI.3.32. Translation from Stephen A. Barney, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, 2002), p. 245. 44   See Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: World Wide Web Register, http://fontes. english.ox.ac.uk/, accessed October 2012, and Orchard, The Poetic Art of Aldhelm, pp. 145-9.

Aldhelm offers a compassionate picture of Scylla; she is depicted almost as a guiltless romantic heroine who has been turned into a monster by the cruel witch Circe. The presentation of intense female suffering expressed in lament is very close to the depiction of the girl of Metamorphoses Books XIII and XIV who is sexually victimized by a god. The account as told by Aldhelm is straightforward until the last two lines which read: ‘Sic me pellexit dudum titania proles/ Ut merito vivam salsis in fluctibus exul’ (‘Thus the daughter of Titan [Circe] once tricked me, so that I should live as an exile – deservedly – in the salt waves’). Why ‘deservedly?’ Is the girl’s metamorphosis to be read as just punishment for a crime? And if so, what sort of crime? Is she being punished for arrogance for rejecting the monstrous Glaucus, half man, half beast? In Book VIII of the Metamorphoses, when Aeneas’s fleet arrives at the entrance of the straits between Scylla and Charybdis, Ovid narrates the story of the nymph Scylla before she is transformed into a monster. It is an extensive digression that spans the remainder of Book XIII and the beginning of Book XIV. Scylla becomes the audience of Galatea’s story, which is told as a warning against arrogance. When the story is over Scylla appears naked on the shore and is spotted by Glaucus, who courts her unsuccessfully. The virgin who rejects her suitor is transformed into a hybrid figure, a woman imprisoned into a monstrous body. Fulgentius describes Scylla as ‘meretricis, quia omnis libidinosa canibus lupisque inguinal sua necesse est misceat: iuste ergo lupis et canibus mixta, quia nescit sua alienigenis devorationibus saturare secreta’ (‘[And Scylla is explained as the symbol of] a harlot, because all her lustful groin must be filled with dogs and wolves, she is then truly filled with wolves and dogs because she cannot satisfy her private parts with inroads of any other kind’).45 Scylla becomes the symbol of a prostitute because her sexual desires cannot be satisfied for her loins are filled with dogs and wolves. This hints at an ancient allegorization of Scylla where her monstrousness symbolises inguinal vice and sexual desire.46 Scylla seems then to be condemned to the same libido that has led the witch Circe to inflict this cruel and unnatural punishment on her, out of sexual jealousy at Glaucus’s unreturned passion for Scylla. According to Hardie, ‘In the Ovidian account, Scylla’s metamorphosis turns into a parable of the fall into sexuality’.47 It is likely that Aldhelm had allegory in mind when writing a riddle on Scylla.48 Another possibility is that Aldhelm is conflating different Scyllas. Does he have in mind the Scylla who was the daughter of Nisus, who betrayed her father, and who was deservedly punished for her crime? In Book VIII of the Metamorphoses, the Megaran heroine finally realises the   Text and translation are taken from Whitebread, Fulgentius the Mythographer, II.9, pp. 75-7. 46   ‘inguinis et uitium et veneris descripta libido’, cf. Ciris, ed. Lyne, 69, p. 134. 47   Hardie, ‘The self-divisions of Scylla’, p. 123. 48   See Aldhelm’s use of allegory in Riddles 63, 64 and 80. 45

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Marilina Cesario dire consequences of her actions, and in a monologue declares: nam quo deserta reuertar? In patriam? Superata iacet, sed finge manere: preditione mea clausa est mihi, patris ad ora? Quem tibi donaui, ciuis odere merentem, finitimi exemplum metuunt, obstruximus orbem terrarum, nobis ut Crete sola pateret. ‘For if I am abandoned, where am I to turn? To my fatherland? It lies defeated. But suppose it did remain: it is closed to me by treachery. To face my father? But I delivered him to you. The citizens hate me, deservedly; the neighbouring peoples are afraid of my example. I blocked off the world, for Crete alone to be open’.49 Conflations of the two Scyllas appear in Vergil’s Aeneid VI.2.86 (Scyllas biformes) and Eclogue 6, and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Amores50 and Fasti.51 The daughter of Nisus’s transformation into the Homeric monster is the origin of the sea creature’s canine features, which are reminiscences of the bitch-like character of the monster’s former self. The device whereby a character is punished by being turned into a bird or plant, the name and features of which evoke the very crime for which they are paying, is a common one. Aldhelm may have consciously created an association between the allegorical interpretation of the Homeric Scylla’s canine features as symbols of shamelessness and the lustful Megaran heroine. It is difficult to establish whether the Scylla riddle had a moral and allegorical meaning attached to it, and whether Aldhelm deliberately combined variant myths, expecting his readers to recognise the different versions. It is safe to assume that Aldhelm was testing both his audience’s linguistic and literary knowledge. And if this was the case, then this riddle must have been addressed to a literate audience, who were acquainted with classical writers as well as with Greek and Latin. Whatever the intention, Aldhelm shows great familiarity with classical authors (both Greek and Latin) as he creates a piece of poetry which brings to life an ancient myth.

  Metamorphoses, ed. Hill, VIII.110-18, pp. 108-9.   ‘Per nos Scylla patri cari caros furata capillos pube permit rabidos inguinibuscque canes; nos pedibus pinnas dedimus, nos crinibus angues’. (‘Through us Scylla stole her father’s precious lock of hair, and set rabid dogs at her thighs and groin: we granted feet wings, and hair snakes). Text and translation from Ovid, Amores: text, prolegomena and commentary in four volumes, ed. J. C. McKeown (Liverpool, 1987), I, p. 216. 51   ‘Et vos, Nisaei, naufraga mostra, canes, Hadriacumque patens late bimaremque Corinthum’. (‘And you, ye Nisaen hounds, monsters of shipwreck; she shunned the Adriatic, stretching far and wide’). Text and translation from Ovid, Fasti, ed. and translation by James George Frazer (Cambridge MA, 1931, repr. 1989), IV.500, pp. 224-5.

Adhelm may have taken the Scylla account as it stands from a later commentary on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is now lost, or more likely he blended different sources and mixed various myths from books VII, VIII, XIII and XIV of the Metamorphoses. The riddle shares verbal similarities with Vergil (particularly Aeneid and Eclogue 6) and Isidore (Etymologiae), and most strikingly with Ovid (Metamorphoses). I would therefore argue that Ovid’s Metamorphoses may have been Aldhelm’s main ‘immediate source’52 for the Scylla riddle. Aldhelm’s debt to classical authors including Ovid cannot simply be stated by linguistic similarities. Michael Lapidge claims that: In order to establish a poet’s debt to an earlier author, the verbal reminiscence must consist of a striking or unusual collocation of words, employed in the same grammatical case and the same metrical feet. But even the application of this criterion leaves much scope for individual judgement: what may strike one reader as a distinctive collocation might strike another as a commonplace. Only rarely is a verbal reminiscence so striking that it can remove, at a stroke, any doubts as to whether the later poet had read the earlier.53 Adhelm’s debt to earlier authors does not simply lie in the amount of exact words in the same grammatical case that he copied from his sources, but also in their imagery and subject-matter. In addition to some verbal echoes of the Metamorphoses, Aldhelm, in the Enigmata, shares Ovid’s obsessive attraction to the ideas of transformation,54 duality and the sometimes imperceptible boundaries between monstrosity and humanity. Acknowledgement I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for his/her valuable suggestions.

49 50

  See D. G. Scragg, ‘Source Study’ in Reading Old English Texts, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 39-58. 53   Michael Lapidge, The Anglo-Saxon Library (Oxford, 2006), pp. 112-3. 54  In relation to riddle no. 81 (Lucifer), Mercedes Salvador-Bello argues that ‘Similarly, with the allusion to his previous angelic condition and his subsequent transformation into a fallen angel or devil, it seems quite reasonable that — among the different prodigies, monsters, and metamorphosed beings of this section — Lucifer might have been selected as a fitting motif to introduce the group of wonders’. See Salvador-Bello, ‘Patterns of compilation’, p. 350. 52

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Chapter 12 Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni Katherine Barker The career of Aldhelm of Malmesbury spans the second half of the seventh century, a period characterised by a separation of academic disciplines: Anglo-Saxon from Late Antique, Germanic from Latin and, not least, Latin from Arab. Of all the dividing lines set up between academic disciplines in the western intellectual tradition, the frontier between classical and Islamic studies has proved among the most durable.1 Seventh-century East Mediterranean, Byzantine trading connections were eloquently expressed in the finds made at Sutton Hoo over 50 years ago; a material wealth represented more recently by the Staffordshire hoard.2 Yet it is almost a surprise to find that Martin Carver’s ‘Age of Sutton Hoo’3 is also the Age of Aldhelm. Further, that the course of Aldhelm’s career owed much to the Arab occupation of Byzantine Syria. A recent re-reading, re-translating – and re-thinking – of some of Aldhelm’s writing has afforded a number of insights into the period making it clear that the protoChristian Germanic imperium Saxonum – in the land Aldhelm still refers to as Britannia – was neither poor nor insular and that Aldhelm and his scholarly, clerical associates may properly be seen as part of the continental world of Late Antiquity. It is evident from his words that there were fluent Latin speakers in Britain well able to cope with his literary style; not only those mocking, plagiarising sacerdotes of the Dumnonian peninsula but among the people of lowland, southern Britain.4 Archaeology demonstrates the final decades of the seventh century to be years of a growing prosperity evidenced in both the identification of coastal and continental trading emporia and the circulation of Frisian sceattas, silver coins, which make their first appearance c. 670.5

  Hugh Kennedy, ‘Islam’ in Interpreting Late Antiquity, Essays on the Postclassical World, ed. G. W. Bowerstock, Peter Brown and Oleg Grabar (Cambridge MA and London, 2001), p. 219. 2   Kevin Leahy and Roger Bland, The Staffordshire Hoard (London, 2009). 3   M. O. H. Carver, ed., The Age of Sutton Hoo, the Seventh Century in North-western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992). 4   Katherine Barker, ‘The Carmen rhythmicum; Aldhelm, poet and composer of carmina’ in Aldhelm and Sherborne, Essays to celebrate the founding of the bishopric, ed. Katherine Barker with Nicholas Brooks (Oxford and Oakville CT, 2010), p. 255. 5   Richard Hodges, The Anglo-Saxon Achievement, Archaeology and the beginnings of English society (London, 1989), see Ch. 4, ‘The Age of Emporia’, pp. 69-114, esp. p. 74. See also Mark Blackburn, ‘“Productive” Sites and the Pattern of Coin Loss in England 600-1180’ in Markets in Early Medieval Europe, Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites, 650-850, ed. Tim Pestell and Katharina Ulmschneider (Macclesfield, 2003), pp. 20-47. Ben Palmer notes the ‘key role apparently played by ecclesiastical centres’; ‘The hinterlands of three southern English emporia: some common themes’ in Markets in Early Medieval Europe’, pp. 48-60, at 51-3. 1

Born c. 640, becoming Abbot of Malmesbury c. 680, Aldhelm died in 709/10 as Bishop of Sherborne. Aldhelm, eald helm, ‘old helmet’ was of royal blood, son of King Centwine (676-85).6 Centwine’s military prowess recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles was celebrated by his son Aldhelm in the verse carmen he composed on the dedication of the church built by Princess Bugga, his sister, see below.7 Author of a surviving Latin corpus comprising literally thousands of words8 he cites authors from across the old Roman world no less from the Hiberno/Latin, where, as Michael Lapidge has recently demonstrated, he received his early education.9 A scholar of magisterial learning, Aldhelm emerges as it were fully-fledged from the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ which, it has been argued, he and members of his West Saxon generation played a significant part in bequeathing us.10 Suffice to say the concept of a ‘Dark Age’ is not appropriate for Ireland, neither is it for the Eastern Mediterranean. Aldhelm describes himself as member of the gens germanica.11 With the arrival of Theodore of Tarsus as archbishop of Canterbury in 669, his term of office destined to span the next two decades, Aldhelm shifted his focus of attention towards the Continent – by way of the Roman Church. It was at Canterbury that Aldhelm acquired an East Mediterranean dimension to his scholarship.12 The significance of Theodore’s appointment lies in the circumstances which brought it about. Within a generation of the death of Mohammed in 632 the eastern Roman empire was overrun.13 Heraclius abandoned the former   Michael Lapidge, ‘The career of Aldhelm’, ASE 36 (2007), 15-69 at pp. 17-18.   Katherine Barker, ‘Usque Domnoniam; Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion of Wessex, another look’ in Aldhelm and Sherborne, pp. 55109, at 88-9; also Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’ in Aldhelm and Sherborne, pp. 253-7. 8   Aldhelmi Opera, ed. Rudolf Ehwald, MGH, AA15 (Berlin, 1919). For translations see Michael Lapidge and Michael Herren, Aldhelm, the Prose Works (Ipswich, 1979) and Michael Lapidge and James Rosier, Aldhelm, the Poetic Works (Ipswich, 1985). 9   M. Lapidge, ‘The career of Aldhelm’, pp. 15-69. 10   K. Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, p. 233. 11   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera; De pedum regulis: allocutio excusativa ad regem, p. 202; Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, p. 45 Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, p. 266 n.143. 12   Bede HE IV.2, Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, ed. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1991), pp. 332-337; Michael Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’ in Archbishop Theodore, commemorative studies on his life and influence, ed. Michael Lapidge (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 17-19. See also Bernard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 14-37; 41-64, and Andrew J. Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome and the Greek Popes, Eastern Influences on Rome and the Papacy from Gregory the Great to Zachararias, AD 590-752 (Lanham NY and Plymouth, 2007), pp. 163-4. 13   Walter E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the early Islamic conquests (Cambridge, 1992). See also Andrew Wheatcroft, Infidels, A history of the conflict between Christendom and Islam (London, 2003), esp. Ch. 2, ‘First Contact’. 6 7

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Katherine Barker Roman provinces of Syria and Palestine to the Arabs and Theodore was among those many East Roman/Byzantine clerics who fled west. In the year he set out for Canterbury, Constantinople itself was under siege. Scholar, diplomat and churchman, Theodore was a Syriac/Greek-speaker originally from Syria and heir to the learning of the great schools of Antioch, Edessa – and Constantinople.14 He was appointed archbishop by Pope Vitalian, an admirer of the Byzantine Greek East, whose initiatives marked a return to peace between Rome and Constantinople most particularly that concerning the long-running East Mediterranean Monothelete heresy (see pp. 117-18 and notes 75 and 76). Vitalian created a new schola cantorum in Rome ‘to provide specialised training in the music peculiar to elaborate ceremonial common in the East but hitherto unknown in Rome [which] reflects the beginnings of a “liturgical byzantinization” of the Roman Church’.15 Bede tells us Theodore was charged with setting up a regular episcopate in Britain;16 travelling to all parts he effected a major re-organisation. His concern was with orthodoxy in the fullest sense of the word, which was to be sustained and promoted, not only by the teaching of approved musical and liturgical practice, but by the proper management of tributum, ‘tribute’ – tax.17 The proceedings of those first church councils he convened in Britain are heavy in late Roman protocol.18 Theodore travelled to Canterbury accompanied by Hadrian, a churchmanrefugee from North Africa19 and Benedict Biscop, whose wealth made possible the endowment of the library at Monkwearmouth and Jarrow. ‘By carrying such awareness to far-distant England ... Theodore imported perspectives and experiences which were unique to the western world in the seventh century’.20 His arrival at Canterbury coincided with a formative phase in West Saxon expansion; the role of the newly (re)introduced Roman church in an old Roman countryside was to complement – to sanction – the imperium Saxonum. He was probably responsible for the introduction of the land charter.21 ‘Theodore was a man of deep learning, vast experience and sterling personal qualities’.22 His role in early Anglo-Saxon history should not be underestimated.

  Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’, pp. 3-19; Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome, p. 163. 15   Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome, pp. 163-5. Vitalian was to be the first of a nearly unbroken succession of Eastern popes spanning the next seventy years. 16   HE IV.2, Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 334-5; Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, pp. 134-9. 17   James Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London and Ronceverte WV, 1986), pp. 50-1. 18   Catherine Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils c.650-c.850 (Leicester, 1995), pp. 39-4; 87-8. See also Thomas F. X. Noble, ‘Rome in the seventh century’ in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, pp. 68-87. 19   Lapidge posits that Hadrian was a refugee from the Arab occupation of Cyrenaica in the 640s – also the centre of murex purple dye production. See Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, pp. 84-94. 20   Lapidge, ‘The career of Archbishop Theodore’, p. 8. 21   David Dumville, ‘The importation of Mediterranean manuscripts into Theodore’s England’ in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, pp. 97-8. See also Eric John, Land Tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1964), 1. 22   Noble, ‘Rome in the seventh century’, p. 87. 14

We find the promotion of the approved liturgy in Aldhelm’s carefully-composed wording of his carmina, ‘epic verses,’ designed for public recitation – for performance – following a well-established bardic tradition. And the liturgy not only includes song – chant – and its proper accompaniment, but precious fabrics; silk, also colour, light and incense. Attributable to Theodore is the introduction of the Byzantine church organ which Aldhelm promotes in the carmen edition of his De Virginitate.23 Theodore’s presence at Canterbury is in itself a measure of the farreaching impact on his generation of the Arab incursions into the Eastern Mediterranean. Aldhelm makes two hitherto unexplored references to the Saraceni, Saracens, the earliest in the Anglo-Saxon world. The impact of Theodore’s newly (re)imposed legislation relating to the assignment and collection of tributum ‘according to the custom of the provincia’ forms the subject of a recent paper on the Dorset-Somerset border country first visited in 1986 which witnessed the setting up of Aldhelm’s West Saxon bishopric at Sherborne.24 The apparent re-emergence of the Roman iugum as the Old English hide, earlier seen as related to some purely local circumstance, may plausibly be understood as the strategic re-instatement under Theodore of an earlier land tax order descended from late third-century legislation effected under Diocletian: legislation common to both Britannia and Syria. Sherborne, the bishopric-to-be, is a strong candidate for the siting of the church council convened at Hæthfeld in 679, long understood as located at Hatfield.25 Selected as cathedra of the new West Saxon – Roman Christian – bishopric, Sherborne yet retains elements of the curvilinear plan of a large British Christian enclosed settlement to be identified with that retrospectively recorded as *Lanprobus, the hundred-hide estate of which   Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’ pp. 243-9.   Katherine Barker, ‘Pen, Ilchester and Yeovil: a study in the landscape history and archaeology of south-east Somerset’, The Proceedings of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society 130 (1985/6), 1145. 25   Katherine Barker, ‘The Dorset/Somerset county boundary at Yeovil: Roman order from imperial to episcopal, taxation and the landscape’, Dorset Procs 131 (2010), 219-35. A case is made here for the location of the 679 Church Council of Hæthfeld at Hethefelde in stocland, the out-hundred of the episcopal manor at the heart of the bishopric-tobe, formerly part of the 100-hide British Christian estate at Lanprobi. ‘Universally accepted as Hatfield’ [Herts] the site ‘should be considered as unidentified’, Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 301, 320. An almost ‘generic’ place name, OE hæth + feld, is found in open outlying areas of large estates. The hethefelde just south of Sherborne is associated with a large ring-fenced enclosure in the episcopal manor of Holnest taken out of the great Common of Blackmore on a north-south droving route with access to the Ilchester-Dorchester Roman road and later on record as the site of an annual cattle fair – a place of seasonal assembly. A number of factors make this ‘heathfield’ a site deserving of serious consideration. Not least is the fact that it was at the 672 synod of Hertford that Theodore established the principles behind the basic organisation of the Church and launched his new policy of creating smaller dioceses (Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, pp. 62, 64). The date assigned to Hæthfeld will also fall well within the reign of Aldhelm’s father Centwine (676-85) arguably responsible for a ‘Roman style’ buildings programme at both Sherborne and Wimborne; see note 52. And thus Hæthfeld was to be located in the new West Saxon bishopric-to-be. See also note 76. It would also help explain why a document relating to Hæthfeld survives at Winchester and not at Canterbury (Cubitt, Anglo-Saxon Church Councils, 257). 23 24

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni was annexed by King Cenwealh, ‘Strong Briton’, by due process of Roman law during the early years of Theodore’s term of office following up his earlier military victory aet peonnum, ‘at pens’, a few miles downstream on the Dorset/ Somerset border. The identity of ‘Probus’ is obscure.26 Ken Dark notes how some of the most ‘Celtic’ sounding saints in the south-west peninsula can also conceal (earlier, preseventh-century) Byzantine connections.27 The scale of the *Lanprobus enclosure suggests a high-status site, a British bishopric.

Aldhelm describes the martyr Chrysanthus presented with a Serica purpureis praebens velamina peplis, Quae moritura facit fetoso viscere bombix ‘silken covering in the form of a purple robe which a dying silk-worm had produced from its fruitful womb’.32 Procopius describes how the Byzantines broke the Persian monopoly by smuggling live silkworms direct from Serinda, the region round modern Bokhara and Samarkand.33 Those people Aldhelm calls Seres – hence Serica. The silk industry was concentrated at Berytus and Tyre on the Syrian coast.

The Liturgy

Purple silk garments were available in Ireland. Aldhelm’s student is instructed to prefer the common sheepskin cloak to the fucato ostro, the painted-purple outfit, ostrum; fabric dyed with the purple blood of the murex, the Mediterranean whelk.34 Elsewhere Aldhelm speaks of fine linen shirts in coccinea, scarlet, or iacintina, bright blue, manicae sericis clavatae, necklines and sleeves embroidered with silk and shoes, galliculae, little shoes in the Gallic – French – designer-style and trimmed in rubricatis pellibus, reddyed leather.35 The Vienna Genesis manuscript presents scenes on the Temptation of Joseph by Potiphar’s wife who is shown seated in a long transparent dress and wearing red shoes. Of sixth-century date, the distinctive style is

i. Serica, silk and purpureus tincturae, purple dye Aldhelm makes many references to silk. Silken goods were among the most highly prized, high-status items from the East; love of luxurious jewels and stuffs, especially oriental stuffs, had come to Byzantium with the Roman army of the emperor Constantine, who ‘entered the Council of Nicea [325] clothed in raiment which glittered as it were with rays of light, reflecting the radiance of a purple robe and adorned with ... gold and precious stones’.28 As Aldhelm explains, something bombicinus, ‘silken’ derives from a vermis, ‘worm’ ... dirivatum nomen epitheton a bombicibus id est vermibus, quos Seres vulgo nuncupant, unde Serica vestis lentis filorum staminibus contexitur 29 ‘takes its name from the adjective bombix, the worm popularly so-called by the Seres from which garments of thin spun silk thread are woven’. In his riddle we learn how the bombix, ‘silkworm’, generates silken fibres feeding on what Aldhelm calls genista ‘broom’ (Appendix: A). Under the emperor Justinian silk became an imperial monopoly.30 The purchase of silk was the responsibility of the comes commerciorum.31   K. Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’ pp. 59-65; Fig 2.2. The Exeter Martyrology presents a St Probus of Tarsus whose Feast Day fell on 11 October (Alan M. Kent and Danny L. J. Merrifield, The Book of Probus, ‘Cornwall’s Garden Parish’ (Tiverton, 2004), p. 20). The Eve of St Probus’ Feast Day, 10 October, is the ‘deciding date’ of Sherborne’s only surviving medieval street fair known as ‘Pack Monday.’ See also K. Barker, ‘Aldhelmus Episcopus: the making and shiring of the Sherborne bishopric, Saxon, Briton and the Byzantine, Dorset Procs 134 (2013), 113-27; note 4. 27   Ken Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire (Stroud, 2000), p. 163. 28   John Gage, Colour and Culture, Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction (London, 1993), pp. 61-2. 29   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De pedum regulis: de ditrocheo, p. 176; Enigmata Aldhelmi, p. 103. C. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), p. 243 gives bombycinus -a -um, adj ‘silken’, bombycina -orum, n, ‘silk garments’ and bombycinum -i, n, ‘silk texture or web’. A word of Greek origin, Aldhelm spells it with an ‘i’ and not a ‘y’. His riddle on the alphabet, Latin elementum (alternatively abecedarium) goes far to explain his preference. See Appendix: G and note 126. Aldhelm is actively promoting the old Roman curriculum. 30   A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284-602 (Oxford, 1964), vol 2, 826-7. 31   R. C. Blockley, East Roman Foreign Policy, Formation and Conduct from Diocletian to Anastasius (Leeds, 1992), pp. 148-9 observes that ‘The Roman authorities never showed any interest in the commercial aspects of foreign trade beyond the collection of tax income at the border … indeed it is even possible that the collection of the border tax was of secondary importance to the government’s concern for security and controlling the flow of information’. The occurrence of Old English geat, 26

waru and gafol place-name elements on the early shire boundaries of Somerset/Dorset/Wiltshire has been the subject of recent work by the author (see references below); the initial shiring will have coincided with Theodore’s term of office. The bounds of the Glastonbury Abbey estate of Uplyme (S. 442) present a wægn geat ‘waggon gate’ and two names presenting an element in waru ‘ware’, respectively werboldiston and warelackeforde on the Dorset/Devon boundary. See H.S.A. Fox, ‘The Boundary of Uplyme’, Devonshire Association Report and Transactions, 102 (1970) 35-47. The Glastonbury estates of Lamyatt and Woodyates present geat names, respectively on the Somerset and Dorset shire boundaries. There is a case here for suggesting that these represent reinstated late Roman portoria which were also associated with the creation of the Sherborne bishopric. It has further been suggested that Aldhelm’s cryptic allusion to his contemporary, Helmgils, first West Saxon abbot of Glastonbury, ‘standing [helmet] hostage’ on the Up/Lyme, Dorset/ Domnonian border (see note 68) may also be understood as the latter’s responsibilities with reference to the new Roman-style bishopric-to-be as a whole: that territory represented today by the counties of Dorset and Somerset. See Barker, ‘Making and shiring of Sherborne’, also K. Barker, ‘Aldhelm “old helmet”, first bishop of Sherborne and his Helmgils, “helmet hostage”, first abbot of Glastonbury on the Dorset/ Devon coast at Lyme: the making of the West Saxon bishopric’, forthcoming. Berenika Walburg (St Andrews) noted that the seventhcentury Syriac church operated merchant syndicates on a diocesan basis, in a paper given in May 2011 at Trinity College, Oxford, ‘Commerce in the Middle East between the seventh and ninth centuries according to the Syriac Law Books’; trading syndicates which were surely known to Theodore. Original Constantinian legislation gave bishops rights to the imperial cursus publicus, see Claudia Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity (Berkeley CA and Los Angeles CA, 2005), 237. See K. Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’, pp. 95-97, and K. Barker ‘Lyme Regis is in Dorset, Uplyme is in Devon ... thoughts arising from a research seminar of September 2008’, Dorset Procs 130 (2009), 223-7, and Barker, ‘The Dorset/Somerset county boundary at Yeovil’. 32   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate: II carmen, p. 401; Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, p. 128. 33   Michael Maas, Readings from Late Antiquity, a Sourcebook, 2nd ed. (London and New York, 2010), pp. 340-1. 34   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi et ad Aldhelmum epistulae, pp. 479-80. 35   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate: II carmen, p. 318; Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, p. 127-8. See also Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England: revised and enlarged edition (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 135-6 and 161. Cf. here caligula ‘small military boot’ and gallicula, ‘small Gallic shoe’, ‘galosh’; Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, pp. 270, 801.

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Katherine Barker strongly suggestive of a Syrian origin, an iconography surely known to Theodore.36 Plain head coverings, Aldhelm complains, gave way to those coloratibus mafortibus ‘which stitched to the clips on the head-bands, fall liberally to their ankles’.37 Maforte or mafortium, not a classical Latin word became, as Penelope Walton Rogers notes, an increasingly common word in Late Antique sources. ‘Illustrations of Aldhelm’s words can be found in Byzantine art, where the Virgin Mary ... is regularly depicted in a dark grey or black veil over a white coif, while ladies of the court wear white or patterned veils’.38 The silk Aldhelm mentions was dyed purple. The purple dye from the murex trunculus was expensive and thus subject to strict control; centre of production was Cyrenaica (see note 19). A cheaper version was obtainable from a British shellfish which Bede mentions.39 But in Aldhelm’s careful reference to purpureae pretiosis tincturae muricibus ‘precious purples of murex dye’ and purpureus tincturae ‘purple dye’ and again de fucorum muricibus,40 ‘murex [-dyed] cloth’, he is surely referring to the imported material. And wool too could be dyed purple. Aldhelm here cites Cyprian, bishop of the Africans, ‘For God did not create scarlet and purple sheep, nor teach dyeing and colouring of wood with the juice of plants or with shell fish, the ram himself in the meadows will [not] alter his fleece, now softly with ruby-purple dye, now with saffron yellow’. (‘Neque enim Deus coccineas aut purpureas oves fecit aut herbarum sucis et conquiliis tingere et colorare lanas docuit .... Ipse sed in pratis aries iam suave rubenti murice [with murex], iam croceo mutavit vellera luto’).41 Carole Biggam observes that the cost of imported Byzantine cloth would probably have been ‘astronomical’.42 Anthea Harris43 notes evidence of increasing silk exportation from the East Mediterranean in the later seventh century and   ‘Potiphar was a high official of Pharaoh (Genesis 39: 1). The patriarch Joseph prospered in Egypt and was promoted in the household of Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife accused Joseph of sexual harassment and he was temporarily imprisoned’; W. R. F. Browning, A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford, 1997), pp. 299-300. Kurt Weitzmann, Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination (London, 1977), pp. 16, 17; also Pl. 26; Vienna Genesis pict. 31, ‘Temptation of Joseph’; Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek. The image of the red shoes is still with us. 37   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), p. 318. 38   Penelope Walton Rogers, Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England (York, 2007), pp. 164-7. 39   HE, I.1, Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 14-15. ‘There is also a great abundance of whelks, from which a scarlet-coloured dye is made’, Sunt et cocleae satis superque abundantes, quibus tinctura coccinei coloris conficitur. See C. P. Biggam, ‘Knowledge of whelk dyes and pigments in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 35 (2006), 23-56 , p. 47. 40   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), pp. 314, 316, 244. 41   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), pp. 315-16, see also Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, pp. 125-6. 42   Biggam, ‘Knowledge of whelk dyes’. 43   Anthea Harris, Byzantium, Britain and the West, The Archaeology of Cultural Identity AD 400-650 (Stroud, 2003), pp. 175-6. C. R Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: a new perspective (Manchester, 1982), p. 155, notes that trade with the Baltic ports may also have been important; Scandinavians in Russia traded their furs for Byzantine and Arab silks and until the ninth century, the Baltic trade was dominated by the Frisians.

has plotted archaeological evidence of fifth to seventh century Coptic tapestries and Byzantine silks from trading and other sites along the Rhine, providing further evidence of that prosperity archaeologically well-attested in the trading emporia along the English Channel coast. High-born and following Byzantine liturgical precedent, Aldhelm wore such garments himself. William of Malmesbury describes Aldhelm’s chasuble ‘as of fine thread, dyed a full deep scarlet … with black roundels of peacocks worked inside’.44 (For Aldhelm’s interest in the peacock, pavo, see Appendix: B). As Aldhelm himself observed ‘Coloured fabrics are much nicer than plain ones … in the case of woven fabrics, of carpets, if the threads dyed with purple (purpureis), and various hues (diversis colorum varietibus fucatae), do not run here and there in the thickness of the weave with a variety of pictures (diversis imaginum), but are made the same colour (uniformi coloris), are not so pleasing to the eye’.45 Gage notes that ‘[a] taste for Persian fabrics became so strong in the seventh century that the Emperor Heraclius brought Iranian weavers to Constantinople and oriental stuffs were widely imitated within the Empire’.46 The words Aldhelm uses for colour are a subject in their own right.47 Aldhelm also refers to portraiture: ‘Artists of portraits of the nobility and painters of royal personages are accustomed to adorn their images with gilded flakes of metal (petalis toracidas) the royal icon (iconisma regale) [is] painted with its ornamental wreath.’ He uses the Greek word ‘icon’. It was the image that was held in high regard, not the ‘despicable person of the painter’ (dispicabilis persona pictoris).48 Aldhelm here cites Gregory the Great in his opinion of artists. As observed (note 47) Aldhelm was clearly not a ‘hands on’ painter.

36

  William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England (Gesta Pontificum Anglorum), trans. David Preest (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 249-50. Aldhelm wrote a riddle on a peacock, pavo, the flesh of which, he noted, never decays; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi Enigmata, pp. 103-4; Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, p. 73. ‘Archaeologists yesterday presented a newly uncovered Byzantine church in the Judean hills, with a mosaic floor depicting lions, foxes, fish and peacocks … a small basilica dating from the fifth century … one of the most beautiful mosaics to be uncovered in Israel in recent years’. Note published in The Guardian, Wednesday 2 February 2011. 45   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), p. 244. 46   Gage, Colour and Culture, pp. 62-3. 47   Ehwald’s index to his Aldhelmi Opera pp. 555-738 lists twenty eight colours of which twelve are used in Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum verse epic: words presenting an iconography and meaning and found in a wide variety of combinations, some clearly of Greek origin. Aldhelm’s words may be compared with those pigments listed by Theophilus (who gives several sources of purple); the words used by Aldhelm suggest he was not a ‘hands-on’ craftsman. See An Essay upon various arts in three books by Theophilus called also Rugerus, priest and monk forming an Encyclopaedia of Christian Art of the eleventh century, trans. Robert Hendrie, with notes (London, 1847). 48   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), pp. 321-2; Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, p. 131. 44

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni ii. Lux, light and ambrosia, incense John Gage notes that Light was a major feature of the Eastern liturgy. ‘In the early Byzantine church the windows themselves … were part of a complex iconography of light’. He cites a Syrian hymn: ‘There shines in the sanctuary a single light, entering through three windows on the wall; an eloquent symbol’. ‘It seems clear that the Early Christian or Byzantine church was to be experienced as not so much a receptacle as a generator of light’.49 There are immediate echoes here of Aldhelm’s words in his poetic dedicatory carmen composed for Princess Bugga’s church:

received by Sergius in Rome probably accompanied by Cædwalla, Centwine’s successor.53 As Aldhelm writes in his dedication to Bugga’s church: Istam nempe diem, qua templi festa coruscant, Nativitate sua sacravit virgo Maria, Quam iugitur renovant Augusti tempora mensis, Dividitur medio dum torrens Sextilis orbe; Qui nobis iterum restaurat gaudia mentis, Dum vicibus redeunt solemnia festa Mariae Et veneranda piis flagrant altaria donis.54 ‘Further to that of which we speak [is] surely the day which the Virgin Mary by her nativity, consecrated the shining festival of the templum which in perpetuity is confirmed, renewed by the month of August during [which] the middle of its cycle burning hot Sextilis (i.e. the Roman month of August) is divided. By which our peace of spiritual well-being be once again restored where there returns by regular succession (i.e. by the calendar) the solemn feast of Mary and the revered high altars are redolent with blessed incense’.

Haec domus interius resplendet luce serena, Quam sol per vitreas illustret forte fenestras Limpida quadrato diffundens lumina templo. Plurima basilicae sunt ornamenta recentis:50 ‘The church (domus), glows with gentle light on occasions when the sun shines through the glass windows diffusing clear light, four square, throughout the templum. Many are the furnishings of the new basilica’. Aldhelm uses the words domus, templum and basilica, all words which mean ‘church’ but with subtle differences of meaning. His words provide us with a reference to the Marian liturgy first introduced in Rome by Pope Sergius (686701). Sergius was born in Sicily, a region which ‘had experienced the impact of the East from antique times’. His family came from Antioch.51 The four festivals of the Blessed Virgin, long-incorporated into the eastern liturgy, quickly became known in England. Aldhelm’s use of quadrato ‘four square’ in the Bugga carmen, may allude both to the four annual feast days and to illumination from the ‘four corners of the compass’.52 Aldhelm was   Gage, Colour and Culture, p. 46. Robert Milburn observes ‘The Byzantines, skilled as they were in the science of optics, tried many devices in order to vary and increase the play of light upon brilliant colours’. Such is born out by Paul the Silentiary’s description of Justinian’s great St Sophia in Constantinople, ‘apart from Paul’s interest in the windows of the church “the sparkling flood of golden rays”, he devoted minute attention to artificial lighting which “illumined the temple as with some midnight sun … its golden dome suspended from heaven”’; Robert Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture (Aldershot, 1988), pp. 186-8. Aldhelm makes special reference to the windows in Bugga’s new church and to the shining quality of the fittings. 50   Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, pp. 14-18, lines 6669; Barker ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 235-7 51   Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome, 161; The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) The ancient biographies of the first ninety Roman bishops to AD75, translation and introduction by Raymond Davies, Translated Texts for Historians, 6 (Liverpool, 1989), pp. 73-4. 52   The four Marian feasts, the Purification, Annunciation, Assumption and Nativity, were celebrated in Rome by the end of the seventh century. See Mary Clayton, The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge, 1990), p. 29. See also Eamonn O’Carragain, ‘Liturgical innovations associated with Pope Sergius and the iconography of the Ruthwell and Bewcastle Crosses’ in Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Robert T. Farrell, BAR British Series, 46, 1978, pp. 131-147. Dodwell notes: ‘It is possible that the Byzantine archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore … brought to England some of the heightened adoration of 49

We are given to understand that the church was consecrated on the Byzantine feast of the Assumption, 15 August. There were twelve altars in Bugga’s church. Quae sunt altaris sacri velamina pulchra, Aureus atque calyx gemmis fulgescit opertus, Ut caelum rutilat stellis ardentibus aptum, Ac lata argento constat fabricate patena:55 ‘A golden cloth glistens with its twisted threads and forms a beautiful covering for the high altar. And the cross that was to be found in the Eastern church, though this would probably have found expression in gold-work rather than in stone, and the fact that the first reference to standing stone crosses in England appears in Theodore’s canons may simply be coincidence’, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 111. Aldhelm makes special reference to the gold-embossed cross in Bugga’s church. The use of quadrato by Aldhelm may also be an allusion to the ground plan of this newly-founded double house, see p. 116. Sherborne shares with Wimborne (also in Dorset) a single, foursquare, early ecclesiastical precinct/enclosure found twice at Wimborne, giving the town of today a very distinctive plan. Wimborne presents one enclosure slightly offset and north of the other, the present minster church occupying a site between the two. A case has been made for the identification of Bugga’s church with Wimborne; Sherborne remains a Mary dedication. Sited on a tributary stream just above the confluence with the River Stour, Bugga’s community had direct contact with the coast. Late seventh-century continental ‘Roman-style’ planning may be implied here; Wimborne and Sherborne will be two of Centwine’s newlyfounded ‘basilicas’ on those rura novellis, ‘new’, that is ‘newly-acquired’, ‘country estates’ referred to by Aldhelm in his Bugga dedication and which will fall within Theodore’s term of office. Aldhelm tells us that Bugga’s father was Centwine whom Lapidge demonstrates was also Aldhelm’s father (‘Career of Aldhelm’, pp 17-18), which suggests that the woman called by this family pet name ‘Bugga’ was identical with Cuthburga of Wimborne. Sherborne and Wimborne were indeed ‘brother and sister’ foundations. See Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’ Fig 2.7, pp. 88-9. 53   Lapidge, ‘Career of Aldhelm’, pp. 52-64. 54   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, p. 17, lines 59-65. 55   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, p. 18, lines 71-4.

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Katherine Barker a golden chalice covered with jewels gleams, so it seems to reflect the heavens with their bright stars; there is a large paten made of silver’.56 That Anglo-Saxon chalices were often lavishly decorated is made clear from both surviving specimens and from contemporary descriptions.57 Hic crucis ex auro splendescit lamina fulvo Argentique simul gemmis ornata metalla; Hic quoque turibulum capitellis undique cinctum Pendit de summo fumosa foramina pandens, De quibus ambrosia spirabunt tura Sabaea Quando sacerdotes missas offerre iubentur.58 ‘Here shines the cross of yellow burnished gold ornamented [?embossed] with silver metal and jewels. Here too a thurible (censer), hangs suspended on high smoking from its [wide] vents from which sweet-smelling Sabaean incense is continuously emitted when the priests are bidden to celebrate mass’. The origins of Aldhelm’s turibulum will never be known59 but the incense came from Saba in Southern Arabia (today’s Yemen), to the Romans, Arabia Felix. ‘Frankincense’ Isidore informs us, ‘is also called libanum after the mountains of Arabia where the Sabaeans dwell. The region is also known as Sabaea’ (… ipsa est … Saba).60   Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, p. 49; Gage, Colour and Culture, p. 62: ‘The fashion for rich stuffs was not confined to costume. Those swags of seemingly pointless materials which drape so many buildings in early medieval pictures are symbols of the innumerable hangings with which churches in Byzantium and the West were decorated on feast-days – hangings which included the most precious oriental textiles. The Spanish nun Egeria was greatly impressed by the church interiors at Jerusalem and Bethlehem in the late fourth century. She writes “The decorations are really too marvellous for words: All you can see is gold and jewels and silk; the hangings are entirely silk with gold stripes, the curtains are the same, and everything they use for services at the festival … is made of gold and jewels. You simply cannot imagine the number, and the sheer weight of candles and tapers and lamps”’. See also Dodwell, AngloSaxon Art, pp. 203-5, notes 154, 155, who observes that the vessels for the Divine Office were among the most precious ornaments of the early Christian church and cites the very similar description of a chalice and paten in Aethelwulf’s verse-history of a cell of Lindisfarne; Æthelwulf: De Abbatibus, ed. A. Campbell (Oxford, 1967) II, 449-50. 57   Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 203-5. Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, pp. 14-18, lines 71-8. 58   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, p. 18, lines 79-82. 59   Barker ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the Expansion’, pp. 71-2. Sherds of Byzantine amphorae and fineware have been found at Glastonbury Tor, but a Byzantine censer found at Glastonbury may not be a contemporary import, though a similar one is known from a seventh-century context in Spain. 60   W. M. Lindsay, Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi etymologiarum sive originum, 2 vols, XIV. iii, 13; and XVII. viii, 2; S. Barney, W. Lewis, J. Beach and O. Berghof, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge, 2006), pp 286 and 348. Caroline Singer, ‘The incense kingdoms of Yemen: an outline history of the south Arabian incense trade’ in Food for the Gods, New Light on the Ancient Incense Trade, ed. David Peacock and David Williams (Oxford, 2007), pp. 4-27. See also Mikahail B. Piotrovsky, ‘Late ancient and early medieval Yemen: settlement traditions and innovations’ in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, II Land Use and Settlement Patterns, ed. G. D. R. King and Averil Cameron, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam (Princeton NJ, 1994), pp. 21329. 56

iii Antiphonal chant in Bugga’s church Aldhelm then makes reference to the sweetness of dulcibus antifonae ‘antiphonal chant’, classibus et geminis ‘in twin columns’, that is, by male and female, confirmed in the next few lines by the reference to fratres and sorores, ‘brothers and sisters’.61 A number of ‘double houses’ are known to have existed in early Anglo-Saxon England; among the best-known are Coldingham, Whitby and Barking. As noted above, Bugga’s double community may be identified with Wimborne (see note 52). Although foundation dates are hard to establish there seems to have been an upsurge in the last thirty years of the seventh century62 which coincides with Theodore’s term of office. While he expressed reservations in his Penitential about such institutions, Theodore declared that ‘we shall not overthrow that which is custom in this region.’63 Double houses are evidenced in Constantinople from the fourth century, the subject of rather ineffective legislation by Justinian.64 If not actually introduced into Britain in the time of Theodore, the double house was an institution of which he had first-hand experience. Belonging to the same years is the statement by Bede that Benedict Biscop, on his return from one of his visits to Rome at the behest of Pope Agatho (678-81), was accompanied by Abbot John, arch-cantor, ‘brought to Britain’ quatinus in monasterio suo cursum canendi annuum, sicut ad sanctum Petrum Romae agebatur ... ‘in order that he might teach the monks of his monastery [Monkwearmouth] the mode of chanting throughout the year as it was practised at St Peter’s in Rome’.65 Bede tells us that John had many invitations to teach elsewhere from other provinciae monasteriis. From the time of Theodore, the ars cantandi begun to be taught. Benedict Biscop and Abbot John were to attend the 679 synod at Hæthfeld (see below p. 118 and notes 25 and 76). Eddius describes Wilfrid as introducing antiphonal singing to Northumbria during the reign of Aldfrith (685-704) one of Aldhelm’s correspondents.66 Bede writes, ‘From that time, the knowledge of sacred music ... began to be taught in all English Churches’ (sonos cantandi in ecclesia ... ab hoc tempore per omnes Anglorum ecclesias discere coeperunt).67 iv An antiphonal chant at *Portus Limina Aldhelm refers to antiphonal chant again in his Carmen rhythmicum which is set on the coast at *Portus Limina, Lyme [Regis] usque … Domnoniam, on the Devon/Dorset   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, p. 16, lines 47, 49-50. 62   Barbara Yorke, Nunneries and the Anglo-Saxon Royal Houses (London and New York, 2003), pp. 23-8. See also note 52 for the suggested identification of Bugga’s monastery. 63   Yorke, Nunneries, p. 25. 64   Peter Hatlie, The Monks and Monasteries of Constantinople, ca. 350850 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 54, 63, 108. 65   HE IV.18; Colgrave and Mynors, p. 388. 66   Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, p. 237. 67   HE IV 2; Colgrave and Mynors, p. 334. 61

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni border.68 Here Aldhelm describes the chant as an integral part of the synaxis, an early [Greek] term for the first half of the Mass. The earliest known ordo in existence recording liturgical practices makes it clear that by about the year 700 there had developed a system of liturgical sentences to be sung at Mass in the synaxis.69 The celebration at *Portus Limina took place on the natalicia of St Paul – a Feast Day shared with St Peter. In his Peter-Paul dedicatory carmen Aldhelm describes Peter as the claviger … portam, [portus] ‘keeper of the door’ and Paul as tutor tremulis cum Petro porrige dextram, Sacra frequentantes aulae qui limina lustrant, the ‘kindly guardian [who] in company with St Peter extends [his] right [hand] to the fearful crowds who in multitudes seek the holy threshold of this aula, (church)’.70 As Ermione Karachaliou has recently noted, in early Byzantine tradition it was customary to have a painted image of SS Peter and Paul over the principal entrance into a basilica.71 Aldhelm describes at *Portus Limina a well-appointed, British church – a pre-West Saxon Glastonbury foundation – which brings to mind Brigit’s seventh-century church at Kildare described by Cogitosus.72 Aldhelm’s words suggest there may already have been Byzantine church connections

  Barker, ‘The setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum’, pp. 15-54.   Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 234-5; see also Richard L. Crocker, An Introduction to Gregorian chant (Yale CT and London, 2000) pp. 106-9, 111, 114-16. 70   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi, Carmen ecclesiastica, p. 11, lines 6, 17, 18. Peter and Paul, the portus and the limen, Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum presents many levels of meaning giving full rein to his ‘fourfold ecclesiastical method’ of literary composition being historia, allegoria, tropologia and anagoge. See below, pp. 119-120; also Barker, ‘The setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum’, pp.1-52 and ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 233-71. One of Aldhelm’s contemporaries, Vergilius Maro Grammaticus, observed that ‘proper nouns (nomina propria) are not to be read as mere noises but as having a subtler interpretation’. Isidore in his Etymologiae pointed out that many names are motivated by their own causes. See Vivien Law, Wisdom, Authority and Grammar in the Seventh Century (Cambridge, 1995) pp. 11-12. A placename in Lim, ‘Lyme’, was one to present Aldhelm with many levels of – complementary – meaning. See Barker, ‘Making and shiring of Sherborne ’, pp.113-27. 71   Ermioni Karachaliou (University of Manchester) ‘Twin basilicas: the linking sacred space of two dogmas’, paper given on 8 June 2009 at the First Manchester Postgraduate Medieval Conference, ‘Religion, Belief, Superstition c. 400 - c. 1550’. 72   L. de Paor, Saint Patrick’s World (Dublin, 1993), pp. 222-3; and Barker, ‘The setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum’, pp. 39-41. A recent careful re-reading of the description of the well-appointed building in which Aldhelm’s company were worshipping that fateful morning when the roof was ripped off during a dramatic storm suggests that it may not have been a timber construction. A candidate here is the Roman villa site at Holcombe in Uplyme which Malcolm Todd suggests presents archaeological evidence for a fourth-century Christian baptistery of an octagonal structure found in Gaul and ‘well represented in the Balkan provinces’ for the Arian and Orthodox communities (M. Todd, ‘Baths or baptisteries? Holcombe, Lufton and their analogues’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 24(3) (2005), 307-11); see Barker, ‘Making and shiring Sherborne’, note 7. Sited on a terrace above the western side of the steepsided valley of the River Lim, the villa site overlooks Uplyme parish church dedicated to SS Peter and Paul, which occupies a similar site on the eastern side of the valley overlooking the route up from the portus. SS Peter and Paul could also offer protection from pestilentia, plague; K. Barker, ‘The Magna Mortalitas of the later seventh century in Dorset: Aldhelm first bishop of Sherbourne, Saints Peter and Paul and a possible eyewitness account’, Dorset Procs 131 (2010) 19-26; see also n. 126. 68 69

at *Portus Limina.73 There is archaeological evidence of sixth- to seventh-century imported east Mediterranean amphorae along the coastline of south-west Britain. Harris suggests that shipments were organised from Syria sanctioned by the imperial authorities at Constantinople and that whilst the Rhine trade supplied eastern Britain, Syrian mercantile communities served the British west, at one and the same time furthering political relationships between the Byzantine empire and the British rulers of the west.74 Thus the British [south]-west may also have been affected by the Eastern Mediterranean Monothelete heresy of the mid-seventh century;75 which would be further   Aldhelm’s references to the liturgy may also imply Eastern Mediterranean links. Storm-force winds struck the church as the company was celebrating the first office of the day … Matutinam melodiam Ac synaxis psalmodium; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Carmen rhythmicum, p. 527, lines 129-30. In the rule of Columbanus ‘ad matutinam was the longest and most important service of the day’. Similarly in the seventh-century Antiphonary of Bangor ad matutinam was also ‘the most important hour’. The Hiberno-Latin liturgy did not have a single source but ‘particularly notable among the Eastern elements which transferred to the West are the Syriac practice of hymns and psalmody, the Antiphonary of Bangor appears to be a direct translation of a Greek antiphon originating in sixth-century Palestine’; Jane Stevenson, ‘Introduction’ in F. E. Warren, The Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church (1881, 2nd ed., Woodbridge, 1987), pp. xlix-xiv, xlvi-xlvii, xix and lxii. Aldhelm describes antiphonal singing at *Portus Limina. The company were woken by what is best understood as the ringing sounds of bells: Suscitarent sonantibus Somniculosos cantibus. ‘Each [British] church had its bell, “clocca” or “campana” used for summoning the congregation together for divine office … the bells of St Columba and St Ninian … are still in existence’. Handbells are also evidenced; Warren ‘Liturgy and Ritual’, pp. 92-3. Warren also discussed the Eastern origin of the British church and its Gallican connections, ibid, pp. 46-56, 57-62. Eastern/Byzantine connotations there may be in the Carmen rhythmicum but Aldhelm’s heavy emphasis on scriptura suggests there will be nothing liturgically inappropriate in his words. His reference both to the synaxis psalmodium and to antiphonal singing may also be understood as relating to the Roman liturgy; see Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’, pp. 233-8, and Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 255-6. ‘Irish churchmen [by contrast] did not regard liturgy as “holy writ” – fixed, immutable and not to be tampered with. They collected books from all parts of the Western world’; Stevenson, Liturgy and Ritual, p. lxx. 74   K. Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’, p. 101; Anthea Harris, Byzantium, Britain and the West, pp. 141-52. Gregory of Tours refers to Syrian traders at Bordeaux, and Bishop Eusebius who succeeded to the Paris bishopric in 591 was ‘a Syrian by race’; Gregory of Tours The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (London, 1974), p. 586. Henri Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne (Paris, 1970), pp. 53-7 describes the Syrians as rouliers de la mer and to be found in all the ports, as the Dutch were to be in the seventeenth century: ‘C’est particulièrement la Syrie où arrivent les caravans de l’Inde, de Chine et d’Arabie’. Pirenne notes an inscription to a Syrian at St Eloi near the mouth of the Seine. He also (ibidem, pp. 73-4) draws attention to the significance of portus in the seventh-century Merovingian world; those harbours where taxes were payable to the royal or church fisc. *Portus Limina presents just such a context (see above pp. 112-113). For a complementary archaeological survey see Sam Turner, ‘Coast and countryside in “Late Antique” southwest England’ in Debating Late Antiquity in Britain AD 300-700, ed. R. Collins and J. Gerrard, BAR British Series 365, 2004 (Oxford), pp. 25-32. Also K. Barker ‘The Sherborne Estate at Lyme’ in St Wulfsige and Sherborne, essays to celebrate the millennium of the Benedictine Abbey 998-1998, ed. K. Barker, D. Hinton and A. Hunt (Oxford, 2005), pp.199204 and K. Barker, ‘Of salt and the Dorset coast at Lyme’, Dorset Procs 127 (2005), 45-52. 75   A Monothelete Syrian priest travelling in Gaul c. 560 was known to the Bishop of Lyon. See Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, p. 55; see also J. M. Hussey, ‘The theological background to seventh-century monotheletism’ in J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Oxford History of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1986), pp. 1029. The Council of Chalcedon of 451 laid down that the second person of the Trinity had two natures, divine and human. In Armenia, Egypt and Syria it was held that Christ had only a single nature and this became 73

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Katherine Barker reason for Aldhelm, abbatus, as directed by an episcopal council, writing the epistolatory diatribe to King Gerent of Dumnonia (Aldhelm’s Domnonia) and his sacerdotes in which he urges them to come into line with the ecclesia Romana. Aldhelm does not name this council. But the importance assigned to the resolution of the Monothelite heresy at the council convened at Hæthfeld in 679 suggests this could plausibly be the council concerned. This in itself would add further weight to its suggested location just south of Sherborne, site of the future bishopric set up to serve the south-western peninsula.76 Given a British Christian involvement in this heresy, a south-western location for Hæthfeld would make good sense. Theodore’s opposition to Monotheletism and hence his doctrinal orthodoxy are made clear by his participation in the Lateran Council of 649.77

a persuasive argument in favour of using the barbita to accompany the singing, the chant. 80 In his first reference to this instrument he uses the Greek word – as he does in his Riddle XIII (Appendix: C) – and then towards the end of the work complements this with Latin organum in a more specific reference to the actual working of this instrument. Nec valet immensum perfecte forte pudorem Garrula raucisono complecti pagina versu, Quamvis millenis collaudent ora loquelis, Sicut folligenis respirant organa flabris Musica concisis et clamat barbita bombis.81 ‘This wordy page of harsh-sounding verse cannot convey/acknowledge [your] steadfast and accomplished modesty even though thousands of words praise [you] to the limit just as engines blow out with ingeniously-made bellows, barbita music with concise/clear cut and deep/strong notes’.

v. Musical accompaniment Aldhelm tells us that in Bugga’s church the teaching of chant was by the psalmista and its accompaniment was by the ten-stringed psalterium – both words of Greek origin. What must be the earliest reference to the Byzantine organ is to be found in Aldhelm’s lengthy Carmen De Virginitate dedicated to abbess Hildelith of the community at Barking on the Thames;78 he then names a further nine high born Christi virginibus who may represent other double monasteries.79 In his De Virginitate Aldhelm mounts known as the Monophysite doctrine. Patriach Sergius of Constantinople came up with a new doctrine: Monotheletism. Christ, while possessing two natures had but a single will. It was a new formula which was intended as a compromise, to satisfy all Christians. Daniel Hull notes a correlation between heresy and social identity in Late Antiquity, see his ‘Religious heresy and political dissent in Late Antiquity: a comparison between Syria and Britain’ in Debating Late Antiquity, ed. Collins and Gerrard, pp. 113-22. 76   K. Barker, ‘The Dorset-Somerset county boundary at Yeovil’, Dorset Procs 131, (2010), 219-35, esp. p. 223. See also Duncan Probert, ‘New light on Aldhelm’s letter to King Gerent of Dumnonia’ in Barker and Brooks, Aldhelm and Sherborne, pp. 110-128; HE IV.5, Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 348-355). At Theodore’s second council convened at Hæthfeld in 679, it was the Monothelete heresy which was the concern (Cubitt, Church Councils, 252-4; Bede HE IX.17; Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 384-91). It was following attendance at an episcopal council, concilium episcoporum, attended by bishops, sacerodotes ‘out of almost the entirety of Britain’ that Abbot Aldhelm, taking up office c. 680 (Lapidge, ‘Career of Aldhelm’ pp. 50-2) was commanded to compose an epistola to Gerent of Dumnonia (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera; epistolae, pp. 481-1; Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, pp.140-3, 15560). Aldhelm does not name the council. Was it not Hæthfeld? Given a British Christian involvement in this heresy a south-western location would make good sense – and geographically rather nearer Dumnonia. Newly-appointed to the office of abbatus after spending some years at Theodore’s Canterbury school, Aldhelm’s Hiberno-Latin background would have made him a canny ambassador. And following up Theodore’s policies promulgated at Hertford, the Council was to be located on the estate of the new bishopric-to-be (see note 25). Chadwick observes: ‘Set in the context of the Monothelete controversy the emphasis of the Council at [Hæthfeld] looked very different … for Bede the episode showed the authority of Theodore vindicated by both his orthodox doctrine and by papal authority’. Theodore’s authority will have been further strengthened by his understanding of things Eastern/Byzantine; Henry Chadwick, ‘Theodore, the English church and the Monothelete controversy’ in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, pp. 88-95; see also Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, ed. B. Bischoff and M. Lapidge (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 139-46. 77   Ekonomou, Byzantine Rome, pp. 163-4. 78   Barker, ‘Poet and Composer’, pp. 243-9. 79   Gale R. Owen-Crocker notes that ‘Scott Gwara questions the

In his riddle (Appendix: C), as it is with his first reference in the De Virginitate, the cithara was clearly ‘upstaged’ by the organ. Isidore of Seville noted that musical notation could not be written down, so the introduction of a properly trained barbita player to accompany the singing would have ensured the liturgical correctness of the performance.82 traditional view that the text was written for the nuns of Barking, Essex, arguing that although the first dedicatee, Hildelith, may have been abbess of Barking, there is no evidence that the text was designed for such a restricted audience. He suggests that it was directed more widely, to West Saxon and/or Hwiccan abbesses of double monasteries’; ed. S. Gwara, Aldhelmi Malmesbiriensis Prosa de Virginitate, ed. CCSL, 124, 124A (Turnhout, 2001), 124, pp. 47-55, see Owen-Crocker, Dress, p. 134, note 27. I am grateful to Gale Owen-Crocker for drawing my attention to this reference. Aldhelm’s words suggest he was related to Justina, Cuthburga and also nec non, to Osburga; Cuthburga may be she who is associated with Wimborne as Bugga. See also above, pp. 115-116 and note 52. 80   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate: II carmen, 355-6, lines, 60-73. This is Aldhelm’s first reference in the De Virginitate to the barbita. For a translation and description see Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 245-6. As Edward Rimbault comments, Aldhelm’s description found in the carmen line 73, Quamlibet auratis fulgescant cetera capsis ‘show that our ancestors at that time were accustomed to gild the external pipes’ evidenced by the time of St Dunstan in the tenth century. Rimbault then cites part of Theophilus’ treatise on organ-building; Edward J. Hopkins and Edward F. Rimbault, The Organ, its history and construction, a comprehensive treatise of the capabilities of the organ (London, 1855), pp.11-19, 2022). See also Theophilus, Encyclopaedia of Christian Art, ibidem, De Organis, pp. 340-54. Wellesch cites a description of a Byzantine portable pneumatic organ by Harun-ben-Jaha in Constantinople in 867; ‘the part of the pipes outside the leather is covered with gold’. ‘The golden organ’, notes Wellesch, ‘is the instrument used by the emperor’. Egon Wellesch, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 1961), pp.105-8. The organ was certainly known in fifth-century Gaul: Sidonius Appolinaris (432-88), Bishop of Arvernis, describes an evening at the court of King Theoderic II, which alludes to the role of the organ in an earlier aristocratic, very secular context, an evening in which there was [happily] ‘no noise of hydraulic organ, or choir with its conductor intoning a set piece; you will hear no players of lyre or flute, no master of music, no girls with cithara or tabor ... ’; Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms, The History of HalfForgotten Europe (London, 2011), ‘Tolosa: Sojourn of the Visigoths (AD 418-507)’, p. 22. 81   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate: II carmen, 466, lines 278587; for translation and further discussion see Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp 246-7. 82   Lindsay, Isidori, III, xv; Barney et al, Etymologies of Isidore, p. 95. Wellesch, Byzantine Music, p.107.

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni The organ presented to Charlemagne was to assist in the teaching of Plainchant;83 the same would surely have applied to the introduction of the barbita at Barking a century earlier. The implication is that there was at least one organ-maker employed by the Roman Church in Canterbury, a Byzantine-trained master-craftsman – and organist – brought over by Theodore as member of his company. If the dedication of Aldhelm’s De Virginitate is indeed directed to other communities in addition to Barking, then it may well be that the barbita was installed elsewhere. There is an allusion to an early organ at Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire.84 The Saraceni, Saracens i The Arabs85 As a refugee from the Arab incursions of the later seventh century Theodore had first-hand knowledge of the Saraceni – if not personal experience. His colleague Hadrian may also have had such knowledge (see note 19). Ismaelitis … sic fuit genus Saracenis, numquam cum omnibus pacem habentes sed simper contra aliquos certantes … ‘thus Ishmael’s race was that of the Saracens, a race which is never at peace with anyone, but is always at war with someone’.86   Wellesch, Byzantine Music, p. 108.   The reference to an organa melliflua, ‘sweet-sounding organ’, is found in a grant of land made by Cenfrith, comes Merciorum, to Aldhelm of ten cassates of land at Wootton Bassett. Heading the charter witness list is Theodorus archiepiscopus; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Chartae Aldhelmianae, pp. 509-10; S.1166. Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 248-9. 85   The author’s attention was drawn to the Seminar for Arabian Studies held at the British Museum in July 2009 when the subject under discussion was Literacy. The later seventh century presents some interesting parallels between the Anglo-Saxon and Arab worlds. A well-developed, status-bearing, poetic oral tradition is evidenced in both, respectively the Latin carmen and the Arabic quasidah. The importance assigned to the establishment of a ‘fixed text’ found in the committing to writing of the Qur’an ‘Recitation’ is paralleled by Aldhelm’s emphasis on scriptura ‘that which is written down’. The carmen edition of his De Virginitate – that composed for public recitation – contains what is probably best described as a ‘copyright statement’. His words were not to be mocked or plagiarised. Such a problem also presented in Arabia; an unwritten, oral, poetic recitation – a chant – was never rendered exactly the same way twice. The later seventh-century Islamic Arab and Christian AngloSaxon worlds were both heirs to Jewish tradition. They were also heirs to the literate machinery of the high Roman Empire, a well-structured centralised bureaucracy based on the cities, civitates, which managed taxation and thus defence. Late Roman land tax institutions were to facilitate the accommodation of both gens germanica and arabi in their respective territories, the legal framing of their power and identity and the promotion of their respective faiths. One of the nice ironies of History is that the flight of Syrian Theodore of Tarsus was to expedite that process in the Germanic West already under way in the Arab East. Thus were laid the foundation for centuries of conflict taken to new levels empowered by the use, interpretation – and manipulation – of received words, scriptura: words literally made legitimate in a licensed exploration of their connotation; those which, through the work of Aldhelm, were to include some of the most emotive: saraceni, arabilis, and sodomitanum. See also Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer ’, pp. 240-2 and Jocelyn Penny Small, Wax Tablets of the Mind, cognitive studies of memory and literacy in classical antiquity (London and New York, 1997), esp. Ch. 3, ‘Publication’. I am grateful to Michael Macdonald, Wolfson College, for drawing this work to my attention. 86   ‘First Commentary on the Pentateuch (PentI)’, Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, PentI 104, p. 324; see also Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, p. 10. 83 84

Eusebius, Aldhelm’s Graecorum historiografus,87 uses the word Saracen for the first time in literature: a pejorative term for the nomadic population of Arabia Deserta. The origins of the word remain uncertain.88 Theodore explains here the link between the Biblical Ishmaelite and the classical Saracen: the term ‘Ishmaelite’ derives from Ishmael, the illegitimate son of Abraham. Aldhelm also uses both words. The urbanised Mediterranean seaboard of Arabia had been part of the Roman-Christian Empire for over three centuries; trade with the Arab world was an essential part of the Roman economy. With the division of the Empire and the establishment of Constantinople, the Arab world formed a complementary part of the Byzantine. However the Arabs did not behave like the barbarians of the north: they were literate, educated and wealthy. Richard Southern explains the confusion this culture created: ‘In understanding Islam, the seventh-century West could get no help from antiquity and no comfort from the present’.89 Refusing to acknowledge the irreversible nature of the advent of Islam – having no precedent – Christian writers were to cast their adversaries in despised roles. Aldhelm’s two references take us to the borders of Syria, to the great Roman frontier limes, bringing to mind his riddle about a camel (camellus), which, having served with the imperial limitanei,90 developed a hump, changed sides and thereafter terrified the Roman cavalry (Appendix: D). Aldhelm’s treatment of the Saraceni (see below) nicely illustrates the character of his often obscure, literary style. He alerts us to those rules of ‘the fourfold ecclesiastical tradition’ he employs in his writing, that quadriformis   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), p. 269. See G. A. Williamson, translation with an introduction, Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, 2nd ed. (London, 1989). 88   Irfan Shahid, Rome and the Arabs, a Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs (Washington DC, 1984), pp. 104-5; 123-41. 89   Richard Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA and London, 1962), pp. 4-5. 90   For a first observation on Aldhelm’s two references to the Saraceni see Barker,‘The setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum’, pp. 257-8, note 104. The construction of the Limes by Diocletian which stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea was to play an important role in ArabRoman relations. Shahid notes ‘The Limes Diocletianus is the key to understanding much about Arab-Byzantine relations and the harnessing of Arab provincials in the service of Rome; for three centuries it was the frontier of Arab-Roman co-existence’, Rome and the Arabs, pp. 52-3; 159-1; see also Kennedy, ‘Islam’, pp. 223-4. ‘The endless frontier of the Saracens’ was described by the Christian pilgrim Sylvia; see T. R. Glover, Life and Letters in the Fourth Century (Cambridge, 1901), p. 138. Its collapse was to provide the setting for Aldhelm’s riddle on the camel (Riddle IC, Appendix: D). His words, written in the Britain of the last two decades of the seventh century, are not a fanciful literary reference to a strange-looking foreign animal, but a powerful evocation of the violence that witnessed the collapse of the Roman limes. And the Roman frontier also supplies the context for his Saraceni; Malchus was taken into slavery along the Syrian/Saracen desert border. The Life of the hermit Hilarion – which exists in versions by both Jerome and Aldhelm – is set along the desert border limes of the old Roman province of Palestina: Hilarion, opinatissimus Palestinae solitudinis accola, parentibus idoloru, ‘Hilarion, the most famous inhabitant of the Palestinian desert, born of heathen parents’; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), p. 266, Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, pp. 88-9. Hilarion felix famoso nomine dictus; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, de Virginitate: carmen II, p. 387; Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 120. Converts to Islam also went into the desert. 87

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Katherine Barker … nam carica fructus de ficulnea nuncupatur, unde massas caricarum conficiunt de recentibus ficis; unde inconvenienter a quibusdam famosus ille heremita Sirorum et Sarracenorum confinio strictis parsimoniae legibus vitam solitariam degens exhausta membrorum vitalia et marcida praecordiorum ilia quinque caricibus contra rerum naturam sustentasse et aluisse describitur, cum humanae sit naturae caricis, quae post grossos maturescunt, nutriri, brutorum vero bubulorum et tragelaforum simulque ibicum caricibus educari et vesci simplex, duplex, triplex, vervex, fornix...97

ecclesiasticae traditionis being historiam, allegoriam, tropologiam and anagogen …‘history, allegory, tropology [the figurative and/or metaphorical] and the spiritual’.91 He employs three Latin words here and one Greek. Ultimately derived from fourth-century John Cassian,92 this remained a popular style of authorship for many centuries. Bede declares that ‘Allegory is the trope by which something is signified other than what is said’.93 Augustine [of Hippo] summed it up in that division between the literal and the figurative which is how the Bible is to be understood. All aspects of allegory were legitimate so long as their aim was to convey truth. Augustine declared that it was the historical, which is the most interesting and significant ... but the recording of historical events must have some purpose greater than the mere recording of facts; historical information must be read allegorically for the historical is itself allegorical.94 As Rollinson observes ‘with this theoretical and interpretative background the Christian potential for creative, original literary allegory was great’.95 In short, there are up to four complementary ways of understanding Aldhelm’s compositions. The only discipline taught today, historia, is certainly used by Aldhelm, but only when relevant to a higher purpose. Aldhelm himself thus presents us with valuable insight into both the context and the purpose of his style of authorship. ii Jerome and Aldhelm, carex and carica His first reference to the Saraceni is found in a lengthy treatise on Latin grammar; Aldhelm digresses in the passage on the spondee to expound on the confusion between two words, carex ‘reed’ or ‘sedge’ and carica a ‘Carian fig’ or ‘kind of dried fig’ and how they decline. The fruit of the fig tree, the carica, is a feminine noun, whilst ficus, ‘fig,’ the fruit of the fig tree (Riddle LXXVII, Appendix: E) can either be masculine or feminine, the declension and gender disputed among the ancients96 and which leads to some skilful trans-gendering by Aldhelm. The carex, member of the sedge family, is also botanically both male and female (see note 108). reed (f) carex, carex, caricem, caricis, carici, carice (singular) carices, carices, carices, caricum, caricibus, caricibus (plural) Carian fig (m/f) carica, carica, caricam, caricae, caricae, carica (singular) caricae, caricae, caricae, caricarum, caricis, caricis (plural)

‘… for carica [Carian fig] is the name of the fruit of the ficulnea, fig tree [m/f] from which are prepared fresh, vigorous figs [m/f] from dough-like lumps of caricarum [m/f] whence those things were inappropriately [used] by that notorious hermit on/at the Syrian-Saracen border [who living by] the laws of strict frugality the solitary life, the life of those [body] vital members, deteriorated, exhausted and limp, it is written [that] contrary to the natural order he was sustained and strengthened by five reeds [a day] [caricibus]; when for human nature it would be figs [caricis], which mature after thickening/after immaturity become mature’. Then follow some heavy double-meanings; the language is far from straight-forward. Aldhelm has edited the story. He continues where Jerome stops with the words brutorum vero bubulorum et tragelaforum. The image of the thickening fig is followed ‘in truth’ by the brutus … bubulus which can be read in two different ways; ‘just as the dull ox [ploughman] and/or unwieldy leather ox-hide thong/lash is nourished’. He uses bubulus ‘pertaining to oxen’ not bubulcus ‘ox-ploughman’ or bubalus, ‘wild ox/buffalo’. Relevant here is his other reference to the Saracens (see below) where he uses the image of the ploughman and the muddy furrow. His words may be understood here as pertaining to an ‘out of control’ leather thong which he pairs with something tragelaforum, linked with dragging. A tragula98 was a sharp-pointed javelin carried by the Roman soldier; a tragum a type of drag net and tragus a nasty goat-like smell. Just as, Aldhelm concludes ‘the ibex/goat/chamois is reared and gratified by simple reeds’ (simulque ibicum caricibus). From which point he continues his grammatical treatise.

  Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De pedum regulis; de spondeo, pp. 155-6.   See also Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, p. 496. ‘The tragelaphus, a kind of stag … is mentioned by Aldhelm together with a bubalus as animals nurtured on figs’. Ehwald in his Aldhelmi Opera, p. 155 gives two alternative manuscript renderings as bobulorum and bubalorum. Henry Mayr-Harting notes that ‘the bubalus (buffalo) and the tragelaphus (chamois) are mentioned in the Vulgate version of Deuteronomy XIV, 5, among the animals whose meat was clean and might be eaten’. Further ‘we know from [Theodore’s] Penitential that he was interested in the question of clean and unclean meat’; The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1972), pp. 208-9. 97

  Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera; Aldhelmus De Virginitate (prosa), p. 232; Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, p. 62; see Barker, ‘The setting of Aldhelm’s Carmen rhythmicum’, pp. 18-19. 92   A. J. Minnis, Medieval theory of authorship, 2nd ed. (Aldershot,1988) p. 34. 93   Philip Rollinson, Classical Theories of Allegory and Christian Culture (Pittsburgh PA, 1981) p. 74. 94   Rollinson, Classical Theories, pp. 45-6. 95   Rollinson, Classical Theories, p. 84. 96   Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), pp. 292, 745. 91

98

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni Lapidge notes that Aldhelm takes his reference ‘nearly verbatim’ from Jerome’s Vita S. Pauli eremitae, St Paul the hermit [of Thebes],99 who does indeed live iuxta Syriam Saracenis iungitur except for the fact that Jerome clearly tells us that Paul was sustained by five figs a day, quinque caricis per singulos dies sustentabatur. Aldhelm’s reference is indeed ‘nearly verbatim’ but the important point here is that his misquotation is deliberate. Jerome breaks off in his story to tell us about the five figs – just as Aldhelm does in his grammatical treatise. MayrHarting comments on Aldhelm’s digression and suggests this to be a fragment of Theodore’s biblical exposition100 – subsequently borne out by the translation of the Biblical Commentaries.101 Jerome’s biography is the sole source of the Life of Paul of Thebes, probably inspired by Evagrius’ Life of Anthony;102 he describes their meeting in the desert. The two are represented on the Ruthwell Cross in the breaking, co-fractio, of a loaf of bread dropped to them in the desert by a raven. The cross has been dated to the later seventh to early eighth century.103 Aldhelm’s words play on the confusion between carices and carica being rushes and figs. The gender of these nouns is relevant; carex, ‘reed’, is feminine, and carica, ‘fig’, is either masculine or feminine. Circular packets of sun-dried Syrian figs can be found in today’s supermarkets. Aldhelm’s words (Appendix: E) suggest these fruits were imported in his day; such were certainly supplied to the Abbey of Corbie by royal licence.104 (Also included in this merchandise was pepper, piper, from India, the subject of Aldhelm Riddle XL, Appendix: F).105 Figs were a source of sugar; Isidore describes them as fed to athletes106 and dried figs were an important commodity in the Constantinople food markets.107 An essential complementary element is the visual. Aldhelm would have been familiar with the sedge known to the botanical world as carex pendula.108 We are   Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, p. 36, n.158.   Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity, pp. 208-9. 101   Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, PentI: Commentary 471; p. 496. 102   Early Christian Lives, ed. and trans. Caroline White (London, 1998), ‘Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome’, pp. 73-84. 103   Éamonn O’Carragáin, Liturgical Innovations, pp. 136-139; Fred Orton and Ian Wood with Claire A. Lees, Fragments of History, Rethinking the Ruthwell and Bewcastle monuments (Manchester, 2007), Pl. 56; pp. 183-4, 186. 104   Pirenne notes that a diploma presented to the Abbey of Corbie in 716 by Chilperic II throws light on this trade. Confirming earlier documents of Clotaire III (657-673) and Childeric II (673-675) the king gave the authority for a levy of merchandise from the cellarium fisci. Merchandise included [olive] oil (10,000 pounds in weight), cinnamon, cumin, cloves, almonds, olives, rice, dates; fifty ‘hands’ of papyrus – and 100 pounds of figs and thirty pounds of pepper; Pirenne, Mahomet et Charlemagne, pp. 60-1. 105   Christine Mcfadden, Pepper (Bath, 2007), p. 15. Lindsay, Isidori, XVII, viii p. 253; Barney et al, Etymologies of Isidore, p. 349; piperis arbor nascitur in India, ‘the pepper tree grows in India’. 106   Lindsay, Isidori, XVII, vii, 17; Barney et al, Etymologies of Isidore, p. 344, notes that the fig, ficus, is so called for its fecundity. 107   Andrew Dalby, Flavours of Byzantium (Totnes, 2003), pp. 136-7 citing the Peri Trophon Dynameos, ed. Delatte, On the power of foods, iv, On fruits. Dried figs ‘… move the bowels, produce gas and harm the digestive system in those with rather a hot constitution’. 108   The sedge family, Cyperaceae, of which carex pendula is one, is characterised by both male and female spikes on the same inflorescence. 99

presented here with the pointed reed with the pendulous seed head and the soft, brown, circular orificious female (or male) fig, the carex and the carica. Aldhelm alludes to the ‘hand-shaped’ quinquefoliate fig leaf in his ficulnea ‘fig tree’ riddle (Appendix: E) an image which was to become established in Christian iconography.109 There was enough in Jerome’s account to prompt Virginia Burrus in her The Sex Lives of Saints, to subtitle part of her chapter 1 ‘The Queer Life of Paul the Hermit’ but she makes no mention of the enhanced treatment assigned by Aldhelm.110 ‘Neither does she make reference to Aldhelm in her essay on ‘The ‘queer marriage of Malchus the Monk’111– see below. The Queer Life of Malchus Aldhelm’s second reference to the Saraceni is more specific and the word play provides graphic insight into the connotation of the carex/carica exercise. The theme is an evil Saracen who is proposing to violate a male Christian slave from behind while he is ploughing. This time Aldhelm does more than ‘tweak’ one of Jerome’s words, he actually re-writes his Life of Malchus.112 In Jerome’s Life it is Malchus himself who tells Jerome his story – as an old man. Malchus himself was Syrian, from the region of Antioch. Jerome’s prime concern ‘may have been to produce a work of propaganda for the life of chastity’113 a theme to be ‘spelled out’ by Aldhelm. Jerome relates how Malchus, running away from marriage, joined a desert monasterium. After many years he sought to return to his widowed mother and was implored by his abbot to stay. Jerome lets Malchus speak for himself. ‘When the abbot failed to persuade me’ says Malchus ‘he [the abbot] fell on his knees and begged me not to desert them, not to destroy myself and not to look back once I had my hand on the plough’. 114 He cites Luke – as does Aldhelm – see below.

100

Richard Fitter and Alistair Fitter, Collins Guide to the Grasses, Sedges, Rushes and Ferns of Britain and Northern Europe (London, 1984) p. 144. 109   Fig leaves constituted the minimal clothing by which the first people covered themselves which Aldhelm alludes to in his riddle on the ficulnea, ‘fig tree’ (see Appendix: E). Figs and grapes were often attributes of the classical gods Dionysus and Priapus suggesting an erotic association; Hans Biederman, Dictionary of Symbolism (London, 1992), p.128. See note 119 for a link made by Gildas between wine and Sodom. Latin word play on the fig presents again in the Islamic occupation of southern Spain which began in 710, coincidentally the year of Aldhelm’s death. The Christian West often designated the settlers ‘Morescoes’, ‘Moriscoes,’ or ‘Moors’. We find that Latin mariscos or mariscus, m, is a kind of rush, and the marisca, f, a large inferior kind of fig; it is also that medical condition known as piles; Lewis and Short, Latin Dictionary, p. 1114. 110   Virginia Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, an Erotics of Ancient Hagiography (Philadelphia PA, 2004), p. 24. 111   Burrus, Sex Lives of Saints, p. 33. 112   See ‘Life of Malchus by Jerome’ in Early Christian Lives, ed. and trans.Carolinne White (London, 1998), pp. 119-28. Jerome’s ‘Life of Paul of Thebes’ was translated into Greek, that of Malchus into both Greek and Syriac, see p. xliii. See also Burrus, The Sex Lives of Saints, pp. 33-9. 113   White, ‘Life of Malchus,’ Introduction, p. 120. 114   White, ‘Life of Malchus’, p. 123.

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Katherine Barker Malchus fled and was captured by nomadic Ishmaelites. His slave master offered him a slave wife but on his refusal to marry her, the slave master drew his sword. So Malchus ‘adopted’ her in a brother-sister relationship and then threatened to turn the sword on himself declaring ‘chastity has its own martyrdom.’ Many years later the couple escaped; saved from re-capture by a lioness, they returned home. And Malchus told his story to Jerome.

child] were urging him towards marriage on which, in the cause of chastity and attaining the heavenly kingdom, he set less and less importance but/for in consideration of his cognatae propinquitatis [the precise meaning is elusive ... his ‘female proclivities’?] taking on board the conversationis fervore anxieties/ cares of normal life his enthusiasm/passion for the coenubialis vitae rigore rigorous/dried up life of the hermit became less [became tepid] little by little [driven] by a personal demon ran away that he might gently cool refrigesceret his passions by running away obvia into the path of Saraceni praedonibus [Saracen plunderers] and Ismaelitis grassatoribus [vagabond Ishmaelites] who were atrociter vastantibus cruelly ravaging/laying waste at will/random, taken captive [he was] ordered to serve as a household slave by such strongly/rigidly-upheld [deemed] just power of law that he was forbidden to demand [from the enemy] the right to return home/right of recovery of his former status postliminium ... [and then his mood seems to change] that he should be delivered from a worthless mancipium [another reference to Roman law] seeing that he feared less the cost of [his] femina [‘woman’] perishing/lost to Sodom, Sodomitanum, the damage of long-term slavery and [being affected by] the cruel slavery [of] yesterday, … dum aratri stibam postergum [‘while re-fitting/re-bearing/re-setting the rear seat of the plough’], he [Malchus] respiciens neglegenter regeret [‘neglected to look behind him’], the ruptis sulcorum glebulis iugerum [‘long-acre harrow’] (Fig 12.1, see also note 126) fractured on a furrow clod– that he should perish on so trifling a matter – since at that moment the long-wished for honour of castitatis [was his] for he would preserve [in order to preserve] unharmed/undefiled in genitali solo servaverat he extorqueretur [‘wrenched out to free himself’] of a stricta machera [‘pointed weapon’], preferring to be transfossus crudeliter [‘cruelly stabbed/run through’] by the mucrone [‘point of a sword’], to fall by the hand of/to yield to pudicitiae [classical Latin ‘chastity’] rather than to protect/defend life by profane law iura profanando [i.e. than to succumb to non-Roman law] having very great fear of putting his soul in danger to no purpose if he were to place something in the way integer of saving [from an enemy] virginitatis status servaretur, his status of virginity’.

In Aldhelm’s version Malchus is threatened by a sword, astride a plough, and martyred rather than yield to an attack from the rear. Once again, the language is far from straightforward.115 Those words in bold type are referred to in the translation that follows. Unde Malchus, cum paternae severitatis violentia simulque materna gravitate, qui successurae posteritati consulebant, ad carnale consortium cogeretur, castitatis obtenu et regni caelestis causa contempnere decrevit; sed cum ob cognatae propinquitatis curam accepto conversationis fervore paulatim tepesceret et torrido coenubialis vitae rigore, instinctu strofosi hostis discessurus, sensim refrigesceret, a Saracenis praedonibus et Ismaelitis grassatoribus obvia quaeque atrociter vastantibus captus et servilis berna famulari iubetur, iusto valde iudicio, ut, qui interdictum repetebat postliminium, serviret ut vile mancipium, quatenus, qui Sodomitanum pereuntis feminae dispendium minime pertimesceret, prolixae servitutis detrimentum et invisum heri famulatum atrociter sentiret et, dum aratri stibam postergum respiciens neglegenter regeret, ruptis sulcorum glebulis iugerum occa nugaciter deperiret, cumque ibidem optatae castitatis insignibus, quae in genitali solo servaverat, carere stricta machera extorqueretur, maluit mucrone transfossus crudeliter occumbere quam pudicitiae iura profanando vitam defendere nequaquam animae periculum pertimescens, si integer virginitatis status servaretur. An attempt to render this passage in English illustrates some of the problems presented by Aldhelm’s style of writing; that needed to accommodate the ‘literal’ meaning as distinct from the figurative, while attempting to render an element of his carefully composed ‘four levels of meaning’ no longer part of literary style (see above), the connotation of his words and phrases and the order in which he has placed them. The word ‘innuendo’ is perhaps the most appropriate here, that to insinuate, itself from the Latin ‘to nod.’ ‘Whence Malchus, as the result of the severitatis violentia aggressiveness of his father together with/ endorsed by his mother’s concern who [were] considering the matter of successurae posteritati, succession; [in Jerome’s story Malchus is an only   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate (prosa), p. 270; see also Lapidge and Herren, Prose Works, p. 91. 115

Homosexuality was accepted in the Roman world – including Arabia – where sexuality was defined by rank, the free-born male at the top. There was thus no specific word for ‘homosexual’ either in Latin or Classical Arabic.116 Aldhelm’s enslaved Christian male is thus being treated as totally inferior. Suffering the ultimate humiliation he was also to be denied recourse to Roman law.117 116   Steven M. Oberhelman, ‘Hierachies of gender, ideology, and power in ancient and medieval Greek and Arabic dream titerature’ in Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. J. W. Wright Jr. and Everett K. Rowson (New York and Chichester, 1997), pp. 55-93. 117   Roman law, legum Romanarum iura, was taught at Canterbury and is mentioned by Aldhelm in his letter to Leuthere; Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera,

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni people.122 The category of the ‘effeminate but seemingly male person’ was, however, acknowledged. This again was a matter of social status; to be the passive partner implied weakness, lack of virility. As late as the nineteenth century, Western travellers to Persia were advised to be on their guard.123

Fig 12.1 Algerian

sole-ard closely resembing

Roman

design and harnessed for working with a single animal

(after White, 1984, Fig. 49)

This is the only reference Aldhelm makes to Sodom, that city by the Dead Sea where Lot, Abraham’s nephew lived. The sins of Sodom and Gomorrah were very grievous, notes Genesis 18:20; the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord. Genesis makes it clear that Lot was a resident of Sodom. Warned of impending disaster by two angels he left his sons and sons-in-law to their fate and escaped with his wife and two daughters; the former looking back turned into a ‘pillar of salt’.118 The story was soon to be found in early Christian scholarship; Prudentius (born 348) describes how Domino Dominus flammam pluit in Sodomitas, ‘The Lord rained fire from the Lord upon the Sodomites’.119 There does exist, however, a Classical Arabic term equivalent to the word sodomy, namely liwāt. This word seems to be a back-formation of the name of the prophet Lūt ‘Lot’ whose dealings with the inhabitants of Sodom are repeatedly mentioned in the Qur’an. In sharp contrast to Christianity however, Islamic jurisprudence was to adopt a more restrained attitude to attraction between members of the same sex.120 The Qur’an (7:80-4) 121 also records the shower of brimstone that rained down on the people of Lot, ‘see what was the end of the sinners!’ Their sins, which are interpreted as sodomy between men, are mentioned twelve times in the Qur’an. It was homosexual activities which brought about the destruction of what the Qur’an describes as Lot’s epistulae, p. 476. See also Martin Brett, ‘Theodore and the Latin canon law’ in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, pp. 120-40. 118   Genesis 18:26. 119   The Holy Bible containing Old and New Testaments, King James edition; Prudentius, trans. H. J. Thomson, vol 1 (Cambridge MA and London, 1949) 144-5, 254-5, 258-9; 274-8. Reference to Sodom is also found in Gildas writing in the Britain of c. 540: Maglocunus, tyrannus, he describes as ‘wallowing … like a man drunk on, wine pressed from the vine of the Sodomites (vino de Sodomitana)’; Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and other documents, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom (Chichester, 1978), 33; pp. 32, 102. 120   James T. Monroe, ‘The striptease that was blamed on Abu Bakr’s naughty son: his father being shamed, or was the poet having fun? Ibn Quzman’s Zajal No. 133’ in Wright and Rowson, Homoeroticism, pp. 94-139, at 116, 122. 121   An Interpretation of the Qur’an; English translation of the meanings, a bilingual edition, trans. Majid Fakhry (New York, 2004).

Genesis does not specify the sins of either Sodom or Gomorrah.124 So what was presented to Aldhelm by Sodom and not by Gomorrah? What prompted him to describe Malchus’ happy release by meeting his death in preference to be taken Sodomitanum? Germanic sode, soode, soede is that clod of earth, caespes, or gleba qua agger conficitur, that lump of earth [thrown up from] a ditch (Aldhelm’s glebulis), hence also canalis, latrina or cloaca, a sewer; alternatively ardor stomachi or vapor acris vetriculi.125 Aldhelm’s readers were supplied with a rich visual – and smelly – image. And we are also presented with Latin sodalitas, ‘fellowship,’ ‘intimacy,’ ‘unlawful secret society’. The evil perpetrators were those once-Romanised, Christianised, Arabi who denied the divinity of Christ. There is another element here. From the Latin verb aro, arare ‘to plough’ something which can be ploughed will be arabilis, ‘ploughable’. Jerome cited Jesus (Luke 9:62) who declared that ‘no man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’. Thus it is that Aldhelm places Malchus, the Christian slave, astride an Arab plough.126 Driving into those long brown furrows he was threatened from the rear   J. W. Wright, ‘Masculine allusion and the structure of satire in early Abbasid poetry’ in Wright and Rowson, Homoeroticism, pp.1-23, at 8. 123   Willem Floor, A Social History of Sexual Relations in Iran (Washington DC, 2008), pp. 283-4, at 319, 343. 124   This is discussed in I. Himbaza, A. Schenker and J-B Edart, The Bible on the Question of Homosexuality, trans. B. M. Guevin (Washington DC, 2011) pp. 5-13 and 18-24, who conclude that ‘Homosexuality is present [in the story of Sodom] without being the principal subject’ (p. 20). There is no reference to Aldhelm’s treatment of the subject. 125   C. Kiliaan, Etymologicum Teutonicae Linguae, Facsimile Uitgave (Handzame, Belgium, 1974), p. 501. 126   Wooden ards are still in use in Ethiopia. No Roman original is known. A mosaic panel at St Romain shows a ploughman directing his team of two oxen from behind with a long goad. See also White’s Farm Equipment of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1975), 210-1; Pl 14b. Aratra in terram validam romanica bona erunt, in terram pullam campanica; iuga romanica optima erunt; vomeris indutilis optimus erit. ‘Roman ploughs will be good for vigorous soil, Campanian ones for grey earth. Roman yokes will be best. A detachable plough share will be the best’(which, is what, in the Malchus story, seems to have fractured); Cato on Farming, De Agricultura, trans. Andrew Dalby (Totnes, 1998), pp. 190-1. A recent paper given by Nicolas Schroeder at Oriel College, Oxford, (15 May 2013) noted the role of the seventh-century Roman church in agricultural ‘improvement’ evidenced both sides of the English Channel, in the highlands of both England and Belgium. A significant find made during the current excavations at the Early Christian site of Lyminge in Kent by Gabor Thomas is a seventh-century iron plough coulter; Current Archaeology, Issue 284, Nov 2013, pp. 20-25; G. Thomas, ‘Life before the Minster; the Social Dynamics of Monastic Foundation at AngloSaxon Lyminge, Kent’, Antiquaries Journal 93 (2013) 109-145. www. lymingearchaeology/org. The part played here by the Roman Church during at least one major outbreak of plague during the later seventhcentury is probably not to be underestimated; we may find a poetic ‘eye witness’ reference from Aldhelm himself; see K. Barker, ‘Sherborne, Glastonbury and the expansion’ pp. 83-4 and 92-93 see also n.72. The basilica building programme on those rura novellis ‘new/newly acquired country estates’ referred to by Aldhelm in the name of his father Centwine (see above note 52) may have been as much related to rural depopulation as to conquest. 122

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Katherine Barker ‘Why do students continue to go to Hibernia classibus, “by the fleet load” when there were in the soils, of fertile Britain, those to give dedasculi “intelligible,” “straightforward”, instruction from the Greek, Argivi, and Roman Romanive, by the Quirites, a citizen of Constantinople; that is Theodore, consecrated with the dignity of pontiff, who flourished from the very beginning of his term of office, likewise in the philosophical arts and et eiusdem sodalitatis cliente Hadriano in like manner his faithful follower Hadrian, presiding [over us], urbane, honourable, ineffable.’

with a pointed tool and so directed his attention forwards – to heaven. Aldhelm’s words may yet yield further doubleentendres.127 The sins of Gomorrah never entered the picture and those of Sodom, sode with Old English dōm ‘doom’, ‘judgement’, ‘law’,128 were to provide subsequent generations with a word in the careful definition of which Aldhelm deliberately re-cast the story of an early Syrian saint told by a wellrespected Roman Christian writer. Indeed, Aldhelm is lavish in praise of Jerome’s life and work. Aldhelm himself placed considerable emphasis on scriptura; he declared more than once that those things he had committed to writing were not to be meddled with.129 Such respect was not afforded to Jerome. Ironically perhaps, it was within Jerome’s lifetime – in 390 – that the public burning of male prostitutes in Rome was carried out by order of the Emperor Theodosius.130 Suffice to say Malchus does not become a well-known saint, from which we may deduce, perhaps, that the imagery was just too powerful. Of probable significance is his omission from the carmen, the verse edition of Aldhelm’s De Virginitate – that composed for public recitation – whereas Hilarion (see note 90), Anthony and Paul are all included.131 Theodore, Quirites urbanitate … ‘Theodore was the first of the archbishops whom the whole English church, omnis Anglorum ecclesia, consented to obey … never had there been such happy times since the English, Angli first came to Britannia’ wrote Bede.132 Thus it was that Aldhelm failed to understand why students should continue to go to Ireland for education. He comments: Cur, inquam, Hibernia, quo catervatim istinc lecitantes classibus advecti confluunt, ineffabili quodam privilegio efferatur … fecundo Britanniae in cespite, dedasculi Argivi Romanive Quirites reperiri … id est Theodoro infilula pontificatus fungenti ab ipso tirocinio rudimentorum in flore philosophicae artis adulto necnon et eiusdem sodalitatis cliente Hadrianae dumtaxat urbanitate enucleata ineffabiliter praedito! 133   A possible case is supplied here by Aldhelm’s stibam postergum ‘rear seat’; cf. stibadium, -ii, n; a semi-circular seat or couch. The question arises as to whether Roman ploughs were equipped with adjustable seats; ‘Greek and Roman ploughs belong to a major class known as breaking ploughs or ards; being symmetrical in design they differ from mouldboard ploughs in that they stir the soil to a shallow depth by throwing it up on both sides of the dividing share, and are thus eminently suitable for the prevailing soil conditions of the Mediterranean region. Their basic design has remained unchanged’. K. D. White, Greek and Roman Technology (London, 1984), pp. 59-60. 128   Found in kingdom and freedom ‘this independent word [dōm] had a wide range of meanings whose nucleus was clearly legal’. It is found in both Old High German and in Old English; D. H. Green, Language and History in the early Germanic World (Cambridge, 1998), p. 41. Akin to dōm is OE deman, ‘to judge,’ hence often to condemn. 129   Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’, pp. 240-2; 263-4. 130   Peter Brown, The Body and Society, Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (Columbia NY, 1988), p. 383. 131   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, De Virginitate, Carmen, pp 384-8; Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, pp. 119-20. 132   HE IV.2; Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 334-5. 133   Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, Aldhelmi et ad Aldhelmum epistulae, pp. 127

From Bede we learn that Theodore and Hadrian were inseparable companions. In the Biblical Commentaries ‘it is practically impossible to distinguish one authority from the other.’134 Anyone having read Aldhelm would surely have noticed his use of the word sodalitatis. The foundations were thus laid, not only for the ecclesia Romana, the Roman Church in Britain, its Liturgy, Language, Land and Canon Law, but for centuries of Christian conflict with the Islamic world; the making of that Orientalism of Edward Said.135 The Roman legacy remains with us in the selective re-instatement of the land tax unit, the Latin iugum by the Old English hide, and the Byzantine legacy in our everyday word for ‘church,’ Greek kyriakon, and again in katholicos, ‘universal’. But we inherit for both the old Roman letter ‘C’ carefully promoted by Aldhelm who did not approve of the ‘K’ (Riddle XXX, Appendix: G).136 The siting of Theodore’s concilium episcoporum of 679 at Sherborne-Hæthfeld not only set out to achieve orthodoxy (Greek ortho-doxos ‘right thinking’) among British Christian communities in Dumnonia, but among those Latin-speaking wealhas, Britons, prominent amongst whom was West Saxon King Cenwealh, the ‘strong Briton’ held responsible by later generations for the confiscation, in the name of the Roman Church by due process of law, of the British Christian estate at Lanprobi during the early years of Theodore’s term of office. And which may, as noted above (p. 113) have already have presented a Byzantine affinity in one Probus. It was that very same estate which, as Sherborne, was to witness, a generation later, the consecration of Aldhelm as its first West Saxon prince-bishop.

492-3. 134   Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, p. 82. 135   Edward Said, Orientalism (London, 1978; reprinted with a new Afterword 1995, and with a new Preface, 2003). 136   Isidore notes that ‘the old script’ consisted of 17 Latin letters called legitimus ‘legitimate;’ the six ‘illegitimate’ letters cited by Aldhelm will be H, K, Q, X, Y and Z. Aldhelm uses the Latin elementum for ‘alphabet’ (we inherit the Greek word) but Ehwald notes that in some manuscript editions of the Enigmata the ecclesiastical Latin word abecedarium, ‘A B C’ is used. It is clear from Aldhelm’s words that he is promoting the old alphabet. The letter Y will have numbered among those six letters ‘not to be counted in our number’ and thus we find Aldhelm and bombix, not bombyx (Appendix: A).The letter X was not used, says Isidore until the time of Augustus and ‘they would write I for Y’. Lindsay, Isidori, I iv 30-1; Barney et al, Etymologies of Isidore, pp. 40-42; Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, p. 6; Barker, ‘Aldhelm, poet and composer’ p. 268.

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni Acknowledgement The author would like to thank Gale Owen-Crocker for valuable assistance in the preparation of this paper. Thanks also go to Brian Schneider.

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Appendix Aldhelm’s Enigmata – riddles – mentioned in the text and presenting an Eastern Mediterranean/Byzantine/Arab theme Vivien Law ‘Wisdom, Authority and Grammar’ pp. 2425, notes that ‘Aldhelm’s, like many Byzantine riddles, focus on the natural world, revealing the play of the four elements and the mysteries of birth.

‘Although buglers blow hollow bronze battlesignals and citharas strum loudly and war trumpets blast noisily, my guts belch out notes by the hundred; in my presence the sound of stringed instruments is soon brought to a standstill.’ (Barker, ‘The Carmen rhythmicum’, Aldhelm and Sherborne, 2010, 244)

(A) Silkworm XII Bombix Annua dum redeunt texendi tempora telas, Lurida setigeris redundant viscera filis, Moxque genestarum frondosa cacumina scando, Ut globulos fabricans tum fati sorte quiescam. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, 103)

(D) Camel IC Camellus Consul eram quondam, Romanus miles equester Arbiter imperio dum regni sceptra regebat; Nunc onus horrendum reportant corpora gippi Et premit immensum truculentae sarcina molis. Terreo cornipedum nunc velox agmen equorum, Qui trepidi fugiunt mox quadripedante meatu, Dum trucis aspectant immensos corporis artus. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, p.145)

‘When the time of year for weaving (silk) thread returns, my pale inwards swell with silken fibres; I quickly climb up to the leafy tops of broom so that, after making the little (silk) balls I may rest in the peace allotted to me by fate.’ (Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 1985, 73)

‘Once I was a consul, when the Roman cavalry officer controlled the sceptres of power with his dominion. Now my body supports the frightful burden of a hump, and a load of killing weight presses on its large shape. I terrify swift herds of horn-footed horses which flee at once in fright with four-footed motion as they spy the mighty limbs of my ferocious body.’ (Translation by the author)

(B) Peacock XIV Pavo Sum namque excellens specie, mirandus in orbe, Ossibus ac nervis ac rubro sanguine cretus. Cum mihi vita comes fuerit, nihil aurea forma Plus rubet et moriens mea numquam pulpa putrescit. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, 103-4) ‘I am outstandingly beautiful, acknowledged as a wonder throughout the world, (even though) I am created from bones and sinews and red blood. As long as I live, the sheen of burnished gold does not blow more brightly (than I do); and when I die, my flesh never decays.’ (Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 1985, 73)

(E) Fig Tree LXXVII Ficulnea Quis prior in mundo deprompsit tegmina vestis Aut quis clementer miserum protexit egenum? Irrita non referam verbis nec frivola fingam. Primitus in terra proprio de corpore peplum, Ut fama fertur, produxi frondibus altis; Carica me curvat, dum massis pabula praestat, Sedulus agricola brumae quas tempore mandit. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, p.132)

(C) Organ XIII Barbita Quamvis aere cavo salpictae classica clangant Et citharae crepitent strepituque tubae modulentur, Centenos tamen eructant mea viscera cantus; Me praesente stupet mox musica chorda fibrarum (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera; 1919, 103)

‘Who in the world sooner provided the covering of a garment, or who more mercifully covered wretched (mankind) in need? I do not speak empty words nor fashion fictions: first of all on earth, as report has it, I produced from my own body a garment of the form of long leaves. The fig bends me down while it provides food in clusters, which the diligent farmer eats during the winter months.’ (Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 1985, pp. 86-7)

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Aldhelm and the Byzantine World: serica, saba and Saraceni (F) Pepper

(G) Alphabet

XL Piper Sum niger exterius rugoso cortice tectus, Sed tamen interius candentem gesto medullam. Dilicias, epulas regum luxusque ciborum, Ius simul et pulpas battutas condo culinae; Sed me subnixum nulla virtute videbis, Viscera ni fuerint nitidis quassata medullis. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, pp.114-5)

XXX Elementum Nos decem et septem genitae sine voce sorores Sex alias nothas non dicimus annumerandas. Nascimur ex ferro rursus ferro moribundae Necnon et volucris penna volitantis ad aethram; Terni nos fratres incerta matre crearunt. Qui cupit instanter sitiens audire docentes, Tum cito prompta damus rogitanti verba silenter. (Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, 1919, p. 110)

‘I am black on the outside, covered with wrinkled rind, yet inside I have a glistening core. I season the delicacies of the kitchen: the feasts of kings and extravagant dishes and likewise sauce and stews. But you will find me to be of no value at all unless my inwards are crushed for their shining contents.’ (Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 1985, p. 78)

‘We were born seventeen voiceless sisters; we say that the six other bastards are not to be counted in our number. We are born of iron – and we die once again by iron – or of the feather of a bird flying swiftly in the sky. Three brothers begot us of an unknown mother. Whoever in his eagerness wishes earnestly to hear our instruction, we quickly produce for him silent words.’ (Lapidge and Rosier, Poetic Works, 1985, 76; note 27: ‘the bastards are the letters h, k, q, x, y and z. The iron that begets them is the stylus; the “three brothers” are the three fingers that hold the stylus.’)

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Chapter 13 Speaking Beyond the Light: experience and auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum A. J. Ford Introduction The Wonders of the East, an Anglo-Saxon text surviving in three manuscripts, makes no reference to the pagan and Christian auctoritates that constitute the learned discourse about prodigies and marvels of which it is a part.1 It lacks even the appeal to experience that authenticates (ostensibly) the letters to Hadrian and Trajan from which it is derived, and which is retained as a strategy in that more widely-circulated prodigy text, the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem and its subsequent translations.2 Instead the Wonders presents a series of predicative assertions, blunt but extraordinary facts that refer to no authority, textual or otherwise, beyond themselves. This characteristic makes the Wonders an unusual example of medieval teratology and an instructive comparandum for the Liber monstrorum, an earlier Anglo-Latin account of prodigies from the seventh or eighth century that employs the theme of auctoritas both to structure its material and to frame the reader’s response. But no text, not even a humble catalogue like the Wonders, is sui generis; all literary productions are interpretable precisely because they participate in a given discourse. In the Wonders, however, the silence of the text concerning its sources obfuscates its place in, and dependence upon, a wider tradition. That is not to suggest, of course, that a reader of the Wonders – historical or modern – will fail to see the connection between it and other teratological literature. But subjects as far beyond experience as those presented in the Wonders cannot be accepted as genuine without reference to authority. Thus this article is an examination of the importance of auctoritas for reading both the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum. The Liber is examined first as the earlier document, and the important teratological tropes of auctoritas and incredulity are explored with reference to it. The absence of these tropes in the Wonders prompts the suggestion that, given the outlandish nature of their subject matter, what the Wonders represses in its text returns in an implicit appeal to other forms of auctoritas. There is a mistranslation in the Old English version of the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem which provides a resonant metaphor for what the reader experiences when encountering the Wonders of the East. Toward the end of the Epistola, the great king reports how he and his men

visit a sacred grove, entrance to which is permitted only to those who have refrained from sexual activity.3 In this grove stands a shrine of two trees, one dedicated to the sun and the other to the moon, at which presides a tenfoot priest with the teeth of a dog. Instructed by the priest, Alexander and his men strip themselves of their rings and clothing and worship the trees. They are invited to ask the sun and moon to return ‘truthful answers’ (veridica responsa) to their supplications, which are only to be thought and not spoken aloud. When Alexander wonders whether he will see his mother and sisters again, one of the trees (it is not clear which) prophesies for all to hear that the king will die before returning home. This information prompts two further visits from Alexander to inquire, first from the moon-tree and then from the sun-tree, the place of his death and the identity of his killer. It is at this point that the Old English preserves a mistranslation. The sun-tree refuses to identify Alexander’s murderer. To do so would obstruct the work of the fates and the trees have already spoken ‘beyond the limit’ of their ‘light’. The Old English reads: Ac ne frign ðu unc nohtes ma ne axa, for þon wit habbað oferhleoðred þæt gemære uncres leohtes, ac to Fasiacen ‫ ך‬Porre þæm cyninge eft gehworf þu. ‘But do not question or ask the pair of us any more, for we have spoken beyond the limit of our light, but turn back to Fasiacen and King Porus’.4 It renders the following in the Latin original: Nunc modo cave, ne nos ulterius scisciteris; inde excede terminos luci nostri et ad Fasiacen Porumque revertere. ‘Now only take care not to question us further: go out from here, from the boundaries of our grove and return to the Fasis and Porus’.5 Most likely the Old English preserves a simple misreading of lux/lucus in which the translator’s source-text read lucis (genitive singular of lux) instead of luci (genitive   The account can be found in Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem, ed. W. Walther Boer, rev. ed. (Meisenheim am Glan, 1973), pp. 41-52 and Alexander’s Letter to Aristotle about India, trans. Lloyd L. Gunderson (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), pp. 151-4. 4   References to the Wonders of the East, the Liber monstorum and the Old English Letter from Alexander to Aristotle are to the editions in Andy Orchard, Pride and Prodigies: studies in the ‘Beowulf’-manuscript, 2nd ed. (Toronto, 2003). This quotation may be found at p. 252 (trans. p. 253). 5   Boer, Epistola, p. 51;Gunderson, Alexander’s Letter, p. 154. 3

  The Wonders of the East is an illustrated text that describes various marvels, monsters and wonderful occurrences. Three versions of differing length survive in both Old English and Latin. For details of the manuscripts see note 37, below. 2   On the epistolary antecedents of the Wonders see Ann Elizabeth Knock, ‘Wonders of the East: a synoptic edition of The Letter of Pharasmenes and the Old English and Old Picard translations’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1982). 1

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A. J. Ford singular of lucus). But read on a second level, it provides a metaphor for the reader’s encounter with the Wonders and something with which to explore the relationship between experience and auctoritas in Anglo-Saxon England.

Et dum sermo de his per multarum scripturarum auctoritatem uelud excelsi sideris fulgore olim humano generi paene ubique refulsit, mendacia ea nemini iteranda putassem nisi me uentus tuae postulationis a puppi praecelsa pauidum inter marina praecipitasset monstra.

The ‘Liber monstrorum’ The Liber monstrorum is extant in five manuscripts; all are continental in origin and date to the ninth or early tenth centuries.6 Together they represent a manuscript tradition which, as Ann Knock notes, was ‘strongest in the area around the southern half of the Rhine’.7 Max Manitius posited a Frankish origin for the Liber in 1911 and noted its similarity to Irish orthography, but the present scholarly consensus – largely on the evidence of orthography – reads the Liber as an Anglo-Latin work.8 Thomas of Cantimpré’s Liber de natura rerum (c. 1244) preserves thirty attributions to one Adelinus (or Adelmus) of which sixteen ‘derive from the Liber monstrorum, with parts quoted in verbatim’.9 This may well indicate that the Liber circulated under Aldhelm’s name and that the text has some connection with his circle at Malmesbury, if not with Aldhelm himself.10 The fragmentary state of some of the manuscripts and the degree of textual variation between them suggest a work that is, in Lapidge’s words, in a ‘fairly advanced state of transmission’; or, as Orchard puts it, all the witnesses ‘have mangled the material somewhat’.11 With this in view – and the terminus post quem provided by the Liber’s repeated use of Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies – Lapidge dates the text to the century after 650. These premises are accepted for the discussion that follows. i. ‘auctoritas’ and incredulity The Prologue to the Liber monstrorum is famously ambiguous concerning its subject and introduces the question of auctoritas early:   Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijks-Universiteit, Voss. lat., MS Oct. 60, fols 1v-12v (Fleury, s. ix/x); London, BL, Royal MS 15B. XIX, fols 103v-105v (Rheims, s. x); New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 906, pp. 79-110 (Rheims, s. ix); St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 237, pp. 2-6 (St. Gallen, s. ix1); and Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August Bibliothek, MS Gudianus lat. 148, fols 108v-123v (Eastern Francia, s. ix/x). For references to catalogue descriptions and to the relevant literature see Michael Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber monstrorum and Wessex’ in Anglo-Latin Literature, 600-899 (London and Rio Grande OH 1996), pp. 271-312, at 283-4). 7   Ann Knock, ‘The Liber monstrorum: an unpublished manuscript and some reconsiderations’, Scriptorium 32 (1978), 19-28, at 21. 8   Max Manitius, Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols (Munich, 1911-31), I, 114. He was followed by E. A. Anspach, ‘Das Fortleben Isidors im VII bis IX Jahrhundert’ in Miscellanea Isidoriana: homenaje a S. Isidoro de Sevilla en el XIII centenario de su muerte [ed. la provincia de Andalucía S.I] (Rome, 1936), pp. 323-56, at p. 336. On the importance of the Liber’s orthography see the summary discussion in Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm’, pp. 285-7. Ann Knock is the only scholar of recent times for whom the available evidence supports a continental origin (see note 7). 9   Ann Knock, untitled review of Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, ed. Corrado Bologna (Milan, 1977) in Medium Ævum 48 (1979), 259-62, at p. 261. 10   Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm’, pp. 289-96. 11   Respectively, Lapidge, ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm’, pp. 284; and Andy Orchard, ‘The sources and meaning of the Liber monstrorum’, in I monstra nell’Inferno Dantesco: tradizione e simbologie [no ed.] (Spoleto, 1997), pp. 73-105, at p. 75. 6

‘And whilst discussion of these things once shone almost everywhere for humankind as if with the brightness of a lofty star through the authority of many writings, I should have thought that those lies were unrepeatable to anyone, if the gust of your request had not cast me from the high poop quivering amongst the monsters of the deep.’12 Clearly, the qualities of ‘veracity and sagacity’ that A. J. Minnis sees as defining criteria for auctoritas – building on M.-D. Chenu’s identification of ‘l’idée d’autorité, de dignité’ within the term – are undermined here.13 But they are not undermined indiscriminately. Throughout the Liber Christian authors are deemed reliable and their pagan counterparts are questioned. This approach is woven into the very structure of the work. As Orchard convincingly reads it, the form of the Liber monstrorum mirrors that of the siren described in the Prologue who, being ‘compared to the work itself’, has ‘a head of reason followed by all kinds of (bestial) shagginess and (serpentine) scaliness’.14 Orchard also notes, with reference to Augustine and Jerome, that the figure of the siren represented the ‘seductive dangers of the secular world’.15 It is tempting, then, to read the Liber monstrorum as an elaborate restatement of Tertullian’s famous dictum (Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis?) and an analogue of Alcuin’s adaptation of it (Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?).16 Orchard’s reading of the text is subtle, but if the Liber monstrorum is construed only as a document in which the Christian inheritance is good and the pagan inheritance is bad, some of its import is in danger of being lost. Since the scepticism of the text is limited to its subject, the rejection of monster-lore from one particular tradition cannot be made to constitute rejection of that tradition in its entirety. What we hear in the (implied) authorial voice of the Liber monstrorum is, as Brian McFadden correctly observes, more properly understood as a certain intellectual freedom operating ‘within an authoritativelydefined discourse’.17 Thus the shock of the Prologue is not that this intellectual freedom might be expressed as contempt for credulity. It is rather that this contempt is expressed within – and, by virtue of the subject matter, implicitly against – the conventions of Christianity that constitute the authoritative discourse for its author.   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 254 (trans. p. 255).   A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: scholastic literary attitudes in the later middle ages, 2nd ed. (Aldershot, 1988), p. 10; M.-D. Chenu, ‘Auctor, actor, autor’, Bulletin du Cange 3 (1927), 81-6, at p. 83. 14   Orchard, ‘Sources and meaning’, p. 81. 15   Orchard, ‘Sources and meaning’, p. 99. 16   Tertullian, De preascriptione haereticorum, in PL II, col. 20B; Alcuin, Ep. 124 in MGH: Epistolae Karolini aevi, tomus II, ed. Ernestus Duemmler (Berlin, 1895; rpt. Munich, 1978), p. 183. 17   Brian McFadden, ‘Authority and discourse in the Liber monstrorum’, Neophilologus 89 (2005), 473-93, at p. 474. 12 13

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Speaking Beyond the Light: Experience and Auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum It was, from the classical period on, part of the discourse concerning the marvellous races to admit the possibility of incredulity and to refer to doubtful subjects on the basis of authority. When the Liber avers that only certain marvels ‘are believed to be true’ (quaedam tantum in ipsis mirabilibus uera esse creduntur) despite their common circulation ‘through the authority of many writings’ (per multarum scripturarum auctoritatem) it is, in one sense, being entirely conventional.18 A certain scepticism is present in teratological texts both before the Liber and after. In the thirteenth century Thomas of Cantimpré included a sceptical parenthesis – si tamen verum est – in the opening paragraph of his account of the marvellous races.19 Isidore of Seville distinguished those which existed and those which do not but have been contrived to explain the causes of things (quae non sunt, sed ficta in causis rerum interpretantur).20 And at the beginning of the Latin teratological tradition a similar caveat can be found at the beginning of Book VII of the Historia naturalis, in which Pliny avers that some of the races he describes ‘will appear portentous and incredible to many’ (prodigiosa aliqua et incredibilia multis visum iri haud dubito). He continues: quis enim Aethiopas antequam cerneret credidit? aut quid non miraculo est cum primum in notitiam venit? ‘For who ever believed in the Ethiopians before actually seeing them? or what is not deemed miraculous when first it comes into knowledge?’ This is the case because ‘the power and majesty of the nature of the universe at every turn lacks credence if one’s mind embraces parts of it only and not the whole’ (naturae vero rerum vis atque maiestas in omnibus momentis fide caret si quis modo partes eius ac non totam conplectatur animo).21 This grandiose statement notwithstanding, Pliny refers to authorities when his subjects appear doubtful (ad auctores relegabo qui dubiis reddentur omnibus).22 Such observations remind the reader of the limits of both reason and experience by putting each term in relation to the other, and both in relation to a third (i.e. Nature). It is reasonable, Pliny implies, to find the Ethiopians unbelievable until they are encountered but also to have the miraculous as a category for processing new and extraordinary experiences. However the reality of Ethiopians is to be believed once encountered and to call their existence miraculous may be a useful explanation only initially. Reason waits only to be proved by experience.

  Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, pp. 256 and 254 respectively.   Thomas of Cantimpré, Thomas Cantimpratensis Liber de natura rerum: editio princeps secundum codices manuscriptos, ed. H. Boese (Berlin and New York, 1973), p. 97.  20   Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hisplanensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive originum libri XX, ed. by W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols (Oxford, 1911), II, n. pag. [XI.iii.28]. 21   All three quotations and translations are taken from Pliny the Elder, Natural History, ed. and trans. H. Rackham, 10 vols (London and Cambridge MA, 1938-62), II, p. 510 (trans. p. 511). 22   Pliny, Natural History, II, p. 512. 18 19

ii. mendacia ea nemini iteranda? Pliny is also clear that comprehension of an object is dependent on its relation to the person observing it: marvellous races are ludibria to Nature (‘playthings’) but they are mirabilia to humans (Historia naturalis, VII. ii.32). The word ludibrium has the subsidiary meanings of ‘object of derision’, or ‘something that mocks by seeming to be other than it is’.23 In this alternative sense the marvellous races may be ludibria to humans. They are derided as incredible or morally suspect (e.g. Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium, 30) but mock humanity by their recurrence and their function as signs (Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXI.viii).24 It would seem, then, that one possible use for the marvellous races – perhaps by extension, the auctoritates that preserved them – was to problematize the categories of human reason and experience. Reason alone cannot be a guide (for it might limit our understanding of what is possible) but neither can experience alone (because what appears miraculous might not actually be so). Augustine makes a similar point in De civitate Dei, one of the two major Christian sources for the Liber monstrorum.25 Writing about adamant (De civitate Dei, XXI.iv), he notes that those who have the stone do not marvel at its hardness, or that it cannot be destroyed except by goat’s blood. Quibus autem non ostenditur, fortasse nec credunt; aut si credunt, inexperta mirantur; et si contigerit experiri, adhuc quidem mirantur insolita, sed assiduitas experiendi paulatim subtrahit admirationis incitamentum. ‘Those who do not see it perhaps do not believe, or, if they believe, they marvel at what is beyond their experience. And if the experience should happen to come, they still marvel at this as being unusual. But continued experience gradually removes all occasion for wonder’.26 This is essentially an elaboration of Pliny in which an initial response that deems something miraculous has, since the term has a specific (and real) theological meaning for Augustine, been replaced by one which reads an experience as insolitus. Augustine, however, takes Pliny’s point to its natural conclusion: experience – and, no doubt,   Oxford Latin Dictionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford, 1968-82), s.v. ‘ludibrium’. 24   Monstra sane dicta perhibent a monstrando quod aliquid significando demonstrent, et ostenta ab ostendendo, et portenta a portendendo, id est, praeostendendo, et prodigia quod porro dicant, id est, futura praedicant. (‘The various names monstra, ostenta, portenta, prodigia come from the verbs monstrare “show”, because they show something by a sign, ostendere “display”, potendere “spread in front”, that is, display beforehand, and porro dicere “say aforetime”, that is, predict the future’.) Augustine, The City of God Against the Pagans, ed. and trans. George E. McCracken, Eva Sanford, William Greene, David Wiesen, Philip Levine and David Knowles, 7 vols (London and Cambridge MA, 1957-72), VII, 56 (trans. p. 57). 25   The other is, of course, Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies. See the table presented as Appendix IIIc in Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, pp. 318-20. 26   Augustine, City of God, VII, p. 20 (trans. p. 21). 23

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A. J. Ford a reasoned reflection upon that experience – takes away wonder, even if its object remains marvellous in itself.27 Although it is not expressed in such terms, the seeds of Gervase of Tilbury’s assertion that ‘the inability to explain why a thing is so constitutes a marvel’ (mirabilia constituit ignorantia reddende rationis quare sic sit) are present here.28 It is not surprising then that, in an earlier section of De civitate Dei, Augustine is quite clear that belief in the existence of the marvellous races is not necessary (Sed omnia genera hominum, quae dicuntur esse, credere non est necesse).29

reason. Two parts of the Prologue contribute to this. In the first the narrator asserts that some wonders are, simply, fabulous and cannot be verified: ... sunt innumerabilia quae si quis ad exploranda pennis uolare potuisset et ita rumoroso sermone tamen ficta probaret, ubi nunc urbs aurea et gemmis aspersa litora dicuntur, ibi lapideam aut nullam urbem et scopulosa cerneret. ‘... there are countless things which if anyone could take winged flight to explore, they would prove that, although they should be concocted in speech and rumour, where now there is said to lie a golden city and gem-strewn shores, one would see there rocks and a stony city, if at all’.33

When, therefore, the Liber asserts that reports of monsters are lies never to be repeated (mendacia ea nemini iteranda) rather than things not necessary to believe, it is repositioning itself significantly in relation to auctoritas.30 Augustine was never so definite. Perhaps because his discussion of marvels was presented as part of a larger theological exploration – of creation and (by extension) salvation in Book XVI of De civitate Dei, and the perpetual physical torment of the damned in Book XXI – his conclusions are given cautiously and circumspectly (pedetemtim cauteque); (De civitate Dei, XVI.viii).31 But the Liber chooses a different strategy altogether because there are two sources of auctoritas. As Boethius notes in a general discussion of authority at the end of his commentary on Cicero’s Topica:

A city is, of course, a human construction and not a product of nature like Pliny’s Ethiopians, or the androgyne concerning whom the Liber’s narrator testifies immediately after the Prologue. So in order to address the marvels of nature, the narrator continues:

omnis auctoritas aut ex magnis atque excellentibus rebus et per naturam optimis venit, aut ab his quae inferiore loco sunt constituta, fidem non ex naturae qualitate, sed ex vulgo insitis opinionibus capit.

‘... because now, when humankind has multiplied and the lands of the earth have been filled, fewer monsters are produced under the stars, and we read that in most corners of the world they have been utterly eradicated and overthrown by them ...’34

‘All authority comes either from things that are great and excellent and best by nature or from those things that hold an inferior place and have credibility not because of the quality of their nature but because of the beliefs held by common people’.32 The accusation of lying is thus an attack on that authority which is great and excellent, for auctoritas must have both veracity and sagacity if it is to be genuine. Since in this context one quality implies the other, it is necessary only to have one to have both, or to attack one to lose both. The second strategy is to use experience – or, more strictly, the possibility of experience – not as something corrective or probative of the limits of reason but an invitation to   Augustine makes this point about lime immediately before the discussion of adamant: Quarum vero rerum ante nostros oculos cotidiana documenta versantur, non genere minus mirabili sed ipsa assiduitate vilescunt (‘But when daily examples of these things occur before our eyes, though their character is no less marvellous, they seem common after frequent repetition’) Augustine, City of God, VII, p. 20 (trans. p. 21). 28   Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia: recreation for an emperor, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), p. 558 (trans. p. 559). 29   Augustine, City of God, V, p. 42. 30   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 254. 31   Augustine, City of God, V, p. 48. 32   Boethius, ‘In topica Ciceronis commentaria’, in PL, LXIV, col. 1168D. The translation is from Boethius’s ‘In Ciceronis Topica’, trans. Eleonore Stump (Ithaca NY and London, 1988), p. 181. 27

... quia nunc humano genere multiplicato et terrarum orbe repleto, sub astris minus producuntur monstra, quae ab ipsis per plurimos terrae angulos eradicata funditus et subuersa legimus ...

Two observations are significant here. First, that where there are humans there are fewer monsters. Although the language is comparative (minus producuntur), the implication is clearly that monsters exist where humans are not; they are beyond human experience almost by definition. Second, and crucially, this is something we know because we read (legimus) that it is the case. The repeated use of comparative language (per plurimos terrae angulos) ensures that some space is left for the possibility of wonders but the implication is that just as we do not know the content of the deep (uastam gurgitis uoraginem), so an encounter with monsters is beyond us. What the Prologue thus accomplishes is a reversal of polarities. In the Plinean model experience and reason operate together, the one reminding the other of its limitations. Auctoritas, however, resides in texts that may require considerable credulity from their readers but that were produced by people with ‘far greater industry or older devotion to study’ (tanto maiore ... diligentia vel cura vetustiore).35 These are the conventions of reason representing that which, in Boethius’ terms, comes from   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 256 (trans. p. 257).   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 256 (trans. p. 257). 35   Pliny, Natural History, II, 512 (trans. p. 513). 33 34

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Speaking Beyond the Light: Experience and Auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum the great, the excellent and the best by nature (ex magnis atque excellentibus rebus et per naturam optimis venit). A contrasting source of authority is the view held by common people (ex vulgo insitis opinionibus capit). This is the world of ‘common sense beliefs’ validated largely by experience or, when speculative, by the experience of being commonly held. They are not written, cannot be read and are, by definition, excluded from the ‘higher’ conventions of reason. In the Liber monstrorum, textual auctoritas is reduced to the status of lies (mendacia) or something ‘spread ... with the gilded speech of marvellous report’ (aurato sermone miri rumoris fama dispergebat).36 It is given the status of common belief, even if it has been expressed in a gold brocade. By such rhetoric reason, rather than complementing experience, becomes subject to it. In a parallel but opposite move, the Liber elevates the world of experience from the status of common belief to something we read. Monsters and wonders – if they ever existed – are quite beyond the sphere of experience since it is written that they are now either overthrown (subversa) or completely destroyed (eradicata funditus). Thus experience, which knows neither golden cities nor sirens, is given the conventions of reason: what was oral and everyday has received the trappings of writing usually reserved for the greatest and best by nature. The shock of the Prologue, then, is not that it describes belief in the monstrous races as unnecessary as Augustine did; nor that it operates entirely without a theological vocabulary whilst presupposing a Christian discourse. The shock is that a conventional element of teratological discourse is used to invert the relationship between auctoritas and experience. In the Liber monstrorum, reason and its written processes do not wait to be proved by experience; instead experience has become authoritative and the starting place for reasoned reflection. There are no monsters, says the Liber monstrorum, where we are not. The ‘Wonders of the East’ While the Prologue to the Liber monstrorum uses selfconscious literary techniques to introduce its subject, the Wonders of the East survives as a list that lacks a form of introduction, a discernable order, or an epistolary or narrative frame. The text preserves no sense of ambiguity concerning its subject and the incredulity topos is entirely absent. Instead the Wonders is presented bluntly and assertively, existing as a given without any reference to auctoritas or a rhetorical strategy to legitimate the content. As noted above, all literary productions are interpretable because they participate in given discourse and that appropriate to the Wonders is, clearly, the discourse of learned teratology. But without two of the tropes integral to that discourse – the incredulity topos and reference to textual or experiential auctoritas – the Wonders is open to secondary encoding. This is not a process which occurs abstractly but at the material and bibliographic level.   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 256 (trans. p. 257).

36

Since the Wonders refuses to provide one of its own, each bibliographic iteration of the text becomes its own interpretative context, an authoritative frame in which the reader can construe the material.37 So, in Vitellius A.xv the Wonders becomes a piece of vernacular literature as part of a ‘literary’ artefact; in Tiberius B.v it is yoked to the theology of a computus manuscript; and in Bodley 614 it complements the Latin mythography of the twelfthcentury schools. In each instance, veracity and sagacity are provided not from within the text itself but by association with the authoritative forms of other discourses. We will examine Tiberius B.v in some detail before presenting shorter accounts of Bodley 614 and, in conclusion, Vitellius A.xv. i. London, British Library, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v, part 1 Nicholas Howe called Tiberius B.v ‘a book of elsewhere’ but it is more commonly – if less poetically – described as a miscellany.38 Since ‘miscellaneous manuscripts were seldom “miscellaneous” for the audiences or individuals that produced, read, and used them’, we might observe that Tiberius B.v fits well the description of a computus manuscript.39 Faith Wallis has identified a ‘classic shape to a computus manuscript, centred on the Paschal table and the solar calendar, surrounded by their explanatory tables and texts’.40 Although Wallis does not specify examples of this ‘classic’ model, it would appear that Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 291 (s. xi/xii) may be taken as a fair – if late – example of the type. However, as Charles Jones noted, ‘the mediaeval computus was not an exclusive form’.41 Wallis observes further that two types of computus manuscript – ‘centrifugal’ and ‘centripetal’ – derive from this ‘classic’ model. In a manuscript of the   The manuscripts are London, BL, Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv, fols 98v-106v (?London, s. x/xi); London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B.v, part 1, fols 78v-87r (?Christ Church, Canterbury, s. xi2/4); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614, fols 36r-48r (?Battle, c. 1180). Both Kenneth Sisam and E. G. Stanley suggest London as a possible origin for Vitellius A.xv; see Kenneth Sisam, ‘The compilation of the Beowulf Manuscript’ in Studies in the History of Old English Literature, ed. K. Sisam (Oxford, 1953), pp. 65-96 (p. 95) and E. G. Stanley, ‘The date of Beowulf: some doubts and no conclusions’ in The Dating of ‘Beowulf’, ed. Colin Chase (Toronto, 1981), pp. 197-211 (p. 211). David Dumville assigns Tiberius B.v to Christ Church in David N. Dumville, ‘The Anglian collection of royal genealogies and regnal lists’, ASE 5 (1976), 23-50. I have assigned Bodley 614 to Battle Abbey on palaeographical grounds; see Alun James Ford, ‘The Wonders of the East in its Contexts: a critical examination of London, BL, Cotton MSS Vitellius A.xv and Tiberius B.v, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Manchester, 2009), pp. 79-105. Although I still consider Battle a reasonable possibility for Bodley 614, I am reluctant to repeat the claim with the the same convivtion as I did in the thesis, hence the question mark. 38   Nicholas Howe, Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England: essays in cultural geography (New Haven CT, 2006), pp. 151-94. Cf. the facsimile of Tiberius B.v published as An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany, ed. Patrick McGurk, D. Dumville, M. Godden and Ann Knock EEMF (Copenhagen, 1983). 39   Barbara A. Shailor, ‘A Cataloger’s View’ in The Whole Book: cultural perspectives on the medieval miscellany, ed. Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel (Ann Arbor MI, 1996), pp. 153-67, at p. 167. 40   Faith Wallis, ‘MS Oxford St John’s College 17: a medieval manuscript in its context’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Toronto, 1985), p. 18. 41   Bede, Bedae Opera de temporibus, ed. Charles W. Jones (Cambridge, MA, 1943), p. 76. 37

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A. J. Ford former type, computistical charts and their explanatory texts have been separated. The charts are then commonly attached to liturgical volumes while the computistical texts ‘take refuge in anthologies of mathematical, physical or astronomical materials’. In the ‘centripetal’ type ‘the classic core of tables and texts can attract a more or less extensive halo of satellite topics’.42 Tiberius B.v – classified as a computistical manuscript rather than a ‘geographical miscellany’43 or a miscellany of some other type44 – is clearly an example of the latter. That the Wonders should be found in the orbit of a computus manuscript is less surprising than might at first seem. For Augustine the existence of monstrous races was primarily a question about creation but it was also one that had implications for the authority of Scripture. His denial that Antipodes might exist (De civitate Dei, XVI. ix) rests on the integrity of the second point. Individual marvels, on the other hand, could be deployed as evidence from the created order, as they are in Book XXI.iv of De civitate Dei. This is because the role that Pliny gave to a personified Nature, Augustine assigns to a transcendent God: Deus enim creator est omnium.45 In the Christian scheme, creation itself takes precedence as a marvel far greater than any of its constituent parts. Ipse est enim Deus, qui omnia in hoc mundo magna et parva miracula ... fecit eademque ipso mundo uno atque omnium maximo miraculo inclusit. ‘For it is God himself who made all the marvels in this world, small and great ... and enclosed them in the universe itself, a single miracle and greatest of all’.46 The same ‘creation principle’ can be seen in the computus. Two examples will suffice. After a technical introduction covering finger-counting and fractions, Bede begins De temporum ratione with an account of the creation of light, the first of God’s acts in the book of Genesis. Similarly, after his prefatory matter Byrhtferth of Ramsey quotes Wisdom 11:21 (Vulgate verse division) as the text from which the rest of his work proceeds: Cum omnipotentia magnitudinis Domini cuncta mirabiliter creasset,‘omnia’, ut divina ait scriptura, ‘in mensura et in numero et in pondere’ constituit.

  Wallis, ‘MS Oxford St John’s College 17’, p. 18.   Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 20. 44   Patrick McGurk schematizes the manuscript as follows in his conclusion to the facsimile: ‘The following categories embrace the contents of the Tiberius miscellany though clear dividing lines between them are not easy to draw: geographical, the Marvels, Sigeric’s journey to Rome, the stations at Rome, the zonal map, Priscian’s translation of Periegesis and the mappa mundi; scientific, the computistical matter, Ælfric’s De temporibus anni, and the Aratea; historical, the lists, episcopal, regnal and other, and the genealogies; and ecclesiastical, the calendar which was closely associated with the computistical items, and the lost Raban Maur’s De laude crucis’ (McGurk, Eleventh-Century Miscellany, p. 107). 45   Augustine, City of God, V, p. 44. 46   Augustine, City of God, VII, p. 62 (trans. p. 63). 42 43

‘When the omnipotent might of the Lord wished to create the universe in wondrous fashion, he arranged “all things”, as holy scripture says, “in measure, and number, and weight”’.47 In its divine order, creation is good. As Bede put it, God created nothing imperfect (neque enim quid imperfectum creator aequissimus institueret).48 Computus was not simply a system or procedure to calculate a date, with data taken from the natural world (the solar year, the lunar year, etc.). It was a project that viewed itself – and the natural world that provided its data – from a theological perspective. Indeed, as Byrhtferth notes at one point in the Enchiridion, computus was not something with theological components, it was something articulated by theology: Hesterna die, dum serenus iubar aurei solis tenebras depullisset cordis interioris antri, theologia exorsa est (id est sermo de Deo) de inceptione compot ... ‘Yesterday, when the serene light of the golden sun had expelled the shadows from the innermost recesses of the mind, theology (that is, language concerning God) spoke concerning the enterprise of computus ...’.49 Computus – the ‘deopan cræft’ as Byrhtferth called it – thus had universal scope.50 It was a paradigmatic theological discourse. Moreover, it was precisely because of its relation to the world as creation that computus unlocked a feast reckoned to be so transformative that it was celebrated not in memoriam but in sacramento (Augustine, Ep. 55). Describing elements of creation as they do, the Wonders are clearly assimilable to such a context. When Byrhtferth rejects Sirens as unfit company for a computist in the Enchiridion, he is rejecting them not as marvels but as representatives of pagan afflatus to be discarded through an inverse invocation.51 Reading the Wonders in this theological context, Mary Campbell’s assertion that the ‘Matter of the East’ is ‘a kind of perverse Scripture’ has a particular resonance.52 Her phrase signifies both the auctoritas employed in the medieval teratology and, as a corollary, its need for exegesis; it suggests both the diachronic and synchronic nature of the Wonders tradition.   Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, ed. Peter S. Baker and Michael Lapidge (Oxford, 1995), p. 6 (trans. p. 7). Baker and Lapidge note (p. 254) that Byrhtferth may have taken the quotation indirectly from Hrabanus’ De computo. 48   Bede, Bedae opera didascalica, ed. Charles W. Jones, 3 vols (Turnhout, 1975-80), II, 291. Note the repeated insistence in the Genesis account that creation is good. 49   Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, p. 16 (trans. p. 17). 50   Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, p. 16. 51   Ic hate gewitan fram me þa meremen þe synt sirene geciged, and eac þa Castalidas nymphas (þæt synt dunylfa), þa þe wunedon on Elicona þære dune; and ic wylle þæt Latona (þære sunnan moder and Apollonis and Diane) fram me gewite, þe Delo akende, þæs ðe ealde swæmas gecyddon. (‘I command to depart from me the mermaids who are called Sirens, and also the Castalian nymphs (mountain elves) who dwelled on Mount Helicon; and I desire to depart from me Latona (the mother of the sun, Apollo and Diana) whom Delos brought forth, as ancient idlers made known’). Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion, p. 134 (trans. p. 135). 52   Mary B. Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: exotic European travel writing, 400-1600 (Ithaca NY and London, 1988), p. 53. 47

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Speaking Beyond the Light: Experience and Auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum It also points to the issue of a reader’s belief in the text, something she approaches directly: The need for the world of Wonders [sic] was a conceptual need, and its data were important as objects of belief. No one has ever needed a griffin, only the idea of a griffin, or the idea of a world in which griffins are possible. The stark antirhetoric of Wonders frees its griffin from the inaccessible and merely pleasurable world of fable, poem, and romance: in a text without ornament the ornament must be substance.53 Much discussion of the Wonders emphasises the ‘Eastness’ of the text. I suggest that it is the marvellous nature of creation which is the key to the Wonders in Tiberius B.v: ‘Eastness’ matters less in a computistical worldview that sees time, rather than space, as its guiding teleological principle. For the computist, everything is ordered in relation to the events of Easter and marvels are redeemable only by their relation to it. The Wonders have become part of an authoritative discourse which has no basis in the text itself; veracity and sagacity are provided not by experience or auctoritas but by association. ii. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 614 There are three sections in Bodley 614: a calendar, a series of excerpts from a tenth-century compilation of geographical and astronomical material known as Opusculum de ratione spere, and the Wonders.54 Bodley 614 preserves the last version of the Wonders and contains a dozen additional elements derived, with two exceptions, from Isidore’s Etymologies. These are, I believe, an innovation of the Bodley scribe and demonstrate his engagement not only with the Wonders but with the broader discourses of auctoritas within the twelfth-century schools.55 In a discussion of the apparent disarray of the ‘Walters Cosmography’ (Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W.73; s. xii/xiii), Harry Bober posits that the codex was ‘not the product of an individual scholar in a lone scriptorium but a composition which develop[ed] through the practice of schools, whose cumulative marks may still be observed’.56 Although Bober does not enumerate these marks, we may infer from the remainder of his article what they include: a selective, almost ‘editorial’ consciousness when compiling or assembling texts; the presence of self-aware commentary upon these same texts; and the prevalence of illustrations and diagrams, ‘visual instruments, artfully forged in a proven pedagogic tradition ... always integral

  Campbell, Witness, pp. 85-6.   A new description of Bodley 614 (including a codicological and palaeographical analysis) may be found in Ford, ‘Wonders’, pp. 26-76. 55   For the sources in the Etymologies see Orchard, Pride and Prodigies, p. 22. On the active engagement of the Bodley scribe with his material see Ford, ‘Wonders’, pp. 109-24, and 135-7. 56   Harry Bober, ‘An Illustrated Medieval School-Book of Bede’s De natura rerum’, The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 19-20 (1956-57), 65-97, at p. 69.

with the text’.57 Bodley 614 is the product of a single engaged scribe, but it is not the idiosyncratic product of a lone thinker. Bober’s ‘cumulative marks’ are clearly visible throughout Bodley 614 and enable it, and the Wonders specifically, to be situated in the intellectual world of the ‘twelfth-century renaissance’. The first point may be demonstrated from the Wonders but there is ample evidence for it among the Opusculum excerpts, too. Scribal arrangement can be seen in most of the additional sections beyond the initial task of selecting the passages from Isidore. The texts on Sciopods, Antipodes and Hippopodes follow each other directly in the Etymologies and are taken almost straight from Isidore; it is possible they constituted a single entry in the mind of the scribe. All of the others, however, show some form of ‘editing’. For example, the scribe contextualises three extracts by placing the rhinoceros, the golden mountains, and the chameleon in India with the phrases Est in India and Sunt et in India (fols 48v and 49r). Similarly, the text concerning men with prominent lips (fol. 50v) begins part way through Isidore’s original and omits a sentence beginning Aliae sine naribus which Isidore uses to link his text. The paragraph on parrots (fol. 51r) omits the clause beginning ita ut from its source. Most interestingly, however, is a new identification. The text on satyrs is not taken solely from Isidore (Etymologies, XI.iii.21) but contains a phrase from Jerome’s Vita Pauli (para. 8). The text in Bodley reads (fol. 50v/9-12) as below. The words in italics are Isidore’s; those underlined are Jerome’s. Satiri homuntio(n)es s(un)t. aduncis narib(us). fronte cornibus asperata. cui(us) extrema pars corporis in cap(ra)ru(m) pedes desinit. q(ua)le(m) i(n) solitudine(m) s(an)c(tu)s antonius uidit. ‘Satyrs are homunculi, with crooked noses, roughened fore-hooves, and the furthest part of the body ends in the feet of a she-goat. St Anthony saw this sort in the wilderness’.58 Such a method is consistent with this scribe’s selections from the Opusculum and, as Paul Allen Gibb has shown, his re-writing of the Tiberius B.v phoenix section with portions from Isidore and Ambrose.59 The second of Bober’s criteria is best illustrated from the astronomical section. It would appear that at some point after writing the main body of the manuscript, the Bodley scribe acquired a copy of William of Conches’s De philosophia mundi, from which the Oxford manuscript was updated. The result for Bodley 614 was twofold: the scribe added a singleton (fol. 35) at the end of the third quire to

53 54

  Bober, ‘Illustrated Medieval School-Book’, p. 81.   Jerome, Trois vies de moines: Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, ed. Pierre Leclerc, Edgardo Martín Morales and Adalbert de Vogüé (Paris, 2007), p. 160. Jerome’s description uses the imperfect tense (desinebat) rather than the present (desinit). The translation is mine. 59   Paul Allen Gibb, ‘Wonders of the East: a critical edition and commentary’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, Duke University, 1977), p. 178. 57 58

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A. J. Ford accommodate a new text on rainbows and shooting stars (from De philosophia mundi, 3.7 and 3.12 respectively). He also added a gloss to fol. 17r, writing in a cursive hand, which gives the names and the characteristics of Phoebus’s horses (De philosophia mundi, 2.28). Its mythological subject matter and mode of presentation matter more than any putative relationship with a particular tradition of glossing. The fact that the scribe was sufficiently engaged to expand its content when an appropriate opportunity arose locates Bodley 614, in a broad sense, within the practice of the schools. That Bodley 614 is part of a tradition of pedagogic illustration is clear from the astronomical section, the iconography of which may be traced back to the Classical period.60 The illustrations in the Bodley Wonders derive, in the first instance, from Tiberius B.v. However they form part of a wider iconographic repository that survives into the thirteenth-century bestiary tradition, as may be seen clearly in London, British Library, MS Royal 12C XIX (s. xiiiin) and the ‘Alnwick Bestiary’ (Alnwick, Library of the Duke of Northumberland, MS 447; s. xiiimed). Both these manuscripts contain illustrations which appear to be mirror images, reversed along the vertical axis, of those included in Bodley 614. Examples from the Wonders include the griffin (Bodley, fol. 47r; Alnwick, fol. 26r) and the unicorn (Bodley, fol. 48v; Alnwick, fol. 11r; Royal, fol. 9v); and, from the Opusculum, the image of Bootes/Draco inter Arctos (Bodley, fol. 24r) may be compared with Emorois in the bestiary (Alnwick, fol. 57r; Royal, fol. 67r).61 The Wonders of Bodley 614 has neither the moralised nor overtly ideological uses that the tradition developed in the hands of bestiary writers and encyclopaedists; rather, in this small manuscript the Wonders is fitted to the discourse of the early scholastic schools that flourished during the twelfth century. One of the discursive strategies of the schools was to employ integumenta – literally, coverings or wraps – to discuss philosophical, theological or scientific points.62 Although opaque to contemporary thinking, integumenta are a long way from the theological understanding that pervades Tiberius B.v (which is perhaps equally opaque at times). Instead, the astronomical excerpts provide the raw material for mythography, the working stuff of integumenta, and by yoking the Wonders to them a claim is made for its academic respectibility. That the Wonders tradition was eventually subsumed into other extended, and predominantly narrative, forms   See, for example, Fritz Saxl, ‘Illuminated science manuscripts in England’ in Fritz Saxl, Lectures, 2 vols (London, 1957), I, 96-110. 61   For facsimiles of the ‘Alnwick Bestiary’ and Royal 12C XIX see Eric George Millar, A Thirteenth Century Bestiary in the Library of Alnwick Castle (Oxford, 1958). The connection between the iconography of Emorois is immediately obvious if the Alnwick and Royal images are contrasted with that in New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.81, fol. 83r (c. 1185). 62   Bernardus Silvestris defined them as ‘a type of demonstrative oratory within a fabulous story, wrapping the meaning of truth’ (genus demonstrationis sub fabulosa narratione, veritatis involvens intellectum). Quoted in M.-D. Chenu, ‘Involucrum: Le mythe selon les théologiens médiévaux’, Archives d’Histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen-Âge 22 (1956 for 1955), 75-79, at p. 76). The translation is mine. 60

might indicate the limited success of the Bodley project: it was the compactness of form that made mythography amenable to exegesis as integumenta, and marvels drawn from an extended narrative are not as susceptible to this process. Nonetheless, the Wonders of Bodley 614 requires – as in its other contexts – participation in a secondary discourse to authenticate its claims. Conclusion: Vitellius A.xv and ‘Speaking beyond the light’ One of the striking things about the Vitellius A.xv Wonders, especially after comparison with the versions in Tiberius B.v and Bodley 614, is the lack of an explicit Christian interpretative frame provided by the extra-biblical account of Jamnes and Mambres (Tiberius B.v), or the Isidorian additions (Bodley 614). This puts the Vitellius Wonders in closer proximity to the epistolary tradition from which it derived than to the versions that follow. Moreover, the lack of an epistolary frame and a pagan protagonist (as in the antecedents of the Wonders) removes the Anglo-Saxon text from the interpretative possibilities provided by the ‘noble pagan’ motif, potentially so rich a theme in a manuscript containing Beowulf and Alexander the Great. Instead, the Wonders is a catalogue (or, less kindly, a list), without even the presence of figures who, if not quite narrators, provide a structuring function in the Liber monstrorum or Physiologus.63 Even allowing for all the differences between a medieval and modern sensibility, the Wonders has few defenders as a literary document. It is certainly a crude piece in comparison with the Liber monstrorum. Yet this is how we are invited to read it in the context of Vitellius A.xv. Like the trees in Alexander’s Letter, the Wonders speaks of things beyond the ‘grove’ of the reader’s lived experience and necessarily beyond the ‘light’ of authority required to comprehend them. Because the Wonders presents its subjects in the form of a list, which relies upon a capacity for inter- and para-textual association to generate meaning, each marvel is less than the sum of the whole. Marvels, outlandish by their nature, are not open to encounter and consequently cannot be narrativized from the reader’s life. De-narrativized, de-contextualized – sitting without any relation to an auctoritas that might frame experience – a simple list of wonders empties itself of meaning in the very act of iteration. As bibliographical form affects meaning, so does literary form; but a literary form dependent on its bibliographical context to generate meaning will not succeed in every context. In Vitellius A.xv the forms are, fatally, mismatched. Where the Liber monstorum uses auctoritas self-consciously and plays with literary convention to present a powerful reversal of the priority of authority over experience, the Wonders of the East presents an empty form that cannot function without some   A similar point concerning catalogues is made by Kathryn E. Powell, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Imaginary of the East: a psychoanalytic exploration of the image of the east in Old English literature’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2002), p. 117, n. 31. 63

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Speaking Beyond the Light: Experience and Auctoritas in the Wonders of the East and the Liber monstrorum auctoritas to make it resonate. The Wonders of the East does indeed speak beyond its light; but without signalling its own interpretative context – in contrast to the Liber monstrorum – it sometimes speaks to where there is only darkness.

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Part V The North, The Universe

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Chapter 14 Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion Frank Battaglia Entering what Patrick Wormald, on one of his own excursions into the religious character of Beowulf, said is among ‘the most thoroughly trampled of all the critics’ cabbage patches,’1 I claim my purpose is to help vegetation to grow. Beginning far back in European prehistory, I will discuss a Danish shrine of a type apparently derided in lines 175-88 of Beowulf and with which parallels may be sought in any future excavation of an Anglo-Saxon wīg/ wēoh site. The votive experience of early Danish farmers incorporated cannibalism. Practices, beliefs and vocabulary of this tradition continued beyond the erection of the first Danish kingly hall at Gudme on Funen, about 300 C.E.2 Cannibalism apparently still had a vestigial role in the religion of the popular militia at Illerup which defeated substantial attacks over a several-hundred-year period overlapping Gudme hall. In fact, traces of ritual cannibalism have been suggested in the very neighbourhood of that building. Changing contexts During the last twenty years, anthropophagy has become less stigmatized. Excavations have established decisively that Paleolithic Europeans were cannibals: the now oldest humans of western Europe, at Gran Dolina in Spain, and also at Moula Guercy in France.3 In addition, dialogue has foregrounded new issues. For the first time, an anthropologist interviewed persons who had been practicing cannibals – until the 1960s when contact was made with civilization, after which about three fifths of the Wari’ died from infectious diseases. These natives of the upper Amazon had ‘disposed of the bodies of their dead   Patrick Wormald, ‘Bede, Beowulf and the conversion of the AngloSaxon aristocracy’ in Bede and Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Robert T. Farrell (Oxford, 1978), pp. 32-95, at p. 39. Problems with the term ‘religion’ for prehistoric material were surveyed in Timothy Insoll, ‘Are archaeologists afraid of gods? Some thoughts on archaeology and religion’, Belief in the Past, ed. idem (Oxford, 2004), pp. 1-6. Norse sources at the time of the adoption of Christianity referred to previous beliefs and practices as forn siðr, ‘old custom’ – Anders Andrén, Kristina Jennbert and Catharina Raudvere, ‘Old Norse religion, some problems and prospects’ in Old Norse religion in long-term perspectives, ed., idem (Lund, 2006), pp. 11-14, at p. 12. 2   Frank Battaglia, ‘Not Christianity versus paganism, but hall versus bog: the great shift in early Scandinavian religion and its implications for Beowulf’ in Anglo-Saxons and the North, ed. Matti Kilpiö, Leena KahlasTarkka, Jane Roberts and Olga Timofeeva (Tempe AZ, 2009), pp. 47-67, at 57-8, Fig. 6. 3   American Museum of Natural History and Junta de Castilla y León, ‘The first Europeans: treasures from the hills of Atapuerca, January 11 – April 13, 2003’, (5/30/03), ; Alban DeFleur et al., ‘Neanderthal cannibalism at MoulaGuercy, Ardèche, France’, Science 1, October 1999, 286 (No. 5437), 128-131, , accessed 10/24/09. 1

as their ancestors had done, by eating the roasted flesh, certain internal organs, and sometimes the ground bones.’4 Not treating endo-cannibalism, the eating of one’s own family or tribe, as a pathology, Beth Condren brought to light a surprising custom among the Wari’: disposing of a deceased tribal member by eating the corpse was regarded as an obligation of in-laws!5 Consumption of a human body after death by natural causes, rather than by murder, is called ‘gastronomic cannibalism’, and Gran Dolina and Moula-Guercy are thought to be examples6 of what Condren’s title and argument designate as compassionate cannibalism.7 Cannibalism and ancestor veneration in late prehistoric northwest Europe The instance of cannibalism most acknowledged in the Danish past – by I. E. S. Edwards in Cambridge Ancient History, for example – occurred closer in time.8 At the fifth millennium BC settlement of Dyrholmen in eastern Jutland, multiple fine cuts were made on human bones in defleshing them, and some were fractured, perhaps to extract marrow.9 Recent exhibits of both the National and Prehistoric Museums of Denmark treated such evidences of anthropophagy as ritual behavior, a religious observance.10 In some areas of the late South Scandinavian Mesolithic, bones of dead persons were removed prior to interment, or sometimes burials were opened for the sake of retrieving bones.11 ‘The deceased’, it has been said, ‘also had a symbolic function concrete ... in the land of the living.’12   Beth A. Conklin, Consuming Grief: compassionate cannibalism in an Amazonian society (Austin TX, 2001), p. xv. 5   Conklin, Consuming Grief, pp. xvi-xvii. 6   I. J. N. Thorpe, ‘Anthropology, archaeology, and the origin of warfare’, World Archaeology 35 (2003), 145-65, at p. 152. 7   The Wari’ had practiced exo- as well as endo-cannibalism (Conklin, Consuming Grief, p. xxiii). 8   Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, ‘Ancient History I’, The Cambridge Ancient History, 1.1. (Cambridge, 1970), 103-4. 9   Christopher Tilley, An Ethnography of the Neolithic (Cambridge, 1996), p. 43; Magnus Degerbol, ‘Et knoglemateriale fra Dyrholm-Bopladsen, en ældre stenalder-køkkenmødding – med særligt henblik paa uroksens køns-dimorphisme og paa kannibalisme i Danmark’ in Dyrholmen, en stenalderboplads paa Djursland, ed. Therkel Mathiassen, M. Degerbøl and J. Troels-Smith, Bind 1, Nr. 1. (Copenhagen, 1948), pp. 77-135, at 105-22. 10   Battaglia, ‘Hall versus bog’, p. 66 n. 75. See also T. Douglas Price, ‘The first farmers of southern Scandinavia’ in The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, ed. David R. Harris (Washington D.C., 1996), pp. 346-62, at 356. 11   Tilley, Ethnography, p. 36; Liv Nilsson Stutz, ‘More than metaphor: approaching the human cadaver in archaeology’ in The Materiality of Death – bodies, burials, beliefs, ed. Fredrik Fahlander and Terje Oestigaard, BAR IS 1768 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 19-28. 12   Lars Larsson, ‘BIG DOG AND POOR MAN, mortuary practices in Mesolithic societies in southern Sweden’ in Approaches to Swedish 4

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Frank Battaglia Manipulation of a human corpse, treating body parts as amulets or relics, or circulating them among monumental tombs, causewayed camps and other locations, would become a staple feature of western European megalithic culture.13 Julian Thomas of The University of Manchester has called this, in effect, a bone economy.14 In an architectural innovation I and others have attributed to Mesolithic converts, Neolithic passage-graves provided ‘continued access after interment.’15 This type of tomb – called a jættestue, ‘giant’s house’, in a Danish expression coined in the eighteenth century – is especially known for deposits of excarnated bones. Jætte will shortly be of interest as a cognate of the Old English word eoten. The Swedish Heritage Board has reflected that: In ancestor rites ... human remains ... provide[d] a resource that could be used by the living. The dead were continuously accessible and the remains of the ancestors might even be distributed between different kinds of places. A burial in the ground, especially with a coffin ... [or] covered with a stone packing ... on the other hand, signals a more definitive farewell and an idea of another life after death’ [, ‘a new religion’].16 Traditions derived from Neolithic practices honouring the dead would become a contested part of Germanic ritual in the Beowulf poem. From the earliest western European Neolithic, some types of pottery share a feature: the use as a temper of ground, burnt, possibly human, bone (tests to determine the matter have been inconclusive).17 The type-site for one variety of bone-tempered Neolithic pottery, La Hoguette in Normandy, participated in an especially complicated ossial circulation.18 This ceramic tradition may later be in Prehistory, ed. Thomas B. Larsson and Hans Lundmark, BAR IS 500 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 211-23, at 215. 13   Andy Jones, ‘Lives in fragments? Personhood and the European Neolithic’, Journal of Social Archaeology 5 (2008), 193-224, at p. 212. Such practices ‘formed a fundamental part’ of funerary rituals involving later dolmens and the passage tombs of Scandinavia; Christopher Tilley, The Dolmens and Passage Graves of Sweden (London, 1999), p. 31. 14   J. S. Thomas, ‘Death, identity and the body in Neolithic Britain’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6 (2000), 653-68, at p. 660. 15   Andrew Sherratt, ‘The genesis of megaliths: monumentality, ethnicity and social complexity in Neolithic north-west Europe’, World Archaeology 22 (1990), 147-67, at p. 156; Frank Battaglia, ‘A common background to Lai de Graelent and Noínden Ulad?’, Emania 11 (1993), 41-48, at p. 42. 16   Magnus Andersson et al., Stone Age Scania (Lund, 2004), p. 233. 17   Claude Constantin, Fin du Rubané, céramique du Limbourg et postRubané, i, BAR IS 273(i) (Oxford, 1985), p. 91. 18   Flemming Kaul, ‘Ritualer med menneskeknogler i yngre stenalder’, Kuml (1991-92), pp. 7-52, at 27; for Rhine-Meuse-Schelde ceramics, L. H. Keeley, ‘The introduction of agriculture to the western north European plain’ in Transitions to agriculture in prehistory, ed. A. B. Gebauer and T. D. Price (Madison WI, 1992), pp. 81-96, at 87; see also La Hoguette and Limburg ware with map of distribution, Detlef Gronenborn, ‘A variation on a basic theme: the transition to farming in southern central Europe’, Journal of World Prehistory 13 (1999), 138-143; for Middle Neolithic bone-tempered pottery in Sweden, Norway, Scotland, Belgium and Northern France, as well as one Roman Iron Age Belgian site, see Ole Stilburg, Shards of Iron Age Communications (Lund, 1997), p. 262. Stilborg has since cited bone-tempered Neolithic pottery in Ireland and

evidence in the neighbourhood of the first Danish kingly hall at Gudme. Museum curator Flemming Kaul discussed rituals with human skeletal parts in the Neolithic and after, finding from the middle Neolithic on into the Bronze Age a rougher handling of bone in ceremonies and a number of sites showing evidence of cannibalism.19 Skeletal remains suggestive of ritual cannibalism in the Iron Age have been found in many lands where passage tombs dot the landscape. Miranda Green and David Liversage are among those who have discussed such material.20 Forlev Nymølle and Gudme-area bone-tempered ceramics For a late vestige of ancient practices we turn to an Iron Age site in eastern Jutland. At Forlev Nymølle in the Illerup river valley, north of Skanderborg, a sacrificial shrine was established on the edge of a small lake. Figure 14.1 shows Silkeborg Museum’s recreation of a phase with a 10 foot tall goddess statue.21 Pottery containing food and drink and presumably invoking the nurturing power of the Earth was deposited over about six centuries, with the latest pottery dating from roughly 400 CE.22 Ten find concentrations over an area of almost 400 square yards make Forlev Nymølle one of the largest fertility-sacrifice finds of northern Europe. Its span of activity overlaps several offerings of weapons at a nearby Illerup valley bog.23 In an early second century BCE area, where animals had been sacrificed, was found a piece of human shoulderblade with cut and wear marks.24 The cuts suggest a knife had been used to deflesh the bone. Similar finds are known in other watery Danish Iron Age votive contexts.25 The wear marks indicate the bone had either been polished or was worn smooth by being much handled. The excavator

the Orkneys, ‘Temper for the sake of coherence: analyses of bone- and chaff-tempered ceramics from Iron Age Scandinavia’, European Journal of Archaeology 4 (2001), 398-404, at 400. 19  Kaul, ‘Menneskeknogler’, p. 43. 20   Miranda A. Green, Dying for the Gods (Charleston SC 2001), pp. 59, 107, 134; David Liversage, Material and Interpretation (Copenhagen, 1980), p. 51. 21   W. A. B. van der Sanden and Torsten Capelle, Mosens Guder/Immortal Images (Silkeborg, 2001), Fig. 90. 22   Silkeborg Museum exhibit, August 2001; Jørgen Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle, en offerplads fra yngre førromersk jernalder’, Kuml (2002), pp. 143-94, at 163-7. 23   Fertility sacrifices at Bukkerup on Funen ceased at the end of the Early Roman Iron Age, about the time when the first weapons sacrifice was made at the nearby site of Kragehul; see Aase Gyldion Andersen, ‘Frugtbarhedsofringer i Sydvestfyns aeldre jernalder’, Kuml (199394), pp. 199-210. War-booty sacrifices at Illerup and similar sites are discussed as a transitional rite, amending the older Germanic religion described here, in Frank Battaglia, ‘Beowulf: a regime of enforcement’ in Reframing Punishment: Reflections on culture, literature and morals, ed. Bhavana Mahajan and Raja Bagga (Freeland, 2013) pp. 36-60, at 41. 24   Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle,’ p. 153. 25   Flemming Kaul, ‘The bog – the gateway to another world’ in The Spoils of Victory – The north in the shadow of the Roman empire, ed. Lars Jørgensen, Birger Storgaard and Lone Gebauer Thomsen (Copenhagen, 2003), pp. 18-43, at 40. A similar handling of skeletal bones has been reported of burials in the British Bronze Age; see Lauren Bailey, Martin Green and Martin J. Smith, ‘Keeping the family together: Canada Farm’s Bronze Age burials’, Current Archaeology, 279 (June 2013), 20-6, at pp. 23-4.

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Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion would be different, but the reverent manipulation of the remains of a deceased person has been compared with the treatment of relics of saints in the Christian Church.28 Indeed, in northwest Europe observances with Christian relics may have actually evolved from practices of native religions.29 The considerable continuity of rite from the Neolithic period30 is among the elements which might lead us to associate cult practices at Forlev Nymølle with the female guardian spirits known as the dísir.31 I do not develop that aspect of our subject here, but instead turn to the neighbourhood of the earliest great hall.

Fig 14.1 The Bog Shrine at Forlev Nymølle, Find Concentration 9 (after Sanden and Capelle, Guder, Fig. 90) conjectured that the bone had been used as an amulet.26 I offer further hypotheses: 1. This bone came from the body of a family member of the person who deposited it.27 2. Scraping of flesh from the skeleton of an ancestor who had perhaps been excarnated enacted a ritual system which included endo-cannibalism, at least in its remote past. 3. Ancestor veneration explained and informed the appropriate handling of the remains as a resource for the living. 4. The agency by which contact with a body part of a dead person may have been understood to produce a good result   At British Iron Age sites All Cannings Cross and Lidbury, Wiltshire, human skull fragments were identified as ‘good luck charms’; see Barry Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain, 2nd ed. (London, 1974), p. 316; Danebury, body parts as ‘talismans or heirlooms’; see Lucy Walker, ‘Population and behavior’ in Danebury: an Iron Age hillfort in Hampshire, ed. Barry Cunliffe (London, 1984), 2, 442-74, at p. 462. 27   The function of amulets as aids or protections (see Audrey Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones, BAR BS 96 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 3-4) makes likely that this bone was from someone revered by the person who had carried it. In addition, at locations like the bog at Illerup, bones from bodies of defeated invaders are not ordinarily found with the sacrificial offering of weapons; see Jørgen Ilkjær, Illerup Ådal (Moesgård, 2000), p. 137. 26

Bone-tempered ceramics found in the Gudme area, where the first Scandinavian kingly hall was built, may have continued a tradition which included cannibalism in Denmark. Eleven vessels have been recovered in which crushed, burnt bone had been included as a temper before firing.32 Here, too, a test did not determine whether the bone was human, but the treatment of the vessels caused them to be described as ‘“holy” bone-tempered pots.’ Made at several locations, they were found in four separate sites, at settlements as well as cemeteries. Thus, some had presumably been used as food vessels. The pots had been produced over a time span perhaps longer than 150 years, centred in the third century. One sherd (Figure 14.2) had been drilled through for use as an amulet that the pottery specialist believed derived its special powers from the bone-tempering. Inclusion of ground, roasted bone in food is the most common kind of bone-cannibalism. If the bone of these food vessels was human, the tempering seems a refined form of osteophagy, a part of religious observance in the Gudme area from the late second century CE through the first quarter of the fourth. Perhaps during this time, a great hall was erected there.

  Kaul, ‘Mennesknogler’, p. 43.   Ann Woodward, ‘The cult of relics in prehistoric Britain’ in In Search of Cult, ed. Martin Carver (Woodbridge, 1993), pp. 1-7, p. 6. Cf. Audrey Meaney, ‘Anglo-Saxon Pagan and Early Christian Attitudes to the Dead’ in The Cross Goes North: processes of conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300—1300, ed. Martin Carver (Rochester NY, 2003), pp. 229-41, at 236. 30   For an overview, see Kaul, ‘The bog’, p. 40. 31   In ‘A Neolithic origin for the collective female deities, the dísir’ Scandinavian Studies session, 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2012, I suggested an origin for the dísir place names of Sweden and Norway in the earliest Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture, Trichterbecherkultur, detailing an analysis I had ventured in ‘The Germanic Earth Goddess in Beowulf?’, Mankind Quarterly 31 (1991), 415-46, at pp. 433-6. See also what Else Mundal calls a ‘cult of foremothers’: Else Mundal, ‘The position of the individual gods and goddesses in various types of sources – with special reference to the female divinities’ in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place-Names, ed. Tore Ahlbäck (Åbo, Finland, 1990), pp. 294-315, at 310. Worship of dísir and related supernatural women, described in the sagas, may represent tenth-century rites; see Hilda Roderick Ellis [Davidson], The Road to Hel (Cambridge, 1943), pp. 134-8. In one instance of dísa blót, ‘sacrifice to the dísir’, a hörgr is reddened with the blood of an offered animal, a late textual allusion to the practice posited in prehistory by Silkeborg Museum’s 2001 exhibit. 32   Stilborg, Shards, pp. 258-63. 28 29

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Frank Battaglia words is clear enough; Grendel ‘puts people to sleep’, in an unprofessorial way, presumably in the sense of ‘kills.’ The second term, however, the verb sendan, probably meant to ‘make a sacrifice’ in traditional Germanic religion.37 Friedrich Klaeber acknowledged the word’s association with ‘old heathen sacrificial terminology’38 although he had emended it, changed his mind and restored the manuscript language, then changed his mind again.39

Fig 14.2 Drilled Bone-tempered sherd from Gudme area (after Stilborg, Shards, Fig. 49) Grendel – sendeð, eoten Grendel’s cannibalism in Beowulf is apparently related to second- to fourth-century traditions in the neighbourhood of the great hall at Gudme, but with a significant difference.33 Whereas traditional Danish religious ritual retained traces of endo-cannibalism, the eating of one’s own people, Grendel, an exo-cannibal, eats outside his tribe. We do have indications, however, that religious practices like those I have been describing had a role in the conception of Grendel. One occurs in Beowulf’s first speech to Hrothgar, the other in his words to Unferth. Beowulf asks Hrothgar to be allowed to cleanse the hall Heorot. He knows that if death takes him, Grendel mearcað mōrhopu (450), ‘will mark his marsh-retreats’ with Beowulf’s body.34 This sounds as if Grendel conducts bog rituals with human corpses.35 Later, Beowulf derides Unferth, saying that he has allowed Grendel to get away with not honouring the Danes. Instead, swefeð ond sendeð (600).36 The first of these   Great halls tended to be associated with settlement reorganization involving small dwellings for a new category of landless persons (Battaglia, ‘Hall versus bog’, p. 48). It is therefore noteworthy that Gudme area ‘bone-tempered pottery does not appear to have belonged to the rich part of the population’ (Stilborg, Shards, p. 263). Continuing use of such ceramics may thus support an inference that Gudme hall was the focal point of a confederation (Battaglia, ‘Hall versus bog’, p. 56). 34   Klaeber’s Beowulf, ed. R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, 4th ed. (Toronto, 2008). Quotations followed by line numbers, except as noted, are from this text. The editors considered ‘will mark with blood’ probable for mearcað (p. 143). 35   However, in the late Iron Age of Denmark, human body parts found in bogs are likely to have been excarnated elsewhere (Kaul, ‘The Bog’, pp. 35, 40). So if ‘mark with [human] blood’ is the sense of line 450, it mischaracterizes that ritual. 36   I follow the manuscript here; similarly: Beowulf with the Finnesburg Fragment, ed. C. L. Wrenn, rev. W. F. Bolton (London, 1973); Anatoly 33

The comparable lexeme occurs in two Eddic poems. In Hávamál (stanzas 144-5), the meaning ‘make a sacrifice’ for senda is underscored by its association with blóta and (twice) sóa.40 In Atlakviða, senda marks the religious edge of a taunt disclosing that Atli has served the flesh of his own children as a meal for his warriors while eating it himself. Guthrun mocks Atli by saying he can ‘make a sacrifice in the high seat’, íǫndugi at senda (Akv., s. 36).41 The meaning ‘a sacrifice by feasting on a corpse’ for senda is emphatic in this context.42 What may seem a farfetched assertion on Guthrun’s part drives a sexual insult. The word níð, occurring just before Guthrun’s mocking speech, marks a manhood-challenge. In Scandinavia, níð had extensive elaboration as a ritualized taunt of male-inadequacy, with a kind of poetry, ‘níðvisur’, and/ Liberman, ‘Germanic sendan “to make a sacrifice”’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 77 (1979), 473-88. Fulk et al., although emending the line to ‘swefeð, ondsendeþ,’ credited Liberman’s ‘excellent synopsis of scholarship’ (p. 154). The manuscript shows the letter d in an apparently separate lexeme ond distanced from prior swefeð and subequent sendeþ see Julius Zupitza, Beowulf, Reproduced in Facsimile, 2nd ed., with new reproduction of the MS. by Norman Davis (London, 1967), p. 29 and facing photograph. No other lexeme analyzed as onsendan in Fulk et al., Beowulf 4th (p. 422) takes the ‘unusual form ond-’ (p. 155) as its prefix. 37   Liberman, ‘Germanic sendan’, p. 477. Ferdinand Holthausen listed opfern ‘to sacrifice’ as the second meaning of senda after ‘senden, schleudern’, ‘to send or propel’; see Vergleichendes und etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altwestnordischen, Altnorwegisch-isländischen (Göttingen, 1948). Fulk et al. stated that ‘the verb onsendan [their suggested emendation in line 600] usually requires the object gāst, to refer to sending forth the spirit (and then referring only to dying, not killing)’ (p. 154). However, none of the agreed instances of onsendan in the poem have this ‘reflexive’ form. (Line 2266 is not a singular exception.) The lexemes without d analyzed as onsendan in Fulk et al., Beowulf 4th are all transitive, with persons or things being sent by a different agent: Scyld (45), by Scyldings; Geats (382), by God; the ‘best of war-garments’ (453), by Hrothgar; ‘gift treasures’ (1482), by Hrothgar; ‘many of life-kin’ (2266), by ‘baleful death’. Sendan in line 600 is intransitive, and thus parallels the usage of senda in the famous passage of Hávamál (below). Liberman speculated that a proto-form of *sendan may have had ‘the object suppressed’ because it meant ‘offer a human sacrifice’. Interestingly, the verb forsendan ‘ put to death’, occurs in an intransitive passive construction during an incident mid eotenum (902-4). Eotenum is usually taken there to be a weak-masculine proper name, ‘among Jutes’. 38   Beowulf and The Fight at Finnsburg, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1950), p. 152. 39   Referenced in Liberman, ‘Germanic sendan’, pp. 476-7. 40   Edda, ed. Hans Kuhn, 4th rev. ed., 1. Texte (Heidelberg, 1962), p. 41; glossed by ‘als opfer darbringen’, ‘to present as a sacrifice’, 2. Kurzes Worterbuch (Heidelberg, 1968), p. 181. 41   Liberman’s article (‘Germanic sendan’) advancing this interpretation was cited in the bibliography of Klaus von See et al. Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda, Bd. 7, Heldenlieder (Heidelberg, 2012), which devoted 245 pages to Atlakviþa, but was not discussed in treatment of the lines in question (pp. 89-90, 349-52). If ‘senda’ ending the strophe, meant ‘send’ (‘send the flesh of the children’) it might be expected to be associated with the preposition ór ‘from’ (‘from the high seat’), instead of MS. í ‘in’; and this was the basis of a Finnur Jónsson emendation. 42   Liberman argued that this oldest meaning of the lexeme is discernible in both Atlakviða, s. 36 and Beowulf 600 (‘Germanic sendan’, p. 479).

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Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion or the erection of a scorn-pole, ‘níðstǫng’, possibly with runes, carved caricatures or a slaughtered animal’s head – all to attack the masculinity of another man.43 In just the way that scorn-poles borrowed the iconography of bog-sacrifices to suggest that a targeted male had been erotically penetrated by another man, so Guthrun sexually degrades Atli in saying he practiced the old religion, let alone that he devoured his own sons to do so.44 Guthrun is called a dís, and I have suggested that dísir were objects of cult at sites like Forlev Nymølle. But Atlakviða is reconstituting the term: the mythological female figures are only responsible for misfortune; human females socalled, like Guthrun, are unfeminine.45 The sense of ‘sacrifice’ unquestionably attends the lexeme in a later text, Gautrekssaga, where Othin says, ‘senda mér Vikar konung’, ‘send me King Vikar.’46 Originally, the verb must have had the meaning ‘transmit’, possibly referring both to the dedication of an offering and the distribution of food from what was dedicated. An element of feeding was associated with it. In late pagan sacrifice, Britt-Mari Nässtrom considered sendan to refer to the sharing of food, creating a communion between gods and humans.47 Thus, sendeð in Beowulf line 600 may link Grendel with rituals iterated in the handling of human bone at Forlev Nymølle. The word eoten represents those traditions more directly. This lexeme, of which the cognate iǫtunn enjoyed wide currency in Old Norse, is commonly translated ‘giant.’48 In Eddic poems about the origins of the cosmos, Ymir, a iǫtunn, was the first conscious being, and the very earth was formed from Ymir’s flesh.49 Another Eddic poem says Ymir was ancestor of all the giants.50 The giants were closely tied to the Vanir, the fertility deities.51 Later   I develop this analysis in ‘Beowulf: enforcement’, pp. 50-1, n.42. I suggest there, in parallel with the discussion here of Atlakviða, that after the mid-first millennium, ritual practices at sites like Forlev Nymølle were likely considered effeminate. Further discussion and references below. 44   Ursula Dronke identified as níð Gunnar’s calling his Hunnish enemies ‘bitches’ and suggesting the Burgundian bears would have ‘love-sport’ with them (Akv., s. 11); The Poetic Edda, Vol. I: Heroic Poems (Oxford, 1969), p. 26. 45   Von See et al., Kommentar, p. 348. Dronke notes that afkár, ‘vehement’, applied first to Guthrun then the Hunnish men, describes her as ‘for a woman, unnaturally forceful’ and the Hunnish men as uttering a ‘sound of grief breaking uncontrollably’ (Poetic Edda, p. 69). Both are being criticized for gender performances: she is an unnatural woman who makes weak men cry! 46   Liberman, ‘sendan’, p. 485. 47   ‘Blóta, sóa och senda’ in Religion och samhälle i det förkristna norden, ed. Ulf Drobin (Odense, 1999), pp. 157-70, at 164; similarly, Berta Stjernquist, with specific reference to Forlev Nymølle: ‘The basic perception of the religious activities at cult-sites such as springs, lakes and rivers’ in The World-View of Prehistoric Man, ed. Lars Larsson and B. Stjernquist, KVHAA Konferenser 40 (Stockholm, 1998), pp. 157-78, at 173; Liberman, ‘Sendan’, pp. 480, 487. 48   For the early ninth-century first written use see Joseph Harris, ‘The Rök Stone’s iatun and Mythology of Death’ in Analecta Septentrionalia, reallexikon der Germanischen altertumskunde 65, ed.Wilhelm Heizmann, Klaus Böldl, and Heinrich Beck (Berlin, 2009), pp. 467-501, at 477, 468. 49   Vǫlspá, s. 3; Vafðrúðnismál, s. 21; Grímnismál, s. 40-41 (Kuhn, Edda); Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, Vol. 1 (Odense, 1994), 57, 156. Conflicting with Vsp, s. 3, Vm, ss. 28-31 carries iǫtunn genealogy back before Ymir. 50   Hyndlolióð, s. 33 (Kuhn, Edda). 51   Hilda Ellis Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (London, 43

lore said a giant was mother of the Æsir, the sky gods, but they regarded Ymir as evil, and were often in conflict with the giants.52 Despite such late manifestations, at the 2002 Manchester conference on archaeology and religion, Anders Andrén reflected that the giants had probably been objects of cult.53 Deserving emphasis here, the giants may represent by name the recipients of sacrifices involving sharing of food. A number of researchers agree in deriving eoten and its cognates – besides Old Norse iǫtunn, Old Danish iætæn, Old Swedish iætun – from Proto-Germanic *etuna-, which is also the source of Old English etan and Modern English ‘eat’.54 The eotenas of Beowulf and the iǫtunnar of Old Norse are etymologically ‘those with sustenance for eating’, or possibly ‘authorities over eating’55 – a very significant appellative in a culture whose heritage included anthropophagy. The eotenas had perhaps once been understood as ancestors who received the humans offered and shared in a meal of Neolithic farmers. Forms of eoten occur eight times in Beowulf, excluding the weak masculine form eotan usually taken as referring to Jutes.56 Three of the eight forms of eoten are adjectival, referring to swords old and efficacious which kill Grendel’s mother, the dragon and Ongentheow. That ‘the best of ancient swords were made by’ eotenas57 while the eotenas themselves were objects of hatred in the poem suggests that a struggle about interpreting the past was still under way when the poem was composed. The power of eotenisc swords may have been a stock motif of Germanic lore, not 1993), p. 83; Clunies Ross, Echoes, p. 187. 52   Else Mundal (‘Female divinities’, pp. 294-315) analyzed affinities between sky gods and giants. Clunies Ross (Echoes, p. 57) saw ‘the difference between giants and Æsir as originating in the male line’, with ‘the general privileging of patriliny over matriliny in Norse myth spring[ing] from this attribution’. 53   ‘Mission impossible? the archaeology of Norse religion’ in Insoll, Belief in the Past, pp. 7-16, at 8. 54   Thus H. S. Falk and Alf Torp, who interpreted the Proto-Germanic form as ‘great-eater’ (vielfresser) or ‘man-eater’ (menschenfresser), Norwegisch-Dänisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, Vol. 1 (Heidelberg, 1910), 479; accepted in Alois Walde, Vergleichendes Wörterbuch der Indogermanischen Sprachen, ed. Alois Walde and Julius Pokorny, Vol. 1 (Berlin, 1930), 120. Ernst Alfred Philippson translated eotenas as ‘Vielfresser’, Germanisches Heidentum bei den Angelsachsen (Leipzig, 1929), p. 81; similarly, Karl Helm, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, Vol. 2 (Heidelberg, 1953), 90; Neils Åge Nielsen, Dansk Etymologisk Ordbog (Copenhagen, 1966), p. 182; Bernhard Maier, Die Religion der Germanen (Munich, 2003), p. 53. Bruce Dickins thought ‘devourer’ the ‘original sense’ of eoten; ‘English names and Old English heathenism’, Essays and Studies 19 (1934), 1-160, at p. 158. Harris (‘iatun’, pp. 48893), suggesting ‘demon who consumes (the dead)’ for *etuna, provided evidences of the antiquity of the term, including possible pre-Germanic Finno-Ugric borrowing. Cf. Hræsvelgr, probably ‘corpse-swallower,’ Vafðrúðnismál, s. 37, quoted in Gylfaginning 18; see Edda, prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (London, 1988), p. 20. 55   The first phrase parses Harris’s ‘leadership’ suffix without the pejorative sense of the extended grade of the base (Harris, ‘iatun’, pp. 490-1. The latter attempts to apply Green’s suffix deverbally; D. H. Green, Language and History in the Early Germanic World (Cambridge, 1998), p. 124; Roger Lass, Old English, A historical linguistic companion (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 200-1). 56   As seen in note 37 above, Klaeber and Fulk et al. have taken eotenum (902) for ‘Jutes’, with Fulk et al., Beowulf 4th (p. 171) citing scholarship translating this term as ‘giants.’ Harris raised one ‘programmatic objection’ (‘iatun’, p. 480). 57   Wrenn, Beowulf, p. 143.

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Frank Battaglia yet modified in light of a new framework about eotenas being asserted in the poem. I have found something similar in the poem’s use of the term gifeðe, ‘granted by fate.’58 A new aspect of this sword motif has been provided by the discovery that bone coal from human bones appears to have been used for case-hardening steel in Scandinavia.59

with them had been an affront to the Weders’ manhood. The glossary of the Fulk et al. Beowulf 4th provides a number of readings for the word nīð, but no hint of its emphatic history as a term for a manhood-challenging insult.64 ‘At its oldest … level … nīð implied a curse (about) lack of masculinity’65

Eotenas (112) are the first named of the poem’s ‘misbegotten’, the untȳdras of line 111. In 1991 I linked these denigrated genealogies to the mythology of human tribal organizations of northern Europe based on female kinship.60 The relevance of the cult of the dísir to the rituals of Forlev Nymølle points in the same direction.61 Near Forlev Nymølle on the small Illerup River, bog deposits of weapons have suggested potent militias, surely with a related belief system.62

A quite violent homophobia emerged in Germanic society in the first millennium C.E., memorably marked in the Grágás of Icelandic law: ‘if a man calls another ... ragr, stroðinn or sorðinn’, words indicating he has been sexually used by another man, the accused ‘has the right to kill in retaliation’.66

The second occurrence of eoten comes early in Beowulf’s speech about marking ‘moor retreats.’ He says he was advised to seek Hrothgar by those who knew he ‘cwōm, / fāh from fēondum, þær iċ fife ġeband, / ȳðde eotena cyn’ –‘ “came bloodstained from enemies where I bound five, destroyed kin of eotenas”’(419-421). He continues ‘Nearoþearfe dreah, / wrǣc Wedera nīð.’ ‘“I endured severe distress. I avenged the nīð of the Weders”’, that is, of his own people. From wrǣc, ‘avenged’, evidently nīð involved some kind of insult, but what? Beowulf does not say that the kin of eotenas had done anything to the Weders to affront them. Why was vengeance necessary? The answer is consequential because Sigemund’s slaying of the kin of eotenas was also a response to nīðas (882884). The essence of the conflict, I would suggest, expanding a line of argument broached above, was that eotenas evoked the authority of women in the old fertility religion and in matrilineal tribes which were its foundation.63 Putting up   Frank Battaglia, ‘Gifeðe as “granted by fate” in Beowulf’, In Geardagum 23 (2002), 51-66, at pp. 53, 63. This article has a lengthy errata sheet, available from . The very motif of cannibalism is appropriated in Fafnismál (prose following s. 31), other texts and Northern iconography, where Sigurd’s drinking the blood of Fafnir causes him to understand the speech of birds; Klaus Düwel, ‘Zur ikonographie und ikonologie der Sigurddarstellungen’ in Zum Problem der Deutung frühmittelalterlicher Bildinhalte, ed. Helmut Roth (Sigmaringen, 1986), pp. 221-71; Terje Oestigaard, ‘Sacrifices of raw, cooked and burnt humans’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 33 (2000), 41-58, at p. 52. 59   Terje Gansum, ‘Reproduction and relocation of death in Iron Age Scandinavia’ in The Materiality of Death – bodies, burials, beliefs, ed. Fredrik Fahlander and Terje Oestigaard, BAR IS 1768 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 141-6, at 141; idem, ‘Role the bones – from iron to steel’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 37 (2004), 41-57. 60   Battaglia, ‘Earth Goddess’, p. 425. 61   Note 31, above; also, Clunies Ross, Echoes, n.46. 62   See Note 23 above. See also Xenia Pauli Jensen, ‘From fertility rituals to weapon sacrifices. The case of south Scandinavian bog finds’ in Glaube, Kult und Herrschaft, phänomene des religiösen im 1. jahrtausend n. Chr. in Mittel- und Nordeuropa, akten des 59. internationalen sachsensymposions, ed. Uta von Freeden, Herwig Friesinger and Egon Wamers (Bonn, 2009), pp. 53-64. 63   Privileging of patriliny over matriliny is required even to distinguish Æsir from giants, and this attribution underpins the entire system of patriarchy in Norse mythology (Clunies Ross, note 52 above). In ‘The Matriliny of the Picts’ (Mankind Quarterly 31 (1990), 17-43), ‘Earth Goddess’ (pp. 415-46), ‘Common Background’ (pp. 41-8), and ‘Goddess 58

The tenderness of Germanic male sensibilities in this matter is shown in Egils Saga. Egil raises a níð pole against Eric Bloodaxe on various grounds, stated in accompanying verses: he is a ‘despoiler of the sacred’ and a fratricide,67 but also, notably, he is ‘governed by his wife’.68 After the mid-first millennium, it might have generated even worse disgrace, in some Germanic areas, to allow the practices of women-centred religion. By the Beowulf poet’s magic, the Scyldings speak for the Danes. Grendel opposes the Scyldings, so he is one of the untȳdras, the ‘misbegotten’, not even a Dane. Native religious traditions became in Beowulf exo-cannibalistic, hardly human.69

Religion in the Early British Isles’ in Varia on the European Past, ed. Miriam Robbins Dexter and Edgar C. Polomé (Washington D.C., 1997), pp. 48-82), I have argued that in northwest Europe monolineal matrilineal tribes descended from the Neolithic. 64   Wolfgang Kühlwein’s study, cited by Fulk et al. (Beowulf 4th p. 418), mapped semantic parameters in selected Old English literature, without capturing the element of gender defamation which attends the lexeme in some contexts. Legal documents and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle used nīðing for ‘coward, outlaw’; nīðlice was glossed as ‘muliebriter’, ‘effeminately’; see T. L. Markey, ‘Nordic níðvísur, an instance of ritual inversion?’, Medieval Scandinavia 5 (1972), 5-18, at pp. 15, 17. Joaquin Martinez Pizarro analyzed an incident recorded by Gregory of Tours, and found in it an ‘oral tradition common to West, and North German sources’ (‘On níð against bishops’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11 (1978-9), 149-53, at p. 153). 65   Markey, ‘Nordic níðvísur’, p. 18; Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: concepts of sexual defamation in early Northern society, trans. Joan Turville-Petre (Odense, 1983), pp. 29-32; Bettina Sejbjerg Sommer, ‘The Norse concept of luck’, Scandinavian Studies 79 (2007), 275-94, at p. 290. 66   Text and translation: Meulengracht Sørensen, Unmanly, pp. 100, 17. Other valuable discussions: Folke Ström, Níð, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Attitudes (London, 1974); Kari Ellen Gade, ‘Homosexuality and rape of males in Old Norse law and literature’, Scandinavian Studies 58 (1986), 124-41; Carol J. Clover, ‘Regardless of sex: men, women and power in early Northern Europe’, Speculum 68 (1993), 363-87; Jenny Jochens, ‘Old Norse sexuality: men, women and beasts’ in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York, 1996), pp. 369-400. 67   Sommer, ‘The Norse concept of luck’, p. 289; ‘Vé grandar’, ‘bræðra søkkva’ in Egils Saga, ed. Biarni Einarsson (London, 2003), pp. 93, 94. 68   Markey, ‘Níðvísur’, p. 10. ‘Unmanliness’ is therefore implied, contra Sommer, ‘The Norse concept of luck’, p. 290. ‘Blekkir’, ‘deceived’ (Einarsson, Egils Saga, p. 94), suggests Eric has been cuckolded. 69   The scene in which Beowulf watches, problematically for a modern hero, his fellow Geat (Hondscioh) being devoured by Grendel (736b-745a, 2076-80) may have suited a poetic plan to redefine sensationally the (endo-) cannibalism of native Danish religion.

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Cannibalism in Beowulf and Older Germanic Religion Beowulf lines 175-6 – which religion? A famous problem passage exemplifies conflict about older Germanic religion, despite Christian sentiment having been interposed. After Grendel’s attacks had emptied Heorot, Hrothgar’s counsellors often sat, considering what might be done. Hwīlum hīe ġehēton æt hærgtrafum wīġweorþunga (175-76a). ‘Sometimes they pledged, at stone-marked lean-tos [i.e., small shrines at dedicated sites in bogs], holyhonours [i.e. sacrifices]’70 F. A. Blackburn, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy Whitelock and Kenneth Sisam, among others, have held that this passage about wīġ-honourings promised æt hærgtrafum is inconsistent with the rest of the poem, and it is usually regarded as a ‘later inauthentic retouching.’71 Klaeber thought that either the Danes, otherwise Christian, relapsed to paganism here, or in these lines the poet forgot he was characterizing them as Christian.72 I suggest that an originally pagan poem showed the Danes as reverting, in the face of Grendel’s attacks,73 to observances that in the sixth century were considered ancient fertilityreligion practices and were here disparaged. Current readings do not offer a satisfactory reason why the Danes, elsewhere seen as Christians or near-Christian noble pagans, are criticized at this point for pagan rites. But if lines 175-76 represent a fertility-belief system, and if the emergent religion of the Danes in an early rendering of the poem anticipated the Germanic paganism found in the poetic and prose Eddas, the conundrum begins to be solvable.

  In lines 2989-90, ġehātan expresses the pledge of a ‘reward’, lēan (in genitive case), the fulfillment of which is detailed with ġelǣstan. Fulk et al. considered wīġweorþunga possibly genitive (p. 456). 71   Blackburn, ‘The Christian coloring in the Beowulf’’ in An Anthology of Beowulf Criticism, ed. Lewis E. Nicholson (South Bend IN, 1963), pp. 1-21, at 16, reprinted from Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 12 (1897) 205-25; Tolkien, ‘Beowulf: the monsters and the critics’ in The Monsters And The Critics and other essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston MA, 1984), pp. 5-48, at 38, 43, rev. from Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936), 245-295; Whitelock, The Audience of Beowulf (Oxford, 1964), p. 78. Sisam considered the passage one of many with inconsistencies, but supposed ‘the audience did not notice them’; he took ll. 3069-73, where hearg also occurs, to be a Christian interpolation; The Structure of Beowulf (Oxford, 1965), pp. 73 note 1, 75 note 1. 72   Klaeber, Beowulf, p. 135. Fulk et al., found the poem ‘anachronistic’ (p. lxviii). I would begin to explain the religious layering by supposing with H. M. Chadwick that a version of Beowulf existed in the sixth century (The Heroic Age [Cambridge, 1912]; 1967, p. 41). The period of production of the D-form of Scandinavian gold bracteates (roughly the first two-thirds of the sixth century) can be seen as a time of high currency for monster stories in Germanic Europe. The exchange of these 359 pendants thus provides a community of discourse in which to situate the origin of the Beowulf poem; Frank Battaglia, ‘Beowulf and the bracteates’ in ‘The Dating of Beowulf: a reassessment’, presented at the Harvard Conference, September 2011. 73   Probably representing opposition to the changed religious and social practices the hall represented (Battaglia, ‘Hall vs. bog’).

From lines 175-76, hearg and wīg certainly refer to aspects of the same devotion. A hearg- compound tells the location, and a wīg-term explains the promise. This congruence is remarkable, a clue that the passage stems from a much earlier version of Beowulf than the Nowell Codex. For in Danish and Anglo-Saxon place-names the religious practices associated with the two lexemes had diverged long before. Although in the last half of the first millennium the Danish wīg cognate (vi) certainly, and Old English hearg probably referred to places where rites devoted to Odin/Woden were carried out, both terms in Beowulf 175-76 may allude to Germanic fertility religion, and sites like Forlev Nymølle. Etymologically, hearg is tied to ‘stones’,74 and altars of the sagas are now thought to reference rock assemblages in small cult buildings the adoption of which dates from around 500.75 Silkeborg Museum’s exhibit on Forlev Nymølle, however, stated that Old Danish hørg earlier referred to collections of stones which identified sacred places in bogs (Figure 14.3). All ten find concentrations at that Jutland sacred area were so marked.76 A regime of religious orthodoxy came to restrict the Danish use of vi to sites honouring Odin,77 but we may imagine that earlier in Scandinavian history the term was applied to ‘holy places’ like Forlev Nymølle.

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Fig 14.3 Large stones from find concentration IV, Forlev Nymølle, where human shoulder-blade was found (after Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle’, p. 154, Fig. 8)   Thomas L. Markey, ‘Germanic terms for temple and cult’ in Studies for Einar Haugen, ed. Evelyn Scherabon Firchow et al (The Hague, 1972), pp. 365-78, at 369; Ordbog over Det Danske Sprog (1925), 7, p. 882 postulated an early Germanic hørg, ‘place with large stones.’ 75   Terry Gunnell, ‘Hof, halls, goðar and dwarves: an examination of the ritual space in the pagan Icelandic hall’, Cosmos 17 (2001), 3-36, at pp. 7-8; Charlotte Fabech, ‘Centrality in Old Norse mental landscapes, a dialogue between arranged and natural places?’ in Andrén, Jennbert and Raudvere, Old Norse religion, pp. 26-32, at 27-8; Lars Larsson, ‘The Iron Age ritual building at Uppåkra, southern Sweden’, Antiquity 81 (2007), 11-25. 76   Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle’, pp. 164, 194. Suggesting links between bog stone heaps and Bronze Age rituals: Pauli Jensen, ‘From fertility rituals’, p. 56. 77   Battaglia, ‘Hall vs. bog’, pp. 62-4, following Kristian Hald, ‘The cult of Othin in Danish place names’ in Early English and Norse Studies, ed. Arthur Brown and Peter Foote (London, 1963), pp. 99-109. 74

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Frank Battaglia Besides stones, most find concentrations at Forlev Nymølle also included the remains of wooden structures. Light pieces of ash were found, as well as larger wooden members. Several wooden staves had been shaped by a tool, including having square holes cut through them. (Figure 14.4). Pairs of wooden staves could have supported a cross-piece between them to create a small lean-to. The wood is a potential referent of the trafum in heargtrafum, which is cognate with Latin trabs, a word for a tree or beam. The primary meanings of træf given by Ferdinand Holthausen for Old English are ‘tent’ or ‘booth’, with ‘temple’ emerging later.78 A difference ‘of function or of status’ between AngloSaxon hearg and wīg sites has been suggested for over half a century.79 I think it likely that rituals at wīg sites shared a tradition with Forlev Nymølle: chthonic and ancestor cults which included the reverencing of female powers80 – such as would be identified in later Norse texts as the dísir – and the curating of the physical remains of predecessors.

Conclusion We may be able to face and even grow with the knowledge that our ancestors were cannibals, just as we all once did with the discovery that our parents had had sexual intercourse. A lesson we could possibly relearn – as the Swedish Antiquities statement hints – is that the Earth is our common body. Acknowledgement I am grateful to greenrocketdigital.com and Fran Battaglia for production of the figures.

Hearg sites probably represent the stratum of Germanic religion which emerged in the middle of the first millennium when rituals in South Scandinavia began to be located, often in association with a building, at arranged rather than natural places. Hearg sites would have been especially devoted to male deities of the Æsir, the sky gods of Germanic religion. Increasing hierarchisation is visible by the late sixth century in Anglo-Saxon burial furnishings and groupings, Style II metalwork, and new systems of punishment.81 I would associate the emergence of hearg sites with such deepening inequality. Religious devotions carried out at English wīg sites may have been treated with progressively more disdain as stratification proceeded. By the late sixth century, derision like that of Beowulf lines 176b-188 – which probably expand a condemnation of religious practices associated with sites like Forlev Nymølle – may have begun to be expressed by some Anglo-Saxon users of hearg sites about wīg sites. We know that, especially after 580, Anglo-Saxons took over ritual enclosures of the native Romano-British elite and converted them to their own use.82 A reorganisation may have been affecting Germanic religious sites as well.   F. Holthausen, Altenglisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg, 1934), p. 352. 79   David Wilson, ‘A note on OE hearg and wēoh as place-name elements representing different types of pagan Saxon worship sites’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 4 (1985), pp. 179-183, at 181. 80   See Notes 31, 61, 63 above. Seventh-century Wessex burial-ritual reorganization has been interpreted as showing (after a bi-lateral system), that ‘lines of descent were no longer being traced through females’; see Nick Stoodley, ‘Burial rites, gender and the creation of kingdoms: the evidence from seventh-century Wessex’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 10 (1999), pp. 99-107, at 105. 81   Helen Geake, The Use of Grave Goods in Conversion-Period England, c. 600 - c. 850, BAR BS 261 (Oxford, 1997), p. 127; George Speake, AngloSaxon Animal Art and its Germanic Background (Oxford, 1980), pp. 3839; Battaglia, ‘Beowulf: enforcement’, citing Andrew Reynolds and Robin Fleming. Such phenomena appear later than the peak period at Gudme; Lars Jørgensen ‘The find material from the settlement of Gudme II – composition and interpretation’ in The Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg, ed. P. O. Nielsen, K. Randsborg, and H. Thrane (Copenhagen, 1994), pp. 53-63, at 56. 82   John Blair, ‘Anglo-Saxon pagan shrines and their prototypes’, AngloSaxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8 (1995), 1-28. 78

Fig 14.4 Wooden staves shaped by a tool from find concentrations III (a), one of a pair, and VII (b), Forlev Nymølle (after Lund, ‘Forlev Nymølle’, p. 179, Fig. 28 c-d)

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Chapter 15 The Creation Riddle and Anglo-Saxon Cosmology Erin Sebo This article considers the three Exeter Book Creation riddles, Riddle 40, Riddle 66 and Riddle 93,1 in terms of what they reveal about Anglo-Saxon conceptions of cosmology, cosmography and cosmogony. Two of the three, Riddles 40 and 93, are incomplete due to manuscript damage: the end of Riddle 40 is missing, while only a few fragments remain of Riddle 93. However, enough survives to compare and contrast. These riddles are, in folkloristic terms, the same riddle because they share the same paradox: that every quality and every extreme is present in some aspect of Creation and so all contradictions may be said to be true of Creation. The first example of this riddle – and the model for the Exeter Book Creation riddles – is Aldhelm’s epic De Creatura.2 It is, as we might expect, profoundly dualistic and this is borne out not only in the dichotomies it describes within creation, but also in the dichotomy between Creator and created, the framing dichotomy of the poem. The ruling dichotomy of the poem, so to speak, is an analogue of this, the division between high and low. This vertical axis is so dominant in the poem that most of the images, regardless of which dichotomy they purport to illustrate, reveal themselves to be images of high and low. So for example, the swift/slow dichotomy is exemplified through the contrast between the eagle’s swiftness in the high heavens and the earthworm’s slowness beneath the earth – high and low. Like most Anglo-Saxon riddle collections, the Exeter Book usually only includes one riddle on each subject or which shares the same paradox; the fact that three retellings of Aldhelm’s riddle appear in the collection is not only extremely unusual but it is also an indication of its popularity, of how it must have caught the Anglo-Saxon imagination. It is, perhaps, the most important riddle in Anglo-Saxon England. Crucially in terms of the concerns of this article it is the one which most explicitly deals with worldview. The connection between Riddles 40, 66, and 93, and therefore the connection of the latter two riddles to De Creatura, has not always been apparent to scholars, in part because, though they are all ‘versions’ of the paradox developed in De Creatura, they are at different stages of transformation. Riddle 40 is a translation, Riddle 66 a reworking and Riddle 93 is so significantly altered that without the intermediate Riddle 66 the connection to De  I have used Muir’s edition and numbering throughout. See Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry, ed. B. Muir (Chicago, 2006). All translations within the article itself are my own unless otherwise indicated. For ease of reference I have included the full text of Riddle 40 complete with Gordon’s translations in an appendix. (Full texts of Riddles 66 and 93 accompanied by my own translations are included in the article itself.) 2   All quotations from De Creatura are from Ehwald’s edition. See Aldhelmi Opera, ed. R. Ehwald (Berlin, 1919).

Creatura might never have been recognised. It is worth pausing briefly to outline these connections because this, in itself, has some bearing on the cosmology each expresses. The first Creation riddle in the Exeter Book and the longest, Riddle 40, has long been recognised as a translation of De Creatura. Its original form appears to have been considerably longer than Aldhelm’s poem. Indeed, as Klein notes of the only other translation of an Aldhelm riddle, ‘it makes the original paradox wholly its own’.3 And, in O’Brien O’Keeffe’s formulation, ‘the Old English poet’s technique sacrifices literal accuracy for poetic effect. So, for example, the poet omits to translate the image of the race in Aldhelm, line 39, developing instead the idea of speed’.4 Throughout the text the translator almost always retains Aldhelm’s original images, although he changes their context and significance. Here translation becomes an opportunity for the same kinds of embellishments that are inherent in oral reproductions (performances) of texts. Indeed, by Anglo-Saxon standards, Riddle 40 is surprisingly exacting.5 Thus, where shifts in emphasis or nuance do occur in Riddle 40, they are especially revealing and warrant close attention. The next riddle, Riddle 66, is apparently a condensed reworking of Riddle 40, the two texts being clearly linked by phrases and other formulaic elements in common. The central image of Riddle 66, of Creation embracing the fields, is an adaptation of Riddle 40 lines 50-3 which begin with a repeated formulaic couplet (ll. 50-1 and ll. 82-3), the only repeated element in that poem: Ic eorþan eom æghwær brædre, ond widgielra þonne þes wong grena; folm mec mæg bifon ond fingras þry utan eaþe ealle ymbclyppan (ll. 50-3), ‘I am broader everywhere than the earth and wider than this green field; a hand may move me and all of me be enclosed easily between three fingers’. Compare: Ic eom mare þonne þes middangeard læsse þonne hondwyrm … … Sæs me sind ealle

1

3   T. Klein ‘The Old English Translation of Aldhelm’s Riddle Lorica’, The Review of English Studies, New Series 48 (1997), 345-49, at p. 345. 4   K. O’ Brien O’Keeffe ‘The Text of Aldhelm’s Enigma no. c in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson C. 697 and Exeter Riddle 40’, ASE 14 (1985), 61-74, at p. 62. 5   R. DiNapoli ‘In the Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is A Seller of Garlic: depth-perception and the poet’s perspective in the Exeter Book Riddles’, English Studies 81 (2000), 422-55, at p. 439.

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Erin Sebo flodas on fæðmum ond þes foldan bearm, grene wongas. (ll.1-5) ‘I am greater than this middle-earth, less than a handworm […]. All the seas’ tides are in my embraces and the earthen breast, the green fields’. Moreover, both use the unusual word hondwyrm. It appears four times in the Old English corpus;6 once apiece in Riddles 40 and 66, once in a medical text (as one would expect) and once in the Corpus Glossary. The word is used in Riddle 40 as a translation of Aldhelm’s verme (l. 66) — more usually translated by its Old English descendant, wyrm. This kind of internal evidence suggests that Riddle 66 is a reworking of Riddle 40, rather than of De Creatura in either an oral or written form. No such obvious linguistic connection marks what remains of Riddle 93 as belonging to this series of increasingly ‘transformed translations’. Rather it was identified as such on the basis of its structure by the great riddle scholar, Frederick Tupper, who noticed its similarity to De Creatura, Riddle 40 and Riddle 66. He writes, ‘the few surviving phrases of this badly damaged fragment exhibit a striking likeness to the comparatives of the “Creation” riddles’.7 It is also true that Riddle 93 shares a common vocabulary of images, a similar implied conception of Creation and, of course, a central paradox. However, in its fragmentary state it is impossible to tell where it sits in the transformation spectrum. Whether or not these three texts were composed in sequence, they represent an idea in progress. We see this transformation take place, especially in the use of what Michelet describes as ‘basic images such as inside/outside, open/closed, high/low, and so forth, to which symbolic meaning is always attached’.8 Riddle 40 Riddle 40 describes Creation in an eclectic series of detailed and luscious vignettes apparently exemplifying various abstract qualities, presided over by an ever-present God. With the exception of a couple of repeated or formulaic phrases, it shows very few signs of orality. It was probably composed no earlier than the tenth century,9 nearly three hundred years after the composition of De Creatura, and the poem differs from Aldhelm’s original in its tone more than its structure (this difference becomes obvious almost immediately).The undercurrent of tension between Creator and created, always present in Aldhelm’s riddle, is replaced by a vision of God mentoring his Creation. De Creatura describes God as ‘frenans’ (‘restraining’; l. 2) the natural world ‘lege’ (‘with [His] law’; l. 2), where Riddle 40 imagines that He ‘healdeð ond wealdeð’ (‘holds and

guides’; l. 5) the world. This more nurturing relationship is reflected in an amplified sense of wonder. Thus, where Aldhelm’s precise mind goes straight to the heart of the riddle’s paradox in his first words about Creation, that God ‘me varium fecit’ (l. 4), (‘made me manifold’), the vernacular translation stresses the awe-inspiring: ‘He mec wrætlice worhte æt frymþe (l. 6) (‘He made me miraculously at the beginning’). This difference is reflected throughout. De Creatura stresses the pivotal oppositions contained within Creation in clean elegant Latin and saves elaboration for those passages which either describe the glory of God, or appeal to it. By contrast, the poet of Riddle 40 sees every image as an opportunity to give full rein to his powers of description. The riddle becomes a frame for his lively and abundant observations and experience of the world. This greater emphasis on narrative and its digressive, sensuous evocation largely erases Aldhelm’s polarising vision. Each extreme becomes separated from the next by an extended descriptive passage and the contrast is inevitably blunted. Consequently the effect is not of a world divided into good and evil along a number of axes, but rather of a multifaceted Creation, teeming with life. For example, Aldhelm uses the image of the pigs strictly to illustrate one side of the abundance/scarcity dichotomy: Pinguior, en, multo scrofarum axungia glisco, Glandiferis iterum referunt dum corpora fagis Atque saginata laetantur carne subulci (ll. 48-50) ‘See! I swell up fatter by far than the grease of the sows as they stuff their bodies again with mastbearing beech and the swineherds are delighted by the fattened flesh’. The equivalent passage in Riddle 40 marks the end of the legible manuscript, but as far as we can tell, the poet has kept most of the elements of Aldhelm’s original. However, crucially, Aldhelm’s swineherds are gone and the joy he attributes to them has been transferred to the pig who ‘wynnum lifde’ (‘lived happily’) in the beechwood. Aldhelm, with greater poetic discipline, uses the image of the sows solely to illustrate abundance: the abundance of their food produces an abundance of flesh which in turn promises an abundance of meat for human consumption. Since they are sows, their health also reflects their ability to produce piglets, thus increasing the herd and therefore the human food supply. By contrast, the vernacular poet is clearly more interested in the opportunity to describe the creature which, in keeping with this shift in poetic interest, is now imagined as an individual, not a member of a herd: Mara ic eom ond fættra þonne amæsted swin, bearg bellende, [þe] on bocwuda, won wrotende wynnum lifde þæt he … (ll. 105-8)

  Old English Corpus, ed. A. di Paolo Healey, 2005. 7   F. Tupper, The Riddles of the Exeter Book (Darmstadt, 1968), p. 238. 8   F. Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest (Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 4. 9   J. Steen, Verse and Virtuosity: the adaptation of Latin rhetoric in Old English Poetry (Toronto, 2008), p. 91. 6

‘Greater I am and fatter than the mast-fed swine, the grunting hog, dark rooting, that lived joyfully in the beechwood’. 150

The Creation Riddle and Anglo-Saxon Cosmology By using the word bearg, which implies a male not a female animal, the vernacular poet instantly dispenses with the idea of the pigs as a symbol of fertile abundance, and by using swin, which may include wild animals, he implies autonomy. These are not animals the lives of which are run in accordance with human principles of husbandry but rather they are free and independent. This example is illustrative of another shift: while Aldhelm is positive in his depiction of humans, Riddle 40 betrays ambivalence. The swineherds are removed and the notion of the pig as a food animal is erased. Riddle 40 also removes Aldhelm’s other reference to human food, the cooked offal at line 43. This aversion to images of human civilization is seen, too, in the treatment of Aldhelm’s image of curled locks (ll. 447), a sign in De Creatura, of unchristian vanity. In Riddle 40 this is transformed into a strange vignette: Ne hafu ic in heafde hwite loccas wræste gewundne, ac ic eom wide calu; ne ic breaga ne bruna brucan moste, ac mec bescyrede scyppend eallum; nu me wrætlice weaxað on heafde þæt me on gescyldrum scinan motan ful wrætlice wundne loccas. (ll. 98-104) ‘I have no white locks on my head excellently curled, for I am completely bald; nor am I allowed to possess eyebrows or eyelashes, for the Shaper sheared me of them all; now curled locks grow marvellously from my head that shine on my shoulders most marvellous’. Unlike Aldhelm’s image it now expresses the bald/hirsute dichotomy, though the underlying idea seems to be concerned with age/youth: the loss of hair with increasing age is the most obvious instance of a situation in which God might be thought to deprive someone of their hair, eyebrows and even eyelashes. However, the tone is rather unsettling. Where other creatures have been imagined as whole, this image focuses on body parts figuratively disembodied, the hair, the eyelashes and the eyebrows which are then literally disembodied by God. These strange, oblique, and slightly disturbing images stand in dramatic juxtaposition to the poem’s exuberant treatment of the animal world, as we have seen. However, perhaps the most striking divergence between original and translation is right in the middle of Riddle 40.10 Here the riddle dispenses with Aldhelm’s template, and gives pride of place to an oral formula:

‘I am everywhere broader than the earth and wider than this green field’. A centrally important image, the formula is a repetition of lines 50-51, the only repetition in the poem. (It is also the basis of the opening line of Riddle 66.) This shifts Riddle 40 away from Aldhelm’s theological emphasis on high/low, celestial/terrestrial and heavenly/infernal, in the direction of great/small; an encompassing, not hierarchical, image. It represents both an ideological shift and a corresponding shift in what Michelet terms ‘imaginary geography’.11 These meanings are linked to the symbolism of the Christian cross, which ‘as the saving bridge between divinity and humanity plays a key role … by dividing and shaping reality into four parts or four directions’.12 Crucially, these four directions are not equal. The Christian cross (unlike various pagan equilateral crosses) lengthens and stresses the vertical axis as the connection between the Divine and human. Aldhelm’s privileging of the vertical over the horizontal axis must be read in these terms. Let us take as an example of this ideological shift Aldhelm’s line: ego complector sub caeli cardine cuncta (l. 8) ‘I embrace all things beneath the pole of heaven’ and Riddle 40’s ‘translation’: ic mid waldendes þisne ymbhwyrft

‘I, with the Master’s word, all this worldcircle utterly embrace around’. In Aldhelm’s image Creation stretches out but, ultimately, is limited by its relationship to the vertical axis. Creation is defined as what exists below, beneath the pole of Heaven. Aldhelm privileges the high as the realm of God, over the low, the mortal realm of His Creation.13 By contrast the vernacular translator dispenses with the vertical axis and amplifies the idea of embrace. The circularity and breadth of this embrace is enacted in the two ymb- prefixes: ‘ymbhwyrft utan ymbclyppe’ (‘worldcircle utterly embrace around’). While the Old English clyppan and the Latin completere both have the same essential meaning, ‘to embrace’, the Old English verb also includes the sense of ‘to honour, prize or cherish’,14 an additional meaning which contributes to the poem’s overall sense of a gentle and affectionate mutuality between Creator and created. Of course, Riddle 40 is not without the vertical axis; in   Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest, p. 5.   K. Jolly, ‘Tapping the power of the cross: who and for whom?’ in The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. C. Karkov, S. Keefer and K. Jolly (Woodbridge, 2006), pp.58-79, at 63. Jolly points out that the sign of the cross was often present on boundary markers and so was used to mark geographical as well as symbolic space. 13   Michelet notes an interesting parallel of this, namely that a ‘high/low dichotomy contrasts human and monstrous dwellings: while the latter are confined to the lower regions, the former tower over many lands (Heorot)’. Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest, p. 80. 14   See J. R. Clark Hall, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Cambridge, 1960). 11

Ic eorþan eom ond widgelra

æghwær brædre þonne þes wong grena. (ll. 82-3)

  Despite the text being incomplete we may surmise where the middle of the poem must have been because although the vernacular poet alters and expands on De Creatura in Riddle 40, he is reasonably faithful in preserving the proportions. 10

worde ealne utan ymbclyppe (ll. 14-5)

12

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Erin Sebo the middle of the poem the riddle-subject declares ‘hyrre ic eom heofone’ (l. 38), (‘I am higher than Heaven’), but high/low is manifestly not the poem’s ruling dichotomy as it is in De Creatura. Riddle 66 As suggested above, Riddle 66 seems to be a condensed reworking of Riddle 40. Indeed, critics often fail to distinguish it from its antecedent. Michelet dismisses it as a shorter version of Riddle 40 and, in accordance with her larger thesis,15 describes Riddle 66 as ‘a short poem revolving around the notion that the world is an enclosed area’.16 By contrast, I shall argue that it reveals a new conception of Creation and that far from expressing enclosure, it is dynamic and expansive in its images and most of all in its sense of space. This is enacted in the schema of Riddle 66 which is stronger and more structured, giving the piece a greater poetic unity. Where Riddle 40 is divided between Creator and Creation, Riddle 66 focuses only on Creation. Thus the riddle’s structure no longer has to accommodate a description of what the riddle’s answer is not, as well as what it is. Riddle 66 replaces Riddle 40’s charming but piecemeal ramble through the detailed particularities of Creation always in the context of its guardian Creator with bold, cosmographical imagery and a structure which moves from the general to the particular and back again: Ic eom mare þonne þes middangeard læsse þonne hondwyrm, leohtre þonne mona, swiftre þonne sunne. Sæs me sind ealle flodas on fæðmum ond þes foldan bearm, grene wongas. Grundum ic hrine, helle underhnige, heofonas oferstige, wuldres eþel, wide ræce ofer engla eard, eorþan gefylle, ealne middangeard ond merestreamas side mid me sylfum. Saga hwæt ic hatte. ‘I am greater than this middle-earth, less than a handworm, lighter than the moon, swifter than the sun. All the seas’ tides are in my embraces and the earthen breast, the green fields. I touch the foundations, I sink under hell, I soar over the heavens, the glorious realm; I reach wide over the homeland of angels; I fill the earth abundantly, the entire world and the streams of the oceans with myself. Say what I am called’. The opening phrase, ‘Ic eom mara þonne þes middangeard/ læsse þonne hondwyrm’ (ll.1-2; ‘I am greater than this middle-earth, less than a hand-worm’), dispenses at a stroke   She writes that the ‘original space of creation is enclosed, properly filled, and settled. But this arrangement is constantly challenged and is never allowed to endure. The sense of space that can be reconstructed from the Creation scene as narrated in Old English verse suggests an insecurity about boundaries, a constant fear of the outside (considered as a threat), and an anxiety to secure everything in its proper place’ Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest, p. 63. 16   Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest, p. 60. 15

with the vertical and horizontal axes of past versions and imagines space stretching out and then shrinking in every direction simultaneously. This is an infinitely expansive image, for although Creation is greater than middle-earth, there is no indication that there is any limit to how much greater. Unlike Riddle 40’s ‘hyrre ic eom heofone’ (l. 38; ‘I am higher than Heaven’) in which two fixed, unchanging points contrast each other, here Creation is the swooping, soaring force which proclaims ‘helle underhnige, heofonas oferstige’ (l. 6; ‘I sink under hell, I soar over the heavens’). The high/low dichotomy remains, but only by implication and the conception, nascent in De Creatura and developing in Riddle 40, of Creation as embracing and circling is realized. Creation describes itself in a series of verbs; hrindan (‘to thrust’), underhnigan (‘to sink under’), oferstigan (‘to climb over’), ræcan (‘to reach’), fyllan (‘to fill, to replenish’). It is a conception of Creation which Irving describes as ‘operating in time and out of time, always in process, always already completed, and always hoped for’.17 In Riddle 40, God is the moving force who ‘healdeð ond wealdeð’ (l. 5), (holds and guides) and although Creation also embraces the earth, it is only at God’s command: Þisne middangeard meahtig dry ten mid his onwalde æghwær styreð; swa ic mid waldendes worde ealne þis ymbhwyrft utan ymbclyppe. (ll. 12-5) ‘This middle-earth, the mighty Lord with his authority everywhere steers; so I, by means of the Master’s word, all this circle of earth embrace’. Even when Creation is declaring its puissance, ‘Eal ic under heofones hwearftre recce’ (l. 33; ‘I rule all under the circle of heaven’), it is only because, ‘swa me leof fæder lærde æt frymþe’ (l. 34; ‘so the dear Father enjoined me at the beginning’). However, in Riddle 66, Creation itself is imagined as the moving force. Where the Creation of Riddle 40 claims that it is ‘widgielra þonne þes wong grena’ (l. 51; ‘wider than this green field’) the Creation of Riddle 66 claims ‘Sæs me sind ealle/ flodas on fæðmum ond þes foldan bearm,/ grene wongas’ (ll. 3-5; ‘All the seas’ tides are in my embraces and the earthen breast, the green fields’). The two passages form an interesting comparison because they stand in an intertextual relationship to each other and so the shift in conception is especially clear. Riddle 66’s Creation stretches as far as the fields and seas, and crucially, beyond. The notion of filling and encompassing the created world is so important that it returns as the final image: ‘eorþan gefylle,/ ealne middangeard ond merestreamas/ side mid me sylfum’ (ll.8-10; ‘I fill the earth abundantly, the entire world and the streams of the oceans with myself’.) Even ‘pole of heaven’, the limiting feature of De Creatura, does not bound Riddle 66’s Creation, which declares ‘wuldres eþel, wide ræce/ ofer engla eard’ (ll. 7-8; ‘the glorious realm, I reach wide over the homeland of angels).   E. Irving, ‘The Advent of Poetry: Christ I’, ASE 25 (1996), 123-34, at p.123. 17

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The Creation Riddle and Anglo-Saxon Cosmology The absence of the Creator/Creation dichotomy in Riddle 66 is reflected in a shift away from, though not a complete abandonment of, oppositions. The first three lines, which are ostensibly made up of two oppositions, illustrate the point: Ic eom mare þonne þes middangeard læsse þonne hondwyrm, leohtre þonne mona, swiftre þonne sunne. (ll. 1-3) ‘I am greater than this middle-earth, less than a handworm, lighter than the moon, swifter than the sun’. The first ‘opposition’ is in the adjectives mare and læsse, though not in the images which illustrate them.18 The reverse is true of the second; the adjectives leohtre and swiftre are not in opposition, though the images mona and sunne are an ancient, archetypal and almost universal dichotomy. Yet the very fact that the poet uses this ancient dichotomy to illustrate qualities (lightness and swiftness) which are not dichotomous, or even opposed, demonstrates that his thoughts are tending away from the dualism of De Creatura and Riddle 40. This development is intriguing since the oppositional structure is deeply embedded in the Christian tradition – we might recall Augustine’s comment on oppositions in language and the world in Civitate Dei19 – and more importantly, oppositions are at the heart of the Biblical account of Creation. Genesis describes God first separating out the oppositions – the heaven from the earth, the light from the dark, the land from the sea – that are seminal to the conception of Creation in Riddle 40 and its model, De Creatura. Yet in some significant ways, Riddle 66 actually becomes more, not less, like the Creation of Genesis. The imagery of Riddle 66 is closer to the cosmographical imagery of Genesis than is Aldhelm’s miscellany of seaweed and honey, Cyclopes and Vulcan’s forge, curly locks and Chinese spun silk, golden bosses and cooked offal. Riddle 40’s shift towards elemental imagery is realized in Riddle 66, which is dominated by cosmological imagery; the mona (‘moon’), sunne (‘sun’), sæs (‘seas’), flodas (‘floods’), wongas (‘fields’), grundum (‘the ground’), helle (‘Hell’), heofonas (‘the heavens’), eorþan (‘the earth’) and merestreamas (‘streams of the oceans’). Moreover, the structure, which (as has already been observed) moves from the general to the particular, is like the structure of the Creation in Genesis. Neither Riddle 66’s strength of conception nor the simple elegance of its structure is matched in later Creation   For although middangeard and a hondwyrm contrast each other, a creature like the hand-worm cannot be the opposite of the world; they are chalk and cheese. 19   Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 11, 18: ‘sicut ergo ista contraria contrariis opposita sermonis pulchritudinem reddunt; ita quadam non verborum, sed rerum eloquentia contrariorum oppositione saeculi pulchritude componitur’ (‘ … just as that opposition of contraries bestows beauty upon language, so the beauty of this world is built upon the opposition of contraries through a certain elegance not of words but of matter’). 18

Riddles. Yet it was tremendously influential. A small token of this is the survival of almost all the comparatives of Riddle 66 in Riddle 93 which embraces the more cosmographical imagery of Riddle 66. Its shorter and more memorable structure and imagery encouraged the further abbreviation of the Creation riddle and helped the various elements to solidify into a series of even smaller and more memorable chunks – what Dundes calls ‘units of worldview’20 – which are the currency of oral literature. (As we shall see, Riddle 93 shows signs of interaction with the oral tradition). These formulaic fragments could then be reused and reordered to form the basis of future Creation Riddles. Riddle 93 Despite the Postmodernist literary project to rescue and re-evaluate texts excluded because of their fragmentary nature from a canon which values the whole, Riddle 93 has been ignored21 and even excluded from translations on the grounds that so little survives that a translation would be meaningless.22 After all, what can be gleaned from a few words? Yet, I believe that there are some observations we may make. Here is what survives of the riddle, quoted in full: Smeþr[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .]ad, hyrre þonne heofon[. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ] glædre þonne sunne, [ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ]style, smeare þonne sealt ry[ . . . . . . . . . . . ] leofre þonne þis leoht eall, leohtre þon w[ . . . . ] ‘Smoother … Higher than Heaven … … brighter than the sun, Sharper than salt … Dearer than all this light, lighter than the w[ind]’. Here the various vignettes of Riddle 40 and the cosmography of Riddle 66 are replaced by a litany of noun and comparative adjective pairs. So in broad terms, Riddle 40 is concerned with the details of Creation, Riddle 66 with the structural elements of Creation but Riddle 93 is concerned with its attributes. Moreover, some of   A. Dundes, ‘Folk ideas as units of worldview’ in Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. A. Paredes and R. Bauman (Austin TX, 1975), pp. 93-103. 21   In addition to the absence of articles devoted to it, Riddle 93 does not even rate a mention in larger works which engage with Old English cosmologies and Creation narratives. Both Michelet and Wehlau, for example, consider Riddles 40 and 66 at some length without even mentioning Riddle 93, although Tupper’s observation of the connection between the three riddles is long standing and there is now a consensus, despite Williamson’s suggestion of ‘water’, that the riddle is solved as ‘Creation’; Tupper, Riddles of the Exeter Book, p. 238, and C. Williamson, A Feast of Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs (Philadelphia PA, 1983). See also: Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest; and R. Wehlau, The Riddle of Creation: Metaphor Structures in Old English Poetry (New York, 1997). 22   Crossley-Holland’s excellent translation of the Exeter Book Riddles is such an example; see The Exeter Book Riddles, trans. K. CrossleyHolland (Harmondsworth, 1979). 20

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Erin Sebo the nouns are now described by different adjectives. For example, in Riddle 93 brightness is exemplified by the sun, where in Riddle 66 it was the moon. (In Riddle 66 the sun illustrates swiftness, a common enough trope in AngloSaxon literature, but incongruous to a heliocentric culture such as ours.) Nevertheless, with so little to work from, one needs to be cautious. For example, while the vertical axis is represented in Riddle 93 and the horizontal axis is not, we cannot conclude, as we can in Riddle 40, that this is because of a preference for the vertical; too much of Riddle 93 is missing. However, we may draw some inferences. For example, the fragment partially demonstrates the order of the comparatives which, as we have seen in Riddle 40 and Riddle 66, can be very revealing of world view. In particular, it shows that the celestial images, heaven and the sun, did not begin the riddle, which has apparently not followed the trajectory of Riddle 66 towards a more Biblical conception. Indeed, a measure of how alien this ordering is to our own cosmology is revealed by Williamson’s reconstruction and translation of the riddle,23 in which he actually reorders elements: a kind of cultural correction.24 This translation assembles the celestial elements at the beginning of the riddle, first the heavenly spheres, then the heavenly bodies, just as in Genesis (Gen. 1:1-31). He has relocated style from the second half of the fourth line to the beginning of the second line of his ‘translation’ and completes it by appropriating the smeþr comparison from the first line. Williamson’s inference that ‘harder’ is the missing comparative adjective accompanying style seems gratuitous. Moreover, the reconstitution of widely separated elements as two halves of the same line gives the impression that the line is concerned with the properties of kinds of materials used by humans. Williamson’s translation implies a movement from the great to the small, from the celestial to the base materials which make up daily human life. Like the vernacular translator of Riddle 40 it seems Williamson has been drawn into reproducing some part of his own conception of Creation. In any event Williamson’s ‘translation’ is illuminating because it charts what we would expect the text to do and thus precisely demonstrates how it deviates from our expectations. What, for example, could Creation be smeþr than, that could have the theological and cosmological importance to earn it a place above the images of the heavens and the sun? 25 The comparatives of Riddle 93 are greatly pared down in comparison with their predecessors. As we have already seen, in Riddle 40 there is often a tension between the stated point of the comparison and the elaboration of that image   Williamson, Feast of Creatures, p. 153.   Riddle 93 is particularly vulnerable to such ‘correction’ since many of the similes upon which its comparatives rest remain expressions in everyday speech, though they do not always retain their comparative form; ‘heavy as lead’, ‘black as pitch’ (pitch black), ‘hotter than Hell’, ‘hard as rock’ (or alternatively, ‘rock-hard’) and ‘cold as ice’. It is perhaps inevitable that these should colour our sense of the riddle. 25   I have been unable to find another instance of smeðe in its comparative form in the Old English corpus; a fact which in itself suggests the concept has little cultural significance.

by the poet. In Riddle 66 the handful of comparatives are elaborated by longer passages of vivid description. But in Riddle 93 these comparative images are, so to speak, entirely ‘one-dimensional’. The poet selects a single, and presumably defining, aspect of each image and this, and nothing else, is the point of its inclusion in the litany. One might well expect this to have the effect of further polarising the already dichotomised vision of De Creatura, Riddle 40, and, to a lesser extent, of Riddle 66. All the more so, since each image was apparently allotted a halfline, a situation which seems to invite a complementary opposite in the corresponding half line. But in the only line to preserve some of both half lines it seems to have had the reverse effect: leofre þonne þis leoht eall, leohtre þon … (‘dearer than all this light, lighter than … ’) exhibits an associative pairing.26 Williamson reconstructs this line as ‘dearer than light, lighter than wind’,27 which, if correct, implies that the two comparatives were put together on the basis of the homonym rather than because of any particular relationship between the two images. Even if we dismiss Williamson’s solution and translate leohtre as ‘brighter’ rather than ‘lighter’ (in the sense of less heavy) the elements are still far from being dichotomous. Conclusion(s) Riddle 40, like its source De Creatura, emphasizes the affectionate relationship between God and His Creation, although it displays unease about the place of humans in this schema. Creation itself is described through the enumeration of the diverse wonders, revealed in a series of vignettes. Riddle 66 is solely concerned with Creation which is conceptualised as an anthropomorphic, dynamic, speaking, vivifying consciousness, a unified force, living, moving and with agency, rather than simply existing. The riddle widens its view so that rather than seeing Creation in the infinite detail of the microcosm, we witness it in the grandeur of the macrocosm. Riddle 66 distils the natural world into its large, structural elements and maps it accordingly. Finally, Riddle 93 appears to have further distilled Creation into a litany of comparatives.28 Lacking the vignettes and word pictures of Riddles 40 and 66, the few surviving elements suggest that the emphasis has shifted from image to attribute. The riddle seems to be concerned with the qualities of Creation (its brightness, speed, etc.), rather than its constituent parts; celestial bodies, plants and animals. The three Creation riddles of the Exeter Book, then, trace a progression. The earlier Creation riddles tend to be more concerned with the concrete constituents of Creation and with the place of humanity within it and of God to it, while the later ones express an increasingly abstract conception.

23 24

  As we shall see, historically, certain pairings have become normative, and in many cases they are not dichotomous pairings. 27   Williamson, Feast of Creatures, p. 153. 28   For a recent discussion of the Comparative and Superlative Riddle type see I. Konstantakos ‘Trial by riddle: the Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias’, Classica Et Mediaevalia 55 (2005), 85-138, at pp.126-8. 26

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Appendix

Riddle 40 Ece is se scyppend,      se þas eorþan nu wreðstuþum wealdeð      ond þas world healdeð. Rice is se reccend      ond on ryht cyning ealra anwalda,      eorþan ond heofones, healdeð ond wealdeð,      swa he ymb þas utan hweorfeð. He mec wrætlice      worhte æt frymþe, þa he þisne ymbhwyrft      ærest sette, heht mec wæccende      wunian longe, þæt ic ne slepe      siþþan æfre, ond mec semninga      slæp ofergongeþ, beoð eagan min      ofestum betyned. Þisne middangeard      meahtig dryhten mid his onwalde      æghwær styreð; swa ic mid waldendes      worde ealne þisne ymbhwyrft      utan ymbclyppe. Ic eom to þon bleað,      þæt mec bealdlice mæg gearu gongende      grima abregan, ond eofore eom      æghwær cenra, þonne he gebolgen      bidsteal giefeð; ne mæg mec oferswiþan      segnberendra ænig ofer eorþan,      nymþe se ana god se þisne hean heofon      healdeþ ond wealdeþ. Ic eom on stence      strengre micle þonne ricels      oþþe rose sy, … on eorþan tyrf wynlic weaxeð;      ic eom wræstre þonne heo. Þeah þe lilie sy      leof moncynne, beorht on blostman,      ic eom betre þonne heo; swylce ic nardes stenc      nyde oferswiþe mid minre swetnesse      symle æghwær, ond ic fulre eom      þonne þis fen swearte þæt her yfle      adelan stinceð. Eal ic under heofones      hwearfte recce, swa me leof fæder      lærde æt frymþe, þæt ic þa mid ryhte      reccan moste þicce ond þynne;      þinga gehwylces onlicnesse      æghwær healde. Hyrre ic eom heofone,      hateþ mec heahcyning his deagol þing      dyre bihealdan; eac ic under eorþan      eal sceawige wom wraðscrafu      wraþra gæsta. Ic eom micle yldra      þonne ymbhwyrft þes oþþe þes middangeard      meahte geweorþan, ond ic giestron wæs      geong acenned mære to monnum      þurh minre modor hrif. Ic eom fægerre      frætwum goldes, þeah hit mon awerge      wirum utan; ic eom wyrslicre      þonne þes wudu fula oððe þis waroð      þe her aworpen ligeð.

5

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Ic eorþan eom      æghwær brædre, 50 ond widgielra      þonne þes wong grena; folm mec mæg bifon      ond fingras þry utan eaþe      ealle ymbclyppan. Heardra ic eom ond caldra      þonne se hearda forst, hrim heorugrimma,      þonne he to hrusan cymeð; 55 ic eom Ulcanus      up irnendan leohtan leoman      lege hatra. Ic eom on goman      gena swetra þonne þu beobread      blende mid hunige; swylce ic eom wraþre      þonne wermod sy, 60 þe her on hyrstum      heasewe stondeþ. Ic mesan mæg      meahtelicor ond efnetan      ealdum þyrse, ond ic gesælig mæg      symle lifgan þeah ic ætes ne sy      æfre to feore. 65 Ic mæg fromlicor      fleogan þonne pernex oþþe earn oþþe hafoc      æfre meahte; nis zefferus,      se swifta wind, þæt swa fromlice mæg      feran æghwær; me is snægl swiftra,      snelra regnwyrm 70 ond fenyce      fore hreþre; is þæs gores sunu      gonge hrædra, þone we wifel      wordum nemnað. Hefigere ic eom micle      þonne se hara stan oþþe unlytel      leades clympre, 75 leohtre ic eom micle      þonne þes lytla wyrm þe her on flode gæð      fotum dryge. Flinte ic eom heardre      þe þis fyr drifeþ of þissum strongan      style heardan, hnescre ic eom micle      halsrefeþre, 80 seo her on winde      wæweð on lyfte. Ic eorþan eom      æghwær brædre ond widgelra      þonne þes wong grena; ic uttor eaþe      eal ymbwinde, wrætlice gewefen      wundorcræfte. 85 Nis under me      ænig oþer wiht waldendre      on worldlife; ic eom ufor      ealra gesceafta, þara þe worhte      waldend user, se mec ana mæg      ecan meahtum, 90 geþeon þrymme,      þæt ic onþunian ne sceal. Mara ic eom ond strengra      þonne se micla hwæl, se þe garsecges      grund bihealdeð sweartan syne;      ic eom swiþre þonne he, swylce ic eom on mægene      minum læsse 95 þonne se hondwyrm,      se þe hæleþa bearn, secgas searoþoncle,      seaxe delfað. Nu hafu ic in heafde      hwite loccas wræste gewundne,      ac ic eom wide calu; ne ic breaga ne bruna      brucan moste, 100 ac mec bescyrede      scyppend eallum;

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Erin Sebo nu me wrætlice      weaxað on heafde þæt me on gescyldrum      scinan motan ful wrætlice      wundne loccas. Mara ic eom ond fættra      þonne amæsted swin, bearg bellende,      þe on bocwuda, won wrotende      wynnum lifde þæt he ...    

105

‘Eternal is the Creator who now rules this earth with sustaining power and governs this world; mighty is the Monarch and rightly King, Master of all; He rules and governs earth and heaven even as these He encompasses. He created me wondrously in the beginning when He first established this earth; bade me dwell long at my vigil, so that I never sleep after, and suddenly sleep comes upon me, my eyes are closed in haste. The mighty Lord everywhere guides this earth with His power; so I at the Ruler’s word include all this world. I am so timid, that a spectre, swift moving, can boldly terrify me, and I am everywhere bolder than a boar, when enraged he stands at bay; none of the warriors upon earth can prevail against me save only God who governs and rules this high heaven. I am much fairer in fragrance than is incense or the rose, which in its pleasure springs so peerlessly from the soil of the earth; I am more delicate than it; though the lily is loved by men, bright in its blossom, I am better than it; so too perforce I always overpower the perfume of spikenard with my sweetness everywhere. And I am fouler than this dark fen which here reeks of disease. I guide all things under the sweep of the sky, according as my loved Father taught me in the beginning, that I must rule rightly thick and thin; hold the likeness of each thing everywhere. I am higher than heaven; the high King bids me behold His precious hidden things. I too see everything under the earth, the evil foul dens of malignant spirits. I am older by far than this world or this earth could become, and yesterday I was born a babe from my mother’s womb, renowned among men. I am fairer than adornments of gold, though man gird it about

with wires; I am meaner than this foul wood or this seaweed which lies here cast away. I am everywhere broader than the earth, and wider than this green wold; a hand can enclose me, and three fingers can with ease clasp me all about. I am harder and colder than the hard frost, the fierce rime, when it comes to earth; I am hotter than the darting shining light, the fire of Vulcan. I am yet sweeter on the palate than the bread of bees mingled with honey; I am also more bitter than is wormwood which stands grey in the copses. I can eat more mightily and hold my own with an ancient giant in gorging; and I always can live happily, though I never see food. I can fly faster than ever could pernex or eagle or hawk; there is no zephyr or coursing wind which can sweep so swiftly everywhere; the snail is speedier than I, the earthworm more nimble and the fen-frog faster in his journey; the son of the dung whom we call the weevil is more rapid in his going. Far heavier am I than the grey stone or the great mass of lead; I am much lighter than this little worm which goes here dryfoot on the flood. I am harder than flint which drives this fire out of this strong hard steel; I am far softer than down which is wind-blown here in the air. I am everywhere broader than the earth and wider than this green wold. I easily embrace everything at a distance, curiously woven with wondrous power. There is no other creature below me in this mighty early life; I am above all beings whom our Ruler created, who alone can mightily tame me with eternal power, so that I shall not be puffed up with pride. I am greater and stronger than the mighty whale which views with dim vision the depth of the sea; I am more powerful than he; likewise am I slighter in my strength than the hand-worm which the children of men, the sages, dig with a knife. I have no fair locks on my head, delicately curled, but am bald far and wide; nor could I enjoy eyelids, nor brown hair, but Creator deprived me of all; now curled locks grow wondrously on my head, so that they can shimmer very curiously on my shoulders. I am larger and stouter than fattened swine, the grunting pig, which, darkcoloured, lived joyously rooting in the beech-wood, so that he … ’

156

Index of Persons and Places

A Aachen, Germany 98, 99 n.64, Fig. 10.10A; Palace School 28 Aaron, St 8 Abingdon, Oxfordshire 49, 51-4 Adamnán, De Locis Sanctis 23 Ælfric, abbot of Eynsham 42, 47, 66-7; Colloquy 36-7, 45; De Temporibus Anni 39-40; Glossary 33, 36-8, 41, 43, 46; Grammar 38-9; Homilies 37, 39, 61-6; Letter to the Monks of Eynsham 65; Pastoral Letters 64-7 Ælfric Bata, Colloquy 36-7, 41-2, 44-5, 47 Aeneas, hero of Greek mythology 24, 109 Aeschylus, Agamemnon 104 Æthelberht, king of Kent 21 Æthelberht, king of Wessex 75 Æthelwold, dean of Glastonbury 45-6 Aethelwulf, monk, De Abbatibus 27, 116 n.56 Aëtius, Roman consul 8-9, 11-12, 15 Agatho, St, pope 116 Aidan, St, bishop of Lindisfarne 25-6 Alban, St 8, 10, 14-15 Alcuin of York 106, 130; (?) Conflictus Veris et Hiemis 28; De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis 29, 74, 76 ; Elegy 28 Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians 20, 116 Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, bishop of Sherborne, 3-4, 11127, 130; De Virginitate 58; Riddles 47, 103-10, 149-56 Alexander III, ‘the Great’, king of Macedon, Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem 4, 129, 136 Alfred ‘the Great’, king of the West Saxons 41 Ambrose, Aurelius Ambrosius, St, archbishop of Milan 97, 135 Ambrosius Aurelianus, leader of Britons 8-9, 12-13, 15, 18, 20 Andrén, Anders 145 Antioch, Syria 10, 112, 115, 121 Aquileia, Italy 9 Arles, France, synod 72 Atli, character in Eddic poem 144-5 Attis, consort of Cybele 95 Augustine, St, of Canterbury 13, 15, 20, 100, 101 n.76 Augustine, St, of Hippo 120, 130; De civitate Dei 105, 131-4, 153 B Bacton, Norfolk 91 Badon, battle of 12, 15 Baetica, Roman province in Spain 72 Baldwin, abbot of Bury St Edmunds 45 Baltimore, Maryland, USA, Museum of Art 100 n.68 Banham, Debby 1-2 Barking, formerly Essex, now Greater London 116, 119

Baston, Lincolnshire 53 Bede, St, ‘The Venerable’, monk of Jarrow, historian 2, 7-15, 17-21, 23-9, 49, 74, 101, 106, 112, 114, 116, 120, 124, 134; Chronica Maiora 7-15, 20; de Arte Metrica 24; de Die Jubicii 24, 29; de Schematibus et Tropis 24; De Tabernaculo 23; De Tempore 23; De Temporum Ratione 40, 134; Epistola ad Ecgbertum 29, 62-3; Historia Abbatum 23; Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum 7-29, 57; Vita S. Cudbercti 24 Benedict Biscop, abbot, founder of JarrowMonkwearmouth monasteries 27, 112, 116 Benty Grange, Derbyshire, helmet 93-4 Berytus, Syria 113 Biggam, Carole 114 Birka, Sweden 75 Blackburn, F. A. 147 Bober, Harry 135 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Latin philosopher 132 Bokhara, Uzbekistan 113 Boniface V, pope 49 Borderie, Arthur De La 12 Bornholm, Denmark 93 Bosa, bishop of York 19 Brigit, St 117 Brough-on-Humber, East Yorkshire 73 Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S. 91 Brude, Pictish king 19 Bugga, princess and abbess, sister of Aldhelm (Cuthburga?) 111, 115-16, 118 Bullough, Donald 74 Burdigala, Bordeaux, France 71 Burrus, Virginia 121 Byrhtferth, monk of Ramsey, Enchiridion 134 Byzantium (later Constantinople, now Istanbul, Turkey) 3, 75-6, 113 C Cædwalla, king of the West Saxons 115 Cædwallon, British king 20 Caesar, Gaius Julius, Roman consul and dictator 7, 10, 14 Caistor-by-Norwich, Norfolk 49, 53 Callimachus, Hecale 105 Cambridge, Lucy Cavendish College 34 Cameron, M. L. 47 n.142 Campus Martius, Rome, Italy 98 Canosa, Apulia, Italy, church of St Maria 97, 100 Canterbury, Kent 49, 95, 112, 119; Christ Church cathedral 19, 34, 36, 45, 58; monastic school 105-6, 108, 111-12 Cappadocia, Turkey 72 Carver, Martin 111

157

Index Cassian, John, St, theologian 120 Cedd, abbot of Lastingham 26 Cenred, king of the Mercians 20 Centwine, king of the West Saxons 111, 115 Cenwealh, king of the West Saxons 113, 124 Ceolfrith, abbot of Jarrow-Monkwearmouth 19, 27 Chaney, William 93 Charlemagne, king of the Franks, Emperor 98, 119; Capitulare de uillis 34, 41 Charybdis, mythical monster 103-4, 107, 109 Chastagnol, André 71 Chenu, M.-D. 130 Chrysanthus, St 113 Cicero, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Topica 132 Circe, Greek goddess 106-9 Clarke, Catherine 24, 28 Claudius, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, Roman Emperor 10, 14 Clayton, Mary 61 n.4 Cleatham, Lincolnshire 49 Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon in Greek legend 104 Cogitosus, monk of Kildare, Life of St Brigid 26, 117 Coldingham, Scottish borders 116 Coleman, scribe 56 Colijnsplaat, Netherlands 71 Conan, Michael 33 n.3 Condren, Beth 141 Constantine I, ‘the Great’, Roman Emperor 14, 72, 113 Constantine III, Western Roman Emperor 10, 14 Constantius I, Roman Emperor 8, 14, 72 Constantinople (formerly Byzantium, now Istanbul, Turkey) 11, 112, 114, 116-17, 119, 121, 124 Constantius of Lyon, priest, Life of St Germanus 9, 12-13, 27 Corbie, France, abbey 121 Cottam, East Yorkshire 77 Cowdery’s Down, Hampshire 35 Cramp, Rosemary 23 Crediton, Devon 59 Crundale, Kent 101 Curtius, E. R. 24, 29 Cuthburga, abbess of Wimborne (‘Bugga’?) 115 n.52, 118 n.79 Cuthbert, St, bishop of Lindisfarne 20, 49 Cybele, Anatolian/Greek/Roman earth goddess 95, 98 Cyprian, bishop of the Africans 114 Cyrenaica, Libya 112 n.19, 114 D Damascus, Syria 101 Deerhurst, Gloucestershire 67 Delphi, Greece 98 Dietrich, F. 81, 83 Diocletian, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus, Roman Emperor 8, 10, 14, 71, 112 Dobbie, Elliott van Kirk 79, 81, 83 Dodwell, C. R. 115 n.52, 116 n.56 Dundes, A. 153 Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury 36, 45 Dyrholmen, eastern Jutland, Denmark 141

E Eadbercht, bishop of Lindisfarne 26 Eadhæd, bishop of Lincoln 19-21 Eata, bishop of Hexham 19 ‘Eborius’, bishop of York 72 Ecgfrith, son of Oswiu, king of the Northumbrians 2, 19 Eddius Stephanus, Stephen of Ripon 116 Edessa, Turkey 112 Edith of Scotland 46 Edward, ‘the Confessor’, king of England 59 Edwards, I. E. S. 141 Edwin, king of the Northumbrians 17-18, 20, 74, 80, 85 Egbert (Ecgberht), archbishop of York 20, 62 Egeria, Spanish nun 116 n.56 Egil Skallagrimsson, Viking 146 Eleutherius, St, pope 10 Eosterwine, abbot of Wearmouth 48 Eric Bloodaxe, king of Norway, Viking king of York 146 Ethelburga, queen of Edwin of Northumbria 49 Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea 9, 119 Evagrius Ponticus, monk, Life of Anthony 28, 121 Evans, Angela 91 Exeter, Devon 3, 46, 59 F Faversham, Kent 93, 100, Fig. 10E Felix, monk, Life of St Guthlac 28 Finan, St, bishop of Lindisfarne 25-6 Finch, Margaret 98 Foley, Trent 13 Forlev Nymølle, Denmark 142-3, 145-8, Figs 14.1, 14.3, 14.4 Forsbrook, Staffordshire 91 Fulgentius, Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, Latin author 106-7, 109 Fulk, R. D. 146 G Gage, John 114-15 Galla Placidia, royal Roman lady, mausoleum of, Ravenna, Italy 97, Fig. 10.7 Gerent, king of Dumnonia 118 Germanus, St, bishop of Auxerre 8-9, 12-13, 15, 20 Gervase of Tilbury, canon lawyer 132 Ghent, Belgium 74 Gibb, Paul Allen 135 Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 2, 7-15, 17-18, 20 Gissing, George 103 Glaucus, sea god in Greek mythology 106-7, 109 Gomorrah, biblical city 123-4 Gordian I , Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus, governor in Britain, Roman Emperor 72 Gran Dolina, Spain 141 Gratian, Roman Emperor 10, 14 Green, Barbara 49 Green, Miranda 142 Gregory I, St, ‘the Great’, pope 2, 10, 13, 17, 20, 41, 47, 62, 102, 114 Grendel, monster in Beowulf 84, 144-7

158

Index Gudme, Funen, Denmark 141-4, Fig. 14.2 Gunn, Vicky 23, 28 Guthrun, character in Eddic poem 144-5 H Hadrian, Publius Aelius Hadrianus, Roman Emperor 98, 129 Hadrian, St, abbot of St Augustine’s Canterbury 105, 112, 124 Hæthfeld 112, 116, 118, 124 Hardie, Philip 104, 109 Harold II (Godwinesson), king of England 46, 76; in Bayeux Tapestry 85 Harris, Anthea 114, 117 Harvey, John 33 Hedeby, Denmark 75 Hengist and Horsa, legendary leaders of the Anglo-Saxons 11, 15 Heorot, hall in Beowulf 84, 144, 147 Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III), Byzantine Emperor 95 Heraclius, Flavius Heraclius Augustus, Byzantine Emperor 95 Herren, Michael 105, 107, 109 Herzfeld, George 61 n.2 Hexham, Northumberland 19, 67 Higham, Nicholas J. 1-2, 13, 23 Highdown, Worthing, West Sussex 49, 52, Fig 5.4B Hildelith, abbess of Barking 118 Hills, Catherine 54 Holthausen, Ferdinand 144 n.37, 148 Holywell, near Oxford 43 Homer, Odyssey 103-4, 107 Honorius, joint Roman Emperor with Theodosius II 8, 1011, 14 Hooke, Della 40 Howe, Nicholas 107, 133 Hrothgar, king of Denmark in Beowulf 144, 146-7 Hume, Kathryn 79-81 I Illerup, Denmark 141-3, 146 Ine, king of the West Saxons 21 n.41, 35, 65 n.30 Iona, Scotland 1, 25 Isidore, St, bishop of Seville, Etymologies 3, 7 n.5, 91 n.17, 106-10, 116, 117 n.70, 118, 121, 124 n.136, 1301, 135 Isis, Egyptian goddess 95 Issendorf, Landkreis Stade, Germany 51, 53 J Jarrow, Tyne and Wear, Lecture 25; monastery 23, 26-8, 112 Jerome, Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, St 7 n.5, 124, 130; Life of Hilarion 119 n.90; Life of Malchus 121-3; Vita S. Pauli eremitae 120-1 Jerusalem, Israel 11, 95 n.35, 98 n.62 John, abbot, arch-cantor 116 John, bishop of Hexham 20 John, St, ‘the Baptist’ 63 Jolly, Karen 151 n.12 Jones, Charles W. 133

Jones, Rachel 54 Joseph, biblical character, son of Jacob 113, 114 n.36 Julius, St 8, 14 Justinian I, ‘the Great’, Byzantine Emperor 113, 116 K Karachaliou, Ermione 117 Kaul, Flemming 142 Ker, Neil 56-7 Kingsworthy, Hampshire 49, 52-3 Kitzinger, Ernst 97 Klaeber, Friedrich 144, 145 n.56, 147 Klein, T. 149 Krapp, George Philip 79, 81, 83-4 L La Hoguette, Normandy, France 142 Lackford, Suffolk 50-1, Fig. 5.1 Lanciani, Rodolfo 98 n.60 Landsberg, Sylvia 6 Lapidge, Michael 24, 106 n.23, 110-11, 112 n.19, 115 n.52, 121, 130, 134 n.47 Lastingham, North Yorkshire, monastery 26, 29 Leahy, Kevin 93 n.27 Leeds, Edward T. 49-50 Lendinara, Patrizia 107 n.34 Leofric, bishop of Devon and Cornwall 3, 59 Leofric, earl of Mercia, Vision of 62 Leofwine (Leo), provost of Ely 44, 46 Lethbridge, Tom 49-50, 53 Leuthere, bishop of Wessex 105, 122 n.117 Lindisfarne, Northumberland, Gospels 38; monastery 256, 116 n.56 Liversage, David 142 Lot, biblical character, nephew of Abraham 123 Loveden Hill, Lincolnshire 51, Fig. 5.4A Lucius, legendary king of the Britons 10, 12, 14 Lucy, Sam 49, 54 Lunaris, Marcus Aurelius, sevir Augustalis (Roman official, perhaps magistrate) of the coloniae of York and Lincoln 71 M MacDougall, Elisabeth Blair 33 MacGregor, Arthur 49 Maddicott, J. R. 74 Magennis, Hugh 80, 84 Magnus Maximus, Roman Emperor 8, 10, 15 Malchus, St ?57, 119 n.90, 121-4 Maldon, The Battle of, Old English poem 80 Mamertus, bishop of Vienne 61 Manitius, Max 130 Marcellinus Comes, Latin chronicler 11 Marcian, Flavius Marcianus Augustus, Eastern Roman Emperor 8-9, 11-12, 15, 17 Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Roman Emperor 10, 14 Mary, St 27, 37, 46, 114-15

159

Index Maximian, Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius Augustus, Roman Emperor 8 Mayen, Germany 74 Mayo, Ireland 26, 29 Mayr-Harting, Henry 120 n.98, 121 McFadden, Brian 130 McKee, Ian 9 Meyvaert, Dom Paul 33-4, 36, 38 n.51, 42, 44, 45 n.128, 46 Michelet, F. 150-2, 153 n.21 Milburn, Robert 115 n.49 Milne, G. 71 Milton, Kent, brooch 91, Fig. 10.4C Minnis, A. J. 130 Minos, mythical king of Crete 104-5 Mohammed, Abū al-Qāsim Muhammad ibn Abd Allāh ibn Abd al-Muttalib ibn Hāshim, prophet and religious leader 111 Mommsen, Theodor 12 Monkwearmouth, Sunderland, monastery 112, 116 Morgan, Gwyn 28 n.21 Morris, Carole 43 Moula Guercy, France 141 N Nässtrom, Britt-Mari 145 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon 11 Nehalennia, goddess worshipped in what is now southern Netherlands 71 Nicea, Council of 113 Nikomedes, freedman from Greece in York 72 Nisus, king of Megara 104-5, 109-10 Noll, Günter 34 n.11 O O’Brien O’Keeffe, Katherine 149 Ochrid, Macedonia 97, 99 Odin, Norse god 147 Oethelwald, sub-king of Deira 18 n.23, 26 Offa, king of the East Saxons 20 Ogilvy, J. D. A. 107 n.39 Ongentheow, king of Sweden in Beowulf 145 Orchard, Andy 106-7, 130 Orosius, Paulus, historian and theologian 8, 10 Osbern, prior at Canterbury cathedral, Life of St Dunstan 36 Oswald, St, king of the Northumbrians 18, 20, 25 Oswiu, king of the Northumbrians 18-19, 20 n.34 Owen-Crocker, Gale R. 23 n.1, 54, 95, 118 n.79, 125 P Palladius, first bishop of Ireland 11, 114 Pantheon, Rome, Italy 98 Parsons, David 25-6 Paul V, pope 98 n. 60 Paul the Silentiary 115 n.49 Paul, St ‘the apostle’ 10, 13, 101, 117 Paul, St, ‘the hermit’ (of Thebes) 121, 124, 135 Paulinus Pontius Meropius Anicius Paulinus, of Nola, St, Latin poet 98

Peter, St, apostle 26-7, 63, 76, 99, 102, 117 Peters, Ellis 45 n.126 Pirenne, Henri 117 n.74, 121 n.104 Pitman, James H. 106 Placidus, Lucius Viducius, from Rouen, France(?), benefactor of York 71 Pliny, ‘the Elder’, Gaius Plinius Secundus, Roman commander and naturalist 103, 131-2, 134 Pope, J. C. 84 Potiphar, biblical character, Egyptian official 114 n.36 Potiphar’s wife 113, 114 n.36 Pseudo-Hyginus 106-7, 109 Pseudo-Vergil 105 Prudentius, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Latin poet 3, 55-9, 123 Q Quentovic, France 74 R Ramm, H. G. 73 Repton, Derbyshire 67 Richmond, John 107 n.28, 109 Rimbault, Edward 118 n.79 Rome, Italy, 1, 3, 7, 10, 14, 17-18, 20, 62, 89, 98, 99 n.64, 100, 102, 112, 115-16, 119 n.90, 124, 134 n.44; Serapaeum 98; St Peter’s 19, 98-100, 102, 116, Fig. 10.9 Rosier, James L. 107 S Saba, southern Arabia (Yemen) 116 Said, Edward 124 Sallust, Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman historian and politician 106, 109 Salvador-Bello, Mercedes 106 n.23,110 n.54 Samarkand, Kazakhstan 113 Scilla, Calabria, Italy 103 Scyldings, Danish people in Beowulf 144 n.37, 146 Scylla, mythical monster, perhaps daughter of King Nisus 3, 103-110 Septimus Severus, Lucius Septimius Severus Augustus, Roman Emperor 14, 72 Sergius I, patriarch of Constantinople 118 n.75 Sergius I, pope 115 Servius, Maurus Servius Honoratus, grammarian 29, 106 Sherborne, Dorset 112, 113 n.31, 115 n.52, 118, 124 Sigbald, abbot of Lindisfarne 27 Sigemund, legendary hero in Beowulf 146 Sims-Williams, Patrick 12 n.35 Sisam, Kenneth 147 Skanderborg, Denmark 142 Smith, Reginald 49 Sodom, biblical city 121 n.109, 122-4 Speake, George 91, 93 Spong Hill, Norfolk 2, 50-4, Fig. 5.2 St Albans, Hertfordshire 10 St Germans, Cornwall 59 Staffordshire, hoard from 111 Stephen II, pope 98

160

Index Stephens, Win 95 Stobi, Macedonia 95, 97-100, Figs 10.8A, 10.9 Strabo, Greek geographer and historian 71 Strabo, Walahfrid, Frankish monk, Hortulus 34, 46 Sutton Hoo, Suffolk 3, 89-102, 111, Figs 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4A, 10.4B, 10.5A, 10.5B, 10.6A, 10.10B Swithun, St, bishop of Winchester 67 Symmachus, St, pope 98 T Tertullian, Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, Latin Christian author 130 Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury 2-3, 18-21, 25, 105, 111-114, 115 n.52, 116, 118-19, 120 n.98, 121, 124 Theodosius I, Flavius Theodosius Augustus, ‘the Great’, Roman Emperor 8, 10, 124 Theodosius II, Flavius Theodosius Junior Augustus, ‘the younger’, joint Roman Emperor with Honorius 7 n.6, 8, 10-1, 14-15, 95 n.35 Thomas, Gabor 123 n.126 Thomas of Cantimpré, theologian 130-1 Thomas, Julian 142 Tolkien, J. R. R. 147 Torslunda, Öland, Sweden 93, Fig. 10.5D Trajan, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, Roman Emperor 129 Trumwine, bishop over the Picts 19 Tupper, Frederick 81, 150, 153 n.21 Tutela Boudiga, Celtic goddess 71 Tyre, Syria 113 U Unferth, Danish courtier in Beowulf 144 V Vale of Evesham 40 Valentinian III, Flavius Placidius Valentinianus Augustus, Western Roman Emperor 8-9, 11-12, 15, 17 Valsgärde, Sweden 93 Veliocasses, Celtic tribe of Gaul 71 Venantius [Honorius Clementianus] Fortunatus, bishop, poet 25, 108 Vergil, Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman poet 3, 24-5, 29, 104-10 Vergilius Maro Grammaticus 117 n.70 Vespasian, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, Roman Emperor 7 n.6, 72 Vitalian, St, pope 112 Vortigern, British warlord 8-9, 11, 15

W Walburg, Berenika 113 Wallace-Hadrill, John M. 8 Wallingford, Oxfordshire 53 Wallis, Faith 7 n.3, 133 Wamers, Egon 93, 101 n.73 Warren, F. E. 117 n.73 Washington, DC, USA, Dumbarton Oaks Collection 100 n.68 Wear, river 27 Wearmouth (Monkwearmouth), Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, monastery 23, 26-8, 112, 116 Weders, the Geat people in Beowulf 146 Wellesch, Egon 118 n.80 West Stow, Suffolk 54 Wharram Percy, North Yorkshire 77 Whitby, North Yorkshire 72, 116 Whitelock, Dorothy 44 n.121, 147 Whitfield, Niamh 91 n.9, 93 Wilfrid, St, bishop of York 19-20, 67, 116 William I, ‘the Conqueror’, king of England 43, 85 William II, ‘Rufus’, king of England 46 William of Conches, French scholastic philosopher, De philosophia mundi 135 William of Malmesbury, monk, historian 114 Williams, Gareth 89 n.5 Williams, Howard 50, 52, 54 Williamson, C. 82-3 Wilton, convent 46; cross 95 Wimborne, Dorset 112 n.25, 115 n.52, 116, 118 n.79 Winchester, Hampshire 41, 56 n.10, 58, 65, 67, 112 n.25 Wollaston, Northamptonshire, helmet 93 Womersley, North Yorkshire, pendant 93, 100, Fig. 10.5E Wood, Ian 23, 26 Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire 119 Wormald, Patrick 141 Wulfsige, bishop of Sherborne 65, 67 Wulfstan II, bishop of Worcester 56 Wulfstan, archbishop of York, homilist 57 nn.17, 18, 63-7 Wyatt, A. J. 81 Y York 3, 8, 19, 29, 35, 41, 71-7 Z Zeno, Tarasis, Byzantine Emperor 7 n.8, 8-9, 12, 17

161

Index of manuscripts

Germany, Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-August Bibliothek, Gudianus lat. 148 130n.6 Netherlands, Leiden, Bibliotheek der Rijks-Universiteit, Voss. lat., MS Oct. 60 130 n.6 Switzerland, St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 237 130n.6 UK, Alnwick Castle 447(Bestiary) 136 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 23 55 n.7; 41 57 nn.17, 18; 111 57 n.15; 140 57 n.15; 173 (Parker Chronicle) 58; 178 56 n.10; 190 57 n.18; 198 57 n.16; 201 65 n.31; 223 55; 286 57 n.15; 291 133; 326 58; 422 (Red Book of Darley) 67; Trinity College MS R.17.1 (Eadwine Psalter) 34; University Library Kk. 3 56 n.10 Durham, Cathedral Library B.II.30 (Cassiodorus) 91; B. IV.9 55-6; Lincoln, Cathedral 182 58

London, British Library, Additional 49598 (Benedictional of St Æthelwold) 46 n. 140; Cotton Claudius B. iv (Old English illustrated Hexateuch) 42; Julius A. vi 42; Nero D. iv (Lindisfarne Gospels) 38; Tiberius A. iii 37 n.45, 47 nn.149, 150; Tiberius A. xiii 57 n.17; Tiberius B. v 4, 42 n.104, 133-6; Titus D. xxvi 47 n.49; Vitellius A. vi 9; Vitellius A xv 3,4, 133, 136; Vitellius E. xviii 56 n.10; Harley 208 58; 585 35 n.27, 57; Royal 12 C. XIX 136; Royal 12 D. XVII (Bald’s Leechbook) 58; Royal 15 B. XIX 130 n.6; Laud Misc. 482 67; Lambeth Palace Library 237 58; Wellcome Library 46 35 n.28 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Auctarium D. 2. 19 (Rushworth or Macregol Gospels) 38; F. 36 3, 55-9 (Prudentius); Barlow 35 58; Hatton 113 56 n.10; Junius 11 (Junius or Cædmon Manuscript) 42; 121 63, 65 n.30; St John’s College 17 57 n.22 USA, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum, MS W.73 135 New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.81 136 n.61; MS 906 130 n.6

162