Aspects of knowledge: Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages 9781526107015

Citation preview

Manchester

Medieval Literature

and Culture

The book is divided into four parts, which provide the reader with a thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. Part I (Anthologies of knowledge) considers the transmission of learning in collections of texts that not only preserve existing knowledge but also develop and add to it. Part II (Transmission of Christian traditions) examines how aspects of Christian tradition are constructed and then appropriated and used over time. Part III (Past and present) illustrates how the past interacts with the culture and politics of the period to fit the needs of contemporary writers and audiences. Part IV (Knowledge and materiality) explores ways in which material objects were instrumental in the preservation and circulation of knowledge.

Aspects of knowledge Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages

edited by marilina cesario and hugh magennis

cesario and magennis (eds)

Ranging from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, and covering such fascinating subjects as dream divination, the mapping of Jerusalem and the re-use of Beowulf for a Christian audience, Aspects of knowledge aims to highlight suggestive strands of a very wide topic. It is intended for an academic readership, including advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as specialists in medieval literature, philosophy, theology, geography and material culture.

Aspects of knowledge

This innovative volume sets out to explore ways in which knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Eschewing traditional categories of periodisation and discipline, it works to establish connections and crosssections between different departments of knowledge, from the history of science to theology and music.

Marilina Cesario is Senior Lecturer in the Earliest English Writings and Historical Linguistics at Queen’s University, Belfast Hugh Magennis is Professor Emeritus in Old English at Queen’s University, Belfast

ISBN 978-0-7190-9784-3

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

CESA000_ppc.indd 1

Front cover— Isidor of Seville gives a book to his sister, MK133B Latin Manuscript – Biblioteque Nationale

9 780719 097843

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ASPECTS O F K Npornography OWLEDGE sanctity and in medieval culture

Series editors: Anke Bernau, David Matthews, James Paz Series founded by: J. J. Anderson and Gail Ashton Advisory board: Ruth Evans, Nicola McDonald, Andrew James Johnston, Sarah Salih, Larry Scanlon and Stephanie Trigg

Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture ­publishes Founding series editors j. j. anderson, gail ashton monographs and essay collections comprising new research informed by current series is broad in scope and receptive to innovation, bringing toge critical methodologies on the literary cultures of the MiddleThis Ages. We are interested in approaches. It is intended to include monographs, collections of commi editions translations of texts, with a focus on English and all periods, from the early Middle Ages through to the late,and and weand/or include post-mediliterature and culture. It embraces medieval writings of many different kind eval engagements with and representations of the medievalhistorical, period (orscientific, ‘medievalism’). political, religious) as well as post-medieval treatme An important aim of the series is that contributions to it should ‘Literature’ is taken in a broad sense, to include the manymaterial. different medieval genres: style which is accessible to a wide range of readers. imaginative, historical, political, scientific, religious. While we welcome contributions already published on the diverse cultures of medieval Britain and are happyLanguage to receive submissions on and imagination in the Gawain-poems J. Anderson Anglo-Norman, Anglo-Latin and Celtic writings, we are also J.open to work on the Middle Water and fire: The myth of the Flood in Anglo-Saxon England Ages in Europe more widely, and beyond. Daniel Anlezark Titles Available in the Series

The Parlement of Foulys (by Geoffrey Chaucer) D. S. Brewer (ed.) Greenery: Ecocritical readings of late medieval English literature

Gillian Rudd   5. In strange countries: Middle English literature and its afterlife: Essays in memory of J. J. Anderson David Matthews (ed.)   6. A knight’s legacy: Mandeville and Mandevillian lore in early modern England Ladan Niayesh (ed.)   7. Rethinking the South English Legendaries Heather Blurton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (eds)   8. Between earth and heaven: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon literature Johanna Kramer   9. Transporting Chaucer Helen Barr 10. Sanctity as literature in late medieval Britain Eva von Contzen and Anke Bernau (eds) 11. Reading Robin Hood: Content, form and reception in the outlaw myth Stephen Knight 12. Annotated Chaucer bibliography: 1997–2010 Mark Allen and Stephanie Amsel 13. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans (eds) 14. Love, history and emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov and Elisabeth Kempf (eds) 15. The Scottish Legendary: Towards a poetics of hagiographic narration Eva von Contzen 16. Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture James Paz 17. The church as sacred space in Middle English literature and culture Laura Varnam

Aspects of knowledge Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages Edited by MARILINA CESARIO AND HUGH MAGENNIS

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7190 9784 3 hardback

First published 2018

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of figuresvii List of tablesix List of contributors x List of abbreviationsxi Introduction1 Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis Part I  Anthologies of Knowledge   1 Dream divination in manuscripts and early printed books: patterns of transmission 23 László Sándor Chardonnens   2 Knowledge of the weather in the Middle Ages: Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri53 Marilina Cesario   3 The Cambridge Songs as anthology of musical knowledge79 Ann Buckley Part II  Transmission of Christian Traditions  4 Cristes leorningcnihtas: traditions of the apostles in Old English literature 97 Hugh Magennis   5 Seeing Jerusalem: schematic views of the Holy City, 1100–1300116 Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Asa Simon Mittman   6 The emergence of devotion to the name of Jesus in the West142 Denis Renevey

vi

Contents

  7 ‘Ther are bokes ynowe’: texts and the ambiguities of knowledge in Piers Plowman Kath Stevenson

163

Part III  Past and Present   8 Meet the pagans: on the misuse of Beowulf in Andreas Richard North   9 Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook Emily Wingfield

185 210

Part IV  Knowledge and Materiality 10 The Jellinge Stone: from prehistoric monument to ­petrified ‘book’ Michelle P. Brown 11 Mise en page: the dimension and layout of books ­containing Old English Donald G. Scragg

235 252

Index280

Figures

  1.1 Two mantic alphabets, the second an improved version copied by the same scribe, in Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 859, fols 57v–58r, by permission of Biblioteca Riccardiana, reproduced with permission  43   1.2 Cross reference on a page with a mantic alphabet to an alphabetical dream book further on in the same ­manuscript, in Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, C. 101, fol. 149r  44   5.1 Map of Jerusalem and its environs, London, British Library, Add. MS 32343, fol. 15r, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved  117   5.2 Map of the Holy Land, Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, CCCC MS 26, fol. iiiv–ivr, by permission of the Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge119   5.3 T-O Map, Isidore, Etymologies, London, British Library, Royal MS 6 C.i, f.108v, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved  122   5.4 List of Privileges, Augustinian Abbey of Formosele, London, British Library, Add. 32343, f.15v, © The British Library Board, All Rights Reserved  125   5.5 Map of Jerusalem and its environs, Lambert of Saint-Omer, Liber Floridus, Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque d’agglomération MS 776 135, f. 50v, Bibliothèque numérique d’agglomération de Saint-Omer – Provenance de l’original  135 10.1 Painted replicas of the larger Jellinge Stone, the royal burial ground, Jellinge, Denmark, around 970–986: a. the Great Beast; b. the commemorative inscription; c. the Crucifixion  236

viii

List of figures

10.2 Decorated incipit, Chi-Rho page, the St Chad Gospels, Lichfield or Lindisfarne, mid-eighth century, Lichfield Cathedral Library, MS 1, fol. 5r  10.3 Beatus initial with lion mask in Winchester style, the Ramsey Psalter, London, British Library, Harley MS 2904, fol. 4r

241 245

Tables

  1.1 Textual transmission of dream divination in manuscripts32   1.2 Textual transmission of dream divination in printed books33 11.1 Table of manuscripts in size order 261

Contributors

Suzanne Conklin Akbari, University of Toronto Michelle P. Brown, School of Advanced Study (University   of London) and University of Oslo Ann Buckley, Trinity College Dublin Marilina Cesario, Queen’s University Belfast László Sándor Chardonnens, Radboud Universiteit Hugh Magennis, Queen’s University Belfast Asa Simon Mittman, California State University, Chico Richard North, University College London Denis Renevey, Université de Lausanne Donald G. Scragg, University of Manchester Kath Stevenson, Queen’s University Belfast Emily Wingfield, University of Birmingham

Abbreviations

ASMMF Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts in Microfiche Facsimile ASPR  The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, ed. G. P. Krapp and E. Van K. Dobbie, 6 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–53) BHL  Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina Antiquiae et Mediae Aetatis, ed. Socii Bollandiani, 2 vols, Subsidia Hagiographica, 6 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1893–1901); Supple­menti Editio, Subsidia Hagiographica, 12 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1911); Novum Supplementum, ed. H. Flos, Sub­sidia Hagiographica, 70 (Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1986) BL British Library Bodl. Bodleian Library CC Carmina Cantabrigiensia (Cambridge Songs) CCCC Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina CE Carmina Ecclesiastica CH I Ælfric’s first series of Catholic Homilies CH II Ælfric’s second series of Catholic Homilies CSASE Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England EEMF Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile EETS Early English Text Society   OS Original Series   SS Supplementary Series LS Ælfric’s Lives of Saints MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PL  Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1844–91) RES The Review of English Studies

Introduction Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis

This edited collection grew out of the desire to explore how knowledge was preserved and reinvented in the Middle Ages. Writings from throughout the medieval period reveal, in both secular and religious contexts, a concern with the establishment, transmission and appropriation of knowledge, whether for practical purposes or out of academic interest in learning. Bede, the great Anglo-Saxon scholar, praises the appetite for ‘wholesome learning’ of the early English church;1 for him scientia is a gift of God to be nurtured and disseminated. Chaucer’s ideal scholar is the clerk whose life is devoted to learning: ‘gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche’.2 For Dante, humankind was created to follow virtue and knowledge (‘seguir virtute e canoscenza’).3 Bede’s intellectual setting is a monastic one but from the twelfth century onwards universities became the new centres of learning, where people like Chaucer’s clerk would have been trained and canoscenza cultivated. Universities formed part of an intellectual network that promoted the dissemination of knowledge, and they boosted the popularity of scientific disciplines across the later medieval world. Inherited knowledge was passed on in monasteries and universities but it was also adapted and extended. Throughout the period writers respectfully altered sources to heighten their relevance to certain events or to a particular readership. In the Preface to De temporum ratione, for example, Bede declares that he has created a new work out of ‘what can be found scattered here and there in the writings of the ancients’.4 Recent years have seen a number of publications reflecting increased and ongoing interest in areas of the vast topic of medieval knowledge. Notable contributions have included the publications resulting from the Italian ‘Leornungcræft’ and Dutch-Italian ‘Storehouses of Wholesome Learning’ projects, which have added a wealth of knowledge on instruction, learning and textual

2

Introduction

t­ raditions from early medieval manuscripts. Rolf H. Bremmer and Kees Dekker’s Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge series, which resulted from the ‘Storehouses’ project, has enhanced our understanding of how ‘the study of texts and manuscripts combined opens up windows on the early medieval world of learning as represented by glossaries, proto-encyclopaedias, biblical companions, hagiographical guides, didactic verse’.5 Foundations of Learning was followed by Sándor Chardonnens’s and Bryan Carella’s edited collection, Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England, which as the title suggests, explores secular learning in the vernacular in the following disciplines: law, encyclopaedic notes, computus, medicine, charms and prognostication.6 The outcome is a fascinating book, which brings together a corpus of writings in Old English, which are very often neglected. As for the later medieval period, Rita Copeland’s Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages, which aims to ‘make visible certain forms of medieval cultural knowledge which historiography has suppressed’, is of particular importance in understanding the role of intellectuals and knowledge in an age of dissent.7 The present collection emanated from the same desire to explore how knowledge was preserved and reinvented, but with different objectives in mind. Unlike previous publications, which are predominantly focused either on a specific historical period or, as in Rita Copeland’s case, on precise cultural and historical events, this volume, which includes essays spanning from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is intended to eschew traditional categorisations of periodisation and disciplines and to enable the establishment of connections and cross-sections between different departments of knowledge, including the history of science (computus, prognostication), the history of art, literature, theology (homilies, prayers, hagiography, contemplative texts), music, historiography and geography. As suggested by its title, the collection does not pretend to aim at inclusiveness or comprehensiveness but is intended to highlight suggestive strands of what is a very wide topic. Aspects of Knowledge seeks to establish a forum of multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural collaboration between different branches of medieval studies and to stimulate further work in areas that are here opened out. Medieval perspectives Medieval scholars wrote much about knowledge at a theoretical and theological level, understanding it as an ambivalent and

Introduction

3

wide-ranging concept. A sense of its complexity is suggested by the vast semantic range of the Latin terms commonly translated as ‘knowledge’, which include scientia, cognitio, notitia, eruditio (among others), together with their respective verbal cognates, scire, cognoscere, noscere and erudire. Apart from the general meaning of knowledge, cognitio, for instance, mainly denotes knowledge acquired through perception or through the exercise of one’s mental powers, notitia commonly refers to knowledge of a concept or an idea, and eruditio, knowledge obtained by instruction, is more akin to learning and can occasionally be used as a synonym for doctrina, disciplina, scientia, intelligentia and cognitio. As observed by Steven Livesey, Christianity displayed an ambivalent and cautious attitude towards knowledge from the beginning.8 In his condemnation of idolatry in 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, ‘We know we all have knowledge [Vulgate scientia]. Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he hath not yet known as he ought to know’ (1 Corinthians 8:1–2).9 The apostle stresses that heathen knowledge, a misguided type of scientia, inevitably leads to greed and arrogance, while caritas or love of God is a prerequisite for acquiring true knowledge, which is directed towards God. For Paul knowledge is a concept that acquires a positive or negative value depending on purpose and circumstance: it can be good or bad. This double aspect is reinforced by Augustine who, borrowing from the passage in 1 Corinthians,10 differentiates between useful and useless forms of scientia and reprimands humankind for pursuing ‘a fallaci nomine scientiae’ (‘what is falsely called knowledge’).11 For Augustine people should be learned in the knowledge of things which tend to edification (‘scientia qua aedificamur’), and ultimately to the understanding of God, as clearly elucidated in one of his Soliloquies, where to Reason’s question, ‘Quid ergo scire vis?’ (‘What then do you want to know?’), Augustine replies, ‘Deum et animam scire cupio’ (‘I wish to know God and the soul’).12 Thus, all knowledge is a gift from the Holy Spirit (John 14:26) and as such cannot be separated from love and faith.13 The relationship between love of God, truth (acquired through vision) and knowledge as inseparable entities is explored more fully by Augustine in De trinitate, where he discusses the doctrine of knowledge mainly as a theological concept rather than a theoretical subject. What is understood cannot be separated from the object of love: ‘verbum est igitur, quod nunc discernere ac insinuare

4

Introduction

volumus, cum amore notitia’ (‘the word, therefore, which we now wish to discern and study is knowledge with love’).14 Here Augustine uses the word notitia15 to denote an embedded form of awareness or intelligentia (perception) which can be achieved through self-knowledge and divine illumination rather than through intellectual understanding or scientia. The epistemological dichotomy of sapientia (wisdom) and scientia (knowledge) is at the core of book XII of De trinitate where the noblest type of knowledge, sapientia,16 is concerned with the contemplation of eternal things (‘aeternorum contemplatione’), while scientia is linked to the way in which we act upon temporal things (‘actio qua bene utimur temporalibus rebus’).17 Paige E. Hochschild explains that in De trinitate ‘scientia is properly understood as the life of faith: it is the temporal ordering of all things to the truth of God. Sapientia is the wisdom of God himself. Both are combined in the twofold nature of Christ’.18 As a consequence, both genera of knowledge are indispensable in attaining true happiness and amor Dei. In Book II of the De doctrina christiana, a work that greatly contributed to the understanding of philosophy, theology, rhetoric and semiotics in medieval Europe, Augustine offers a disquisition on the appropriation of classical learning and the liberal arts (disciplinis liberalibus)19 for the understanding of Sacred Scripture. Some kinds of scientia are deemed unnecessary and luxurious and ought to be utterly rejected but certain other disciplines, if subordinated to the love of God and to the study of the Scripture, constitute a valuable exegetical aid to Christians. Among these useful disciplines Augustine particularly highlights scientia acquired from the senses linked to objects (‘vision’), and experimental or intellectual scientia embracing experiments and the mechanical arts (medicine, agriculture and navigation), the sciences of reasoning and of numbers, history and natural science.20 The importance of re-appropriation of learning and knowledge from the past had already been emphasised in De ordine, where Augustine encouraged students to be instructed in ‘disciplinis omnibus’ (‘all branches of learning’). Among those, the verbal disciplines of grammar, language and writing are regarded as utilia (useful) and ‘nec discuntur illicite’ (‘not unlawful to learn’) and of great service in biblical hermeneutics.21 However, Augustine’s guarded approach towards profana scientia is evident in his discussion of dialectics, a branch of learning that he acknowledges to be ‘in litteris sanctis sunt, penetranda et dissolvenda, plurimum valet’ (‘of very great service in searching into and unravelling all sorts of

Introduction

5

questions that come up in Scripture’) but one that can also foster ‘libido rixandi et puerilis quaedam ostentatio decipiendi adversarium’ (‘the love of wrangling, and the childish vanity of entrapping an adversary’).22 Still, eruditio (instruction) in the liberal arts, if pursued in moderation and with determination from childhood, ‘intellectum efferent ad divina’ (‘leads the mind to God’), enhances the spirit and shapes excellent teachers of philosophy.23 Augustine’s view of the usefulness of secular learning in Christian education is echoed by Cassiodorus in the preface to his Institutiones, where he explains that ‘Divine Scripture […] will be better understood if one has prior acquaintance (notitia) with [the arts and disciplines of liberal studies]’; these are de grammatica, de rhetorica, de dialectica, de arithmetica, de musica, de geometrica, de astronomia. Cassiodorus goes on to discuss these disciplines in greater detail in Book II.24 His aim, refuting the teachings of Church Fathers like Caesarius of Arles, who criticised the liberal arts as leading to doctrinal heresy,25 is to demonstrate that these arts are embedded universal forms of knowledge, which were in existence long before pagan authors learnt and taught them. For Cassiodorus, as for Augustine, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, given their shared concern with numbers, are part of mathematical theory: ‘mathematicam uero latino sermone doctrinalem possumus appellare’ (‘what in Latin indeed we can call the mathematical art’).26 The term quadrivium is used for the first time by Boethius27 in the Preface to his treatise on numbers, De arithmetica, in relation to a four-part study, including arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy, the knowledge of which is subordinated to the ‘the highest perfection of the disciplines of philosophy’.28 The debt of Isidore of Seville, the great organiser and classifier of knowledge for the Middle Ages, to Cassiodorus’s and Boethius’s taxonomy of the artes liberales reframed within a Christian context is evident in the first three books of his encyclopaedic work the Etymologiae (I. de grammatica; II. de rethorica et dialectica; III. de quattor disciplinis mathematicis).29 As explained by Mark Amsler, Isidore perceives knowledge or cognitio as ‘fixed rather than transitory because it is structured in language’.30 Language, specifically etymology, is the structure upon which knowledge of all things is built, ‘nisi enim nomen scieris, cognitio rerum perit’ (‘for unless you know the name, the understanding perishes’).31 Book I, on ars grammatica (grammar being, in Isidore’s view, the governing principle of knowledge together with etymology), opens with a

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Introduction

clear etymological distinction between disciplina and ars, which the author attributes to Plato and Aristotle.32 For Isidore, disciplina and scientia, both deriving from discere (learning), imply something that ought to be learned in order to be known, whereas ars, derived from the Greek ɑ͗ρετή (virtue), is rather a faculty of the mind or manner of thinking consisting of strict principles and rules,33 in effect a technique. ‘Encyclopaedic’ works such as Isidore’s Etymologiae and, long before that, Pliny’s Historia naturalis (an anthology of sources on the natural world), can be described as (to borrow Mary FranklinBrown’s terminology) ‘“heterotopias” of knowledge, that is, spaces where many possible ways of knowing are juxtaposed’, and whose main goals are ‘to provide a comprehensive overview of knowledge, to organize it, and to propagate it’.34 In the preface to the Historia naturalis, Pliny describes his libellus as a work that includes all those subjects that the Greek call enkuklios paideia (iam omnia attingenda quae Graeci ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία [enkuklios paideia] vocant).35 Scholars identify Pliny’s enigmatic reference to ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία with a comprehensive advanced programme of study the aim of which, as Umberto Eco puts it, ‘is to produce a type of complete man, versed in all the disciplines’.36 Based on Isidorean practice and butressed by Augustinian theologically inspired thinking, encyclopaedic knowledge was transmitted to the medieval world, where it provided a foundation of monastic and, later, university education. In one of the most quoted passages from the Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum,37 Bede zealously praises the ambitious and ‘encyclic’ educational programme offered at the school of Theodore (Archbishop of Canterbury, 668–90) and his colleague Hadrian, which recruited monks ready to learn Greek and Latin, Christian and pagan works, alongside the study of grammar and metrics, and of other subjects such as astronomy, arithmetic and computus, which were linked to the study of the Scriptures.38 Faith Wallis maintains that for Bede scientia ‘simply denoted “knowledge”’ and was not to be intended as ‘an end in itself’, but, as for Augustine, ‘was directed to knowledge of God’ (doctrina christiana).39 In chapter XXV of De temporum ratione, designed as a scientific textbook for teaching and learning, covering diverse subjects including medicine, mathematics, astronomy and natural science, Bede refers to naturalis ratio in the sense of ‘factual knowledge about the natural world, and rational inferences drawn from this knowledge’.40 According to Wallis, Bede understood

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ratio as embracing ‘both “reckoning” and “reasoning”’ and that ‘time-reckoning and the study of the natural world [were] not to be intended as self-contained and self-explanatory disciplines, but subordinate elements of Doctrina christiana or erudition useful for Christian preachers and exegetes’.41 Studying the computus might be useful for daily needs and it might expand human knowledge, but it had first to aid the understanding of God. In the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede narrates the story of the arrival of the Irish Bishop Aidan, who was summoned by King Oswald as a spiritual guide for his people. Aidan is described as a saintly man ‘of outstanding gentleness, holiness, and moderation, having a zeal in God’, but not ‘secundum scientiam’ (‘according to knowledge’), for he kept Easter, mistakenly, ‘in accordance with the customs of his own nation’.42 Bede here seems to be separating faith from scientia; knowledge of God does not suffice when it comes to the study of computus, which Bede sees as a form of applied knowledge, ‘a vision of science as a problem-solving activity’43 more in line with the naturalis ratio of the De temporum ratione, than implied scientia. Bede’s reverential attitude towards ancient writers and inherited knowledge is explicated in the Preface to De temporum ratione where he claims that he has created a new piece of work out of ‘quare de his quae sparsim in veterum scriptis inveniri potuerant ipse novum opus condere studuerim’ (‘what can be found scattered here and there in the writings of the ancients’).44 Bede’s scientific works, which were widely disseminated in Carolingian schools and scriptoria, made their way back into England with the Benedictine Reform. An example of the great intellectual ambition associated with this renewed scientific interest and computistical knowledge is the elaborate treatise on the reckoning of time, written (in English) by Byrhtferth of Ramsey and composed to help parish priests in their regular duties. Byrhtferth’s aim is to introduce the science of computus to the iunge men of the monastery and teach them more about the Easter mysteries, including the cycles and the twelve tables.45 The intellectual setting of the early medieval period was predominantly confined to courts, a good example of which is Charlemagne’s, and monasteries, but from the twelfth century onwards universities became the new centres of learning, where people like Chaucer’s clerk would have been trained and Dante’s canoscenza cultivated. Universities formed part of an intellectual network, which promoted the dissemination of knowledge and boosted the popularity of scientific disciplines across the later

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Introduction

medieval world. The epistemological paradigm established by Augustine in Book II of the De doctrina christiana, which set the foundations for the medieval understanding of knowledge, was both complemented and theoretically challenged in the later period by the proliferation of classical scientific, philosophical and mathematical materials from the Greek, Jewish and Islamic traditions, made accessible to the West through the works of Latin translators and commentators, including Gerard of Cremona, Michael Scotus and Alfred of Sareschal as part of the cultural and educational programme promoted at the Cathedral School of Toledo.46 Aristotle’s treatises on dialectic (logic) in particular (Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics and Sophistical Refutations), which came to be incorporated into the university curriculum, offered a reconceptualisation of the nature of scientia and scientific knowledge (Gr. ἐπιστήμη, ‘episteme’) and a new philosophical framework of investigation based on a ‘carefully crafted logical methodology that surveyed everything that was humanly knowable about the natural world, its ultimate principles and causes, as well as man’s destiny in this universe – all this without the aid of divine revelation’.47 For early medieval thinkers ‘both faith and scientia depend[ed] ultimately on the same indirect first principles that must be accepted, not proved’,48 and subjected to the doctrina christiana, whereas, for Aristotle, instruction was mainly an inductive process given or received by way of argument and which proceeds from pre-existent knowledge,49 which is of two kinds: ‘in some cases admission of the fact must be assumed, in others comprehension of the meaning of the term used, and sometimes both assumptions are essential’.50 The mathematical sciences and all other speculative disciplines, which, for Aristotle, were mainly independent entities, are learnt in this way, and the same can be said for the two forms of dialectical reasoning, syllogistic and inductive, ‘for each of these latter make use of old knowledge to impart new, the syllogism assuming an audience that accepts its premises, induction exhibiting the universal as implicit in the clearly known particular’.51 Thus scientific knowledge must be demonstrated (demonstrative syllogism or apodeixis)52 through its cause (scientia ex causis): ‘we think we understand something if we possess a deduction from some true and primitive items’,53 for grasp of a reasonable conclusion is the primary condition of knowledge. The new theoretical and scientific models offered by both Aristotle and the works of Averroes, which were in circulation at the same time, posed a considerable threat to the supremacy of

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theology as a science within the university organisation: ‘only the proof of the strictly scientific character of theology could secure its place at university’.54 Of particular significance for the theologians of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was Aristotle’s theory of subalternate sciences, which he extensively discusses in the first book of Posterior Analytics, arguing that each science possesses its own field of enquiry, arguments and application. Subalternate sciences derive their principles from higher sciences, as is the case with optics, which infers most of its concepts from geometry. Thomas Aquinas’s familiarity with Aristotle’s disquisition on sciences is evidenced in his Expositio libri Posteriorum Analyticorum.55 In his answer to the questio of whether the sacra doctrina, based upon divine revelation, is a science, Aquinas distinguishes between two kinds of scientiae (‘duplex est scientiarum genus’): ‘lumine naturali intellectus’, that is those which proceed from a principle known by ‘the natural light of the intelligence’ and those which proceed from a principle known by ‘lumine superioris scientiae’, ‘by the light of a higher science’: So it is that sacred doctrine is a science [sacra doctrina est scientia], because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed [scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum]. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.56

Indeed scientia Dei (‘knowledge of God’) is the cause of everything, for we acquire knowledge of natural things through God, from whom they originate. Aquinas places theology as a subalternate science, which is subjected to the higher knowledge that is revealed or inspired directly by God.57 The developing understandings and applications of knowledge sketched briefly above – we are well aware that a full account of medieval theories of knowledge remains to be written – provide a conceptual background for the specific ‘aspects’ covered in the present collection. Our overview has focused on attitudes to knowledge in learned Christian tradition but it is also important to attend to secular strands of knowledge, such as those deriving from Germanic culture and from folk practice, which existed in relationship to the learned ‘Christian’ knowledge that this book also explores. ‘Christian’ knowledge was generally unproblematic in the medieval period, of course, and most thinkers, following the lead of the fathers, considered that it should be actively cultivated. Knowledge

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Introduction

of the apostles, knowledge of the power of the name of Jesus and knowledge of saints and their devout practices, to mention examples examined in chapters here (see chapters 4, 6 and 9), needed no defence; literacy and learning for religious purposes, including on the part of holy women, as in the case of Queen Margaret of Scotland (see chapter 9), were to be embraced. As mentioned above, however, with reference to Bede’s Aidan, sanctity could be achieved without true knowledge. Langland’s Will in Piers Plowman goes further and asks what good is knowledge at all in saving one’s soul, a radical question discussed in one of our contributions below (chapter 7). Secular, pagan knowledge needed stronger justification. Secular knowledge included not only the classical heritage appropriated by Augustine, Cassiodorus and others but also knowledge of Germanic mythology and legend and other later secular traditions, as in chivalric romance. Referring to a Germanic hero, the AngloSaxon churchman Alcuin famously asked, ‘Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?’ (‘What has Ingeld to do with Christ?’).58 This issue of knowledge of and from the pagan Germanic world is taken up here in the chapter on the Jellinge Stone (chapter 10) and in the chapter on the use of Beowulf in the Old English verse saint’s life Andreas (chapter 8). Beowulf itself, like the Jellinge Stone, views Germanic tradition positively though bringing a Christian perspective to its understanding, while Andreas is shown to reject the heroic world as vanity, re-appropriating Beowulf in mock-epic terms to do so. Secular academic knowledge, stemming ultimately from pagan antiquity and developed particularly under the influence of Isidore, was generally agreed in the Middle Ages, as it had been by the most authoritative fathers, to provide useful foundations for Christian study. Examples of such knowledge discussed in this book are the widely found literature of the interpretation of dreams (the corpus is surveyed analytically here for the first time, chapter 1) and that of weather forecasting (chapter 2), shown to be based on learned inheritance rather than on practical experience, though interestingly in the particular manuscript studied here an instance of practical forecasting, deriving presumably from folk tradition, is also incorporated. Also included below (chapter 5) is a cartographical contribution that studies a particular twelfth-century map of Jerusalem to demonstrate a combination of Christian symbolism and real urban topography, as learning and experience are integrated in a doubly useful image of the city. Practical and inherited utilia are also combined in the music collection discussed in the chapter on the Cambridge Songs (chapter 3).

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The transmission of such useful knowledge was a continuing concern for scholars and educators throughout the period. As explicitly stated by Bede (see above p. 7), many writers saw it as their job to transmit knowledge, often also organising and extending it as they did so; Isidorean taxonomies are reworked in riddle collections, for example (and Isidore himself was an organiser and extender par excellence);59 translators and adapters modify their source texts as they render them in the target language, most famously, perhaps, as in the writings of Chaucer but also, to refer to a text discussed in a chapter of this book (chapter 8), in Andreas. As shown in other chapters here, copies of collections of weather forecastings (chapter 2) and dream interpretations (chapter 1) tend to have individual features rather than pass on their exemplars unchanged and new and old are combined in music anthologies (chapter 3). And transmission has a material dimension as well as an intellectual one. This material dimension is brought out in the present volume in the attention given to specific manuscripts and other artefacts: as well as the carved stone of the Jellinge monument (see chapter 10), studies here focus on particular manuscripts containing a religiously inspired map (chapter 5), a series of weather texts (chapter 2) and a collection of music writings (chapter 3), while the chapter on dream interpretation (chapter 1) offers an analysis of specific examples. The theme of materiality is expressed most strikingly in the book’s closing chapter (chapter 11), which gives an account of the actual size and layout of Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, considering the manuscripts so essential to the transmission of all knowledge – religious, secular or a combination of the two – as physical objects. Outline of the chapters The chapters in this volume are grouped into four parts: I, Anthologies of Knowledge; II Transmission of Christian Traditions; III, Past and Present; and IV, Knowledge and Materiality. As illustrated in the preceding paragraphs, common concerns are also widely reflected across these parts but the groupings are intended to provide the reader with a further thematic framework for approaching aspects of knowledge. The first part, Anthologies of Knowledge, considers the transmission of learning in anthologies and collections of texts that not only preserve existing knowledge but also develop and add to or modify that knowledge. The first chapter, by Sándor Chardonnens,

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takes the reader into the world of dreams. In an ambitious and wide-ranging study Chardonnens argues that alphabetical and thematic dream books, dream lunaries and mantic alphabets belong to the same branch of divination, that of oneiromancy, but that they were rarely anthologised in clusters within the same collection. He investigates patterns of transmission of dream divination in manuscripts and early printed texts in order to understand whether the ways in which those three types of dream divination were clustered together may give us an indication of genre awareness. In the second chapter Marilina Cesario addresses the subject of weather forecasting in the Middle Ages as revealed in the meteorological prognostics that survive abundantly from throughout the period but particularly from the eleventh century onwards. This chapter focuses in particular on one fifteenth-century medical manuscript from Germany containing an anthology of seven Latin weather texts. Cesario edits and translates the texts for the first time and offers detailed discussion of them. She finds that these treatises contribute to their manuscript’s overarching interest in natural philosophy and that they were mostly given theoretical rather than practical usage, having their place in a context of eruditio (academic learning). One item stands out from the others, however, a puzzling salt prognostication found uniquely here. This text relies not, it is argued, on erudite knowledge but on knowledge acquired empirically and appears to have been designed for practical use. The chapter throws new light on prognosticatory literature, a branch of medieval learning that has recently emerged from the margins to become a significant object of scholarly concern. The final chapter in this part, by Ann Buckley, presents an appraisal of the collection known as ‘The Cambridge Songs’, found in a mid-eleventh-century English manuscript but derived from a German source, which also included material from the international clerical court culture of the period. Buckley suggests that the collection can be viewed as an example of an ‘anthology of musical knowledge’, which informs on genres, techniques, performance practice and the types of repertory that would have been usual in the eleventh century among learned audiences. The chapter focuses firstly on the collection’s song texts as a source of information on musical knowledge and musical practice in German court culture of the eleventh century but takes account too of the wider European clerical and intellectual framework, interrogating the raison d’être of such a collection in the context of anthologies of knowledge of the time.

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Questions of transmission are addressed even more directly in the second part, Transmission of Christian Traditions, which examines how aspects of Christian tradition are constructed and then appropriated and used over time. The theme of the interpretation and application of Christian knowledge is central to Hugh Magennis’s survey of treatments of the apostles in vernacular writings in Anglo-Saxon England. The acta of the apostles originated in the East but were transmitted and reworked by Western writers, not least in pre-Conquest England. Examining depictions of the apostles in Old English, Magennis’s chapter emphasises the definitive place that the apostles occupy within Christian systems of knowledge and understanding but also considers how traditions of the apostles are appropriated and reconceived by Anglo-Saxon writers (including the poet of Andreas, whose reworking of his source is considered in greater detail in the chapter by North). Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Asa Simon Mittman’s chapter ‘Seeing Jerusalem: schematic views of the Holy City, 1100–1300’ brings us into the realm of cartography and medieval perceptions of geographical space, specifically in relation to Jerusalem. The chapter pays particular attention to the map of the city in a manuscript from twelfth-century Flanders, doing so in the context of an overview of medieval map-making, which stresses the symbolic function of maps within a Christian view of the physical world, with Jerusalem the ideal city at its centre. For the composer of the map examined here, however, Jerusalem is not just an ideal, but a real city. Thus theological understanding is strikingly combined with practical knowledge. Denis Renevey’s contribution examines the ways in which writers in the Greek world and, later, Western religious teachers used the name of ‘Jesus’ in contemplative practices, and offers answers as to the way in which knowledge of the power of the name ‘Jesus’ was appropriated for different purposes in the two differing Christian traditions, and according to distinct spiritual ideologies. Renevey discusses the influence of Origen in the development of knowledge about the powerful potential of the name of Jesus and goes on to highlight the attachment to the name in Orthodox liturgical practice from about the ninth century, an attachment that in the fervency of its language anticipates Western traditions of affectivity. Among Western writers, Renevey focuses on Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux, the former promoting affective use of the name in personal devotion, the latter in a communal monastic context, as part of a well-conceived devotional scheme.

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As analysed in the chapter by Kath Stevenson, traditions of Christian knowledge are an abiding preoccupation for William Langland in Piers Plowman, with Langland exploring fundamental questions about the pre-eminence or otherwise of abstract learning, textually mediated and transmitted (‘clergie’), over experiential knowledge (‘kynde knowynge’) and about the role of learning in Christian salvation. What good is knowledge? In an age of abstruse academic discourse, in which Langland himself was deeply versed, Langland’s protagonist Will searches urgently for the knowledge that is truly valuable, that is, the knowledge that will enable him to save his soul. Stevenson locates Langland’s ambivalence concerning the efficacy of textually mediated learning within the wider contexts of vernacular theology in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and in particular shows Langland’s treatment of the Passion in the central passus of his poem to be informed by the developing traditions of affective piety. For Langland the Passion can function as a site in which textual and experiential knowledge are united, with abstract intellectual knowledge becoming transfigured as it is fused with ‘kynde knowynge’. Part III, Past and Present, illustrates how the past interacts with the culture and politics of the period to fit the needs of contemporary writers and audiences. This part opens with Richard North’s chapter ‘Meet the pagans: on the misuse of Beowulf in Andreas’, which argues that the Old English poem Andreas (on St Andrew) appropriates Beowulf for mock-epic purposes, turning knowledge of Beowulf, a poem that by implication must have been famous in Anglo-Saxon England, to a new Christian purpose. Andreas is seen to offer through its mock-epic style a satirical commentary on the heathen nostalgia of Beowulf. In Andreas knowledge of secular literature and its version of the past is astutely re-appropriated for religious purposes, being absorbed into and transcended by a Christian celebration of the true heroism of the saint. This chapter adds a new dimension to the understanding of Anglo-Saxon literary history and the place of secular tradition within it. Emily Wingfield’s chapter examines treatments of Queen Margaret of Scotland (d. 1093), beginning with the Life written by Turgot, prior of Durham, at the request of Margaret’s daughter the English queen Matilda, a work that highlights Margaret’s literacy and learning; Margaret’s role as reader and writer is shown to be emphasised also in later treatments. The subject of this chapter is thus not a branch of knowledge but the perceived learning of an important female individual and the significance of that learning

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in constructions of her as a saint. The chapter examines the way in which books function as vehicles for Margaret’s sanctity and political power and suggests that the Life itself is designed to model the life of a learned and holy queen for Margaret’s daughter, Matilda. Wingfield then considers how later verbal and visual accounts of Margaret develop this tradition so that she comes to function as an advisor of princes as well as princesses, her sanctity being shown to inhere ‘quite specifically, in her literacy’. The final part, Knowledge and Materiality, explores ways in which material objects were instrumental in the preservation and circulation of knowledge. Michelle Brown’s contribution represents an instance of the integration of Christian and pre-Christian Germanic knowledge in the early Middle Ages. Brown explores the context and meaning of the distinctive late-tenth-century runestone carved at the royal burial ground of Jellinge in Denmark, viewing the monument as a book in stone and a symbol of conversion and of changing political agendas in Scandinavia in the tenth century. Ranging widely across early medieval art, Brown explains that the stone draws upon both Christian and pagan Norse ­traditions ‘to form a new, integrated iconography that formed a distinctive expression of the Scandinavian experience of cultural synthesis and conversion’. Materiality is writ large in what is the final chapter of the volume, by Donald Scragg. Scragg focuses on the very practical issue of the size and the layout of Old English manuscripts from the eighth century to the first half of the twelfth, in order to explore the role of books in the transmission of thought, knowledge and practical experiences of the age. The chapter considers how the dimensions of surviving books can give clues ‘about their intended use, about how they were created and about what that may tell us about the role of the written vernacular in the society of early England’.

Notes  1 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. B. Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), IV.2.  2 Chaucer, General Prologue, line 308, ed. L. D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 28.  3 Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, Inferno, ed. M. Chiavacci Leonardi (Milan: Mondadori editore, 1991), xxvi.120, p. 189.

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 4 Bede: The Reckoning of Time, trans. F. Wallis (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998, repr. 2004), p. 4.  5 R. H. Bremmer and K. Dekker (eds), Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), p. x. See also R. H. Bremmer and K. Dekker (eds), Practice in Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2010); C. Gilberto and L. Teresi (eds), Limits to Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2013); and R. H. Bremmer and K. Dekker (eds), Fruits of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Leuven: Peeters, 2016). See also P. Lendinara, L. Lazzari and M. A. D’Aronco (eds), Form and Context of Instruction in Anglo-Saxon England in the Light of Contemporary Manuscript Evidence (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).  6 L. S. Chardonnens and B. Carella (eds), Secular Learning in AngloSaxon England: Exploring the Vernacular (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012).  7 R. Copeland, Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 1. See also, Copeland’s Rhetoric Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and D. G. Deanery, K. Ghosh and N. Zeeman (eds),  Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014).  8 T. Glick, S. J. Livesey and F. Wallis (eds), Medieval Science, Technology and Medicine: An Encyclopaedia (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), s.v. ‘Scientia’, p. 455.  9 Modern English Bible translations are from the Douay-Rheims version, online at www.drbo.org/. 10 Sed hoc modo instructus divinarum Scripturarum studiosus, cum ad eas perscrutandas accedere coeperit, illud apostolicum cogitare non cesset: ‘Scientia inflat, charitas aedificat’ (Sancti Aurelii Augustini Hipponensis Episcopi Opera Omnia, De doctrina christiana), opera et studio Monachorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri (Paris: Gaume Frates, 1836), II.xli.62, cols 75–6. ‘When the student of the Holy Scriptures, after being instructed in this manner, begins his examination of them, he should not fail to reflect upon that observation of the apostles: ‘Knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies’. The translation is from J. J. Gavivan, Saint Augustine, Christian Instruction (Fathers of the Church, vol. 2 Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947, repr. 1966), p. 114. 11 Confessionum Libri Tredecim (Opera Omnia), opera et studio Monachorum Ordinis Sancti Benedicti e Congregatione S. Mauri (Paris: Gaume Frates, 1836), XIII.xxi.30, col. 396. 12 T. F. Gilligan, Soliloquies (New York: Cima Publishing, 1948), Soliloquy I.ii.7, p. 350.

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13 For a study of Augustine’s epistemology, see L. Gioia, The Theological Epistemology of Augustine’s De Trinitate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 14 Cum itaque se mens novit et amat, iungitur ei amore uerbum eius. Et quoniam amat notitiam et novit amorem, et verbum in amore est, et amor in verbo, et utrumque in amante atque dicente (De Trinitate, Opera Omnia, IX.x.15, col. 1348). ‘Hence, when the mind knows and loves itself, its word is joined to it by love. And because the mind loves its knowledge and knows its love, then the word is in the love and the love in the word, and both are in him who loves and who speaks’. The translation is from S. McKenna, Saint Augustine: The Trinity (Fathers of the Church, vol. 45; Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963, repr. 1972), p. 285. 15 See M. J. B. Gardin Dumesnil (ed.), Latin Synonyms, with their Different Significations, and Examples Taken from the Best Latin Authors, trans. by J. M. Gosset (London: Whittaker, 1819). 16 ‘For it is the duty of good education to arrive at wisdom by means of a definite order; without order this is a matter of chance hardly to be relied upon […]’. Gilligan, Soliloquies, Soliloquy. I.xiii.23, p. 374. 17 De Trinitate, XII.xxii.16, cols 1400–1. 18 P. E. Hochschild, Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 218. 19 S. Borruso (trans.), St. Augustine, On Order (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), Book II, Second Debate, ix.26, p. 86. 20 De doctrina christiana, II.xxix.58, col. 74. 21 De doctrina christiana, II, table of contexts, chapter xviii, cols 41–2. 22 De doctrina christiana, II.xxxi.48, col. 69. 23 Borruso, On Order, Book I, First Debate, viii.24, pp. 30–1. 24 W. Halporn (ed. and trans.), Cassiodorus Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning, On the Soul, with an introduction by M. Vessey (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), p. 107. 25 G. Morin (ed.), Sancti Caesarii Arelatensis Sermones, CCSL 103–4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1953), Sermo XCIX. 26 Iam in musica, in geometria, in astrorum motibus, in numerorum necessitatibus ordo ita dominatur ut si quis quasi eius fontem atque ipsum penetrale videre desideret, aut in his inveniat aut per haec eo sine ullo errore ducatur (‘take now music, geometry, the motion of the heavens, number theory. Order is so overpowering in these, that anyone seeking its source will either find it there, or will be led to it through them without error’). Borruso, On Order, Book II, First Debate, v.14, pp. 68–9. 27 For a thorough study of education and culture from the sixth to the eighth centuries, see P. Riché, Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Centuries, trans. from the 3rd edn by J. J. Contreni (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1976).

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28 M. Masi (trans.), Boethian Number Theory (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983), p. 71. Both Boethius and Cassiodorus drew on Martianus Capella’s order of discussion of the liberal arts in De nuptiis philologiae et mercurii. By the sixth century classical learning and study of pagan authors had already entered Irish monasteries where particular relevance was given to the quadrivium as applied to computistical studies. 29 S. A. Barney (trans.), The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), I.xxix.2, p. 55. 30 M. Amsler, Etymology and Grammatical Discourse in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 1989), p. 136. 31 Barney, Etymologies, p. 42. 32 Disciplina and ars were often used interchangeably. Augustine uses disciplina to refer to disciplinis liberalis, and ars to denote the branch of learning as in artes mechanicae, de arte rhetorica et dialectica (De doctrina, II. xli.62). 33 J. Oroz Reta and M. A. Marcos Casquero (eds), Etymologias (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1994), I.i.1, p. 25. 34 M. Franklin-Brown, Reading the World: Encyclopaedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012), pp. 7–8. See also J. North, ‘The art of knowing everything’, in P. Binkley (ed.), Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 183–200. 35 H. Rackman (ed. and trans.), Pliny Natural History, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press and W. Heinemann, 1967), Preface.14, pp. 10–11. 36 U. Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 149. On the interconnectedness of knowledge and the importance of learning different subjects, Vitruvius states that Architecti est scientia pluribus disciplinis et variis eruditionibus ornata, cuius indicio probantur omnia quae ab ceteris artibus perficiuntur (‘The science of the architect depends upon many disciplines and various apprenticeships which are carried out in other arts’). F. Granger (ed. and trans.), Vitruvius on Architecture, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press and W. Heinemann, 1970), I.i, pp. 6–7. 37 Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, IV.2. 38 For a detailed analysis of Theodore’s and Hadrian’s period, see B. Bischoff and M. Lapidge (eds), Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, CSASE 10 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 39 F. Wallis, ‘Bede and science’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bede (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 114 and 116.

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40 F. Wallis, ‘Si naturam quæras: reframing Bede’s “science”’, in S. DeGregorio (ed.), Innovation and Tradition in the Writings of the Venerable Bede (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2006), pp. 65–99 (pp. 88–9). 41 Wallis, ‘Bede and science’, p. 114. 42 Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, III.3, p. 256. 43 Wallis, ‘Bede and science’, p. 125. 44 C. W. Jones (ed.), Bedae opera de temporibus (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1943), p. 175. The translation is that of Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, Preface, p. 4. Bede’s debt to both divine inspiration (amore Dei) and ancient documents (litteris antiquorum) is explicitly acknowledged in the final passage of the Historia, which opens with: Haec de historia ecclesiastica Brittaniarum, et maxime gentis Anglorum, prout uel ex litteris antiquorum, uel ex traditione maiorum, uel ex mea ipse cognitione scire potui, Domino adiuuante digessi Baeda famulus Christi, et presbyter monasterii beatorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli, quod est ad Uiuraemuda, et Ingyruum. (I, Bede, servant of God and priest of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul which is at Wearmouth and Jarrow, have, with the help of God and to the best of my ability, put together this account of the History of the Church of Britain and of the English people in particular, gleaned either from ancient documents or from tradition or from my own knowledge). Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, V.24, p. 293. 45 M. Lapidge and P. S. Baker (eds), Byrhtferth’s Enchiridion (EETS, SS 15; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 120–1. 46 For a detailed discussion on this topic, see S. Brown, ‘The intellectual context of later medieval philosophy: universities, Aristotle, arts, theology’, in John Marebon (ed.), Medieval Philosophy (History of Philosophy, vol. III; London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 188–203. 47 See G. Klima, F. Allhoff and A. Jayprakash Vaidya (eds), Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 8. 48 Glick, Livesey and Wallis, Medieval Science, p. 455. 49 J. Barnes (trans.), Aristotle: Posterior Analytics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edn, 1994), I.1, p. 1. ‘The object of knowledge would appear to exist before knowledge itself, for it is usually the case that we acquire knowledge of objects already existing’, in E. M. Edghill (trans.), Aristotle, Categories, Works of Aristotle Translated into English, 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 7; R. McKeon, The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941). 50 Barnes, Posterior Analytics, I.1, p. 1. 51 Barnes, Posterior Analytics, I.1, p. 1. 52 ‘We do know things through demonstration. By a demonstration I mean a scientific deduction; and by scientific I mean a deduction

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by possessing which we understand something’. Barnes, Posterior Analytics, II.2, p. 2. 53 Barnes, Posterior Analytics, I.9, p. 14. 54 U. G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), p. 131. 55 Expositio libri Posteriorum Analyticorum, ed. R. Spiazzi (Turin: Leonine Press, 2nd edn 1964). Jerkins notices that in Aquinas’s commentary to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics, noscere and notitia are employed as ‘near synomyms of cognoscere and cognitio, but the former pair of terms seem to be used in a more restricted sense. They seem to signify only intellectual cognitio and cognitio which successfully apprehend its object. That is, notitia seems to be true belief with positive epistemic status, and noscere seems to be to have such a belief. Aquinas uses innotescere as the passive form of noscere (to become known)’. J. I. Jerkins, Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 17. See also R. Pasnau, Theories of Cognition in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 56 The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, part I. QQ I.XXVI, trans. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1992), Iª.Q.1.art.2, p. 4; for Latin text, see P. Caramello (ed.), Sancti Thomae de Aquino Summa theologiae (Turin: Marietti, 1952), Iª.Q.1.art.2, p. 15. 57 Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Q.15.art.9, p. 199. 58 Alcuini sive Albini Epistolae, Ep. 124, edited by E. Dümmler, MGH, Epistoli, IV (Epistoli Karolini Aevi, II) (Berlin: apud Weidmannos, 1895), pp. 181–4; for a Modern English translation, see D. A. Bullough, ‘What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?’, Anglo-Saxon England, 22 (1993), 93–125. 59 See M. Salvador-Bello, Isidorean Perceptions of Order: The Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata, Medieval European Studies, 17 (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2015).

Part I Anthologies of Knowledge

1 Dream divination in manuscripts and early printed books: patterns of transmission1 László Sándor Chardonnens

Introduction Upon consulting three different forms of medieval dream divination, we learn that to dream of a dragon signifies honour, but to do so on the sixteenth day of the moon will make the dream come true only after a long time, and if one finds the letter v on the first line of the left-hand page of a book opened at random after the dream, it means death. The dreamer may eventually achieve honour, therefore, but if out of luck might die before the auspicious outcome of the dream can take effect. Whether medieval people approached dream divination in the same exhaustive way as the example given here is the subject of this chapter. This is not to say that medieval people thought differently about dream divination than we do, because approaches to oneiromancy now are as complex as they were in the past, but modern scholars have many more medieval sources at their disposal than medieval dream diviners did at any one time. Relying on many hundreds of texts, a modern scholar doubling as a dream diviner can select interpretations in which dragons signify honour instead of delusion, in which the sixteenth day of the moon ensures that the dream will take effect instead of not coming true at all, and in which the letter v means death instead of a happy life, just to add a touch of foreboding to the prediction. With around fifty medieval and early modern thematic dream books and around 265 alphabetical dream books in existence, a great variety of interpretations of dream topics is available. Add to these texts a further 280 or so lunaries dealing with if and when dreams will come true and ninety-five mantic alphabets that combine oneiromancy with bibliomancy, and the number of possible interpretations is bewildering. A slight snag for modern scholars in approaching this material is that they must be equipped to read a multitude of scripts from the ninth century onwards, to understand Latin and at least eleven other European

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languages from various periods and dialect regions, and to have leisure to travel across Europe and the United States to consult these many texts. The challenges facing modern scholars can be overcome with some effort, but the same cannot be said of those that faced medieval dream diviners. Medieval dream diviners who needed access to written sources of their brand of secular scientia were limited by what was available in a certain language in a certain region at a certain point in time. Since written sources dealing with oneiromancy were transmitted piecemeal, a text-based, comprehensive dream interpretation of the kind featured above may have been rare. Not all forms of dream divination, moreover, were available throughout the Middle Ages. Whereas alphabetical dream books and lunaries had already been around since the ninth century, for instance, thematic dream books and mantic alphabets first emerged in the twelfth century. To collect several sources dealing with dream divination, then, cannot have been easy. Even so, authorities on dream divination such as Alf Önnerfors noted ‘dass die mittelalterlichen Somnialien und Lunare als typische prognostische Gattungen intim mit einander zusammenhingen’ (‘that the medieval prognostic genres of alphabetical dream books and lunaries were closely connected’).2 Lorenzo DiTommaso even goes so far as to argue that ‘in approximately one quarter of the extant manuscripts a lunation immediately precedes, follows, or is in some other way intimately related to a copy of the Somniale Danielis’, and that these two forms of dream divination ‘regularly appear as one text in the same manuscript’.3 This would suggest that medieval scribes saw generic connections between these two forms of dream divination. Sure enough, lunaries and alphabetical dream books are sometimes attested in the same book, sometimes in sequence or even as a single text, but much less frequently than projected. As far as other forms of dream divination are concerned concrete data were lacking altogether. It has not been qualified, by extension, whether the various forms of oneiromancy were considered to belong to the same tradition of learning, even if it would make sense to us that they might have done so. Having examined many hundreds of manuscripts and early printed books that contain dream divination, I argue that a putative close connection between the various forms of dream divination was not widespread before the age of print but existed largely as a result of ad hoc decisions made by individual scribes. This chapter introduces the various oneiromantic practices current in medieval times, traces

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major developments in the transmission of dream divination in the Middle Ages and early Modernity, and examines the existence of an awareness among scribes and printers of connections between the various forms of dream divination. The findings are based on a corpus of 860 medieval and early modern sources in 489 manuscripts and 89 printed books up to 1550, the most comprehensive survey brought together so far.4 Divinatory dreams Defined as ‘a train of thoughts, images, or fancies passing through the mind during sleep’, dreams take on various forms.5 Starting with Sigmund Freud’s Die Traumdeutung, dreams have been seen to be vents of the unconscious: by interpreting the meaning of dreams, a person’s hidden drives and anxieties can be made manifest.6 Pre-Freudian ideas about dreams and dreaming, however, offer a different perspective. Steven Kruger opined that in the past ‘dreams were often thought to foretell the future because they allowed the human soul access to a transcendent, spiritual reality’.7 This does not mean that all dreams were considered divinatory. By its very nature, dream divination relates only to dreams that can be interpreted meaningfully, and most medieval theories about dreaming include a few kinds of dreams that have mantic qualities. Immensely popular throughout the medieval period, the theory advanced by the late antique scholar Macrobius in his Commentarii in somnium Scipionis constitutes a fivefold division of dreams: Omnium quae uidere sibi dormientes uidentur quinque sunt principales et diuersitates et nomina. Aut enim est ὄνειρος secundum Graecos quod Latini somnium uocant, aut est ὅραμα quod uisio recte appellatur, aut est χρηματισμός quod oraculum nuncupatur, aut est ἐνύπνιον quod insomnium dicitur, aut est φάντασμα quod Cicero quotiens opus hoc nomine fuit uisum uocauit.8 (All dreams may be classified under five main types: there is the enigmatic dream, in Greek oneiros, in Latin somnium; second, there is the prophetic vision, in Greek horama, in Latin visio; third, there is the oracular dream, in Greek chrematismos, in Latin oraculum; fourth, there is the nightmare, in Greek enypnion, in Latin insomnium; and last, the apparition, in Greek phantasma, which Cicero, when he has occasion to use the word, calls visum.9)

The five kinds of dreams described by Macrobius include the insomnium and the uisum, which arise from internal, mental or physiological processes, and that are thought to have no divinatory

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value. Macrobius asserts, however, that ‘tribus ceteris in ingenium diuinationis instruimur’ (‘by means of the other three we are gifted with the powers of divination’).10 These divinatory dreams may be prompted by external agents and are hence close to prophetic visions, such as the oraculum. They may also have links to external reality because they predict what will happen in the future (the uisio and the somnium). Whereas the oraculum is generally associated with prophecy and therefore out of bounds to worldly diviners, the uisio and somnium are the kinds of dreams covered by secular dream divination. The main distinction between the latter two is that the uisio comes true in exactly the way that it is dreamt, whereas the somnium deals in symbols whose value can only be decoded by interpretation. The somnium is the type of divinatory dream that dream books concern themselves with, while other kinds of dream divination may also cover the uisio, such as lunaries. Macrobius’s was the principal dream theory throughout the Middle Ages, though other models already existed, and yet others were subsequently advanced by high and late medieval thinkers. As Kruger discusses, antedating or contemporary with Macrobius’s dream theory were those of Greek and Roman philosophers like Aristotle, who saw little mantic value in dreams, Synesius, who stressed the revelatory power of dreams, and Calcidius, who ascribed revelatory value only to dreams ‘sent by “diuinae potestates”’.11 Church Fathers, too, occupied themselves with dream theory, and they were deeply concerned with the agency behind revelatory dreams. For patristic writers the problem of dream divination seems to have resided not so much in the act of interpretation, which has ample biblical precedent, but in discerning divine from demonic agency, and true from false dreams.12 High medieval thinkers refined existing dream theories by uniting pagan and Christian models, and by adding somatic components drawn from classical and Arabic medicine. In the course of the medieval period, humoral theory was brought to bear on dream theory, as outlined in Rhazes’s Liber ad Almansorem, for example. This led to more developed models of the somatic causes of dreaming, as in Pascalis Romanus’s Liber thesauri occulti, which unites somatic dream theory with dream divination.13 Late medieval thinkers developed their theories of dreaming even further, constructing intricate models that categorised dreams and dream theory in rigidly logical fashion. Late medieval dream theory, however, was increasingly sceptical of the value of mantic dreams, partly through improved access to Greek philosophical

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notions about dreaming, notably Aristotle’s, and partly through a growing suspicion of dream divination on religious grounds. Religious scepticism lay in the supposition that external ­inspiration of dreams might arise from deceptive agents, turning dreams that appear meaningful into falsehoods.14 Such negative responses to divinatory dreams are evidenced mainly in philosophical and religious writings, but they also affected a number of late medieval oneiromantic texts that were crossed out or denounced by later users of the manuscripts (e.g., Oxford, Balliol College, MS 329 and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 7349).15 Even so, late medieval dream theory did not rule out the possibility that mantic dreams existed, merely queried under what circumstances dreams came about and what external conditions made a dream be true or false. To sum up, medieval dream theory relied principally on the work of Macrobius, with alternative models becoming available or being developed over time. Some alternative models hailed from Greek and Roman philosophy and from classical and Arabic medicine. Others were composed by Church Fathers, theologians and medieval thinkers, who fused pagan and Christian approaches to dream theory and speculated on the internal and external causes of dreaming and the agency behind divinatory dreams. The majority of medieval dream theories have in common that they provided for the possibility of divinatory dreams. The Macrobian somnium and uisio are the meaningful dreams of choice, and it is these types that dream divination pertains to. Dream divination There are roughly four kinds of dream divination in written form available to medieval dream diviners: alphabetical dream books, thematic dream books, lunaries and mantic alphabets.16 These forms of dream divination are here discussed in turn. Alphabetical dream books are the best known form of medieval dream divination.17 Thought to have derived from an older Byzantine alphabetical oneirocriticon (Gr. ὀνειροκριτικόν, ‘dream interpretation’), alphabetical dream books were the only type of oneiromancy that interpreted the contents of dreams for most of the medieval period in the Latin West.18 While many alphabetical dream books do not explicitly claim to have been authored by any one person in particular, the rubrics and incipits of a fair number of them name Daniel. The attribution is to the Jewish

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prophet Daniel, who is reported in the Old Testament to have been carried off to Babylon to be educated as court advisor. When the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that his own diviners were unable to interpret, Daniel interpreted the king’s dream, which God revealed to Daniel along with the content of the dream itself. Daniel, in other words, had an oraculum of the king’s somnium and its interpretation. Alphabetical dream books are consequently known as Somniale Danielis, one of several types of divination among the prophet’s apocrypha.19 The dreams covered by alphabetical dream books are of the somnium type. Alphabetical dream books are inventories of signs that occur in dreams, together with their interpretations. The signs are ordered alphabetically in short entries of the type ‘x y significat’ (‘x signifies y’), where x stands for the sign manifested in a dream and y for the interpretation of the sign, for instance, ‘dracones videre dignitatem significat’ (‘to see dragons signifies honour’).20 The sign (x) is usually worded as a verb phrase, with the verb expressing an action or a sensory experience. Most attention is given to the sense of sight, in keeping with the essentially visual nature of dreaming. The interpretation (y) is a noun or short noun phrase that promises future profit or loss, health or illness, life or death, happiness or sadness, security or danger, and fortune or misfortune. The verb significat joins the sign and its interpretation, testifying to the meaningful link between the sign in the dream and its import in waking life. Alphabetical dream books vary in length from as many as 716 entries to as few as twenty-three entries on a scrap of paper pasted to the inside back board of a manuscript.21 Texts that span the entire alphabet typically number between 100 and 450 entries, but many surviving texts are fragmentary from the start, and cover only a few letters of the alphabet. Dream books vary in length because the formulaic structure of the entries made it easy to add or delete entries. Complete alphabetical dream books go from a to z in twenty-three letters. The entries of vernacular dream books initially followed the underlying alphabetical order of the Latin sources. An entry about water, for instance, would be at the beginning of a vernacular dream book on account of Latin aqua. Only towards the close of the medieval period did vernacular dream books adopt vernacular alphabetical order, including the use of newer letter forms, such as j and w. Thematic dream books were a marginal phenomenon for most of the medieval period. Despite the fact that a substantial variety

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of thematic oneirocritica circulated in the Greek East, none of these made it to the Latin West before the later twelfth century, in marked contrast to the early introduction of the Somniale Danielis. There are three groups of thematic dream books known in the Latin West: Pascalis Romanus’s Liber thesauri occulti, and the Oneirocritica of Achmet ben Sirin and Artemidorus. Pascalis Romanus published his Latin Liber thesauri occulti in Constantinople in the 1160s.22 The first part of the Liber thesauri occulti concerns dream theory, and the second and third parts form a thematic dream book that is largely but silently based on the Greek Oneirocritica of Artemidorus (second century AD) and Achmet ben Sirin (tenth century). Severely limited in circulation, the Liber thesauri occulti survives in a handful of manuscripts and never made the transition to print. Hans Lobenzweig made an abbreviated translation into German in the mid-fifteenth century.23 Relying on a variety of Greek, Byzantine and Arabic sources, the thematic dream book of Achmet ben Sirin was translated from Greek into Latin by Leo Tuscus in Constantinople in the 1170s.24 The Latin version was subsequently translated into French and German. It is also preserved in Italian in a number of printed books and manuscripts. Some sixteenth-century Italian printers published a thematic dream book attributed to the Old Testament king Solomon that is heavily indebted to the Oneirocriticon of Achmet. Although Pascalis Romanus already relied on the Oneirocriticon of Artemidorus, it would take until the sixteenth century for the Latin West to be officially introduced to Artemidorus, starting with the Όνειροκριτικών βιβλία πέντε (Venice, 1518).25 Janus Cornarius published a Latin translation, De somniorum interpretatione, Libri quinque, in 1539, which was quickly followed by translations into German (1540), Italian (1542) and French (1546). Lunaries are among the most widely transmitted forms of medieval divination.26 Like alphabetical and thematic dream books, lunaries from the Latin West are thought to go back to older Byzantine sources, in this case the selenodromion (Gr. σεληνοδρόμιον, ‘the course of the moon’).27 Lunaries are attributed to a wide range of authorities, including Adam, Bede, Esdras, Galen, Merlin and Solomon, but the sporadic ascription to the prophet Daniel and the occasional co-occurrence of lunaries and Somniale Danielis mean that lunaries, or Lunationes Danielis, are now regarded as Daniel apocrypha.28 With various ways to measure the course of the moon, lunaries are just one type of lunar divination. Tracing the cycle of

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a­ pproximately thirty days from new moon to new moon, lunaries are distinct from zodiacal lunaries, which follow the passage of the moon through the twelve signs of the zodiac, and from the mansions of the moon, which track the course of the moon through the twenty-eight lunar mansions. Of the three kinds of lunar ­divination, lunaries are the only ones that include predictions for dreams, though they may focus on different aspects of life too. A distinction is made between specific (specialised) and collective (general) lunaries. Specific lunaries report the outcomes of only one of the following fields of interest: general actions, birth, bloodletting, dreams or illness. Collective lunaries cover all of these topics in one go, and sometimes also predict the chances of retrieving stolen goods or runaway servants. A prediction such as ‘luna .i. quicquid uideris in gaudium erit’ (‘the first day of the moon: whatever you see [in your dream] will turn to joy’), for instance, is all a dream lunary will say about the first day of the moon, but a collective lunary will also predict the outcome of various other events on this day.29 Since dream and collective lunaries do not interpret the content of dreams but only predict if and when dreams come true, they may cover dreams of both the somnium and uisio­type. Mantic alphabets are the final form of dream divination under discussion.30 It is unclear where and when mantic alphabets originated. Förster suggests a Greek origin, with a translation into Latin in the seventh or eighth century.31 No Byzantine mantic alphabets have been attested, however, and I think it is more likely that mantic alphabets evolved out of the alphabetical texts and acrostics that circulated in Northwestern Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries.32 Many mantic alphabets are attributed to Joseph, the Old Testament patriarch who was sold into slavery and became Pharaoh’s advisor after interpreting the latter’s dreams. In imitation of the designation Somniale Danielis for alphabetical dream books, mantic alphabets are sometimes called Somniale Ioseph. The dreams covered by mantic alphabets are probably of the somnium and uisio type, though mantic alphabets do not interpret symbols in dreams (which dream books do), nor do they predict if and when a dream will come true (which lunaries do). Instead, mantic alphabets provide a general prediction for the future, based on a form of bibliomancy after having had a dream. Users of mantic alphabets will have to engage in some ritual acts, such as prayer and kneeling in church, after which they open a book at random, usually a psalter. The first letter on the left-hand page of

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the book is looked up in the alphabet key, which is a list of letters of the alphabet with predictions. A user who finds the letter a, for instance, will learn that ‘a significat vitam uel potestatem’ (‘a signifies life or power’).33 The predictions are ordered alphabetically in short entries of the type ‘littera significat y’ (‘letter signifies y’), where y stands for the interpretation of the letter, usually a noun or terse noun phrase that promises future profit or loss, health or illness, life or death, happiness or sadness, security or danger, and fortune or misfortune. The verb form significat joins the letter and its interpretation, testifying to the meaningful link between the letter retrieved at random and the dream’s import in waking life. Mantic alphabets go from a to z in twenty-three letters, irrespective of the language of the text. Vernacular texts, in other words, do not adapt the alphabet to local linguistic needs, probably because the book to be consulted at random (mostly the psalter) will have been in Latin. Major developments in the transmission of dream divination In order to make sense of developments in dream divination, it is worth tracking textual transmission across time. The following analysis is based on the corpus of oneiromantic texts I have identified with the help of existing surveys and original research. The corpus is split into manuscripts and printed books. Manuscript sources date from the earliest, ninth-century alphabetical dream books and lunaries onwards. No date limit is set for manuscripts, since post-medieval copies invariably reflect medieval practices, a case in point being the texts copied out of antiquarian and scholarly interest between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.34 The transmission of dream divination in print starts at around 1475. The cut-off date for printed books is 1550, since the approximately seventy-five-year period leading up to the mid-sixteenth century marks a gradual transition from medieval textual traditions that make their way into print largely unchanged, to recontextualisations of older texts and the subsequent displacement of medieval oneiromancy by newly introduced Byzantine thematic oneirocritica in Greek, Latin and the European vernaculars. The textual transmission of dream divination in manuscripts can be seen in Table 1.1. The analysis of these data follows after Table 1.2 below. Please note that the lower attestation rates in the early and high Middle Ages in comparison to the higher rates in

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Table 1.1  Textual transmission of dream divination in manuscripts

ix x xi xii xiii xiv xv xvi xvii xviii xix xx

thematic dream books

lunaries

SD

LTO

OAch

OArt

CL

DL

non-oneiromantic lunaries

SI

 2  3  8  9 12 50 82 14  9  2

– – – 1 2 2 2

– – – 1

– – – – – – – 1

 2  1  8  7 15 35 93 12  5  1

 4  2 13  5  5 12 18  1  3

22  4 32 16  5 24 55  7  6

– – –  3  7 13 39 13  1

9 9 7 2

 1

 1

Abbreviations: SD = Somniale Danielis, LTO = Liber thesauri occulti, OAch = oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, OArt = oneirocriticon of Artemidorus, CL = collective lunary, DL = dream lunary, SI = Somniale Ioseph. A dash means that a kind of dream divination is not yet in evidence in the Latin West.

the late Middle Ages may have various external causes, such as the markedly lower production and survival rates of older books in general. That said, the manuscripts under consideration hail from all over Europe and cover all kinds of topics and disciplines, so regional or context-related influences on survival rates are evened out. It is possible, therefore, to study the transmission of the various types of dream divination in relation to each other without having to engage in a discussion on manuscript survival in general. The transmission of dream divination in printed books between around 1475 and 1550 can be seen in Table 1.2.35 Extant in 263 copies, alphabetical dream books are one of the oldest forms of oneiromancy in the Latin West. The earliest text witnesses date from the ninth century, and alphabetical dream books have been in circulation ever since, though their popularity dwindled in the course of the sixteenth century, when thematic dream books came in vogue. Even so, alphabetical dream books have become the oneiromantic method of choice from the nineteenth century onwards; so much so, in fact, that even Chinese dream books now occasionally abandon the strictly organised thematic order that characterises them, in favour of alphabetical (pinyin) order.36 Somniale Danielis are attested in Latin and several

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Table 1.2  Textual transmission of dream divination in printed books

SD xv4/4 xvi1

42 30

thematic dream books

lunaries

LTO

OAch

OArt

CL

DL

5

– 10

21  7

2 5

non-oneiromantic lunaries 1

SI 16  3

Abbreviations: SD = Somniale Danielis, LTO = Liber thesauri occulti, OAch = oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, OArt = oneirocriticon of Artemidorus, CL = collective lunary, DL = dream lunary, SI = Somniale Ioseph. A dash means that a kind of dream divination is not yet in evidence in the Latin West.

European vernaculars. English translations first appeared in the eleventh century, French in the thirteenth, Irish and Italian in the fourteenth, German, Spanish and Welsh in the fifteenth, and Icelandic in the sixteenth century.37 With 191 texts, the transmission of alphabetical dream books in manuscripts rises steadily from two in the ninth century to eighty-two in the fifteenth century, with a sharp drop in the sixteenth century. Alphabetical dream books are among the earliest forms of medieval dream divination to make it into print, in around 1475, and there are no less than forty-two oneiromantic incunables in a twenty-five-year period. Decline sets in after 1500, however, with only thirty prints in fifty years, and no publications at all in the second half of the sixteenth century from the German and Italian printers who accounted for most of the incunable and post-incunable Somniale Danielis. Alphabetical dream books form the nucleus of printed dream divination manuals. Most oneiromantic incunables also include lunaries or mantic alphabets, but post-incunables, on the other hand, tend to contain alphabetical dream books only, augmented by excerpts from dream theoretical works, perhaps in an attempt to rescue the reputation of alphabetical dream books.38 Thematic dream books are first introduced in the twelfth century, starting with Pascalis Romanus’s Liber thesauri occulti, which survives in five Latin and two fifteenth-century German copies. The low number of text witnesses of the Liber thesauri occulti suggests that the work was transmitted in the periphery of dream divination, which is made the more likely because the Liber thesauri occulti did not make it into print at all. A close contemporary to Pascalis Romanus’s work, the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, was slightly more successful. Translated by Leo Tuscus in the twelfth century, the Oneirocriticon of Achmet was transmitted

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in small numbers in manuscripts between the twelfth and the seventeenth centuries, with a peak of nine copies each in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Latin version was translated into French in the fourteenth century, and into German in the sixteenth century. It is also preserved in the vernacular in a number of books printed in Italy in the sixteenth century, and in three manuscripts dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. In all, the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin is extant in twenty-eight manuscripts and five early prints. Yet another Byzantine thematic dream book, the Oneirocriticon of Artemidorus, proved more popular in the early modern period. The Oneirocriticon of Artemidorus appeared late in the Latin West, with prints in Greek in 1518, and in Latin in 1539, and a single manuscript copy in Latin from the sixteenth century. No less than ten prints survive in Latin and the European vernaculars between 1539 and 1550, and about another thirty prints appeared in the second half of the sixteenth century. A comprehensive collection of Byzantine oneirocritica with Latin translations first appeared in Paris in 1603 with Nicolas Rigault’s bilingual (Greek and Latin) Artemidori Daldiani & Achmetis Sereimi F. Oneirocritica. Astrampsychi et Nicephori versus etiam Oneirocritici.39 Why thematic dream books were so late to arrive in the Latin West is a moot point, but even after their introduction in Latin in twelfth-century Constantinople by Pascalis Romanus and Leo Tuscus they were unable to compete against the popularity of alphabetical dream books until the sixteenth century. In the course of the sixteenth century, the Somniale Danielis came under increased suspicion during the religious reforms as a result of a clampdown on apocrypha and attempts to control the spread of non-biblical prophecies and revelations. This had consequences for the oraculum in particular, but also extended to the uisio and the somnium, and hence to dream divination in general.40 Around the same time, thematic dream books were on the rise as a result of humanist scholarly interest in specifically Greek oneirocritica, witness the success of the oneirocriticon of Artemidorus in Greek, Latin and the European vernaculars.41 The (renewed) introduction of thematic oneirocritica in the early sixteenth century, therefore, caught the Somniale Danielis at a particularly bad time, which led to marked changes in the transmission of dream books at the cusp of the medieval and early modern periods. Extant in 451 copies, lunaries are not only one of the most popular forms of divination in the medieval period, but with 278

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dream and collective (i.e., oneiromantic) lunaries they are also the most frequently transmitted form of dream divination. All lunaries are included in the present survey, because oneiromantic lunaries may co-occur either with other kinds of dream divination on account of their subject matter, or with other lunaries on account of their structure. The earliest text witnesses date from the ninth century, and though lunaries were out of fashion by the seventeenth century, they are occasionally still found in modern printed fortune tellers. Lunaries are attested in Latin and a range of European vernaculars. English translations first appeared in the eleventh century, French and German in the thirteenth, Dutch in the fourteenth, Italian, Swedish and Welsh in the fifteenth, and Icelandic in the seventeenth century. With 415 texts in manuscripts, 243 of which are oneiromantic, lunaries are significantly more widely distributed in manuscripts than alphabetical dream books. The high rate of attestation in the ninth century (twentyeight texts), in particular, is testimony to the rapid integration of lunaries in early medieval practical science. As with other forms of dream divination, the transmission of lunaries peaks in the fifteenth century and drops in the sixteenth century, but a striking feature is that the transmission of specific lunaries does not keep pace with that of collective lunaries, that is, collective lunaries are increasingly more frequently transmitted than specific lunaries. Lunaries appear in print too, always in connection with alphabetical dream books on the continent (but not in England), and never in connection with thematic dream books. All oneiromantic incunables focus on alphabetical dream books, usually followed by mantic alphabets or preceded by lunaries. Three incunables even contain a complete set of a lunary, an alphabetical dream book and a mantic alphabet. The preference for collective lunaries over specific lunaries in late medieval manuscripts is carried over into print: twenty-one out of twenty-three lunaries in incunables are collective and only two are dream lunaries. Most sixteenth-century printed Somniale Danielis, on the other hand, only rarely include lunaries or mantic alphabets. The decreased transmission of medieval forms of oneiromancy in the sixteenth century, t­herefore, applies to lunaries even more so than it does to alphabetical dream books. Sixteenth-century oneiromantic prints show an even distribution of five collective versus five dream lunaries from continental printers. The English were particularly late to print dream books, the first publications being Here begynneth the Dreames of Daniell 42 and Thomas Hill’s The moste pleasaunte Arte of the Interpretacion

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of Dreames.43 Lunaries, however, were already being printed in England in the first half of the sixteenth century, witness De cursione Lune44 and Here begynneth the Nature, and Dysposycyon of the dayes in the weke.45 The lunaries in these publications, it is to be noted, do not occur in specifically oneiromantic contexts, in contrast to the lunaries printed on the continent around this time. Extant in ninety-five copies, mantic alphabets are a late arrival to medieval oneiromancy. The earliest text witnesses date from the late twelfth century. Mantic alphabets are attested in Latin and several European vernaculars. German translations first appear in the twelfth century, French in the fourteenth, English and Italian in the fifteenth, and Welsh in the sixteenth century. The earliest Italian texts are in incunables, and a single Italian text in manuscript survives in Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Marc. gr. II. 163. Mantic alphabets in manuscripts follow the rise and fall pattern of all medieval forms of dream divination, going from three texts in the twelfth century to thirty-nine in the fifteenth, thirteen in the sixteenth, and one in the seventeenth century. Mantic alphabets have a history of transmission that is coeval with the first thematic dream books, but in contrast to the latter, the former are included in incunables. The first printed dream divination manuals from around 1475 already include mantic alphabets, to a total of sixteen text witnesses in incunables, particularly from Southern German and Italian printers. It has already been observed that sixteenth-century printed alphabetical dream books rarely include additional items, which holds true for lunaries and for mantic alphabets. There are, in fact, only three sixteenth-century books with mantic alphabets, and the last text to appear in print before the nineteenth century dates from 1537.46 The preceding analysis charts the overall transmission of oneiromantic texts in the medieval period. It demonstrates that all forms of dream divination known in manuscript form show a steadily increasing textual transmission up to the fifteenth century and a sharp decline in the sixteenth century. The analysis also shows that older and newer forms of dream divination part ways in the early modern period. Excluding non-oneiromantic lunaries, the 546 oneiromantic texts in manuscripts are distributed as follows: 8 texts in the ninth century, 6 in the tenth, 29 in the eleventh, 26 in the twelfth, 41 in the thirteenth, 121 in the fourteenth, 243 in the fifteenth and 48 texts in the sixteenth century, and a further 24 manuscript copies of medieval sources in the seventeenth century and after. Out of 546 texts, 434 are alphabetical dream books and

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oneiromantic lunaries, oneiromantic methods that first emerged in the ninth century. The newer forms of dream divination introduced in the twelfth century, in other words, constitute only a small proportion of oneiromantic texts, even though alphabetical dream books and oneiromantic lunaries are not attested in great numbers before the thirteenth century either. Mantic alphabets are the more successful of the newer forms of dream divination, with seventy-six text witnesses against a mere thirty-six thematic dream books in manuscripts. Late fifteenth-century printers, particularly German and Italian ones, were quick to tap into a new market by publishing a total of eighty-one oneiromantic texts in a span of twenty-five years. During this time, not a single thematic dream book appeared in print. Printed books from the first half of the sixteenth century herald significant changes, however. In this fifty-year period, sixty oneiromantic texts make it into print, with the number of alphabetical dream books and lunaries halved as compared to their occurrence in incunables, and with only three mantic alphabets. A quarter of all oneiromantic texts printed at this time, in contrast, are thematic dream books, with no less than ten editions of the newly published oneirocriticon of Artemidorus in a span of eleven years. These findings would seem to support the notion that the first half of the sixteenth century witnessed major changes in the transmission of dream divination. Despite recontextualisations of older mantic and oneiromantic texts by French and English printers (e.g., the integration of lunaries and dream books in Jean Thibault’s La Phisionomie des songes et visions fantastiques,47 and the collective lunary in Here begynneth the Nature, and Dysposycyon of the dayes in the weke), the traditional forms of dream divination that had been around for centuries were on their way out, and their place was filled by Byzantine thematic oneirocritica. The existence of oneiric awareness It has now been established that there are several major developments that influenced the transmission of dream divination going from the Middle Ages to early Modernity, but so far no attempt has been made to discover whether medieval scribes and early printers were aware of the shared oneiric features of texts dealing with dream divination. Modern scholars such as Önnerfors and DiTommaso have hinted at such awareness by positing close connections between alphabetical dream books and

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lunaries.48 Makers of descriptive catalogues likewise observed a close connection between ‘Lunationes [lunaries] et Somnia [alphabetical dream books], a pair of treatises on prognostication which appear together in a variety of shapes, both in Latin and in other languages’.49 Aside from the fact that such claims leave out of consideration the other forms of oneiromancy known in the Latin West, the main problem is that they might say more about our conception of dream divination than about that of the original scribes. I know from personal experience that those who study dream divination tend to overestimate the incidence of connections between the various types of dream divination in manuscripts based on what should probably be regarded as exceptional cases. Contrary to the regularity with which alphabetical dream books and lunaries ‘appear as one text in the same manuscript’, in the words of DiTommaso,50 for instance, the actual number of these combined alphabetical dream books and lunaries can be counted on two hands. Similarly, the proportion of manuscripts in which alphabetical dream books are directly followed or preceded by lunaries is much smaller than the 25 per cent posited by DiTommaso:51 out of 191 manuscripts containing alphabetical dream books, 106 feature no other forms of dream divination or lunary whatsoever, and only twenty-seven feature sequences of alphabetical dream books and oneiromantic lunaries. There are of course more than twenty-seven manuscripts that contain alphabetical dream books and oneiromantic lunaries, but in these books, the dream books and lunaries are separated by other texts. To put matters in perspective: 357 out of 489 manuscripts under discussion contain only one oneiromantic text or a single lunary, eighty-one manuscripts feature more than one form of dream divination, four manuscripts feature one non-lunar form of oneiromancy and one or more non-oneiromantic lunaries, and a further forty-seven manuscripts contain more than one lunary but no (other) forms of dream divination. Granted that the overall manuscript context may be unrelated (e.g., the Somniale Danielis in the juristic manuscript Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Vitt. Em. 1511),52 oneiromantic texts can sometimes be related to their immediate contexts according to subject matter, purpose and structure.53 Some oneiromantic texts are found in the subject-related context of dream theory. The alphabetical dream book in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Class. 84, for instance, is preceded by William of Aragon’s Liber de pronosticationibus somniorum; the

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dream lunary in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, B VII 4 is followed by a treatise on the origins of dreams; and the alphabetical dream book in Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Donaueschingen 793 is preceded by Rhazes’s Liber ad Almansorem. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1880 contains an alphabetical dream book copied by the physician Ulrich Ellenbog (c. 1435–99), who immediately after the Somniale Danielis compiled a dream theoretical treatise in which he denied that dreams have any predictive value other than for medical purposes.54 A final example is Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 4o Cod 180, an early modern composite miscellany entitled sompniarium, with manuscript booklets, incunables and post-incunables on dream theory and dream divination. Contrary to expectations, however, dream theory is not a highly productive context for dream divination in manuscripts and incunables, except in post-incunables, as has already been observed. Oneiromantic texts are also encountered in the purpose-related context of divination at large. The alphabetical dream book in Cambridge, University Library, Gg.1.1, for example, is preceded by a Revelatio Esdrae, hemerological texts (such as Egyptian Days and Dog Days) and a brontology. These three types of divination, particularly the Revelatio Esdrae, are attested with some frequency in manuscripts containing dream divination and lunaries. In addition to prognostications such as the Revelatio Esdrae, hemerologies and brontologies, divination in general is a highly productive textual environment for dream divination.55 London, BL, Harley 2558, for instance, has a sequence of a Revelatio Esdrae, a sunshine prognostic, a collective lunary, two hemerologies, a birth prognostic, a mantic alphabet and an alphabetical dream book. AngloSaxon manuscripts such as London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, Cotton Titus D. xxvi + xxvii, and Oxford, Bodl. Library, Hatton 115 are similarly known for their extensive clusters of mantic texts, including several forms of oneiromancy. Oneiromantic texts are encountered, finally, in the context of comparable types of divination in terms of structure. Mantic alphabets, for instance, may occur alongside other texts dealing with lot casting. Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 312 contains a collection of lot books by Konrad Bollstatter (1420s–1482/1483) with a mantic alphabet. Augsburg, Staats- und Stadtbibliothek, 2o Cod 25 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 1367 have sequences of dice sortilege and mantic alphabets. Similarly, oneiromantic lunaries may co-occur with non-oneiromantic lunaries, as in

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Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. Phillipps 1790, Copenhagen, Kongelige Bibliotek, AM 194 8vo, Erlangen, Universitätsbibliothek Erlangen-Nürnberg, Ms. 674 and many more manuscripts. Lunaries are also attested together with the mansions of the moon and zodiacal lunaries. The collective lunary in Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, K 2790, for instance, is found alongside the mansions of the moon of Johannes Hartlieb (c. 1400–68), and the collective lunary in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. lat. oct. 93 is followed by a zodiacal lunary. The preceding contextual analysis demonstrates that the various forms of dream divination frequently co-occur with non-­ oneiromantic texts, yet the tendency for oneiromantic texts to be transmitted together precisely because of their oneiromantic nature is surprisingly low. In fact, single oneiromantic texts tend to cluster significantly more frequently with other mantic texts than with other oneiromantic texts. Of eighty-one manuscripts featuring more than one oneiromantic text, only fifty-nine have these texts in sequence (approximately 12 per cent of the total number of manuscripts under discussion). This modest number of sequential attestations suggests that there was no widespread awareness among medieval scribes that different forms of oneiromancy might fit together; or if there was such awareness, scribes did not usually act on it. This observation may sound gratuitous, but the first printed dream divination manuals (between 1475 and 1500), for instance, rarely included alphabetical dream books only. The alphabetical dream books printed in incunables usually did not quite fill a quire of six, eight or ten folios, and the remaining space was almost invariably used for oneiromantic lunaries at the start of the volume, for mantic alphabets at the end, or for a sequence of all three forms of dream divination. The printers of such volumes must have realised that these texts had an oneiromantic purpose in common, despite the differences in structure and modus operandi of the individual types of dream divination. Early printers seem to have been aware, in other words, that all three forms of divination deal with dreams. The same cannot be said for scribes. The first manuscripts to have sequences of dream divination are the eleventh-century London, BL, Cotton Tiberius A. iii and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 567, which is comparatively late in relation to the early attestation of lunary clusters in the ninthcentury manuscripts London, BL, Harley 3017 and St Gallen,

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Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 751. The first oneiromantic sequences are of course limited to combinations of oneiromantic lunaries and alphabetical dream books, the only forms of dream divination available at the time. The emergence of mantic alphabets in the twelfth century did not mean, however, that this text type was immediately associated with existing forms of dream divination, witness the twelfth-century London, British Library, Royal 12. C. xii, in which a mantic alphabet is separated from a sequence of a collective lunary and a Somniale Danielis by over seventy folios. It would take another century for clusters of alphabetical dream books, oneiromantic lunaries and mantic alphabets to appear, for instance, in the thirteenth-century London, BL, Cotton Cleopatra B. ix, the fourteenth-century London, BL, Additional 15236, and the fifteenth-century Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 75.3 Aug. 2o. Manuscript sequences of three forms of dream divination, though, are highly exceptional, and sequences of either alphabetical dream books and oneiromantic lunaries (e.g., Aberystwyth, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, Llanstephan 28 and Budapest, Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Cod. lat. 59) or alphabetical dream books and mantic alphabets are somewhat more common (e.g., Melk, Benediktinerstift, Cod. 728 and Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, M. IV. 11). Oneiromantic lunaries and mantic alphabets, on the other hand, never go together without an alphabetical dream book as an ­intermediary (which is also the case in early printed books). Other sequences are first attested with the advent of thematic dream books. London, BL, Harley 4025, for instance, features Pascalis Romanus’s Liber thesauri occulti alongside the oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ott. lat. 1870 has the Liber thesauri occulti and an alphabetical dream book. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Ms. lat. qu. 70 and Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, T 81 sup., finally, have sequences of alphabetical dream books, collective lunaries and the Oneirocriticon of Achmet. The preference for specifically dream books in these manuscripts seems to indicate that the connections between different Oneirocritica were clearer than between thematic dream books and other forms of oneiromancy. Yet these sequences of dream books, too, are exceptional, and the four manuscripts cannot be advanced as evidence for widespread awareness of what connects oneiromantic texts. Rather, they demonstrate that such awareness seems to reside in the ad hoc decisions of individual scribes.

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The exceptions that prove the rule, therefore, must be sought in the practices of individual scribes, not in a broadly carried oneiric awareness. Folios 41r–136v of Oxford, Bodl., Digby 103, for instance, form a booklet composed by a twelfth-century, English scribe, and contain a sequence of the Liber thesauri occulti, the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, and three dream theoretical works by Aristotle.56 The booklet brings together some of the newest insights in dream divination and dream theory that had only just become available in the course of the twelfth century. Another noteworthy example is the fifteenth-century Italian manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. 859. The sixty-one folios of this manuscript are entirely devoted to dream divination, and to a lesser extent to dream theory. The main contents are the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin, an alphabetical dream book, two mantic alphabets and two more alphabetical dream books. In between these oneiromantic texts are notes on Macrobius’s categories of dreams, excerpts of biblical passages relating to dreams, and excerpts on dream theory from Michael Scotus’s Liber introductorius, Haly Abenragel’s Libri de iudiciis astrorum and Gregory the Great’s Dialogi. The scribes of Digby 103 and Ricc. 859 must have made a conscious effort to collect oneiromantic and dream theoretical materials and copy them together, an effort that is rarely in evidence before the sixteenth-century printed dream divination manuals. The scribe of Ricc. 859 can even be attributed a critical approach to his work, because in copying the second mantic alphabet on the same page as the first one, he commented: ‘aliter’ (‘another one’), and later added ‘ista est melior’ (‘this one is better’) (see Figure 1.1). Another scribe who consciously collected oneiromantic texts is Gallus Kemli (1417–1480/81), monk at St Gallen and sometime friar who copied many theological manuscripts. Kemli wrote a mantic alphabet in St Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 692 and several oneiromantic texts in Zürich, Zentralbibliothek, C. 101. The latter manuscript shows a scribe who was keenly aware of the oneiric contents of his texts. Kemli copied a mantic alphabet on folio 149r, then some non-mantic texts, and then a sequence of an alphabetical dream book and a dream lunary on folios 158v–161v. All three oneiromantic texts are entitled Sompnile (‘dream interpretations’): the mantic alphabet is a Sompnile Ioseph, the alphabetical dream book a Sompnile Danielis, and the dream lunary a Sompnile Lunare. By calling these texts Sompnile, Kemli showed that he was aware that all three texts were oneiromantic,

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Figure 1. 1  Two mantic alphabets, the second an improved version copied by the same scribe

but I found an even clearer indication of his discernment in that he returned to the texts at a later point in time and connected the mantic alphabet to the alphabetical dream book by a set of cross references on folios 149r (see Figure 1.2) and 161r. To the right of the mantic alphabet he wrote: ‘item Sompnile Danielis require xo folio post vel numero’ (‘also look for the Sompnile Danielis on the tenth folio hereafter or thereabouts’), and at the end of the alphabetical dream book: ‘Sompnile Ioseph require xo folio ante vel numero’ (‘look for the Sompnile Ioseph on the tenth folio before or thereabouts’). If indubitable proof is required of oneiric awareness among medieval scribes, then the cross references by Gallus Kemli may serve as a locus classicus. Kemli, however, is an exception, as are the scribes of Digby 103 and Ricc. 859. Conclusion Whereas previous research has either limited itself to specific forms of dream divination, such as the oneiromantic Daniel apocrypha, thematic dream books or mantic alphabets, or to medieval or early modern textual transmission, this chapter has charted the ­development of dream divination comprehensively with the help

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Figure 1.2  Cross reference on a page with a mantic alphabet to an alphabetical dream book further on in the same manuscript

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of the most extensive corpus of oneiromantic texts in manuscripts and early printed books to date. This broad approach has brought to light significant changes in the transmission of dream divination and has sought to contextualise some of the claims posited by scholars who based themselves on smaller data sets. The large numbers of surviving texts from West European sources from the ninth century onwards suggest that dream divination was a major concern in medieval and early modern culture, which is borne out by the steadily rising number of text witnesses towards the late medieval period, and the rapid adoption of dream divination by printers in the late fifteenth century. While new forms of oneiromancy were introduced in the twelfth century, not all proved equally successful from the start: mantic alphabets commanded a reasonable amount of attention, but Pascalis Romanus’s Liber thesauri occulti and the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin were overshadowed by alphabetical dream books and oneiromantic lunaries, the traditional forms of dream divination. Textual transmission in post-incunables, however, signals great changes in that the older forms of dream divination were rapidly being pushed out of the market by the newly introduced oneirocriticon of Artemidorus and printed editions of the Oneirocriticon of Achmet. At the same time, the religious censorship of oneiromantic texts in late medieval manuscripts is testimony to growing discontent with the traditional medieval forms of dream divination. It stands to reason to conclude, therefore, that humanist interest in Greek oneirocritica and religious denunciation of revelations and divination converged in the early sixteenth century to displace the older forms of oneiromancy that had proved highly successful before. Medieval oneiromancy, in other words, changed from being a scientific discipline to an idolatrous pseudo-science. Perceived patterns in the textual transmission of oneiromancy led modern scholars to make claims about the oneiric awareness of medieval scribes. It has been argued, for instance, that a sizeable proportion of oneiromantic texts appear in direct sequence, which would seem to hold for alphabetical dream books and lunaries in particular. Though it is true that alphabetical dream books and lunaries sometimes co-occur or appear as a single text, a detailed examination of the surviving text witnesses does not support the idea that there was any widespread awareness among medieval scribes of the shared properties of the various forms of dream divination. Three quarters of the 489 manuscripts under discussion contain just one oneiromantic text or a single lunary,

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and only about 17 per cent feature more than one oneiromantic text. An analysis of these manuscripts illustrates that oneiromantic texts may co-occur with dream theoretical works and other types of divination but that the collocation of oneiromantic texts has been overstated in modern scholarship. The analysis also shows that there is no reason to assume a growing awareness on the part of medieval scribes that oneiromantic texts belong together, in contrast to the clear manifestation of such awareness on the part of early printers. In fact, the evidence that could be advanced, such as the joining of lunaries and alphabetical dream books into single texts, or the clustering of alphabetical dream books, oneiromantic lunaries and mantic alphabets, is attested in very few manuscripts. Much as we might like to find a growing oneiric awareness in the course of the medieval period, there is no increase or development whatsoever until the age of print. That said, there are a few cases in which oneiromantic and dream theoretical texts were collected in single volumes by scribes who has a manifest oneiric agenda. There is also the instance of Gallus Kemli, the scribe who returned to his oneiromantic texts to make sure other readers understood that the texts were all dream divination of some kind even though they did not appear in sequence. Such discernment, however, is the accomplishment of individual scribes, not the result of larger historical developments. Notes   1 The present investigation was made possible through a visiting fellowship at the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, and a postdoctoral research fellowship from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research. The chapter benefited from feedback on papers delivered at the Medieval Research Seminar at Queen’s University Belfast in 2011, and at the 46th and 47th International Congresses on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, in 2011 and 2012. I would like to thank Valerio Cappozzo and Marilina Cesario for identifying several hard to find texts, Nikola Chardonnens and Dimitri Drettas for their help and expertise in matters relating to Chinese dream prognostics books, and Hans Kienhorst and Ad Poirters for their assistance in deciphering the crabbed writing of Gallus Kemli.  2 A. Önnerfors, ‘Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte des sogenannten Somniale Danielis’, Eranos, 58 (1960), 142–58 (151).  3 L. DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel and the Apocryphal Daniel Literature (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 232, 270.

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 4 A complete handlist of the text corpus under discussion is available on my Academia page: www.academia.edu/29720263/Handlist_of_Dream_ Divination_and_Lunar_Prognostication_in_Western_Manuscripts_ and_Early_Printed_Books_up_to_1550 (accessed 22 November 2017).  5 Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press, www.oed. com, s.v. ‘dream, n2’.  6 S. Freud, Die Traumdeutung (Vienna: Franz Deuticke, 1900).  7 S. F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 2. For the background to medieval dream theory I have relied on Kruger, Dreaming. In addition to the many sources referred to in the notes below, key studies on dreams and dream divination are D. Boccassini (ed.), Sogni e visioni nel mondo indo-­ mediterraneo (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009); T. Gregory (ed.), I sogni nel medioevo (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985); D. Harmening, Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin: E. Schmidt 1979), pp. 95–117; T. Ricklin, Der Traum der Philosophie im 12. Jahrhundert: Traumtheorien zwischen Constantinus Africanus und Aristoteles (Leiden: Brill, 1998); D. Schulman and G. G. Stroumsa (eds), Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); K. Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher des Mittelalters’, in N. F. Palmer and K. Speckenbach (eds), Träume und Kräuter: Studien zur Petroneller ‘Circa instans’-Handschrift und zu den deutschen Traumbüchern des Mittelalters (Cologne: Böhlau, 1990), pp. 121–210; L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–58), II, pp. 290–302, VI, pp. 475–85; M. E. Wittmer-Butsch, Zur Bedeutung von Schlaf und Traum im Mittelalter (Krems: Medium Aevum Quotidianum, 1990).  8 Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis, I.iii.2, in F. Eyssenhardt (ed.), Macrobius (Leipzig: Teubner, 1868), p. 473.  9 Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. W. H. Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), pp. 87–8. 10 Macrobius, Commentarii, I.iii.8, in Eyssenhardt (ed.), Macrobius, p. 475; Macrobius, Commentary, trans. Stahl, p. 90. 11 Kruger, Dreaming, p. 31. 12 Jacques le Goff, ‘Le Christianisme et les rêves (IIe–VIIe siècles)’, in Gregory (ed.), I sogni nel medioevo, pp. 171–218 (pp. 216–18), provides an overview of Old Testament dreams and dreamers. 13 See Kruger, Dreaming, pp. 70–3. 14 See Kruger, Dreaming, pp. 83–4. 15 For a modern religious denunciation, see the lunary in Metz, Médiathèque du Pontiffroy, MS 221, described in the catalogue as ‘nullus christianus ista credat’ (Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques des départements, first series, 7 vols (Paris,

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1849–85), V, p. 97). For studies of religious censorship of dream divination, see L. S. Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in medieval Western manuscripts and early printed books’, Modern Philology, 110 (2013), 340–66 (355–8); L. S. Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England, early modern Europe, and modern America: the reception and afterlife of a medieval form of dream divination’, Anglia, 132 (2014), 641–75; Önnerfors, ‘Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte’, 151. 16 I exclude minor references to dreams in a small number of lot books and the use of dreams as diagnostic tools in medicine. The former is known mainly from late medieval German sources, such as the Alfadol; the latter can be found in Rhazes’s Liber ad Almansorem and its late medieval vernacularisations. See G. Hoffmeister, ‘Rasis’ Traumlehre: Traumbücher des Spätmittelalters’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 51 (1969), 137–59; K. Speckenbach, ‘Traumbücher’, in W. Stammler, K. Langosch, B. Wachinger, G. Keil, K. Ruh, W. Schröder and F. J. Worstbrock (eds), Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd rev. edn, 14 vols (Berlin: de Gruyter, ­1978–2008), IX, pp. 1014–28 (pp. 1025–8); Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher’, pp. 169–93; K. Speckenbach ‘Traumbücher’, in W. E. Gerabek, B. D. Haage, G. Keil and W. Wegner (eds), Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), pp. 1411–15. 17 Key studies of alphabetical dream books: L. S. Chardonnens, AngloSaxon Prognostics, 900–1100: Study and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 290–329; DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, pp. 236–59; A. Epe, Wissensliteratur im angelsächsischen England: Das Fachschrifttum der vergessenen artes mechanicae und artes magicae, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung des Somniale Danielis (Münster: Tebbert, 1995); S. R. Fischer, The Complete Medieval Dreambook: A Multilingual, Alphabetical Somnia Danielis Collation (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982); M. Förster, ‘Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Volkskunde II, IV, V, IX’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 120 (1908), 296–305, 125 (1910), 39–70, 127 (1911), 31–84, 134 (1916), 264–93; M. Förster, ‘Das älteste kymrische Traumbuch (um 1350)’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 13 (1921), 55–92; J. Grub, Das lateinische Traumbuch im Codex Upsaliensis C 664 (9. Jh.): Eine frühmittelalterliche Fassung der lateinischen Somniale DanielisTradition (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984); L. T. Martin, ‘The earliest versions of the Latin Somniale Danielis’, Manuscripta, 23 (1979), 131–41; L. T. Martin, Somniale Danielis: An Edition of a Medieval Latin Dream Interpretation Handbook (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1981); Önnerfors, ‘Zur Überleferungsgeschichte’; Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher’, pp. 128–51. 18 On the Byzantine Oneirocriticon of Daniel, see S. M. Oberhelman, Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with

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Commentary and Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 2–5, 59–115. 19 See DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, pp. 231–307. 20 Zurich, Zentralbibliothek, C. 101, fols 158v–161r (159r). 21 Oxford, All Souls College, MS 81 and Bad Windsheim (Historische) Stadtbibliothek, MS 99, respectively. 22 Key studies of the Liber thesauri occulti: S. Collin-Roset, ‘Le Liber thesauri occulti de Pascalis Romanus (un traité d’interprétation des songes du xiie siècle)’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen age, 30 (1963), 111–98; S. Collin-Roset, ‘L’Emploi des clefs des songes dans la littérature médiévale’, Bulletin philologique et historique (jusqu’à 1610), 1967 (1969), 851–66; Ricklin, Der Traum, pp. 307–9. 23 See W. Schmitt, ‘Das Traumbuch des Hans Lobenzweig’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 48 (1966), 181–218. 24 Key studies of the Oneirocriticon of Achmet ben Sirin: F. Berriot, Exposicions et significacions des songes et Les songes Daniel (Geneva: Droz, 1989), J. C. Lamoreaux, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002), pp. 140–54, M. Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and its Arabic Sources (Leiden: Brill, 2002); S. M. Oberhelman, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 1991), A. C. Pistoja, ‘The Oneirocriticon of Achmet in the West: a contribution towards an edition of Leo Tuscus’ translation’, Studi Medievali, 55 (2014), 720–58. 25 Key studies of the Oneirocriticon of Artemidorus: J. du Bouchet and C. Chandezon (eds), Études sur Artémidore et l’interprétation des rêves (Paris: Presses Universitaire de Paris Ouest, 2012), D. E. HarrisMcCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); P. C. Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity: Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 77–91. 26 Key studies of lunaries: Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 393–465; M. Förster, ‘Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Volkskunde VIII’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 129 (1912), 16–49; M. Förster, ‘Die altenglischen Traumlunare’, Englische Studien, 60 (1925/1926), 58–93; M. Förster, ‘Vom Fortleben antiker Sammellunare im englischen und in anderen Sprachen’, Anglia, 67/68 (1944), 1–171; L. Means, Medieval Lunar Astrology: A Collection of Representative Middle English Texts (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen, 1993); Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher’, pp. 152–8; E. Svenberg, De latinska lunaria: Text och studier (Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1936); E. Svenberg, Lunaria et zodiologia latina (Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1963); I. Taavitsainen, Middle English

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Lunaries: A Study of the Genre (Helsinki: Societé Néophilologique, 1988); C. Weißer, Studien zum mittelalterlichen Krankheitslunar: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte laienastrologischer Fachprosa (Hannover: Wellm, 1982); E. Wistrand, Lunariastudien (Gothenburg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag, 1942). 27 Förster, ‘Vom Fortleben antiker Sammellunare’, 34–5. See, e.g., P. A. Torijano, ‘The Selenodromion of David and Solomon’, in R. Bauckham, J. R. Davila and A. Panayotov (eds), Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures I (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2013), pp. 298–304. 28 See DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, pp. 259–79. 29 Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, Codex 321(647), p. 21. 30 Key studies of mantic alphabets: L. S. Chardonnens, ‘Two newly discovered mantic dream alphabets in medieval French’, Medium Ævum, 80 (2011), 111–16; Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in medieval Western manuscripts and early printed books’; L. S. Chardonnens, ‘“Thes byne the knoyng off dremys”: mantic alphabets in late medieval English’, Anglia, 132 (2014), 473–505; Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England’; M. Förster, ‘Zwei kymrische Orakelalphabete für Psalterwahrsagung’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 20 (1936), 228–43; Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher’, pp. 161–9; W. Suchier, ‘Altfranzösische Traumbücher’, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, 67 (1957), 129–67. 31 Förster, ‘Zwei kymrische Orakelalphabete’, 228–9. 32 See Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 175–80; and L. S. Chardonnens, ‘The Old English alphabet prognostic as a prototype for mantic alphabets’, in L. S. Chardonnens and B. Carella (eds), Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 223–37. 33 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 7349, fol. 45va. 34 For example, Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Voss. Lat. O. 52; London, Wellcome Library, MS 439; Oxford, Bodl., Junius 43 and 44. 35 For convenience, I include as fifteenth-century printed books all incunables in Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz (www.gesamtkatalogderwiegendrucke.de), even though some of these books are now thought to postdate 1500. On the early print history of dream divination, see also Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England’, 659–64. 36 See, e.g., Guo Chao 郭超, Jiemeng shiyong shouce 解梦使用手册 [Practical Dream Interpretation Handbook] (Beijing, 2005). See also J. P. Drège and D. Drettas, ‘Oniromancie’, in M. Kalinowski (ed.), Divination et société dans la Chine médiévale: Étude des manuscrits de Dunhuang de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et de la British Library (Paris: Bibliothèque National de France, 2003), pp. 369–404.

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37 A lost, thirteenth-century translation into Dutch is posited by F. van Oostrom, ‘Sompniarys: Maerlants dromen geduid?’, in H. van Dijk, M. H. Schenkeveld-van der Dussen and J. M. J. Sicking (eds), In de zevende hemel: Opstellen voor P. E. L. Verkuyl over literatuur en kosmos (Groningen: Passage, 1993), pp. 63–7. 38 For example, Eyn newes Traum Büchlein (Strasbourg: Jakob Cammerlander, [c. 1535]), Interpretationes Somniorum Danielis (Kraków: Marek Szarfenberg, 1550). 39 Published by C. Morellus, Lutetia (= Paris), 1603. 40 See K. Bulkeley, Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History (New York: New York University Press, 2008), pp. 167–91; Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England’, 649–58; C. Gantet, Der Traum in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ansätze zu einer kulturellen Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 55–107; C. Gantet, ‘Dreams, standards of knowledge and “orthodoxy” in Germany in the sixteenth century’, in R. C. Head and D. Christensen (eds), Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies in Early Modern German Culture: Order and Creativity 1500–1750 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 69–87; P. Holland, ‘“The interpretation of dreams” in the Renaissance’, in P. Brown (ed.), Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 125–46; Speckenbach, ‘Die deutschen Traumbücher’, pp. 194–210; K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England (London: Penguin, 1971), pp. 25–77. 41 See Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England’, 659–64. 42 London: Robert Wyer, [1556]. 43 London: Thomas Marsh, 1576. 44 London: Richard Faques, [c. 1528]. 45 London, Robert Wyer, [c. 1554]. 46 See Chardonnens, ‘Mantic alphabets in late medieval England’, 664–70. 47 Paris: Nicolas Buffet, 1545. 48 See Önnerfors, ‘Zur Überlieferungsgeschichte’, 151; DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, p. 270. 49 G. F. Warner and J. P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Collections, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), II, p. 28 (with regard to the texts in London, BL, Royal 12. C. xii). 50 DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, p. 232. 51 DiTommaso, The Book of Daniel, p. 276. 52 See M. Semeraro, Il “Libro dei sogni di Daniele”: Storia di un testo “proibito” nel medioevo (Rome: Viella, 2002), pp. 31–6. 53 A marginal but not altogether unrelated context is that of dream divination alongside literary works that feature dreams or dream

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visions, for instance, poems of Dante and Boccaccio alongside alphabetical dream books in Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Martelli 12 and Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ross. 947, respectively. See V. Cappozzo, ‘Libri dei sogni e geomanzia: la loro applicazione letteraria tra Islam, medioevo romanzo e Dante’, in Boccassini (ed.), Sogni e visioni, pp. 207–26; V. Cappozzo, ‘Libri dei sogni e letteratura: l’espediente narrativo di Dante Alighieri’, in G. Natali and P. Stoppelli (eds), Studi di letteratura italiana in memoria di Achille Tartaro (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), pp. 99–119; V. Cappozzo, ‘Il Decameron e il Libro dei sogni di Daniele nel cod. Vaticano Rossiano 947’, Studi sul Boccaccio, 42 (2014), 163–78. See also Collin-Roset, ‘L’Emploi des clefs des songes’; S. R. Fischer, The Dream in the Middle High German Epic: Introduction to the Study of the Dream as a Literary Device to the Younger Contemporaries of Gottfried and Wolfram (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1978); S. R. Fischer, ‘Dreambooks and the interpretation of medieval literary dreams’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 65 (1983), 1–20; G. Haag, Traum und Traumdeutung in mittelhochdeutscher Literatur: Theoretische Grundlagen und Fallstudien (Stuttgart: de Gruyter, 2003). 54 See Martin, Somniale Danielis, pp. 48–50. 55 See Means, Medieval Lunar Astrology, pp. 56–60; Taavitsainen, Middle English Lunaries, pp. 51–8. 56 See Ricklin, Der Traum, pp. 307–22, for an analysis of the contents of Digby 103.

2 Knowledge of the weather in the Middle Ages: Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri1 Marilina Cesario

In the Middle Ages extreme weather events, such as heavy rain and snowfalls, showers of hail, heat waves, droughts, floods and unseasonably warm or cold temperatures, would have had catastrophic effects on many areas of society, chiefly on farming, seafaring, health and commerce. Environmental knowledge and weather forecasting based on the observation of the behaviour of the current weather and season, and of meteorological phenomena, was of paramount importance to those societies whose economic fortunes were heavily dependent on agriculture and livestock farming. Weather forecasts, which required knowledge of the related topics of astronomy and the reckoning of time, would therefore advise farmers on the most propitious times to plant and on those when it would not be advisable to begin their operations, especially when rains and winds were threatening, which could bring their toils to naught. References to meteorological prediction and information about the seasons frequently appear in calendars, and more detailed descriptions of disastrous weather events and their harmful impact upon growing crops, houses, animals and people consistently feature in medieval annals and chronicles. A typical example is the following entry in the Annals of Fulda where we learn that in 872: Omne tempus aestivum grandinibus variisque tempestatibus pernoxium extitit; nam grando plurima loca frugibus devastavit; ­horrenda etiam tonitrua et fulmina pene cotidie mortalibus interitum minabantur, quorum ictibus praevalidis homines et iumenta in diversis locis exanimata et in cinerem redacta narrantur. (The whole summer was ruined by hailstorms and other kinds of tempest. The hail destroyed the crops in many places, and terrifying thunder and lightning threatened mortals almost daily with death: it is said that immense bolts killed men and draught animals in various places and reduced them to ashes).2

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Some meteorological phenomena, chiefly winds, thunder and lightning were often associated with fears of divine action and therefore endowed with prophetic significance. The chronicler’s effort to confer a portentous function to anomalous weather occurrences and connect them to terrestrial happenings is evinced in the annal for the year 857 (Annals of Fulda) where the ‘terribilem valde tempestatem’ (‘exceedingly terrible storm’) and ‘fulmen inorme ignei draconis’ (‘powerful lightning-bolt like a fiery dragon’), which killed three holy men and badly injured another six at Cologne and Trier, are described as prodigia (marvels, portents).3 Timothy Reuter argues that those strange prodigia were taken as signs foretelling the depositions of Archbishops Gunther and Theotgaud, which would follow in the year 863.4 The chroniclers’ effort to interpret the weather and their readiness to bring a particular political or historical event into suggestive relation with the appearance of a sign in the sky, may have been encouraged by the proliferation of prognostic texts, particularly from the eleventh century onwards, based on the observation of meteorological phenomena. As Trevor Dean observes, ‘chronicles were thus in part looking to the future: they shared in a wider desire for foreknowledge’.5 Meteorological prognostics were more than a guide to the earth’s changing seasons; they were firmly connected to the economy of a country, and could be consulted as a guide to the nation’s or an individual’s prospects.6 The most popular of all prognosticatory texts, which survives in hundreds of copies in several languages, transmitted continuously between the eighth and the sixteenth centuries, and known as the Revelatio Esdrae, offers forecasts of the weather for the year to come and then extends its predictions to the field of human affairs.7 The Revelatio appears prominently in computus manuscripts alongside medical and scientific works and in conjunction with other meteorological texts, which may include prognostication by the wind and sun during the twelve nights/days of Christmas, thunder prognostication according to the months of the year, the days of the week and the cardinal points. A book of the weather: a case study of MS Landesbibliothek und Murdardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, med. 40 8 (s. xv) It may be challenging for readers today to appreciate fully medieval approaches to weather forecasting, so accustomed are we to thinking of weather predictions in relation to weather apps,

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c­ omputer-based models, weather stations and satellites, and meteorological radars, which offer information on local precipitation and intensity. As Paul E. Dutton posits: ‘Weather’ is properly historical and stubbornly subjective, since it involves humans in time thinking about it and how it affects their lives. By reversing the process, we can, by studying their ‘weather’, also study them, their preoccupations, economic and social concerns, and cosmological and religious ideas. To study the weather is to study the human.8

So, what can be learned from medieval weather reports? Can a study of the weather offer a glimpse into monastic psychology, how medieval people looked up to those types of texts, their relationship with time, the cosmos and the body and their preoccupations with health? Moreover, do we get any information about the political, social and economic conditions of the country in which a given text may have been copied? And finally, how were those texts read and used? The fifteenth-century medical manuscript Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murdardsche Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel, med. 40 8 (henceforth K) from Germany is used here as a case study in an attempt to answer those questions. K includes an intriguing collection of seven short meteorological treatises copied by the same hand as part of an independent section, which, I believe, exemplifies some of the knowledge about weather forecasting that would have been available to medieval ‘meteorologists’. The first folios of the manuscript, which are heavily annotated, contain a medico-botanical synonym list (synonyma apothecariorum, fols 1r–32r),9 followed by a medical poem Carmen de urinibus by the French physician Aegidius Corboliensis (fols 32v–37v), medical recipes and various tracts by Hippocrates and Galen (fols 30r–94r). Easter tables (‘tabula Dionysii’, ‘tabula Friugonis’ and ‘tabula indicationis’) follow on fols 94v–106r, and a text on ‘omnis materia medicinalis’ (‘all medical matters’) takes over on fol. 106r. The meteorological section begins on fol. 107r, where at the top of the page the scribe added the title Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri (‘A little book on the disposition of the entire year to come’), which comprises the following prognostications: Revelatio Esdrae or weather predictions for the year to come (I); ‘On the disposition of the year according to the sound of the thunder during the Octave of the Nativity’ (II); ‘On the disposition of the year according to the winds’ (III); ‘On the disposition of the year according to fair weather during the twelve days’ (IV); ‘On

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the disposition of the year according to the months during which thunder is heard’ (V); a rare text where salt is used to predict rain (VI); and ‘How they predict the nature of the year from the night of the Circumcision of Christ’ (VII). The manuscript ends with more recepta varia (fols 107v–108r) added by a different hand.10 All items on fol. 107rv, with the exception of the salt calendar (VI), to which I shall return later, fit into the typical if … then (protasis … apodosis) structure that defines most prognostic texts in which natural phenomena are observed as indications of future events. The title at the top of the folio, Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri, gives readers a clear indication that the meteorological treatises that make up the collection offer predictions for the year to come, a far cry from our too familiar day-to-day or five-day weather forecasts.11 Furthermore, they display broadly similar features and are placed within a temporal framework (dies circumcisionis domini I, II and VI; xii. noctibus in natali domini III, IV; menses V, VI), and are easy to read and comprehend, a feature assisted by the use of punctuation that separates the predictions (punctus), and repetitive, simple language. The main questions they attempt to answer are also essentially the same; e.g., what will the weather be like? Who will die this year? Will livestock thrive? The kalendologion12 (I) contains a typical incipit that ascribes the text to Esdras the prophet, ‘Hec presagia dedit dominus esdre phophete’ (‘These are the prophecies that the Lord gave to Esdras the prophet’),13 and gives long-term predictions from the day of the week on which the dies circumcisionis domini falls. It begins the day with a section including acts of nature, such as pluuia (‘rains’) and siccitas (‘drought’) for hyem (‘winter’), ver (‘spring’) and estas (‘summer’), and what may be related to the weather, including naues peribunt (‘danger to ships’), terremotus (‘earthquake’) and incendia (‘fire’). Given the damage unseasonable weather could cause to agriculture, it is unsurprising that most predictions are concerned with food production or lack of it (fructus ortorum ‘fruits from the garden’, messes ‘crops’, annone ‘produce’, triticum ‘wheat’, frumentum ‘corn’, lini ‘flax’, pomi ‘fruit trees’, oleum ‘oil’, fames ‘famine’, glandes ‘acorn’ in IV) and livestock farming (oues ‘sheep’, boues ‘cows’, apes ‘bees’, porci ‘pigs’, pecude ‘cattle’ in VII; and vituli equorum ‘horses’ foals’ in IV). Not only do changes in weather lead to environmental disturbances, but are also intimately interconnected to diseases, the ones mentioned being ‘magna pestilencia’ (‘great plagues’), ‘ventris praecordiorum dissoluciones’

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(­‘weakness of the stomach and of the intestines’) and ‘dolor oculorum’ (‘­eye-pain’) (in I).14 The second section of the Revelatio is typically concerned with more terrestrial and mundane activities, including deaths and political and military matters: bella (‘wars’), pax (‘peace’) among the people, mutaciones principum (‘changes of regime’), death of kings and princes. The other categories affected may comprise viri (‘men’), mulieres (‘women’), mulieres grauide (‘pregnant women’), iuuenes (‘young people’), paruuli (‘children’), senes (‘elderly men’), turpes homini (‘dishonourable men’), mercatores (‘merchants’), prophete (‘prophets’). Notwithstanding a couple of uncommon predictions, one which displays an interest in eastern affairs ‘pugne erunt in oriente’ (‘there will be battles in the east’) and an allusion to ‘prophete multi egredientur futuri’ (‘many future prophets will come forth’), the latter closing the prognostication, most prophecies in I do conform to those found in other texts, although no two surviving versions of a kalendologion are identical. It can therefore be argued that scribes developed a blueprint for these prognostications, which allowed their standard shape to be fixed through the centuries, and as a result most prophecies are universal and could indeed apply to any country and historical period. However, one cannot deny that meteorological prognostics, which were customarily written, circulated and received in connection with each other, were subject to individual variations and embellishments. At times particular scribes adapted their sources for the readers among whom a text was to circulate, and attention to apparently insignificant differences in the main text may throw light on what may have been of appeal to a particular country. A case in point may be afforded by the prophecy for the month of August in K (thunder prognostication V), which foretells ‘prospera rei publice egrotare multos et precipue sutores significat’ (‘prosperity of the state and many will be sick, and especially shoemakers’). The reference to sutores, which, as far as I am aware, is unique to the version in K, might point to the monopoly position of shoemakers in medieval Germany, which increased after the Great Plague of 1349.15 The interpolation of sutores in a fifteenth-century copy produced in Germany might be a deliberate attempt on the scribe’s part to make the text relevant to its readers. There is in fact no mention of ‘shoemakers’ in the earlier versions of the prognostication in the Old English London, BL, MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv, fol. 103v (s. xii) and in the Latin London, BL, MS Egerton 2852, fol. 107v (s. xiv) of which V is nearly an exact copy.16

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Certain other additions may point to the country in which a given text may have been produced, as might be the case in the Old English prognostication by the sun in Oxford, Bodl. MS Hatton 115, fols 149v–150r, where the English are the main addressees of the prophecy: ‘Gyf þy æfteran dæg sunne scyneþ. þonne byð on ængel cynne gold eaðbegeate’ (‘if the sun shines on the second day, then gold will be easy to obtain among the English’).17 Furthermore, England is mentioned in the fifteenth-century prognostication by the wind in London, BL, MS Egerton 1995, fol. 60v: ‘In illo anno incendium domorum igne quasi per universum Anglie esse significat’ (‘In that year it signifies that there will be burning of the houses because of fire nearly throughout the whole of England’). It is safe to assume that these predictions were intended for an English audience interested in the destiny and wealth of their own country. In II, III, IV, V and VII the climatic phenomena of thunder, wind and sun are viewed as prophetic signs that give foreknowledge of future events. II and V are examples of brontologies, a genre, that, as David Juste and Hilbert Chiu remark, ‘belongs to a very old tradition, whose earliest extant examples can be traced back to cuneiform tablets of the Neo-Assyrian period (ca. 1000–612 B.C.)’.18 The unfavourable occurrences anticipated in II, which are placed within an eight-day period, per octaua Christi, starting on die nativitatis until the first of January, carry obvious religious implications. Iram celestem (‘wrath from heaven’), which appears twice, once in connection with tempestatem maris (on die nativitatis Christi), and another in relation to the approaching of diem nouissimi (on secunda die), no doubt stems from Biblical accounts where the voice of God, usually signifying judgement, is likened to thunder: ‘et audivi vocem de caelo tamquam vocem aquarum multarum et tamquam vocem tonitrui magni’ (‘and I heard a voice from heaven, as the noise of many waters and as the voice of great thunder’) (Rev 14:2). Other religious references in II include ‘mortalitatem populi dei’ (‘death of God’s people’) on tercia die and ‘obitum alicuuius sancti hominis’ (‘death of some holy men’) on quinta die. No evident religious symbolism is attached to the other brontology in the collection, this time arranged according to the months of the year on which thunder is heard, tonitrua sonuerint V, which the scribe labels ‘alia prophecia’ (‘another prophecy’). The majority of its predictions, in a similar vein as those contained in I, exhibit diverse agricultural and human concerns: validos ventos (‘strong winds’), annum tempestuosum (‘stormy year’) or iocundum

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et fructiferum (‘happy and fruitful’), sterilitatem (‘unfruitfulness’) or abundancia frugrum (‘abundance of cereals’), famem (‘famine’), bellum (‘war’), lites (‘disputes’) or pacem populo (‘peace among the people’), mortem (‘death’), infirmitatem (‘disease’) and concordiam in omnibus (‘union among everyone’). The wind is the main predictive agent in III, a fairly widespread prognostication, which bases its predictions on the blowing of the wind during the twelve nights of Christmas.19 The earliest known Latin exemplar for this prognostication appears in the ninth-­century computistical Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.l., MS 1616, fol. 12v, from Fleury.20 The version in K closely agrees with a late eleventh-century copy in Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège, MS 77, fol. 69v, probably produced in Liège. In line with the negative symbolism of the wind, the two versions mainly announce misfortunes, including death of people and cattle (reges, principes, tributarij, viri ingrati, artifices, senes, magni domini and pecora), fires (incendia), battles (bella) and shortage of timber (ligna confringentur). However, positive prophecies do occur on the third night where abundance of bread is prophesied, and on the sixth night where princes will not die in battle. III concludes the prognostication with an encouraging invocation to the Lord: ‘deus exorandus est perpetuo’ (‘may the Lord be praised eternally’).21 A more positive note, in accordance with the auspicious nature of the sun, is sounded in the prognostication secundum serenitatem duodecim dierum IV, which follows the wind, and of which fewer versions have survived. To my knowledge, the earliest copies are attested in two eleventh-century manuscripts: CCCC MS 391, p. 713, and Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège, MS 77, fol. 69v.22 IV, as most other continental analogues, mainly portends joy among Christ’s faithful (fideles Christi), gold and silver (aurum et argentum), abundance of wine, grains, acorns, cows’ and sheep’s milk, fish, cows, sheep and horses’ foals (vinum, frumenti, glandes, lactis vacce ouis et boues, piscis, oues, boues, vituli equorum).23 As was the case with the wind, unexpected prophecies, this time negative, make an appearance on the third, eleventh and twelfth days. Whereas several directional brontologies have been identified as part of the De tonitruis, a set of texts based on thunder divination,24 VII, the final item of the meteorological section, is a little-known example of wind prognostication which purports to predict naturam anni (‘the nature of the year’) according to the four cardinal directions (ab oriente, occidente, meridie and aquilone) from the nocte dies circumcisionis domini.25 The prognosticon states

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that a clear sky on the night of the circumcision of Christ signifies ‘bonus annus in omnibus rebus erit’ (‘a good year for everything’), but if the wind blows, no matter from what direction, it presages an unproductive year, and deaths of various kinds. A directional wind prognostication in Coptic has survived in a single leaf from a late ninth-century parchment codex (P. Mich inv. 590) where it is part of a kalendologion, referred to by Gerard M. Browne as a ‘subliterary manual’. The text begins its predictions on 6 Tubi (the beginning of the year in the Coptic calendar), which may correspond to the dies circumcisionis domini in VII: This is the sign of 6 (?) Tubi concerning the way in which we are taught what is profitable to us before it happens. If the east wind comes forth on that day, the water is good, and it will cover the entire earth, the cattle will live, the crops will blossom, the honey will diminish, and the last of the crops of the field will perish.26

For that specific day VII predicts that ‘ab oriente ventus flauerit pecora et pecudes peribunt’ (‘if the wind blows from the east, sheep and cattle will perish’). The Coptic text appears to be more elaborate; in fact, emphasis is placed not only on the cardinal directions, but also on the time of the day on which the wind is blowing: ‘If a south wind comes forth on the dawn of 9 Tubi, and the north wind comes forth at evening […]’). Furthermore, it attributes positive or negative prophecies to the direction from which the wind comes forth, whereas VII simply reinforces the analogical link between the negative value of the sign (protasis), that is the destructive force of the wind, and the threatening effect (apodosis), which is naturally expected. This seems to suggest that the logical cause–effect relationship between portent and prediction was not necessarily inferred from experiential knowledge, but rather, as Leo Oppenheim proposed with regard to divination practices in ancient Mesopotamia, ‘sometimes subconscious associations [were] provoked by certain words whose specific connotations imparted to them a favourable or an unfavourable character, which in turn determined the general nature of the prediction’.27 The suggested relationship between antecedent and consequent, which relies heavily upon universally accepted categories, would explain why the meteorological phenomena of wind and thunder were generally viewed as harbingers of ominous occurrences, and by contrast the sun was taken as the forerunner of something good. The same may be argued in relation to I where most predictions replicate the positive or negative value attributed to each day of

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the week. The idea of Sunday as a positive day, in which there is to be no fasting or kneeling, is mostly reproduced in the Revelatio, which for Sunday predicts good weather and abundance of crops and sheep,28 whereas the outlook for a year beginning on secunda feria is predominantly menacing.29 However, as noted previously, exceptions do occur, which can be ascribed to the long process of adding and editing that such texts underwent. Salt calendar A puzzling text, in which salt is used to predict the rain for the year to come (VI), is embedded within more conventional weather prognostics. This unparalleled calendar, of which, to my knowledge, another classical or medieval witness has yet to be found, differs substantially from the other meteorological material and defies any precise and simple attempt of categorisation. It is in fact a blend of natural science, alchemical lore, experimentation and divination. Tony Hunt makes a useful distinction between prognostication and divination: In divination there are prescribed actions which must be carried out before information to be observed is disclosed, whilst in prognostics what is necessary is observation and interpretation, without the necessity to execute any action in order to gain access to what is observed.30

VI is undoubtedly more akin to divination than prognostication; in order to know ‘in quo mense magis pluat per circulum anni’ (‘in which month it will rain the most during the year’), it is imperative that on the first of January the following recommended actions must be carried out: take a broad dish or else a beam of wood and put twelve heaps of salt in hollows in it (‘accipe discum latum vel trabesetum et in eius concauita pone duodecim cumulos salis’) and name all twelve months in succession from January to December.31 After that, the wooden dish ought to be placed in a cellar (celario) or in a secret place (loco secreto) underground throughout the night, and the next morning the salt will have dissolved into each hollow to varying degrees; the greater the amount of moisture the wetter the corresponding month will be in the coming year. By contrast, if the salt has kept its crystal shape, then that month will be dry. The underlying chemical principle here is that due to its hygroscopic nature salt dissolves when exposed to the air or humid weather. Although to some degree all salts are hygroscopic, the

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one mentioned in the calendar is likely to be potash (potassium carbonate), which was known for several thousand years as it can be extracted with water from wood ash.32 If left in air, potassium carbonate will take more and more moisture and eventually can completely dissolve in this water forming a solution. This is what happens with that salt in a cellar in VI. The appearance of liquid in potash indicates that the relative humidity is above 43 per cent, not uncommon in northern Europe. At the same amount of water in air the relative humidity increases with decreasing temperature. That is why it is recommended to place the salt heaps in a celario (where it is usually cooler and more humid) to make sure that some liquid appears even during a hot and dry summer night. The amount of water absorbed will depend on the amount of salt in each heap; the more salt the more moisture will appear. As the recipe does not require to make heaps completely equal, the amount of water will be different and different amounts of moisture will appear, which suggests that perhaps no precise measurements were required. Given the lack at present of a known earlier analogue (if one does indeed exist), no definite statement can be made as to the origin of this text. Moving forward in time, VI might be the precursor of a seventeenth-century ‘Onion calendar’, possibly originating in Hungary, where salt is positioned in twelve onion scales (corresponding to the twelve months, from January to December) to determine the rain and which, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac,33 is still very much in use today among farmers and gardeners.34 The two calendars only differ inasmuch as the trabs in the Kassel text has been replaced by the onion scales; this does not alter the experiment given that both onions and wood have hygroscopic qualities; they gain or lose moisture depending on the atmospheric conditions. Notwithstanding the lack of an antecedent, one can confidently argue that, whoever devised this method of weather forecast, possibly someone with alchemical knowledge, must have been familiar with the hygroscopic properties of salts, in particular potash. Interestingly, VI points out that this method has been passed down by phisicos (‘natural philosophers’), quite possibly Aristotle, who in Book IV, part 6 of the Meteorologica, the first study entirely devoted to meteorological occurrences, discusses at length the various kinds of salts.35 Moreover, an originally Arabic compilation on classifications of alums and salts attributed to al-Razi, and considered one of the main contributions to modern chemistry, acquired great popularity in the late Middle Ages thanks to the

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twelfth-century Latin translation by Gerard of Cremona, entitled Liber de aluminibus et salibus.36 It is well known that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries marked a significant development in approaches to alchemy in the West, thanks to Latin translations of Arabic and Greek texts made available within monastic and academic circles.37 It seems to me that the prognostic treatises in K, mainly based on perception and arguably historical observations of empirical phenomena, were given more theoretical than practical usage, whereas VI, I would argue, relies instead upon knowledge acquired through experimentation. In his work On Experimental Science, Roger Bacon argues that ‘reasoning’ and ‘experience’ must be used in conjunction in order to acquire knowledge and understand nature: ‘Reasoning guides us to a sound conclusion, but does not remove doubt from the mind until confirmed by experience’.38 VI, which combines a theoretical framework with experimentation and first-hand knowledge, undoubtedly contributes to the unifying and coherent purpose of the Libellus’s main preoccupation with weather, time and the calendar. Conclusions This final section will briefly consider how the weather prognostica complement the medical and computistical material found in K. Furthermore, it will question whether the meteorological treatises I–VII were viewed as academic texts, reserved for an erudite environment, which formed part of scientific and scholarly training, or else they were treated principally as popular works, for use by those readers, whether monks or laymen, who set store by almanacs. It should be noted, before addressing the issues above, that K is by no means the only medieval manuscript that devotes an entire section to meteorological material; it follows, to a certain degree, set patterns, which are repeated in other compositions. It was relatively common practice, from the eleventh century onwards, for weather prognostics (revelatio, wind, sun and thunder) to be grouped in clusters, often in the form of booklets or separate quires, which could circulate independently of the rest of the manuscript and be used for reference.39 One of the earliest surviving examples – with which some prognostics in K bear many similarities – from the end of the eleventh century is MS 77 from Liège, where fols 62v–70r form an independent unit containing meteorological prognostications

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and extracts from Bede’s De natura rerum and Isidore’s work of the same title.40 The second prognostic text on thunder is the longest (fols 62v–68r); it begins with the four cardinal points from which the thunder is heard, and then turns to the twelve months of the year, the seven days of the week, and the hours of the day.41 The thunder prognostication is followed by passages from Bede’s De natura rerum, beginning with a sentence from chapter thirty-six on the signs of the tempest and by the Revelatio Esdrae and wind and sun prognostications, which generally circulated together, as is mirrored in the twelfth-century addition to Oxford, Bodl. MS Hatton 115 (Canterbury or Worcester). Its fifth booklet (fols 148–155), consisting of two quires of four leaves each, contains a mix of prognostic texts including: dream lunarium, birth lunarium, individual birth prognostics by the week, Christmas Day, wind, sun, thunder (days of the week), dreambook, general lunarium.42 A similar body of material appears in the fifteenth-century astrological and medical compendium, London, BL, MS Sloane 282, which comprises a calendar of John Somer, tables of lunar and solar eclipses,43 medical recipes, a copy of the Secretum secretorum44 and the following prognostications, which appear on fols 86r–87v: revelatio (based on the calends of January), Christmas Day, wind and sun in the twelve nights/days of Christmas, thunder according to the months, and individual birth predictions.45 Interestingly, Sloane 282 includes two examples of the same class of prognostication: Revelatio Esdrae and Christmas Day,46 the only difference between them is the reckoning of the beginning of the year.47 The inclusion of different versions of the same prognostication within the same manuscript raises interesting questions about the utilitarian nature of such texts. If one indeed relied upon these texts for practical purposes, which version would be consulted? Would one be more reliable than the other? But if we were to take the two versions as symptomatic of the still prevailing confusion concerning the beginning of the year, whether it was taken to be the first of January or the 25 December, then having two versions in the same booklet would have been quite convenient. There are clear signs of purpose in the assembling of the prognostics cluster in Liège MS 77 and K; all the items included are indeed concerned with the weather and the natural world. In Liège MS 77 this is further reinforced by the presence of abstracts from Bede’s and Isidore’s De natura rerum, which frame the prognostications and provide the background knowledge of the physical phenomena of wind, thunder and sun. It could be argued that the

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Kassel scribe may have accessed the meteorological material in the form of a booklet or a separate quire where the texts had already been copied in that order.48 What contributes to the uniqueness of this collection is the presence of the salt calendar, which might have already been part of the scribe’s exemplar. On the other hand, the inclusion of VI might be a reflection of the scribe’s personal taste and their attempt to combine alchemical lore with meteorological knowledge. K encompasses what Linne R. Mooney refers to as ‘scientific and utilitarian texts’: medical material and three Easter tables interspersed between the herb-medical recipes and the weather prognostics.49 It is not far-fetched for prognosticatory and divinatory material to coexist in the same manuscript collection with compustical and medical material. This is how Roy M. Liuzza explains this concurrence: Like computus, they [prognostics] offer a glimpse of cosmic order beneath the chaos of time; like medicine, they reveal the regular pattern beneath the irregular course of illness. Like both, they are underwritten by a theory, though scarcely visible in surviving manuscripts, of the homology between the bodily humours, the seasons of the year, and the elements that make up the cosmos.50

Given the prevalence of medical material in K, one can hypothesise that the manuscript may have been commissioned and used by physicians and apothecaries for their own instruction and training. To return to one of the questions addressed at the onset of this chapter: was the Libellus put to any practical use? Who would benefit from those meteorological texts? According to Tony Hunt, ‘[prognostic texts] represented in their day the organized knowledge or “science” of prognostication, at first best approached as book-learning’.51 Hunt’s view is supported by the fact that manuscripts containing prognostic texts rarely show concrete signs of use.52 The corrections, deletions, interpolations and scholia that fill the medical material in K support the assertion that such texts were constantly revised and consulted. On this point, Sàndor Chardonnens asks, in relation to Anglo-Saxon prognostics, ‘why else would one revise, enhance or amend a text but to increase its legibility or facilitate its use?’53 Noticeably, the energetic scribal intervention occurring in the medical texts reduces sensibly in the weather anthology in K, where one encounters only occasional interlinear insertions. It appears that the Kassel scribes were more reluctant to make

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significant changes to prognosticatory and divinatory texts than to medical and computistical items. On the other hand, the additions of red ink to prognostics’ headings, added by the same hand during the revision phase in order to assist speed of reference, may point, to borrow Chardonnens’s terminology, to ‘indirect signs of use’.54 Unfortunately, no records of the success or failure of specific prophecies have survived. By contrast, due to its instructional and experimental nature, VI, unlike the neighbouring prognostic texts, may have actually been designed for use. The instructions contained therein do resemble medical recipes where salt is used in a wide range of contexts, as a preservative for other ingredients, a mild antiseptic, and with herbs to draw out and stem.55 Whatever its intended use, the Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri aptly contributes to the manuscript’s overarching interest in natural philosophy, which embraces inquiries and questions about the physical world through the knowledge and understanding of medical texts and herbal pharmacy, computistical learning and its applications (Easter tables), natural science (weather prognostics), alchemical lore and experimentation (salt calendar). Edition and translation Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri56 [Fol. 107r] Hec57 presagia dedit dominus esdre prophete. Si dies circumcisionis domini finerit die dominico. hyemps erit bona. ver humidum et calidum ventosum et sudus. estas erit sicca ventosa. annona bona. vindemie vbertas. oues et boues crescent. mel habundabit. pax erit. senes morientur. fructus ortorum peribunt pungne58 erunt in oriente. noua aliqua audiantur a regibus et principibus. Si in secunda feria finerit hyemps mixta erit et quodammodo vmbrosa et interdum gelu forte. ver bonum. estas temperata ventosa. diluuia multa erunt. messes sicca. vindemie peribunt. turpes homines morientur.59 bella multa erunt. mutaciones principum. reges peribunt. apes peribunt. frumentum medio modo. Si tertia feria. hyemps magna et bona. et in parte ventosa. ver ventosum et humidum. estas ventosa et sicca. frumenti copia. mulieres grauide morientur. autumpnus siccus. repentina mors regnabit. na\u/es peribunt. mellis habundancia. incendia multa. magna pestilencia. fructus ortorum peribunt. oleum habundabit. Si feria quarta hyemps mala et calida. ver humidum et ventosum. estas mixta. annone vilitas erit. frumentum bonum. vindemia

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bona. pomorum vilitas. olei habundancia. virorum iuuenum et mulierum interitus. bella et multe contenciones mercatores habundabunt. ventris precordiorum dissoluciones per multa loca fames. et aliquid noui a remotis audietur. Si feria quinta hyemps erit temperata. ver ventosum. estas bona. vindemie habundancia. autumpnus bonus. reges et principes morientur et pax erit. frumenti vilitas. lini caritas. mel parum. porci et oues morientur. pluuie multe. flumina tument. oleum habundabit. annona medio modo. Si sexta feria hyemps mixta. ver bonum sed ventosum. estas mixta annona bona. frumenti vilitas. vindemia bona. apes morientur. dolor oculorum. paruuli morientur. terremotus per loca arenosa. peregrinacio regibus et principibus. oleum habundabit et clamor magnus erit super principes. Si sabbato. hyemps dura et ventosa. annona cara. frumenti erit angustia. autumpnus siccus. vindemia bona. paruulorum interitus. lini habundancia. triticum dominabitur. languores vexant senes vsque ad mortem. multa erunt incendia domorum. magni domini pacificabuntur et pax erit. terremotus in quibusdam locis. prophete multi egredientur futuri. De disposicione anni secundum tonitrua per octaua Christi. Tonitrua in die nativitatis Christi significat magnam tempestatem maris et iram celestem. Secunda die significat natiuitatem regis vel mortem eius. Tercia die significat bellum magnum in gentibus. Quarta die significat mortalitatem populi dei. Quinta die iram celestem vel diem nouissimi apropinquare. Sexta die obitum alicuius sancti hominis. Septima die natiuitatem vel electionem magni regis significat. De disposicione anni secundum ventos. Si venti magni erunt ipsa nocte natiuitatis Christi reges et principes et tributarij peribunt. Si secunda nocte viri et ingrati60 deficient. Si tertia nocte panis habundabit. Si quarta nocte artifices peribunt. Si quinta nocte artifices erunt in scandalo. Si sexta nocte principes ibunt ad bellum et non peribunt. Si septima [fol. 107v] nocte erunt incendia. Si octaua nocte senes morientur. Si nona nocte omnia ligna confringentur.61 Si decima nocte pecora peribunt. Si \vn/decima nocte magni domini in bellis peribunt. Si duodecima nocte deus exorandus est perpetuo. De disposicione anni secundum serenitatem duodecim dierum. Si dies natiuitatis Christi serena fuerit letabuntur omnes fideles Christi.62 Si secunda dies serena fuerit revelabuntur aurum et argentum. Si tertia dies bellum erit in gentibus.

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Si quarta dies vinum habundabit et vituli equorum prosperabuntur. Si quinta frumenti copia erit. Si sexta glandes ­habundabunt. Si septima copia lactis vacce ouis et boues habundabunt. Si octaua copia piscium erit. Si nona oues et boues prosperabuntur. Si decima dies serena fuerit argentum habundabit. Si vndecima mortalitas hominum erit. Si duodecima infirmitates immedicabiles erunt. Alia prophecia De disposicione anni secundum menses per tonitrua. Si tonitrua in ianuario sonuerint. validos ventos et habundanciam et bellum illo anno significat. Si in februario multorum hominum et maxime diuitum morbum et interitum. Si in martio ventos validos et habundanciam frugum et lites in populo significat. Si in aprili annum iocundum et fructiferum et mortem iniquorum hominum significat. Si in maio frugum inopiam et famem et varias infirmitates significat. Si in iunio habundanciam frugum et varias infirmitates significat. Si in iulio. bonam annonam et interitus fetus et pecorum significat. Si in augusto. prospera rei publice egrotare multos et precipue sutores significat. Si in septembri habundanciam frugum et interitus hominum et maxime potentum significat. Si in octobri anona63 bona sed alterius frumenti erit trinorum. et ventum validum et arborum fructus copiam significat. Si in nouembri sterilitatem frugum et annum tempestuosum significat. Si in decembri habundanciam annone et pacem in populo et concordiam in omnibus significat. Si vis scire in quo mense magis pluat per circulum anni tunc attende primam noctem mensis ianuarij accipe discum latum vel trabesetum et in eius concauita pone duodecim cumulos salis nominando omnis menses per ordinem incipiendo a ianuario vsque ad ultimum mensem scilicet decembrem hoc secundum discum vel trabesetum in quo ponense salis cumulos in celario vel in loco secreto siccare sub terra per noctem loca et de mane considera de quo cumulo magis exeat de aqua in illo mense magis pluet et de quo cumulo minus exiet de aqua et in illo mense minus pluet secundum phisicos. Qui de nocte diei circumcisionis domini naturam anni predicunt. dicunt quidem. si serena nox fuerit sine vento et pluuia. bonus annus in omnibus rebus erit. Si ab oriente ventus flauerit pecora et pecudes peribunt. Si ab occidente reges et principes morituros significat. Si ab meridie etiam infirmitates et mortes hominum significat. Si ab aquilone annum infructuosum demonstrat.

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A little book on the disposition of the entire year to come (I) Here [are] the prophecies that the Lord gave to Esdras the prophet. If the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on a Sunday, there will be a good winter, a wet, hot, windy and bright spring, there will be a dry and windy summer, good year’s produce, copious grape harvest, sheep and cows will thrive, honey will abound, there will be peace, old men will die, the fruits from the gardens will perish, there will be fighting in the east, some novelties will be heard of kings and princes. If [the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ] falls on a Monday, there will be a mixed winter, and somewhat shady, and hard frost, a good spring, a temperate and windy summer, there will be many floods, crops will be dry, grape harvest will perish, dishonorable64 men will die, there will be many wars, changes of princes, kings will die, bees will die, corn in moderate measure. If [the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on] a Tuesday, [there will be] a great and good and partly windy winter, a windy and wet spring, a windy and dry summer, plenty of corn, pregnant women will die, [there will be] a dry autumn, sudden death will dominate, ships will be destroyed, [there will be] abundance of honey, many fires, many plagues, the fruits from the gardens will perish, [and] oil will abound. If [the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on] a Wednesday, [there will be] a bad and warm winter, a wet and windy spring, a mixed summer, cheap produce, there will be good corn, good grape harvest, cheap fruits from the trees, abundance of oil, men, young people and women will die, [there will be] wars and many disputes, merchants will prosper, [there will be] weakness of the stomach and of the intestines, [there will be] famine in many places, and some news will be heard from afar. If [the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on] a Thursday, there will be a temperate winter, a windy spring, a good summer, abundance of grape harvest, a good autumn, kings and princes will die and there will be peace, crops [will be] cheap, flax [will be] dear, [there will be] little honey, pigs and sheep will die, [there will be] heavy rainfall, rivers will swell up, oil will abound, [and] the year’s produce [will be] in moderate measure. If [the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on] a Friday, [there will be] a mixed winter, a good but also windy spring, a mixed summer, good year’s produce, cheap crops, good grape harvest, bees will die, [there will be] eye-pain, children will die, [there will be] an earthquake in sandy places, travel of kings and

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princes, oil will abound, and there will be much clamor concerning princes. [If the feast day of the Circumcision of Christ falls on] a Saturday, [there will be] a harsh and windy winter, dear grain, dearth of natural produce, [there will be] a dry autumn, good grape harvest, death of children, abundance of flax, wheat will dominate, feebleness will trouble old men all the way to death, many housefires, great lords will make peace and there will be peace, [there will be] an earthquake in some places, [and] many future prophets will come forth. (II) On the disposition of the year according to the sound of thunder during the Octave of the Nativity. [If] the sound of thunder is heard on Christmas Day, it portends a great sea storm and wrath from heaven. On the second day, it portends the birth of a king or his death. On the third day, it portends great war among people. On the fourth day, it portends death of God’s people. On the fifth day, [it portends] wrath from heaven or the last day will be near. On the sixth day, [it portends] the death of some holy men. On the seventh day, it portends death or election of a great king. (III) On the disposition of the year according to the winds. If there are great winds that same night of Christ’s birth, kings, princes and tributaries will die. On the second night, men and the unpleasant will diminish in number. On the third night, bread will abound. On the fourth night, craftsmen will die. On the fifth night, craftsmen will fall into temptation. On the sixth night, princes will go to battle and they will not die. On the seventh night, there will be fires. On the eighth night, old men will die. On the ninth night, timber will disintegrate.65 On the tenth night, sheep will die. On the eleventh night, great lords will die in battle. On the twelfth night, may the Lord be praised eternally. (IV) On the disposition of the year according to fair weather during the twelve days. If there is fair weather on the day of Christ’s birth, all Christ’s faithful will rejoice. If the weather is fair on the second day, gold and silver will be uncovered. On the third day, there will be war among the people. On the fourth day, wine will abound and horses’ foals will prosper. On the fifth [day], there will be abundance of grain. On the sixth [day], acorns will abound. On the seventh [day], [there will be] abundance of cows’ [and] sheep’s milk, and cows will increase. On the eighth [day], there will be [abundance of] fish. On the ninth [day], sheep and cows will thrive. If the weather

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is fair on the tenth day, silver will abound. On the eleventh [day], [there will be] death of men. On the twelfth [day], [there will be] incurable diseases. (V) Another prediction. On the disposition of the year according to the months during which thunder is heard. If thunder is heard in January, it portends a strong wind and abundance and war in that year. If [thunder is heard] in February, it portends disease and destruction of a multitude of men and especially rich [men]. If [thunder is heard] in March, it portends a strong wind and abundance of fruits of the earth and disputes among the people. If [thunder is heard] in April, it portends a happy and fruitful year and death of unjust men. If [thunder is heard] in May, it portends scarcity of fruits, and famine, and various diseases. If [thunder is heard] in June, it portends abundance of fruits and various diseases. If [thunder is heard] in July, [it portents] a good year’s produce, and destruction of offspring and cattle. If [thunder is heard] in August, it portends prosperity of the state and many will be sick, and especially shoemakers. If [thunder is heard] in September, it portends abundance of the fruits from the earth and death of men, and especially powerful [men]. If [thunder is heard] in October, it portends good year’s produce, but of other grain there will be triple [harvest], and a strong wind and abundance of fruits from the trees. If [thunder is heard] in November, it portends unfruitfulness and a tempestuous year. If [thunder is heard] in December, it portends abundance of crops and peace among the people and union among everyone. (VI) If you wish to know in which month it will rain the most during the year, then, wait for the first night of the month of January, take a broad dish or else a beam of wood and put twelve heaps of salt in hollows in it, after naming all twelve months in succession, beginning with January up to the last month, [that is] of course December. Here [place] the propitious dish or wooden beam in which you put the heaps of salt in a cellar or in a secret place underground in which to drain out through the night, and in the morning examine from which heap comes out most of the water, in that month it will rain the most, and from which heap less water comes out, according to natural philosophers, in that month it will rain less. (VII) How they predict the nature of the year from the night of the Circumcision of Christ, in fact they say [that] if the night [of the Circumcision of Christ] is clear with neither wind nor rain, it will be a good year for everything. If the wind blows from the east,

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sheep and cattle will perish. If [the wind blows] from the west, it indicates that kings and princes will die. If [the wind blows] from the south, it indicates diseases and also death of men. If [the wind blows] from the north, it indicates an unprofitable year. Notes   1 My gratitude goes to the Leverhulme Trust for enabling me to bring to completion this essay and other projects thanks to a Research Fellowship. I also wish to thank Dr Elizabeth Solopova and Professor Tony Hunt for their useful comments.  2 G. H. Pertz (ed.), Annales Fuldenses (Hannover: Impensis bibliopolii Hahniani, 1891), pp. 76–7. The translation is from Timothy Reuter (trans.), Annals of Fulda (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 68.  3 Pertz, Annales Fundenses, p. 48.  4 Reuter, Annals of Fulda, p. 40, n. 10.  5 T. Dean, ‘Natural encounters: climate, weather and the Italian Renaissance’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire, 18 (2011), 545–61 (551).  6 Tony Hunt defines meteorological prognostics as ‘predictions predominantly about the weather from the weather (according to the wind, thunder, sunshine), largely based on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day’. T. Hunt, Writing the Future: Prognostic Texts of Medieval England (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2013), pp. 196–7.  7 Anne Matter’s valuable attempt to catalogue versions of the kalendae ianuariae and Christmas Day prognostications has been surpassed by Lorenzo DiTommaso, who offers a conspectus of 287 Western manuscripts of the Revelatio Esdrae. The creation of a complete list of the surviving versions of the Revelatio remains a daunting task, since they are widely scattered among various astrological, medical and computistical collections, and new versions are constantly located. See L. DiTommaso, ‘Pseudepigrapha Notes III: 4. Old Testament Pseudepigrapha in the Yale University Manuscript Collection’, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, 20 (2010), 3–80. Main studies of the Revelatio include (these are by no means exhaustive): A. Boucherie, ‘Dialectes anciens: Un almanach au xme siècle’, Revue des Langues Romanes, 3 (1872), 133–45; G. Mercati, Note di letteratura biblica e cristiana antica, Studi e Testi, 5 (Rome: Tipografia Vaticana, 1901); M. Förster, ‘Beiträge zur Mittelalterlichen Volkskunde’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 120 (1908), 2 ­ 96–301; P. Spunar, ’Ceské Zpracováni Esdrásova Proroctvi Ve Videnském Rukopisu ÖNB 3282’, Sbornik Národniho Muzea V Praze (Acta Musei Nationalis Pragae), 12 (1967), 101–7; A. Matter, ‘The Revelatio Esdrae

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in Latin and English tradition’, Revue Bénédictine, 92 (1982), 376–92; D. Juste, ‘Comput et divination chez Abbon de Fleury’, in B. Obrist (ed.), Abbon de Fleury Philosophie, Science et Comput autour de l’an mil (Paris: Centres d’histoire des sciences et des philosophies arabes et médiévales, 2004), pp. 95–129; F. Fery-Hue, ‘Revelatio Esdrae ou Prophéties d’Ezéchiel: Éléments nouveaux pour le corpus latin et français des prophéties d’après le jour de Noël’, in M. C. Timelli and C. Galderisi (eds), Pour acquérir honneur et pris: mélanges de moyen français offerts à Giuseppe di Stefano (Montréal: Éditions Ceres, 2004), pp. 237–51; L. S. Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, 900–1100: Study and Texts (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 491–500; M. Cesario, ‘Weather prognostics in Anglo-Saxon England’, English Studies, 93 (2012), 391–426.  8 P. E. Dutton, ‘Observations on early medieval weather in general, bloody rain in particular’, in J. R. Davis and M. McCormick (eds), The Long Morning of Medieval Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 167–80 (p. 168).  9 Fol. 1r (containing two notes: one on scholastic work and another on the planets), which was not part of the original manuscript, was added at a later stage. 10 H. Broszinski (ed.), Die Handschriften der Murhardschen Bibliothek der Stadt Kassel und Landesbibliothek. Manuscripta Medica (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1976), pp. 29–34. I am indebted to Dr David Juste for bringing this manuscript to my attention. 11 The existence of several versions, in different languages, together with a remarkable degree of variation, makes the textual tradition of such texts an extremely complex one. It is not the aim of this study to investigate each individual prognostication within the meteorological collection, and its relationship to other continental equivalents, in an attempt to establish source and origin. Instead I shall confine myself to addressing the main atmospheric, terrestrial and human concerns reflected in this ensemble of texts and the relationship between the weather material and the other items within the manuscript. 12 The earliest Latin exemplar appears in the late eighth-century Voss. Lat. MS Q. 69, fol. 37v. For an edition of the text, see R. Bremmer, ‘Leiden, Vossianus Lat. Q. 69 (part 2): schoolbook or proto-­encyclopaedic miscellany?’ in R. H. Bremmer and K. Dekker (eds), Practice in Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 19–53. See also Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, pp. 491–2. 13 Other attributions include: Ezechiel, Esdra and Joseph, Dionysius and Zephaniah. 14 Florence, Biblioteca Riccardiana, Ricc. MS 1258, fols 88v–89v (Italy, s. xv), for example, mentions doglie di fianchi (stomach ache), sinchura di pecto (heart disease) and doglie di capo (headache), and Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10268, fol. 110rv reports that multe

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infirmitates erunt causa flatus (breathing will be the cause of many diseases). 15 This is reinforced by the numerous finds of leather shoes from German coastal towns. For archaeological evidence, see G. P. Fehring, The Archaeology of Medieval Germany, trans. R. Samson (London: Routledge, 1991). See also J. Wubs-Mrozewicz, ‘Shoes and shoemakers in late medieval Bergen and Stockholm’, Collegium Medievale (2005), 1–29. 16 Both texts are edited by R. M. Liuzza in ‘What the thunder said: Anglo-Saxon brontologies and the problem of sources’, RES, 55 (2004), 1–23. See also D. Juste and H. Chiu, ‘The De tonitruis libellus attributed to Bede: an early medieval treatise on divination by thunder translated from Irish’, Traditio, 68 (2013), 97–124. 17 The prediction for the eighth day in another version of the sun prognostication in CCCC MS 391, p. 713 reads that Gif þy viii dæge sunne scineð beorhte þonne bið cwicseolfer on angel kynne yð geate (‘if the sun brightly shines on the eighth day, then quicksilver will be easy to obtain among the English). 18 Juste and Chiu, ‘The De tonitruis libellus attributed to Bede’, 6. 19 For a study of wind prognostication, see M. Cesario, ‘An English source for a Latin text? Wind prognostication in Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115 and Ashmole 345’, Studies in Philology, 112 (2015), 213–33. 20 Other versions of wind prognostication include: Oxford, Bodl., MS Digby 86, fol. 32r (s. xiii) Latin; Worcester, Cathedral Library, MS Q. 61, fol. 45r (s. xiii), Old French; Oxford, Bodl., MS Rawlinson C. 814, fol. 74r (s. xiv), Latin; Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.7.23, fol. 261 (s. xiv), Latin; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.l., MS 873, fol. 200r (s. xii), Latin; Oxford, Bodl., MS Ashmole 345, fol. 69r (s. xiv/ xv), Latin; Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, MS Plimpton 260, fol. 32 (s. xv), Middle English; London, BL, MS Egerton 1995, fol. 60v (s. xv), Latin; Aberdeen, University Library, MS 123, fol. 154v (s. xv), Latin; London, BL, MS Sloane 282, fol. 86r (s. xv), Latin; London, BL, MS Sloane 2584, fol. 35v (s. xv), Latin; London, BL, Additional 27582, fol. 266r (1523); and Heidelberg, UB, cpg, MS 226, fol. 51r (s. xv), German (I owe this last reference to Sándor Chardonnens). 21 The prediction for the twelfth night is missing in Liège MS 77. 22 Other versions of the sunshine prognostication include: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, n.a.l., MS 873, fol. 200r (s. xii), Latin; Oxford, Bodl., MS Hatton 115, fols 149v–150r (s. xii), Old English; London, BL, MS Harley 2558, fol. 193v (s. xiv), Latin; Longleat House, MS 174, fol. 82 (s. xv), English; Oxford, Bodl., MS Digby 88, fol. 40r (s. xv), Latin. I am grateful to Sàndor Chardonnens and David Juste for bringing to my attention manuscripts I may have otherwise not found.

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23 A bizarre prophecy concerning ants and camels appears in the Old English versions: MS Hatton 115, fols 149v–150r and CCCC 391, p. 713. See M. Cesario, ‘Ant-lore in Anglo-Saxon England’, AngloSaxon England, 40 (2011), 73–91. 24 For a learned study on thunder divination, see Juste and Chiu, ‘The De tonitruis libellus attributed to Bede’. 25 A modern prognostic based on the cardinal points from which the wind blows is mentioned by M. Förster, ‘Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Volkskunde VI’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 128 (1912), 55–71 (64). 26 G. M. Browne, Michigan Coptic Texts (Barcelona: Papyrologia Castroctaviana, 1979), p. 55. 27 A. L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 211. 28 Sunday was also believed to be a lucky day for babies born on that day. 29 Three Mondays during the year were thought to be unlucky: the first Monday in April, the second in August and the last in December. Ancient astronomers considered Tuesday bad because of its association with Mars; those born under Mars were likely to be choleric, warlike and contentious. Wednesday or die mercurii was the day on which Judas and the chief priests planned the betrayal of Christ (Mark 10:1). Thursday was linked to Jupiter, a good planet, which is naturally moist and warm. Because it ruled the blood, people born under Jupiter were happy and generous. Friday was associated with Venus, a good planet because of its proximity to the sun; people born under Venus were both generous and happy. Finally, people born under the influence of Saturn were melancholic, taciturn and low-spirited because of the preponderance of water and earth, heavy elements, in their constitution. 30 Hunt, Writing the Future, p. 13. 31 It is unclear whether nominando simply refers to the naming of each hollow to its corresponding month, or whether the names of the months ought to be spoken in order for the prescribed actions to be validated. 32 I am indebted to Vladimir Kuznetsov (Professor of Chemistry, University of Oxford) for his assistance on this matter. See http://dwb4. unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869B/CHEM869BLinks/www.chem.ualberta. ca/7Eplambeck/che/p101/p01013a.htm (accessed 10 October 2017). 33 See www.almanac.com (accessed 25 October 2017). 34 See http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2014-12-31/peffley-­predict2015-rainfall-traditional-onion-calendar#.VYMJ_c5N3zK; and https:// library.ndsu.edu/grhc/articles/newspapers/news/onion.html (accessed 10 October 2017). 35 Interestingly another fifteenth-century manuscript from Germany, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 10268, fol. 110rv, for die martis predicts salis coagulatione.

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36 See R. Steele, ‘Practical chemistry in the twelfth century Rasis de aluminibus et salibus’, Isis, 12 (1929), 10–46; and J. Raske (ed. and trans.), Das Buch der Alaune und Salze (The Book of Alums and Salts). A Source of Late Latin Alchemy (Berlin: Chemie, 1935). 37 I follow Anke Timmermann’s definition of alchemy as ‘mostly relating to experiments and the transformation of matter’. See A. Timmermann (ed.), Verse and Transmutation: A Corpus of Middle English Alchemical Poetry (Critical Editions and Studies) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), p. 17. 38 R. B. Burke (trans.), The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon (2 vols, New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), vol. II, part six: ‘Experimental Science’, p. 585. 39 In this chapter I shall only consider, for comparative purposes, those collections in which the revelatio, wind, sun and thunder prognostications are part of the same section, and exclude consideration of those manuscripts that contain only one or two meteorological treatises. For instance, the appearance of the Christmas Day prognostication in association with the wind (generally either preceding or following it on the same folio) suggests that these two kinds of prognostication were probably circulating together, perhaps as part of the same booklet, since they are placed within the same period; Christmas Day is the first of the twelve nights of this period. 40 Liège MS 77 is a composite volume made of two parts, one dating from the eleventh–twelfth centuries, the other from the fourteenth. These two sections were part of two separate volumes before they were bound in together in the seventeenth century. The earlier book, which was copied on parchment, contains fols 1–75 and Isabelle Draelants dates the handwriting of this section from the end of the eleventh century. See I. Draelants, Astrologie et Divination dans le MS 77 Bibl. Univ. Liège, fols 62r–70v (Namur: 3e Congrès de l’Association des cercles Francophones d’Histoire et d’Archéologie de Belgique, 1990), pp. 319–35; and M. Fiess and M. Grandjean, Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège: Catalogue des manuscrits (Liège: Université de Liège, 1875), pp. 264–7, n. 470. 41 See Juste and Chiu, ‘The De tonitruis libellus’; and Draelants, Astrologie et Divination. 42 For a description of MS Hatton 115, see N. R. Ker (ed.), Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (1957, reissued with Supplement; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), no. 32, p. 402; E. Treharne, ‘The dates and origins of three twelfth-century manuscripts’, in P. Pulsiano and E. Treharne (eds), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage: Tenth to Twelfth Centuries (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 227–52; and Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics. 43 L. Thorndike, ‘Eclipses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, Isis, 48 (1957), 51–7. 44 See R. Steele and A. S. Fulton (eds), Secretum secretorum, Opera hactenus inedita Roberti Baconi, 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928).

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45 A brief description of the manuscript is available at: www.bl.uk/ catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=1235&CollID =9&NStart=282 (accessed 10 October 2017). 46 London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius A. iii, fol. 36rv and fols 41v–42r (s. xi, Canterbury) and London, BL, MS Cotton Titus D. xxvi–xxvii, fols 10v–11v and fol. 25rv (s. xi, Winchester) also contain two versions of the Revelatio. 47 There had always been difficulty in determining when New Year’s Day fell, since the beginning of the year was calculated differently by different civilisations in different periods: 1 January, Christmas Day, the first day of Advent and 25 March were all common dates. See R. L. Poole, Studies in Chronology and History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934). Weather prognostics began to be attached to Christmas Day in the eleventh century in Latin, and they occur somewhat later in many medieval manuscripts, especially from England and France. 48 A closer inspection of K is needed in order to determine whether the manuscript is made of separate quires that were bound together at a later stage. 49 According to Linne R. Mooney, scientific and utilitarian texts ‘range from learned treatises on astronomy, medicine, arithmetic, geometry, agriculture, and husbandry to treatises on the medieval conception of prognostication, magic, alchemy, geomancy, astrology and physiognomy’. L. R. Mooney, ‘Manuscript evidence for the use of medieval English scientific and utilitarian texts’, in R. F. Green and L. R. Mooney (eds), Interstices: Studies in Middle English and AngloLatin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004), pp. 184–202 (p. 184). 50 R. M. Liuzza (ed. and trans.), Anglo-Saxon Prognostics: An Edition and Translations of Texts from London, British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A. iii (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), p. 60. 51 Hunt, Writing the Future, p. 11. 52 By contrast, folding medical almanacs containing prognostications like Oxford, Bodl., MS Rawlinson D. 393, which were meant to be carried around hanging from the physician’s belt, most likely served a utilitarian purpose. See Mooney, ‘Manuscript evidence’, p. 189. 53 Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, p. 141. 54 Chardonnens, Anglo-Saxon Prognostics, p. 141. 55 I am grateful to Dr Christina Lee and Dr Freya Harrison for their suggestions. 56 The meteorological prognostics in K are, to my knowledge, published here for the first time. I have made no attempt to normalise orthography or punctuation, apart from ‘u’ and ‘v’. \ / refer to scribal insertions, mainly above the line. Abbreviations have been expanded silently. I have followed the order of the items as they appear in the manuscript, which is available online at http://orka.bibliothek.

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uni-kassel.de/viewer/image/1358159248782/219/ (accessed 10 October 2017). 57 Red capitals are used to mark the beginning of a new prognostic text. 58 For ‘pugne’. 59 For the same day Heildelberg, UB, MS 213, fols 143v–144r also predicts that turpiores homines moriuntur. 60 For this night, most Latin versions read ‘viri ingrati’. 61 This could be an error for ‘confragrentur’ (to be burnt, to be on fire). 62 Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège, MS 77 (s. xi/xii), fol. 69v and Oxford, Bodl., MS Digby 88, fol. 40r (s. xv) read ‘letabuntur serui dei’. Both texts are edited by M. Cesario, ‘The shining of the sun in the twelve nights of Christmas’, in S. McWilliams (ed.), Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), pp. 195–212 (pp. 209–12). 63 Space has been left unfilled here. 64 ‘Turpiores’ could also be translated as ‘morally deformed’ or ‘ugly’. 65 If the intended reading was ‘confragrentur’, then this prophecy should be translated: ‘On the ninth night, timber will be on fire’.

3 The Cambridge Songs as anthology of musical knowledge Ann Buckley

The collection known as ‘The Cambridge Songs’, or Carmina Cantabrigiensia,1 is found in a manuscript copied by Anglo-Saxon scribes at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, in the mid-eleventh century. The entire codex now runs to 446 folios, though several are missing, some from before it was foliated in the fifteenth century and still others since. The compiler of the original collection from which CC was copied is unknown, as is its provenance, but there are many references in the texts, and occasionally in the use of language, which indicate that CC derived from a German source in the lower Rhineland which, as well as locally produced texts, included material representative of the international clerical court culture of the period. It has been suggested that the exemplar may have been compiled by a cleric at the imperial palace in Cologne from two or more sources and to have been completed no later than 1039, the year of the death of Emperor Conrad II, since he is the last of the emperors to whom a song was dedicated in the collection. How CC reached Canterbury is also not clear. However, it is known that there was a close connection between Cologne and Anglo-Saxon England from around 1040 to 1066. In 1054 Bishop Ealdred of Worcester travelled to Cologne as emissary of King Edward the Confessor. King Edward was the brother-in-law of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry III (1046–1056) whose assistance he sought in facilitating the return to England of Edward the Exile with a view to his inheriting the throne as his successor. Before leaving Cologne the emperor presented Ealdred with two illuminated manuscripts (a psalter and a sacramentary), which had previously belonged to King Cnut. They were the work of Earnwig, teacher of Wulfstan, then Bishop of Worcester, to whom Ealdred presented them on his return to England. It is thought possible that the manuscript from which CC was copied may

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also have been among the materials that travelled with him.2 The question remains open in the absence of firm evidence,3 but it is clear that the exemplar of CC was one of a substantial and varied collection of English and continental materials held in the library of St Augustine’s Canterbury and available to the compilers of Gg.5.35 on the eve of the Norman Conquest. The first half of the codex (amounting to more than 200 folios) contains mainly late antique Christian Latin poems with extensive Latin and a few Old English glosses, including Bible poems of Juvencus, Sedulius and Arator; the epigrams of Tiro Prosper; the Psychomachia of Prudentius; the phoenix poem of Lactantius; and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius. The second half, over 230 folios, contains Latin verse, mainly Carolingian and Anglo-Latin, including many poems that were widely known, or required reading, in the Middle Ages: antique poetry such as the Distichs of Cato; Anglo-Latin works such as Aldhelm’s poem on virginity (Carmen de virginitate), Bede’s poem on the Day of Judgement, the riddles of Eusebius, Tatwine, Boniface, Symphosius and Aldhelm; Carolingian poetry such as De laudibus sanctae crucis of Hrabanus Maurus and Hucbald of Saint-Amand’s poem in praise of baldness. CC commences at the end of this section, indicated as ‘quedam rithmica carmina’ (‘some rythmic poems’) in the twelfth-century table of contents.4 The manuscript as a whole defies precise classification. The two most widely accepted theories are that it was either a classbook of graded readings5 or a work of reference. The former is the unequivocal view of Rigg and Wieland. Yet Dronke, Lapidge and Stoltz, as well as Ziolkowski, are of the opinion that some of the materials would have been too difficult for students and that the latter classification is more likely.6 Dronke et al. also point out that many of the glosses are not Anglo-Saxon but Carolingian, thus not reflective of contemporary student use in Canterbury but copied along with their accompanying texts from earlier sources. Furthermore, in their view the description of ‘graded readings’ is not entirely accurate as this aspect of the texts is not presented in a consistent manner. Thus while the question must remain open to further enquiry, the overall consensus is that this compilation is a work of reference or an anthology of Latin poetry (albeit ­interspersed with a few instances of prose).7 CC occupies twelve folios of this substantial codex. That the texts are songs and not just poems is clear from their content and topics, their structure, the extent of specific musical terminology, descriptions of performance practice (including singing and

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t­ echniques of playing musical instruments), titles of tunes in some of the rubrics, and the presence of partial music notation in the form of unheighted neumes, that is, neumes on a single horizontal plane, thus not indicating the rise and fall of the melodic line. The collection also contains specific texts pertaining to music theory and to singing exercises, for some of which transcribable notation exists in other manuscripts. Further topics include panegyrics and laments for religious and secular leaders, politics, satire, love, spring, as well as religious and didactic songs and settings of Boethian poems from The Consolation of Philosophy. They thus combine a range of different types of knowledge or scientia, which would have been familiar to students and teachers of the liberal arts: the mathematical aspects of music theory as one of the subjects of the quadrivium, with its overarching theological framework, as well as the empirical or experiential know-how of those engaged in musica practica, inluding audience engagement. Whatever its primary purpose and contemporary use, CC may be viewed as a florilegium of musica scientia, which embodied and transmitted a wealth of information on musico-poetic genres and performance practice usual in the eleventh century among learned audiences (and most likely also heard in more public venues such as festivals and taverns). It thus provides a window into the intellectual and sound-world of clerical culture of that time, and the types of musical and poetic styles and techniques that were taught and shared among performers and their audiences. Before turning to specific examples, I shall first give a brief account of the content of the collection. While there have been several studies of individual carmina, the most recent complete edition of CC is that of Jan Ziolkowski.8 As well as providing a substantial introductory essay and an English translation of all of the songs,9 Ziolkowski added a further thirtyfour to the forty-nine published, respectively, by Breul, Strecker and Bulst,10 bringing the total currently identified to eighty-three, or eighty-six if split items (i.e., those containing preludes or introductory texts) are counted separately.11 This was achieved firstly by the fortuitous discovery in Frankfurt in the early 1980s of a single leaf among an indeterminate number, which became detached from the original both before and since it was foliated by Clement Canterbury, librarian at St Augustine’s in the late fifteenth century;12 and secondly, by the inclusion of songs in the same hand from the beginning of the next gathering (fols 442ra– 443rb), which had been ignored by previous editors13 and which

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Ziolkowski regarded as arguably part of the song collection. This of course adds to the argument that CC formed part of the original manuscript, rather than being a separate self-contained collection added in subsequently. While the term carmina in itself can indicate either spoken or sung poems, there is copious external and internal evidence which places it beyond reasonable doubt that here it refers to songs. It is worth quoting Ziolkowski, whose views I wholeheartedly endorse: Readers of literature cannot be reminded often enough that poetry, especially lyric poetry, was conceived from the beginning as a musically informed entity […]. Such a reminder is particularly apt when the literature under consideration is a collection such as the CC. Although the most common experience of the CC these days will be through the eyes of a silent and solitary reader, or at best as the objects of parsing and discussion in small classes of advanced students, in the eleventh century they thrived in performances before audiences on all manner of occasions, from festivals for entertainment to funerals and coronations for solemn commemoration. Their raison d’ȇtre was song.14

This evidence for taking the texts as songs has several aspects: the structure of many of the items, including no less than thirteen in sequence form and eight with refrains, is indicative of known song types; genres such as eulogies, laments, love songs and religious songs; the presence of a proemium or prelude in three instances; references to modus, a tune or a melody, in the rubrics in the case of four and sometimes also in the text (e.g., CC 11); references to instrumental accompaniment; descriptions, and celebration, of musical performance, in numerous instances; and above all, the presence of partial music notation in the form of neumes in the case of eight. As well as that, a few of the items without neumes in CC occur as songs with music notation in other sources. The collection also reveals a conscious awareness of metrical diversity, including both rhythmic and quantitative, strophic and stichic, and some German-Latin macaronic entries. Among these are ambrosians and other hymn-like strophes, adonics, anapaests, sapphics, and strophes in freer rhythm, as well as others showing the influence of (Germanic) accented metres. Along with the Boethian metra, quantitative items include dactylic and leonine hexameters, inter alia. Thirdly, there is a significant number of songs whose specific topic is the theory of music, either singing about it as in a didactic

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exercise, or referring to theory and acoustics in some aspect, which is very suggestive of an environment in which these materials were originally created and used. Thus, as well as their performative function as songs, CC embodies a large corpus of knowledge on the practice of music, an aspect that is rare in earlier medieval sources, which are usually more concerned with music theory as part of the quadrivium, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, within an overall theological framework. Added to this limitation is the indecipherability of music notation from much before the twelfth century. Although heighted neumes existed already by the late tenth century, enabling indication of pitch differentiation, and the musical stave was invented in the early eleventh by Guido d’Arezzo (991/2–post 1033), these options were not necessarily availed of, depending most likely on the purpose of the manuscript and the requirements of its users. A further problem is the complete absence of notation for instrumental music, which belonged to the domain of oral tradition, leaving literary references, iconography and educated guesswork as the only means of reconstructing a performance history for medieval music up to the twelfth/ thirteenth century. But in CC, while admitedly also amounting to ‘literary reference’, we have quite detailed accounts that provide insight into not only contemporary performance practice but also contemporary knowlege and use of musical instruments, acoustics, music theory, social contexts of performance, patronage, and the psycho-emotional effects of music, in very specific terms. In this respect, CC, as well as being a song anthology within a larger collection of late antique and medieval poetry, also serves as an immensely rich repository of eleventh-century musical knowledge for the modern reader. Song genres The songs are loosely grouped according to the various genres represented, beginning and ending with a religious theme, i.e., panegyrics and dirges for worldly and ecclesiastical leaders; other occasional and political items; comic tales and other sorts of narrative; religious, admonitory, didactic, springtime, and love. They include six praise poems for German emperors, all of them from the period 950–1050: coronation songs for Henry III (r. 1046–56, CC 16)15 and Conrad II (r. 1027–39, CC 3); a lament on the death of Henry II (r. 1014–24, CC 17), a sequence on his burial at Bamberg (CC 9), a lament for Conrad II (CC 33), and a song in praise of

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the Ottonian dynasty (CC 11). Other items concern entertainment and celebration of ecclesiastical and secular figures: archbishops Heriger of Mainz (CC 24), Poppo of Trier (CC 25), Heribert of Cologne (CC 7); a celebratory dance song for St Cecilia’s Day believed to be associated with a convent in Cologne where there was a community of canonesses in the eleventh century dedicated to her name (CC 26). This is hardly mere happenstance in such a collection, given that St Cecilia is the patron saint of music. CC also includes other occasional and political items, comic tales (particularly at the expense of the Swabians) and other sorts of narrative, as well as some seventeen songs of religious devotion. A number of these are in forms related to sequences and tropes along with a Merovingian abecedarian hymn (CC 18) with a penitential text.16 CC 1, consisting of three lines, is also part of a longer hymn from St Gallen;17 ‘Salve festa dies’ (CC 22) is a processional hymn from the standard liturgical repertory; CC 44 is found in part as a trope in liturgical sources from Nevers and Sens;18 CC 83 is a song of intercession to the Virgin. On the more worldly side, there are songs celebrating spring (CC 22, 23), as well as love songs (CC 27, 28, 39, 40, 46, 48, 49), a number of which were erased in whole or in part presumably for what was deemed their overly erotic content by a medieval censor at the abbey.19 Lastly, there are songs with didactic texts concerning musical intervals and playing technique, such as CC 10, about the nightingale, as well others about music theory and history (e.g., CC 45, addressing Pythagorean music theory and celestial harmony, and CC 21, a prose text to facilitate memorisation of musical intervals and their names). It can be seen, therefore, that while there is a clear German stamp on this collection, it is by no means of purely local interest but contains a wide variety of songs from the international repertory, most likely that of the clerical courts. And while many of them are unique survivals, a significant number are found also in other parts of Europe, particularly France and Italy.20 Clerical milieux — as with Latin culture generally — knew no geographical frontiers. This leads us to the question of the origin of CC as a discrete collection. What was or were its exemplar(s)? As mentioned above, it appears to originate in the Middle/Lower Rhine area, and very possibly Cologne itself. A German provenance is suggested also by the presence of so many sequences, though CC 10 (‘Aurea personet lira’) is probably French and is known elsewhere with its melody (‘Aurea frequenter lingua’), and ‘Iam dulcis amica

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uenito’ (a version of CC 27) occurs in a late tenth-century troper from St Martial.21 And while CC represents clear evidence for the use of this form in Germany, the oldest sequences are from northern France of the ninth century, and so CC provides an important bridge between these and the more elaborate and regularised forms such as are found in Abelard’s planctus, in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century German forms of ‘conductus‑Leich’, or in some Old French vernacular lais found in twelfth-/thirteenthcentury trouvère chansonniers.22 There are several other possible German leads. Four of the CC sequences entitled Modi occur also in different versions in an eleventh-century manuscript from Paderborn Cathedral:23 Modus qui et Carelmanninc, Modus Florum, Modus Liebinc, Modus Ottinc (on fols 60–63), believed to have been copied from a North Thuringian original. These are equivalent to CC 5, 15, 14, 11 (in that order) and are not part of an anthology but occur at the end of a codex containing materials relating to Alexander, Aristotle, Bede, as well as a Life of St George. This and CC may share a common ancestor.24 Secondly, there is a highly suggestive account of music provided by a minstrel at an inn at the request of one of the guests in one of the moral satires by Sextus Amarcius Gallus Piosistratus, an eleventh-century German author based in Speyer. It concludes as follows: causing the tuneful strings to accord frequently in a fifth, he plays loudly of how the sling of a shepherd laid low great Goliath [cf. CC 82], how a sly little Swabian deceived his wife with a trick similar to her own [cf. CC 14], how perceptive Pythagoras laid bare the eight tones of song [cf. CC 12], and how pure the voice of the nightingale is. [cf. CC 10]

The passage also contains a detailed description of the sound of the musician playing on the strings and the whole is highly suggestive of performance of songs current at that time.25 Thirdly, we have the testimony of Ebbo, a magister at the Cathedral School at Worms who, in a letter to Henry III, referred to a collection of modi that he had been commissioned to prepare at Henry’s behest.26 This is all we know, but it is one of the clearest indicators not only of the existence of such collections at this time, but especially of Henry III’s interest in song anthologies. Henry was known for his Christian ideals and his love of learning and the arts.27 It is possible that CC itself was commissioned by him, and even that it was Ebbo who assembled it, or at least contributed to

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the endeavour. Another candidate is Wipo (d. post 1046) who was chaplain to Conrad II and author of at least one of the CC.28 Performance practice, musical technique, names of instruments The evidence of CC shows that it was usual to accompany singing on a stringed and/or wind instrument. The instruments most usually mentioned are lira, cithara, rota, tympanum, tibia, fistula, with references also to a plectrum. The first four are all stringed instruments, mainly lyres, but cithara could also be applied to a harp (or to a lute-type instrument, i.e., with a fingerboard). ‘Caute cane, caute cane; conspira karole’ (CC 1A), and ‘Caute cane, cantor care’ (CC 30) both address musicians at the beginning of a performance: Sing carefully, / breathe together, pipe-player (CC 1A) Sing circumspectly, sweet singer; / let the windpipes puff together brightly / let the strings sound together elegantly. (CC 30)29

Other examples include three religious songs, one of a general nature in praise of God and the Virgin Mary: sing praise … not only with the sound of strings but also with tuneful songs of jubilation …. (CC 4.6b)

one in honour of St Victor, patron saint of Xanten: Now, string, sound melodies devoutly to the son of the holy virgin Mary. (CC 8)

and another describing King David’s progeny singing praises of the Lord on various stringed instruments. This is a particularly rousing song with a single-line refrain repeated thrice between each stanza, and includes references to David seated with his cithara between his knees and to his progeny strumming their lyres with a plectrum (CC 81). These are very evocative of David imagery as found in many continental psalters and tropers, as, for example, in the St Martial instance cited above, while also perfectly credible as Germanic (and Anglo-Saxon) lyres. A number of the songs open with a proemium or prelude, others appear separately, sometimes amounting to just a few lines. In the case of the latter, some may be incipits of longer songs known to the compilers, although they might also be examples of introductory material or preludes that could be applied to a number of different songs, again reinforcing the notion of an anthology or

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work of reference. This is suggested by the similarity between, e.g., the two ‘Caute cane’ items (CC 1A and 30). Equally, snatches of song addressing musical intervals (discussed below) could serve a similar purpose, or represent a refrain, or indeed at the same time, an extract from a music lesson. There are other songs that begin with an exhortation – not a separate prelude but with a similar ‘warming up’ function or one to summon the audience, such as ‘Advertite, omnes populi’ (CC 14: ‘Listen, all you people’); ‘Mendosam quam cantilenam ago’ (CC 15: Modus Florum, ‘The lying ballad that I sing’); ‘In gestis patrum veterum […] quod uobis dicam rithmice’ (CC 42: ‘In the deeds of the early fathers I read a certain amusing story [about Abba Johannes, small in stature, but not in virtues] … that I will relate to you in a rhythmic poem …’).30 Similiarly, a lament for a certain William opens with an exhortation to the master to make his lyre sound sweetly and the chorister to raise his voice high (CC 43): Tu, magister,   tuam liram,   fac sonare dulciter et tu cantor,      in sublime     uocem tuam erige ambo simul     adunati       cantilene mistice.

A particularly rich example is the song about Lantfrid and Cobbo (CC 6: ‘Omnis sonus cantilenae trifariam fit’), which illustrates many of the features of a live performance. It opens with a Prelude, ‘Every sound of songs comes in three ways’, followed by a description of strumming strings with plectrum and hand; pitches of strings; blowing of wind instruments through pipes of different sizes and puffing of stomach and mouth; and vocal sounds of humans and birds. Then the story is announced, and narrated semi-dramatically, whether by two singers or by one using different ‘voices’. It is a tale about departing on a long journey and the difficulties involved in separation but with a happy ending, and it concludes with another musical reference: ‘[a]nd after singing thus for a long time […] he dashed his tympanum on the cliff and returned his wife to him, untouched’. Unusual as it may seem, tympanum refers to a stringed instrument and not to a drum (as Ziolkowski has it).31 Other descriptions of musical performance of a more general nature include: All of us singing melodies together32 give thanks to the Creator. (CC 2)

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sing praise with me […] not only with the sound of strings but also with tuneful songs of jubilation. (CC 4.6b) Let us celebrate in these melodies. (CC 6)

A number of accounts are more conventionally allegorical, metaphorical and indeed theological, such as in the lament for Archbishop Heribert (CC 7): [you] rule the plectrum33 of our soul (CC 1a.5) Let us together sound a melody, / when the heartstrings / are carefully tuned, proclaiming matters / partly sad, / partly happy,/ about the pious pastor and patron Heribert. (CC 2a)

or in ‘Aurea personet lira’: Hear the songs of our soul as we entreat […] the sounding together [symphoniae] of our voices will praise you. (CC 9)

Theory of music communicated, taught and learnt in song The theory of music is mentioned in several of the carmina, whether singing about it as in a lesson or making reference to it in some aspect. Pythagoras and his theories are celebrated in ‘Vite dator, omnifactor’ (CC 12). Though mainly a song in praise of God, the Creator of all, and about good living, it makes reference to the story of how Pythagoras explained the functioning of music by visiting a blacksmith, by way of illustrating the search for ‘the obscure meaning of things’. Again one’s attention is drawn to the use of a musical example to preach Christian morality, suggesting the environment in which such a song would have been composed and performed. Similarly, Pythagorean music theory and celestial harmony are invoked in another song in praise of the deity, ‘Rota modos arres personemus musica’34 (CC 45): As renowned Pythagoras learned from the smiths / as he comprehended consonances by means of four hammers, / he determined the intervals of the seven planets, / from which celestial music comes into being; /as the arithmetic rule / of number relates, / giving all things first principles, / May the king, ruling all wondrously, rule us forever.

The ode to a nightingale, ‘Aurea personet lira’ (CC 10), already mentioned above, is an excellent example of theory, pedagogy, musical aesthetics, and specialist musical knowledge of scales and modes. It also contains references to lyre, monochord and intervals; the ‘plectrum of the tongue’, and to Musica as teacher:

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1. May the golden lyre sound bright melodies; may a single string / be tightened over fifteen notes [i.e., two octaves]; may the middle tone / produce the first sound according to the Hypodorian mode. 2. Let us give praise to the nightingale / with organic35 voice, singing out a sweet melody as music teaches, without mastery of which there can be no true songs. The theory of intervals, ‘Diapente et diatesseron’, is also mentioned in a two-line song that might well be extracted from a music lesson, but could equally serve as a prelude to a song about music, or indeed any song (CC 21): A fifth and a fourth, a concord both high- and low-pitched, together a consonance, produce an entire octave in a consonant36 modulation.

Of relevance also here is the Amarcius reference above, where the minstrel at the inn is described as playing in fifths to accompany his singing. As well as indicating an intellectual environment where the technicalities of music and performance were obviously familiar to all, there are some specific references in some of the songs to teaching and learning, such as CC 10 where Musica is referred to as a teacher, or the two ‘Caute cane’ items (CC 1A and 30), which have some of the suggestions of a singing lesson. The lament for William (CC 43) describes a magister touching the strings and composing the song, while encouraging the cantor to raise his voice ‘both united at once in mystical37 song’. Emotional effects of music Insight into the social role of music as an agent of heightened emotion is apparent in many of the CC. They range over a wide gamut, including lamenting the dead, erotic love, the joys of spring, humour and satire. Specifically, one item about a sly Swabian who tricked the king (CC 15, ‘Mendosam cantilenam’) is recommended to little boys to make audiences laugh: … puerulis commendatum dabo quo modulos per mendaces risum auditoribus ingentem ferant. (… I will give [highly recommended] to little boys, so that they may bring great laughter to listeners through lying measures of song.)

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Modus Ottinc (CC 11), a song in honour of three Ottonian emperors, recounts an incident where fire broke out while Otto slept. Fearful of his reaction if they disturbed him, his servants played string music to awaken him. A number of religious songs also make reference to the power of music, such as ‘Dauid, uates Dei’ (CC 82), where there is mention of how David soothed King Saul when he became enraged, and ‘Virgo, dei genitrix’ in which prayerful pleas to the Virgin for her intercession are expressed through the beauty of the penitent’s song (CC 83). CC in the context of other medieval song anthologies Anthologies of song are rare at this time. Secular songs are usually found scattered here and there, in liturgical manuscripts such as the St Martial troper, or in miscellenaous collections. Indeed apart from anthologies of classical and Carolingian Latin lyrics, there are no extant collections with such a substantial component of poetic learning from medieval Germany until the Carmina Burana,38 which dates to the first half of the thirteenth century. Furthermore, many of the songs in CC are unique, and there is no equivalent surviving from this time that celebrates and explores the practice of singing and instrumental music to such an extent. And yet the indication is that other written sources did exist, which made ­possible such a comprehensive collection. One would like to know what the motivation was for copying CC at Canterbury. Was the collection perhaps loaned to the abbey, as has been suggested by some? In any case it would have served well as an anthology of musical and poetic forms already familiar to an Anglo-Saxon community of the eleventh century, even if the specifically German songs (particularly those in praise of local secular and ecclesiastical rulers) might not have had an immediate resonance with performing musicians in Canterbury. We may wonder what might have resulted there or indeed at another English centre of learning had the Norman Conquest not taken place, or not taken place when it did. In a short few years some of the materials that form this collection would probably have held little interest for the new elite whose political and cultural interests were French and not Anglo-Saxon or Germanic. There are no other surviving song anthologies from medieval England until the Harley Lyrics,39 and there is nothing on the scale of CC, for either size or diversity.

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Notes  1 Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.5.35, fols 432ra–443vb, hereafter ‘CC’.  2 See P. Dronke, M. Lapidge and P. Stotz, ‘Die unveröffentlichten Gedichte der Cambridger Liederhandschrift (CUL Gg.5.35)’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 17 (1982), 54–95 (58–9).  3 This is only one of several possibilities since there were many contacts between England and Lotharingia in the eleventh century. See F. Barlow, Edward the Confessor (London: Eyre Methuen, 1970), p. 215; also M. Lapidge, ‘The origin of C[orpus] C[hristi] C[ollege] C[ambridge, MS] 163’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographic Society, 8/1 (1981), 18–28.  4 But note that there they are said to begin on fol. 424 instead of fol. 432. See A. G. Rigg and G. R. Wieland, ‘A Canterbury classbook of the mid-eleventh century (the “Cambridge Songs” manuscript)’, AngloSaxon England, 4 (1975), 113–30 (118).  5 Rigg and Wieland, ‘A Canterbury classbook of the mid-eleventh century’. For a summary of all of the scholarly theories on the nature of this codex, see J. Ziolkowski (ed. and trans.), The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia) (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. xx–xxv.  6 See Dronke, Lapidge and Stotz, ‘Die unveröffentlichten Gedichte der Cambridger Liederhandschrift’, p. 56.  7 See Rigg and Wieland, ‘A Canterbury classbook of the mid-eleventh century’, for a full description of the contents.  8 See Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs.  9 All of the translations given here are from Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs. 10 K. Breul (ed.), The Cambridge Songs: A Goliard’s Song Book of the XIth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915) contains forty-seven, and includes facsimiles; K. Strecker (ed.), Die Cambridger Lieder, MGH, Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi, 40 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1926); W. Bulst (ed.), Carmina Cantabrigiensia, Editiones heidelbergenses, 17 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universtätsverlag, 1950). 11 CC 1A, 14A, 30A. 12 Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xxvii. For more detailed accounts see M. T. Gibson, M. Lapidge and C. Page, ‘Neumed Boethian metra from Canterbury: a newly recovered leaf of Cambridge, University Library, Gg. 5.35 (the “Cambridge Songs” manuscript)’, Anglo-Saxon England, 12 (1983), 141–52. There (p. 145) it is argued that the leaf was taken to Germany in 1840, whether by accident or otherwise, following a visit to Cambridge by Theodore Oehler, who was in search of manuscript materials. Records show that it was still part of the MS in 1839.

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13 CC 77–83 in Ziolkowski’s edition. With the exception of CC 79 and 80, these were first published in Dronke, Lapidge and Stotz, ‘Die unveröffentlichten Gedichte der Cambridger Liederhandschrift’. 14 Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xl; the strong appeal in the first sentence is attributed to B. Gentili, Poetry and its Public in Ancient Greece, from Homer to the Fifth Century, trans. A. T. Cole (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). 15 Numbers refer to the ‘CC’ numbering system in Ziolkowski’s edition. 16 It is extant in several MSS, several from the ninth and tenth centuries, including an early one from St Gallen. See Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. 225 and 227; Bulst, Carmina Cantabrigiensia, p. 75. Penitential texts were a particular feature of the early Irish church, hence it is possible that such a hymn may have been composed at a continental Irish centre of learning. While space does not permit fuller discussion of this question, it may be relevant here to mention that the Cologne churches of Groß Sankt Martin and St Panteleon were headed by Irish abbots in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 17 Now Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS IV G 68, fol. 207r, with notation. 18 Two from Nevers, both tropers, now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS n.a. lat. 1235, fol. 76v (12th century) and lat. 9449, fol. 35r (11th century); and a third from Sens, now Sens, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 46 (13th century). For further discussion, see Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, pp. 298–9. 19 See Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xxix, for details. 20 ‘International’ songs also include CC 6 and 13 (both concerning performance skills, and discussed below), which, along with CC 48, are neumed in other sources. Again space does not permit fuller discussion here, but further details on individual items are provided by Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, with a summary discussion, on pp. xxxvi–xxxvii, concerning the French and Italian elements. It is also relevant to note that Henry III’s second wife was Agnes of Poitou, and she may have been a conduit for at least some of the French material. 21 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 1118, fol. 246. This richly illuminated manuscript is remarkable for its extensive illustrations of instrumental musicians and dancers. See, for example, T. Seebass, Musikdarstellung und Psalterillustration im früheren Mittelalter, 2 vols (Bern: Francke, 1971), Bildband, Pls I–XII. 22 For a more extensive discussion see A. Buckley, ‘Old French lyric Lais and Descorts and related Latin song to c. 1300’, 3 vols. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Cambridge, 1990, I, 135–43. 23 Now Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, MS 3610; Cod. Guelf. 56. 16. Aug. 24 Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xxxiv.

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25 The entire passage in Latin with English translation and discussion may be consulted in Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, pp. xliv–lii. 26 See Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv for further details. 27 Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xxxii; see also P. G. Schmidt, ‘Heinrich III. — Das Bild des Herrschers in der Literatur seiner Zeit’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 39 (1983), 582–90. 28 Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, p. xxxiv. 29 I have replaced Ziolkowski translation ‘harmony’ for the Latin ‘conspira’ and ‘concinnantiam’ in CC 1A and 30, respectively, as it has specific technical implications. Here I suggest, rather, that it means ‘harmoniously’, ‘in tune’, or ‘sounding together’. 30 ‘quod uobis dicam rithmice’ leaves open the question of speaking rather than singing. But the term ‘dicere’ did not necessarily exclude singing, particularly if one takes into account the possibilty of declaiming or performing in a slightly intoned way. Here it could also be interpreted as ‘telling a story’, as indeed is suggested in Ziolkowski’s translation. 31 Cf. also Amarcius’s use of the term, Ziolkowski, The Cambridge Songs, pp. xlv–xlvi. 32 ‘concinnantes’: Ziolkowski gives ‘harmony’. 33 Mistranslated as ‘lyre’ by Ziolkowski. 34 This is the only instance of the term ‘rota’ in the CC, but here Ziolkowski translates it as ‘harp’, incorrectly. It is sometimes written with a double ‘t’, translated ‘(h)rotta’ in Middle High German, and appears to be cognate with Welsh crwth, Irish crot and English crowd, all vernacular terms for a lyre. 35 ‘In uoce organica’; Ziolkowski gives ‘well-tuned voice’ but it could possibly be a technical reference to ‘organal’ or two-part singing. 36 ‘modulatione consona’; Ziolkowski gives ‘harmonious modulation’ which is not incorrect in the general sense of the English word. 37 Ziolkowski gives ‘symbolic’ for ‘mistice’. 38 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 4660 and 4660a. 39 British Library, MS Harley 978, Reading Abbey, mid-thirteenth century. For a recent discussion of its contents and classification, see H. Deeming, ‘An English monastic miscellany: the Reading manuscript of Sumer is icumen in’, in H. Deeming and E. E. Leach (eds), Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 116–40.

Part II Transmission of Christian Traditions

4 Cristes leorningcnihtas: traditions of the apostles in Old English literature Hugh Magennis

The apostles, Christ’s closest chosen disciples, were honoured everywhere throughout the Middle Ages as among the very greatest saints of the church. As elsewhere, they were venerated extensively in Anglo-Saxon England, where they were remembered in ecclesiastical practice and personal devotion and through contemplation of their lives. Notably, the apostles are presented almost invariably in Anglo-Saxon sources in what we might refer to as institutional contexts, within which they contribute centrally to constructions of Christian knowledge and understanding. Treatments of the apostles may bring out aspects of their individual significance and, in Old English poetry, they may be reconceived in distinctively Germanic heroic terms, but the apostles also serve as essential pillars in larger structures that express the unity and coherence of Christian knowledge, structures ranging from litanies and calendars to catalogue poems and cycles of homilies. As explained below, the poem Andreas is, exceptionally, a freestanding composition about a single apostle but other surviving references to the apostles in Old English typically occur within the framework of larger textual constructs. The present chapter surveys references to and treatments of the apostles in Anglo-Saxon England, focusing in particular on Old English sources, which have received less attention (with reference to our topic) in existing scholarship than Latin traditions.1 The chapter emphasises the place of the apostles within systems of knowledge and understanding but also considers how traditions of the apostles are appropriated by Anglo-Saxon writers. Traditions of the apostles The names of the twelve2 apostles are recorded (with variation between Jude and Thaddeus) in the New Testament. The lists

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of the apostles given in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles (Matthew 10:1–4, Mark 3:13–19, Luke 6:12–16, Acts 1:13) served as the source of later litanies and other listings, supplemented by Acts 1:26, which explains how Matthias was elected to replace Judas Iscariot, and with the universally accepted addition of Paul, ‘apostle to the gentiles’ (Romans 11:13). Individual agreed feast days for the apostles were established in late antiquity and transmitted through calendars and martyrologies, most notably in the West the influential Martyrologium Hieronymianum, which can be traced back to at least the sixth century and was compiled from earlier sources.3 Other seminal reference works in the West included Isidore of Seville’s De ortu et obitu patrum.4 The apostles appear not only in the Gospels and the canonical Acts of the Apostles but also in the Greek (in some cases, ultimately Syriac) apocryphal acts that later sprang up about them, detailing further their experiences after the Ascension – their missionary travels, with exciting adventures along the way, and their eventual deaths, all except John as martyrs. These apocryphal acts, composed mainly in the second and third centuries,5 form the basis of the hagiographical literature on the apostles. By the sixth century the most important original acts had been adapted and translated from Greek into Latin, and these later texts, referred to as passiones, were among the Christian literature inherited by the Anglo-Saxons and in many cases rendered into the vernacular.6 Scant personal information concerning the apostles and their previous lives can be gleaned from the Gospels themselves or the Acts of the Apostles. We learn incidentally, for example, that Peter had been a fisherman and was married and that Matthew was a tax collector, but such details are few and far between. Some later apocryphal traditions concerning the apostles add a little more colour about their backgrounds, such as that John had been about to marry (at Cana) when he received the call.7 There is no body of apocryphal literature, however, on the earlier lives of the apostles, in contrast to the situation with regard to their later lives and to the early lives of Jesus and Mary. As in the Gospels and canonical Acts, the apostles are understood in the apocryphal acts to have been good, if ordinary, people in their earlier lives; and in their ‘present’ lives in the acts they are not portrayed as uniformly perfect. In contrast to the conventions of developed medieval hagiography, they tend to achieve saintly perfection, undergoing a process of learning in the course of their, often adventurous, experience.8 Thomas is portrayed as protesting

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about going to India, for example; Andrew shows weakness during his mission to the cannibalistic Mermedonians; Peter attempts to flee rather than face arrest, before Christ appears to him in the famous Quo vadis scene and convinces him to turn back to Rome; Peter and Paul have been characterised as ‘weak and uncertain of themselves’ in their contest with Simon Magus.9 The apostles are humanised in the acts to a far greater extent than is the case in most later writings about saints. Like Jesus himself, but unlike the vast majority of people celebrated in hagiographical literature, the apostles were also humbly born, which is a point of interest to exegetical commentators.10 The instinct of many early medieval hagiographers in treating this apocryphal material is to accommodate it more securely where possible to the world of conventional hagiography, removing or reducing the element of human weakness in its protagonists and moving away from the idea of ‘saints in process’. This instinct to present the apostles in idealising terms as faultless and ‘iconic’11 figures is particularly evident in Anglo-Saxon vernacular writers, most notably of all in Ælfric. Anglo-Saxon England In early Christian Anglo-Saxon England Aldhelm writes that it was ‘through [the apostles] that the world was converted to belief in the high-throned God’ (‘e quibus altithrono conversus credidit orbis’);12 in the later period the apostles are prominent among the saints Ælfric includes in his hagiographical writings in Catholic Homilies as venerated by the whole church;13 and, as we would expect, the apostles are widely referred to throughout Anglo-Saxon Christian records, appearing frequently in church dedications, for example,14 omnipresent in liturgical calendars15 and in litanies of the saints16 and frequently referred to in art17 and in Anglo-Latin and Old English literature, both collectively and as individuals. As suggested above, individual apostles are usually presented in some kind of larger context, though they can also function to more specific purpose. For example, the apostle Bartholomew makes a brief, miraculous appearance in the life of St Guthlac, preserving the Anglo-Saxon hermit from demons, as reflected in the original vita by Felix of Crowland and in the Old English prose translation and the poem Guthlac A (Guthlac had settled in his fenland retreat on the feast of St Bartholomew).18 In the life of St Agatha, Peter appears to the saint in her prison cell, relieving her suffering.19

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Old English literature: prose One larger context in which apostles characteristically appear is in martyrologies and calendars. Among the former, the ninth-century Old English Martyrology is notable as a vernacular collection having short entries glorifying eleven of the ‘twelve’ apostles, along with Paul.20 The Martyrology contains summaries of the lives of some 230 saints (and it is incomplete today), set out in the calendar order of their feast days. Of the apostles, it lacks only Matthias; the feast day of Matthias falls on a date (24 February) that coincides with one of several gaps common to all surviving manuscripts of the Old English text. Matthias remained a shadowy figure anyway and tended to become confused with Matthew from an early date (as reflected in some Anglo-Saxon calendars and elsewhere).21 The entries in the Old English Martyrology identify each of the eleven apostles, plus Paul, on the basis of biblical and traditional information and then move on to summarise their missionary work and martyrdoms; the entries are (in calendar order) on John (enumerating miracles associated with him), Philip (mentioning his mission to Scythia), James the Less (relating his martyrdom in Jerusalem), Peter, with Paul (focusing on their deaths at Rome and on post-mortem miracles), James the Great (mentioning both his travels to Spain and his execution by Herod), Bartholomew (concentrating on his missionary work and martyrdom in India), Matthew (relating his experiences and martyrdom among the Ethiopians), Simon and Thaddeus, treated together and mentioning that Thaddeus was also known as Judas (Jude) (referring to their preaching in Persia), Andrew (mentioning his Scythian and Achaian missions and his martyrdom), and Thomas (relating his work among the Indians). The martyrology form provides a calendrical structure for the commemoration of saints, of which the apostles are among the essential representatives. As a compendium of hagiographical knowledge, however, the Old English Martyrology contrasts with other early medieval martyrologies22 not only in the amount of biographical information it supplies about individual saints but also in its inclusion of non-hagiographical material, which makes up about a quarter of the text. Based on a large number of antecedent sources, many of which may have been brought together in a lost immediate source, the Martyrology is truly remarkable for the range and variety of its contents.23 The non-hagiographical entries chart the seasons and months, highlight important moveable feasts

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and include various kinds of secular and religious lore, including cosmological, astronomical and zoological. Christine Rauer refers to such elements as providing an ‘encyclopaedic’ component to the Martyrology, identifying it as a broad ‘reference’ book.24 As such, the Martyrology brings together a wide range of knowledge under the unifying structure of the cycle of the year. A ‘storehouse’ of knowledge, it presents its saints in the context of this cycle, with the apostles reassuringly present as essential components in a universalising structure. Another kind of larger context for mentions of the apostles is that of the structured homiliary, as represented, for example, by the Blickling Homilies and, much more ambitiously and comprehensively, the Catholic Homilies of Ælfric, both of which follow the course of the ecclesiastical year. Ælfric, writing at the end of the tenth century and beginning of the eleventh, is the most prolific Old English writer on the apostles. He is interested both in their experiences in the Gospels and Acts and in their later lives. Though he writes a considerable amount on the apostles, it is interesting to note that, like other Old English writers, he has little to say about their epistles. Ælfric’s lack of coverage of the epistles follows from the fact that his sermons are typically treatments of the Gospel reading of the day but also reflects the exegetical and hagiographical nature of his focus on the apostles: he is interested in their exegetical significance and in their sanctity rather than in the personality or humanity that emerges in their own writings. With the exception of that of Thomas, whose passio appears in the later collection Lives of Saints, the lives of all of these apostles (bar Matthias) are narrated in detail in Catholic Homilies. And, as well as these narrative accounts, Ælfric also often refers to apostles in his exegetical preaching in Catholic Homilies, finding lessons for his congregations in their experiences. He returns to the life of Peter in Lives of Saints, where he includes an item for the feast day of the Chair of St Peter (22 February), recounting travels and miracles of the apostle.25 He also provides, in the second series of Catholic Homilies, a second homily (in addition to the first-series one on Peter and Paul) for the feast day of Peter (29 June), and he has an exegetical homily on Peter the fisherman in one of the ‘supplementary’ homilies printed by Pope.26 It is notable that Peter receives the most attention from Ælfric of all the saints other than the Virgin Mary. Peter is recognised as being a particular focus of veneration in later Anglo-Saxon England (and was the patron saint of Ælfric’s monastery at Cerne).27

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As mentioned above, the passion of Thomas appears not in Catholic Homilies but in Lives of Saints;28 Ælfric writes in Catholic Homilies that he has omitted the passion of Thomas ‘because it has long since been turned into English in poetry [on leoðwisan]’29 (the poetic life of Thomas mentioned here is not otherwise known) but also because the great Augustine questioned the credibility of a particular episode in the passion, that of the cupbearer gruesomely punished in retribution after striking Thomas in the face. Ælfric declares that although the rest of the passion of Thomas, which he knew in the ‘Cotton-Corpus Legendary’ variant of the version referred to today as BHL 8163,30 is fully credible (‘full geleaflic’, line 16), ‘For this doubt [‘twynunge’, line 15] we would not touch his passion’.31 By the time he wrote Lives of Saints Ælfric had changed his mind about treating the passion of Thomas, though he is careful to leave out the problematic episode of the cupbearer. He says in a short Latin introduction to the Lives of Saints text that he has long been in doubt about translating the passion of Thomas into English, but now, in response to the persistent urgings of his patron, ealdorman Æthelweard, he desires to do so, passing over (‘pretermittere’, line 10) the questionable episode. As I discuss in more detail elsewhere,32 in his writings on the apostles, Ælfric carefully separates their Gospel experiences, which he treats exegetically, from their later experiences, which he treats hagiographically. His treatment of episodes from Acts of the Apostles can contain elements of either approach. In some of the items on apostles in Catholic Homilies, he presents a discussion of a Gospel-based theme (from the Gospel reading for the day) and then moves on to a separate hagiographical account – based on a different source – of their missionary work, persecution and martyrdom, resulting in a composite text. There is a clearly marked sub-heading of ‘passio’ in these homilies for the part dealing with the saints’ acts and martyrdoms. This two-part pattern is apparent in the homilies on Andrew, Matthew, and Peter and Paul.33 In the case of John, there is a brief passage on his role in the Gospels (noting that he was to have been married), before Ælfric moves swiftly on to his later acts.34 A different type of two-part structure is found in Ælfric’s homily for the feast day of St Peter, in which, in the first part, he retells the story from Acts (11:1–23) of Peter’s release from prison by an angel while, in the second, he offers a complex spiritual interpretation of the Gospel episode of Peter walking on the waves, where the apostle loses his nerve and is rebuked by Jesus (Matthew 14:22–36).35

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In his other accounts of apostles Ælfric concentrates exclusively on the apostle’s later acts, with no reference to the Gospels. This is the case with his treatment of Bartholomew, James the Great, Philip and James the Less, Simon and Jude, and Thomas;36 he also includes an extended apocryphal legend about John in old age in his Letter to Sigeweard, the only piece of detailed narrative in the whole text.37 In line with his characteristic approach to hagiography, Ælfric is at pains to present the apostles as iconic figures, faultlessly holy, removing any elements of imperfection apparent in his biblical and apocryphal sources.38 The apostles figure centrally in Ælfric’s work. They are inspiring and glorious and in their doings they offer lessons for readers and congregations. Individually and collectively they command the highest veneration, but for Ælfric, as for other writers, they have an even greater significance, taking their place at the centre of Christian structures of knowledge and understanding, as reflected in their position in his great cyclical compositions. They are definitively representative of the universal church to which the church in England is inextricably attached. This institutional dimension to treatment of the apostles is one that is apparent with reference to Old English writings more generally but it achieves its most developed form in the work of Ælfric. In the late tenth-century Blickling Homilies there are prose versions of the acts of Peter and Paul, another version of which appears in Ælfric, and of Andrew among the Mermedonians (along with accounts of other great saints, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and Martin). The Blickling version of the acts of Peter and Paul39 closely follows its Latin original and, as pointed out by Scott DeGregorio, is notable as presenting a less iconic image of the saints than that cultivated by Ælfric.40 The Blickling adaptor is much less interventionist than Ælfric in reshaping the inherited passio. The Blickling version of the acts of Andrew among the cannibals of Mermedonia (as also found in the Vercelli Book poem Andreas) is incomplete; a complete (but evidently lightly abridged) text of this version, which presents a close translation of its Latin source, is preserved in the manuscript CCCC 198.41 There is an anonymous (possibly twelfth-century) version of part of the life of St James the Great in British Library, MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv.42 Both CCCC 198 and Cotton Vespasian D. xiv are calendrically ordered collections, which, as well as anonymous works, also incorporate Ælfrician versions of passiones of the apostles, providing larger structures for the treatment of individual saints.

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Old English literature: verse The corpus of Old English verse hagiography is a small one within which we find three works that are of particular relevance to the apostles. Two of these, The Fates of the Apostles and The Menologium, place the individual apostles within larger structures while the third, Andreas, seems to be an independent composition. As mentioned above (p. 102), we also know of a poem on St Thomas, which has not survived. The apostles as a group are treated in the short catalogue poem The Fates of the Apostles, one of four Old English poems ‘signed’ with the name Cynewulf,43 which refers to twelve (line 4) apostles and, with extreme brevity, summarises the acts of the same eleven found in other accounts (Matthias is again missing), arriving at the number twelve by the inclusion of Paul. Cynewulf also touches on the apostles in the Exeter Book poem Christ II (The Ascension) (without naming any of them), in which in an elaboration of the Ascension scene in Luke (24:49–53) he describes how Christ sends them off on their mission to preach to all nations.44 The Fates of the Apostles is presumably based on a Latin martyrology or on a ‘passionary’ of the apostles; its actual source has not been identified.45 It does not have a calendrical structure but takes the form of a catalogue unified by its thematic focus on the apostles. The catalogue form was evidently one very attractive to Old English poets, to the extent that it has been justly identified as ‘the preeminent didactic form in OE poetry’.46 In Fates, Peter and Paul are mentioned first but there does not otherwise appear to be any particular significance in the order of the other apostles. Whatever its source, Fates clearly recasts its material to present it in heightened language. Typical of its exultant celebration of the apostles is its summary of the achievements of Andrew, who is portrayed as an active hero, a miles Christi (soldier of Christ), triumphant in battle:47 Swylce Andreas   in Achagia for Egias   aldre geneðde. Ne þreodode he fore þrymme   ðeodcyninges, æniges on eorðan,   ac him ece geceas langsumre lif,   leoht unhwilen, syþþan hildeheard,   heriges byrhtme, æfter guðplegan   gealgan þehte. (lines 16–22)

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(Andrew also risked his life before Ægeas in Achaia. He did not vacillate before the might of any king upon earth but he chose for himself eternal and enduring life and unephemeral light when, unflinching in the fight, to the clamour of the mob, after battle play he straddled the gallows.)48

Andrew, like the other apostles, is for the narrator of Fates a sublime and powerful figure, the unchanging perfect hero of hagiographical tradition – presented, however, in strikingly Germanic terms – who willingly embraces death ‘after the battle play’ (‘æfter guðplegan’) of the gallows and thereby the eternal life that it leads to. In contrast, the speaker himself is weak and inglorious in his sickness. The Fates of the Apostles combines the transmission of information about the apostles, functioning thereby as a structured repository of knowledge, with a reconceiving of them in Germanic terms, drawing upon the rich resources of Old English poetry to do so. Individually the apostles are wondrous heroes but the catalogue form also requires the audience to consider them as representing a thematically unified body of Christian knowledge. There is also some deployment of the language of Germanic warriorship with reference to the apostles in the poem traditionally entitled The Menologium, though here it is less developed than in The Fates of the Apostles. The language of Germanic warriorship is drawn upon, for example in the reference in The Menologium to James and Philip as ‘modige magoþegnas’ (line 82, ‘brave kinwarriors’), and Thomas is described as ‘þristhydigum’ (line 223, ‘valorous-minded’), and ‘bealdum beornwigan’ (line 225, ‘a brave warrior’). In accordance with the social order of heroic poetry the apostles are consistently presented as noblemen (as in Fates but unlike the Bible): they are thegns, princes (‘æþelingas’, line 189) and loyal companions of their lord (‘þeodenholde’, line 123). The Menologium, probably dating from the later tenth century, is a metrical calendar preserved in BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. i, listing the months and seasons of the year and giving brief accounts of important feast days celebrated in each month.49 Some twenty-eight feasts are mentioned altogether, and included among these are those of all the apostles, except John. At 231 verse lines, The Menologium is much smaller in scale than the Old English Martyrology, and it is in verse, but it resembles the latter work, and contrasts with Latin metrical calendars, in its interest in calendrical lore and the measurement of time.

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The Menologium celebrates the apostles and a few other great saints, all of whom are ‘universal’ rather than English (though Gregory and Augustine connect England to the universal church). The poem ends with an emphasis on the universality of the feast days highlighted in its calendar: these are feast days, among which those of the apostles figure prominently, to be observed by the whole church in Britain, thereby placing that church within the embrace of the universal church: Nu ge findan magon haligra tiida   þe man healdan sceal, swa bebugeð gebod   geond Brytenricu Sexna kyninges   on þas sylfan tiid. (lines 228b–31) (Now you are able to discover the saints’ feast days that are to be observed wherever the command of the Saxons’ king extends throughout Britain in this present time.)50

In The Menologium the celebration of the saints fits into an encompassing structure expressing a theological understanding of the cycle of the year that merges the temporale and sanctorale calendars with acknowledgement of the natural passing of the seasons and months (which are given their traditional English names). The Menologium aims to transmit calendrical knowledge, in the words of its poet, ‘swa hit getealdon geo […] frode gesiþas, / ealde ægleawe’ (lines 17–19) (‘just as wise companions, ancient scholars of the law, reckoned it long ago’).51 Here the appeal is to tradition, with different strands of tradition, including prominently those concerning the apostles, being integrated into a whole in the poem. As Nicholas Howe remarks, ‘Although the poem locates individual days within the year, its value lies in its wholeness, in its recording of the drama of Christian order and time’.52 The Menologium includes mention of Matthias (‘nergendes þegn’ (line 26), ‘thegn of the Saviour’), but, as noted above, curiously omits John. It does have two feasts of John the Baptist, however, 24 June (birth) and 29 August (beheading), and in the 24 June citation it refers to John as ‘þeodnes dyrling’ (line 116, ‘the Lord’s beloved’), which might suggest confusion on the part of the poet, since John the apostle was commonly identified as ‘the beloved disciple’. The language of noble Germanic heroism is also employed in Andreas, a hagiographical poem focusing on one apostle (with Matthew also having a supporting role, however) rather than

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presenting that apostle in a wider institutional context.53 This poem on St Andrew is based on the story of the saint’s adventures in Mermedonia rather than his mission to Achaia (which the Mermedonian adventures are presented as interrupting), where he would be martyred. Ivan Herbison has explained how the Andreas poet in approaching the material of the apocryphal legend ‘makes a fundamental change to the representation of the central character in an attempt to rewrite the source to accommodate a specifically hagiographical perspective’.54 This is a difficult act for the poet to pull off, given the intractable nature of the legend, in which Andrew displays unsaintly unwillingness to accept the formidably dangerous mission, loses heart in the midst of his suffering, and leaves Mermedonia prematurely before he has completed his work there. In the original legend of Andrew and the Mermedonians it is even possible to see an element of deliberate comic incongruity in the presentation of the saint and his followers, which is played down in the Old English poem: for example, there is no mention in Andreas of the unheroic seasickness of Andreas’s men on the voyage to Mermedonia, though this is emphasised in the original acts.55 Like the poets of The Fates of the Apostles and The Menologium, though in a much more sustained manner, the Andreas poet uses the language of Germanic heroism to re-present the saint. Earlier critics had seen the stylistic inconsistency of Andreas as a mark of the naivety and incompetence of the poet, but Herbison identifies it as symptomatic of a deeper structural problem with which the poet wrestled in the attempt to portray Andreas as a wholly admirable miles Christi:56 In considering the Andreas poet’s use of the language of Germanic heroism, other recent critics have gone further. It has been convincingly argued, not least by Richard North in this volume, that Andreas has been directly influenced by Beowulf.57 A sense of the ambitiousness of the Andreas poet’s creative engagement with inherited material may be gained by comparing the poem with the Old English prose analogue referred to above. Needless to say, the Old English prose version – based on a (no longer extant) Latin prose version of the legend, which would have been very similar to the (also no longer extant) source used by the Andreas poet58 – does not draw on the language of Germanic heroism. The critical editors of the prose version are surely right when they assess it to be ‘a close (often slavishly close) translation’ of the Latin.59 Nonetheless, even the Old English prose version lacks the detail about the seasickness of Andrew’s followers.

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Unlike most of the treatments of the apostles discussed in this chapter, Andreas may be seen as a free-standing composition. It reappropriates the Andrew story in Germanic terms but does not seek incorporate Andreas into a larger structure of Christian knowledge or understanding having an overarching coherence. Even in the case of Andreas, however, the impetus to provide such a larger structure is reflected in its strategic placement alongside The Fates of the Apostles in the Vercelli Book. The Vercelli Book is not as tightly organised as many of the collections mentioned above but its compiler provides a broadening perspective on Andreas by accompanying it with a poem that constitutes a storehouse of knowledge about the apostles, making essential facts about the apostles available to a vernacular audience within a coherent instructional framework.60

Notes  1 See especially A. M. O’Leary, ‘Apostolic passiones in early AngloSaxon England’, in K. Powell and D. Scragg (eds), Apocryphal Texts and Traditions in Anglo-Saxon England, Publications for the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 2 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 103–19 (with particular reference to Aldhelm and Bede); also A. Thacker, ‘In search of saints: the English Church and the cult of Roman apostles and martyrs in the seventh and eighth centuries’, in J. M. H. Smith (ed.), Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2000), pp. 247–77.  2 The number twelve is specified in John 6:71 and 1 Corinthians 15:5; on the ‘twelve’ apostles, see W. Bauer, ‘The picture of the apostle in early Christian tradition’, in E. Hennecke, New Testament Apocrypha, ed. W. Schneemelcher, English translation ed. R. McL. Wilson, 2 vols (London: Lutterworth Press, 1963 and 1965), II, pp. 35–74.  3 See J. Dubois, Les Martyrologes du moyen âge latin, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1978).  4 Ed. PL, 83, cols 129–56.  5 The apocryphal acts are collected in English translation, with useful introductory matter, in J. K. Elliott (ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); for a stimulating introductory account, see R. I. Pervo, ‘Early Christian fiction’, in J. R. Morgan and R. Stoneman (eds), Greek Fiction: The Greek Novel in Context (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 239–54.  6 For a detailed overview, see F. M. Biggs (ed.), The Apocrypha: Sources

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of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture, Instrumenta Anglistica Mediaevalia, 1 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 2007), pp. 37–56. On the transmission of apostolic passiones to AngloSaxon England, see O’Leary, ‘Apostolic passiones’; O’Leary deduces that the apostolic apocrypha came to England as a collected group within a century or so of the Gregorian mission: ‘apostolic passiones circulated in a distinct group which reached England (perhaps before arriving in Ireland) by about AD 700’ (p. 115).  7 See, for example, Ælfric’s homily ‘Assumptio Sancti Iohannis Apostoli’, CH I, IV, in P. Clemoes (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series. Text, EETS, SS, 17 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 207–16 (lines 8–10); for translation, see B. Thorpe (ed. and trans.), The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part, Containing the Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, 2 vols (London: Ælfric Society, 1844–46), I, pp. 59–77 (p. 59). As pointed out by Malcolm Godden, Ælfric is here following Bede and possibly drawing on Haymo: see M. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, EETS, SS, 18 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 30.  8 Averil Cameron refers to adventurous features of plot in the apocryphal acts inherited from Greek secular romance, ‘damsels in distress, the quest theme, the miraculous escape, and so on’, A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, Sather Classical Lectures, 55 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 89–119 (p. 91). Some of these features, it should be pointed out, are also found in the ‘canonical’ Acts of the Apostles: Pervo has written that the Acts of the Apostles ‘gives larger scope to adventure than to instruction and has affinities with ancient fiction’. Amplifying this point about Acts, Pervo continues, ‘Paul covers much of the territory over which the leading figures of Greek novels wander, and his life, too, is marked by intrigue, captivity and narrow escapes from death, including deliverance from shipwreck’, Pervo, ‘Early Christian fiction’, p. 240. Features of Greek romance are also found in early hagiography, but they become less frequent as the genre develops; they are not cultivated in most Anglo-Saxon examples.  9 For the episodes referred to here, see Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 447–8 (Thomas), 284–5 (Andrew), 424 (‘Quo vadis?’), 404–23 (Simon Magus); the quotation is from S. DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld, and vernacular hagiography: sanctity and spirituality in the Old English lives of SS Peter and Paul’, in D. Scragg (ed.), Ælfric’s Lives of Canonised Popes, Old English Newsletter Subsidia, 30 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 2001), pp. 75–98 (p. 87). 10 Ælfric gives an impassioned exegetical explanation of Christ’s choice

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of poor fishermen, not emperors or philosophers, to be his first disciples: see ‘Natale Sancti Andreę Apostoli’, CH I, XXXVIII, ed. Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 507–19 (lines 24–43); trans. Thorpe, Homilies, I, 577–9: if he had chosen the wealthy before the needy it would have seemed that they had been chosen for their possessions. 11 On idealising representations of sanctity in the early Middle Ages, see the influential essay by J. W. Earl, ‘Typology and iconographic style in early medieval hagiography’, Studies in the Literary Imagination, 8 (1975), 15–46; with reference to the saint as unchanging and iconic; see also, with particular reference to Ælfric, DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld, and vernacular hagiography’. 12 Aldhelm, Carmina ecclesiastica (CE), IV (‘In duodecim apostolorum aris’, ‘On the Altars of the Twelve Apostles’), in M. Lapidge and J. L. Rosier (trans.), Aldhelm: The Poetic Works (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), pp. 50–7 (xiii, p. 57); R. Ehwald (ed.), Aldhelmi Opera, MGH, Auctores Antiquissimi, 15 (Berlin: Weidmanns, 1919), pp. 19–32 (xiii, line 2, at p. 31). CE IV (the main source of which is Isidore of Seville, De ortu et obitu patrum) consists of notices of Peter, Paul, Andrew, James the Great, John, Thomas, James the Less, Philip, Matthew, Simon and Thaddeus (Jude). CE V (ed. Ehwald, Aldhelmi Opera, p. 32; trans. Lapidge and Rosier, Aldhelm, pp. 57–8) is a separate treatment of Matthias (Judas’s replacement), who is not mentioned in CE IV; Lapidge and Rosier comment, ‘CE V on Matthias clearly belongs with the preceding twelve poems which make up CE  IV. Aldhelm apparently added it as an afterthought, to complete the treatment of the apostles’ (p. 242, n. 79). The primacy of Peter and Paul is indicated by the additional separate carmen in their honour, which opens the series (CE I, ed. Ewald, pp. 11–12; trans. Lapidge and Rosier, p. 46). 13 In his Old English preface to Lives of Saints Ælfric says that in his previous two books (i.e., the two series of Catholic Homilies) he had translated the passions and lives of the saints the English nation honours with festivals but that in Lives of Saints he is including saints ‘whom monks in their offices honour amongst themselves’: see W. W. Skeat (ed. and trans.), Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, EETS, OS, 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London: Oxford University Press, 1881–1900; rpt. as 2 vols, 1966), I, 4–5 (lines 40–6); cf. also Latin preface to Lives of Saints, ed. and trans. Skeat, I, 3–4 (lines 5–9). 14 See N. Orme, English Church Dedications, with a Survey of Cornwall and Devon (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996), esp. pp. 11–24; O’Leary, ‘Apostolic passiones’, pp. 117–18. 15 See F. Wormald (ed.), English Kalendars Before A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 72 (London: Harrison and Sons, 1933); R. Rushforth, Saints in English Kalendars before A.D. 1100, Henry Bradshaw Society, 117 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2008).

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16 See M. Lapidge (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, Henry Bradshaw Society, 106 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991). 17 See V. Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries: Cultural, Spiritual, and Artistic Exchanges (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 162–75; Ortenberg’s survey of representations in art is part of her overview of veneration of the apostles in Anglo-Saxon England; also G. Henderson, ‘The representation of the apostles in insular art, with special reference to the New Apostles Frieze at Tarbat, Ross-shire’, in A. Minnis and J. Roberts (eds), Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and Its Insular Context in Honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 473–94; J. Lang, ‘The apostles in Anglo-Saxon sculpture in the age of Alcuin’, Early Medieval Europe, 8 (1999), 271–8. 18 See B. Colgrave (ed. and trans.), Felix’s Life of St Guthlac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), chs 32–3, pp. 106–9; for the Old English prose version, see P. Gonser (ed.), Das angelsächsische ProsaLeben des hl. Guthlac, Anglistische Forschungen, 27 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1909); for Guthlac A, see ASPR, III, 49–72, lines 684–751 (pp. 69–71). 19 See Ælfric’s ‘Natale Sancte Agathe Uirginis’, LS, VIII, ed. and trans. Skeat, I, 194–209 (lines 131–46). 20 See C. Rauer, The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts, 10 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013); G. Kotzor (ed.), Das altenglische Martyrologium, Bayerische Akademie der Wissen­schaften, Philos.-hist. Klasse, Neue Forschung, 88, 2 vols (Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissen­schaften, 1981). 21 On the confusion between Matthew and Matthias, see K. R. Brooks (ed.), Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), pp. 60–1. For confusion or uncertainty about Matthias in Anglo-Saxon calendars, see, for example, Oxford, Bodl., MS Digby 63, where the name appears as ‘Matthiani’ (ed. Wormald, English Kalendars, p. 3), Salisbury 150, where it appears as ‘Mathei’ (ed. Wormald, English Kalendars, p. 17), and Cotton Nero A. ii, where ‘Mathii’ has been altered to ‘Mathie’ (ed. Wormald, English Kalendars, p. 31). Matthias appears with the other apostles in most litanies but is missing in Cambridge University Library, fols 1. 23 (ed. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, p. 93), and Cotton Tiberius C. i (ed. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Litanies of the Saints, p. 178). 22 For systematic comparisons, see Kotzor, Martyrologium, I, 284–300, 302–11. 23 Many of the (possibly antecedent) sources of the Old English Martyrology were tracked down by J. E. Cross and published in his numerous articles. For current thinking concerning sources, see C. Rauer, ‘The sources of the Old English Martyrology’, Anglo-Saxon

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England, 32 (2003), 89–109; M. Lapidge, ‘Acca of Hexham and the origin of the Old English Martyrology’, Analecta Bollandiana, 123 (2005), 29–78, and Rauer’s edition, Old English Martyrology, pp. 2–3. 24 C. Rauer, ‘Usage of the Old English Martyrology’, in R. H. Bremmer and K. Dekker (eds), Foundations of Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages, Storehouse of Wholesome Learning, 1, Mediaevalia Groningana, new series, 9 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), pp. 125–46 (pp. 132, 142). 25 ‘Cathedra Sancti Petri’, LS, X, ed. and trans. Skeat, I, 218–39. 26 ‘In Festivitate Sancti Petri Apostoli’, CH II, XXIV, in M. Godden (ed.), Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. Text, EETS, SS, 5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 221–9; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 381–95; ‘Dominica VI post Pentecosten’, in J. C. Pope (ed.), Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection, 2 vols, EETS, OS, 259 and 260 (London: Oxford University Press, 1967 and 1968), II, 511–30 (Homily XIV). 27 On veneration of Peter in Anglo-Saxon England, including the reform period, see Ortenberg, The English Church and the Continent, pp. 162–9; DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld, and vernacular hagiography’, pp. 94–6: P. Lendinara, ‘Pietro, apostolo, vescovo e santo, nella letteratura anglosassone’, in L. Lazzari and A. M. Valente Bacci (eds), La figura di San Pietro nelle fonti del medioevo: Atti del convegno tenutosi in occasione dello Studiorum universitatium docentium congressus (Viterbo e Roma 5–8 settembre 2000), Textes et études du moyen âge, 17 (Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 2001), 649–84. 28 ‘Passio Sancti Thome Apostoli’, LS, XXXVI, ed. and trans. Skeat, II, 398–425. 29 ‘Excusio Dictantis’, ed. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, pp. 297–8 (lines 8–9); trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 521. On Thomas in Anglo-Saxon England, see further F. M. Biggs, ‘Ælfric’s comments about the Passio Thomae’, Notes & Queries, n.s., 52 (2005), 5–8; Biggs, The Apocrypha, pp. 55–6. 30 As demonstrated by P. H. Zettel: see his ‘Saints’ lives in Old English: Latin manuscripts and vernacular accounts: Ælfric’, Peritia, 1 (1982), 17–37 (22): the standard edition of the Latin text is still Passio Sancti Thomae Apostoli, in B. Mombritius (ed.), Sanctuarium seu Vitae Sanctorum, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Paris: Albert Fontemoing, 1910 (original ed. 1480)), II, pp. 606–14. 31 For the cupbearer episode in the Latin passio, see Passio Sancti Thomae Apostoli (ed. Mombritius), p. 607, lines 7–20; Acts of Thomas, ch. 6 (trans. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament, pp. 449–51). 32 H. Magennis, ‘Ælfric’s Apostles’, Anglo-Saxon England, 44 (2016), 181–99.

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33 See, respectively, ‘Natale Sancti Andreę Apostoli’ (see n. 10) (Godden suggests that the two parts of this homily were originally written as separate homilies, which on later reflection Ælfric decided to bring together: see Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: Introduction, Commentary and Glossary, p. 318); ‘Natale Sancti Mathei Apostoli et Euangelistæ’, CH II, XXXII, ed. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, pp. 272–9; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 469–81; ‘Passio Apostolorum Petri et Pauli’, CH I, XXVI, ed. Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 388–99; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, I, 365–85. On Ælfric’s choice of material in his saints’ lives in Catholic Homilies, esp. for apostles, see M. R. Godden, ‘Experiments in genre: the saints’ lives in Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies’, in P. E. Szarmach (ed.), Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), pp. 261–87. 34 ‘Assumptio Sancti Iohannis Apostoli’, CH I, IV, ed. Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 207–16; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, I, 59–77; see Godden, ‘Experiments in genre’, pp. 266–9. 35 For St Peter, see n. 26, above. 36 ‘Passio Sancti Bartholomei Apostoli’, CH I, XXXI, ed. Clemoes, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, pp. 439–50; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, I, 455–77; ‘Natale Sancti Iacobi Apostoli’, CH II, XXVII, ed. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, pp. 241–7; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 413–25; ‘Apostolorum Philippi et Iacobi’, CH II, XVII, ed. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series, pp. 169–73; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 295–303; ‘Passio Sanctorum Apostolorum Simonis et Iude’, CH II, XXXIII, ed. Godden, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies:The Second Series, pp. 280–7; trans. Thorpe, Homilies, II, 481–99; ‘Passio Sancti Thome Apostoli’, LS, XXXVI, ed. and trans. Skeat, II, 398–425. 37 See R. Marsden (ed.), The Old English Heptateuch and Ælfric’s Libellus de Veteri Testamento et Novo: Vol. I, EETS, OS, 330 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 223–7, lines 673–814. 38 On Ælfric’s treatment of his hagiographical sources, see, for example, DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld, and vernacular hagiography’; E. G. Whatley, ‘Lost in translation: omission of episodes in some Old English prose saints’ legends’, Anglo-Saxon England, 26 (1997), 187–208; E. G. Whatley, ‘Pearls before swine: Ælfric’s vernacular hagiography and the lay reader’, in T. N. Hall (ed.), Via Crucis: Essays on Early Medieval Sources and Ideas in Memory of J. E. Cross, Medieval European Studies, 1 (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2002), pp. 158–84. 39 ‘Spel be Petrus & Paulus’, in R. Morris (ed. and trans.), The Blickling Homilies, EETS, OS, 58, 63 and 73 (London: Oxford University Press, 1874, 1876 and 1800; rpt. as one vol., 1967), pp. 170–93 (Homily XV);

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for an insightful comparison of this text with Ælfric’s version, see DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld and vernacular hagiography’. 40 DeGregorio, ‘Ælfric, gedwyld, and vernacular hagiography’, p. 82. For Ælfric’s version, see ‘Passio Apostolorum Petri et Pauli’ (see n. 33, above). 41 ‘S. Andreas’, ed. and trans. Morris, The Blickling Homilies, pp. 228–49 (Homily XIX); the CCCC 198 version is edited in F. G. Cassidy and R. N. Ringler, Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, 3rd edn (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), pp. 205–19. 42 R. D. N. Warner (ed.), Early English Homilies from the TwelfthCentury MS. Vespasian D. xiv, EETS, OS, 152 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1917), pp. 21–5; see J. Proud, ‘Old English prose saints’ lives in the twelfth century: the evidence of the extant manuscripts’, in M. Swan and E. Treharne (eds), Rewriting Old English in the Twelfth Century, CSASE, 30 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 117–31 (pp. 127–8 and p. 131, n. 52). 43 Ed. ASPR, II, 51–4. On The Fates of the Apostles, see especially, Brooks, Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles, pp. xxx–xxxi; J. M. McCulloh, ‘Did Cynewulf use a martyrology? Reconsidering the sources of The Fates of the Apostles’, Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (2000), 67–83. The other ‘signed’ poems of Cynewulf are Christ II, Juliana (both in the Exeter Book), and Elene (Vercelli Book). 44 Ed. ASPR, III, 15–27. 45 See McCulloh, ‘Did Cynewulf use a martyrology?’. 46 N. Howe, The Old English Catalogue Poems, Anglistica, 23 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1985), p. 203. 47 On the theme of miles Christi, see especially S. Morrison, ‘Old English cempa in Cynewulf’s Juliana and the figure of the miles Christi’, English Language Notes, 17 (1979–80), 81–4; J. Hill, ‘The soldier of Christ in Old English prose and poetry’, Leeds Studies in English, New Series, 12 (1981), 57–80; J. P. Hermann, ‘The recurrent motifs of spiritual warfare in Old English poetry’, Annuale Mediaevalia, 22 (1982), 7–35. 48 The translation referred to is that in S. A. J. Bradley (ed. and trans.), Anglo-Saxon Poetry: An Anthology of Old English Poems in Prose Translation with Introduction and Headnotes (London: Dent, 1982), p. 155 (translation modified); for The Fates of the Apostles, see pp. 154–7. 49 Ed. ASPR, VI, 49–55. The Menologium is also conveniently available, with Modern English translation and commentary, in C. A. Jones (ed. and trans.), Old English Shorter Poems: Volume I, Religious and Didactic, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 15 (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), pp. 174–89. 50 Trans. Jones, Old English Shorter Poems, p. 189. 51 Trans. Jones, Old English Shorter Poems, p. 175. 52 Howe, The Old English Catalogue Poems, p. 86. 53 Ed. ASPR, II, pp. 3–51.

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54 I. Herbison, ‘Generic adaptation in Andreas’, in J. Roberts and J. Nelson (eds), Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2000), pp. 181–211 (p. 191). 55 On comic aspects of Andreas, see further North’s chapter in this volume, pp. 186–7. 56 Herbison, ‘Generic adaptation in Andreas’, p. 211. 57 See also the studies cited by North, chapter 8, p. 207, n. 7. 58 See North’s discussion of this topic, chapter 8, p. 186. 59 Cassidy and Ringler, Bright’s Old English Grammar and Reader, p. 204. 60 For a recent discussion of its organisational principles, see F. Leneghan, ‘Teaching the teachers: the Vercelli Book and the mixed life’, English Studies, 94 (2013), 627–58.

5 Seeing Jerusalem: schematic views of the Holy City, 1100–1300 Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Asa Simon Mittman

A many-ringed circle spans the width of a folio that now resides in London, BL, Add. MS 32343, a modern compilation (figure 5.1).1 The circle, circumscribed by five bands dotted with red ink, delimits the outer wall of the city of Jerusalem. Within and without this circle are locations sacred and secular, ancient and contemporary – or nearly so – with the map’s production during the twelfth century. The city is divided into quarters, each of which is further subdivided. We see major pilgrimage sites, such as Golgotha and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; administrative centres of Frankish settlement, such as the ‘Temple of the Lord’, or Dome of the Rock, and the ‘Temple of Solomon’, the Templar headquarters at the converted and expanded Al-Aqsa mosque; important meeting places of the Frankish community at Jerusalem, such as the ‘Latin Church’ and food market; a few natural features that also had devotional resonance, such as the Mount of Olives and the Kidron River; and, in the lower right-hand corner of the map, in the south-west quarter, fifty-one anonymous little houses. There are roads and a pool. Around and between these sites, providing order, structure and entrance to the city, are six gates, five punctuating the outer wall and one located near the city centre. The map is similar to other maps or plans of Jerusalem, especially the so-called ‘Crusader maps’, which, as Hanna Vorholt puts it, ‘represent Jerusalem as a walled city with a perfectly round circumference, five portals, and an urban layout dominated by a cross – or T – shaped street network’.2 It is also reminiscent of some medieval world map types.3 The fine details of this map are worth close attention. The design, layout, judicious employment of spot colour, inscriptions, inclusions and exclusions are carefully modulated to provide rich material for ruminative viewing. This folio does, after all, present the sacred omphalos of the world, a space layered with

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Figure 5.1  Map of Jerusalem and its environs

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ancient meanings and caught up in dynamic, immediate political circumstances and military conflicts. In this chapter, we will focus on this single sheet, with attention paid to three main aspects of its construction and contents: the history of the abbey where it was drawn; its role as micro- and macrocosm; and its negotiation of the interplay between space and time, which meet at the intersection of the ‘Street to the Temple of the Lord’ and the ‘Street of the Gate of Mount Zion’ with eschatological significance. Maps sit in a potent position between the recording and production of knowledge, reflecting the ‘real world’ but necessarily transforming it through the process of reduction and schematisation. The map of Jerusalem and its environs in Add. 32343 actively negotiates between various forms of knowledge, as it makes arguments about the significance of Jerusalem in political and divine history. By exploring the layered significance of this map in two dimensions – first, through a close visual study of the Add. 32343 map, in the context of other medieval maps; second, through a narrative examination of the document’s origins and comparative study of a prose itinerary of Frankish Jerusalem – we aim to provide views of the sacred city from two different perspectives, as it was conceived in the high medieval imagination. Close visual reading In this section, we will look very carefully at the map itself, focusing on design, layout and internal relationships, as well as comparisons with related maps. In Add. 32343, we find an image filled with openings of various sorts. Of course, there are the five outer portals and the Porta Speciosa, but also the three portals into the Holy Sepulchre and the four into the Temple of the Lord. There is also the entrance to the Cloister of the Holy Sepulchre, just above the church itself, an open arch emphasised by being nearly four times as tall as the wall in which it is set. These entrances become focal points through their consistent repetition; except for the double outline of the Porta Speciosa and the castellated framing of the Porta David to the west, they are all basically repetitions of the same form, varied only in scale and orientation. They also become foci of visual attention because of their very emptiness. In this busy folio, in which most of the space has been filled in with image or text, their resolute blankness draws the eye, especially given the energetic fussiness of the stonework of the city wall. Their framing of negative space invites us in, and the broad boulevards that run

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Figure 5.2  Map of the Holy Land

straight as arrows from the Porta Stephani (north), Porta Montis Syon (south) and Porta David (west) then draw us inward.4 The main approach to the city for travellers from Europe, prior to the Fall of Jerusalem, was along the path from the west, from Acre and Jaffa, as presented on Matthew Paris’s maps of the ‘Holy Land’.5 These maps, such as that which spreads over CCCC 26, fol. iiiv–ivr (figure 5.2), are oriented to the east, though not merely by medieval convention. They are part of a long pilgrimage itinerary – requiring at least forty-six days of travel, according to Suzanne Lewis6 – that spans seven folios at the opening of this volume of Matthew’s Chronica Majora, bending their orientation to follow the generally unwavering path of the pilgrim rather than bending the path to follow any sort of naturalistic geography, at least for the first several folios of the itinerary.7 In the case of the depiction of Jerusalem in Add. 32343, the map can again be oriented both towards the east, following medieval convention, and towards the reader, providing access for virtual entry into the sacred space. Daniel Connolly, writing about Matthew’s maps,

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asserts their ‘performative possibilities’, tracing this tradition forward from Cassiodorus (sixth century) through to Matthew (thirteenth century). Relying on an extensive scholarly tradition established over the past forty years, Connolly argues: The Benedictine brother who perused these pages understood this map […] as a dynamic setting, the operation of whose pages, texts, images, and appendages aided him in effecting an imagined pilgrimage that led through Europe to the Crusader city of Acre and eventually to a complex representation of Jerusalem. This image of Jerusalem was seen as both the unavailable center of earthly pilgrimage and as a goal of spiritual contemplations, which focused on it as a figure of the Heavenly Jerusalem.8

However, Matthew’s historical moment, almost a century later, was pointedly different from that facing the creator of the Add. 32343 map. Matthew was likely born around 1200, well after the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187, whereas the creator of the Add. 32343 map was working within the tumult of the lead-up to the Fall, or its immediate aftermath. The assertively open status of the map was therefore either a plea for continuity of access, or a defiant refusal to accept the new and raw loss. Indeed, the openness of the map extends beyond its gaping portals. Rather, the entire city is open to us, from our God’s-eye perspective. The stone walls are high and crenellated, but they are no impediment to us as we gaze down from above. Further, the microcosmic structures of the Temple of the Lord and the Holy Sepulchre are further open to us, not only via their portals but also via their missing domes. The compound perspective of the map – common to the period – presents both the Temple and Sepulchre in plan-view, like the city, but their contents are portrayed in profile. It is as if we have swooped down from on high, through their domes, to alight within, where we can look at the rock – ­pointedly labelled lapis – and the tomb. We might be able to press yet further, entering into these. The structure of the rock is somewhat unclear, here, appearing as a course of rounded stones, surmounted by a triad of upright stones, like some sort of lingam.9 While not clear in the image, the stone is permeable, with an entrance to the cave beneath it. More pointedly, on the map it appears that the tomb within the Sepulchre is standing open. A parallelogram of stones is surmounted by the lid, propped upright. Open portals, open streets, open buildings and an open city – all stand open for the viewer, theoretically ensconced in the abbey

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scriptorium where the manuscript was produced, but also engaged in the process of peregrinatio in stabilitate – pilgrimage without moving.10 If this map were produced before 1187, this openness might denote a vehement assertion of control, of the endurance of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, made to seem all the more eternal through the resonance of this city map with the Heavenly – and eternal – Jerusalem, as well as with mappaemundi and the body of Christ, as will be discussed below. Alternatively, if it were produced just after 1187, in the period when Western Christians were mourning their loss of Jerusalem, the emphatic openness of the image might be read as a defiant statement, as a record of lived memory and a battle cry for the next crusade to again conquer the city. The circular format of Jerusalem on the map raises other points of significance. Though most representations of Jerusalem are circular, the city itself, of course, was a rough parallelogram, as shown on one twelfth-century map.11 The resonance of the circle as a perfect shape surely influenced this decision, but we are more interested here in exploring the connections with mappaemundi, which P. D. A. Harvey asserts ‘played a significant role in constructing most of our regional maps [of the Holy Land]’.12 Harvey is primarily discussing the content of the maps, which is often cited as coming from textual sources but, he argues, is more often filtered through world maps, before being used on maps of smaller regions. The overall layout of many of the maps or plans of Jerusalem, though, clearly bear the imprint of the mappaemundi that may have served as a source for their design. If we step back from this map, what we see is, in essence, a replica of standard mappamundi design. For comparison, we can turn to a typical T-O map housed in a late eleventh-century copy of Isidore’s Etymologies (Royal 6 C.i, f. 108v) (figure 5.3). Both the latter and the map in Add. 32343 present circular forms surrounded by multiple rings, divided internally by the beams of a cross. On the T-O map, the patibulum (the horizontal beam of the cross) is formed by the Tanais (Don) and Nile rivers, and the stipes (the upright element of the cross) is formed by the Mediterranean. This therefore divides the world into the three known continents, with Asia occupying the upper (eastern) half of the ecumene, and Europe and Africa each filling a quarter of the map below it. The eastern orientation of most medieval maps is generally considered to reflect the preeminence of the Holy Land, as well as the site of mankind’s origins in Paradise, in the East.13

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Figure 5.3 T-O Map, Isidore’s Etymologies

The eastern orientation bears particular significance for the map in Add. 32343, as it presents Jerusalem, itself central to many mappaemundi, particularly those of the Hereford-Ebstorf-Psalter Map type.14 Here, there is an effort to present the eastern half of Jerusalem as more significant than the western half, not only through orientation but also through coloration. The eastern arc of the outer wall of the city contains red bricks, and all of the vignettes east of the wall have red highlights, whereas the wall and vignettes to the west are monochromatic. This highlighting seems to be uncommon, if not otherwise unknown. The red may reflect a desire to echo the importance of the east – the region where this map is itself set – as stressed on the majority of the mappaemundi. It would thereby draw attention to the role of this map, and its original, as microcosms of the world as a whole. In other words, just as the east is presented on most mappaemundi as the region of greatest importance, the east is emphasised on this city map, underlining the correspondence of the city map to the world map and thus echoing the correspondence of the microcosm of the city of Jerusalem to the macrocosm of the earth. This effect would have been intensified by the fact that regional maps in this period are very uncommon. As Harvey notes, Palestine is the only location for which there are several regional maps extant, prior to the fifteenth century.15 Just as Jerusalem is a microcosm of the world, as represented on T-O maps, so too the Temple and Sepulchre are – in Add. 32343 – microcosms of Jerusalem. They are the same in form and similar in their presentation of stone walls perforated by large gates. Indeed, superimposing the Sepulchre over the Temple and then enlarging the resulting circle would more or less reproduce the map. The Temple’s gates at due north, west and south are in the position of those on the city wall. The Sepulchre has three gates, one of which is also in the position of the west gate. It is unclear if the other two

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are intended to be in symmetrical positions, or not – the southern gate is certainly lower than the northern – but if so, these would be in positions equivalent to the two eastern gates in the city wall. This leaves only the eastern gate of the Temple unaccounted for, though if we invert the eastern door of the Temple, it would align with the Porta Speciosa. This is all speculative and imperfect, but our point is not that the mapmaker decided to precisely divide the portals from the city among the two round structures within it, but rather, that they all echo one another and create a dynamic sense of play with micro– and macrocosmic layers. If we enlarge the buildings, we produce the city; if we enlarge the whole city, we produce a T-O mappamundi, with streets replacing waterways and districts replacing continents. Just as the Temple and Sepulchre are each a microcosm of the city that contains them, so too the city is a microcosm of the whole world, of which it is the navel.16 Narrative reading Our close visual reading of the map above, along with the comparative study of the T-O mappamundi that informs it, allows us to see the multiple levels on which medieval viewers interpreted the visual image of Jerusalem appearing in Add. 32343. Turning now to a narrative reading of the same document, we can find entry points into the story of how and why the map was produced, as well as insights into how the map provided its medieval viewers with a kind of itinerary or narrative passage through the streets of the imagined Holy City located at the far reaches of Outremer. We will first look more closely at the circumstances of production of the document before turning to a prose analogue to the inscriptions of the map, an itinerary of the streets of Jerusalem that corresponds closely to the street names, monuments and commercial districts identified on the map of Add. 32343. This comparative reading allows us to grasp another dimension of readers’ experience of the diagrammatic map, as they imaginatively traversed the various passages through the city gates and the streets crisscrossing the urban landscape. We know more about the time and place of the production of this map than is common for such a fragment, because the verso of the page contains an earlier twelfth-century document written at the Augustinian abbey of Formosele (modern Voormezeele, in far western Flanders; figure 5.4). The British Library’s Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts ascribes the map to the twelfth century,

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and the document on the other side of the leaf to Pope Callixtus II (also ‘Callistus’).17 We can, however, determine the date of the document more precisely, and the nature of that document can, in turn, shed light on the circumstances that led to the production of the map image and accompanying text on the other side of the leaf. The document is written in a northern continental hand, typical of early twelfth-century Flanders, suggesting that it is a copy of an original document from the court of Pope Callixtus II, who in it confirmed the privileges of the abbey. The document is addressed to Isaac, Abbot of Formosele, and enumerates the privileges assigned to the abbey, with reference to a range of local towns, naming the relevant counts and dukes associated with those lands. It is therefore possible to date this document with some precision. Callixtus II reigned 1119–1124, but Isaac did not take on the role of abbot until 2 October 1123, which allows us to date the document confirming the abbey’s privileges between late 1123 and Callixtus’s death in 1124. The late Carolingian features evident in the hand of the document are consistent with that date. The privileges page was probably at first unbound, judging from the remaining red wax marks from seals on all four edges of what is now the verso. These seals must have been removed before the map was drawn on the other side, as there is no evidence of the raised seals affecting the very precise curved lines of the map drawing.18 The reuse of this leaf for the map drawing is not simply evidence of the ever-practical re-employment of vellum sheets to avoid waste: instead, the use of the other side of the privileges page underscores the intense linkage of global and local concerns in the artefact. Jerusalem was, on the one hand, a distant land located at the edge of Outremer; but it was also the Christian stronghold in the East, a place infused with the apocalyptic expectation that unified all members of the church, and inhabited by a range of European national communities within the city walls. Jerusalem was remote, but it was also proximate, especially to the monastic communities of Flanders that were closely linked to the significant military orders, and ducal houses that were deeply involved in the administration of the Latin Kingdom. The hand of the map page is, like that of the privileges page, typical of the local region, bearing many of the same stylistic features (e.g., the dot above the letter ‘y’; the ornamental curved terminal ‘s’). The hand is preGothic miniscule, with some late Carolingian features, and therefore can be dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century (a slightly later date would be possible if we are dealing with an older

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Figure 5.4  List of privileges, Augustinian Abbey of Formosele

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scribe whose handwriting features were developed at an earlier date, but the map page bears no obvious evidence of this, such as shakiness of the hand).19 This would place the date of the map page in the latter years of the abbacy of that same Isaac of Formosele addressed in the privileges document, whose long service in that office – from 2 October 1123 to 13 October 1169 – caused him to be revered as a father of his community long after his death. The list of abbots contained in the Chronicon Vormeselense states that Isaac had many books copied out, and copied some in his own hand; that he gathered many privileges for the abbey; and that he collected notable relics, including the Blood of Christ and a fragment of the nails used on the Cross.20 The intricate map of the city in Add. 32343 would have been a suitable accompaniment to Isaac’s efforts to build Formosele’s reputation as a place where treasures associated with the Holy Land, both sacred objects and sacred texts, were gathered. The strong links between Flanders and Jerusalem are reflected in the leaf from Add. 32343, listing local privileges on one side, and mapping the universal city of Jerusalem on the other. This double nature – local and global – is consistent with the political and social ties that linked the two regions. Early in the twelfth century, Flanders was the domain of Count Robert II – known as ‘Robert of Jerusalem’ (r. 1093–1111) – who was in the retinue of Godfrey of Boulogne in the early years of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, and maintained strong ties to the church through his marriage to Clementia of Burgundy, sister to Pope Callixtus II; in the mid-twelfth century, late in Isaac’s abbacy and around the time the map of Add. 32343 was drawn, Count Thierry of Flanders (r. 1128–68) travelled repeatedly to Jerusalem and back to Flanders, in 1156 and 1159, and again in 1164 and 1166. Formosele was far from alone in having a map image of this sort; a series of related maps, with a shared circular form and many of the same landscape and architectural features, survives from the region of Flanders and northern France, and testifies to the intertwined history of those regions with the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem in this period. Yet the image in Add. 32343 is unusual in the precision of its geometric form, the level of detail and the intense focus on symmetry and symbolic structure. The circular building forms of Add. 32343, like the curved arches of the major gates and the circumferences of the city walls, were drawn with a compass, with the prick-point at the centre still visible; the streets and the edges of the gates were carefully drawn with a straight edge.21 There is an underlying geometry of the city, which conveys the spiritual

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meaning embedded in the walls and edifices of the holy sites; at the same time, however, the materiality of the city is also emphasised, in what we might call the ‘logic of stones’ reiterated throughout the map image and the blocks of text in which it is embedded. The sacred space of the city of Jerusalem, as illustrated on the map of Add. 32343, was far from simple. On the one hand, the whole city was sacred, a singular site whose unity could be represented in the form of a perfect circle. On the other hand, the city was also filled with a range of sacred locations, which varied not only in terms of greater or lesser sacrality, but in the quality of that sacrality. So many sites within the city were heavily over-written palimpsests of the religious practices observed in and around them. This was particularly true of the many locations that were sacred within both so-called ‘Old Testament’ and ‘New Testament’ hermeneutics, but the recent presence of Islamic worship in Jerusalem added a further layer. This complicating factor is particularly apparent in medieval Christian accounts of the Dome of the Rock, or ‘Templum Domini’. For Muslims, the presence of the stone marked by the footprint of Muhammad was a reminder of the prophet’s milraj or ‘night journey’ to paradise, and a pointer to the divine. For Christians, however, the stone could only be understood as a marker of the pagan idolatry they believed they had displaced from the site through their successful conquest of Jerusalem in 1099.22 Yet the stone persists, not only in the modern name of the ‘Dome of the Rock’ but on our diagrammatic map: as we have seen, the Templum Domini features a little drawing of a stone labelled lapis. This site is just one manifestation of the curious ‘logic of stones’ apparent on this diagrammatic map. Stones are everywhere: near the Holy Sepulchre, in the bottom left corner, we find the lapis scissa or split stone; the north gate, at the left side of the page, named for Saint Stephen commemorates the site of the death of the first Christian martyr, who was killed by having stones thrown at him, as the inscription at the lower right recounts; the shining white marble stone of Christ’s tomb is described in the inscription at the lower left, along with the exact dimensions of the tomb; and a description of the building of the stone walls of the city appears at the upper left. This ‘logic of stones’ is not so much a testament to the permanence and immutability of the Holy City as it is a reminder of the fundamental ambiguity of every sacred site. The sacred site is both a pointer towards the divine and a material object, dangerously open to being regarded as an idol. The diagrammatic map of Add. 32343 holds in precarious tension

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these two aspects of the sacred site – abstract geometrical form and material stone – in a powerful evocation of the Holy City. The map invokes the materiality of Jerusalem on yet another level, as well. As we have noted, the cityscape includes monumental objects – portals, domed edifices and shrines – but it also includes more mundane urban features, such as the ‘forum rerum venalium’, or food market, and the ‘cambium monete’, or money exchange. The ‘ecclesia latina’, located close to the Holy Sepulchre, did not compete with the glorious edifices of the Temple Mount, or with the Sepulchre itself; instead, it was the place where local Latin Christians came to baptise their children, or solemnise their marriages. This tension between the city as abstract symbol and lived environment comes into sharper relief when we place the diagrammatic map of Add. 32343 into conversation with a prose map of the very late twelfth century, written within about a decade of the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187.23 Like the map in Add. 32343, the Old French prose ‘Estat de la Cité de Iherusalem,’ or ‘State of the City of Jerusalem’, was produced by European Christians who had inhabited Jerusalem since the First Crusade in 1099, but it also reflects the wistful, even nostalgic perspective of those who remembered the streets of the city they had inhabited as they looked back following their retreat to the citadel of Acre in 1187–89.24 These two texts – the diagrammatic map and the prose map – both walk the reader through the streets of the city, but they do so in different ways. Most obviously, of course, this difference centres on word versus image: the diagrammatic map can be seen synoptically, all at once, while the prose map can be experienced only in a linear fashion, as the reader moves through the text. Yet, as we have seen, the diagrammatic map requires more than a synoptic glance for its meaning to be apparent: we had to make our way around the map, visually exploring its various regions, in order to get a full account of the city. The prose map differs from the visual map in that it dictates the route – or better, the various routes – that must be taken to get a full sense of the cityscape. The visual itinerary one takes to move through the diagrammatic map is up to the reader; the itinerary the reader takes to move through the prose map is set by its anonymous author. Local knowledge Even more clearly than the diagrammatic map (which dates from soon after the mid-twelfth century, perhaps based on an earlier

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exemplar), the prose map of the ‘City of Jerusalem’ is an artefact of a peculiar time, an in-between time. After the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem became a government in exile, centred after 1192 on the fortified stronghold of Acre. From that vantage point, the French-speaking Latin Christian population recalled the streets of the Holy City that was no longer available to them, both in the form of late twelfth-century street maps of Jerusalem and through prose maps such as this one, a detailed itinerary of the streets of the city told from the vantage point of one who walked those streets. The narrator consistently speaks in the first-person singular (‘I’) – a departure from the plural first-person voice (‘we’) of the rest of the historical chronicle in which the ‘City of Jerusalem’ narrative is embedded. That first-person voice repeatedly invites the reader (addressed as ‘vous’) to imaginatively participate in this nostalgic recreation of a no-longer accessible cityscape. The itinerary of the ‘City of Jerusalem’ text recreates actual walks through Jerusalem, describing passages through winding roads in three of the city’s four quarters. The narrator first passes through the city on a west to east axis, through the citadel gate, winding through the Christian Quarter in the north-west, emerging on the east side of the city onto the Temple Mount and descending to the eastern entrance to the city, at the Golden Gates. He then begins his walk again, this time from the northern gate (called the Gate of St Stephen by the local Christian population), winding through various marketplaces and money exchanges to emerge at the southern Zion Gate to survey the surrounding region just outside the wall of the city. He finally returns once more to the Gate of St Stephen to recount his itinerary through what he calls the ‘Jewry’, in the north-east of the city. The narrator then explains his neglect of the south-western quarter, stating that its Christian inhabitants ‘are not obedient to the law of Rome’ and therefore he will not describe them. This omission corresponds to the medieval maps of Jerusalem, which either leave the south-western quarter blank or dot it with generic triangular house forms, as in Add. 32343. The ‘City of Jerusalem’ narrative describes interactions with a range of local inhabitants, as the urban landscape was constituted in the years before 1187. These inhabitants include both Christian locals and Christian tourists, as we can see in two passages: Chapter 5 (west–east path) Devant la Change tenant la rue des Herbes a une rue que l’en apeloit Mal Cuisinat. En cele rue cuisinoit l’en les viandes as pelerinz que

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l’en leur vandoit. Et si i lavoit on les chies, et si aloit l’en de la rue au Sepulcre. Tout au devant de cele rue de Mal Cuisinat avoit une rue que l’en apeloit la rue Couverte, la ou l’en vandoit la draperie, et estoit toute a voute par desore. Et par cele rue aloit l’en au Sepulcre. (p. 496) (Opposite the Exchange, joining the Street of Plants, was a street known as ‘Ill Cooked’ [Mal Cuisinat]. This is where they cooked foodstuffs that were then sold to pilgrims, and they also washed heads there. It was reached from Sepulcher Street. Just opposite Ill Cooked Street was another called the Covered Street, where cloth was sold, and this was all vaulted over; it led to the Sepulcher. (p. 16))

Note that in this first description, we find places for visitors to bathe (where they ‘washed heads’) and to buy prepared foods, however badly cooked they might be. Elsewhere in the text, we find a description of places where ‘were sold the palm fronds which palmers take home from the land beyond the sea’ (p. 15). These moments provide an indirect glimpse of the tourist ­population – those who would be in the city only for a short time, on ­pilgrimage – and of the local merchants and proprietors who catered to those visitors. Elsewhere in the ‘City of Jerusalem’ narrative, different locations are described that would have been relevant not to tourists but only to locals, including the corn market, different meat markets, fish and cheese markets and so on. A second passage describes the same region of the city as the first passage does, but following the north–south walk. This second account of the region brings out additional aspects of the local topography and, indirectly, the people who inhabited it: Chapter 7 (north–south path) Quant en venoit devant cel Change, si trouvoit on a main destre une rue couverte a voute par ou l’en aloit au moustier del Sepulcre. En cele rue vendoient li Surien leur draperie, et si i faisoit l’en les chandeilles de cire. Devant ces Changes vandoit on le poison. A ces Changes tenoient ces .III. rues qui tenoient aus autres Changes des Latinz. Dont l’une des .III. ruez avoit non rue Couverte, la vandoient li Latin leur draperie, et l’autre rue des Herbes, et la tierce Mal Cuisinat. Par la rue des Herbes aloit on en la rue de Mont Syon et trescopoit en la rue David. (p. 501) (Coming to this [Syrian] Exchange, you found on the right a covered street, vaulted over, along which people went to the Sepulcher church. Syrians sold their fabrics in this street, and wax candles were made there. Fish was sold outside these Exchanges. Adjacent

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to them were three streets leading to the Exchange of the Latins. One was called the Covered Street, where the Latins sold their cloth, the second was the Street of Plants and the third, Ill Cooked Street. The Street of Plants led into Mount Sion Street and cut across the Street of David. (p. 19))

Here we see the same streets, but with an additional level of difference highlighted. Instead of a single exchange, we find two exchanges described; instead of one cloth market, we find two. In each case, one exchange or cloth market belongs to the ‘Latins’ and one to the ‘Syrians’. These terms explicitly refer to language affiliation, but these terms were consistently used in place of labels based on religious identity.25 In other words, religious heterogeneity was referred to only obliquely, replaced by references to language group. As we have seen, exchanges and cloth markets are identified in the ‘City of Jerusalem’ text as being either ‘Latin’ or ‘Syrian’. That is, we have group affiliations used to designate not just different religious sites (churches and abbeys) but also secular locations. Beyond these, we also find descriptions of segregated (or, at least, concentrated) neighbourhoods. An example of this appears in a passage from chapter 9: Chapter 9 Or m’en revieng de la rue de Josaphas. Entre la rue de Josaphas et les murz de la cité, a main senestre, avoit rues ausint comme une ville. Et la manoient et demouroient li plus des Surienz dedenz la cité de Jherusalem. Et ces rues apeloit on la Giuverie. En cele Giuverie avoit .I. moustier de sainte Marie Madalegne. (p. 505) (Now I shall return to Jehosaphat Street. Between this street and the city walls, on the left, were streets forming as it were a town. Most of the Syrians in Jerusalem lived there, and those streets were called the Jewry. In this Jewry was the church of St. Mary Magdalene. (pp. 21–2))

This passage is interesting in two ways: first, in its account of what we might call a ‘town within a town’, where the Syrian population is concentrated, making a kind of microcosm within the larger metropolis; second, in its description of that town within a town as ‘Jewry’. Note that this region is the north-eastern quarter of the city (corresponding to the top left of the schematic map), which is not the Jewish quarter (actually located in the south-east), but what we now refer to as the Muslim quarter. This raises a question: What is the meaning here of the term ‘Jewry’ (‘Giuverie’)? The

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term appears to be used in this passage to designate a segregated neighbourhood in general – not specifically one inhabited by Jews.26 Since both Jews and Muslims were explicitly prohibited from residence in Jerusalem while it was under Latin Christian rule, it seems most likely that the ‘Jewry’ was inhabited by Arab Christians, who populated the city in increasingly large numbers over the twelfth century.27 While the writer of the prose map states that the inhabitants were ‘Surienz’, it is not clear whether this refers to their ecclesiastical affiliation (Syriac Christian) or to their preferred language (Syriac), since these two groups did not completely overlap.28 To add to the ambiguity, the Latin Christian term ‘Surienz’ can refer either to Syriac or Arabic speakers.29 The narrator does not describe the streets running within the Syrian ‘Jewry’, but only those that mark its borders, and the only site within that region he does mention is the church of Mary Magdalene.30 A similar obliqueness informs his account – or, rather, non-account – of the Armenian quarter. Both the west–east and the north–south walk through the urban landscape avoid any reference to what lies within the south-western quarter. The narrator explains his neglect in this way: Or vous ai dit et nommé les abaies et les moustierz de Jherusalem par dehorz Jherusalem et par dedenz les rues des Latinz, mes je ne vous ai mie nommé les abaies ne les moustierz des Surienz, ne des Grejoiz, ne des Jacobinz, ne des Boavinz, ne des Nestorins, ne des Herminz, ne des autres manierz de genz qui n’estoient mie obeissanz a la loi de Rome, dont il avoit moustierz et abaies en la cité. Pour ce ne vous veil je mie parler de toutes ces genz que je ai ci en droit nommees, qui n’estoient mie obeissanz a la loi de Rome, si comme l’en disoit. (p. 507) (Now I have told you the names of the abbeys and churches of Jerusalem outside the city, and those in the streets of the Latins, but I have said nothing at all about the abbeys and churches of the Syrians, nor of the Greeks, Jacobites, Bedouin [Boavinz], Nestorians, Armenians, or any of the other peoples who had churches and abbeys in the city but were not at all obedient to the law of Rome. The reason I have no intention of telling you about all these people that I have just mentioned is that they are said to have never at all have been obedient to the law of Rome. (pp. 22–3, translation modified))

Here, the narrator is explicit in explaining why he omits any ­description of non-Latin Christians: it is because they are ‘not “obedient to the law of Rome”’. This silence finds its visual ­

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r­epresentation in the mid-twelfth-century diagrammatic map of Jerusalem in Add. 32343, where the south-western (lower right) quarter of the city – which corresponds to what is now known as the Armenian quarter – lacks the landmarks of the other three quarters. Instead, it features a generic bit of text on the origins of the city and the various names by which it has been known. Other Jerusalem maps of the period similarly either leave the southwestern quarter blank or dot it with abstract triangular house forms. This correspondence between diagrammatic map and prose map shows how even an intricate account of the cityscape could have its blind spot – a region that the author of the map, whether diagrammatic or prose, is determined not to make visible to the reader. We could say that the city includes streets and features that are visible to the map’s reader, and other parts that are carefully kept invisible. Conclusions Like the map of Jerusalem in Add. 32343, medieval world maps were based on a symbolic geography where shape (ordinarily circular) and orientation (towards the east) were deeply meaningful, and where the map’s internal symmetries and interrelations revealed deeper sacred truths. While real locations were depicted on world maps – cities such as Rome, Carthage and Babylon; bodies of water such as the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the circling Ocean; mountain ranges, monuments and so on – their mode of depiction was not intended to provide a practical guide to navigation, but rather a meaningful and synoptic image of the orderly nature of divine creation and the civilised world of mankind. The placement of Jerusalem at the centre of the map, sometimes highlighted in red or decorated with a drawing of a church or temple, served to emphasise the city’s pride of place in the spiritual geography of salvation history. Medieval schematic drawings of the city of Jerusalem also shared in this spiritual geography. One particularly revealing example of this practice appears in an early twelfth-century compilation of short texts by Lambert of Saint-Omer, the Liber Floridus31 (figure 5.5). In this work, Lambert includes a world map following the conventions outlined above. He also includes, however, two other depictions of Jerusalem. Just as the physical city of Jerusalem is depicted on the world map, the heavenly city of Jerusalem is depicted in two additional illustrations. One of these shows the

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heavenly Jerusalem ‘as a walled city bedecked with jewels’. The other illustration shows, again, the heavenly Jerusalem, this time as a schematic diagram with twelve towers symmetrically occupied by the twelve apostles. As Jay Rubenstein has pointed out, this vision of Jerusalem at once draws upon past images of ‘other distant earthly cities’ such as ‘Rome, Troy, and Alexandria’ and also points upward, towards the heavenly Jerusalem that the earthly city merely prefigures.32 The map in Add. 32343 is significantly different from these examples. While Lambert of Saint-Omer was deeply concerned with the First Crusade and its pivotal role in the establishment of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, his view of Jerusalem was – so to speak – at a distance. Jerusalem was for him an ideal, a spiritual destination. For the composer of this map, conversely, Jerusalem is not just an ideal, but a real city. A profound symbolic geography is embedded in this map; but an actual urban environment is also reflected here, with local features embedded within the larger circle of the city. The symbolic geography appears in the microcosmic logic explicated in the first section of this chapter, with the architectural microcosms of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple of the Lord gesturing towards the urban microcosm of the City of Jerusalem, which in turn gestures towards the microcosm of the created world, itself a microcosm of the orderly universe. The actual urban environment is represented here as well, however, in a series of intensely practical buildings, street names and urban features that convey something of the texture of lived experience in Frankish Jerusalem. The map of Add. 32343 is just one in a constellation of related maps produced in northern France and Flanders in the twelfth century. Two of the most closely related maps were produced very close to Formosele, in the adjoining region of Therouanne (mentioned as an abutting territory on the privileges page of Add. 32343), one in the first half of the twelfth century, copied at Saint-Omer or nearby Saint-Bertin,33 (Figure 5.5) and one near the end of the century – certainly after 1187 – at the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Bertin, around 1190–1200.34 A few others survive, as well.35 These maps, seen together as a group, refract the ways in which the Holy City was imagined during the twelfth century, ranging from around 1120 (with the Liber Floridus) to shortly after the Fall of Jerusalem in 1187. The maps in this group are clearly related, sharing the same circular form and many of the same specific features. But the map of Add. 32343, while it remains to

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Figure 5.5  Map of Jerusalem and its environs

us just in a single leaf, in a random gathering of interesting odds and ends compiled in the nineteenth century, has a uniquely rich story to tell us about the ways in which Jerusalem was imagined in the twelfth century. It was at once an abstract form, reflecting the divine reality above, and a material environment, made of stone and mortar, flowing with money and food, and resounding with the footsteps of its inhabitants.

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Notes  1 Add. MS 32343 is a curious place for such a map to have wound up, as it is seems to be something of a celebrity document collection, with short letters and documents by, among others, Empress Josephine of France, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Dickens, as well as several musical sheets by Henry Lewes, composer of the music for Milton’s Comus. It was apparently donated as a collection by Walter Bloomfield; a flyleaf reads, ‘Transferred from the Dept. of Prints and Drawings, 26 May 1884’.   The authors would like to thank the AHRC Research Network on Remembered Places and Invented Traditions: Thinking about the Holy Land in the Late Medieval West, and its organiser, Anthony Bale, for bringing us together and inspiring this chapter.  2 H. Vorholt, ‘Studying with maps: Jerusalem and the Holy Land in two thirteenth-century manuscripts’, in L. Donkin and H. Vorholt (eds), Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (2012), 163–200 (166). The earliest three examples are all connected with Saint-Omer.  3 Such works are often called ‘plans’ rather than ‘maps’, implying the presentation of an architectural edifice and thereby constructing the city of Jerusalem as a single, cohesive citadel. There is correspondence between this perspective and the perfectly circular representation in Add. 32343. However, the circular wall marks only the perimeter of the city, not the extent of the geography charted; in fact the map spreads over most of the folio, with important sites located beyond the city walls. To the east, for example, we find Mons gaudii (Mount Joy, so named by crusaders grateful for a first glimpse of the city at the map’s centre), Bethleem (Bethlehem) and Sepulchra rach[eli] (Tomb of Rachel). We see a valley and a river, hills and mountains, and other cities (in drastically reduced scale, such that they appear smaller than some of the structures within Jerusalem). A similar point is made by Vorholt, ‘Studying with maps’, p. 165: ‘The distinction between maps of Jerusalem and maps of the Holy Land is often artificial. Few maps show exclusively the city of Jerusalem, and some regional maps give more prominence to Jerusalem or show it in greater detail than they do other cities’.  4 The Porta Aurea (south-east) has clear abrasions within its opening. Close examination suggests that the city wall originally had continued erroneously across the opening, but was then removed. This suggests the strength of the mapmaker’s desire to emphasise the portal’s openness.  5 D. K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris: Medieval Journeys through Space, Time and Liturgy (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), p. 15, argues that the maps were likely produced between 1250 and 1255.

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A rich study of the production of the maps and the relationship of Matthew’s map of Palestine to his maps of Britain can be found in S. Sansone, Tra cartografia politica e immaginario figurativo: Matthew Paris e l’Iter de Londonio in Terram Sanctam (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2009).  6 S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 342.  7 Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris, pp. 55–62.  8 D. K. Connolly, ‘Imagined pilgrimage in the itinerary maps of Matthew Paris’, Art Bulletin, 81.4 (December, 1999), 598–622 (598). See also, among others, E. Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed Their World (London: British Library, 1997), p. 14; A. S. Mittman, Maps and Monsters in Medieval England (New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 31; and M. Botvinick, ‘The painting as pilgrimage: traces of a subtext in the work of Campin and his contemporaries’, Art History 15 (1992), 1–18.  9 The raised structure at the centre of the lapis might evoke the Christian belief in a Muslim idol on the site, as recorded by Fulcher of Chartres. See S. C. Akbari, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 242–7 (p. 247). 10 J. LeClerq, ‘Monachisme et pérégination du IXe au XIIe siècle’, Studia Monastica, 3 (1961), 33–52; and G. Constable, ‘Opposition to pilgrimage in the Middle Ages’, Studia Gratiana, 19 (1976), 125–46. See also Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris, pp. 32–9, on Cassiodorus’s Institutions, where the sixth-century historian writes: ‘tum si vos notitiae nobilis cura flammaverit, habetis Ptolomei codicem, qui sic omnia loca evidenter expressit, ut eum cunctarum regionum paene incolam fuisse iudicetis, eoque fiat ut uno loco positi, sicut monachos decet, animo percurratis quod quiquorum peregrination plurimo labore collegit’ (‘if a noble concern for knowledge has set you on fire, you have the work of Ptolemy, who has described all places so clearly that you judge him to have been practically a resident in all regions, and as a result you, who are located in one spot, as is seemly for monks, traverse in your minds that which the travel of others has assembled with very great labor’), R. A. B. Mynors (ed.), Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937), 66, no. 25; translation from Cassiodorus, L. Webber Jones (trans.), An Introduction to Divine and Human Readings (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), p. 125, ‘Divine Letters’, no. 25. Edson, Mapping Time and Space, p. 14, connects this notion to medieval maps. 11 Cambrai, Centre Culturel, MS 437, fol. 1r, mid-twelfth century. For illustration and brief discussion, see P. D. A. Harvey, Medieval Maps of Holy Land (London: British Library, 2012), p. 23. In discussing Matthew Paris’s three maps of Palestine, Harvey, p. 85, notes that the

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square representations of the city are surprising, and possibly connected to the description of the Heavenly Jerusalem, with its twelve gates. The Ebstorf Map’s square depiction of Jerusalem is explicitly the Heavenly Jerusalem. 12 Harvey, Medieval Maps of Holy Land, p. 7. 13 For an extensive discussion of the role of the eastward orientation of many medieval maps, see A. Scafi, Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 125. This orientation was tied to the representation of the Garden of Eden, believed to be located in the far east, but also to the temporal role of the east. As Scafi, p. 127, summarises, ‘What happened in the east, happened first’. See also Mittman, Maps and Monsters, pp. 48–50; J. R. Short, The World Through Maps: A History of Cartography (Abingdon: Firefly Books, 2003), p. 15; and B. L. Gordon, ‘Sacred directions, orientation, and the top of the map’, History of Religions, 10.3 (February 1971), 211–27. 14 Iain MacLeod Higgins suggests that the convention of featuring Jerusalem at the centre of medieval world maps was far from ubiquitous: ‘Defining the earth’s center in a medieval “multi-text”: Jerusalem in the Book of John Mandeville’, in S. Tomasch and S. Gilles (eds), Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 1998), pp. 29–53 (p. 44). For a summary of the centrality of Jerusalem in medieval maps, see Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 50–2. See also Harvey, Medieval Maps of Holy Land, p. 28. 15 Harvey, Medieval Maps of Holy Land, p. 16 16 Similarly, the north-east quadrant of the map is, like the city as a whole, divided into four quadrants by streets in the shape of the cross. This is, then, another microcosmic echo of the overall design. 17 British Library, ‘MISCELLANEOUS: Add MS 32343 A–G: 12th century–19th century’, Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts, no date, http://searcharchives.bl.uk/ (accessed 31 January 2014). We disagree with Pamela Berger, who dates the map to the thirteenth century in The Crescent on the Temple: The Dome of the Rock as Image of the Ancient Jewish Sanctuary (Leiden: Brill, 2012), p. 90, figure 5.7. 18 The privileges page was probably at first bound as a recto page that then had the map drawn on its verso, since the map has ornamentation on the left side that looks like it was the outer margin of the page. Later, the page was apparently sliced out from a fairly tight binding, hence the losses to what was the inner edge. This edge is also less straight than the outer edge, as if the cutter began a bit out from the gutter at the top, then pressed more tightly in against it for the bulk of the folio, before slipping back out a bit from the gutter as he approached the lower edge. Further, the upper corner of the outer edge is slightly rounded, suggesting wear from page turning in its original binding. The margins

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of the verso show evidence that the leaf was pasted down at some point, with the recto showing; there are lines of adhesive residue, with whiter fibres still stuck within, especially at the outer edge. The leaf also shows evidence of having been folded in half horizontally. This suggests that the leaf might have been reused in a binding. 19 The authors would like to thank Prof. Alexander Andrée for his opinion on the dating of the hands in London, BL, Add. MS 32343 (r and v). 20 Chronicon Vormeselense, Recueil de chroniques, chartes et autres documents concernant l’histoire et les antiquités de la Flandre occidentale, publié par la Société d’Émulation de Bruges. Première série: Chroniques des monastères de Flandre (Bruges: C. de Moor, 1847), p. 2. 21 Pinpricks are visible at the central crossing of the streets; 1 mm above the drawing of the stone at the Templum domini; and just under the ‘l’ in ‘sepulchrum’ at the Holy Sepulchre. A compass was also used to make the curves of the gates, subsequently corrected freehand. 22 For a detailed account of this aspect, see Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 235–47. 23 Jaroslav Folda has dated the prose map to the 1190s or very first years of the thirteenth century. See J. Folda, Crusader Art in the Holy Land, from the Third Crusade to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 42–5. 24 ‘L’Estat de la cité de Iherusalem’, in Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr de 1229 à 1261, dite du manuscript de Rothelin, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux, II (Paris: L’Imprimerie nationale, 1859), pp. 489–515. A translation can be found in Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with Part of the Eracles or Acre Text, trans. J. Shirley (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 13–29. The text and translation are subsequently cited in the text by page number. 25 C. MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East: Rough Tolerance (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 102. 26 This usage is perhaps echoed in the modern usage of ‘ghetto’, a term originally used to describe a Jewish neighbourhood, but now denoting any minority neighbourhood. 27 E. Kohlberg and B. Z. Kedar, ‘A Melkite physician in Frankish Jerusalem and Ayyubid Damascus’, pp. 116 and 121; reprinted as entry XII in B. Z. Kedar, The Franks in the Levant, 11th to 14th Centuries (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993). See also B. Z. Kedar, ‘The subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant’, pp. 147–9; reprinted as entry XVIII in the same volume. On Jewish, Muslim and Arab Christian populations in the larger region, see R. Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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28 Ellenblum, Frankish Rural Settlement in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, pp. 26–7. 29 MacEvitt, The Crusades and the Christian World of the East, pp. 102–4. 30 Compare Daniel Lord Smail’s account of the ‘cartographic uncertainty’ concerning the Jewish quarter in fourteenth-century Marseille: notarial records for the period provide little evidence for this region, except for the north-eastern corner, which had a substantial Christian population. D. L. Smail, ‘The linguistic cartography of property and power in late medieval Marseille’, in B. A. Hanawalt and M. Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis, MS: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 37–63, esp. p. 44. 31 Lambert of Saint-Omer, Liber Floridus [facsimile of Ghent University ms.] in A. Derolez (ed.), Lamberti S. Audomari Canonici Liber Floridus: codex autographus bibliothecae universitatis Gandavensis: auspiciis eiusdem universitatis in commemorationem diei natalis (Ghent: Story-Scientia, 1968). See also A. Derolez, The Autograph Manuscript of the ‘Liber Floridus’: A Key to the Encyclopedia of Lambert of SaintOmer, Corpus Christianorum Autographa Medii Aevi, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998). An overview of the Liber Floridus can be found in Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 75–89. 32 ‘When looking toward Jerusalem from twelfth-century Flanders, what Lambert and these other nameless scribes saw was a glimpse of their own homeland, a bit of God’s city mingled together with unthinkably prosperous earthly urban spaces and with hints of other distant earthly cities, too – Rome, Troy, and Alexandria. All of these places served as signposts on humanity’s journey […] to the heavenly Jerusalem’. In Lambert’s illustrated Apocalypse, Jerusalem appears almost as a schematic diagram, with twelve towers symmetrically occupied by the twelve Apostles. Jerusalem ‘is the destination where all truths, all maps, and all cities would, with the passing of time, become as one’. See J. Rubenstein, ‘Heavenly and earthly Jerusalem: The view from twelfth-century Flanders’, in B. Kühnel, G. Noga-Banai and H. Vorholt (eds), Visual Constructs of Jerusalem (Turnhout, Brepols, 2014), pp. 265–76 (p. 275). 33 Saint-Omer, Bibliothèque de l’Agglomération, MS 776, fol. 50v. 34 Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, MS 76 F 5, fol. 1r. On the Hague manuscript, see H. Brandhorst, ‘The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek MS 76 F 5: A Psalter Fragment?’, Visual Resources, 19 (2003), 15–25, esp. 23–4; on the illustration of knights at the base of the map, see A. Stones, ‘Les Débuts de l’héraldique dans l’illustration des romans Arthuriens’, in H. Noyau and M. Pastoureau (eds), Les Armoriaux (Paris: Le Léopard d’or, 1998), pp. 335–420, esp. pp. 403, 412, n. 65; Stones argues for an early thirteenth-century date for the image on ‘stylistic grounds’.

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35 Other maps in this group include Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, MS 9823–4, fol. 157r; Stuttgart, Würtembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod. Bibl. 2o 56, fol. 135r; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 5129 (in a late twelfth-century manuscript of Robert the Monk’s History of Jerusalem). Reproductions of the maps found in Stuttgart and Saint-Omer can be found in Berger, The Crescent on the Temple, pp. 88–9 (figures 5.5 and 5.6). Note that Berger’s dating is not reliable, based on the thirteenth-century date she assigns to London, BL, Add. MS 32343; see Berger, The Crescent on the Temple, p. 90 (figure 5.7).

6 The emergence of devotion to the name of Jesus in the West Denis Renevey

Used on its own, ‘Jesus’ is not a term of address frequently used in the Bible. As it is a common name among Jews, it is necessary for the Gospel writers to address ‘Jesus’ by either adding his origin, ‘of Nazareth’, or to attribute some of his specific titles, such as ‘Lord’, ‘Saviour’, ‘Son of God’. In fact, the name ‘Jesus’ on its own, sometimes accompanied by a special title, is used as a direct form of address only by demons and people outside the circle of Jesus’s direct disciples. For contemporary Jews, ‘Jesus’ therefore has no particular greatness and is not a spiritually significant name. The Gospel Passion episodes (Matthew 27; Mark 15; Luke 23; John 18) are good cases in point as they depict the audience in front of Pontius Pilate having to make a choice to save either the seditious ‘Jesus’ Barrabas or ‘Jesus’ of Nazareth.1 In fact, Jesus’s opponents and some pagans are the exception in making use of ‘Jesus’ without a qualifier, demonstrating their rejection of the divine and salvific nature of Christ by this linguistic act, while the apostles instead use qualifiers (Acts 2:22: ‘Jesus whom you have put to death’, or ‘Christ’, for instance).2 The New Testament is therefore scarce in its use of the name ‘Jesus’ as a term that shows recognition of its spiritual power. Only in a few instances does one detect a positive attitude towards ‘Jesus’ as in the case of the story of Bartimaeus (Mark 10:47 and Luke 18:38) and in Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Phil. 2:6–11). The first passage narrates the story of the blind beggar Bartimaeus calling upon Jesus and saying, ‘Fili David Iesu miserere mei’ (‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me’). The invocation of the name ‘Jesus’ by Bartimaeus is semantically loaded within this particular context. Following a rebuke by his accolytes, Jesus cures Bartimaeus of his blindness because of his faith, which finds expression in the invocation of the Name. Perhaps even more importantly, St Paul’s letter to the Philippians stands as a very substantial testimony to the importance of both

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the invocation of ‘Jesus’ and the ‘Name of Jesus’ within the Bible. In view of the importance that this passage holds in later developments of the devotion to the Name of Jesus in late medieval Europe, it is worth quoting it in full here: qui cum in forma Dei esset non rapinam arbitratus est esse se aequalem Deo sed semet ipsum exinanivit formam servi accipiens in similitudinem hominum factus et habitu inventus ut homo humiliavit semet ipsum factus oboediens usque ad mortem mortem autem crucis propter quod et Deus illum exaltavit et donavit illi nomen super omne nomen ut in nomine Iesu omne genu flectat caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum et omnis lingua confiteatur quia Dominus Iesus Christus in gloria est Dei Patris. (Phil. 2:6–11) (Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause, God also hath exalted him and hath given him a name which is above all names: that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.)

The passage from the epistle establishes a critical link between the humble act of Christ’s taking human shape and posits it as an essential aspect of divine agency. As part of this representation, St Paul’s promotion of ‘Jesus’ as the name above all other names is more than fitting. The ordinary name ‘Jesus’ stands therefore as the quintessential symbol for divine humility and requires reciprocation by means of humility before the name on the part of all Christians: ‘Ut in nomine Iesu omne genu flectat caelestium et terrestrium et infernorum’. The reverence towards the name of Jesus that St Paul requires authoritatively and firmly from the Philippians finds its logical cause in the humble gesture that God undergoes in his humanity and death on the cross. The name of ‘Jesus’ therefore in St Paul’s passage is loaded with semantic meaning. Jesus as a name is now associated with, and indissociable from, one of God’s qualities, humility. Both passages contain in essence the seeds of conflating devotional practices that appear as early as the late eleventh century in the West. The Bartimaeus episode (Mark 10:47 and Luke 18:38) makes a case for the power of the invocation of the name ‘Jesus’, on its own or accompanied by brief qualifiers. The episode stands

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as an exemplum demonstrating the power of the invocation, as the character Jesus responds to it by miraculously curing Bartimaeus on the grounds of his unreserved faith. The letter to the Philippians instead offers a theological consideration of the nature of the Trinity and the nature of the incarnation, exemplifying the importance given by God to the ‘nomen Iesu’, which therefore requires veneration from all of God’s creation. One can trace on the one hand a continuum between the Jesus prayer and the invocation of ‘Jesus’ by Bartimaeus, and find on the other multiple manifestations of the influence of the reference to the power of the Name of Jesus. So, even if the simple invocation of ‘Jesus’ and the more complex reflection on the power of the ‘Name of Jesus’ initially derive from different religious attitudes, with different origins and specific idiosyncrasies, the slow process of transformation that each undergoes enables mutual influence and ultimate conflation in some late medieval texts. This chapter discusses the emergence and transformation of the devotion to the Name of Jesus from the time of Origen of Alexandria up to the twelfth century.3 It demonstrates how knowledge about the power of the Name of Jesus developed incrementally and in parallel to its devotional practice during these centuries. Origen of Alexandria (184/185–253/254), perhaps more than most other Church Fathers, shows an ongoing interest in the name ‘Jesus’.4 In On the Principles (Peri Archoni) and Contra Celsum, Origen shows awareness of and interest in the many names given to Christ and makes a strong case for the omnipotence of both the Father and the Son, using St Paul’s letter to the Philippians (Phil. 2:10–11) as biblical evidence.5 In Contra Celsum, composed around 250, Origen debates hypothetically with a certain Celsus, who flourished in the second half of the second century.6 In this treatise Origen makes a case for the power of the Name, against Celsus’s allegation of the use by Christians of demonic names to subdue or drive out demons.7 Further, in the same treatise, Origen argues for the effect the name of Jesus has on the soul, without however suggesting a particular meditative practice underlying his statements.8 Origen’s interest in the name of Jesus culminates in his commentary and homilies on the Song of Songs, which became available to the West in the Latin translation provided by Rufinus around 410.9 Origen perceives the commentary as dramatic composition, imagining characters on stage coming in and out, so that his entire perception of the biblical book, and his response in the form of a commentary, are permeated by a strong performative dimension.10

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While Origen is among the first commentators to offer an allegory of the soul in dialogue with God, it is one that is strongly embedded in a Christological setting. Christ in his humanity acts as mediator between the soul and God in the account of the possible union that can take place between them. Such an ambitious spiritual consideration accounts for the strong and innovative affective tone of the commentary that has been noted by translators and editors.11 One should therefore not be surprised to discover Origen using a robust affective tone when discussing the humanity of Jesus, and more specifically when offering a commentary on the power of the Name of Jesus. As much as the narrative of the Song is carried by the voices of the different characters, so is the commentary performed in similar fashion, with the literal and anagogical voices moving in and out of the commentary frame, giving the commentary a crisp and vivacious speed. Origen’s commentary of Cant. 1:3–4, ‘Unguentum exinanitum nomen tuum’ (the Vulgate reading is ‘Oleum effusum nomen tuum’), offers an initial historical (literal) explanation followed by an exploration of its mystical potential, applied first to the church, and then to the soul. Origen’s identification of the voice of the Bride as the one uttering the words ‘Ungentum exinanitum nomen tuum’ is instrumental in empowering the ‘Name of Jesus’ expression. The oily and easily spreadable consistency of the unguent becomes an apt metaphor to convey the way in which the Name will spread over the four corners of the world, emanating a sweet smell everywhere. Origen makes a careful distinction between the power of the name and that of the divine self itself, using the Song of Songs verse that makes reference to running towards God (Cant. 1:3), rather than being united to him. Although the word ‘Jesus’ is not used, the humanity of Jesus is stressed as part of this empowering process and plays a significant role in the emergence and transformation of a practice that has its roots in St Paul’s letter to the Philippians, with its insistence on the power the Name should exert. Origen has identified a very specific function for the name, one that is concomitant with, but distinct from, the role played by the character Jesus. Even greater importance is given to the Name in Origen’s two homilies on the Song of Songs, available from the Latin translation by St Jerome: ‘Unguentem effusum nomen tuum’. Propheticum sacramentum est. Tantummodo ‘nomen’ Iesu venit in mundum et ‘unguentum’ praedicatur ‘effusum’ […] ‘Unguentum effusum nomen tuum’.

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Quomodo ‘unguentum’ ad effusionem suam odorem longe lateque dispergit, sic Christi nomen effusum est. In universa terra Christus nominatur, in omni mundo praedicatur Dominus meus; unguentum enim effusum est nomen eius. Nunc Moysi nomen auditur, quod prius Iudaeae tantum claudebatur angustiis; neque enim Graecorum quispiam meminit eius neque in ulla gentilium litterarum historia de illo seu ceteris scriptum aliquid invenimus. Statim ut Iesus radiavit in mundo, eduxit secum legem et prophetas et vere completum est: ‘unguentum effusum est nomen tuum’. (4. THY NAME IS AS PERFUME POURED FORTH. These words foretell a mystery: even so comes the name of Jesus to the world, and is ‘as perfume poured forth’ when it is proclaimed […] ‘Thy name is a perfume poured forth’. As perfume when it is applied scatters its fragrance far and wide, so is the name of Jesus poured forth. In every land His name is named, throughout all the world my Lord is preached; for His ‘name is as perfume poured forth’. We hear the name of Moses now, though formerly it was not heard beyond the confines of Judea; for none of the Greeks makes mention of it, neither do we find anything written about him or about the others anywhere in pagan literature. But straight away, when Jesus shone upon the world, He led forth the Law and the Prophets along with Himself, and the words, ‘Thy name is as perfume poured forth’, were indeed fulfilled.)12

Other biblical passages such as the anointing at Bethany as found in Mark 14:3, John 12:3 and Luke 7:37 convey further the function Origen gives to the action of pouring forth, of spreading, of circulating and disseminating the power of the Name via the image of the perfume. The Bethany episode also qualifies the activity of pouring forth with regard to the moral qualities of the human agents acting upon it. Origen’s differentiation between the sinful woman pouring forth the perfume on Jesus’s feet with the one who pours it over Jesus’s head, points also to a performative action linked to the name that is qualified according to one’s own moral standing. Although devotional acts are not explicitly stated, nor are instructions for devotional practice provided, they nevertheless underlie Origen’s reflections. Bernard of Clairvaux was inspired by Origen in his own formulation of a devotion to the humanity of Christ that uses His body as a devotional map over which one progresses according to one’s own moral capacity, moving from Christ’s feet up to His head as one improves in moral standing and devotional ability.13 Origen and several other writers contribute significantly to the transformation of attitudes and knowledge about the ­ powerful

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potential of the name ‘Jesus’ as an object of veneration and a devotional tool.14 However, Byzantine liturgy with its ‘Office of the most sweet Jesus’, marked by the persistent invocation, ‘O sweet Jesus’ (‘Iesous glykytate’), is also instrumental to this process of transformation, making the name ‘Jesus’ a catalyst for an affective response. The office is attributed to the ninth-century hymnologist Theoctistus of the Studium (died around 890), disciple of Theodore of the Studium (759–826), from Constantinople. A more cautious dating based on the existence of the office in a twelfth-century manuscript, Vienna, MS Vindobon. Theol. Gr. 299 (olim 78), makes the eleventh century the terminus ad quem for its composition. The office in this manuscript is found among the canons of John Mauropus (around 1000–1070).15 The ‘Office of the most sweet Jesus’ is suffused by tenderness towards Jesus that is unparalleled in eleventh-century Western and Eastern Christianity, not to mention the early centuries. The thirty-six stanzas that comprise the hymn repeat the name ‘Jesus’ one hundred and sixteen times, with the first three stanzas beginning ‘O most sweet Jesus’, and with the qualification of ‘my Jesus’ in many of the other stanzas. The office invokes Jesus in a spirit of compunction and purification, asking for his mercy and benevolence, so that the ‘I-voice’ may find a privileged location to the right of Christ at the Last Judgement: O most sweet Jesus, glory of the monks! Merciful Jesus, joy and ornament of ascetics! O Jesus, save me, Jesus, my Saviour, my Jesus so merciful! tear me away, O Jesus my saviour from the dragon’s claws; deliver me from his pitfalls O Jesus my saviour. Take me away from the infernal abyss O Jesus my saviour, and count me, O Jesus, among the sheep placed to your right.16

The office posits an ‘I-voice’ that needs to acknowledge its sinful nature and show compunction. All of the stanzas are based on that scenario, without moving from this particular state to one of higher spiritual achievement. The overwhelming presence of the name

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‘Jesus’ within the office fulfills two specific functions. One elicits introspection and recognition of the self’s impure state, while the other, although recognising the self’s state of imperfection, nevertheless triggers hope of a salvific gesture on the part of Jesus. The office as a whole therefore is not a recipe for comprehensive psychological introspection. Instead it prompts an awareness of the psychological state of the performing individual, acknowledging the need for penitence, which is the first step towards psychological transformation: Most sweet Jesus, O Christ, O Jesus, open for me the doors of penitence, O Jesus, friend of men, welcome me, bowing in front of you and fervently imploring O Jesus, my savior, the forgiveness of my sins.17

The characteristic tenderness of Jesus towards humankind, and the imploring ‘I-voice’, point to an uneven distribution of agency between the performer and Jesus. The eight Marian stanzas (7, 11, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36), evenly distributed within the office, further accentuate the intercessory mode of the office, looking to Mary as a mediator between the ‘I-voice’ and Jesus. The poem ends by insisting on the role of the Virgin Mary as ‘theotokos’, as the mother who may bend the will of Jesus so that he demonstrates his kindness to humankind. The qualifier ‘glykytate’ for Jesus, in its vocative form, is used in the first line of the first six stanzas of the poem, and is repeated once again in stanza fourteen, line two.18 The evidence provided by Mary Carruthers on the use of ‘dulcis’ as a significant term for the history of affective piety, which translates Greek ‘chrestos’, may need a slight readjustment in the light of the use of the less ambiguous, more sensuous ‘glykytatos’ to qualify ‘Jesus’ in the Greek office.19 Situated temporally between Venantius Fortunatus’s sixth-century hymn, Pangue lingua gloriosi lauream certaminis, one of the first Christian poems ‘to exploit the terrible paradoxes inherent in the aesthetic quality of dulcis/suavis’,20 and the Cistercian rhetorical and effusive elaborations on the sweetness of God, the ‘Office of the Most Sweet Jesus’ plays therefore an as yet unacknowledged role in the history of affective piety. It also gives unprecedented weight to the role of the name ‘Jesus’ in

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the early history of affective piety, one that manifests itself in the form of communal and liturgical affective responses. The evidence provided by the Greek office suggests the practice of affective piety was centred upon the name ‘Jesus’ in the Eastern Church. Although it probably manifested initially as an individual, perhaps not fully fledged practice, by the early Eastern fathers, it took the form of a liturgical practice possibly as early as the ninth century, which was to be continued successfully in the orthodox church up to this day. When considering the Eastern practice, one is confronted from the ninth century onwards with an affective piety that did not come in waves, but which rather manifested its presence in a more or less continuous manner and contributed to its spread and knowledge in the West.21 The liturgy played a significant role in the development of interest towards ‘Jesus’ and his Name. The commemoration of the circumcision celebrated by the Greeks before the sixth century was adopted in the West, as it travelled via the Mediterranean to Southern Italy, Spain, Gaul and then reached Rome to spread throughout Christendom.22 The Gospel passage chosen for the occasion of the commemoration of the circumcision allowed the preacher a discussion on the name given to the infant born in Bethlehem. The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735), in his homily upon the feast of the circumcision, assumes a performative dimension in the repetition of the name ‘Jesus’.23 Elsewhere he attributes to the name ‘Jesus’ some of the qualifiers found in the Old Testament linked to the notion of salvation, thus reiterating some of the literary practices developed by the early fathers.24 Bede’s contribution to the development of the devotion to the name ‘Jesus’, like the Greek ‘Office to the Sweet Name of Jesus’, takes place in a liturgical setting, and is therefore experienced as a communal event. Anselm of Canterbury’s (c. 1033–1109) contribution to the devotion to the Name in the West may have been influenced by earlier liturgical and homiletic uses. The Meditatio ad concitandum timorem is part of a collection of prayers and meditations written by Anselm between 1070 and 1080, while he was at the monastery of Bec, in Normandy.25 Although the prayers and meditations are not suitable for liturgical use, their devotional tone relies heavily on the liturgical tradition of private devotion. According to Southern, the prayers are more subtle and daring than anything produced in the West up until the moment of their composition, with a heightened poetic emotion that triggered the call for a new

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rise of affective piety in the West.26 The prayers and meditations were written at the request of Countess Mathilda of Tuscany, who became a major agent for their dissemination.27 Despite their innovative individual devotional element, Anselm does not provide substantial information about how to practise them. He only mentions in his prologue that they are meant to stir the mind out of its inertia, and that they need to be practiced in solitude, with compunction of heart. Of all of Anselm’s meditations, Meditatio ad concitandum timorem is the only one to give the name ‘Jesus’ such a prominent place as part of the meditative process. Anselm’s contribution is a first, but powerful, foray into the potential the name ‘Jesus’ can generate. It is innovative, as it moves the name ‘Jesus’ out of the liturgical context to offer it for personal devotional practice. In a similar mode to the Greek ‘Office to the Sweet Name of Jesus’, a stress on compunction pervades the first part of the meditation. The opening lines (1–22) call upon the performer to react to and reflect upon his life, its state of sin and its unfruitful, damnable aspect. If the meditation asks for serious introspection, it does so in the larger frame of salvation history, alluding to the Day of Judgement as a threat for the unrepentant, sinful soul. The text attempts to stir up the languid soul by prompting responses to the following question: ‘Quid dormitas, anima tepida et digna evomi, quid dormitas? Qui non expergiscitur, qui non tremit ad tantum tonitruum, non dormit, sed mortuus est’ (‘O man, lukewarm and worthy to be spewed out, why are you sleeping? He who does not rouse himself and tremble before such thunder, is not asleep but dead’).28 To sum up, the first part of the meditation asks its performer whether the text, in forcing a face-to-face with his own sinful nature, will succeed in generating an emotional reaction manifested by tears and groans. If performed genuinely, as an act of faith, the performer has no other option but to give in to the emotional demands made by the text, which adds: ‘Auge ergo, peccator, auge superioribus aerumnis pondus, adde terrorem super terrorem, ululatum super ululatum’ (‘O sinner, increase the weight of wretchedness, add fear to fear, wailing to wailing’).29 No other text linked to the devotion to the name ‘Jesus’ before Anselm’s works so carefully in creating a representation of emotional excess, which one needs to confront directly and personally. Anselm brings the emotional potential of the meditation to a climax, with a series of aggressive, pointed and

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simple ­three-to-four word questions (note the repetitive use of ‘quid’, ‘quis’ and ‘qui’), bringing the performer to a paroxysm of anguish: Quid, quid tunc, quid erit tunc? Quis eruet de manibus dei? Unde mihi consilium, unde salus? Quis est qui dicitur “magni consilii angelus”, qui dicitur “salvator”, ut nomen eius vociferer? (What will happen then? Who will deliver me out of the hands of God? Where shall I find counsel, where safety? Who is he who is called Angel of mighty counsel, who is called Saviour, that I may call upon his name?)30

The remaining part of the meditation is entirely focused on emphasising the power of the Name. No other text prior to this one instils so much spiritual and psychological potential into the invocation of ‘Jesus’ as a healing practice. The meditation brings the performer to a critical psychological point that requires an immediate remedy, so as to redirect his affective energies and operate an inner transformation. This virtuosic exercise is configured to operate as part of a redemptive practice, a process of self-analysis that is aimed at redirecting the will towards spiritual matters following a process of purification. There is no antecedent in the West for such a carefully crafted affective script that places the invocation to ‘Jesus’ and the devotion to his name as fundamental triggers to religious introspection. Anselm’s meditation fuses the invocation of ‘Jesus’ from Mark 10:47 and Luke 18:38 with the reference to the power of the name from Phil. 2:6–11. The last twenty lines of Meditatio ad concitandum timorem combine eleven ‘Jesus’ invocations with five references to particular attributes given to the Name, amalgamated in a remarkable and effective fashion: IESU, IESU, propter hoc nomen tuum fac mihi secundum hoc nomen tuum. IESU, IESU, obliviscere superbum provocantem, respice miserum invocantem. Nomen dulce, nomen delectabile, nomen confortans peccatorem et beatae spei! Quid enim est IESUS nisi salvator? Ergo IESU, propter temetipsum esto mihi IESUS. (Jesus, Jesus, for your name’s sake, deal with me according to your name. Jesus, Jesus, forget the pride which provoked you, see only the wretchedness that invokes you. Dear name, name of delight, name of comfort to the sinner, name of blessed hope. For what is Jesus except to say Saviour? So, Jesus, for your own sake, be to me Jesus.)31

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The tone of the meditation oscillates between love and compunction, with the qualifiers ‘dulce’, ‘delectabile’ contrasting with the sterner ‘confortans peccatorem’ attached to the ‘nomen’ that follows. The blending of these two para-liturgical practices makes the meditation one of the most significant hallmarks for the development of the devotion to the Name in the West. Meditatio ad concitandum timorem stands as the first Jesus-centred devotional exercise for private lay use. The way in which Anselm’s complex process of accommodation and transformation of knowledge on the Name as found in the Greek ‘Office to the Sweet Name of Jesus’ and in the Greek tradition more broadly, escapes us, so that a direct line of borrowings and influences between Eastern and Western traditions is difficult to discern.32 Anselm’s innovative contributions are nevertheless manifold: first the invocations to ‘Jesus’ and to the ‘Name of Jesus’ are inserted into a devotional programme based on triggering an affective response as a reaction to the performer’s understanding of God’s mercy towards his act of compunction and request for help; secondly, the form the performance takes makes it unsuitable for liturgical, communal use, and requires solitude; thirdly, although born out of Anselm’s immersion within monastic life and spiritual practice, the meditation is written at the instigation of a female lay patron, for her personal use.33 Anselmian compunction and fear of God as preconditions for the use of the Name of Jesus and the ‘Jesus’ invocation are textually absent from the Cistercian tradition of reverence for the Name. Bernard of Clairvaux’s (1090–1153) first sermon for Christmas Eve and the first sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision show his interest in the Name, which is developed further in sermon fifteen from the Song of Songs.34 The declamations by Bernard on the name of Jesus in his first sermon for Christmas Eve are inspired by the verse of the Christmas martyrology, which would have been sung at the chapter house by the monks on the morning of the Vigil, and followed by a prostration. In the sermon, Bernard insists on the power of a brief invocation, emphasising not so much the ‘Jesus’ invocation on its own, but rather the power of short prayers in general: ‘Iesus Christus, Filius Dei, nascitur in Bethlehem Iudae’. O breve verbum, de Verbo abbrevatio, sed caelesti suavitate refertum! Laborat affectio mellifluae dulcedinis copiam latius effundere gestiens, nec inveniens verba. Tanta siquidem gratia est sermonis huius, ut continuo incipiat minus sapere, se vel ‘unum iota’ mutavero.

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(‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, is born in Bethlehem in Judea.’ This word, which talks about the abbreviated Word, is indeed brief, but it is filled with heavenly sweetness! Love is at pains expressing the over abundance of this honeyed sweetnes, but it cannot find the words. So great is the beauty of this simple sentence that it immediately loses its taste, if I were to change but only a small part.)35

One finds Bernard in a state of wonder as he considers the power that this sentence contains and the knowledge it can convey to whoever ponders over it: God’s incarnation into the second person of the Trinity marks the beginning of his salvific mission, his greatest gift to humankind. Bernard here is not so much interested in analysing the rhetoric qualities of the phrase, but rather the powerful message of divine love that it contains. The verse is repeated seven times in the course of the sermon and Bernard conveys and shares in his usual carefully crafted affective style his personal response to this divine visitation. The ‘oleum effusum nomen tuum’ imagery of Cant. 1:3–4, which receives full treatment in sermon fifteen on the Song of Songs, plays a crucial role here in bringing up the topic of Jesus as saviour. Interestingly, Bernard’s insistence on the salvific role of Jesus in his humanity is rendered exclusively as a joyful demonstration, completely devoid of considerations about human’s sinfulness as the cause for this divine mission. As Bernard states, such a wonderful event leads his soul to venerate the Holy Name. The blessing of the Holy Name, which is borrowed from Psalm 102:3, is strongly focused upon the person of Jesus in this passage, and seems to suggest that Bernard has already developed and pondered the veneration to the ‘Name of Jesus’. Bernard takes an active role in discussing the function of naming in his first sermon on the Circumcision, which begins with Luke 2:21, ‘Postquam consummati sunt dies octo, ut circumcideretur Puer, vocatum est nomen eius Iesus’ (‘And after eight days were accomplished, that the child should be circumcised, his name was called JESUS’).36 After regarding the act of Jesus’s circumcision as another divine altruistic gesture, to be aligned with his Passion and Crucifixion, Bernard moves on to more linguistic considerations based on the semantic potential of the name, which holds special status as the name above all other names, a name that holds special power in the way it urges reverence via the physical action of kneeling. However, Bernard’s religious and linguistic considerations lead him to consider further the power of the name Jesus via the

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metaphor of the ‘oil poured out’. All names in a sense carry the semantic load contained within the name ‘Jesus’, but in a scattered way: Magna quidem nomina; sed ubi est ‘nomen, quod est super omne nomen’, nomen Iesu, ‘in quo omne genu flectatur’? Forte in his omnibus unum illud invenies, sed expressum quodammodo et ‘effusum’. Nempe ipsum est, de quo sponsa in Cantico amoris: ‘Oleum’, inquit, ‘effusum nomen tuum’. (Great, indeed, are these names, but where is the ‘name that is above all names’ the name of Jesus ‘in front of which all kneel’? Perhaps in all these names you will find in fact only this unique name of Jesus, but uttered and dispersed, as it were. It is indeed this name that the bride pronounces in the song of love: ‘Your name is oil poured out’.)37

Bernard offers a powerful rumination upon the semantic content of the name of Jesus, one which takes a pervasive approach, firstly considering its function as the linguistic point of convergence to which all names refer, and secondly viewing it as a container, heavily loaded by God’s salvific intent for humankind, which works therefore as a powerful magnet comprising all the events of the Passion and Crucifixion. Sermon fourteen on the Song of Songs further develops various hermeneutic perspectives given by Bernard to the oil imagery and makes an essential preliminary to sermon fifteen in which the bride’s name of the Song of Songs is compared to oil. My contention is that Bernard, by aligning himself within the scheme of Christian salvific history, is fully aware of the historic moment he is inventing by creating a context and settings for a new devotional practice towards the Name. The sermon therefore reveals the mechanics that contribute to the construction of the devotion, and demonstrates on the part of its author an acute awareness of the psychological, cultural and historical paradigms that create the ideal ground for its full invention. The following passage shows Bernard to be fully aware of his own role within the history of Christian salvation in triggering the rise of this devotion. Bernard profits indeed from circumstances favourable to devotional monastic practice to contribute an aspect of knowledge on the devotion that is momentous: Nec miror si, cum venit plenitudo temporis, facta est effusio nominis, Deo quippe quod per Ioelem promiserat adimplente, et effundente de Spiritu suo super omnem carnem, cum tale aliquid et apud hebraeos olim contigisse legam.

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(Nor am I surprised if, when the time has fully come, there is an outpouring of Jesus’s name as God fulfils what he has promised through Joel, an outpouring of his Spirit on all mankind, since I read that a similar event took place among the Hebrews in former times.)38

However individual the practice of the devotion to the Name of Jesus can be, Bernard does not shy away from describing it as a powerful tool for the dissemination of Christian doctrine among pagans. Jesus as a name becomes a flagship for Christianity, one which when pronounced aloud, pours itself out and wins over pagans and infidels. His metaphoric use of the ‘oleum effusum nomen tuum’ verse in the context of the second crusade demonstrates the political and ideological implications of the veneration to the Name.39 The suffering of Christ during the Passion and Crucifixion, followed by the resurrection, make possible the pouring out of Christian doctrine over the multitude that will then re-echo the words of the Song of Songs, ‘oleum effusum nomen tuum’. If the political implications linked to the spread of the veneration of the Name of Jesus are given brief but serious consideration at this stage by Bernard, they are part of a larger scheme that seems to work its way from an outward to an inward movement by means of the three properties given to the oil that figure as the major metaphorical tools used by Bernard to define the power of the name Jesus. The three properties of the oil as fuel for light production, as a food ingredient, and finally as medical unguent are discussed in detail by Bernard as part of his sermon on the practice of the devotion to the Name. The light imagery linked to the oil enables him to discuss the spread of the Christian faith throughout the four corners of the world. The food ingredient imagery allows Bernard to display his views on linguistic utterances and the way in which each of his writings, and those of his fellow monks, should be impregnated by the powerful resonance of the name Jesus, whether the latter is explicitly rendered or not. As Bernard writes: Aridus est omnis animae cibus, si non oleo isto infunditur; insipidus est, si non hoc sale conditur. Si scribas, non sapit mihi, nisi legero ibi Iesum. Si disputes aut conferas, non sapit mihi, nisi sonuerit ibi Iesus. Iesus mel in ore, in aure melos, in corde iubilus. (Every food of the mind is dry if it is not dipped in that oil; it is tasteless if not seasoned by that salt. Write what you will, I shall not relish it unless it tells of Jesus. Talk or argue about what you will, I shall not relish it if you exclude the name of Jesus. Jesus is to me honey in the mouth, music in the ear, a song in the heart.)40

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Each characteristic of the name addresses different aspects of the Christian life. Light serves to point out the benefits received by the Christian community and insists on its role in disseminating them further afield to the pagans. Oil as a food ingredient highlights the role of the monastic community in its production of texts devoted to strengthening the soul in its Christian beliefs fed by the pervasive meaning given to the name ‘Jesus’. The final characteristic of the oil, that of medicine, which is discussed in part four of sermon fifteen, brings Bernard to address the psychological disposition of the monks and is central to his sermon in support of the devotion to the Name. At this point, the external functions that had been imparted to the Name are displaced by advice about how to use the name in a personal way. The care with which Bernard imagines specific psychological dispositions that monks may be prone to, and the judiciousness with which he advocates the use of the name with regard to each of them, are evidence of the practice of the devotion to the Name and its power as a spiritual medicine. Letting the name come into one’s heart and letting it out through the mouth, Bernard says, dispels darkness and makes a cloudless sky. Bernard even contends that the invocation of the name by those who have suicidal thoughts may bring one back to a state of joyful desire for life. The final part of sermon fifteen is totally devoted to the psycho-spiritual effects that the name of ‘Jesus’ has on those who utter it. Bernard’s concise, but precise, explanations deal with the multiple effects of using the name and show his awareness of its rich semantic potential: it may recall all the events linked to the humanity of Jesus while also invoking the divine figure due to the Trinitarian nature of the Christian God. Bernard therefore depicts the inner visual and emotional landscape that the evocation of the Name of Jesus may trigger within the mind of its performer. One should not overlook the programmatic aspect of sermon fifteen on the use of the Name by Bernard. The latter posits visuals that help configure a morally perfect human being while at the same evoking the ‘all-powerful God’: ‘Haec omnia mihi sonant, cum insonuerit Iesus’ (‘All these re-echo for me at the hearing of Jesus’s name’).41 Sermon fifteen is less an account of Bernard’s spiritual experiences triggered by the invocation of the name than a set of instructions for potential users. The shared cultural monastic assumptions between Bernard and his audience make possible a shift from ‘I’ to ‘you’, without having to be too prescriptive. Medical terminology is aptly used to construct the dynamics that define the soul’s engagement with the performance of the name and its multiple referents:

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Sumo itaque mihi exempla de homine, et auxilium a potente: illa tamquam pigmentarias species, joc tamquam unde acuam eas; et facio confectionem, cui similem medicorum nemo facere possit. (Because he is man I strive to imitate him; because of his divine power I lean upon him. The examples of his human life I gather like medicinal herbs; with the aid of his power I blend them, and the result is a compound like no pharmacist can produce.)42

Bernard suggests the use of the name of Jesus as a container for the soul, so that it can hide within it as in a receptacle, which will act both as preventative and corrective medicine. The name offers a cure to one’s own affections, guards against their corruption, or returns them to wholeness if they have been damaged by one of the deadly sins. Following the accretion of spiritual benefits one should come out of one’s own contemplative and interior world and speak words inspired by the name during the canonical hours. The Bernardine configuration of the devotion to the Name of Jesus takes place within the enclosed walls of the monastery and seems to be confined to use by monks. Despite that confinement, sharing his knowledge of the devotion’s spiritual power with his Cistercian readership has a significant bearing on the way in which it will spread in the West. The particular intimate monastic setting that Bernard uses as context for his delivery enables a non-prescriptive tone that possibly veils in part the programmatic nature of his writing. Added to the powerful affective tone that is one of Bernard’s stylistic characteristics, one could easily remain oblivious of the depth of his reflections upon the timely use of the devotion to the Name of Jesus in his day and age. If Bernard posits experiencia as fundamental to his investigation of the religious life, and makes the Song of Songs the ultimate object for its exploration, nevertheless he contributes a carefully planned programme for the practice of the devotion to the Name. My exploration of the emergence of a new religious attitude towards the name of Jesus brings me to the following conclusions. The name ‘Jesus’ used on its own had no particular appeal as an object of veneration to the apostolic fathers and the early Christians. The transformation towards veneration, followed by the emergence of a devotional practice, was slow and haphazard, so far as we can tell. Perhaps more interesting, existing evidence suggests the affective response to the name of Jesus had its first lease of life in the Eastern liturgical context, possibly as early as

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the ninth century, so that our presuppositions about the emergence of affective piety in the eleventh century require a serious rethink. Anselm’s Meditacio ad concitandum timorem remains of course a very important witness to a personal form of devotion outside of a monastic setting for a lay female audience. Yet, however significant it may be for our understanding of affective piety, the existence of the Greek ‘Office of the Most Sweet Jesus’, which expresses an astounding tenderness towards Jesus, demonstrates that affective piety can be codified within a liturgical context and therefore performed within a communal setting. It also reveals that its practice was not initially conceived to satisfy the needs of female lay or religious individuals. Finally, although I am not trying to deny Bernard’s participation in a form of religious experience in which the reformation of affective dispositions stands at the core of his concerns, it seems to me that too pointed a focus on this aspect may deter us from understanding the broader purpose behind his sermons and other prose texts. My reading of sermon fifteen demonstrates that Bernard was very much aware that cultural and political circumstances were ideal for triggering an interest in the devotion to the Name, which fulfilled several functions. When used communally, the repetition of the name ‘Jesus’ serves to instil fear in pagans and is used as a rallying banner for all Christians. The name also serves to assess the spiritual quality of theological writings and speaks in favour of a theology that combines faith in the Name and rational exploration. Thirdly, the personal devotion to the Name that Bernard advocates as the third aspect of his sermon shows his awareness of the significance of affective piety centred on the Name. Therefore I would like to suggest that we read Bernard’s contribution as one which is primarily concerned to promote performative engagement with the devotion to the Name of Jesus. Although affectively charged, Bernard’s writings offer aspects of knowledge about the devotion that engage with past usage and transformation and that attempt to circumscribe a multiplicity of functions. The erroneous attributions to Bernard of a large number of hymns, prose texts and meditations on the Name of Jesus, including the well-known ‘Iesu dulcis memoria’, is recognition of his major influence in developing the devotion. Yet, unlike Anselm, we have no evidence that Bernard himself provided poetic texts intended for performative use. In the context of this study on the development of the devotion to the Name of Jesus, Bernard’s contribution is more

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pertinent if considered as part of a well-conceived scheme promoting and refining the devotion to the Name of Jesus. Notes  1 Biblia Sacra. Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 2 vols, ed. R. Weber (Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1969; 2nd edn 1975). All following references to the Bible are to this edition. English translations are from the following internet page: www.seebs.net/bible.cgi (accessed 25 July 2014).  2 I am summarising I. Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, trans. C. Cummings, Cistercian Studies Series, 44 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1978), pp. 5–12.  3 This chapter is part of a book project tracing the development of the devotion to the Name of Jesus in England and beyond from the eleventh century up to the end of the fifteenth century. Its tentative title is Name Above Names: Devotions to the Name of Jesus in Late Medieval England.  4 St Irenaeus (early second century–202), Augustine and PseudoDionysius’s reflections on language’s difficulty at conveying the reality of the divine have a bearing on medieval understanding of the power of the name of Jesus. For Irenaeus, see Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, pp. 18–20.  5 See Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, pp. 20–9; see also Origen, On First Principles: Being Koetschau’s Text of the De Principiis translated into English, together with an Introduction and Notes, ed. G. W. Butterworth (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1936), p. 25.  6 Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. H. Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953; 3rd edn 1979).  7 Origen, Contra Celsum, I.6, p. 10.  8 Origen, Contra Celsum, I.67, p. 62.  9 See Origène, Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques I (Livres I­ –II): Texte de la version latine de Rufin, ed. L. Brésard eand H. Crouzel, in collaboration with M. Borret, Sources Chrétiennes, 375 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1991); see also Origène, Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques II (Livres III-IV): Texte de la version latine de Rufin, ed. L. Brésard and H. Crouzel, in collaboration with M. Borret, Sources Chrétiennes, 376 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1991). See also The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies, trans. R. P. Lawson (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1957). 10 For a detailed study of Origen’s commentary within the larger tradition, see A. E. Matter, The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 20–48; see also A. W. Astell, The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

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1990). For a close study of Origen’s commentary and the homilies, see J. C. King, Origen on the Song of Songs as the Spirit of Scripture: The Bridegroom’s Perfect Marriage-Song, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 11 See Origène, Commentaire I, p. 53. 12 See The Song of Songs, trans. Lawson, pp. 272–3; Die Grieschischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der Ersten Drei Jahrhunderte. Origenes, vol. 8, Homilien zu Samuel I, Zum Hohelied und zu den Propheten, Kommentar zum Hohelied in Rufins und Hieronymus’ Übersetzungen, ed. W. A. Baehrens (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1925), pp. 33–4. 13 See M. Simon, ‘Saint Bernard à l’ombre du Christ: une mystique de l’incarnation rédemptrice’, Collectanea Cisterciensia, 72 (2010), 111–16. 14 See Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, pp. 18–61. 15 See S. Salaville, ‘Un office grec du “Très Doux Jésus” antérieur au “Jubilus” dit de Saint Bernard’, Revue d’Ascétique et de Mystique, 25 (1949), 247–59 ; see also Hausherr, The Name of Jesus, pp. 79–86. 16 See Salaville, ‘Un office grec’, p. 251; the English translation, which is mine, is based on Salaville’s French translation of the Greek text. 17 Salaville, ‘Un office grec’, p. 252, stanza 5. 18 I am grateful to Prof. A. F. Morand (Université Laval), who provided me with this information in a private correspondence dated 18 February 2014; ‘glykytatos’ is the superlative, meaning ‘the most sweet’, the vocative case is ‘glykytate’. 19 See M. Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, Speculum, 81 (2006), 999–1013. 20 Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, 1012. 21 See Carruthers, ‘Sweetness’, 1008, who quotes F. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian Latin Poetry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1927), p. 419. In her defence, and that of Raby, one must acknowledge that their focus is on the Western tradition. 22 See M. Viller, with the assistance of J. Guibert and F. Cavallera (eds), Dictionnaire de Spiritualité Ascétique de Mystique: Doctrine et Histoire, vol. 8 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974), col. 1114; also available at www. dictionnairedespiritualite.com/ (accessed 25 July 2014). 23 See Bede, Homiliae, ed. D. Hurst, CCSL, 122 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1955); see also Bede, Bede the Venerable: Homilies on the Gospels, trans. L. T. Martin, Cistercian Studies Series, 110 and 111 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1991). 24 Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, 8, makes reference to homily five; see col. 1114. 25 See S. Anselmi Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi Opera Omnia, vol. 3, ed. F. S. Schmitt (Edinburgh: T. Nelson et Filios, 1946); for the English translation, see The Prayers and Meditations of St Anselm, trans. B. Ward (London: Penguin Books, 1973).

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26 See Prayers and Meditations, Foreword, pp. 9–15. 27 See Prayers and Meditations, p. 10. 28 S. Anselmi, p. 77, lns 27–8; Prayers and Meditations, p. 222, lns 33–58. 29 S. Anselmi, p. 78, lns 63–4; Prayers and Meditations, p. 223, lns 80–1. 30 S. Anselmi, p. 79, lns 77–9; Prayers and Meditations, pp. 223–4, lns 100–3. 31 S. Anselmi, p. 79, lns 83–7; Prayers and Meditations, p. 224, lns 108–12. 32 For an attempt at discerning such a route, see K. Ware, ‘The Holy Name of Jesus in east and west: the Hesychasts and Richard Rolle’, Sobornost, 4:2 (1982), 163–84; see also R. E. Sinkewicz, ‘An early Byzantine commentary on the Jesus prayer: introduction and edition’, Medieval Studies, 49 (1987), 208–20; see J. Munitiz, ‘A Greek “Anima Christi” prayer’, Eastern Churches Review, 6 (1974), 170–80. I am grateful to J. Hirsch, from Georgetown University, for pointing my attention to Munitiz’s article. I am also grateful to him for sharing his interests in exploring Eastern influences on Western spirituality, which in the case of the devotion to the Name are still to be fully understood. 33 Although written for Mathilda, the meditations could of course have been used also within Anselm’s monastic milieu. 34 Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons pour l’année, vol. I.1 (Avent et Vigile de Noël), trans. M.-I. Huille, intro. M. Lamy, notes A. Solignac. Sources Chrétiennes, 480 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2004); Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons pour l’année, vol. I.2 (De Noël à la Purification de la Vierge), trans. M.-I. Huille, intro. M. Lamy, notes A. Solignac, Sources Chrétiennes, 481 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 2004). The English translation, which is mine, is based on the Latin and the French facing translation. 35 Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons pour l’année, vol. I.1, pp. 198–9. 36 Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons pour l’année, vol. I.2, p. 92. 37 Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons pour l’année, vol. I.2, pp. 98–9. 38 Sancti Bernardi Opera. vol. 1, ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot and H. M. Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), p. 83; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 2, Song of Songs I, trans. K. Walsh (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1971), p. 106. 39 For Bernard’s involvement in crusading ideology, see his letters to the eastern Franks and Bavarians, written in 1146, as well as his letter to the duke and people of Bohemia, written in 1147, see Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, PL, 183, cols 565–7; for a modern English translation, see L. and J. Riley-Smith, The Crusades: Idea and Reality, 1095–1274 (London: Edward Arnold, 1981), pp. 95–6; Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘Epistolae’, PL, 182, cols 652–4; for an English translation, see Riley-Smith, The Crusades, pp. 97–8; see also Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘De laude novae militiae’, Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. 3,

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ed. J. Leclercq, C. H. Talbot and H. M. Rochais (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–74), pp. 214–15 ; for an English translation, see Riley-Smith, The Crusades, pp. 101–3. 40 S. Bernardi Opera, vol. 1, p. 86; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 2, p. 110. 41 S. Bernardi Opera, vol. 1, p. 87; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 2, p. 111. 42 S. Bernardi Opera, vol. 1, p. 87; Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, vol. 2, p. 11.

7 ‘Ther are bokes ynowe’: texts and the ambiguities of knowledge in Piers Plowman1 Kath Stevenson

Let the mind, therefore, know itself, and not seek itself as if it were absent; let it fix the attention of its will, by which it formerly wandered over many things, upon itself, and think of itself. (Augustine, De trinitate, X.viii.11)2

‘[T]her are bokes ynowe’ (B.xii.17), states the personification Ymaginatif to Will, the narrator of William Langland’s complex, hortatory fourteenth-century allegory, Piers Plowman.3 The implications of his comment have a profound resonance throughout the poem, raising questions as to the nature and validity of textual authority, the pre-eminence or otherwise of knowledge over experience, the role of learning in Christian salvation and, ultimately, the spiritual legitimacy of a life spent ‘med[dling] with makynge’ (B.xii.16). Langland’s anxious engagement with these issues is manifested throughout his poem, and forms an integral part of the work that J. A. W. Bennett once described as ‘the supreme English testament of Christian faith’.4 How then did Langland, a poet and clerk steeped in books and learning,5 whose poem nevertheless suggests a paradoxical ambivalence over the efficacy of texts, resolve these issues? There are, it seems, two interwoven strands of Piers Plowman in which these concerns are explored. The first is the poet’s concern with the role of abstract knowledge in the scheme of salvation, which is painstakingly considered in the often frustrating experiences of Langland’s initially stumbling, stubborn, and at times wilfully obtuse dreamer.6 The second, more complex, issue is the pertinence of the conclusions reached by Will for the project in which the poet is himself involved: it is this reflexive examination that engages most interestingly with the question of knowledge, as it is conveyed by texts, in Piers Plowman.

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‘Many know many things yet …’ ‘Philosophus esses, si tacuisses’, Ymaginatif tells Will: ‘You would have been a philosopher if you had held your peace’7 (B.xi.414a), and indeed time and time again in the central passus of Piers Plowman Langland demonstrates how Will’s quest for truth is hindered rather than helped by his attempts to understand through abstract learning what may only be known, it is implied, experientially; in essence, to rationalise the Divine. Ymaginatif’s comment hints at a degree of ambivalence on Langland’s part as to the function of learning in the search for truth, but, as this chapter will argue, this is not necessarily the case: we need to carefully disentangle Langland’s poetic persona from the goals of his poem. Piers Plowman clearly demonstrates the important role that learning (and in this sense, specifically, ‘book-learning’) must play in the Christian society he envisages, but in doing so, it makes explicit the point that learning on its own cannot achieve salvation, as Scripture’s words to the dreamer make clear – ‘Multi multa sciunt et seipsos nesciunt’ (‘Many know many things yet do not know themselves’) (B.xi.3). The conclusions Langland presents as to the proper role of learning in Christian life are developed through the dreamer’s search for Dowel. Not comprehending Holy Church’s comment that man has an innate capacity to love God (and hence ‘threuthe’) – ‘It is a kynde knowynge that kennet in thyn herte / For to loven thi Lord levere than thiselve’ (B.i.142–3) – the dreamer’s search for Dowel begins on an intellectual level, and in what proves to be the first of many conversations as to the nature and the whereabouts of Dowel, Will’s intellectual presumptions hinder his quest for truth. We might contrast Will’s antagonism, in this section of the poem, towards the personifications he encounters, with the binary oppositions said by Michelle Karnes to characterise critical readings of these crucial passus: In Langland studies, this binary expresses itself in the many allegiances of ‘kynde knowynge’ and ‘clergie’; the former is associated with experience, works/deeds/action, will, affect, the vernacular, the laity, charity, individualism and poetry, and the later with words (as opposed to works), Latin, institutions (the church, the university), the intellect, hierarchy, communalism, systematization, cognition, and learning.8

The ‘many allegiances’ of Karnes’s account are mapped on to the Thomist categorisation of natural knowledge (naturalis

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rationis) and revelation (divinae revelationis) that underpins her discussion.9 However, it is perhaps questionable as to whether or not the critical readings to which she alludes can be as easily and unproblematically reconciled with this Thomist binary as Karnes here seems to suggest, and, in particular, her straightforward equation of ‘kynde knowledge’ with ‘natural knowledge’10 seems to me to be less attentive than necessary to the semantic subtleties and ambiguities of the former phrase as it is used in Langland’s poem.11 This chapter argues that, rather than staging the poet’s preference for ‘kynde knowynge’ over ‘clergie’, or vice versa, Langland is in fact narrating the maturation of Will – that is, the will (voluntas) – in a carefully calibrated series of epistemological and pedagogical encounters. It becomes the task of the reader, not the poet, to resolve the tensions exposed by Will in his quest for Dowel. Informed by one of the Friars that Dowel is to be found with them (admittedly, an unlikely claim, given Langland’s typical portrayal of their ilk within his poem),12 Will responds, not as an earnest seeker after knowledge but, incongruously, as a seasoned practitioner of scholastic debate, ‘“Contra!” quod I as a clerc, and comsed to disputen’ (B.viii.20), prompting Pearsall to remark that ‘the dreamer’s presumption, in arguing “as a clerk”, does not auger well for his readiness to receive spiritual illumination’.13 The Friar’s allegorising is plausible, and as Pearsall notes, ‘perfectly orthodox’, but as he goes on to explain, ‘it is the application to which it is put that is disturbing (and which suggests the limitations of the intellectual approach), namely to give support to a manifest falsehood (i.e. that Dowel dwells pre-eminently with the Friars)’.14 Justifiably unsatisfied by the Friar’s explanation, Will continues his roaming before falling asleep once more, and meeting Thought. The figure of Thought, Robertson and Huppé long ago observed, ‘represents those ideas concerning the way to achieve Truth of which Will is at the moment capable […] [He] describes Dowel, Dobet and Dobest in terms of externals, with no suggestion of the necessary preparation of the will for good action through faith and grace’.15 Again, Thought’s dialogue with Will serves to emphasise the inadequacy of a solely intellectual methodology in the search for salvation. As Michelle Karnes comments, ‘When Thouȝt appears to Will, he seems a promising guide – Will is thinking, at any rate – but Will’s initial faith in Thouȝt’s ability to lead him to Dowel turns out to be misplaced’.16

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Still unable to comprehend (or, simply to rely upon) the ‘kynde knowynge’ of which Holy Church spoke in Passus I, Will is at this stage focusing purely on the external in his attempts to define Dowel, and it is a natural extension of this outward rather than inward projection that he asks where he might see Dowel in action, and is directed to Wit. The terms in which Will has the question posed to Wit are important, because they again reveal the purely intellective nature of his thinking at this stage – he wants Wit to ‘preven hise wittes’ (B.viii.122) by explaining the nature of Dowel, Dobet and Dobest, and the implicit presumption in his question is that Wit is sufficient to provide the answers Will is so fervently seeking. However, Wit, like Thought, is a self-sufficient faculty, and thus cannot greatly advance Will’s search for truth. As Karnes puts it, ‘In the course of conversing with his faculties Thouȝt and Wit, Will shows that natural knowledge, when divorced from clergy, goes badly astray’.17 Indeed, Wit is soundly rebuked for trying to do so by Study, who sees Will’s pseudo-intellectualism as parallel to those of the laity who ‘dryvele at hir deys, the deitee to knowe, / And gnawen God with the gorge whanne hir guttes fullen’ (B.x.56–7). Study is perhaps a little unfair on the dreamer at this stage, not to mention on readers of the vernacular pastoralia that became increasingly widely read as Langland was composing his poem. Certainly, Will’s persistent attempts to understand the mysteries of grace (which make Dowel possible) on a rational level are flawed, relying as they do on the efficacy of cognitive endowment, with no recourse to experiential learning, but he is at least genuinely (if, at this stage, unsuccessfully) engaged with the search for truth, unlike the ‘jangeleres’ (B.Pro.35) whose idle and presumptious talk of theological matters is intended merely to entertain their lords. At this stage in the B-text, Study explicitly warns Will of the inherent impossibility of trying to make sense of theological cruxes by recourse to rational thought, and to learned books: Ac Theologie hath tened me ten score tymes: The moore I muse therinne, the mystier it semeth, And the depper I devyne, the derker me it thynketh. It is no science, forsothe, for to sotile inne. A ful lethi thyng it were if that love therinne nere; Ac for it leteth best by love, I love it the better, For there that love is ledere, ne lakked nevere grace. (B.x.182–8)

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Will’s intellectual presumption is rebuked by Study, who quotes from the Bible to the effect that man should ‘Non plus sapere quam oportet […]’ (‘Not be more wise than it behoveth to be wise’) (B.x.118a). However, mollified by the dreamer’s abject ­ apologies and the earnestness of his search, she directs him to Clergy and Scripture, who she says can guide Will to Dowel. The sequence of Will’s intellectual guides is especially ­relevant in these passus, suggesting both the supremacy of the sacred textual authority represented by Scripture over the secular textual authority of which Dame Study is a personification; and, hence, the inadequacies of academic hermeneutics in expounding the sacred. Clergy gives Will a simple, yet textually authoritative, answer as to how to find Dowel – he is to keep the commandments and to believe in God. Attempting to dissuade Will from his incessant intellectual grappling with the problem of Truth, Clergy quotes from Gregory, ‘Fides non habet meritum ubi humana racio prebet experimentum’ (‘No merit attaches to believing [only] those things that human reason can put to the test of experience’) (B.x.250a), thus making explicit the chasm between what must be believed through faith and what may be intellectually proven. However, Clergy’s teaching falls on deaf ears, as Will persists in his theological arguments, fretting over predestination and the salvation of the righteous, before eventually confusing himself to such an extent that he feels betrayed by his own intellect, despairs of learning (and by extension the church and its institutions) and abandons all hope of understanding in the belief that simple piety will prove more effective than learned discourse: The doughtieste doctour and devinour of the Trinitee, Was Austyn the olde, and heighest of the foure, Seide thus in a sermon – I seigh it writen ones – ‘Ecce ipsi idiote rapiunt celum ubi nos sapientes in inferno mergimur’18 And is to mene to Englissh men, moore ne lesse, Arn none rather yravysshed fro the righte bileve Than are thise konnynge clerkes that knowe manye bokes, Ne none sonner ysaved, ne sadder of bileve, Than plowmen and pastours and povere commune laborers … (B.x.452–60)

The irony of Will’s assertion lies not only in his paradoxical rejection of learning by means of a learned reference, whose rhetorical force stems from the very notion of textual authority, which Will

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employs in its repudiation, but also, as Schmidt’s notes on the line point out, in the fact that the quotation is actually a misquotation: The unlearned start up and take heaven by force [alluding to a traditional interpretation of Mt. 11:12] and we with our learning and without heart [sine corde], lo, ‘where we wallow in flesh and blood’ […]. If Langland was not using some other Augustinian source, then he has omitted sine corde (which leaves learning per se blameless) and replaced ‘flesh and blood’ with ‘hell’. He thus appears to attack learning as dangerous in itself, a distortion perhaps meant to be recognised by readers who could appreciate the extremism of Will’s position.19

The suspect nature of the textual authority to which the dreamer alludes may be seen to be representative of the equally suspect nature of his arguments at this stage and thus invalidates, at this juncture, any claims for the authority of the text in which Will is featuring. The superficial plausibility of Will’s absolute rejection of the role of learning in salvation is thus fundamentally undermined by Langland, even as his poetic creation gives voice to it, reminding his readers, critically, that in this strand of Langland’s consideration of textual authority the voice of the poet should not be conflated with that of his narrative persona. Alford suggests that Will’s meetings with the specialised personifications in these passus are best read as a representation of the sequence of elements involved in the process of learning: Wit (native intelligence) joined with Study (‘studium’ – application) leads to Clergy (learning) which resides with Scripture (books, writing) and all of these together contribute to Imaginatif (prudential judgement).20

However, the more Will meets with these personifications and converses with them, the more confused he becomes. Learning, even the learning exemplified by Scripture, is, in isolation (sine corde) ultimately and fundamentally inadequate in the search for Dowel, and the dreamer’s insistence on pursuing intellectually and externally what can only be discovered experientially leaves him in a state of almost frantic bewilderment. The impasses reached by the dreamer as a result of his solely intellective approach is shown by Langland to persist for the bulk of Will’s life. In the B and C texts, the meeting with Ymaginatif, the most important of Will’s intellectual guides, comes forty years later – forty years that Will spends walking in his own self-created wilderness. This biblically significant lapse of time, recalling as it

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does the wanderings of the people of Israel, is a clear indication of the futility of Will’s earlier quest for Dowel via ratiocinative thought. It is only now, haunted by the spectre of Old Age and in terror for his own salvation, that the dreamer is persuaded to abandon his intellectual conceits and to accept that learning, while commendable in the Christian scheme of things, in and of itself offers no access to grace: Ac grace is a gifte of God, and of greet love spryngeth; Knew nevere clerk how it cometh forth, ne kynde wit the weyes: Nescit aliquis unde venit aut quo vadit21 Ac yet is clergie to commende, and kynde wit bothe, And namely clergie for Cristes love, that of clergie is roote. (B.xii.68–71)

As his encounter with Ymaginatif makes clear, it is the dreamer’s refusal to accept that his own spiritual state – his reluctance to trust to ‘kynde knowynge’ – is the problem preventing him from finding Dowel that has hindered him thus far. Some of the theological issues raised earlier in the poem as to the question of predestination or the salvation of the righteous heathen, as exemplified by Trajan,22 are here addressed and Will, ashamed by his ignorant dispute with Reason, is ‘shaken by his self-image in the inner vision’.23 Now, putting aside his intellectual pride, he prepares to commit himself affectively to the search for truth, by setting out with Conscience and Patience.24 Only after this decision has been taken, and the goal of solely intellective progress abandoned, do we hear of Piers again, for the first time since the search for Dowel began. Piers’s reappearance confirms yet again the primacy of experiential knowledge over abstract erudition. In the following passus, the Gospel story (the ultimate textual authority)25 unfolds before the dreamer, but in such a way that he, while not being exactly a participant, is nevertheless more than merely a detached spectator. Langland’s treatment of affectivity, as we shall see, undercuts any scholarly characterisation of affective piety as ‘anti-intellectual, unthinking “thinking”’.26 It is no accident that, in her discussion of the epistemological dimensions of affectivity in a later text, Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, Valerie Allen can comment, ‘the intensity of affective piety that Love exhorts can be read as an indication of knowing in a different mode, of a change of direction from what is known to how it is known, and in this reorientation, the will comes into play’.27 Voluntas

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having finally submitted to ‘kynde knowyng’, Will might at last comprehend, through his affective understanding of the Passion, the mysteries of salvation through grace. ‘Meddling with “Makyng’” In the strand of Langland’s consideration of textual authority discussed above, it has been argued that the voice of the poet should not be conflated with that of his narrative persona. The dreamer’s naivety is, rather, a heuristic device whose function is to activate the reader or listener’s own epistemological search for Truth. Will’s incessant stumbling towards an understanding of Truth, his somewhat sketchy grasp of theology and his, at times wilful, obtuseness are strategically conceived by Langland, who employs Will’s insistent questioning as a rhetorical device through which he can more fully explicate his own resolute view of the relationship of learning to salvation. Langland leaves his readership in no doubt as to what he wants them to think of his characters, most obviously in his use of personifications, but also in the case of his less onedimensional creations: Will may be lured away from the search for Dowel by Concupiscencia Carnis but Langland’s naming of her precludes the possibility of his readership imputing any value to her speeches. Similarly, the dreamer’s frequently presumptuous tone, when he argues self-consciously as a ‘clerke’ (B. vii.20) in his reproach to Reason, or in his impatient rejection of Scripture’s teaching: ‘“This is a long lesson” quod I, “and litel am I the wiser!” Where Dowel is or Dobet derkliche ye shewen. / Manye tales ye tellen that Theologie lerneth …’ (B.x.371–3) serves to emphasise the invalidity of his arguments. Langland’s attitude towards his creations was most certainly not one of ironic detachment. Thus, while the dreamer may appear to stumble – somewhat haphazardly – from one guide to the next before all is made clear to him in the revelatory passus dealing with the Passion, his perplexities are not those of the poet. A more complex issue, however, is, as noted above, the pertinence of the conclusions Langland has Will reach for the project in which the poet is himself engaged. Having so forcibly argued for the primacy of experience – the life lived – over abstract knowledge as a means to salvation, and undermined the legitimacy of textual authority, what then of the status of Langland’s own ‘med[dling] with makynge’ (B.xii.16)? It is in this aspect of the arguments regarding the nature of textual authority in the poem that the conflation of the concerns of author and narrative

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persona seem to me most tenable, and the anxieties voiced by Will to reflect more authentically those of Langland. Such a conflation of the dreamer with the author in this instance is supported by Schmidt’s reading of the poem: It may however be objected that I have already been engaging in speculation by speaking indifferently of Langland the author and of his character Will, to whom, after all, the speech of self-defence has been assigned. I do not deny that there are, at innumerable places in Piers Plowman, significant discriminations to be drawn between the two; but there is no serious risk of an autobiographical fallacy here because what I am discussing is not the facts of the poet’s life but the character and quality of his mind. The evidence for that […] is the text of his work, in so far as we can establish its form, its sequence and its readings.28

In his detailed discussion of Langland’s consideration of the ‘naïveté and moral responsibility of his activity as a maker’29 Schmidt highlights four especially relevant passages in the poem – the dialogue of Lewte (B.xi.84–107), Ymaginatif (B.xii.10–31), Dame Studie (B.x.30–50) and a passage of direct authorial comment (B.xii.409–56). The passages concerning Lewte and Ymaginatif are of most weight here, as both engage with the spiritual validity of the enterprise of writing in, respectively, a general and more personal sense. Lewte’s arrival in the poem coincides with the dreamer’s engagement with the idea of the limitations of textual authority: ‘“Wherfore lourestow?’” quod Lewtee and loked on me harde. “If I dorste amonges men”, quod I “this metels avowe”!’ (B.xi.85–6)

This is the second instance in the poem where Will voices concerns regarding the ultimate inadequacy of the authority of the text. On the earlier occasion in the prologue, where the dreamer is discussing the institutions of the church, he avoids direct engagement with his subject, trailing off almost mid-sentence: ‘Forthi I kan and kan naught of court speke moore’ (B.Pro.111). In the latter case, however, Lewte encourages him (indeed, essentially commands him) to speak out fearlessly against the iniquity he encounters, provided he can do so objectively. The dreamer’s dialogue with Lewte thus justifies the exposure, through spoken or written discourse, of vice and hypocrisy, provided such criticism stems from a desire to re-establish an ideal through the denunciation of its contemporary realities. In doing so, it goes some way towards vindicating both

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satire and allegory as moralising modes, reflexively justifying within the work itself the rhetorical and generic strategies deployed by the poet of Piers Plowman. While Lewte’s discussion with the dreamer offers a general support of the legitimacy of poetic discourse in critically engaging with contemporary social evils, the dreamer’s dialogue with Ymaginatif provides an examination of the place of poetry in a more specific instance: its role – and the vitality of that role – in the life of Will, and hence by extension in Langland’s own life. As Schmidt comments: This greater intimacy is marked not only by the fact that Will defends himself, but by the very nature of his interlocutor, Ymaginative. The latter is clearly a ‘noetic’ personification, a power within the dreamer, whereas Lewte is sufficiently external to him to sound almost like an embodiment of his ideal audience.30

Whereas Lewte, in essence, tells Will/Langland what he wants to hear – his enterprise is a valid act of service in a Christian society – and urges him on with his literary endeavours, Ymaginatif forces the poet into a more sustained scrutiny of his poetic undertaking. Again, the terms of the dialogue are interesting. Ymaginatif draws Will’s attention to how his duties have been neglected in his pursuit of poetry: And thow medlest thee with makynge – and myghtest go seye thi Sauter, And bidde for hem that yyveth thee breed; for ther are bokes ynowe To tell men what Dowel is, Dobet and Dobest bothe, And prechours to preve what it is, of many a peire freres. (B.xii.16–19)

In suggesting to Will that there are ‘bokes ynowe’, Ymaginatif stands in opposition to Lewte, who, as noted above, encouraged Will to continue with his endeavours – ‘wherefor sholdestow spare / to reden it in retorik’ (B.xi.101–2). The disagreement between the dreamer’s two guides can, however, be resolved by considering Ymaginatif’s words in their specific context. He asserts that there are enough authorities to expound on the nature of Dowel – implicit in his words is the suggestion that Will’s endeavours are at worst presumptuous, and at best redundant. If there were, as Ymaginatif declares, books, preachers and friars enough to explain the nature of Dowel, then the criticisms he levies at the poet would be valid. However, the pedagogical authority of

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each of the ‘institutions’ adduced by Ymaginatif as the explicators of Dowel has been shown in the poem to be in some sense lacking, justifying the dreamer’s response: Ac if ther were any wight that wolde me telle What were Dowel and Dobet and Dobest at the laste, Wolde I nevere do werk, but wende to holi chirche And there bidde my bedes but whan ich ete or slepe. (B.xii.25–8)

Implicit in Ymaginatif’s comments is the assumption that those authorities explicitly concerned with the explaining of Dowel – the friars, preachers and, in a somewhat different sense, existing texts – fulfil their role satisfactorily. As the hypocrisy of ecclesiastical figures is the target of the most vehement satire in Piers Plowman, and the role of texts is circumscribed as an adjunct to what is known experientially, the idealised situation to which Ymaginatif alludes, in which Will could lead a contemplative life, is shown to bear little resemblance to the contemporary world in which Will is seeking to save his soul – a world which is, in fact, more accurately reflected in the less idealised discourse of Lewte. In the dialogue with Lewte and Ymaginatif, Langland may therefore be seen to have successfully justified his ‘makyng’ as a legitimate and edifying enterprise – fulfilling a need to explain the nature of Dowel in the absence of any other satisfactory source, and simultaneously highlighting the abuses of duty by the traditional custodians of Christian knowledge. However, there still remains one crucial paradox to be resolved, and it is the question posed at the beginning of this section of the discussion. Having demonstrated that the pursuit of abstract knowledge on its own is inadequate as a means to salvation, and hence having problematised the legitimacy of textual auctoritas, what then of the status of Langland’s own poetic creation? ‘Hauyng [th]is in minde’: the cognitive dynamics of ‘kynde knowyng’ One way in which this paradox can be (at least partly) resolved is to consider Piers Plowman, or to be more specific, the central passus of the poem, which consider the events of the Passion, as a site on which textual and experiential knowledge are fused; the resultant text is the focus for the affective experience of Langland’s readers. As Stephen Kelly puts it, ‘The poem impels its readers, through the example of its narrator and surrogate reader, Will, to begin for themselves the imaginative process by which society can be

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re-envisioned […] in terms more faithful to its source and justification in Christian ethics’.31 Langland’s imaginative recreation of the traditional Biblical narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection is, as Schmidt notes, pervaded and directed by a single concentrated purpose – ‘to give the audience experiential knowledge, kynde knowyng, of the nature of charity, God’s love, in action’.32 In its fusion of textual and experiential knowledge through the use of affective rhetoric, this crucial section of Langland’s poem may be seen to be informed by the developing traditions of affective piety, albeit in a particularly subtle way. Certainly, it could be argued, Langland’s treatment of the Passion shows few of the characteristics most commonly associated with the affective tradition. There is no direct exhortation to his readers for personal, creative extrapolation on the scenes presented; no graphic appeals to the senses; no explicit authorial direction of the readers’ responses, and no particular emphasis on a lingering or agonising death. Elizabeth Kirk draws attention to Langland’s atypical treatment of Christ’s suffering and death, commenting, ‘Langland’s portrayal of the events of Holy Week does not correspond with the approaches to the Crucifixion and Atonement prevalent in his time’.33 One of the most notable features of Langland’s presentation of the Passion narrative is its starkness and its lack of dramatic embellishment, albeit not of dramatic import. The events of the Trial before Pilate to Christ’s dying words on the cross are told in less than thirty lines (B.xvii. 36–61); Christ’s death in only five (sublime) lines: ‘Consummatum est’ quod Crist, and comsede for to swoune, Pitousliche and pale as a prison that deieth; The lord of lif and of light tho leide hise eighen togideres. The day for drede withdrough and derk bicam the sonne. The wal waggede and cleef, and al the world quaved. (B.xviii.57–61)

Implicit within these lines, superb in their stark compression, is what Mitchell Merback terms ‘direct, imaginative contact with the people and events of the Passion’,34 and it is in this sense that these passus are informed by the tradition of affective piety. Langland’s visual reconstruction of the Crucifixion, while corresponding closely to the events narrated in the Gospels, is nevertheless designed to evince an affective response, as evidenced by the transcendent ambition of his poetry. The bleak grandeur of these lines imbues the passage with a poetic resonance far greater than any

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that could be achieved by gory elaboration. In a single, majestic line – ‘The lord of lif and of light tho leide hise eighen togideres’ (B.xiii.59) – Langland emotively juxtaposes the divine Christ and the frail humanity he took upon himself. The very cosmos recoils at the horror of Christ’s death. In his presentation of Will as actually present at his imagining of the Passion, Langland may be seen to be engaging with the rhetoric of affectivity, but to be doing so in a very particular manner. Kirk has highlighted the atypical nature of Langland’s depiction of Christ’s Crucifixion, but the incongruity she sees as characterising Piers Plowman at this juncture is further manifested in the poet’s relation to the affective tradition.35 Langland’s depiction of the Passion is emotionally mediated: the poetry in the passage quoted above is both an affective response to New Testament narrative, and a focus for a similarly emotionally mediated engagement on the part of the poem’s readers. What marks Langland’s relationship to affectivity when compared to that of paradigmatic texts in the tradition is the distancing strategy he employs in having the experience of the fictional Will mediate between writer and reader. Consider, for instance, the rhetorical features of one of the central English expressions of the affective mode, The Book of Margery Kempe. In her Book, Kempe’s readers are presented with her first person account of her emotionally mediated piety – her experiences are, superficially at least, directly and immediately available for the reader. But Kempe’s is itself an idiosyncratic treatment of affectivity. While it is clear that she expertly emulates the imaginative re-staging of biblical events that she witnessed either in Corpus Christi drama or the Easter liturgy, her text works ceaselessly to place her subjectivity at the centre of the narrative, not the periphery, where it would be more appropriately placed. As her attendance at, and indeed active participation in, the delivery of the Virgin Mary or Christ, as narrated in Book I of the Book shows, Kempe is less interested in making herself present at events than situating herself at their heart. Hence, appropriation of affective devotional techniques is a central strategy in her own textual selffashioning; the goal of her account is, to use a post-medieval term, the elaboration of ego. We might usefully contrast Kempe’s text with the more sophisticated affectivity of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ. Contrary to traditional readings of Love’s text, according to Valerie Allen, ‘The affective piety Love advocates makes knowing a matter of ethical being and calls for a ­reconsideration of

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the knowing subject’.36 In this, perhaps, Langland and Love have a coincident goal: as Michelle Karnes puts it, ‘in Love’s translation [of the Meditationes vitae Christi], imagination creates distance from rather than proximity to imagined scenes’.37 Love asserts in his Proheme: Wherfore we mowen to stiryng of deuotion ymagine & þenk diuerse wordes & dedes of him & oþer, þat we fynde not writen, so þat it be not aȝeyns þe byleue, as seynt Gregory & oþer doctours seyn, þat holi writte may be expownet & vndurstande in diuerse maneres, & to diuerse purposes, so þat it be not aȝeyns þe byleue or gude maneres. And so what tyme or in what place in þis boke is writen þat þus dide or þus spake oure lorde Jesus or oþer þat bene spoken of, & it mowe not be preuet by holi writ or grondet in expresse seying of holy doctours. it sal be taken none oþerwyes þan as a deuoute meditacion, þat it miȝt be so spoken or done. And so for als miche as in þis boke bene contynede diuerse ymaginacions of cristes life, þe which life fro þe bygynnyng in to þe endyng euer blessede & withoute synne, passyng alle þe lifes of alle oþer seyntes, as for a singulere prerogatife, may worþily be clepede þe blessede life of Jesu crist, þe which also because it may not be fully discriuede as þe lifes of oþer seyntes, bot in a maner of liknes as þe ymage of mans face is shewed in þe mirrroure. Þerfore as for a pertynent name to þis boke, it may skilfully be cleped, þe Mirrour of þe blessed life of Jesu criste.38

Like Langland, Love recognises the cognitive and affective potential of fiction, and, like Langland, his text produces effects for which medieval literary theory had only partial explanation. As Richard Beadle observes, ‘devout imagination could be said to possess what we would now describe as a purely aesthetic aspect’.39 For Karnes, ‘meditation as the Myrrour describes it remains within the confines of the present. Journeying into biblical scenes through contemplation and participating in them through devotion, the meditant imagines scenes that are unmistakably fictive’.40 But this is precisely the point, as the fictivity of the Mirror is immediately admitted by Love: in the ‘diuerse ymaginacions of cristes life’ he says his text will present. Their distance from historicity is explicitly described in Love’s justification of the title of his work: echoing the Pauline description of the nature of fallen – and therefore contingent and partial – cognition, Christ’s life can only be known ‘bot in a maner of liknes as þe ymage of mans face is shewed in þe mirrroure’. Later Love states, ‘Nowe if þou take gude hede to alle þat haþ bene done to our Lorde Jesu, & alle þat he haþ suffrede’.41 In

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f­oregrounding meditative attentiveness, Love turns the onus of moral recognition onto his audience. He manipulates the reader into contemplating his or her experience of witnessing, with the ‘inner eye’, the suffering and death of Christ. Properly performed, and here the contrast with Kempe could not be greater, affective meditation forces the reader to conjoin imagined perception and conscience in the cultivation of compassio. Only with ‘trewe ymaginacioun & inward compassion of þe peynes & þe passion of our lorde’ might the reader ‘acquire’ knowledge of Christ’s actual sufferings. Love elsewhere defends affective meditation on the Passion as follows: Wherfore hauyng þis in mynde, first to stiryng of þe more compassion […] For þe grete misteries & alle þe processe þerof, if þei were inwardly consideret with alle þe inwarde mynde & beholdyng of mannus soule. as I fully trowe, þei sholde bringe þat beholdere in to a newe state of grace. For to him þat wolde serche þe passion of oure lorde with alle his herte & alle his inwarde affeccione. þere shuld come many deuout felynges & stirynges þat he neuer supposede before. Of þe whech he shuld fele a newe compassion & a newe loue, & haue newe gostly confortes, þorh þe whech he shold perceyue him self turnede as it were in to a newe astate of soule, in þe which astate þoo forseide gostly felynges, shold seme to him as a nerneste & partie of þe blisse & ioy to come.42 

Contemplation of Christ’s passion ‘sholde bringe þat beholdeze iu to a newe state of grace’, but only if he or she reads ‘simply’, with the sort of hermeneutic and cognitive humility Langland’s narrator has yet to learn. For example, Will’s first impulse upon waking is to act upon his internalisation of the events of the Passion by celebrating Mass: […] and right with that I wakede, And called Kytte my wif and Calote my doghter: ‘Ariseth and reverenceth Goddes resurexion, And crepeth to the cros on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel! For Goddess blissede body it bar for oure boote, And it afereth the fend – for swich is the myghte, May no grisly goost glide there it shadweth. (B.xviii. 427–33)

But in keeping with Love’s later admonition that the penitent maintain ‘gude hede’, Will’s response to his new understanding of the divine charity represented by the Crucifixion is undermined by Langland: Will fails to realise his avowed intentions, instead falling asleep once more. Will, as the poem’s narrator, is not only

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an imperfect practitioner of affectivity as it would be later theorised by Love; he is also an imperfect ‘reader’ of Langland’s poem, and it is an imperative of the wider rhetorical strategy of the text that this should be the case. The exchange between Holy Church and Will in the opening passus of Piers Plowman contains both the central question of the poem – ‘How may I save my soule’ (B.i.84) – and the answer – ‘kynde knowing’ (B.i.143) – upon which the rest of the text is in some sense an extended meditation. ‘Kynde knowynge’ – affective understanding as a ground of knowledge, combining the ratiocinative and the experienced – is key, and while Will’s reluctance, or indeed his inability to accept this is in part, as argued above, symptomatic of his intellectual presumption, it is also part of a wider tactic of deferral on the part of the poet himself. If Will could fully grasp the import of Holy Church’s teaching or enact a genuinely affective response to his later experiential knowledge of Christ’s love in action, then the poem would not need to be written – the impetus for the text would be undone. Langland’s engagement with affective piety is of crucial importance in Piers Plowman, but it lies in the mode of response articulated, yet not realised, by Will. The nature of the poem demands, as a structural necessity, that its implied readers have a greater capacity for understanding than that displayed by its ostensible narrator. It is they who have the potential to undertake and to complete a model of action suggested but aborted in Will’s response. It is in this way that Passus XVIII can function as a site on which experiential and textual knowledge – or ‘kynde knowyng’ and ‘clergie’ as described by Karnes – are united. In this light, the dualism postulated above of ‘head knowledge’ on the one hand and ‘heart knowledge’ on the other is reconfigured in a mode that preempts the affective epistemology of Love, in which abstract intellectual knowledge is not so much discarded by the primacy of experience, but rather transfigured. Notes   1 I am immensely grateful to Dr Stephen Kelly, who read earlier drafts of this chapter, commenting in particular on the sophistication of affectivity in Nicholas Love.  2 Stephen McKenna (trans.), Saint Augustine: The Trinity (Fathers of the Church, vol. 45; Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1963).

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 3 Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from Piers Plowman come from A. V. C. Schmidt (ed.), The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-text (London: Everyman, 1995).  4 J. A. W. Bennett, Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve Centuries of English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 85, quoted in J. A. Burrow, Langland’s Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 1.  5 See J. A. Alford, ‘Langland’s learning’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 9 (1995), 1–8.  6 Discussed in C. D. Benson, ‘The frustration of narrative and the reader in Piers Plowman’, in R. R. Edwards (ed.), Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1994), passim.  7 All translations from Latin are from Schmidt’s The Vision of Piers Plowman.  8 M. Karnes, ‘Will’s imagination in Piers Plowman’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 108 (2009), 27–58 (28).  9 Karnes, ‘Will’s imagination in Piers Plowman’, 27. 10 Karnes, ‘Will’s imagination in Piers Plowman’, 27. 11 See M. C. Davlin, ‘Kynde knowyng as a major theme in Piers Plowman B’, RES, 22 (1971), 1–19. 12 On Langland’s anti-fraternalism see W. Scase, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), passim. 13 D. Pearsall (ed.), William Langland, Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2008), p. 188, n. 20. 14 Pearsall, William Langland, p. 188, n. 32. 15 D. W. Jr. Robertson and B. F. Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 74. 16 Karnes, ‘Will’s imagination in Piers Plowman’, p. 38. 17 Karnes, ‘Will’s imagination in Piers Plowman’, pp. 38–42. 18 ‘Lo, the unlearned themselves take heaven by force while we wise ones drown in hell.’ 19 D. V. Smith, The Book of the Incipit: Beginnings in the Fourteenth Century (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), p. 448. 20 Alford, ‘The design of the poem’, in J. A. Alford (ed.), A Companion to Piers Plowman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 29–66 (p. 54). See also Smith, The Book of the Incipit, p. 195, who equates the sequence with the structure of academic disputation. 21 ‘But thou knowest not whence he cometh and whither he goeth’. 22 Will’s encounter with the boisterous figure of Trajan is, of course, a particularly apposite episode in Langland’s consideration of the role of learning in the search for Truth. If Will had understood the exemplum of Trajan properly he would have understood earlier that books and

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grace are not correlated – it is perhaps the most concrete example in the poem. Ironically, however, Will would only have had access to the story of Trajan (and hence of the primacy of grace over learning) through texts – a characteristically Langlandian paradox. 23 Alford, ‘The design of the poem’, p. 48. 24 As Alford notes, ‘[Will’s] progress is expressed allegorically by the company he keeps’, Alford, ‘The design of the poem’, p. 49. 25 ‘The fact that the Bible is the ultimate, unquestionable authority is demonstrated in Piers Plowman in Passus XVIII where the Four Daughters of God are recounting and debating the events of the Easter weekend and discussing their meanings and ramifications. […] Their debate is broken into by the entrance of the character Book, the Bible personified and a representation of the Living Word’, G. Rudd, Managing Language in Piers Plowman (Piers Plowman Studies, 9; Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 38–9. 26 R. Perry, ‘“Thynk on God, as we doon, men that swynke”: the cultural locations of Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord and the Middle English Pseudo-Bonaventuran tradition’, Speculum, 86 (2011), 419–54 (454). 27 V. Allen, ‘Belief and knowledge in Love’s Mirror’, in S. Kelly and R. Perry (eds), Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 553–71 (p. 557). 28 A. V. C. Schmidt, The Clerkly Maker: Langland’s Poetic Art (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987), p. 19. 29 Schmidt, The Clerkly Maker, p. 5. 30 Schmidt, The Clerkly Maker, p. 14. 31 S. Kelly, ‘Piers Plowman’, in P. Brown (ed.), A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c.1350–c.1500 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), p. 549. 32 Schmidt, The Vision of Piers Plowman, p. xlv. 33 E. D. Kirk, ‘Langland’s narrative christology’, in Robert Edwards (ed.), Art and Content in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr (Cambridge: Brewer, 1994), pp. 17–36 (p. 22). 34 M. B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion, 1999), p. 43. 35 Kirk, ‘Langland’s narrative christology’. 36 Allen, ‘Belief and knowledge in Love’s Mirror’, p. 562. 37 M. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011), p. 219. 38 M. G. Sargent (ed.), Nicholas Love: The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Full Critical Edition (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005), pp. 10–11 (emphasis added).

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39 R. Beadle, ‘“Devoute ymaginacioun” and the dramatic sense in Love’s  Mirror and the N-Town Plays’, in S. Oguro, R. Beadle and M. G. Sargent (eds), Nicholas Love at Waseda (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), p. 11. 40 Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition, pp. 219–20. 41 Sargent, Nicholas Love, p. 172. 42 Sargent, Nicholas Love, p. 160.

Part III Past and Present

8 Meet the pagans: on the misuse of Beowulf in Andreas Richard North

Christians they may be at the end of Andreas, but for most of this poem the Mermedonians are mad pagan cannibals. The devil has made them so, and their hopes of salvation improve only when they try to make St Matthew into one of their victims. According to this poem, an Old English verse adaptation in the Vercelli Book of a Latin version of a Greek apostolic romance, St Andrew converts the cannibals on the Lord’s command after coming to their city to rescue his fellow apostle. Yet there is more to this Old English versification of a saint’s legend than rescue mission, passion and mass conversion, for it also appears that the poet of Andreas, recasting Mermedonia as the inverse of Heorot and Andrew as Beowulf’s ultimately stronger rival, subjects his pagans to a mockepic ridicule, which his audience could not have enjoyed without knowing Beowulf.1 The immediate source of Andreas has not been found. It was probably a Latin adaptation of the Πράξεις Ανδρέου καὶ Ματθεία εἰς τὴν πόλιν τῶν ἀνθρωποφάγων (‘Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the City of the Cannibals’), which, though surviving in a manuscript from the end of the ninth century, has a text datable to around 400 with roots going back even further.2 All analogues differ, while even the Πράξεις (henceforth Praxeis) shows itself to be a later recension by omitting a name for the city or even mention of the bishop (Plato) whom Andrew consecrates for his Mermedonian converts towards the end. The ‘Bonnet Fragment’, from a manuscript of the eleventh century, provides a Latin text which is closest to the Greek, but which answers to no more than lines 843–954 of the Old English poem. The Codex Casanatensis, of the twelfth century, contains a full Latin adaptation, the Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud Anthropophagos, but this lies at a further remove from the Praxeis.3 Among other Latin adaptations yet further removed is a condensed poetic text in Codex Vaticanus 1274, of

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the mid-eleventh century, which is alone with Andreas in naming the bishop.4 Two Old English prose homilies with this story are fragmentary redactions of the same adaptation of a Latin text, one which appears to have been close to that in the Bonnet Fragment. One is a middle section of the narrative in the later tenth century collection of the Blickling Homilies, the other a fragment in the eleventh-century MS, CCCC 198.5 The Old English Andreas, in its account of the transformation of its subject from reluctant apostle to fearless hero, is as much a saint’s life as these analogues.6 However, it has also been noted that Andreas is composed with a unique and potentially comic wildness of expression.7 The Praxeis shows us that some such possibilities may have been available to the poet of Andreas in his source, as in the case of Andrew’s dialogue with the ship’s captain, Jesus in disguise, in his journey to Mermedonia in the first third of the story.8 Yet a wider comic tendency in Andreas is manifest in the poet’s extravagant expressions, many of which appear to take Beowulf as their source. Indeed Andreas contains a higher number of verbal parallels with Beowulf than does any other Old English poem.9 Although these have been dismissed as oral-formulaic coincidences,10 enough textually comparative work has been done to redefine them as the poet’s conscious or internalised loans.11 Here I shall discuss twelve examples. My first is when the poet calls Andrew a ‘beorn beaduwe heard’ (‘warrior hard in battle’) (line 982) as he marches on the jail in Mermedonia. These words for a miles Christi12 may also recall the epithet ‘beadwe heard’, which describes Beowulf as he closes with Grendel’s Mother, at Beowulf, line 1539. It is hard to treat this usage in Andreas as purely typescene formulaic, for two reasons. One is that the Beowulf-poet’s use of this epithet is visibly related to the Norse expression ‘bǫðvarr bjarki’ (‘battle-ready little bear’), which is the basis for the name of Beowulf’s deep-fried heathen counterpart in the later Norse analogues.13 The other is the fact that no other examples of ‘bead[u]we heard’ survive in Old English literature. In Andreas it seems therefore likely that the poet calls Andrew ‘beorn beaduwe heard’ in order to make him a rival to Beowulf. It is clear that the poet of Andreas borrows subversively from Beowulf from the moment he acclimatises the Mermedonians to heroic Scandinavia. Their story goes that they arrest pilgrims and other passing backpackers in order to eat them after a fattening of thirty days. Notice of these pagans’ meal-habits is soon followed in the poem by their unwitting parody of the Eucharist, in which ‘næs

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þær hlafes wist’ (‘it was not loaf food there’), ‘ne wæteres drync’ (‘nor drink of water’) that they have for their use, but rather ‘blod ond fel, / fira flæschoman feorrancumenra’ (‘blood and skin, flesh of men come from afar on which they dine’) (lines 21, 22, 23–24). The Mermedonian pagans perform an unwitting simulation of Christians, who can eat the body and drink the blood of Christ. In any other conversion narrative with a setting as far from England as a city by the Black Sea, they might look little worse than the Roman unbelievers in Cynewulf’s Juliana and The Fates of the Apostles or the Jewish ones in his Elene. Yet the poet of Andreas is only too ready to mock his pagans, as a formula from Beowulf shows: Swelc wæs þeaw hira, þæt hie æghwylcne   ellðeodigra dydan him to mose   meteþearfendum, þara þe þæt ealand   utan sohte. (Andreas, lines 25–8) (Such was their custom, that each man from a nation of foreigners did they make, when needing food, into meat, of those seeking that land by water from abroad.)14

This bare introductory half-line is all that is needed to bring the tragic Danes of Beowulf to mind. When Grendel invades Heorot, and when neither King Hrothgar nor his council can think of a solution, the Danes sink into despair and make offerings to the devil. The poet defends their actions as performed in ignorance of the true God: Swylc wæs þeaw hyra, hæþenra hyht.   Helle gemundon in modsefan,   Metod hie ne cuþon, dæda Demend,   ne wiston hie Drihten God, ne hie huru heofena   Helm herian ne cuþon, wuldres Waldend. (Beowulf, lines 178–83) (Such was their custom, hope of heathen men. They were mindful of hell in their hearts, did not know the Measurer, Judge of Deeds, nor were wise to the Lord God, nor knew how to praise the Helm of heaven, Ruler of Glory.)

The poet of Beowulf knows that the old Israelites were idolaters too (Exodus 32:1–6). His sympathy for these heathens as honorary Israelites may be seen in the objectivity with which he describes

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their rituals. Although the Danes pray to the devil, who will take their souls, they are as ignorant as they were two generations earlier, in lines 50–2, when they committed Scyld Scefing to the deep. Later, in defiance of his statement above, the poet of Beowulf allows his heathens to praise God most of the time. The monotheism into which Hrothgar’s invocations have thus been morally translated is Israelite in all but name. To add to his salvage of heroic Scandinavian cousins, the poet leaves Hrothgar’s name out of the idolatry about which he is otherwise so open. In both the funeral and the sacrifices he takes the earliest care to introduce and alleviate the religious plight of his heathens. The poet of Andreas makes a barbed reference to this compassion by deploying the half-line ‘swelc wæs þeaw hira’ as early as line 25 of his work. A certain structural resemblance permits this, for both Beowulf and Andreas start with heroes setting off over high seas to rescue foreign nations from cannibal assaults. Without knowing it, Andrew even likens his own expedition to Beowulf’s. When he says ‘færeð famigheals fugole gelicost’ (‘with foamy neck she sails most like a bird’) (Andreas, line 497), of the ship he is in, he cites the Geat’s ‘flota famiheals fugle gelicost’ (‘vessel foamnecked most like a bird’) (Beowulf, line 218). Yet there are also differences between Beowulf and Andreas sufficient to make one poem the mock of the other. The cannibals in Andreas are introduced as the host nation itself, and most other parallels are reflected in the manner in which the poet of Andreas represents them. The source that he versifies will have portrayed Mermedonians as provincial pagans living through a sub-Roman apocalypse.15 In the perforce heroic versification of this tale he turns these people into Scyldings. A city full of Grendels? Having entrapped St Matthew, who visited them earlier, the Mermedonians provide a potentially comic inversion of the Heorot scenario in which the visitor entraps the people. Likewise, when Andrew is forced on his mission, he becomes the potential inverse of Beowulf. Having questioned the Lord’s command to save Matthew in three days’ time, then looking for his transport to Mermedonia by the shore the next morning, he cuts a poor figure alongside the headstrong Geat who leaves for Denmark against his uncle’s wishes, having picked his own ship and crew. The modesty that a saint must have goes too far in this initial reluctance, and the exchange between Andrew on the shore and the sailors in the boat the next morning takes the comedy further. This is based on his failure to perceive that the ship’s captain is his old friend Jesus in disguise.16 The Praxeis

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makes the dialogue short and careful. The captain is perfectly played and there may be comedy in the unworldly way in which Andrew reveals to him that ‘Ναῦλον οὐχ ἔχομεν σοι παρασχεῖν, ἀλλ’ οὔτε ἄρτον ἔχομεν εἰς διατροφήν’ (‘We have no fare to offer you, nor do we even have a loaf for our sustenance’) (ch. 6).17 But unworldliness is a saint’s weapon: Andrew confirms his worth, for which the Lord is testing him, by saying that he is on a mission from God, and that if the captain cannot help, he and his men will find another boat. All this is before Andrew has boarded. The Casanatensis solemnises the discourse by letting Andrew and the others board before the Lord more prosaically tests Andrew by asking for the fare. Andrew answers, ‘Crede mihi frater, quia nec aurum habeo, neque argentum, unde tibi naulum dare, set neque panem in sitarcis’ (‘Believe me brother, I have no gold, nor silver, with which to pay you my fare, nor even a loaf as part of my provisions’) (ch. 6).18 The Latin captain responds with disbelief, rather than with irony, repeating the things that Andrew does not have in order to get a proper explanation. Andrew’s ensuing statement defends his saintly poverty more elaborately than in the Greek, but with the same elements. The whole scene, as Wilcox has observed, is structured around the Eucharist, in that the Lord breaks bread with Andrew, which, since the disciples are too seasick to eat it, Andrew shares with Him. Andrew’s assurance to the captain, that the Lord will offer him bread as recompense, captures the irony of the apostle’s position.19 The Old English poetic version, which appears to follow a Latin source closer to the Praxeis, magnifies the hot saintly temper that is otherwise in the Casanatensis. Politely at first, hailing the captain from shore, Andrew asks for passage, ‘þeh ic þe beaga lyt, / sincweorðunga, syllan meahte’ (‘though few are the rings, treasures and adornments I could give you’) (lines 271–2). Though Andrew adds that God will reward the captain, the message is lost on him. After citing the dangers of going to Mermedonia, the captain offers to ferry Andrew and the others to his city only when they have ‘gafulrædenne agifen’ (‘yielded up payment of tribute’), ‘sceattas gescrifene’ (‘coins as prescribed’) (lines 296–7), that is, to the sailors’ price. Andrew answers ‘ofstlice’ (‘hastily’) (line 299): with temper, to judge by his ensuing words. The poet calls him ‘wineþearfende’ (‘in need of friends’) (line 300), as if Andrew will soon need them to pull him out of a brawl. Andrew’s answer is a satire of heroic expectations. Later he explains that the Lord taught him to live without gold and silver

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(lines 337–8), but to make his poverty clear to the merchant skipper now, he swaps the coins for an exaggerated image of treasure: ‘Næbbe ic fæted gold   ne feohgestreon, welan ne wiste   ne wira gespann, landes ne locenra beaga,   þæt ic þe mæge lust ahwettan, willan in worulde,   swa ðu worde becwist.’ (Andreas, lines 301–4) (‘I have no plated gold nor riches of treasure, no wealth nor provisions nor fastening of wires, no land nor linked rings, with which I can possibly arouse your desire, such worldly pleasure as in words you reproach me for.’)

In that the fabulous objects to which Andrew refers belong to kings, he makes a point about unreasonable expectations: Andrew is a missionary, not a king. Andrew makes his point still clearer with the hypermetric line 303. At first there seems to be a lack of clarity: the phrase ‘landes ne locenra beaga’ (‘of land or linked rings’) may be an ‘objective genitive’, produced by a poet who ‘tries to write in the heroic style, but sometimes muddles it’.20 However, if this half-line is read as a quotation from Beowulf, the style is far from muddled. The phrase ‘landes ond locenra beaga’ occurs in the third of only three hypermetric passages in Beowulf. This is in the poet’s dénouement concerning Hygelac, Beowulf’s mother’s brother and best friend. In the story, Beowulf is now dead and an unnamed Geatish messenger has returned home with the news. He sketches a reverse history of the wars that the Geats have fought with their neighbours: first with the Franks, who killed Hygelac when he raided their territory; then with old king Ongentheow of the Swedes, who killed Hæthcyn in the battle of Ravenswood, threatened death to the Geatish survivors all night long, only to withdraw when Hygelac, the younger brother, marched in to save them all in the morning. Hygelac routs the Swedes and sends his champions Wulf and Eofor after King Ongentheow. When the kings falls, after a ferocious fight with these brothers, Hygelac loots the Swedish kingdom and returns home in triumph. Then, with dire consequences for the stability of his own country, he rewards the champions with riches beyond the dreams of avarice: ‘geald þone guðræs   Geata dryhten, Hreðles eafora,   þa he to ham becom, Iofore ond Wulfe   mid ofermaðmum, sealde hiora gehwæðrum   hund þusenda

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landes ond locenra beaga   (ne ðorfte him ða lean oðwitan mon on middangearde   syððan hie ða mærða geslogon), ond ða Iofore forgeaf   angan dohtor, hamweorðunge,   hyldo to wedde.’ (Beowulf, lines 2991–8) (‘The lord of Geats, Hrethel’s offspring, when he came to his home-seat, paid Eofor and Wulf for that war-charge with an excess of treasure, gave each of them one hundred and twenty thousand of land and linked rings (nor need any man in the middle world begrudge them that reward, since they had won those glories by fighting for them) and then he gave Eofor his only daughter as ennobler of his estate, the pledge of his loyalty.’)

If this hypermetric sequence means anything in Beowulf, and of course its metrical distinctness and even authenticity have been questioned,21 it is that the end of Hygelac’s career is implicit in its beginning. Hygelac’s prodigal generosity will become a habit to be replenished by ever riskier ventures until the excess of it leads him and all but one of his retinue to their doom on the Rhine. This is a highly political image of disaster, one far from the apparently mundane ship’s captain to shore situation that we have before us in Andreas. However, it may be argued that the half-line in Beowulf is the source for its near-double in Andreas. By unwittingly citing a negative version of the Geatish messenger’s 120,000 units of land and linked rings, Andrew uses Beowulf to give him the catchphrase for a spendthrift king. The poet’s own view of treasure emerges in the course of a fifth apparent borrowing from Beowulf. Describing Andrew’s ship as filled with treasure just as Scyld Scefing’s is, he makes it nonetheless clear that he is praising her complement, Andrew and his disciples as well as the angels and heavenly captain: Æfre ic ne hyrde þon cymlicor   ceol gehladenne heahgestreonum. (Andreas, lines 360–2) (Never did I hear of any keel the comelier laden with high treasures.)

The poet of Beowulf uses similar language to describe Scyld’s funeral ship before she is shoved on the deep, destination unknown:

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ne hyrde ic cymlicor   ceol gegyrwan hildewæpnum  ond heaðowædum billum ond byrnum. (Beowulf, lines 38–40) (Nor did I hear of a comelier keel made ready with war-weapons and battle garments, with axes and coats of mail.)

The social importance to the Beowulf-poet of this treasure is clear; a few lines later he calls it ‘þeodgestreonum’ (‘royal treasures’) (line 44). Yet from the evident re-use of the crucial words in Andreas it appears that the later poet repeats Beowulf’s ‘never-yet-heard’ topos in order to portray Andrew’s ship as even better than Scyld’s. The real treasure is of the spirit, and Andrew’s scorn for money is the correct attitude to have. A sixth borrowing from Beowulf turns Andrew’s zeal into artless condescension. Just when we think, through Andrew’s sustained praise of God in lines 540–8, that he has acknowledged the identity of the young captain who asks him all the questions, Andrew reveals no understanding at all: ‘Huru is gesyne,   sawla nergend, þæt ðu þissum hysse   hold gewurde ond hine geongne   geofum wyrðodest, wison gewitte   ond wordcwidum! Ic æt efenealdum   æfre ne mette on modsefan   maran snyttro.’ (Andreas, lines 549–54) (‘Indeed it can be seen, O Saviour of Souls, what favour you have shown to this boy, with what gifts honoured him young as he is, with what wise wit and eloquence! In a man of his age I have never met greater cleverness of mind.’)

This parting flourish is lacking in the analogues, whose speech ends with a paean to the Almighty. Beowulf, however, provides a parallel, even if not in the form of a quotation, for Hrothgar condescends to Beowulf similarly just before the hero takes his leave. This foreign champion has helpfully indicated some trouble for Denmark in the near future. There may be an invasion for which he promises to bring a forest of Uncle Hygelac’s spears (lines 1826–35): this turns out to be Ingeld’s revenge raid on Heorot. Possibly, in his offer to foster Hrethric, there may be a threat to Hrothgar’s sons (lines 1836–9): this turns out to be true as well,

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coming from Hrothulf, their next king and cousin.22 Wise as he is, Hrothgar fails to understand any of it: Hroþgar maþelode him on andsware: ‘Þe þa wordcwydas   wigtig Drihten on sefan sende;   ne hyrde ic snotorlicor on swa geongum feore   guman þingian.’ (Beowulf, lines 1841–3) (Hrothgar then spoke to him in answer: ‘These words you have uttered the wise Lord sent to your heart; nor have I heard a man at such young stage of life intercede more cleverly.’)

The difference lies not between Andrew and Hrothgar, who are both beyond middle age, but between their interlocutors. As the young ship’s captain is the Lord in disguise, Andrew’s mistake is worse. This is brought home to him the next morning. After angels carry them all to a place of rest outside the walls of Mermedonia, Andrew’s disciples reveal a heavenly vision from which he has been pointedly excluded, whereupon the Lord reappears as a little boy, rebuking Andrew for his original doubts. The agents of humiliation become younger each time. However, the result is positive in that after this nadir Andrew begins to harden to the task. Leaving his disciples behind, just like Beowulf, though unlike him invisible, he earns the hero’s epithet, ‘beorn beaduwe heard’ (‘a warrior hard in battle’) as he moves on the Mermedonian jail in line 982. This use marks a turning point, for the humiliations inspire Andrew’s courage to equal Beowulf’s. A seventh example of the poet’s use of Beowulf may be seen in the hero’s entry into the jail. As soon as he reaches this place in town, divine intervention ensures that all seven guards drop dead. The Praxeis and the Casanatensis both let Andrew into the jail through a Christian blessing (ch. 19). The Greek analogue says that ‘περιεχάραξεν Ἀνδρέας τὴν θύραν τῷ σημείῳ τοῦ σταυροῦ καὶ αὐτομάτως ἡ θύρα ἠνεῴχθη’ (‘Andrew furnished the door with the sign of the cross, and the door opened of its own accord’); the Latin analogue says of Andrew, with a little more detail, that ‘extendens dexteram suam ad carcerem, fecit signum sancte crucis’ (‘and stretching out his right hand towards the jail, he made the sign of the holy cross’), whereupon the guards drop and ‘ianua vero carceris statim aperta est eis, et ferrum ipsius ianue dissolutum est’ (‘indeed the door of the jail was at once opened for them, and the same door’s iron was melted’), as are the chains on the

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­prisoners.23 Andreas follows the sequence of events in the Praxeis, while emphasising the ‘dextera’ (‘right hand’) of the Casanatensis. Just as in the analogues, Andrew ‘se halga’ (‘the saint’) (line 996) prays to the Father within his breast, praising ‘Godes dryhtendom’ (‘God’s lordship’) (line 999). In the following, whether the manuscript reading ‘gastes’ is for the Holy ‘Spirit’ (‘gāst’) and the Lord accomplishes what Grendel does with His hands, or this is for Andrew as the holy ‘guest’ (‘gaˇst’) in Mermedonia, Andrew is recast as a cannibal: Duru sona onarn þurh handhrine   haliges gastes, ond þær in eode,   elnes gemyndig, hæle hildedeor.   Hæðene swæfon, dreore druncne,   deaðwang rudon. (Andreas, lines 999–1003) (At once the door rushed open with a touch from the hand of the holy guest, and inside, inspired by valour, marched in a man daring in battle. Heathens were sleeping, drunk with blood, had reddened the place of death.)

The dead outside are thus glimpsed as if sleeping inside. As may be seen below, the effect of this figure is to remind us of a scene in Beowulf. The hand-touch points to Grendel’s forced entry. First there is the long-awaited approach of this wretched ‘rinc’ (‘man’) ‘dreamum bedæled’ (‘of happiness deprived’) (lines 720–1). Then the splintering wood: Duru sona onarn, fyrbendum fæst,   syþðan he hire folmum æthran; onbræd þa bealohydig,   ða he gebolgen wæs, recedes muþan.   Raþe æfter þon on fagne flor   feond treddode, eode yrremod.   Him of eagum stod ligge gelicost   leoht unfæger. Geseah he in recede   rinca manige swefan sibbegedriht   samod ætgædere magorinca heap. (Beowulf, lines 721–30) (At once the door rushed open, made firm with fired bonds, when his hands touched it; with evil purpose he swung it open, now he was enraged, the building’s mouth. Swiftly after that did the fiend tread in on stained floor, walk in wrathful of mind. From his eyes appeared,

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most like a flame, a light of no beauty. Saw there in the building many warriors, a kindred comitatus sleeping together, a band of young men.)

At first it might seem hard to establish why the poet of Andreas alludes to Grendel’s entry just when his hero is ready to snatch Matthew and the other prisoners from a fate worse than death. Yet, as Hamilton says, he ‘reverses what we may think of as the received point of view’.24 The effect is to ironise expectations of disaster in an audience habituated to Beowulf. Hearing the door give way, Matthew and the others expect a cannibal but get Andrew instead. The hagiographic effect is Andrew’s warm reunion with Matthew under the eyes of Christ (lines 1004–19), where the statement ‘syb wæs gemæne / bam þam gebroðrum’ (‘goodwill was shared between both brethren’) (lines 1013–14) emphasises the faith community of the apostles and its ascendancy over all tribal kindreds such as the ‘sibbegedriht’ (‘kindred comitatus’) sleeping in Heorot (Beowulf, line 729). This spiritual uplift is the greater for coming after Andrew’s Grendel-like entry into the jail. Not long after Andrew has dropped the guards and released all the prisoners, the townsfolk go mad with hunger, and not for the first time the English poet puts a strain on the story. Using Beowulf to sharpen his attack on Mermedonian pagans, in the eighth example to be discussed here, he illustrates their cannibalism in action, then presents it as a parody of the Eucharist. As in the Casanatensis (by implication at the end of ch. 24), the poet lets his Mermedonians eat all seven dead guards: Duruþegnum wearð in ane tid   eallum ætsomne þurh heard gelac   hildbedd styred. (Andreas, lines 1090–2) (For the door-thanes, in one hour, for all of them together, in harsh play was their war-bed disturbed.)

The Praxeis and Casanatensis give a more detailed preliminary in which the Mermedonians haul the dead guards to a trough (‘ληνός’) or tank (‘lacus’) in the square, one with runnels for the blood, and next to an oven (ch. 22). This appears to be the source of the poet’s ‘hildbedd’ (line 1092) at the centre of the cannibal feast. The poet’s effect by his invocation of ‘feormian’ (‘to take dining rights’) on this line is to present the Mermedonians as insane

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hypostases of Grendel, who ‘sona hæfde … eal gefeormod’ (‘had soon fed up on all’) of Hondscio’s lifeless body in Beowulf, lines 743–4. In the Praxeis and Casanatensis, the locals are mad, but if there is a contradiction, still bureaucratic in the way they attend to the details. The devil has done well, ingraining the cannibal state so deeply in these pagans that they see no alternative, once their meals have escaped, to finding substitutes from the dead guards, or from among themselves. In the midst of his cannibal fantasia the English poet points up an irony in his likely source.25 Although the text is corrupted, it is possible to see that he refines the eucharistic irony in the scene that follows the feast.26 Once the mob have devoured the dead guards, we have, in lines 1108–12, what might be called an anti-Eucharist: a human father sacrificing his son to save his own life, as well as to give the Mermedonians a continuation of theirs. The analogues, just after the Mermedonians fail to eat their prisoners, give an extended scene in which the Mermedonian rulers plan to eat seven fresh victims from among their own people that day and seven more daily from then on. Clearly the madness of the city is reaching its climax. When the council assigns a group of old people to the shambles, which will provide the next meal, one of them gets out of it by offering his son and then his daughter in his place. The English poet simplifies the scene, adducing some divination, which singles one old man out in particular, rather than seven to stand in for the guards. Moreover, this man offers only a son. The logistics of supply and demand are dismissed in Andreas for the sake of this one striking gesture: Ða se tan gehwearf efne ofer ænne   ealdgesiþa, se wæs uðweota   eorla dugoðe, heriges on ore.   Hraðe siððan wearð fetorwrasnum fæst,   feores orwena. (Andreas, lines 1103–7) (Then the twig passed right over one particular old campaigner who was the philosopher to the troop of nobles in the host’s front line. Quickly thereafter was he fastened in tight bonds, no hope for living more.)

This man is not only old, he stands for such authority within his society as the Mermedonians have, or used to have. In the Praxeis he is called a ‘γεραιός’; in the Casanatensis, a ‘senior’; both meaning ‘old man’.27 In the poem, however, his age comes ready with a

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socially endorsed wisdom. And what wisdom it is. The term ‘uðwita’ connotes a man of philosophy, science or learning.28 Cynewulf uses ‘uðweotan’ (‘scholars’) in Elene for the pharisees who ‘æht bisæton, / on sefan sohton hu hie sunu meotudes / ahengon (‘sat in council, sought answers in their minds to how they might hang up the Measurer’s Son’) (lines 473–5). The bad father in Andreas is more of their presumed kind, but the son will be his own: Cleopode þa collenferhð   cearegan reorde, cwæð he his sylfes   sunu syllan wolde on æhtgeweald,   eaforan geon[g]ne, lifes to lisse;   hie ða lac hraðe þegon to þance. (Andreas, lines 1108–12) (Cried then the stout-hearted with grieving voice, said that he would give up his own son into their power, his young heir, in exchange for enjoying life; they on that offer quickly dined with thanks.)

This scene is refocused so as to echo the Father’s sacrifice of His Son. The poet presents the impending feast as a pagan Eucharist, one without transubstantiation or ‘lif’, which is eternal. Possibly this poet is reflecting, as Boenig believes, a mid-ninth-century Corbie controversy over whether to endorse a respectively figural or literal interpretation of Christ’s eucharistic flesh and blood.29 Yet his immediate aim appears to be a parody of the old man and his society. It is to keep his and their lives going in this world that the ‘uðweota’ lets the Mermedonian mob partake in the body of his son. Calling him wise and brave, in the voice of their heroic culture, as the poet does here, turns the pagans into fools. With this mockery the poet of Andreas strikes at the moral underbelly of Beowulf. Rendering the Mermedonian trough or tank into a ‘hildbedd’ (‘bed of war’), perhaps a war-grave (line 1092), he may trigger a reminiscence of a speech in which old King Beowulf tells his men how Herebeald, King Hrethel’s eldest son, died by mistake at the hands of his brother Hæthcyn: ‘Wæs þam yldestan   ungedefelice mæges dædum   morþorbed stred.’ (Beowulf, lines 2435–6) (‘Unfittingly for the eldest through kinsman’s actions was a bed of death dispensed.’)

These lines introduce the tragedy of Hrethel, which Beowulf relates to the platoon accompanying him to the Dragon (lines 2426–2519).

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Beowulf recalls his childhood, that King Hrethel, his grandfather, took him in at the age of seven. Hrethel kept him, enriched him, ‘sibbe gemunde’ (‘was mindful of kinship’) (line 2431). Beowulf recalls that he was no less dear to Hrethel than the latter’s own sons, Herebeald and Hæthcyn and Hygelac. When the eldest died, killed by Hæthcyn’s misdirected arrow (or spear), there was no compensation, or vengeance, and much grief. Hrethel mourned, says the aged Beowulf to his men, with as little point as a churl mourning for his hanged and thus unrecompensed son (lines 2450–3). Just so did the Geatish guardian carry the ‘heortan sorge weallinde’ (‘welling heart’s sorrow’) (lines 2463–4), finally dying of it: ‘He ða mid þære sorhge,   þe him to sar belamp, gumdream ofgeaf,   Godes leoht geceas, eaferum læfde,   swa deð eadig mon, lond ond leodbyrig,   þa he of life gewat.’ (Beowulf, lines 2468–71) (‘He with that sorrow which too sorely befell him gave up the joy of man, God’s light he chose, left property to heirs, as does a blessed man, land and peopled dwellings, when he’s passed from life.’)

Both men, the churl and Hrethel, compose elegies with which to purge themselves of grief, but the old king dies of his. Beowulf’s simile is complicated by its allusive depth, for it plays the king off against a type. The ‘gomel ceorl’ (‘old churl’) with the hanged son provides not only a comparison for Hrethel, but also an apparent stylisation of his dilemma within the mythology of Hrethel’s homeland: Icelandic sources tell us that Hǫðr slays his brother Baldr, son of ‘karl’ (‘churl’) Óðinn.30 The (Odinic) vengeance on one son for the death of another is a course that the father could follow, since he has no love for Hæthcyn (Beowulf, lines 2464–7). However, the old king refrains, dying of grief instead and thereby emulating a Christian martyrdom even while living in ignorance of Christ. With the half-line ‘Godes leoht geceas’, the poet of Beowulf indicates that a seat in heaven may reward the conduct and intuition of this grieving father. This tragic tale, into which the phrase ‘morþorbed stred’ (‘bed of violent death dispensed’) (line 2436) for Herebeald leads us, counts as the most pathetic idealisation of heathens in Beowulf.31 As an evocation of pathos for the pre-Christian condition, it is also the Beowulf-poet’s big occasion for nostalgia. The poet of Andreas seems determined to have a go at him for this, echoing his opening in ‘hildbedd styred’, then recasting Hrethel as a self-centred infanticide.

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Having saved the son who was to be eaten instead of his father, Andrew submits to arrest. The Mermedonian townsfolk spend the following three days in an orgy of torturing, flogging and dragging the saint in and out of his cell and around the city. Andrew’s blood flows in gouts and his flesh scatters through the streets of this heathen city like a premonition of the wine and host that the cannibals will come to celebrate. His resolve weakens so far that he rebukes Jesus for not being exact about the punishment he was led to expect. Christ suffered within one day, Andrew for three. Yet the legend makes clear what the torture is for. When the Lord responds, restoring Andrew’s broken body to a state better than new, our man is transformed into the full apostle, a spiritual warrior with the power of miracles. This is an improvement on the powers of the half-monstrous heathen Beowulf, with whom the poet’s expressions have compared Andrew unfavourably for more than half the poem. The flood-scene that follows in Andreas confirms the saint’s new powers in the poem’s greatest set-piece, one that alludes to Beowulf in two more ways (our ninth and tenth examples). In the analogues of Andreas, St Andrew starts off the punishment and conversion of his cannibal captors by ordering a statue to discharge a salt-water flood through its mouth. Typologically this scene is a simulation of baptism.32 The waters rise higher, eating the cannibals who would have eaten Matthew. A wall of flame around the city, laid on by an angel (in the Praxeis, Archangel Michael) at Andrew’s request, makes sure that the Mermedonians stay on in their city to drown. In Andreas the stone is a pillar, not a statue, but wastes not a moment in obeying Andrew’s command. A stream wells up in the dawn, flows out and floods the city, increasing in size. Our poet, never able to resist a metaphor,33 turns the flood into a feast as only heroic poetry can present one: no food but no lack of drink. All this he encapsulates in his unique opening word: Meoduscerwen wearð æfter symbeldæge,   slæpe tobrugdon searuhæbende.   Sund grunde onfeng, deope gedrefed.   Duguð wearð afyrhted þurh þæs flodes fær.   Fæge swulton, geonge on geofene   guðræs fornam þurh sealtes sweg;   þæt wæs sorgbryþen, biter beorþegu!   Byrlas ne gældon, ombehtþegnas.   Þær wæs ælcum genog fram dæges orde   drync sona gearu. (Andreas, lines 1526–35)

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(It was a serving of mead after the feast-day, men who kept weapons woke from their sleep. Sea enfolded ground, stirred from the depths. The company took fright at this flood’s assault. Doomed, they died, young men in ocean snatched by war-charge of salt swallow; that was a brewing of sorrow, a bitter beer-tasting! Cup-bearers did not dally, servants and thanes. There was drink enough at once ready for all from the start of day.)

From the sweetness of mead, this drink turns bitter, and the ‘meoduscerwen’ figure has been imagined as ‘poculum mortis’.34 It might be, but ‘the cup of death’ still forms part of the cultural background rather than informs the passage. The immediate image is different, that of a wild party going wrong, a self-inflicted disaster, the poet’s own metaphor for heathendom in general.35 The ‘meoduscerwen’ hapax in this passage has been read without difficulty through the elements OE ‘meodu’ (‘mead’) and ‘scierwan’ (‘to dispense’); any notion that the latter word contains the opposite meaning, ‘deprive’, is laid to rest by the deluge of the context. However, ‘meoduscerwen’ also recalls the notorious word ‘ealuscerwen’ in Beowulf, likewise a hapax. Despite the likelier direction of poetic loans, most critics read ‘ealuscerwen’, which is even harder to interpret, as a word of the same category as the compound in Andreas.36 In Beowulf, the word ‘ealuscerwen’ occurs at the height of Beowulf’s fight against Grendel, just when we see that the monster is about to lose. Beowulf has waited in the shadows, allowing Grendel to eat the unfortunate Hondscio so as to lower his guard. Once in the grip, Grendel thinks of fleeing: at this moment Beowulf’s victory over the cannibal is achieved. The poet of Beowulf uses ‘ealuscerwen’ to announce this. Some critics state that the latter word is a metaphor for an attack as an overheavy drinking bout, but they ignore this scene’s tipping of the balance of power.37 The poet of Beowulf starts off by saying that Grendel’s was a ‘geocor sið’ (‘melancholy mission’) (line 765). The hall of Heorot resounded: Denum eallum wearð, ceasterbuendum,  cenra gehwylcum, eorlum ealuscerwen.   Yrre wæron begen, reþe renweardas.   Reced hlynsode. (Beowulf, lines 765–70) (For all the Danes, for fortress-dwellers, for each keen man, for noblemen, there happened

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a prescription of good fortune. Both were wrathful, fierce the house-janitors. The building boomed.)

Both ‘meoduscerwen’ and ‘ealuscwerwen’ are governed by ‘wearð’, the preterite of ‘weorðan’ (‘become, happen’). Elsewhere I have followed a theory (of Ursula Dronke; personal commuication) that the ealu-prefix to the Beowulf compound denotes ‘good fortune’ rather than ‘ale’, its homophone; that ‘ealu’, connoting ‘prosperity’, is found inscribed as alu in runes on fourth-century bracteates, on a sixth-century pot lid in Spong Hill, and in Old Scandinavian on the Eggjum stone in eighth-century Norway;38 and that the scierwen-base here connotes a carved dispensation of good fortune.39 That image is in the three Norns in Vǫluspá (‘the sibyl’s prophecy’) (c. 1000), of whom Urðr (‘what has happened’) and Verðandi (‘what is happening’) are named as two, and Skuld (‘what must happen’), as the third. With the half-line ‘skáru á skíði’ (‘they cut marks on wood’) in stanza 20/7, the Norns are shown to carve men’s fates on slips of wood: þær lǫg lǫgðu,   þær líf kuru alda bǫrnum,  ørlǫg seggja. (Vǫluspá, 20/9–12)40 (They laid down laws, they chose lives for mankind’s children, the destinies of men.)

Some notion of carving a manifest destiny appears in the word ‘ealuscerwen’ in the scene in Beowulf. With the word ‘ealu’ denoting ‘good fortune’, with ‘scerwen’ being related to ‘scieran’ (‘to cut’) and with four dative phrases embodying the recipients, our reading of this compound is best figured through the above image of Norns inscribing symbols for men. Hereby the poet of Beowulf appears to mark the beginning of victory over Heorot’s twelve-year predator. In Andreas, in mocking contrast, the compound meoduscerwen marks the beginning of defeat for Mermedonia. Whereas the poet of Beowulf, if ealuscerwen means ‘prescription’ or ‘dispensation of good fortune’ (Beowulf, line 769), describes people from the Germanic past respectfully with a metaphor from the same pre-Christian time, the poet of Andreas appears to treat this expression as ripe for mockery: in his day, ealuscerwen may have sounded like antique nonsense. His purpose, being determined by the story in his source on St Andrew, is so different from that of Beowulf that his word-formation on the basis of a pun on the homophone in ealu-scerwen, as ‘a dispensation of ale’, looks like

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a wilful ­misreading. This is despite the fact that, in its context, the destruction of cannibals with a generous serving of sea-water, meoduscerwen is no less dramatic. In what may be counted as a tenth use of Beowulf, the poet mocks Heorot’s deliverance further by letting his Mermedonians sing. As the flood-waters rise higher, the townsfolk begin to wail in lamentation. In the Greek: ‘καὶ ἒκλαιον καὶ ἐβόων πάντες λέγοντες· Οὐαὶ ἡμῖν’ (‘and they wailed and cried out, all of them saying “Woe to us!”’) (ch. 30); in the Casanatensis, ‘exclamaverunt omnes in impetu, et fletu magno dicentes, ve nobis de ista omnia que supervenerunt nos’ (‘they cried out, all of them, in a convulsion, and with great weeping, they said “Woe to us for all those things which have come upon us!”’) (ch. 30).41 Admitting the error of their ways, they earn the mercy that Andrew provides. The poet of Andreas gives an extra edge to this lamentation, for unlike his likely source, he turns the cannibal wail into a composition of songs: Đær wæs yðfynde   innan burgum geomorgidd wrecen.   Gehðo mændan forhtferð manig,   fusleoð golon. Egeslic æled   eagsyne wearð, heardlic hereteam,   hleoðor gryrelic. Þurh lyftgelac   leges blæstas weallas ymbwurpon,   wæter mycladon. Þær wæs wop wera   wide gehyred, earmlic ylda gedræg. (Andreas, lines 1547–55) (Easy was it to find there inside the town a performance of the blues. Bewailed their grief many fear-stricken men, chanted eager litanies. Terrifying fire became clear to the eye, cruel devastation, voices raised in horror. With airborne commotion did blasts of flame envelop the walls, the waters grew higher. Weeping of men there was widely heard, piteous the mob of men.)

As the Mermedonians, still pagan at this stage, are not human, the poet lets the humour run riot. There is more kindness in the way Grendel’s singing is described when he begins to lose the battle in Heorot: Sweg up astag niwe geneahhe.   Norð-Denum stod atelic egesa,   anra gehwylcum

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þara þe of wealle   wop gehyrdon, gryreleoð galan   Godes ondsacan, sigeleasne sang,   sar wanigean helle hæfton.   Heold hine fæste se þe manna wæs   mægene strengest on þam dæge þysses lifes. (Beowulf, lines 782–90) (A melody arose, a new one, constantly. Danes in Norway were struck with a terrible fear, any one of them who heard this weeping from his sea-wall, a litany of horror chanted by God’s adversary, a song with no victory, an anguish keened by hell’s captive. He held him fast who was physically the strongest of all men in that day of this life.)

In this passage the poet of Andreas appears to recall Grendel, God’s adversary, ‘gryreleoð galan’ (‘chanting a litany of horror’) (Beowulf, line 786), particularly with ‘fusleoð golon’ ‘chanted eager litanies’ (Andreas, line 1549), the natural outcome of festivity which begins with the word ‘meoduscerwen’ (‘serving of mead’) (Andreas, line 1526). Once the survivors of this unofficial baptism have asked for a real one, Andrew bids the flood subside, rejoices at the change of heart and, with a prayer to Jesus, brings all but fourteen drowned pagans back to life (Andreas, lines 1613–24). He orders the building of a church and consecrates a bishop named Platan (‘Plato’) (line 1652).42 The Mermedonians are transformed into Christians, their city into the Eucharist, all on a massive scale. Mermedonia is now a ‘winburg’ (‘wine-town’) in the narrator’s and the Lord’s words (lines 1637 and 1672). The poet also portrays Mermedonia, when Andrew wants to leave it with the job half done, as a ‘goldburg’ (‘gold-town’), with ‘secga seledream ond sincgestreon’ (‘hall-joys of men and treasure hoards’), the sleek complacent ‘beorht beagselu’ (‘bright ring-palaces’), which he cannot bear to stay in (lines 1655–7). The transformation is that of the city itself. In the devil’s infiltration earlier, Mermedonia looked like a set for Dawn of the Dead, but now the embarrassing past has become a surreal memory and the locals regret Andrew’s decision to leave. Why, becomes obvious when the Lord forces Andrew to return: the devil is still there. The poet’s view of pagans, which resembles knowledge more than fantasy, is that a truly efficacious conversion requires more than one attempt.

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My eleventh and twelfth claims of Beowulfian allusion come in this poet’s self-interruption before his flooding set-piece towards the end: [XIV] Hwæt, ic hwile nu   haliges lare,  leoðgiddinga,   lof þæs þe worhte,  wordum wemde,   wyrd undyrne  ofer min gemet.   Mycel is to secganne,  langsum leornung,   þæt he in life adreag,  eall æfter orde.   Þæt scell æglæwra  mann on moldan   þonne ic me tælige  findan on ferðe,   þæt fram fruman cunne  eall þa earfeðo   þe he mid elne adreah,  grimra guða.   Hwæðre git sceolon  lytlum sticcum   leoðworda dæl  furður reccan. Þæt is fyrnsægen,  hu he weorna feala   wita geðolode,  heardra hilda,   in þære hæðenan byrig. (Andreas, lines   1478–91) XIV  (Listen, for a while now I have been pleading  words in verse ballad so as to teach what glories  the saint performed, a history, when revealed,  beyond my capacity. A big task it is, a work  of time-consuming study, to say all he suffered  in life from the start. Wiser in the law than I  is the earthly man, by my reckoning, who shall find  in his spirit the means of knowing from the beginning  every hardship that the man courageously suffered  in that fierce fighting. And yet the narration  of a few lyrics more in little snatches on this theme  must still be made.  It is an epic of ancient times,  the great number of torments he endured,  what harsh assaults in that heathen town.)

This rakishly self-deprecating digression is unmatched in the analogues and so unlikely to be based on the apocryphal source, which is marked as ‘wyrd undyrne’ (‘a history revealed’) (line 1490), apparently in allusion to ‘wurd undyrne’ in (only) Cynewulf’s Fates of the Apostles (line 42). Moreover, the half-line ‘ofer min gemet’ (‘beyond my powers’) is elsewhere attested only in Beowulf (line 2879), where young Wiglaf berates himself for failing to help Beowulf survive the Dragon. The function of the whole intermezzo, as Fred Biggs suggests, may be to dissociate Andrew’s

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passion from the happy ending 300 lines later.43 Yet if we look in Beowulf for the words to which the fyrnsægen-claim of genre may refer, we see the Andreas-poet taking a stance on epic form. This he portrays as overblown but inevitable. Beowulf gives an unnamed Danish noble celebrating the hero on their ride back from the mere: guma gilphlæden   gidda gemyndig se ðe ealfela   ealdgesegena worn gemunde. (Beowulf, lines 868–70) (a man laden with boasts, mindful of episodes, who a whole multitude of old epics remembered in great number.)

In Beowulf this king’s thegn does in retrospect what his monastic imitator is about to try in Andreas. One man refers to ‘ealdgesegena’, the other to ‘fyrnsægen’, both to hail victory against the cannibal. Yet the poet of Andreas more modestly calls his own work ‘leoðgiddinga’ (‘a verse ballad’) (line 1479), an expression that occurs elsewhere only in Fates of the Apostles (line 97). With this term he appears to allude to Cynewulf as his model for the versified saint’s life, whereas with his quotation from Beowulf he mocks epic as a dragon and himself as another Wiglaf attempting to slay it, his mentor almost dead. To sum up, I suggest that the poet of Andreas made fun of the Mermedonians by redrawing them as Scyldings now blended with Grendel their oppressor. There was surely a contrast between the legendary Danes of Beowulf and the living examples who looted English monasteries in the ninth and tenth centuries. Whether some communal knowledge of that experience is the cause of the Andreas-poet’s quixotic style is a question I explore elsewhere.44 Here it will be enough to claim that the man sharpens his saint’s life with a Cervantesque parody of Beowulf. My deduction is that he and his audience knew Beowulf as a classic and yet begged to differ on its vision of heathens as tragic. To this end the Andreaspoet makes Andrew a stronger hero than Beowulf, and through his pagans he mocks a cult of that great poem. Notes  1 K. R. Brooks (ed.), Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961); B. Mitchell and F. C. Robinson (eds), Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). For my and Bintley’s subsequent edition, see n. 44.

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 2 C. Tischendorf (ed.), Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha, rev. R. A. Lipsius and M. Bonnet, 2 vols (Hildesheim: Olms, 1959), II.1, pp. 65–116; my translation is based on D. R. MacDonald, in J. K. Elliott (ed.), The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 287–99. Cf. R. Boenig, The Acts of Andrew in the Country of the Cannibals: Translations from Greek, Latin, and Old English, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 70.B (New York and London: Garland, 1991), pp. ii, v–ix.  3 F. Blatt (ed.), Die lateinischen Bearbeitungen der Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud Anthropophagos, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissenschaften, 12 (Giessen: Topelmann, 1930); M. J. B. Allen and D. G. Calder (trans.), Sources and Analogues of Old English Poetry: The Major Latin Texts in Translation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1976), pp. 14–34.  4 F. M. Biggs (ed.), Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: The Apocrypha, Instrumenta Anglistica Mediaevalia, 1 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2007), pp. 40–1.  5 R. J. Kelly (ed. and trans.), The Blickling Homilies (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), pp. 158–63 and 195. MS CCCC 198 (fols 38r to 394v) is edited in The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century, ed. R. Morris, EETS, OS, 58, 63, 73 (London: Oxford University Press, 1874, 1876, 1880), reprinted as one volume (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 228–9 and 236–49.  6 I. Herbison, ‘Generic adaptation in Andreas’, in J. Roberts and J. Nelson (eds), Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Related Themes in Memory of Lynne Grundy (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2000), pp. 181–211 (p. 193); D. Hamilton, ‘Andreas and Beowulf: placing the hero’, in L. E. Nicholson and D. W. Frese (eds), Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Essays in Appreciation (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 81–98 (p. 95); R. E. Bjork, The Old English Verse Saints’ Lives: A Study in Direct Discourse and the Iconography of Style, McMaster Old English Studies and Texts, 4 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), pp. 110–31 (pp. 121–4); D. G. Calder, ‘Figurative language and its contexts in Andreas: a study in medieval expressionism’, in P. R. Brown, G. R. Crampton and F. C. Robinson (eds), Modes of Interpretation in Old English Literature: Essays in Honor of Staney B. Greenfield (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), pp. 115–36 (p. 131); A. Harbus, ‘A mind for hagiography: the psychology of resolution in Andreas’, in K. E. Olsen, A. Harbus and T. Hofstra (eds), Germanic Texts and Latin Models: Medieval Reconstructions, Germania Latina, IV, Mediaevalia Groningana, 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2001), pp. 127–40 (p. 132).

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 7 E. B. Irving, Jr., ‘A reading of Andreas: the poem as poem’, AngloSaxon England, 12 (1983), 215–37 (p. 229); H. Magennis, ‘A funny thing happened on the way to heaven: humorous incongruity in Old English saints’ lives’, in J. Wilcox (ed.), Humour in Anglo-Saxon Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 137–57 (pp. 145–7); Herbison, ‘Generic adaptation’, 186–208: J. Wilcox, ‘Eating people is wrong: funny style in Andreas and its analogues’, in C. E. Karkov and G. H. Brown (eds), Anglo-Saxon Styles (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 201–22 (pp. 207–9).  8 Herbison, ‘Generic adaptation’, pp. 185–7.  9 A. Orchard, ‘The originality of Andreas’, in L. Neidorf, R. J. Pascual and T. Shippey (eds), Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 331–52; A. M. Powell, ‘Verbal parallels in Andreas and its relationship to Beowulf and Cynewulf’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2002), pp. 168–232, esp. 175–6. 10 L. J. Peters, ‘The relationship of the Old English Andreas to Beowulf’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 66.5 (1951), 844–63. 11 Hamilton, ‘Placing the hero’, pp. 82–94; A. R. Riedinger, ‘The formulaic relationship between Beowulf and Andreas’, in H. Damico and J. Leyerle (eds), Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., Studies in Medieval Culture, 32 (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993), pp. 283–312 (p. 305). 12 J. Hill, ‘The soldier of Christ in Old English prose and poetry’, Leeds Studies in English, N.S., 12 (1981), 57–80. 13 R. North, The Origins of ‘Beowulf’: From Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 48–9. 14 All translations are my own. 15 M. D. J. Bintley, ‘Demythologising urban landscapes in Andreas’, Leeds Studies in English, N.S., 40 (2009), 105–18. 16 Wilcox, ‘Eating people is wrong’, pp. 208–9. 17 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, p. 42; cf. Apocryphal New Testament, trans. MacDonald, p. 285. 18 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, p. 43. 19 Wilcox, ‘Eating people is wrong’, p. 208. 20 Hamilton, ‘Placing the hero’, p. 83. 21 M. Lapidge, ‘The archetype of Beowulf’, Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (2000), 5–41 (37–8). 22 North, Origins of ‘Beowulf’, pp. 53, 108–9, 116. 23 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, pp. 68–9. 24 Hamilton, ‘Placing the hero’, p. 86. 25 Wilcox, ‘Eating people is wrong’, pp. 210, 215–16. 26 On the textual corruption at line 1090, Lee Brooks, Andreas and the Fates of the Apostles, ‘Commentary’, p. 99.

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27 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, pp. 76–7. 28 OE u¯ðwita (i.a.): for books, in The Battle of Brunanburh, line 69; as a gloss (uðuuta) for philosophus, in the Corpus Glossary, Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, ed. T. Wright and R. P. Wülker, 2 vols (London: Trübner, 1884), I, p. 39, line 20; for experts on computus, in the Menologium, line 166; for Cato the Elder, in The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. M. Godden and S. Irvine, with M. Griffith and R. Jayatilaka, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), I, 427 (C Text Metre 10. 48–51, esp. 50; cf. B Text, p. 19, line 24). 29 R. Boenig, ‘Andreas, the Eucharist, and Vercelli’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 79 (1980), 313–31 (320). 30 Snorri Sturluson: Edda: Prologue and Gylfaginning, ed. A. Faulkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 48 (ch. 49); R. North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, CSASE, 22 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 198–202. 31 North, Origins of ‘Beowulf’, pp. 199–202. 32 T. D. Hill, ‘Figural narrative in Andreas: the conversion of the Mermedonians’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 70 (1969), 261–73: M. M. Walsh, ‘The baptismal flood in the Old English Andreas: liturgical and typological depths’, Traditio, 33 (1977), 137–58. 33 Calder, ‘Figurative language and its contexts in Andreas’, pp. 119–26; Hill, ‘The soldier of Christ’, pp. 71–2. 34 C. F. Brown, ‘Poculum mortis in Old English’, Speculum, 15 (1940), 389–99. G. V. Smithers, ‘Five notes on Old English texts’, English and Germanic Studies, 4 (1951–52), 65–85 (67–75); H. Magennis, ‘The cup as symbol and metaphor in Old English literature’, Speculum, 60 (1985), 517–36 (531–5). 35 Calder, ‘Figurative language and its contexts in Andreas’, p. 132. 36 J. Rowland, ‘OE ealuscerwen/meoduscerwen and the concept of “paying for mead”’, Leeds Studies in English, N.S., 21 (1990), 1–12. 37 Irving, ‘A reading of Andreas’, p. 235; see also his ‘Wild party at Heorot’, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 11 (1966), 161–8. J. Klegraf, ‘Beowulf 769: ealuscer-we¯ n’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 208 (1971), 108–12; R. W. Hanning, ‘Sharing, dividing, depriving: the verbal ironies of Grendel’s last visit to Heorot’, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 15 (1973), 203–12 (211). 38 W. Krause and H. Jankuhn, Die Runeneinschriften im älteren Futhark, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Uprecht, 1966), pp. 239–41, 247–8, 255–9; P. Pieper, ‘Die Runenstempel von Spong Hill: Pseudo-Runen oder Runenformel?’, Neue Ausgräbungen und Forschungen in Niedersachsen, 17, 181–200 (181–6). On Old Scandinavian alu (‘fortune’) and skorin (‘cut’) on the

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Eggjum stone, see M. Olsen and A. Liestøl, Norges innskrifter med de yngre runer (Oslo: Kjeldeskriftfondet, 1924) I, pp. 225–32 (p. 227). 39 R. North, ‘“Wyrd” and “wearð ealuscerwen” in Beowulf’, Leeds Studies in English, N.S., 25 (1994), 69–82 (74–5). 40 The Poetic Edda: Volume II: Mythological Poems, ed. and trans. U. Dronke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 12; see Dronke’s ‘Commentary’, p. 128. 41 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, pp. 88–9. 42 Bearbeitungen, ed. Blatt, p. 145 (fol. 157v). 43 F. M. Biggs, ‘The passion of Andreas: Andreas 1398–1491’, Studies in Philology, 85 (1988), 413–27 (413). 44 See Andreas: An Edition, ed. R. North and M.J. Bintley (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016).

9 Reading and writing St Margaret of Scotland from Turgot’s Vita to the Blackadder Prayerbook Emily Wingfield

Margaret (d. 1093), queen of Scots and consort of Malcolm III, was the eldest child of the exiled Edward Ætheling (d. 1057) and granddaughter of Edmund Ironside (d. 1016).1 After a period of exile that ended in Hungary, where Margaret was born, the family returned to England in 1057 where Edward died within a year, and his son, Edgar Ætheling, was not considered as a successor of Edward the Confessor, who died childless in 1066. After William, Duke of Normandy (1027/8–1087), had claimed the English throne it seems that Margaret’s family briefly came under the duke’s protection. However, they became involved in resisting the Norman invaders and in 1068 Margaret was forced to seek ‘shelter’ in Scotland along with her mother and siblings. She subsequently married the Scottish king Malcolm III in 1069 or 1070, died at Edinburgh Castle on 16 November 1093, and was buried before the high altar in Dunfermline Priory Church. She was canonised in 1249–50.2 Relatively few accounts of Margaret’s life survive,3 but those that do emphasise her literacy and learning to a remarkable extent. Thus, the Vita sanctae Margaritae Scotorum reginae, written around 1100–1107 at the request of Margaret’s daughter, the English Queen Matilda, by Turgot, then prior of Durham, tells of the survival of Margaret’s Gospel Book, which having fallen into a stream appeared to suffer no damage. The book itself survives (now Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5) and contains both a Latin poem again detailing the book’s miraculous survival, and a number of striking images of knowledge and learning in the form of a sequence of evangelist portraits. Turgot’s Vita and those accounts that draw on it, including Walter Bower’s fifteenth-century Scottish chronicle, The Scotichronicon, also make repeated reference to Margaret’s knowledge and direct use of Holy Scripture, and show Margaret using her superior learning to guide

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her husband, Malcolm, towards personal and public reform. Visual representations of Margaret in turn consistently represent her not only clothed in regal attire and surrounded by a halo but also – and most significantly – holding a book in her hand. In examining the association between Margaret and her books in a series of written texts and visual images ranging in date from the twelfth to late fifteenth century, this chapter will offer a revised interpretation of Margaret’s literacy and learning. In his analysis of passages in Turgot’s Vita depicting Margaret as a reader, Gameson wrote: The inclusion in this short work of no fewer than three passages mentioning books might seem to imply that Margaret was a particularly literate woman. This, however, would be to go beyond the evidence, or at least to misread it. […] [T]he key point is that all three passages have more to do with sanctity than literacy, and they reflect the firm associations of reading with spirituality.4

He is of course correct to point out that Margaret’s devout reading was not unique; she and her daughter, Matilda, were just two of several women from the period who had a reputation for learning and who owned or were associated with books. However, the cumulative weight of those verbal and visual portraits of Margaret assessed in this chapter in which Margaret is depicted in firm association with one form or another of Holy Scripture leads me to take some issue with the main thrust of Gameson’s statement. Gameson argues that Turgot’s portrait of a bookish queen has ‘more to do with sanctity than literacy’. This chapter instead shows that the two are far from mutually exclusive. Indeed, in those twelfth- to fifteenth-century verbal and visual accounts analysed here, Margaret’s sanctity inheres precisely, and quite specifically, in her literacy. Margaret, Matilda and Turgot’s Vita sanctae Margaritae Scotorum reginae The Vita sanctae Margaritae Scotorum reginae comprises four chapters, prefaced by a prologue, and survives in two versions (a long and a short). The shorter version is found in London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E. i (part 2, fols 11v–13v) as part of John of Tynemouth’s mid-fourteenth-century collection of condensed lives of Insular saints, entitled Sanctilogium Angliae, Scotae, et Hiberniae; the manuscript itself was produced at St Alban’s before

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1395.5 The longer version survives in two extant manuscripts: London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius D. iii (fols 179v–186r) (a collection of saints’ lives traditionally dated to the mid-thirteenth century but more recently brought forward to the late twelfth)6 and (in a variant form) in a mid-fifteenth-century manuscript originating from Dunfermline, now Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, MS II 2097 (fols 26–41v).7 A third now-lost manuscript was also used for the version of the Vita in the Acta sanctorum and in Pinkerton’s 1789 Vita antique sanctorum […] Scotia.8 Baker argued that the abbreviated version of the Vita in Tiberius E. i was closer to the original text than the longer version, but, as Huneycutt observes, ‘[t]here is no reason to believe that the [shorter] Life of Margaret represents an exception to John’s practice of collecting and abbreviating from existing collections or individual vitae’.9 I here follow Huneycutt in accepting the longer version as being closer to the original text, which is usually dated between 1104 and 1107.10 The surviving copy of the Vita in Tiberius D. iii ascribes the text simply to one ‘T servorum S. cuthberti servus’, with a seventeenth-century hand adding ‘Per Turgotum Dunelmensem’ in the margin.11 Despite this limited evidence, most scholars are comfortable attributing the Vita to Turgot (c. 1050–1115) who lived for many years at Durham as prior but also spent time at Melrose and Teviotdale and frequently visited the court of Malcolm Canmore. From 1007 until his death he was bishop of St Andrews at the wish of the Scottish king, Alexander I.12 Turgot explains in the preface to the Vita that he was commissioned to write the work by Margaret and Malcolm’s daughter, Matilda, queen of England and first consort of Henry I (1080– 1118).13 Addressing Matilda directly, he writes, ‘you have, by the request that you made, commanded me […] that I should narrate for you the particulars of the life of your mother, whose memory is held in veneration’ and he further explains that Matilda requires a written and not simply oral account: ‘you desire not only to hear about the life of your mother, who ever yearned after the Kingdom of the Angels, but further, to have it continually before your eyes in writing that so, although you were but little familiar with her face, you might at least have perfect acquaintance with her virtues’ (pp. 19, 20, emphasis added).14 As Turgot here suggests, Matilda had little personal knowledge of her mother. From an early stage in her childhood, Matilda’s education was entrusted to Margaret’s sister, Christina, and she

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seems to have spent time first at Romsey and then (from 1093) at Wilton. David Knowles and R. N. Hadock estimated that the Benedictine convent of Wilton Abbey housed between eighty and ninety women by the beginning of the twelfth century and it became a significant centre for aristocratic female learning and literacy. As Stephanie Hollis has most recently shown, Wilton functioned as a kind of elite boarding school responsible for the education of secular, high-ranking women and it is likely to have had an extensive library. It is also possible that Margaret was herself educated here, although there is no direct evidence for this.15 In commissioning a life of her mother, Matilda followed in the footsteps of the English queens Edith and Emma who themselves asked eulogists to celebrate their family connections. Edith (d. 1075), the wife of Edward the Confessor, commissioned the Vita Ædwardi regis – the first book of which provides a history of her family.16 Emma (d. 1052), queen of England, second consort of Æthelred II, and second consort of King Cnut, commissioned a monk of Saint-Bertin (Flanders) to produce the Encomium Emmae reginae (1041–42), which Keynes describes as ‘one of the most remarkable political biographies of the Middle Ages’.17 Matilda’s commissioning of Turgot’s Vita is moreover part of a more sustained interest in the arts. She commissioned William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum,18 and it has also been suggested that she commissioned the Voyage of Brendan.19 Eight poems written for Matilda or as epitaphs after her death have, moreover, been identified and six letters survive written by Matilda to Anselm (c. 1033–1109).20 In its portrait of Margaret, the Vita presented Matilda with an image of the learned and pious queen she would go on to be in the later stages of her own reign. As such, the text has rightly been characterised by Huneycutt as a ‘“mirror” for the new queen of England, presenting the virtues of an ideal princess’.21 Within the text itself, Margaret also functions as a queenly advisor, guiding her husband, Malcolm, and his more traditional counsellors, towards personal and political reform. In the first book, Turgot focuses on Margaret’s early dedication to Holy Scripture: Whilst Margaret was yet in the flower of youth, she began […] to employ herself in the study of Divine writings, and therein with joy to exercise her mind. Her understanding was keen to comprehend

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any matter, whatever it might be; to this was joined a great tenacity of memory, enabling her to store it up, along with a graceful flow of language to express it.

Turgot here not only depicts Margaret as studious but also emphasises her ability to remember and subsequently re-articulate what she has read. In the very next paragraph, Turgot records Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm as being made ‘in obedience to the will of her friends’ and ‘by the appointment of God’, and he prefaces this with an image of Margaret ‘meditating on the law of the Lord day and night […] like another Mary sitting at His feet’ (p. 28). Margaret’s marriage to Malcolm is here presented, as it is in the D-version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, as being an arrangement that she was far from desirous of herself, but the pressure placed on Margaret by her family is tempered by the belief that her marriage was part of a greater divine plan. Of the marriage, the D-version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (for the year 1067) records: The king [Malcolm] eagerly pressed [Margaret’s] brother [Edgar] until he said ‘yes’ to it – also he dared not otherwise, because they had come into his power. So it came to pass as provided by God – and it could not be otherwise – just as he himself says in his gospel that even one sparrow cannot fall into a snare without his providence. The foreknowing Creator knew beforehand what he wanted to have done by her, because she would increase the glory of God in that land, and direct the king out of the path of error, and turn him and his people together towards a better way, and lay aside the evil customs which that nation earlier followed – just as she afterwards did. The king then received her [i.e. married her], although it was against her will; and her customs pleased him, and [he] thanked God, who so powerfully gave him such a consort, and reflected wisely, since he was very prudent, and turned himself toward God, and despised every impurity. About that the apostle Paul, teacher of all nations, declared: The unbelieving man is saved through the believing wife, and likewise the unbelieving wife through the believing man etc. […]22

Within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Margaret’s marriage is presented (as it will be in the subsequent sections of Turgot’s Vita) as part of a wider divine plan through which Margaret will act as an agent of God to bring about the reform of her husband and his realm. The marriage is also framed in both Turgot and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with allusions to passages in the New Testament. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle alludes to Matthew 10:29 and 1 Corinthians 7:14, while Turgot prefaces his account of

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Margaret’s marriage with an echo of the second verse of Psalm 1 and allusion to the account in Luke 10:38–42 of Christ at the House of Martha. Margaret is thus a female counterpart to the blessed man whose ‘will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night’. She is also likened to the devoted and contemplative Mary, whom Christ described as taking ‘the best part’ in sitting at His feet in contemplation of His word, in contrast to her anxious sister Martha who ‘was busy about much serving’. Significantly, precisely this passage occurs among the Gospel extracts in Margaret’s own Gospel Book (Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5, fol. 24r). Margaret is therefore depicted as modelling her desire for knowledge on a biblical scene with which she was no doubt very familiar. In a subsequent passage, Turgot describes Margaret’s chamber as ‘a workshop of sacred art [where] copes for the cantors, chasubles and church ornaments, were always to be seen, either already made, of an admirable beauty, or in the course of preparation’ (p. 30). The implication of this passage is that Margaret was not only desirous of scriptural knowledge, but also skilled in pursuits of needlecraft. In his Legend of Edith, the Benedictine monk, musician and hagiographer, Goscelin,23 who seems to have served at one point as chaplain to the Wilton nuns, similarly described St Edith24 – Wilton’s most famous and saintly alumna – as embroidering ecclesiastical garments adorned with gold, gems and pearls,25 and the first book of the Vita Ædwardi regis also praises Queen Edith’s skill in embroidery.26 Turgot’s reference to Margaret’s sewing skills may thus be part of a wider tradition, but it could also be designed to draw a parallel between Margaret and the Virgin Mary. In the Protoevangelium of James, written around 150, reference was made to Mary’s accomplishments and her ability to spin and weave. In subsequent visual art up until the eleventh century, Mary was represented as engaged in these activities when the angel of the Annunciation appeared,27 and so it is possible that Turgot had such images in mind when commenting on Margaret’s own accomplishments at needlework. In Book II, Turgot writes of Margaret: [S]he acted always under the wisest of masters, the guidance of Holy Scriptures. Even amidst the distractions of lawsuits, amidst the countless cares of state, she devoted herself with wonderful assiduity to the study of the word of God, respecting which she used to ask profound questions from the learned men who were sitting near her. But just as no one among them possessed a deeper intellect than

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herself, so none had the power of clear expression. Thus it very often happened that these doctors went from her wiser men by much than when they came. (pp. 37–8)

In commenting on how Margaret used to question – and in the process teach – Malcolm’s royal advisors, Turgot is here alluding to an episode in the early life of Christ depicted in Luke’s Gospel (2:41–52). There, Mary and Joseph find Jesus ‘sitting in the midst of the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions’; his understanding and learning was so superior that ‘all that heard him were astonished at his wisdom and his answers’. Once again, therefore, Margaret’s remarkable earthly capacity for knowledge is on a par with the divine learning of Christ and his biblical companions. After this report, Turgot proceeds to describe how, ‘by the help of God’, Margaret ‘made him [Malcolm] most attentive to the works of justice, mercy, almsgiving, and other virtues’ (pp. 38–9), adding: Hence it was that, although he could not read, he would turn over and examine books which she used either for her devotions or her study; and whenever he heard her express especial liking for a particular book, he also would look at it with special interest, kissing it and often taking it into his hands. Sometimes he sent for a worker in precious metals, whom he commanded to ornament that volume with gold and gems, and when the word was finished, the king himself used to carry the book to the queen as loving proof of his devotion. (pp. 39–40)

As Gameson comments, ‘[f]or the historian of manuscripts this is a fascinating record of how and why a group of books were adorned with precious bindings; and for the student of literacy it presents an interesting contrast between the literate female and the illiterate male’.28 Gameson also notes that this passage ‘is a verbal counterpart of the various early medieval images of royal or noble couples presenting or receiving books’,29 but with the signal difference that here we have a queen receiving the book from a king, whereas most contemporary images have a woman presenting a man with a book. Turgot’s scene is therefore most similar to contemporary images where an important male figure is shown presenting a book to the Virgin Mary.30 He depicts Malcolm both venerating Margaret’s books and thereby transforming them into relics several years before her death and subsequent canonisation. In describing how Margaret worked to bring about reform of the Scottish church, Turgot also has her following scriptural

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example and precedent. He tells us that Margaret attempted to change Scottish practice regarding the observance of Lent, prescribed annual communion and abstention from manual labour on a Sunday and sought to modify Scottish marriage customs to bring them in line with the canon law of the Western church. He records too that she called frequent councils to bring about these reforms (p. 44). Historians dispute both the extent to which Margaret was in fact responsible for contemporary ecclesiastical reform and also whether those councils Turgot mentions ever took place,31 but for the purposes of this chapter the historical facts are less significant than the manner in which Margaret is said to have influenced Scotland’s church leaders and brought about reform. For, Turgot repeatedly depicts Margaret as arguing against her opponents by citing Holy Scripture and St Gregory the Great, and he concludes, ‘For everything that she proposed she supported so strongly by the testimony of the Sacred Scriptures and the teaching of the holy Fathers, that no one on the opposite side could say one word against them’ (p. 51). Margaret is thus here shown applying the devout knowledge of the Bible earlier described to a direct practical cause and a parallel is drawn between the Scottish queen and Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great: ‘It seemed as if a second Helena were there present, for as that queen in former days by citing passages from the Scriptures overcame the Jews, so in our times did Queen Margaret overcome those who were in error’ (p. 44).32 The most significant testimony of Margaret’s devotion to Holy Scripture comes in the third book of the Vita. Here, Turgot presents himself as reluctant to recount miraculous events associated with Margaret, but he does decide to ‘narrate one incident which may go to prove what the holiness of her life was’ (p. 66): She had a book of the Gospels beautifully adorned with gold and precious stones, and ornamented with the figures of the four Evangelists, painted and gilt. All the capital letters throughout the volume were radiant with gold. She had always felt a particular attachment for this book; more so than for any of the others which she usually read. It happened that as the person who carried it was once crossing a ford, he let the book, which had been carelessly folded in a wrapper, fall into the middle of [the] stream. Unconscious of what had occurred the man quietly continued his journey; but when he wished to produce the book, suddenly it dawned upon him that he had lost it. Long was it sought, but nowhere could it be found. At last it was discovered lying open at the bottom of the river. Its leaves had been kept

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in constant motion by the action of the water, and the little coverings of silk which protected the letters of gold from becoming injured by contract with the leaves, were swept away by the force of the current. Who could have imagined that the book was worth anything after such an accident as this? Who could have believed that so much as a single letter would have been visible. Yet of a truth, it was taken up from the middle of the river so perfect, so uninjured, so free from damage that it looked as if it had not been touched by the water. […] The book was conveyed to the queen, and the miracle was reported to her at the same time; and she, having thanked Christ, valued it much more highly than she had done before. (pp. 66–8)

What is so remarkable about this account is that the very Gospel Book it describes appears to survive as Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5. The latter Gospel lectionary bears on one of its first folios an early twelfth-century verse inscription identifying it as the volume in Turgot’s account.33 Elsewhere, similar accounts are given of books associated with at least four other holy figures. The Lindisfarne Gospels are said by Symeon of Durham to have been lost at sea when a storm overtook the ship transporting St Cuthbert’s body to Ireland in the late ninth century; the volume washed up unharmed some three days later. Muirchu’s seventh-century Life of St Patrick records the saint’s confidence that his books would be unscathed when he was ordered by King Loegaire to cast them into water and fire, while two sets of St Columba’s books survived immersion in water. Finally, a Gospel Book of St Kieranus reportedly fell into a lake before becoming later caught on the hoof of a cow drinking in the lake and retrieved intact.34 Turgot’s account of Margaret’s Gospel Book was not, therefore, without saintly precedent and it is perhaps not insignificant that Reginald of Durham later wrote that Margaret had always held St Cuthbert in special veneration, gifting a jewelled cross, a book written in silver letters (‘textus argenteus’), and a ‘precious cap of linen’ to his monks.35 And, as Keene notes, ‘Malcolm’s branch of the royal family, the descendants of Donald II, claimed a privileged association with St Columba through their continuing patronage of Dunkeld, the site of the saint’s relics’.36 One accordingly wonders to what extent Turgot’s account is a case of life imitating saintly art or art imitating saintly life – or, a subtle mixture of the two.37 What is striking in either case is that Turgot alone presents us with a female reader, but by drawing on an established motif he deftly aligns her with a succession of male saintly forebears. As such, Margaret’s surviving Gospel Book acts

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as a witness to and relic of a female sanctity that gains authority from established masculine parallels. Margaret’s books Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5 is a small (c. 173 x 110 mm) vellum volume consisting of thirty-eight folios.38 Following an early twelfth-century verse inscription detailing the time spent by the volume in water, it contains twenty-six selected readings from the four Gospels interspersed with full-page portraits of the four Evangelists.39 The text was copied by a single scribe, in an English Caroline minuscule that can be dated to the mid-eleventh century, and the volume is decorated throughout with extensive use of gold. We have already seen how Margaret’s Gospel Book contained an extract from Luke’s Gospel that Margaret seems to have emulated (metaphorically) in her own devotion to the Holy Word. She would also have found within the Gospel Book a mirror of her own literate activities in the four evangelist portraits (on fols 3v, 13v, 21v and 30v). The portraits are framed by gold and coloured bars and the enrobed evangelists painted in a palate of blue, green, yellow and orange-brown. All four are depicted in the act of writing or reading, and in each case the book or scroll that they hold or write in is golden. And so, just as Turgot’s Vita with its portraits of the learned and pious Margaret functioned as a ‘mirror’ for her daughter, Matilda, so too might Margaret have found in her Gospel Book a ‘mirror’ of her own contemplative, ‘bookish’ devotion to the Word of Christ that the Vita itself subsequently records. In addition to her Gospel Book and the ‘textus argenteus’ reportedly given by her to Durham, Margaret is associated with a Celtic Psalter, now Edinburgh, University Library, MS 56.40 The small volume (130 x 85mm) contains Jerome’s translation of the Psalms based directly on the Hebrew version, and is written in an Irish miniscule script (apparently of Scottish origin) dating not later than the eleventh century. As Borland remarks, ‘it is very difficult to determine the provenance of this manuscript with any accuracy’,41 not least because the manuscript itself contains no mark of ownership earlier than the sixteenth century. An inscription on fol. 143v (‘Liber magister [sic] Johannis Reyd Cancellarii Aberdonensis’) reveals that the manuscript was owned in the first half of that century by John Reid, Chancellor of Aberdeen, but very little is known about the

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manuscript prior to this date.42 The manuscript is richly decorated with small and large initials, illuminated line endings, scrolls in the lower margins, and two full page initials. Verse initials have their centres coloured purple, green, blue, yellow or red, and psalm initials have interlace work. Terminals are frequently animal heads, fish or quadrupeds. The original illumination on fol. 50r appears to have been replaced with one in the Winchester style of the second half of the eleventh century.43 Most significantly, the gold and decoration technique of this page of illumination parallels that in Margaret’s Gospel Book. The gold in both has the same granular texture and is laid direct onto the vellum. The style of gold frames and lettering is similar in both manuscripts, and the large initial Q on fol. 50r of the Celtic Psalter in particular resembles that on fol. 22r of the Gospel Book. The cloud design in the Psalter also has its counterpart below the figure of St Luke on fol. 21v of the Gospel Book. Finalyson therefore suggested that ‘the gold illumination could conceivably have been carried out by some artist in Queen Margaret’s entourage in Scotland at the suggestion of King Malcolm’.44 Confirmation of this must await further research but for now the Gospel Book and Psalter stand convincingly as striking – and surviving – evidence of the close, almost symbiotic relationship between Margaret’s learning and faith. Letters to Lanfranc The final piece of external evidence for Margaret’s learning and literacy comes from knowledge of letters she sent to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1010–1089).45 As discussed further below, Margaret converted the church in which she was married, Holy Trinity at Dunfermline, into a Benedictine priory. This was to be a daughter-house of Christ Church (Canterbury) and seems to have been a product of cooperation between Margaret and Lanfranc. A letter addressed to Margaret by Lanfranc alludes to a now lost letter he had himself received from her.46 Gameson is keen to point out that ‘it is open to doubt whether [Margaret] will have drafted this personally’,47 but even if she only dictated its contents, Margaret was, quite clearly, a highly literate woman and one able to communicate with and command the respect of one of the highest churchmen in the land. She is in turn depicted as such in subsequent verbal accounts and visual illustrations.

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The Dunfermline Vita and Miracula and Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon I turn now to two Scottish accounts of Margaret that continue the emphasis found in Turgot on Margaret’s literacy and learning, beginning with a collection of material in Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, MS II 2097. This manuscript was copied and compiled at the Benedictine Abbey of Dunfermline during the reign of James III (1460–88).48 However, much of the manuscript’s material was originally composed many years previously. It contains: 1.  A variant and heavily interpolated form of Turgot’s Vita (fols 1r–17v)49 2. A collection of historical and legendary material, ascribed to the ‘Dunfermline Continuator’ (fols 17v–21v) 3. A short chronicle known as the ‘Dunfermline Chronicle’ (fols 21v–26r)50 4. Miracula S. Margarite Scotorum regine (fols 26r–41v)51 5. A version of Jocelin of Furness’ Vita S. Waldeuui (Life of Waltheof, abbot of Melrose) (fols 41v–68r) 6. Miscellaneous Devotional Pieces (fols 68v–112r).52 The Miracula were composed about two centuries before the date of the manuscript in which they are now found, most probably by a monk of Dunfermline. Although the dating is not precisely certain, it appears that the collection may have initially been composed in the middle decades of the thirteenth century, some time prior to Margaret’s canonisation in 1249 and the translation of her relics in 1250, with further passages (such as that relating to the 1263 battle of Largs) being made at a later date.53 Within the context of the Madrid manuscript, the Miracula complements Turgot’s Vita. Where the latter text associates only one miracle with Margaret, the Miracula associates Margaret with forty-five acts of healing (both physical and spiritual). An emphasis remains, however, on Margaret’s knowledge and on her ability to restore to others the power of senses connected to learning (speech and sight). The Prologue thus refers to Margaret as a ‘wise mistress, full of faith and understanding’ who ‘with subtlety and skill led whoever had been blinded by the darkness of shadows and was obdurate in the ignorance of the truth to recognition of the truth’,54 while in chapter 6 she restores the power of speech to a local girl: ‘For through God’s grace and the powerful lady her tongue became so adapt at speaking that no trace at all of the earlier impediment

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could be found in any word’. In total, Margaret restores speech on four occasions across the collection, and sight twice, and on each occasion it is implied that newfound spiritual insight is coterminous with the restoration of physical sense. An independent, now-lost version of much of the material in Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, MS II 2097 appears to have been available to the Scottish chronicler and abbot of Inchcolm, Walter Bower (1385–1449).55 Sometime around 1440/1441, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth (c. 1380–1444)56 commissioned Bower to continue an earlier chronicle by John of Fordun up to his own day.57 Bower duly completed his task and the resulting Scotichronicon, written between 1441 and 1447, extended to the murder of King James I of Scotland in 1437. The first five books of Bower’s Scotichronicon are mainly derived from Fordun, but Bower does add some material of his own, including in those sections of the chronicle relating to St Margaret. Fordun himself drew on an earlier version of some of the material in the Dunfermline manuscript, including its version of Turgot’s Vita, but Bower appears to have had independent access to the material and included additional passages from it in the Scotichronicon.58 A number of these passages continue the emphasis on Margaret’s literacy and learning found in Turgot’s Vita. Most significant for our purposes are chapters 23 and 24, which report ‘The virtuous works of the Saints Malcolm and Margaret’. Bower’s additions to Fordun here stress Margaret’s literary and learning and draw attention to the way in which she used her superior wisdom to guide her husband. Chapter 23 thus begins: I shall at this point deal briefly with some of the virtuous works and almsgiving of that magnificent king Malcolm and his queen, as Turgot testifies in the Legend of the life of the blessed queen. For just as the prophet David sang in the Psalm: ‘In the company of the holy, you will be holy’, so the king himself learned from the saintly queen to enjoy saintly works, and with her encouragement to refrain from wickedness, to confirm the truth of what St Paul said: ‘Through his Christian wife a heathen man is sanctified’.59

In the first half of this quotation, Margaret’s reform of Malcolm is associated with Psalm 17:26, and Bower further endorses this association by drawing an additional association with 1 Corinthians 7:14. He then adds to Fordun’s account a further seven lines from the Dunfermline Vita recounting Malcolm’s veneration of Margaret’s books.60 This account is almost identical to that in

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the Tiberius Vita, where Malcolm’s veneration of Margaret’s books serves to transform them into quasi-relics a good many years before Margaret’s death and subsequent canonisation, but Bower also adds to chapter 24 a further passage (lines 15–21) on Margaret’s books from the Dunfermline Vita: ‘Apart from the Hours of the Holy Trinity, Holy Cross, and St Mary she read through the psalter within the space of a day and a night two or three times on these holy days […]’.61 In summarising Bower’s use of the Dunfermline material, Watt suggests that Bower ‘extends Fordun’s use of Turgot’s Life of Margaret, but maintains his predecessor’s approach to the text in which the emphasis is laid on the queen’s works of corporeal charity somewhat at the expense of her more intellectual and reforming qualities’.62 The fact that Bower introduces two passages on Margaret’s books would, however, indicate that this is not quite the case. Indeed, Bower instead takes care in his additions to maintain the emphasis on Margaret’s literacy and learning found in Turgot’s Vita. As such, we find in his Scotichronicon not just a pious and charitable saint, but also a bookish queen whose superior wisdom fosters reform in her divinely ordained husband. St Margaret and her books in miniatures and initials In the final section of this chapter, I turn to two Scottish visual images that parallel the emphasis on Margaret’s literacy and learning found in the above verbal accounts.63 The first manuscript is London, BL Add. MS 39761.64 This small vellum Book of Hours appears to have been copied in the mid-fifteenth century by a French scribe and illuminator. The calendar contains a number of festivals connected to the French city of Bourges, suggesting either that the manuscript was based on an exemplar from that city or that the manuscript was copied there itself. The latter is a distinct possibility since a number of Scottish families settled at Bourges in the period.65 Either way, the prominence of St Andrew among the memorials, and the inclusion of two devotions in honour of St Margaret and the office of St Ninian, combined with the occurrence of the phrases ‘Commendo me famulam tuam Mariam’ (fol. 91r) and ‘Concede mihi Marie indigne famule tue’ (fol. 96v), strongly suggest that the manuscript was produced for a Scottish patroness named Mary.66 The manuscript contains a number of miniatures, including one (on fol. 93v) of St Margaret of Scotland, followed on fols 94r

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to 95r by two antiphons, ‘De sancta margareta regina’ and ‘Alia antiphona cum oracione de sancta margareta regina scocie’. In the miniature, Margaret is depicted wearing a blue tunic under a rich mantle on which are emblazoned in red and gold the royal arms of Scotland. She is crowned and holds in her left hand a sceptre, while in her right hand she holds a small open book in a red cover. The relatively small size of the book might suggest that it is a Book of Hours, akin to the one in which the image is found. Either way, the visual image suggests once again that Margaret’s sanctity – and regality – bears an intimate relationship with her literacy.67 The same is true of the image of Margaret in the Blackadder Psalter (Edinburgh, NLS, MS 10271).68 This manuscript appears to have been written in France in the second half of the fifteenth century, most probably for Robert Blackadder (d. 1508) who became Archbishop of Glasgow in 1483.69 It was subsequently owned by Alexander Stewart, Archbishop-designate of St Andrews (d. 1513) and illegitimate son of James IV.70 In a historiated initial on fol. 101r, Margaret is again shown in regal attire (a blue undergarment surmounted by yellow-gold mantle), crowned and surrounded by a halo, reading an open book. This visual tradition of presenting Margaret with a book in her hand continues in later Scottish heraldry. The arms for Queensferry (‘Insignia Burgi Passadi Reginae’), for instance, where St Margaret is believed to have established a ferry for pilgrims on their way north to St Andrews, depict a crowned Margaret holding a sceptre in her right hand and a book in her left. The arms, which are sometimes used with a Burghal coronet added to them, are the same as the device on the oldest known seal of the Burgh, of which an impression dated 1529 is on record. These also show Margaret, who gave Queensferry its name, standing in a boat on the sea and carrying a purple-bound book.71 As with the two miniatures, the heraldic image recalls the emphasis on Margaret’s learning in verbal accounts of her life and bears witness to the extent to which books became central to Margaret’s saintly reputation. Conclusion This chapter has analysed a series of English and Scottish texts and images ranging from the early twelfth century to the second half of the fifteenth century in which St Margaret of Scotland is persistently and emphatically presented as a reader of Holy Scripture and as a learned and wise queen.72 In Turgot’s Vita,

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written between 1100 and 1107, Margaret is presented as a mirror for the learned and pious queen that her daughter, Matilda, would become. Turgot repeatedly highlights Margaret’s devotion to and knowledge of the Bible and Books of Hours and he likens her in the process to Mary, sister of Martha, and even to Christ himself in conversation with learned doctors. Turgot also recounts how Malcolm venerated his wife’s books and conferred on them the status of relics over a century and a half before Margaret was canonised. In demonstrating how Malcolm gave books as gifts to his queen, Turgot’s Vita furthermore parallels contemporary visual images of the Blessed Virgin Mary receiving books from male patrons. External evidence of Margaret’s reading and writing survives to support Turgot’s portrait of a learned and literate queen. Margaret is known to have written to Archbishop Lanfranc about the conversion of Holy Trinity Church, Dunfermline, into a Benedictine Priory, and she is known to have owned, or have been associated with, three further volumes: a ‘textus argenteus’ gifted to Durham, a Celtic Psalter (now Edinburgh, University Library, MS 56) and a Gospel Book (Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5). The latter appears to be the same Gospel Book whose miraculous survival Turgot recounted in his Vita. Within it, Margaret would have found a mirror of her own literate activities in the four richly decorated evangelist portraits, as well as an account of Christ at Martha’s house. The compilation of material in Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, MS II 2097 continues to present Margaret in the same vein as a wise and learned queen. This manuscript, originating in Dunfermline, contains (among other items) an interpolated version of Turgot’s Vita and a set of Miracula that depict the ‘regina uenerabilis’ (‘venerable queen’) restoring the powers of speech and sight, both literally and metaphorically, to a number of devout followers.73 An independent, now-lost version of the material in this manuscript was in turn used by Bower in his Scotichronicon to expand upon the use of the same material already made by Fordun’s Chronica. In adding to Fordun’s account, Bower interpolated passages from the Dunfermline Vita recounting Malcolm’s veneration of Margaret’s books and her own devotion to the Psalter and Books of Hours. Margaret is subsequently depicted within miniatures and historiated initials in two Scottish Books of Hours as a saintly queen holding a book in her hand. These visual images function

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as ­counterparts to the aforementioned verbal representations of Margaret as a bookish queen and they seem to anticipate the future heraldic tradition of the burgh of Queensferry where Margaret stands in a boat holding a volume bound in the suitably royal colour, purple. With this body of evidence in mind, we are in a position to return to Gameson’s argument that Turgot’s portrait of a bookish queen has ‘more to do with sanctity than literacy’. In doing so, I bring to mind a study by Paul Koudounaris of jewelled saints’ remains from southern Germany. A series of skeletons was found in 1578 when some of the catacombs of Rome containing relics of the city’s early Christian community were opened up. Over the next couple of hundred years, some of the skeletons, identified as saints’ remains, were sent north across the Alps to replace relics destroyed in the Protestant Reformation. To mark their newfound status, they were festooned with an extraordinary assortment of jewels, cloth of gold and other precious fabrics, and are still objects of veneration today.74 Koudounaris’s study reminds me of the way in which Malcolm venerated Margaret’s holy books and transformed them into relics several years before her death and subsequent canonisation. Margaret’s surviving volumes no longer bear the jewels they once might have done and they are, by and large, no longer treated as objects of devotion, but they nevertheless deserve to be treated far more seriously than Gameson’s comments suggest. In St Margaret of Scotland we have a fascinating case study of an early female queen actively and quite self-consciously manipulating her knowledge and learning to further her political power, and in the work of her biographers and subsequent historians we have an instance of the ways in which learning and literacy can stand testimony to both earthly authority and its divine approval. Notes  1 There are many biographies of Margaret. See especially G. W. S. Barrow, ‘Margaret [St Margaret] (d. 1093)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10844 (accessed 27 June 2013); and C. Keene, Saint Margaret, Queen of Scots: A Life in Perspective (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).  2 D. Baker, ‘“A nursery of saints”’: St Margaret of Scotland reconsidered’, in D. Baker (ed.), Medieval Women (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 119–41 (pp. 120–1).

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 3 In addition to the material discussed in this chapter, accounts of Margaret appear in the writings of William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Oderic Vitalis, Reginald of Durham, Reginald of Hovedon and Goscelin. For the latter three authors see L. A. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 12 and 21; for Goscelin, A. Macquarrie, ‘An eleventh-century account of the foundation legend of Laurencekirk, and of Queen Margaret’s pilgrimage there’, Innes Review, 47 (1996), 95–109 (96–7); and T. Owen Clancy, ‘The foundation legend of Laurencekirk revisited’, Innes Review, 50 (1999), 83–8. Margaret also appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The D-version of this chronicle (BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fols 3–86) is thought to have been destined, in its final form, for the Scottish court. See M. Swanton (ed. and trans.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (London: Phoenix Press, 2000); and R. L. Græme Ritchie, The Normans in Scotland (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1954); more broadly Nicholas Brooks, ‘Why is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle about Kings?’, Anglo-Saxon England, 39 (2010), 43–70. Finally, for Scottish accounts of Margaret see M. Coll-Smith, ‘The Scottish Legendary and female saints’ lives in late medieval Scotland’, unpublished D.Phil. thesis (University of Oxford, 2010); and ‘From chronicle to liturgy: Scottish sources of the legend of St Margaret, Queen of Scotland’, in J. Hadley Williams and J. Derrick McClure (eds), Fresche Fontanis: Studies in the Culture of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013), pp. 143–64.  4 R. Gameson, ‘The gospels of Margaret of Scotland and the literacy of an eleventh-century queen’, in L. Smith and J. H. M. Taylor (eds), Women and the Book: Assessing the Visual Evidence (London and Toronto: British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 148–71 (p. 157).  5 J. Taylor, ‘Tynemouth, John (fl. c. 1350)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27466 (accessed 7 February 2014).  6 Keene, Saint Margaret, p. 5; J. Harrison, ‘The mortuary roll of Turgot of Durham (d. 1115)’, Scriptorium, 58:1 (2004), 67–82 (68).  7 This version has been recently edited and translated by Keene, Saint Margaret, pp. 135–221.  8 This now-lost manuscript was edited by Daniel Papebroch for the Bollandists in 1698, and he described his exemplar as ‘ex Membraeno Codice Valcellensis in Hannonia monasterii, nunc nostro’. There are few variants between Papebroch’s edited text and that in Cotton Tiberius D. iii.  9 Baker, ‘“A nursery of saints”’, pp. 130–2; L. L. Huneycutt, ‘The idea of the perfect princess: the Life of St Margaret in the reign of Matilda II (1100–1118)’, in M. Chibnall (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies XII:

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Proceedings of the Battle Conference (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 81–97; and L. L. Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland: A Study in Medieval Queenship (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), pp. 11–12 (p. 12). 10 This dating is based on a reference in the longer text to the uncorrupt body of St Cuthbert whose tomb was opened in 1104. The text also refers to Margaret’s son, Edgar (d. 1107), as reigning. In the following discussion Latin quotations of the Vita are taken from J. Hodgson Hinde (ed.), Symeonis Dunelmensis opera et collectanea, Surtees Society, 51 (Durham: Andrews & Co., 1868), pp. 234–54. English translations from W. Forbes-Leith (trans.), Life of St Margaret of Scotland by Turgot, Bishop of St Andrews, 2nd edn (Edinburgh: William Patterson, 1884). Throughout this chapter, I generally quote sources only in modern English translation in the interest of space. For the most part, textual issues are not a factor and originals are available in the sources cited throughout. 11 The Papebroch edition (see note 8, above) expanded the initial ‘T’ and ascribed the work to a Durham monk called ‘Theodric’ but, as Coll-Smith notes (‘The Scottish Legendary’, p. 68), Papebroch gives no reason for selecting this particular monk from the seven brothers listed on the rolls of the abbey (including Turgot) whose names begin with a ‘T’. The Dunfermline Vita, discussed below, states that the author was ‘Turgotus sancti cutberti servus’. 12 R. Bartlett, ‘Turgot (c. 1050–1115)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/27831 (accessed 31 January 2014). 13 L. L. Huneycutt, ‘Matilda (1080–1118)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18336 (accessed 7 February 2014). See also Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland. 14 For the Latin see Symeonis Dunelmensis opera et collectanea, p. 234. 15 D. Knowles and R. N. Hadock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales (London: Longman, 1953), p. 221; S. Hollis, ‘Wilton as a centre of learning’, in S. Hollis, W. R. Barnes, R. Hayward, K. Loncar and M. Wright (eds), Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber Confortatorius, Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 307–38. 16 A. Williams, ‘Edith (d. 1075)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8483 (accessed 31 January 2014). 17 S. Keynes, ‘Emma (d. 1052)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8794 (accessed 31 January 2014). 18 R. M. Thomson, ‘Malmesbury, William of (b. c. 1090, d. in or after 1142)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb. com/view/article/29461 (accessed 31 January 2014). 19 Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, pp. 139–40. 20 Huneycutt, ‘Perfect princess’, pp. 92 and 94.

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21 Huneycutt, Matilda of Scotland, p. 13, and ‘Perfect princess’. For an analogous case-study, see I. McCleery, ‘Isabel of Aragon (d. 1336): model queen or model saint?’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 57:4 (2006), 668–92. 22 Swanton, Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, D-version, pp. 201–2. Italics original. 23 F. Barlow, ‘Goscelin (b. c. 1035, d. in or after 1107)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11105 (accessed 31 January 2014). 24 B. Yorke, ‘Edith (961x4–984x7)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8482 (accessed 31 January 2014). 25 See M. Wright and K. Loncar (trans.), ‘Goscelin’s legend of Edith’, in Hollis, Writing the Wilton Women, p. 68. 26 J. Tibbetts Schulenburg, ‘Holy women and the needle arts: piety, devotion, and stitching the sacred, c. 500–1500’, in K. Allen Smith and S. Wells (eds), Negotiating Community and Difference in Medieval Europe: Gender, Power, Patronage and the Authority of Religion in Latin Christendom (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2009), pp. 89–101. 27 P. Sheingorn, ‘“The wise mother”: the image of St Anne teaching the Virgin Mary’, Gesta, 32:1 (1993), 69–80 (69). 28 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, p. 158. In contrast to Gameson, I would question how we are meant to interpret Malcolm’s supposed ‘illiteracy’ here. I rather suspect that Malcolm did have some practical literacy, although this may not have extended to the ability to read and understand Latin literary sources. Compare Ralph Turner, ‘The Miles Literatus in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England: How rare a phenomenon?’, The American Historical Review, 83 (1978), 928–45; Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Chichester: John Whiley & Sons, 2012), p. 231. 29 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, p. 159. 30 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, pp. 160–1. 31 For a survey of views see Baker, ‘“A nursery of saints”’, pp. 126–8. 32 See J. A. McNamara, ‘Imitatio Helenae: sainthood as an attribute of kingship’, in S. Sticca (ed.) Saints: Studies in Hagiography, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 141 (Binghampton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1996), pp. 51–80. Margaret is further connected to Helena via her ownership of a relic known as the ‘Holy Rood’. This was said to be a fragment of the True Cross, itself purportedly found by Helena. 33 For a text and translation of this verse see Gameson, ‘Gospels’, pp. 165–6. 34 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, pp. 160–1; T. Ratcliffe Barnett, Margaret of Scotland: Queen and Saint: Her Influence on the Early Church in Scotland (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1926), pp. 119–20.

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35 Reginald of Durham, Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti quae novelis patratae sunt temporibus, ed. James Raine, Surtees Society, 1 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1835), p. 218 36 Keene, Saint Margaret, p. 68. 37 Compare Keene, Saint Margaret, p. 2. 38 For a facsimile of the Gospel Book see W. Forbes Leith, The Gospel Book of Saint Margaret Being a Facsimile Reproduction of St. Margaret’s Copy of the Gospels Preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1896). See also R. Rushworth, St Margaret’s Gospel Book: The Favourite Book of an Eleventh-Century Queen (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2007). 39 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, pp. 149–52. 40 C. R. Borland, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Western Mediaeval Manuscripts in Edinburgh University Library (Edinburgh: T. & A. Constable, 1916), pp. 100–102; A. P. Laurie, ‘The pigments used in painting “the Rosslyn Missall” in the Advocates’ Library, and the Celtic Psalter, D. p. III, 8, in the Library of the University of Edinburgh’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 62 (1922–3), 41–5; S. M. Holmes, ‘Catalogue of liturgical books and fragments in Scotland before 1560’, Innes Review, 62:2 (2011), 127–212 (136–7); C. P. Finlayson, Celtic Psalter: Edinburgh University Library MS 56 (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1962); Treasures from Scottish Libraries (Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland, 1964), no. 8, p. 3. 41 Borland, Descriptive Catalogue, p. 100. 42 A prayer (‘Domine Jhesu Christe qui in hunc mundum propter nos peccatores advenisti’) was added in a small, probably Scottish, hand in the fourteenth century to fol. 48v. 43 For this style, see J. F. Kershaw, ‘The distribution of the “Winchester” style in late Saxon England: metalwork finds from the Danelaw’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History, 15 (2008), 254–69 (254). 44 Finlayson, Celtic Psalter, p. xxviii. 45 H. E. J. Cowdrey, ‘Lanfranc (c. 1010–1089)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/16004 (acces­ sed 19 February 2014). 46 H. Clover and M. Gibson, The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 50; G. W. S. Barrow, The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), p. 167. 47 Gameson, ‘Gospels’, p. 162. 48 Dunfermline was a significant centre of literary production in fifteenth-century Scotland. See S. Mapstone, ‘The Scotichronicon’s first readers’, in B. E. Crawford (ed.), Church, Chronicle and Learning

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in Medieval and Renaissance Scotland: Essays Presented to Donald Watt on the Occasion of the Completion of the Publication of Bower’s ‘Scotichronicon’ (Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1999), pp. 31–55 (pp. 34–5); R. J. Lyall, ‘Books and book-owners in fifteenth-century Scotland’, in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; reissued 2007), pp. 239–56 (pp. 244, 246–248); J. Higgit (with an introductory essay by J. Durkan), Scottish Libraries, Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 12 (London: British Library, 2006), pp. 93–6. 49 See also C. Keene, ‘The Dunfermline Vita of St. Margaret of Scotland: hagiography as an articulation of hereditary rights’, Arthuriana, 19:3 (2009), 43–61. As noted above, the Dunfermline Vita has recently been edited and translated by Keene and will be cited here as Keene (ed.), ‘Dunfermline Vita’. The text has tentatively been dated to between 1154 and 1285. See Keene, Saint Margaret, p. 6, and A. Taylor, ‘Historical writing in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Scotland: the Dunfermline compilation’, Historical Research, 83 (2010), 228–52. 50 See D. E. R. Watt (general ed.), Scotichronicon by Walter Bower in Latin and English, 9 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987–98), iii, pp. xvii-xviii and Taylor, ‘Historical writing’. 51 R. Bartlett (ed. and trans.), The Miracles of Saint Æbbe of Coldingham and Saint Margaret of Scotland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). 52 See Bartlett, Miracles, p. xxxii. 53 Bartlett, Miracles, pp. xxxv, xxxvi. 54 Bartlett, Miracles, p. 71. 55 See D. E. R Watt, ‘Biography of Walter Bower’, in Watt, Scotichronicon, ix, pp. 204–8. 56 A. Borthwick, ‘Bower’s patron, Sir David Stewart of Rosyth’, in Watt, Scotichronicon, ix, pp. 354–62. 57 W. F. Skene (ed.), Johannis de Fordun Chronica Gentis Scotorum, Historians of Scotland, 1 (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1871); W. F. Skene and F. J. H. Skene (ed. and trans.), John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation, Historians of Scotland, 4 (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1872). 58 Watt, Scotichronicon, iii, pp. xvii–xix. 59 Watt, Scotichronicon, iii, Book V, chapter 23, lines 1–8. 60 Watt, Scotichronicon, iii, Book V, chapter 23, lines 14–21; Keene (ed.), ‘Dunfermline Vita’, p. 185. 61 Compare Turgot, Life, ed. Forbes-Leith, p. 63; Keene (ed.), ‘Dunfermline Vita’, p. 206. 62 Watt, Scotichronicon, iii, p. xix. 63 J. Higgit, ‘Imageis Maid With Mennis Hand’: Saints, Images, Belief and Identity in Later Medieval Scotland, The Ninth Whithorn Lecture (Whithorn: Friends of the Whithorn Trust, 2003), unpaginated, n. 54.

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64 Rev. E. S. Dewick, ‘On a MS. Book of Hours written in France for the use of a Scottish lady’, Transactions of the St. Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, 7:3 (1911–15), 109–20. 65 A Breviary now in the Victoria and Albert Museum was written and illuminated in the city in the early sixteenth century for the Scottish Monypenny family. See A. van de Put, ‘The Monypenny Breviary’, Proceedings of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland, 56 (1921–22), 72–114 and E. Beck, ‘The Monypenny Breviary’, The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 55 (1929), 272, 277. 66 The volume was certainly in Scotland in the second half of the sixteenth century since fol. 1r contains the inscription: ‘This buik pertenis to the honorable Elizabeth Danielstoune Ladie of Clarkingtone 1577’. The verso of the first flyleaf also has: ‘ELIZABETHE DANIELSTONE LADIE OF CLARKINGTONE 1577 12 of dECEMBER 1577’. Elizabeth was married to one Patrick Cockburn of Clerkington and as such was connected to one of sixteenth-century Scotland’s most significant literary networks. See my ‘The familial, professional, and literary contexts of Edinburgh, National Archives of Scotland, Manuscript RH 13/35’, Textual Cultures, 7:1 (2012), 77–96. 67 Within the bounds of the manuscript, the image of Margaret with a book in hand echoes miniatures of the Virgin, who reads at the Annunciation (fol. 67v), St Katherine of Antioch (fol. 82v), Mary Magdalene (fol. 84v), St Elizabeth (fol. 85v). 68 See National Library of Scotland Catalogue of Manuscripts Acquired Since 1925, vol. viii (Edinburgh: HMSO, 1992), pp. 106–7, and Holmes, ‘Catalogue of liturgical books’, p. 165. 69 L. J. Macfarlane, ‘Blackadder, Robert (c. 1445–1508)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/ 2489 (accessed 31 January 2014). 70 T. Chalmers, ‘Stewart, Alexander (c. 1493–1513)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26454 (acc­ essed 31 January 2014). 71 R. M. Urquhart, Scottish Burgh and Country Heraldry (London: The Camelot Press, 1973), pp. 179–80. Also, J. Horne Stevenson and M. Wood (eds), Scottish Heraldic Seals: Royal, Official, Ecclesiastical, Collegiate, Burghal, Personal, vol. 1 (Glasgow: Robert Maclehose, 1940), p. 60. 72 I should like to acknowledge my thanks here to my student, Claire Harrill; this chapter grew directly out of fruitful conversations with Claire as I supervised her now-complete PhD thesis: ‘Politics and sainthood: Literary representations of St Margaret of Scotland from the eleventh century to the fifteenth century in England and Scotland’ (University of Birmingham, 2010). 73 Bartlett, Miracles, pp. 76, 77. 74 P. Koudounaris, Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013).

Part IV Knowledge and Materiality

10 The Jellinge Stone: from prehistoric monument to petrified ‘book’ Michelle P. Brown

The transmission of knowledge is a multi-faceted process. Acquaintance with new ideas is tempered by the parameters of those which are already stored on the shelves of the recipient’s ‘inner library’. Intertextuality plays a significant role in how knowledge is accessed and processed – and texts do not have to be written in order to form a part of the cultural memory of an individual or a people. The process of converting the technically ‘illiterate’ but mnemonically rich peoples of northern Europe to Christianity, a religion of the Word, is a fruitful ground for exploring some of these aspects of knowledge transfer, integration and transformation. This chapter will discuss how the Jellinge Stone, a funerary monument of the Danish royal house of late tenth-century date, marks a pivotal shift in imaging from pagan warlords to Christian monarchs and how the traditional medium of an inscribed or decorated stone became a skeuomorph of the illuminated Scriptures of Christianity. It will also suggest that the stylistic and formal aspects of the Jellinge Stone’s decoration point to the cultural influence of Anglo-Scandinavian England and Norse Ireland upon conversion-period Scandinavia, a factor often overlooked in favour of the traditional historical view of a mainly German missionary endeavour, despite the web of trading and property-owning links that had bound Scandinavia to the late Insular world since the ninth century. The Jellinge Stone proclaims in a royal funerary context – as the liturgical manuscripts proclaimed in the public liturgy – a new order, legitimised by its genealogical and locational past and by its economic, political and spiritual present, commemorated by a prehistoric monument displaying the symbolism and semiotics of the Christian tradition as a statement of both continuity and change. The heraldic standards of Denmark and England share not only a taste for lions passant but appropriately symbolise their

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(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 10.1  Painted replica of the larger Jellinge Stone: a. the Great Beast Painted replica of the larger Jellinge Stone: b. the commemorative inscription Painted replica of the larger Jellinge Stone: c. the Crucifixion

intertwined histories of settlement, trade, dynastic politics and faith during a crucial, formative phase in the development of the two countries from the ninth to eleventh centuries. Norway’s standard also features a lion, but this time it is rampant and axewielding – as befits the Norse in stereotypical popular imagination. The lion, king of the beasts and Christian symbol of kingship and resurrection, would have symbolised to contemporary observers the Scandinavian impact upon and integration into mainstream Christendom from the earliest stages of conversion. Its appropriation and reinvention as the Great Beast was to become a distinctive feature in Scandinavian art, epitomised on the pictorial rune-stone (see figures 10.1a–10.1c) carved at the royal burial ground of Jellinge in Denmark at the command of King Harald Bluetooth sometime between around 970 and his death in 985 or 986. This commemorates that ruler’s parents, while an earlier rune-stone on the site had been erected by his father, Gorm, in memory of his wife, Thyra. King Harald’s commission features a runic inscription recording this commemoration, set out as display script set within a decorative framework embellished with interlace, resembling those found in the incipit pages of Insular Gospel books (see figures 10.1b and 10.2). This is introduced on the adjacent face of the stone by the lion, or Great Beast (see figure 10.1a), which heralds the opening of the Psalms in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon Psalters. On the third side of the roughly shaped boulder is an image of the Crucifixion (see figure 10.1c), enmeshed in interlace in Ringerike style, itself a fusion of Germanic art and the contemporaneous Winchester style of art. These carvings would once have been brightly painted, increasing the similarity of what would otherwise be a traditional pagan memorial to a petrified Christian illuminated manuscript.

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At this time the Ottonian empire was on the rise and the Benedictine reform movement was at its height in Anglo-Saxon England, producing that masterpiece of Christian book production, the Benedictional of St Ethelwold (BL, Add. MS 49598)1 in full-blown Winchester style, replete with rich pigments, gold, classicising fleshy acanthus fronds and equally rich iconography. The Insular and Anglo-Saxon background to monuments such as the Jellinge Stone, and to the conversion of this part of Scandinavia, has been somewhat neglected, despite the fact that from the ninth century onwards Danish settlers in England would have formed a conduit for Anglo-Saxon influence in their ancestral homeland, even before the kingdoms were united under Cnut. Germany is regarded as the principal route of conversion and ecclesiastical influence upon Scandinavia, primarily via Hamburg-Bremen, but this historical model may be more nuanced and have included English and Irish or Hiberno-Welsh input, to judge from art historical evidence2 and that of the remains of the medieval liturgical book holdings of Sweden (now preserved as binding fragments in the Swedish National Archives), which included a number of eleventh- and twelfth-century English manuscripts.3 In this chapter I shall accordingly explore these themes from the perspective of the context and significance of the Jellinge sculpture as a book in stone – a powerful symbol of conversion and of changing international and domestic agendas in Scandinavia, in which the mysterious and awe- (or terror-)inspiring lands of the north would be integrated into the European world view.4 This view is manifest in the Tiberius World Map (BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B.v, f. 56), thought to have been drawn in AngloSaxon Canterbury shortly before 1030, the year of the death of England’s Danish ruler, King Cnut.5 This world map, the first medieval example of its kind, conflates a schematic view of the then known world, indebted to the work of classical cartographers and explorers such as Alexander the Great, with Christian biblical and exegetical lore. The Garden of Eden appears at the top, while the northlands appear to the left-hand side, with Britain and Ireland depicted disproportionately large and those areas known particularly well to Anglo-Scandinavian navigators – such as the Orkneys, Shetlands and Iceland – shown in considerable detail. This reflects both the absorption of these islands into a powerful Viking trading empire that stretched from Newfoundland to Constantinople and the unification of Christianised Anglo-Scandinavian England and Denmark under the rule of Cnut (reigned 1016–1035). Cnut chose

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to have himself depicted in a book, along with his queen, Emma, herself a Norman of Viking blood, formerly wed to an English king – Ethelred ‘unræd’, the ill-advised or ‘unready’ – for royal union legitimised Cnut’s military conquest of England. Both were renowned bibliophiles and are depicted in the liber vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, as donors/patrons/­ protectors, bestowing a massive gold altar-cross symbolic of their care for the economic and spiritual welfare of their realms (BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6, Winchester, 1031). The Scandinavian introduction to the Word – the incarnation of Logos (the divine) in book form – was, by the 1020s, long-lived. Christendom had been rocked in 793 by the first of the Viking raids, which targeted one of its most hallowed shrines – that of St Cuthbert on Holy Island in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, a focal point of which was the wondrous Lindisfarne Gospels (BL, Cotton MS Nero D.iv), which mercifully survived the attacks. The book’s bejewelled treasure binding or shrine did not and was despoiled, probably at a later date, for its bullion value.6 Another, less valuable, book-shrine (Dublin, National Museum of Ireland, 1986: 141) was cast into Lough Kinale in Co. Longford in Ireland in the ninth century, a generation or so after it was made to house a Gospel Book-relic, perhaps by a disgruntled Viking raider who may have been the one responsible for tearing it open. The codex had become a powerful symbol of faith in the early medieval world. Byzantine icons, from the time of the magnificent sixth-century examples from Sinai, feature it as an intermediary between Creator and Creation. Around 800 the English monastery of Breedon-on-the-Hill in Mercia, which within a generation would lie at the heart of the Viking area of settlement and rule known as the Danelaw, erected an iconostasis screen at the entrance to its chancel in Byzantine fashion, featuring a sculpture of the Virgin, depicted as the Hodegetria (Indicator of the Way) in the manner of Byzantine icons, but with the Christ child whom she usually held replaced by a book – the incarnation of the Word.7 So great was the Anglo-Saxon respect for the book and the faith that it represented.8 Yet the Anglo-Saxons, like the Scandinavians who were shortly to join them, were Germanic migrants who had undergone a lengthy process of conversion and cultural integration over the preceding two centuries. Another of the sculptures at Breedon, a small post or part of a cross-shaft of ninth-century date, accordingly juxtaposes a Mercian beast, derived from earlier Germanic art, with a Mammen-style Viking beast sprung, ultimately, from the

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same stock. For origins were not forgotten during this process, but celebrated. Nowhere is this process of cultural assimilation more apparent than on the eighth-century Northumbrian Auzon/Franks Casket (British Museum and Florence, Bargello), possibly a book-shrine for a royal genealogy, the whalebone of which is fashioned into a selective narrative of world history with scenes depicting the suckling by the she-wolf of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome, the sack of Jerusalem by Emperor Titus, and the Germanic hero Weyland the Smith (about to rape the daughter of his enemy, Nithhad, and conceive a saviour-warrior) juxtaposed with the Virgin and Child and the adoration of the Magi, the whole identified by runic inscriptions. Thus the antique Greek, Judaic, Roman and Germanic past culminated in the Christian present, expressed in the local vernacular language and script system. A century later, the Nunburnholme cross, near York, likewise symbolised cultural continuity when it was recarved for a Scandinavian settler – perhaps the seated warlord represented – to juxtapose the iconography of Sigurd overcoming the dragon, Fafnir, with Christ overcoming death on the Cross.9 This Crucifixion was, itself, part of an eighth-century reworking of a prehistoric menhir adapted as a piece of Roman masonry. And so a newly converted Danish Viking anchored himself to his newly appropriated land by correlating his previous and newly adopted faiths and cultural narratives on a stone that had stood there for over a millennium. Harald Bluetooth did something similar when he had the larger of the two Jellinge Stones (see figure 10.1) carved to commemorate the sepulchre of his parents, King Gorm and Queen Thyra, who were interred in one of the two nearby burial mounds, in age-old pagan fashion and, in the process, to celebrate his role in the unification and conversion of Denmark. In the process, the grave of his forebears was transformed into a Christianised royal shrine, in the manner of Anglo-Saxon England with its tradition of royal saints – many of them martyred by Vikings. The earlier Germanic occupiers of post-Roman Britain had experienced a somewhat similar transformative process, evident in sites such as the highstatus ship-burial mound of Sutton Hoo, whose occupant took with him to the afterlife de luxe items based upon Roman military parade armour, an heirloom helmet and other gear from the southern Scandinavian or northern German homelands, Celtic hanging bowls, Frankish coins and a belt-buckle with relic chamber, exotic Byzantine and Coptic Christian metalwork. Also in evidence

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were two spoons bearing the names Paulos and Saulos, perhaps indicating baptism, such as that received by King Redwald of East Anglia (thought to be the deceased in question) at the hands of his ‘godfather’ and political overlord, King Ethelberht of Kent, during the early seventh century. Redwald is reported (in Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica) to have taken his Christening gifts home and displayed them in his temple alongside his other idols.10 Another important early seventh-century burial mound discovered recently at Prittlewell in Essex shows a similarly mixed identity, its international haul of ‘stuff’, indicating aspiration as an ‘heir of Rome’, incorporating eastern Christian wares such as a Coptic bronze jug with a saint depicted on its escutcheon and, even more overtly Christian, tiny gold crosses placed on the eyelids of the deceased warlord, in Lombardic fashion. It has been suggested that such apparently schizophrenic burial practices, merging pagan and Christian indicators, may have resulted from deceased converts being interred by pagan relatives, or vice versa. I think it is more likely to be the result of a gradual process of transition – saints’ shrines such as that of St Cuthbert continuing to feature gravegoods, even if in the guise of relics. However, Harald Bluetooth’s Christianisation of his parental pagan burial site at Jellinge may, in some sense, be analogous. King Gorm had earlier commemorated his wife, Thyra, who pre-deceased him, by erecting a rune-stone adjacent to her burial mound – a Danish Taj Mahal. It read (in translation), ‘King Gormr made this monument in memory of Thyrvé, his wife, Denmark’s adornment’11 and is composed in Old Norse written in the Younger Futhark. A church was later built on the site, of which there may have been an original timber prototype erected by their son, Harald Bluetooth, who, in the 980s, had a massive, roughly hewn triangular boulder carved with a runic inscription reading (in translation), ‘King Haraldr ordered this monument made in memory of Gormr, his father, and in memory of Thyrvé, his mother; that Haraldr who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian’.12 Unlike earlier runic inscriptions, such as that on the adjacent Thyra stone, which runs vertically, the Jellinge Stone lettering was arranged in horizontal lines, reading from left to right, as on the pages of a book (see figure 10.1b). The knot of interlace at the upper left recalls, and occupies the position of, the major initials of Insular Gospel Books, followed by rectilinear panels of display script, as in the St Chad Gospels (Lichfield Cathedral Library,

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Figure 10.2  Decorated incipit, Chi-Rho page, the St Chad Gospels

MS 1; see figure 10.2) – which also features a roaring beast as part of its border structure, paralleling the Jellinge Great Beast. This was probably made for Lichfield (a daughter house of Lindisfarne) in the mid-eighth century and was redeemed by a Welshman, Gelhi, in the mid-ninth century in return for his best white horse, probably in the aftermath of Viking upheaval.13 Another analogy for the Jellinge Stone’s incipit-page style is the Stockholm Codex Aureus, made in mid-eighth-century Kent, one of the first areas to witness Viking incursion. This Codex Aureus bears a marginal

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Old English inscription added to its Chi-Rho page in the midninth century recording that it was redeemed from captivity from a Viking army, in return for bullion, by Eadlorman Alfred and his wife, Werburh, and was presented by them to the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. The redemption of such book-hostages from pagans was a well-established practice in the early Armenian Church.14 The Danes had already, apparently, come to appreciate the value of sacred books – if only in economic terms, for the Codex Aureus does indeed drip with gold. The Danish presence in England had less visual impact upon book production than it did upon its sculpture and metalwork, although a few books such as the Bosworth and Winchcombe Psalters display some Viking influence in their style of interlace.15 The patronage of Cnut and Emma, from 1016–1030 did, however, shape English book culture. They identified a stellar artist-scribe in the Canterbury Cathedral scriptorium – Eadui Basan (‘the Fat’) – whom they pulled out of the cloister to follow the court as scribe of prestigious documents and of de luxe liturgical manuscripts, which they gave as gifts to curry favour with the Anglo-Saxon secular and ecclesiastical hierarchy, following Cnut’s seizure of the throne.16 Harald Bluetooth’s aspirations as sponsor of a literate Christian culture had been fully realised in the reign of this successor. Scandinavia was already acquainted with writing, and with Christianity. In 831 the missionary Ansgar was despatched from Birka in Sweden bearing a message written in runes by King Björn’s own hand, informing the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious of his mission’s success.17 The substantial corpus of rune-sticks from Bergen and Hedeby, extending through to the fourteenth century, bears witness to high levels of pragmatic lay literacy in these thriving mercantile societies. The informal tone of some of these inscriptions, often accompanied by drawings of ships and the like, are paralleled in Viking graffiti, such as that scratched on the walls inside the prehistoric tomb of Maes Howe on the Orkneys by a band of Vikings who took shelter there in a storm, allegedly searching for treasure and whiling the time away by commenting upon their paramours.18 The use of runes in Christian Britain extends back to at least the early eighth century, when the name of a woman, Osgyth, was carved on her memorial stone on Holy Island in both Latin script and Old English runes.19 These two languages and scripts were also used to inscribe an early prototype of the moving Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood, on the eighth-century Ruthwell Cross – a Northumbrian

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monument in recently annexed British territory. The cross also features a programme of figural scenes, including the Magdalene anointing the feet of Christ and the Crucifixion.20 The Jellinge Stone also features, on the side of the boulder that faces the royal burial mound, an image of the Crucifixion (see figure 10.1c) as a promise of salvation. There was also an earlier indigenous Scandinavian tradition of figural iconography, of course, on the painted stones of Gotland.21 The closest stylistic analogies for the Jellinge image, with its tunic-clad Christ and stylised drapery swags, are to be found in Insular Gospel Books of around 700, such as the Durham Gospels Crucifixion (Durham Cathedral Library, MS A.ii.17, f. 383b, Lindisfarne or Melrose, c. 700) or the Echternach Gospels Matthew evangelist miniature (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Lat. 9389, f. 18v; Echternach, c. 700), set against a cross to emphasise the exegetical equation of Matthew’s symbol with the man – recalling his Gospel’s emphasis upon the incarnation of Christ.22 Irish parallels include the St Gall Gospels (St Gall, MS 51, p. 266, Ireland), around 800 and, in metalwork, the Athlone Crucifixion panel (National Museum of Ireland), also around 800. This iconography stems ultimately from more naturalistic early Christian works such as the Syriac Rabbula Gospels (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut. I.56), dated 586, but the Jellinge artist has enmeshed his Christ in a thicket of interlace with acanthus terminals – like a sacrificial lamb in the thicket. The foliate features also call to mind the tree of life, or inhabited vinescroll – a symbol of the Eucharist and of redemption – which may be found adorning sculptures in many Northumbrian churches such as Bede’s home monastery of Jarrow, or on the late seventh-century English ‘Coptic-style’ binding of the St Cuthbert Gospel, found in his coffin.23 The foliate cross features in Anglo-Saxon art, but only in Scandinavia does the Saviour appear to be bound to his destiny by its fronds, rather than giving life to its shoots. Henning Kure has suggested an intended allusion to Odin, who in Norse mythology hung for nine nights in the tree Yggdrasill, the world tree and meeting place of the Gods wherein dwelt creatures such as the dragon.24 The side of the Jellinge Stone that now faces the church building there is also adorned with an image that complements this distinctive Scandinavian version of the Crucifixion iconography, the Great Beast doing battle with a serpent that coils itself around his body, much as the vine binds the crucified Christ. The lively,

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passant stance of the beast recalls that of Insular symbols of the evangelist Mark, as in the late seventh-century Echternach Gospels (f. 75v), and its body is articulated by engraved contour lines and hip-spirals in the manner of Pictish carvings,25 which also influenced Insular manuscript art, as in the Book of Durrow’s symbols.26 Similar features can be observed on the roaring lionlike beast of the early eleventh-century Norwegian Vang stone and on the tamer beasts engraved upon the Anglo-Scandinavian Sutton Isle of Ely brooch (British Museum, 1951,1011.1),27 also from the eleventh century, bearing runes proclaiming ownership by a woman named Ædwen, where they are juxtaposed with two serpents. Like the Jellinge Stone’s beast, these creatures inhabit or sprout fronds of acanthus ornament of Carolingian and English Winchester style ornament, the influence of which distinguishes Scandinavian Mammen and Ringerike style art.28 The beast and serpent appear earlier in Insular art, for example on the Chi-Rho page announcing the birth of Christ in the Irish St Gall Gospels of around 800 or the Welsh Ricemarch Psalter (Trinity College Dublin, MS 50) of around 1080. Here the quadruped has the distinctive roaring head of the lion, symbol of kingship, the lion of Judah and of its scion, Christ. The lion mask – an antique feature revived in Carolingian art – makes a regular appearance in later Anglo-Saxon illumination in the great Beatus initials found in illuminated psalters of Winchester style. One of the earliest of these is the southern English Bosworth Psalter (BL, Arundel MS 60, f. 13r), which is of similar date to the Jellinge Stone, and which also features a serpent. In the Ramsey Psalter (BL, Harley MS 2904 f. 4r; see figure 10.3), from Winchester or Ramsey and also of late tenth-century date, the Beatus initial with its lion, which announces the plea for salvation and promise of redemption embodied in the Psalms that follow, is introduced by an image of the Crucifixion (f. 3v). Such, I would suggest, may have been the inspiration for the Jellinge Stone’s programme conveying the hope of resurrection, symbolised in Christian art by the iconography of Christ as the lion, his resurrection being recounted by St Mark and allegorically portrayed by his symbol, the lion, secured through Christ’s sacrifice in the Crucifixion. King Harald’s inscription completes the promise, guaranteed by the legitimacy of his own kingship, secured by his parental lineage, of new life which he brings his people by consolidating and extending his kingdom and formally introducing the new faith with which many of his people must have been acquainted since the interaction with Carolingian

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Figure 10.3  Beatus initial with lion mask in Winchester style, the Ramsey Psalter

and the Insular world commenced in earnest during the raiding and trading of the eighth century. Yet this may not be the only possible reading of this image. Scandinavian mythology also had its motifs of hero-saviours overcoming the serpent. The Sigurd Rune-stone at Ramsundsberget, Jäder, Södermanland, Sweden, like the Jellinge Stone probably a reused prehistoric stone monument, shows Sigurd killing the dragon Fafnir – a scene overtly compared with the Crucifixion as a Scandinavian precursor/type on the Nunburnholme cross.29 Similarly, the rune-stone at Altuna, Uppland, Sweden, for example, depicts Thor, his feet protruding from a boat, capturing the Midgard Serpent – a scene also depicted in north-west England on the Gosforth cross.30 These encounters encapsulate a nihilism that runs counter to Christian beliefs of resurrection and eternal life, for in the final encounter between the serpent and Thor, predicted to occur at Ragnarök, the serpent (Jörmungandr) will come out of the sea and poison the sky, before being killed

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by Thor.31 The hero-deity will then walk nine paces before succumbing to the serpent’s lethal venom. The beast and serpent conflict thus drew upon both Christian and pagan Norse traditions to form a new, integrated iconography that formed a distinctive expression of the Scandinavian experience of cultural synthesis and conversion. In alluding to the codex, vehicle of the Word of God and codicological symbol of Christianity, Harald was honouring his new faith and affiliations in the ancient, rough-hewn stone medium of the ancient North. The use of runes, rather than the Latin language and script proclaims, however, local identity and former cultural achievements and beliefs, at the point of formal entry into an international ecumene. The distinctive treatment of the iconographies of the Crucifixion and the lion reinforces the accommodation of old and new traditions and belief systems, in the manner of the Franks Casket and Nunburnholme cross. We have discussed the Christian iconography of the lion already. The serpent or dragon, the two often interchangeable, often betokens evil/Satan in Christian lore, although it can also have a positive meaning – the brazen serpent raised by Moses in the wilderness, for example, being interpreted from the early Christian period (and appearing in art, as in the tenth-century metalwork example in the nave of Sant Ambrogio in Milan) as a precursor or ‘type’ of the raising up of Christ upon the cross. To this may be added the interpretation in the Physiologus precursor of the medieval bestiary and probably originating in Alexandria, first written in Greek in the second century AD and translated into Latin around 400. The Physiologus speaks of the lion as king of the beasts, an allegorical symbol of Christ, who can nonetheless be killed by the serpent, which is also said to attack a man when he is clothed and to flee from his nakedness.32 This is interpreted as the innocence of the naked Adam (or Christ, the ‘second Adam’), who could only be attacked when he put on the clothing of mortality. This may help to explain the Jellinge Stone’s adoption of a substantial tunic cladding the crucified Christ, who is ensnared by serpentine coils – which nonetheless sprout the shoots of new life. The conflation of lion and serpent is not, however, commonly encountered in early medieval art. They form a hybrid, along with the goat’s head, in the chimera of classical Greek and Roman art and reappear, separate but locked in combat, in subsequent Romanesque and Gothic art (for example, on an English crozier of around 1200, on a twelfth-century capital at Chauvigny in

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Poitou-Charente and a door-knocker in Dresden, on a Gothic misericord in Poitiers and carved on a bridge in Prague). The Scandinavian Great Beast, inspired by earlier Germanic art and by Christian iconographies mediated via Britain and Ireland, may underpin such subsequent medieval images. Its influence not only went on to produce other Scandinavian versions of the motif, as on the Kallunge weathervane from Gotland (Oslo Ship Museum, Norway), but also spread abroad soon after its appearance on the Jellinge Stone, for it reappears on another stone monument in London (the St Paul’s Rune-stone now in the Museum of London), again accompanied by a runic inscription proclaiming that it was erected by Ginna and Toki, presumably in memory of a relative, friend or patron. This stone was carved in the early eleventh century and excavated in the churchyard of St Paul’s Cathedral – founded (or refounded) in 604 by St Mellitus, a member of St Augustine’s Roman mission to the Anglo-Saxons, who wrote to Pope Gregory the Great seeking advice concerning the conversion process and was told to honour pre-existing places and practices of worship and to integrate and Christianise them.33 As at Jellinge the St Paul’s Rune-stone and Great Beast do just that. Presumably the stone commemorated a Scandinavian citizen of London who lived and traded there during the reign of Cnut and whose hopes of eternal salvation were pinned upon the age-old paradigm of the conflict between good and evil. In pagan Germanic belief this battle, in which all were joined and which qualified one for admission to Valhalla, was doomed to ultimate failure, with the World (Midgard) Serpent ultimately destroying all things and all time. What Christianity offered was the hope, in the face of such nihilism, that God, the Creator in the form of the Great Beast – or the empathetic self-sacrificed God become Man of the Crucifixion – might actually win after all, however contorted and potentially strangling the coils in which we become ensnared. For, as Psalm 91:13 proclaims, God is, ultimately, all powerful: ‘Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet’.34 Notes  1 R. Deshman, The Benedictional of Æthelwold, Studies in Manuscript Illumination, 9 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995); A. Prescott, The Benedictional of St Æthelwold: A Masterpiece of AngloSaxon Art: A Facsimile (London: The British Library, 2002).

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 2 For example, J. Graham-Campbell, R. Hall, J. Jesch and D. N. Parsons (eds), Vikings and the Danelaw: Selected Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress (Oxford: Oxbow, 2001); S. Fuglesang, Some Aspects of the Ringerike Style: A Phase of 11th Century Scandinavian Art, Mediaeval Scandinavia Supplements (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 1980); A. Reynolds and L. Webster (eds), Early Medieval Art and Archaeology in the Northern World: Studies in Honour of James Graham-Campbell (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2013); U. Plahter, E. B. Hohler, N. J. Morgan and A. Wichstrøm, Painted Altar Frontals of Norway, 1250–1350, Volumes 1–3 (London: Archetype Publications, 2004).  3 K. Abukhanfusa, J. Brunius and S. Benneth, Helgerånet. Frånmässböcker til munkepärmar (Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag i samarbete med Riksarkivet/Stockholms Medeltidsmuseum, 1993); K. Abukhanfusa, Mutilated Books: Wondrous Leaves from Swedish Bibliographical History, Skrifter utgivna av Riksarkivet, 23, Stockholms Medeltidsmuseum exhibition catalogue, 15 (Stockholm: Riksarkivet, 2004).  4 For an introduction to Viking art, see O. Klindt-Jensen and D. M. Wilson, Viking Art, 2nd edn, The Nordic Series, 6 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1980); E. Roesdahl and D. M. Wilson (eds), From Viking to Crusader: The Scandinavians and Europe 800–1200 (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1992). On Anglo-Saxon art, see C. E. Karkov, The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2011); L. Webster, AngloSaxon Art: A New History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012); M. P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London and Toronto: British Library and Toronto University Press, 2008); and Art of the Islands: Celtic, Pictish and Anglo-Saxon Visual Culture (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2016).  5 See M. P. Brown, ‘Making manuscripts and Mappaemundi’, in N. Millea and D. Terkla (eds), A Companion to English mappaemundi of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, forthcoming).  6 See E. P. Kelly, ‘The Lough Kinale shrine: the implications for the manuscripts’ in F. O’Mahony (ed.), The Book of Kells: Proceedings of a Conference at Trinity College Dublin, 6–9 September 1992 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), pp. 280–9.  7 M. P. Brown, ‘Imagining, imaging and experiencing the East in Insular and Anglo-Saxon cultures: new evidence for contact’, in J. D. Niles, S. S. Klein and J. Wilcox (eds), Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination, Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies, 6 (Tempe, AZ, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016), pp. 49–84.  8 For discussion of this premise, see M. P. Brown, The Book and the Transformation of Britain, c. 550–1050: A Study in Written and Visual

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Literacy and Orality, The Sandars Lectures in Bibliography, 2009 (London and Chicago, IL: British Library and Chicago University Press, 2011).  9 R. N. Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England (London: Collins, 1980), and ‘Scandinavian myth on Viking-period stone sculpture in England’, in M. C. Ross (ed.), Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, Proceedings of the 11th International Saga Conference, 2–7 July 2000 (Sydney: Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney, 2003). See also M. Foys, Virtually AngloSaxon: New Media, Old Media, and Early Medieval Studies in the Late Age of Print (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007), pp. 161–7. 10 S. Plunkett, Suffolk in Anglo-Saxon Times (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), p. 79. 11 Translation is from the Samnordisk runtextdatabas, available at http:// home6.swipnet.se/~w-61277/rundata/1.htm (where it is referenced as Rundata, DR 41) (accessed 4 May 2014). 12 Translation from the Samnordisk runtextdatabas (where it is referenced as Rundata, DR 42). 13 M. P. Brown, ‘The Lichfield Angel and the manuscript context: Lichfield as a centre of Insular art’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 160 (2007), 8–19. 14 H. L. Petrosyan, ‘Writing and the book’, in L. Abrahamian, N. Sweezy and S. Sweezy, Armenian Folk Arts, Culture and Identity (Bloomington and Indianopolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 50–68 (p. 57). 15 On this and the other Insular and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts mentioned, see Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age. 16 T. A. Heslop, ‘The production of de luxe manuscripts and the patronage of King Cnut and Queen Emma’, Anglo-Saxon England, 19 (1990), 151–98; Brown, The Book and the Transformation of Britain, c. 550–1050. 17 M. P. Brown, ‘The Tower of Babel: the architecture of the early Western written vernaculars’, in A. J. Duggan, J. Greatrex and B. Bolton (eds), Omnia Disce: Medieval Studies in Memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 109–28. 18 For example, ‘Ingigerth is the most beautiful of all women’ and ‘Ingebjork the fair widow – many a woman has walked stooping in here a very showy person’, signed by ‘Erlingr’. The Orkneyinga Saga relates (ch. 93): ‘On the thirteenth day of Christmas they travelled on foot over to Firth. During a snowstorm they took shelter in Maeshowe and two of them (his men) went insane, which slowed them down badly so that by the time they reached Firth it was night time’, www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm (accessed 18 October 2014).

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19 Brown, ‘The Tower of Babel’ and The Book and the Transformation of Britain; see also R. I. Page, Runes and Runic Inscriptions (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1995); and J. Higgitt, K. Forsyth and D. N. Parsons (eds), Roman, Runes and Ogham. Medieval Inscriptions in the Insular World and on the Continent (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2001). 20 E. Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition (London and Toronto: British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2005). 21 M. H. Kammel (ed.), Gotland’s Picture Stones: Bearers of an Enigmatic Legacy, Reports from the Friends of the Historical Museums Association, 84 (Visby: Gotlands Museum, 2012). 22 M. P. Brown, ‘Embodying exegesis: depictions of the evangelists in Insular manuscripts’, in A. M. Luiselli Fadda and É. Ó Carragáin (eds), Le Isole Britanniche e Roma in Età Romanobarbarica (Rome: Herder, 1998), pp. 109–27. 23 T. J. Brown (ed.), The Stonyhurst Gospel (London: Roxburghe Club, 1969); M. P. Brown, ‘“In the beginning was the Word”: books and faith in the age of Bede’, The Jarrow Lecture, 2000 (Newcastle-uponTyne: St Paul’s Church, 2000), and ‘Reading the Lindisfarne Gospels: text, image, context’, in R. G. Gameson (ed.), The Lindisfarne Gospels (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, forthcoming). 24 H. Kure, ‘In the beginning was the scream: conceptual thought in the Old Norse myth of creation’, in R. Simek and J. Meurer (eds), Scandinavia and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages: Papers of the 12th International Saga Conference (Bonn: Hausdruckerei der Universität Bonn, 2003) pp. 311–19. 25 G. and I. Henderson, The Art of the Picts (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004). 26 B. Meehan, The Book of Durrow (Dublin: Trinity College, 1996). 27 J. M. Backhouse, D. H. Turner and L. Webster (eds), The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966–1066 (London: British Museum 1984), no. 105. 28 J. Kershaw, Viking-Age Scandinavian Art Styles and their Appearance in the British Isles. Part II, Late Viking-Age Art Styles, The Finds Research Group AD 700–1700, Datasheet 43 (2011). 29 Bailey, ‘Scandinavian myth on Viking-period stone sculpture in England’. 30 Bailey, Viking Age Sculpture in Northern England and ‘Scandinavian myth on Viking-period stone sculpture in England’. 31 See Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, trans A. G. Brodeur (New York: The American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1916), pp. 61–6. 32 See the Physiologus, chapters 1 and 18: see Christian Schröder, Der Millstätter Physiologus. Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Würzburger Beiträge zur deutschen Philologie, 24 (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2005).

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33 Gregory I, Letter to Abbot Mellitus, Epistola 76, PL, 77, cols 1215– 16; www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/greg1-mellitus.txt (accessed 18 October 2014). 34 King James Bible.

11 Mise en page: the dimension and layout of books containing Old English Donald G. Scragg

Until the recent advent of information technology, the main channel for the transmission of knowledge in Europe since class­ ical times has been through the medium of the written word. From the end of the ninth century to the early twelfth, books were written in England in one of two languages, Latin and English and occasionally in both. Since those in Latin form part of a pan-European cultural development and must consequently be seen in that context, this chapter is devoted exclusively to vernacular materials, the attempt being to understand more about the role of books in English and any specialised function they may have had. Although the concept of the book would not appear, superficially, to have changed much in the last millennium and more, on closer inspection it is apparent that many features of both books themselves and their usage have altered with the passage of time. For instance, whereas books today have a defining notion usually indicated by the title, in the pre-Conquest period books in English sometimes have no governing theme while their items often appear, to us at least, to have been randomly assembled, and they apparently had no titles.1 The many hundreds of books containing English surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period have been very fully catalogued and analysed,2 but it is clear that more can still be gleaned from their careful perusal either individually or as a whole. In my recent work on cataloguing the scribes writing English up to 1100,3 which in itself offered a new perspective on a large number of Anglo-Saxon books, I have had reason to handle a great many manuscripts containing the vernacular, and it has struck me how greatly they vary in size and page layout, while at the same time conforming to an overall design. This chapter will explore how the dimensions of surviving books in English can give clues about their intended use, about how they were created, and about what that

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may tell us about the role of the written vernacular in the society of early England. In all that is said below, it has to be borne in mind that chance of survival plays a great part, and all my conclusions are consequently relative. Large books are more likely to survive than smaller ones, and books in English have survived better in some centres than in others.4 Books in English need to be set against the many more books in Latin that were also produced in England, sometimes written by the same scribes, but to have tackled this larger issue would have made this a bigger project than is possible here. What I have sought to do is to provide material for a fuller study of the English materials, and to highlight issues that seem to have been overlooked in the whole question of the transmission of knowledge. In Table 11.1 below, the dimension of each book is seen in terms of the writing area since the surviving overall size depends on how much of the page has been trimmed by binders (cf. items 10a and 10b, which are part of a single writing exercise and in which writing size is the same but overall page size is now different, and item 103, which is a single manuscript that has been artificially divided into two books by a modern binder and where each now has a different page size). Layout of the table It is necessary to begin with an explanation of the way in which the material is laid out in Table 11.1 at the end of the chapter, before attempting a brief analysis of my findings from the material itself. Included in the survey are all manuscripts written from the earliest period (in this case the late ninth century) to those broadly dated to the beginning of the twelfth century. This end-date is chosen because new ideas appear in book creation in the course of that century, but the date is plastic and I have made no effort to exclude manuscripts of the transition period from the eleventh to the twelfth given that palaeographic dating can only be considered accurate within a quarter of a century and book creation must have varied considerably from one centre to another. Since a date generally agreed by palaeographers is included for each entry, it is possible for readers to draw their own conclusions about comparison within half-centuries. As far as contents are concerned, the list is intended to include all books that are written wholly or predominantly in English but not those which are written in Latin with occasional English material. Latin texts with English glosses

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are therefore excluded, as are Latin manuscripts with sporadic English items. Exceptions are those works which were clearly intended to be seen as in both languages, such as bilingual copies of the Benedictine Rule, where English translations follow the Latin chapter by chapter, two texts where Latin follows the Old English, the Faustina copy of the Regularis concordia (item 40), the AngloSaxon Chronicle version F (item 75), and a recently discovered unique bilingual homiliary (item 56). Since a brief note of the contents of the volumes is included in the table, users can easily ignore such items should they wish to do so. Single-page documents are excluded but manuscript fragments are included where at least one complete page has survived. Damage, for example that sustained in the Cotton fire, is noted where necessary, but obviously page size for manuscripts in which fire damage has resulted in the shrinkage of the parchment is not included. The table is in size order, from largest to smallest by height of the writing area, with width being a secondary feature.5 Also included is the number of lines per page, to suggest the size of writing. The number of lines per page can give only an indication of size of writing, since a great deal of space is sometimes left between the lines. This methodology is helpful in, for example, the large copies of the Pastoral Care (items 2 and 4), which have relatively few lines per page, as against copies of the translation of the Old Testament (items 5 and 7), which are comparable in size but which have many more lines.6 However, that the number of lines is only broadly indicative of size of writing is clear from item 11b, a single quire in a copy of the Old English Bede, which, by comparison with most of the rest of the manuscript (item 11a) has a much longer writing area without any increase either in the number of lines or of the size of writing. In this instance, the scribe may have been using a quire originally intended for a different manuscript, or he may have started to move to a different number of lines per page as happens in later quires of the manuscript, but whatever the cause of his choice of writing area, the size of his writing does not change. Items in the table are numbered in the left-hand column for ease of reference. Where manuscripts have marked internal differences, either in page size, writing area or number of lines, subdivisions in the numbering draw attention to them (e.g., items 1, 10, 11, 15). In item 1, for example, only two quires survive, each now used as the binding leaves of a later book, but 1b at least (and possibly 1a also) has been cut down to fit its present position,7 although writing area,

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layout and contents show that the two quires are ultimately part of one book. No account is taken in line numbering of any lines left blank by the scribe, nor does page length or width take account of additions made subsequent to the original writing plan. Sizes for both writing area and full-page are given in millimetres and in general are those recorded by Ker in his Catalogue, occasionally modified by the measurements of others including myself and editors of facsimiles such as the EEMF series or the volumes of ASMMF.8 Item numbers in Ker’s Catalogue and volume numbers of ASMMF are included in the table for reference since item numbers in the table have no relevance beyond the list itself.9 The width of the writing area is calculated within the inner bounding lines. Discrepancies between authorities recording length of writing area sometimes occur when ascenders and descenders are taken into account, but these do not disturb the overall pattern established here. The table includes a broad indication of content, so that readers may draw fuller conclusions about the intended use of the books than can be attempted within the scope of this chapter. The contents of the manuscripts are fully described in Ker’s Catalogue, and no attempt is made to reproduce that material here. Consequently, the contents column gives only the briefest indication of the main entry in each item so that comparison may be made between items ordered by size. Where a manuscript appears to have additional material added subsequent to the writing of what is assumed to be its original focus, such material is ignored. A good example is item 41, which has a copy of Ælfric’s Grammar copied by two scribes. Additional material was later added before the Grammar by different scribes, while the remaining blank leaves after the Grammar were filled with further material and additional quires added by yet more scribes. I have assumed that it was the original intention to make a copy of the Grammar and that all of the rest were later additions, and have therefore included the Grammar alone in item 41. Throughout the table, I have made no distinction between Ælfric’s Grammar and the Grammar and Glossary, nor between homilies and saints’ lives nor between different versions of Wærferth’s translations of Gregory’s Dialogues. The versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are signalled, however, being seen as distinct texts. It is important to note that not all books survive in the form in which they were written. This may be because they consist of quires that were not written in the order in which they survive,

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for example the Vercelli Book (item 22), which, although written throughout by a single scribe, includes what are now three opening quires, which may have been intended either for a different book or for a different place within the book.10 The same is probably true of item 64 which, in the material written by the original scribe (a collection of homiletic pieces by Ælfric), consists of three independent booklets, which may have been put together at any time by someone other than the scribe himself.11 More extreme examples are other items that were clearly altered, e.g., item 103, which not only has an extra cut-down quire inserted (item 103b) but has another (Quire 2) inserted within the leaves of Quire 1. It is also the case that not all sheets of parchment were intended for the use to which they have been put in surviving books. Four leaves of Quire 14 of item 82 were made as two leaves for a much larger manuscript, as can be seen by the ruling that runs vertically down the page. They were then folded in half to fit their present position, with the original ruling ignored. Although item 82 was created late in the period covered by the table, an earlier example may be found in Exeter additions to item 88c where pp. 33–40 (four leaves) were first ruled for two larger leaves.12 Commentary I begin with a brief consideration of the general layout of preConquest books containing English. No book survives written in landscape, with the width greater than the length of the writing area. There are few books (only four in the table) written in double columns (items 1, 21, 36, 57), in addition to an initial quire in one other (item 62b) ruled for a table of contents. This is in contrast to books in Latin, which are more frequently in this format.13 Although double column layout occurs in one of the particularly large vernacular books (item 1), presumably for ease of reading, it also occurs in some medium-sized volumes, suggesting that the number of columns relates either to use or to the traditional presentation of such material (e.g., the herbal in item 21 and the pharmacopoeia in item 36),14 or both. The majority of surviving books lie within a particular size range, with a page size from around 300 x 200 to around 250 x 150. Since these have often been trimmed by binders, it is more helpful, as noted above, to consider the writing area, which most commonly lies between 230 x 130 and 180 x 100 (items 25 to 75, almost half of the total).

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Readers should interpret imaginatively the bald figures given in the table. For instance, in some pages of item 22 (the Vercelli Book), the relationship of text to page size suggests that they were made with little reference to the maximum use of parchment, since text length as against page length shows that almost 100 mm was left as top and bottom margins,15 while page width against text shows an equally cavalier use of parchment. Although such wide margins might be expected in large volumes such as items 2 and 11, or elaborately illuminated ones such as item 30, it seems more surprising with regard to medium-sized unadorned ones like the apparent workman-like book of homilies which item 22 is (despite some of its contents being in verse). Similarly the number of lines to a page may give some indication of the size of writing, though this is not necessarily the case as noted above of item 11, where the height of the writing area is increased by one fifth in Quire 10 (item 11b) without a change in the number of lines to the page. Here there is no significant increase in the size of writing (nor a change of scribe), merely a wider space between the lines.16 Equating the size of books with content is rarely possible with any degree of certainty, but some observations can be made. It would seem likely that large volumes of biblical translation (items 3, 5, 7, 9) are intended for lectern use, and this is probably true too of the larger copies of homilies and lives of saints (items 6 and 10), Ælfric’s Grammar (item 1, which is presumably a copy used by a master teaching novices), and possibly also some copies of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (items 8 and 11). At the opposite extreme, such copies of the laws as have survived are regularly small (items 96, 99, 100 and 102), exceptions being where law-codes are added to other material, as in the Parker Chronicle (item 15). It is possible that copies of particular sorts of material traditionally have a uniform size, or it may be that these are of like size because the copies are in some way related in their transmission history, for example the copies of Ælfric’s Grammar in items 51, 54, 59, 65, and 66, and again 92 and 94,17 or copies of the bilingual Benedictine Rule in items 44 and 49. For all their similar dimensions, it is hard to justify a relationship between the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in items 15 and 18, and those in 73 and 75, since there is no close textual relationship within each pair (items 15 and 18 are versions A and D, items 73 and 75 are B and F). There is, on the other hand, a known relationship between versions B and C, items 73 and 34 respectively,18 but clearly size is not important in that relationship. Likewise items 10, 19 and 42

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(Bodley 340, CCCC 162 and CCCC 198) are known to be closely related textually, in that they are sets of homilies drawn principally from the copies of the First and Second series of Catholic Homilies sent by Ælfric to Archbishop Sigeric, but their size would suggest that 10 and 19 are closer to each other than either is to 42, whereas in fact 19 and 42 are textually closer than either is to 10.19 We might have to conclude, in other words, that there is little that can be deduced about the relationship of copies of texts from the size of the books in which they are recorded. In a few manuscripts, although the dimensions of the book as it has come down to us remain consistent, there is a different writing area in one or more quires, a fact that is worthy of note when there is no change of scribe. This is a matter which has been much commented upon in the case of the Vercelli Book (item 22), where a marked change in the writing area and number of lines (item 22c) occurs in the middle of a single entry (The Dream of the Rood).20 The table makes it easy to bring similar changes in format in other manuscripts into the discussion,21 for example the copy of the Old English Bede in item 11b, of the Pentateuch in item 95, and again, in the middle of a homily (and from the recto of one folio to the verso) in item 91. Less certain are the examples of Gregory’s Dialogues in item 14, and perhaps the copy of the Gospels in item 16, and of the homiliary in item 31. Similar, but not identical in that the subject matter changes with the format, is item 25, but here the likelihood is that two booklets (25a and 25b) were created independently and associated with each other only at a late date. In manuscripts in which there has been alteration at a much later period with the introduction of material written by a different scribe, this type of change in format is easier to understand, as, for example, item 78b (the Tanner manuscript of the Old English Bede), where a scribe has inserted ten folios into an existing quire to supply text lost or omitted in the original, and has adjusted the number of lines to accommodate precisely the text needed (two or more lines fewer than on surrounding folios). There are other issues that may be illuminated by looking at size, but there is room here to consider only two: first, the usefulness of layout in determining when two or more originally separate books have been locked together at a later date, and second, its value in the determination of a book’s original form. Items 31 and 38 are now parts of one manuscript, but size coupled with content, quiring and scribal hands shows that they were originally two. The same is true of items 33 and 34, although in this case the scribe of

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item 34 may have consciously added his material to an earlier book. In contrast, Ker notes in his Catalogue22 that the uniformity of format, as well as the overlap of scribes, associate items 88, 89 and 91, while items 28 and 35 are only marginally different from each other in layout and may have been intended as a pair. To illustrate the original form of a book, I take as an example a manuscript that was written in the first half of the eleventh century and considerably altered some fifty years later. In item 88d we have an Exeter scribe inserting one quire containing two homilies into the middle of an existing homiliary. The added quire has 25 lines as against 19 in the rest of the book (and against 19 in other contemporary Exeter additions in the related 88c), but the added lines do not involve increasing the written area. Presumably the increased number of lines was to accommodate the added material and only this. From this we can deduce two things: first, the scribe knew precisely how much space he would need, and second, he was conscious of the need to preserve the writing space so that the book remained uniform. While I was working on the table below and dividing item 88 into its constituent parts, my attention was drawn to Ker’s note at the end of his description of the second of two homiletic pieces written on the inserted quire. Ker states: ‘Pp. 225, 226 are blank’.23 At first sight, this appears to suggest that the scribe left two blank pages at the end of the inserted quire with its two homiletic pieces. Why then would he have increased the number of lines per page when he was at pains to keep the writing area to that of the rest of the book? The answer is that the blank leaf (two pages) is not part of the inserted quire as the positioning of Ker’s comment suggests but the beginning of a quire from the original book of the early eleventh century (item 88b in the table below). Item 88 was (and is) a double volume homiliary, CCCC 419 and 421, with the first volume opening with a blank leaf.24 It would seem from the layout of CCCC 421 (item 88b) that it too began with a blank leaf and that the material written on Quires 16–24 originally opened the book,25 which therefore began with four homilies by Ælfric from the First Series of Catholic Homilies designed to be preached successively from Lent to the Ascension. Furthermore, it is likely that what is now the first piece in CCCC 421, Ælfric’s homily for Pentecost in the First Series, which he wrote to follow the homily for Ascension Day, was intended to come next in the sequence in this manuscript as it does elsewhere. This discovery, which seems not to have been noticed by the many scholars who have worked on this manuscript,26 takes us a step

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nearer to seeing the original form of a book that was much altered during the Anglo-Saxon period (and possibly again during the sixteenth century).27 Understanding how knowledge and ideas were transmitted in the early Middle Ages begins and perhaps ends with a study of the texts themselves. If this chapter facilitates comprehension of the creation of the books, the vehicles of that knowledge, then it will have served its purpose.

9

8

7

6

5

4

2 3

1b

35, –

23, –

142, 7

117, –

125, 21

19, –

30, 25 322, 3

265, 15

Written space

Page size

c. 267 x 167 328 x 217

c. 265 x 158 c. 320 x 225 30 (29 on fols 3 and 10) c. 265 x 135 305 x 215

XI1

XI2

XI1

27

38

30

gospels

Bede

Hexateuch

lives of saints

269 x 165

XI1

37

Heptateuch

298 x 201 (trimmed) 294 x 223

271 x 189

XI2

c. 409 x 262 27 312 x 211 26

Ælfric’s Grammar Ælfric’s Grammar Pastoral Care Gospels

Content

Pastoral Care

305 x 148 280 x 170

26 in 2 columns

26 in 2 columns

Lines per page

XI 3rd c. 273 x 157 c. 325 x 230 24 quarter

X2 XI

XI med. c. 340 x 240 382 x 282

XI med. c. 340 x 240 397 x 272

265, 15

1a

BL, Royal 12 G XII, fols 2–9 Oxford, All Souls College 38, fols 1–12 CCCC 12 Oxford, Bodl., Eng. Bib. c. 2, fol. 9 Cambridge University Library Ii. 2. 4 Lincoln, Cathedral Library 298, no. 2 Gloucester, Cathedral Library 35, fols 1–3 BL, Cotton Claudius B. iv Cambridge University Library Kk. 3. 18 CCCC 140

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Table of manuscripts in size order

(continued)

single bifolium only binding fragments

Exeter

notes

CCCC 41, pp. 141–56

CCCC 41, pp. 157–206

11c

Page size

XI1

XI1

32, 11

32, 11

OE Bede c. 250–57 x c. 347 x 214 25 (except pp. 145–35 335–50 [Quire 22] and p. 483 which have 24) 293 x c. 347 x 214 25 (except pp. OE Bede 145–35 53–4 which have 24) OE Bede c. 250 x c. 347 x 214 pp. 157–90 and 145–35 205: 27; pp. 191–8 and 201–4: 28; fol. 206: 22

homilies

homilies

Content

XI1

26

26

Lines per page

c. 258 x 155 Bodl. 342: 315 x 210

c. 258 x 155 Bodl. 340: 315 x 220

Written space

XI in.

XI in.

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Oxford, Bodl., 309, 17 Bodley 340 + 342, fols 1– 202 Oxford, Bodl., 309, 17 Bodley 340 + 342, fols 1–202 CCCC 41, pp. 1–140, 32, 11 207–350 and 367–484

11b

11a

10b

10a

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

Quires 11–13; adjustments have been made to make text fit into Quire 13 (the next quire presumably written already)

Quire 10

this and 10b created as a double volume

notes

Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 22 BL, Cotton Otho C. i, vol II

CCCC 173, fols 1–16 39, –

CCCC 173, fols 17 and 18 CCCC 173, fols 19–30 CCCC 173, fols 33–52 Cambridge University Library Ii. 2. 11, fols 2–87, 96–199

15a

15b

16a

15d

15c

14

20, 22

39, –

39, –

39, –

182, 6

87, 12

49, –

13

12

32, 11

CCCC 41, pp. 351–66 CCCC 201, pp. 1–278

11d

247 x 150

c. 296 x 196 32

XI2

23

c. 287 x 206 25

c. 245 x 138 317 x 225

220 x 170

X1–XI2 c. 225 x 140 c. 287 x 206 25

X1

IX/X

fols 1–61: 27; fols 62–146: 30; fols 149–55: 31 c. 245 x 145 c. 287 x 206 36 and 37 (39 on fol. 16) c. 230 x 160 c. 287 x 206 26

XI1 and c. 245 x 150 uncertain XI med.

X/XI

c. 250 x c. 347 x 214 23 145–35 XI1 and c. 250 x 122 c. 280 x 162 41 XI2

XI1

Gospels

laws

Chronicle A

Chronicle A to annal 891 Chronicle A

Gregory’s Dialogues, etc.

the original composition is unclear but the later additions are a homiletic and legal anthology Pastoral Care

OE Bede

(continued)

Quires 1 and 2

much damaged by fire

originally XI1, expanded in XI2, taking over quires from the original

Quire 23

CCCC 162 Exeter, Cathedral Library 3501, fols 8–130 Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 76, Part B

19 20

21

18b

18a

17

Cambridge University Library Ii. 2. 11, fols 88–95 Oxford, Bodl., Bodley 441 BL, Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fols 3–53, 55–69, 72–86 and 88–90 BL, Cotton Tiberius B. iv, fols 54, 70, 71

16b

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

328, 6

38, 25 116, 22

XI med. 240 x 162

242 x 129 240 x 160

Chronicle D

54: c. 285 x 24 206; 70 and 71: c. 285 x 195 c. 297 x 203 23 c. 310–20 x 21–23 218–25

XI med. 243 x 116 and XI2

192, –

XI in. X2

Chronicle D

c. 285 x 190 24 (25 on fols 75 and 76r

295 x 208

31 (fols 131–9: 30) in 2 columns

herbal

homilies verse

Gospels

XI med. 243 x 116 and XI2

25

192, –

296 x 190

245 x 120

Gospels

Content

XI1

20, 22

26

Lines per page

312, 3

Page size

c. 255 x 160 317 x 225

Written space

XI2

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Canterbury

Quire 13

notes

26c

26b

26a

25b

25a

24

23

22c

22b

22a

BL, Royal 7 C XII, fols 4–218 BL, Cotton Julius E. vii Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 76, Part A, fols 1–54 Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 76, Part A, fols 55–67 CCCC 190, pp. 295–420 CCCC 190, pp. 295–420 CCCC 190, pp. 295–420 225 x 120

XI1

XI med. 230 – 220 x c. 288 x 185 132 XI med. 230 – 220 x c. 288 x 185 132 XI2 230 – 220 x c. 288 x 185 132

328, 6

45, –

45, –

45, –

293 x 205

293 x 205

230 x 135

XI1

328, 6

c. 232 x 125

c. 237 x 145

28; Quire 2: 27; Quire 5: 25 28; Quire 2: 27; Quire 5: 25 28

19

27

c. 240–22 x 155–50

X2

X ex.

c. 260 x 144

X2

ecclesiastical institutes ecclesiastical institutes pastoral letters homily

St Basil Admonitio

Gregory’s Dialogues

(continued)

pp. 295–319, 351–9

pp. 366–418

pp. 320–50

Quires 11 and 12

homilies and lives of saints in verse and prose c. 310 x 203 29 homilies and Quire 4 lives of saints in verse and prose homilies and Quires 15–19 c. 310 x 203 Quire 15: 32 or 33; Quires 16 and lives of saints in 17: 31; Quires 18 verse and prose and 19: 32 310 x 205 25 homilies Ælfric’s working manuscript 273 x 185 32 lives of saints

c. 238–15 x c. 310 x 203 24 or 25 142–37

X2

XI in.

162, 19

257, 17

Vercelli, Bibliotheca 394, – capitulare CXVII, fols 1–24 and 33–104 Vercelli, Bibliotheca 394, – capitulare CXVII, fols 25–32 Vercelli, Bibliotheca 394, – capitulare CXVII, fols 105–35

Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 20 Oxford, Bodl., Junius 11, pp. 1–212 CCCC 178, pp. 1–42 + CCCC 162, pp. 139–60 CCCC 178, pp. 43–270 Oxford, Corpus Christi College 279, Part II BL, Cotton Tiberius B. i, fols 1–111

29

33

32

31b

31a

30

28

BL, Cotton Otho C. i, vol. I CCCC 196

27

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

230 x 115

191, 10

354, –

27

25

Lines per page

c. 287 x 195 26 or 27

c. 274 x 21–29 212–25 c. 323 x 196 26

288 x 180

uncertain

Page size

225–210 x 111 224–215 x 136–130

XI in.

XI1

23–26

c. 280 x 195 27 (25 on fols 3–34)

259 x 168

c. 225 x 130 c. 287 x 195 30 or 31

XI1

41, 25

41, 25

334, –

890–897 225–205 x 175–160 X/XI c. 225 x 135–120 XI1 c. 225 x 130

XI 3rd 226 x quarter 110–100

XI1

Written space

324, 6

47, –

181, 3

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Orosius

OE Bede

homilies

homilies

poetry

martyrology, Vindicta salvatoris Pastoral Care

gospels

Content

Quires 5–18

Quires 1–4

badly damaged

notes

CCCC 178, pp. 287–457

BL, Cotton Vitellius 220, 17 C. v, original fols (see Ker, Catalogue, p. 291)

BL, Cotton Vitellius 220, 17 C. v, added fols BL, Cotton Faustina 155, – B. iii, fols 158–98 + Tiberius A. iii, fols 174–7 BL, Harley 3271, fols 239, 15 7–92

38

39a

39b

41

40

37

41, 25

BL, Cotton Vitellius 219, 1 C. iii, fols 11–85 CCCC 201, 50, – pp. 179–272

36

35

BL, Cotton Tiberius 191, 10 B. i, fols 112–64 CCCC 191 46, –

34

224–215 x c. 280 x 195 27 136–130 c. 224 x 98 288 x 175 27

220 x 115

c. 215 x 137 271 x 179

XI1

26

Capitula of Theodulf, homily bilingual Benedictine Rule homilies

verses; Chronicle C rule of Chrodegang pharmacopoeia

30

Ælfric’s Grammar

35–37, except fol. 95v on which 30 c. 245 x 155 25 Regularis Concordia

XI1

XI1

c. 220 x 130 uncertain to fol. 83 (end of a quire); then c. 220 x 145 c. 230 x 145 uncertain

c. 220 x 132 c. 287 x 195 22

c. 280 x 162 27

X/XI

XI1

XI med. 222 x 100

XI 3rd quarter XI1 c. 222 x 155 c. 260 x 190 31 in 2 columns

XI2

(continued)

fire and water damage

bilingual

BL, Add. 47967 133, – Oxford, Bodl., Auct. 297, 16 F. 4. 32, fols 10–18

57, 11

46 47

45

43, 25 109, 14

48, 25

48, 25

48, 25

CCCC 188 Durham, Cathedral Library, B. IV. 24, fols 74–127 CCCC 303

CCCC 198, fols 1–143, 160–217, 248–87 CCCC 198, fols 144–9 CCCC 198, fol. 150–9 and 218–47

c. 214 x 133 278 x 175 214 x 138 262 x 184

213–203 x 260 x 196 34 and 35 145–138 c. 212 x 130 c. 282 x 190 31 212 x 110 c. 245 x 170 20

XI1 XI2

XII1

X1 XI2

XI1

25 33

c. 271 x 187 22–23

c. 271 x 187 25

c. 215 x 135–107 c. 215 x 135–107

XI1

Lines per page

c. 271 x 187 26

Page size

c. 215 x 135–107

Written space

XI1

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

43 44

42c

42b

42a

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

Orosius single homily

homilies bilingual Benedictine Rule homilies

homilies

homilies

homilies

Content

Quires 20 and 28–31, written by a ‘nearly contemporary’ scribe (Ker, Catalogue, p. 79)

Quire 19

notes

BL, Harley 107, fols 227, 15 1–71v New York, Pierpont 418S, – Morgan Library, G. 63 Taunton, Somerset County Record Office, DD/SAS C/1193/77

54

56

55

53

52

51 209 x 158

208 x 126

IX ex.

X2

195, –

c. 275 x 185 25

205 x 165

c. 205 x 135 c. 245 x 185 20 (trimmed)

XI2

XI2

28

271 x 172

24

15

23

XI med. 206 x 135

259 x 180

276 x 207

XI med. c. 210 x 103 226 x 152

353, –

23

bilingual homiliary

bilingual Benedictine Rule Ælfric’s Grammar Exodus

Ælfric’s Grammar Pastoral Care

bilingual Benedictine Rule homilies

24 (fols 62–7: 25) Boethius

c. 275 x 218 30

158, 15

210–205 x 162

X/XI

15, 17

Cambridge University Library Gg. 3.28 BL, Cotton Julius A. ii, fols 10–135 BL, Cotton Tiberius B. xxi + Kassel, Landesbibliothek, Anhang 19 Oxford, Corpus Christi College 197

285 x 190

c. 210 x 150 282 x 193

XI med. 210 x 115

XII1

395, –

50

49

305, –

Oxford, Bodl., Bodley 180 Wells, Cathedral Library 7

48

(continued)

4 leaves

2 leaves

fragment

Cambridge University Library Ii. 4. 6 Cambridge, Trinity College B. 15. 34 Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 113 + 114

60

62b

62a

61

Oxford, Bodl., Junius 338, 6 121, fols 1–110

331, 6

86, 16

21, 21

XI2

XI2

c. 248 x 161 21

c. 261 x 150 20

33 to fol. 26, then 31, all in 2 columns 20 (21 on pp. 253–78 and 295–395) 26

Lines per page

Hatt. 113: 23 255 x 158; Hatt. 114: c. 268 x 160 c. 200 x 95 c. 263 x 153 23 200 x 95

XI med. 201 x 99

XI med. 202 x 94

203 x 95

XI2 262 x 175

c. 203 x 135 260 x 170

XII1

BL, Royal 15 B XXII 269, 15

333, 17

59

58

uncertain

Page size

204 x 158

175, –

BL, Cotton Otho B. ii + Otho B. x, fols 61, 63, 64 Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 116

57

Written space

X/XI

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

ecclesiastical institutes

homilies

homilies

Ælfric’s Grammar homilies

homilies

Pastoral Care

Content

2 columns in fols 1–8, ruled for a table of contents

notes

Durham, Cathedral 107, 14 Library B. III. 32, fols 56–127 BL, Cotton Caligula 139, – A. xv, fols 120–41

BL, Cotton Faustina 153, 21 A. ix Oxford, Bodl., 332, 6 Hatton 115, fols 140–7

71

60, 25

70

69

332, 6

Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 115, fol. 65 CCCC 322

68

67

89, 16

56, 11 332, 6

66

65

63 64

338, 6

Oxford, Bodl., Junius 121, fols 111–37 CCCC 302 Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 115, fols 1–64, 66–139 Cambridge, Trinity College R. 9. 17

62c

c. 188 x 105 228 x 150 c. 187 x 111 230 x 150 187 x 100

XI2

XII1

XI2

248 x 160

242 x 155

23

30 (31 in Quire 20) 24

24

190 x 100

XI2

217 x 165

22 lines in Quire 17

single homily

(continued)

independent quire

computistical 3 quires, material, annals, including some notes, etc. material in Latin brief homiletic items Gregory’s Dialogues homilies

36

190–180 x c. 120

XI2

235 x 156

191 x 114

XI1

homilies homilies

homilies

27 (30 in Quire 4) Ælfric’s Grammar; Distichs of Cato 30 Ælfric’s Grammar

c. 200 x 95 c. 263 x 153 23; fols 128–37: 22 197 x 110 c. 253 x 168 31 197 x 100 248 x 160 27

XI/XII c. 192 x 130 206 x 146

XII1 XI2

XI2

BL, Cotton Domitian 148, – viii, fols 30–70

Oxford, Bodl., Eng. 323, – Hist. e. 49 Oxford, Bodl., Laud 343, 6 Misc. 482

75

76

77

74

73

BL, Royal 12 D 264, 1 XVII BL, Cotton Tiberius 188, – A. vi, fols 1–35 + Tiberius A. iii, fol. 178 Princeton, University 382, 17 Library, Scheide 71

178 x 127

XI med. 178 x 65

XI1

XI/XII 182–176 x 107–100

185–75 x 108

185 x 120

X2

X/XI

185 x 130

Written space

X2

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

72

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

24

c. 200 x 145 21 (22 occasionally near the beginning of the MS) c. 210 x 146 fols 30–45r: 21 or 22; fols 45v–53: 29 or 30; fols 63–70: 40–45 at end of final quire 234 x 168 29 c. 202 x 91

Content

penitential

Orosius

Chronicle F (English with Latin translation)

homilies

Chronicle B

21 (20 in Quire 5) recipes

Lines per page

c. 228 x 158 23

264 x 182

Page size

notes

85

84

83

82

81

80

79

78b

78a

BL, Cotton Caligula A. xiv, fols 93–130 Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 8558–63, fols 132–53 BL, Cotton Vitellius A. xv, fols 94–209 BL, Cotton Faustina A. x, fols 3–100 BL, Cotton Faustina A. x, fols 102–48 London, Lambeth Palace 427, fols 210–11 CCCC 449

Oxford, Bodl., Tanner 10, fols 1–104, 115–139 Oxford, Bodl., Tanner 10, fols 105–14

71, 25

281, –

154, 15

154, 15

216, –

10, 13

138, 19

351, –

351, –

c. 177 x 107 250 x 162

21

c. 171 x 100 c. 188 x 135 33

XI1

XI2

c. 175 x 98 c. 225 x 145 28 (27 in Quire 16) 175 x 97 211 x 155 21

c. 175 x 105 c. 195 x 20–22 lines 115–30 c. 175 x 98 c. 225 x 145 28

c. 175 x 115 c. 210 x 150 fols 132–9: 23; fols 140–153: 25

222 x 132

24

Ælfric’s Grammar

prose and verse texts Ælfric’s Grammar Benedictine Rule lives of saints

penitential texts

lives of saints

OE Bede

26–8; fols 124–39: OE Bede 22–4

XII1

XI2

XI1 (140r: XII1) X/XI

XI med. 176 x 96

X med. c. 177 x 107 250 x 162

X1

(continued)

fragment

damaged in Cotton fire

one quire + two leaves inserted later into Quire 14 38-leaf fragment

170 x 80 170 x 80 170 x 80

c. 170 x 80 184 x 125

XI1

XI2 XI2

XI2

89

88c 88d

88b

88a

BL, Cotton Cleopatra 144, – B. xiii, fols 1–58

69, 8 69, 8

69, 8

68, 8

XI1

c. 170 x 95 c. 225 x 150 24; fols 96–115: 25 170 x 80 c. 205 x 130 19

373, –

homilies homilies

homilies

homilies

laws

medical recipes

Content

19 (except fols 57 homilies and 58

c. 195 x 120 19 c. 195 x 120 25

c. 195 x 120 19

27

XII1

87

208 x 155

170 x 130

X in.

Louvain-laNeuve, Archives de l’Université Catholique de Louvain, Fragmenta H. Omont 3 Rochester, Cathedral Library CCCC 419 and 421, pp. 1 and 2 CCCC 421, pp. 99–208, 225–354 CCCC 421, pp. 3–98 CCCC 421, pp. 209–24

417S, 13

Lines per page

86

Page size

Written space

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

Quire 15 inserted between existing quires of item 88b

single page fragment

notes

97

96

95b

95a

94

93

92

Cambridge University Library Hh 1. 10 Oxford, Bodl., Laud Misc. 509, fols 1–33 Oxford, Bodl., Laud Misc. 509, fols 34–141 BL, Burney 277, fol. 42 BL, Harley 585, fols 1–129

London, Lambeth Palace 489 London, Lambeth Palace 489 Oxford, St. John’s College 154 CCCC 422, fols 1–13

91a

91b

BL, Cotton Otho A. vi, fols 1–129

90

231, 1

136, –

344, 7

344, 7

17, 16

70A, 11

362, 15

283, –

283, –

167, –

c. 154 x 90–85

154 x 90

XI2

X/XI

155 x 90

XI2

191–85 x 117–10

207 x 130

211 x 138

17 or 18

25

26

29

herbal

laws

Pentateuch

Pentateuch

211 x 138

155 x 90

XI2

26 or 27

c. 155 x 95 203 x 140

XI2

homilies

homilies

Ælfric’s Grammar Solomon and Saturn (verse and prose) Ælfric’s Grammar

fols 21v–58: 25

fols 1–21r: 19;

Boethius in prose and verse

c. 165 x 120 c. 205 x 155 22; fols 2 and 5: 21 X med. 160 x 95 190 x 130 23 or 24

167 x 80–85 189 x 121

XI2

XI in.

167 x 80–85 189 x 121

c. 180 x 110 27 (fols 58–68: 28)

XI2

X med. 167 x 93

(continued)

fol. 122 has 24 lines

single bifolium

much damaged; measurements from the best preserved leaves

164, 17

65, 11 161, 19

103b Oxford, Bodl., Junius 336, 17 85, fols 18–24

103a Oxford, Bodl., Junius 336, 17 85, fols 2–17 and 25–35 + Junius 86, fols 36–81

102

100 101

BL, Cotton Nero A. i, fols 3–57 CCCC 383 BL, Cotton Julius A. x, fols 44–175 BL, Cotton Nero A. i, fols 70–177

99

163, 17

200, 19

BL, Cotton Titus A. iv

98

Written space

Lines per page

bilingual Benedictine Rule laws

Content

notes

laws martyrology (fragmentary) XI in. 135 x 60 c. 165 x 105 24 to fol. 106 and ecclesiastical 122–67; 25 on fols institutes, laws, 109–21; 26 on fols etc. 168–77 XI med. c. 130 x 80 J 85: 160 x 13–19 homilies line numbers 115; J 86: vary by 155 x 100 quire and are sometimes drawn lines ignored by the scribe XI med. c. 140 x 100 independent 19 or 20 homily added quire by quire cut same scribe down to fit

28 (fols 118–24 reruled for 13–15 lines) c. 165 x 105 19

192 x 118

Page size

XI/XII c. 137 x 78 187 x 115 26 X/XI 135 x 72 c. 176 x 122 17

XI med. 140 x 76

XI med. 146 x 73

Ker, Date ASMMF nos

Item Manuscript shelfmark (and folios)

Table 11.1  Continued

The Jellinge Mise en pageStone

277

Notes  1 For example, CCCC 201, a collection of laws, which also has the earliest telling in English of the Greek tale that is also the story of Shakespeare’s Pericles. Individual items have titles in some manuscripts but not the manuscripts themselves, although Latin m ­ anuscripts occasionally do so, for example the first part of CCCC 190 (to fol. 294), which has a title in Latin on an eleventh-century flysheet.  2 For a complete catalogue of all books known to have been made in England up to the end of the eleventh century, see H. Gneuss and M. Lapidge, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: A Bibliographic Handlist of Manuscripts and Manuscript Fragments Written or Owned in England up to 1100 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). For an analytical catalogue of books containing vernacular material, see N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957).  3 For the later Anglo-Saxon period, see D. Scragg, A Conspectus of Scribal Hands Writing English, 960–1100 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012). I am currently compiling a complementary list of all hands up to 960. Looking at scribal hands has led me, for example, to notice the very large number of writers using the vernacular in the later period (the work of more than a thousand survives from the ‘long’ eleventh century), and I have commented elsewhere on the opportunity this gives for us to look at education practices in the late tenth and eleventh century. Re-reading marginal annotations in English has also led to a number of significant discoveries, such as the meaning of single-word annotations. One example will suffice: wið in the margin of Oxford, Bodl., Barlow 35, fol. 23r is almost certainly the beginning of a charm and should be added to the corpus of charm literature.  4 In Worcester, the writing of English appears to have continued much more extensively into the twelfth century than elsewhere, and the study of vernacular materials even longer, while at the Reformation, when a great many early medieval books were lost, more manuscripts survive from Canterbury than from elsewhere.  5 Size order is judged by the writing area of the main part of the manuscript. Where subsidiary parts differ, as 11b, these are ignored in the organisation of the table.  6 An extreme case where it would work less well is a single partial leaf, Geneva, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Bodmer 2, where the writing is so large that it fills all available space between the lines, ascenders and descenders overlapping. The Bodmer fragment has to be excluded from this study because the leaf that survives is incomplete.  7 Note in particular item 18 (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D) where a binder has left three leaves longer than the rest so as to preserve marginal annotations.

278

Donald G. Scragg

 8 ASMMF (1994–), formerly published in Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghamton, NY), latterly in Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe, AZ).  9 The numbers under Ker’s Catalogue when followed by ‘S’ refer to his ‘A supplement to Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon’, Anglo-Saxon England, 5 (1976), 121–31. 10 The quire signatures are contemporary, but not certainly written by the original scribe. In D. G. Scragg, ‘The compilation of the Vercelli Book’, Anglo-Saxon England, 2 (1973), 189–207 (190–1), I present evidence to suggest that Quire 4 was once intended as the opening quire of a book. There is also evidence that Quire 1 is independent of the others (see The Vercelli Book, ed. C. Sisam, EEMF, 19 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1976), p. 37). 11 Later another booklet, item 71, was added to the collection, and a single sheet, item 68, was inserted between two of the three Ælfric booklets. 12 Ker, Catalogue, pp. 118 and 196. 13 This is often because Latin verse is recorded in lines, as is modern English verse, whereas Old English verse is written out by scribes as if it were prose. For an example of Latin verse distinguished from its prose counterparts, compare different items in Oxford, Bodl., Auct. F. 3. 6. Double column layout also occurs in Latin in large books, presumably for ease of reading. 14 For the relationship between items 21 (Oxford, Bodl., Hatton 76, Part B) and 36 (BL, Cotton Vitellius C. iii), see C. Franzen, Introduction to ASMMF, vol. 6 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies., 1998), p. 21. 15 Page length even after trimming in the early nineteenth century binding is 310 mm as against text length of 215 mm on pages with the fewest lines, see Sisam, The Vercelli Book, p. 18. 16 In contrast compare Quire 15 of CCCC 421, item 88c, where the number of lines to the page increases by a third (19 to 25) but where the writing area is unchanged. This item is considered more fully below. 17 This might of course simply be because so many copies of this text survive. 18 A full argument of the case for and against a close relationship between B and C can be found in K. O’Brien O’Keeffe (ed.), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 5, MS. C (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. lvii ff. 19 See The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, ed. D. G. Scragg, EETS, OS, 300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 3. 20 Most recently by P. J. Lucas, ‘The Vercelli Book revisited’, in M. T. Hussey and J. D. Niles (eds), The Genesis of Books: Studies

The Jellinge Mise en pageStone

279

in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A. N. Doane (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 167–9. 21 The subdivisions in the numbering, e.g., items 22a, b, c, help highlight occurrences, although changes of scribe are not marked in the table. 22 Ker, Catalogue, p. 184. 23 Ker, Catalogue, p. 118. 24 This was originally in CCCC 419 (item 88a) but is now pages 1 and 2 of CCCC 421. 25 Among English books of the eleventh century that still have an opening blank leaf (although now often filled with later material) are Oxford, Bodl., Auct. F. 3. 6. For an example of an English book with blank opening pages, see Oxford, Bodl., Junius 121. 26 They are all listed by Jonathan Wilcox in the bibliography to ASMMF, vol. 8 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), pp. 12–13. 27 Ker, Catalogue, p. 117, notes that an offset on p. 98 is of writing on p. 209. For details of sixteenth-century changes, see Wilcox, ASMMF, vol. 8, p. 8.

Index Index

Note: Titles of works with known authors can be found under authors’ names; ‘n.’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page; references in italics refer to illustrations. ‘Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the City of the Cannibals’ see Praxeis (Andreou kai Mattheia eis te-n polin to-n anthropophago-n) Ælfric of Eynsham 99, 100–3 Catholic Homilies 99, 101–2 Grammar 255 Letter to Sigeweard (On the Old and New Testament) 103 Lives of Saints 101–2 affective piety 148–52, 157, 158, 169, 174–8 alchemical knowledge 62 al-Razi (attrib.), Liber de aluminibus et salibus, trans. Gerard of Cremona 63 Achmet ben Sirin, Oneirocriticon 29, 33–4, 41, 42, 45 Alcuin of York 10 Aldhelm of Malmesbury 99 Carmina ecclesiastica 110n.12 Andreas, Old English poem 14, 106–8, 185–209 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D-version 214, 227n.3 F-version 254 Annals of Fulda 53–4 Anselm of Canterbury 13, 149–52

Meditatio ad concitandum timorem 149–52, 158 anthology/anthologies 11–12, 80, 83, 90 apostles 13, 97–115 Aquinas, Thomas, 164–5 Expositio libri Posteriorum Analyticorum 9 Aristotle 8, 26 Meteorologica 62 Posterior Analytics 8, 9 Prior Analytics 8 Sophistical Refutations 8 Topics 8 Artemidorus, Oneirocriticon 29, 34, 37, 45 Augustine of Hippo 3, 5, 10 Soliloquies 3 De doctrina christiana 4, 7 De ordine 4 De trinitate 3, 4, 163 Auzon/Franks Casket 239 Averroes 8 Bacon, Roger, On Experimental Science 63 Bede, the Venerable 1, 149 De tempore ratione 1, 6, 7 De natura rerum 64

Index Historia ecclestica gentis Anglorum 6, 7 Benedictine reform movement 237 Benedictine Rule 254 Benedictional of St Ethelwold 237 Beowulf, Old English poem 14, 185–209 passim Bernard of Clairvaux 13, 146, 152–7, 158–9 ‘First Sermon for Christmas Eve’ 152–3 ‘First Sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision’ 152, 153–4 ‘Sermon Fifteen on the Song of Songs’ 152, 154–5, 156–7 ‘Sermon Fourteen on the Song of Songs’ 154 ‘Sermon on the Practice of the Devotion to the Name’ 155–6 Bible see New Testament, Old Testament Blackadder Psalter 224 Blackadder, Robert, archbishop of Glasgow 224 Blickling Homilies 101, 103, 186 Boethius, De arithmetica 5 Bower, Walter 222 Scotichronicon 210, 222–3 brontologies see prognostication, thunder Byrhtferth of Ramsey, Enchiridion 7 caritas 3 Caesarius of Arles 5 Callixtus II, pope 124 Cambridge Songs 12, 79–93 Carmina Burana 90 Casenatensis version of Latin Acta Andreae et Matthiae apud anthropophagos 185, 189, 193–4, 196, 202 Cassiodorus 10, 120 Institutiones 5, 137n.10

281 Chaucer, Geoffrey 1 Christ II (The Ascension), Old English poem 104 Cnut, king of Denmark and England 237–8, 242 cognitio 3, 5 computus 7 conversion to Christianity 235–47 Daniel, Old Testament prophet 27–8 Dante Alighieri 1 disciplina 3, 6 divination 23–52, 61, 66 dream see oneiromancy salt 61–3 dream books 27–37 alphabetical 27, 32–3, 38, 44 thematic 28–9, 33–4 lunaries 29–30, 34–6, 38, 64 mantic alphabets 30–1, 36, 39, 43, 44 Dream of the Rood, The Old English poem 242 Dunfermline, Benedictine abbey 220, 221 Ealdred, bishop of Worcester 79 early printed books 32–43 passim Edith, queen of England 213 Emma, queen of England 213, 238, 242 Encomium Emmae reginae 213 encyclopaedic knowledge 6, 101 eruditio 3, 5 ‘Estat de la Cité de Iherusalem’, Old French prose text 128–33 experiential knowledge see knowledge and experience Fates of the Apostles, The, Old English poem 104–5, 107, 108 florilegium 81 Formosele Abbey, Flanders 124–6, 125, 134

282 Franks Casket see Auzon/Franks Casket Freud, Sigmund, Die Traumdeutung 25 Goscelin, Legend of Edith 215 Guthlac A, Old English poem 99 Hadrian of Canterbury 6 Harald Bluetooth, king of Norway 236, 239, 240, 246 Harley Lyrics 90 Helena, saint 217 Henry III, Holy Roman emperor 79, 83 incarnation 144 Insular art 237, 240, 243, 244 intelligentia 3, 4 Isidore of Seville 5, 11 De natura rerum 64 De ortu et obitu partum 98 Etymologiae 5–6 Jellinge Stone 15, 235–51, 236 Jerusalem 13, 116–41, 117, 135 Fall of 119, 120, 128, 129, 134 Islamic worship in 127 Latin Kingdom of 121, 124, 126, 129, 134 John of Tynrmouth, Sanctilogium Angliae, Scotae, et Hiberniae 211 kalendologicon 56, 57 Kempe, Margery, The Book of Margery Kempe 175 knowledge and experience 163–78 Lambert of Saint-Omer, Liber Floridus 133–4, 135 Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury 220 Langland, William, Piers Plowman 14, 163–81

Index learning 164–78 passim, 179–80n.22 female 210–26 Libellus de disposicione totius anni futuri 55–72 edition 66–8 translation 69–72 Lindisfarne Gospels 238 liturgy, 147–9 ‘Office of the most sweet Jesus’ 147–9, 158 Love, Nicholas, Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ 169, 175–8 Macrobius, Commentarii in somnium Scipionis 25 Malcolm III, king of Scotland 210, 213, 214, 222–3 manuscripts (general) 15, 31–46 passim, 237–47 passim, 252–78 dimensions 253–76 layout 256–60 transmission history 257–8 use 257–60 manuscripts, individually cited Cambridge, CCCC, MS 26 119, 119 Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.5.35 79–93 Edinburgh, NLS, MS 10271 224 Edinburgh, University Library, MS 56 219–20 Kassel, Landesbibliothek und Murdarsche Bibliothek der Stad Kassel, MS med. 408 55–72 Liège, Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège, MS 77 59, 63–4 London, BL, Add. MS 32343 116–41, 117 London, BL, Add. MS 39761 223–4

Index London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius D.iii 212 London, BL, MS Cotton Tiberius E.i 211 London, BL, MS Sloane 282 64 Madrid, Biblioteca del Palacio Real, MS II 2097 212, 221–3 Oxford, Bodl., MS Lat. liturg. f. 5 210, 215, 218, 219 mappaemundi 121–3, 133, 136n.3 T-O 121, 122, 123 maps 116, 117, 118, 119, 134, 237 Margaret, queen of Scotland, saint 14–15, 210–26 canonisation 221 Gospel Book 210, 215, 217–18, 219 images of 223–4 Psalter 219–20 translation 221 Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii 18n.28 Martyrologium Hieronymianum 98 Matilda, queen of England, daughter of Margaret of Scotland 14–15, 210, 212–13 Menologium, The, Old English poem 105–6, 107 Miracula S. Margarite Scotorum regine 221–2 musical instruments 86–7 musical knowledge 12 music theory 81, 82–3, 88–9 Pythagorean 88 New Testament Acts 1:13 98; 1:26 98; 2:22 142; 11:1–23 102 1 Corinthians 7:14 214, 222; 8:1–2 3; 15:5 108n.2 John 6:71 108n.2; 12:3 146; 18 142 Luke 2:21 153; 2:41–52 216; 6:12–16 98; 7:37 146; 10:38–42

283 215; 18:38 142, 143, 151; 24:49–53 104 Mark 3:13–19 98; 10:47 142, 143, 151; 14:3 146; 15 142 Matthew 10:1–4 98; 10:29 214; 14:22–36 102; 27 142 Philippians 2:6–11 142–3, 151; 2:10–11 144 Revelation 14:2 58 Romans 11:13 98 name of Jesus 13, 142–62 natural philosophy 12, 66 neums 81, 82, 83 notitia 3, 4 Nunburnholme Cross 239, 245 Old English Martyrology 100–1 Old Testament 145, 149 Canticles 1:3–4 145, 153 Exodus 32:1–6 187 Psalms 1:2 215; 17:26 222; 91:13 247; 102:3 153 oneiromancy 12, 23–52 Origen 13, 144–7 Commentary on the Song of Songs 144–5 Contra Celsum 147 On the Principles 144 Ottonian dynasty 84 empire 237 Paris, Matthew 119–20 Pascalis Romanus, Liber thesauri occulti 26, 29, 33, 45 performance practice (music) 81, 85, 86–8, 89 Physiologus 246 Pictish art style 244 Pliny, Historia naturalis 6 poetry 170–3 Praxeis (Andreou kai Mattheia eis te-n polin to-n Anthropophago-n), apochryphal text 185, 186, 188–9, 193–4, 196, 199, 202

284 prognostication, weather 12, 53–78 sun 58, 64 thunder 58–61, 64 wind 59–61, 64 quadrivium 5, 81, 83 Ramsey Psalter 244, 245 Regularis Concordia 252 Revelatio Esdrae 39, 54, 55–61, 64 Rhazes, Liber ad Almansorem 26, 39 Ringerike style of art 326, 244 Robert of Jerusalem, Count Robert II of Flanders 126 runes 239, 242, 244, 246 Ruthwell Cross 242–3 St Augustine’s, Canterbury 80 St Chad Gospels 240–1, 241 St Paul’s Rune-stone 247 salt 61–3 sapientia 4 Scandinavian mythology 239, 243, 245–6, 247 scientia 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 24, 81 scientia Dei 9 profana scientia 4–5 Sigurd Rune-stone 245 Somniale Danielis 24, 28, 29, 34, 35

Index song genres 83–6 Sutton Hoo ship burial 239–40 textual authority 163, 167, 168, 171, 173 Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury 6 Thyra Rune-stone 240 Tiberius World Map 237 transmission of knowledge 13, 31–43, 45–6, 235–47, 252–60 Turgot, prior of Durham 14, 210, 212 Vita sanctae Margaritae Scotorum reginae 14–15, 210, 211–19, 221, 222–3 Venantius Fortunatus, Pange lingua 148 Vercelli Book 108, 185, 256, 258 visual images 116–41, 223–4, 235–51 Vita Ædwardi regis 213, 215 weather see prognostication William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum 213 Wilton, Benedictine convent 213 Winchester style of art 236–7, 244 world maps see mappaemundi; Tiberius World Map