Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture: Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text 1785704982, 9781785704987

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Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture

Transformation in Anglo-Saxon Culture Toller Lectures on Art, Archaeology and Text

Edited by

Charles Insley and gale R. Owen-Crocker

Oxford & Philadelphia

Published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by OXBOW BOOKS The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE and in the United States by OXBOW BOOKS 1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083, USA © Oxbow Books and the individual contributors 2017 Paperback Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-497-0 Digital Edition: ISBN 978-1-78570-498-7 (epub) A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher in writing.

Printed in the United Kingdom by Hobbs the Printers Typeset in India by Lapiz Digital Services, Chennai For a complete list of Oxbow titles, please contact: UNITED KINGDOM UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Oxbow Books Oxbow Books Telephone (01865) 241249, Fax (01865) 794449 Telephone (800) 791-9354, Fax (610) 853-9146 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] www.oxbowbooks.com www.casemateacademic.com/oxbow Oxbow Books is part of the Casemate Group Front cover: Processional cross from the Staffordshire Hoard, mid-7th century. © Birmingham Museums Trust; detail of altar cross from Bischofshofen church, near Salzburg; Anglo-Saxon, late 8th century (also on back cover). © Salzburg, Dom Museum. Back cover: Gold buckle from the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial, first quarter of the seventh century. © British Museum

Contents List of Illustrations���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������vii Contributors����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xiii Gale R. Owen-Crocker 1. A New Chronology and New Agenda: The Problematic Sixth Century�������������������� 1 John Hines 2. Anglo-Saxon Art: Tradition and Transformation������������������������������������������������������� 23 Leslie Webster 3. King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 47 Barbara Yorke 4. Strategies of Visual Literacy in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Book Culture��������������� 71 Michelle P. Brown 5. The Vercelli Book as a Context for The Dream of the Rood���������������������������������������������105 Éamonn Ó Carragáin Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 129

List of Illustrations Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5

Figure 1.6 Figure 1.7

Figure 1.8 Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2

The radiocarbon calibration curve available at the start of the project ‘Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 570–720: the chronological basis’. After Hines and Bayliss 2013, fig. 2.3 Types of belt-fitting which occur in both male and female graves in Early Anglo-Saxon England. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Leading types for the phases AS-MA to AS-MC in the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Leading types for the phases AS-MD to AS-MF in the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 A frequency profile of furnished burial in the male and female sequences defined by the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods. After from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Buckle-types in male graves of phases AS-MA and AS-MB with dated Continental parallels. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5. Classified sword- and scabbard-fittings in male graves of phases AS-MA and AS-MB with dated Scandinavian and Continental parallels. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Diagrammatic representation of the chronological phasing of glass bead-types in Early Anglo-Saxon women’s graves. After Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Brooch-types in female graves of phases AS-FB and AS-FE most characteristic of Anglian and Saxon areas. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5 Brooch-types in female graves of phases AS-FB and AS-FE most characteristic of Kent and the south-east. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5. Square-headed brooch from Chessell Down, Isle of Wight, early sixth century. © British Museum Sculptured angel of the Annunciation, Lichfield Cathedral, early ninth century. © Lichfield Cathedral

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List of Illustrations

The Franks Casket, general view, early eighth century. © British Museum Figure 2.4 Pottery lid from a cremation urn, Spong Hill, Norfolk, mid-fifth century. © Castle Museum Norwich Figure 2.5 Crucifixion, the Ramsey Psalter, late tenth century. © British Library Figure 2.6 Gold buckle from the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial, first quarter of the seventh century. © British Museum Figure 2.7a, b The Ruthwell Cross, details, mid-eighth century. © David Wright Figure 2.8 Gold and garnet sword pommel from Dynham, Shropshire, second quarter of seventh century. © Ludlow Museum Figure 2.9 Sword hilt, details, from Abingdon, Berkshire, late ninth century. After Archaeologia 50 Late Roman buckle with Oceanus between dolphins, late Figure 2.10 fourth century. After Haseloff 1984 Figure 2.11 Brooch fragment from Galsted, Denmark, early fifth century. © National Museum Copenhagen Figure 2.12 Clasp from the Taplow, Bucks., barrow burial, c. AD 600. © British Museum Figure 2.13 Processional cross from the Staffordshire Hoard, mid-seventh century. © Birmingham Museums Trust Figure 2.14 Altar cross from Bischofshofen church, near Salzburg; Anglo-Saxon, late eighth century. © Salzburg, Dom Museum. Decoration on liturgical bowl, Ormside, Cumbria; Figure 2.15 Anglo-Saxon, late eighth century. Drawing C. Miller Figure 2.16 Gold ring of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, mid-ninth century. © British Museum Walrus ivory pen case (detail), mid-eleventh century. Figure 2.17 © British Museum Gilded silver figure of a woman, early seventh century. © PAS Figure 2.18 Figure 2.19 St Cuthbert’s coffin, figure of Christ, c. AD 698. Drawing © author Figure 2.20 Dedication page from a copy of Bede’s Lives of St Cuthbert, showing King Athelstan presenting the book to the saint’s shrine at Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, before c. 934. © Corpus Christi College Cambridge Walrus ivory Virgin and St John from a Crucifixion group, Figure 2.21 late tenth century. © St Omer, Musée Sandelin Figure 2.22 Sword pommel from near Beckley, Oxfordshire, late eighth century. © British Museum Figure 2.23 Gold finger-ring, East Anglia, mid-ninth century. © Christie’s Figure 2.24 The Fuller Brooch, late ninth century. © British Museum Figure 3.1 Front panel, Franks Casket (copyright and permission The   f h h )

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List of Illustrations Figure 3.2 Figure 3.3 Figure 4.1 Figure 4.2 Figure 4.3

Figure 4.4 Figure 4.5

Figure 4.6

Figure 4.7

Figure 4.8

Figure 4.9

Wayland’s Smithy on Ashdown (photograph Barbara Yorke) Back panel, Franks Casket (copyright and permission The Trustees of the British Museum) St Matthew, conceptualising the process of biblical transmission, from the Lindisfarne Gospels, Holy Island, c. 710–720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, f. 25v) Cross carpet-page and decorated incipit page commencing St Luke’s Gospel in the Lindisfarne Gospels, Holy Island, c. 710–720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, ff. 138v-139r) Pharoah executing his baker – a biblical episode visualised as a contemporary Anglo-Saxon ruler and witan enacting legal process. The Old English Hexateuch, Canterbury, c. 1000 (BL, Cotton MS Claudius B. iv, f. 59r) Cnut and Emma presenting a golden cross in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, 1020s (BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r) The Virgin, a Mercian adaptation of the Byzantine iconography of the Virgin Hodegetria the ‘Indicator of the Way’, in which she holds the Gospel book as the symbol of God incarnate, rather than the conventional Christ-child. Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leics.), c. 800 (photograph Michelle P. Brown) The Ruthwell Cross, panel probably depicting a Northumbrian king with accompanying runic Old English inscription, standing in recently annexed British territory in what is now southern Scotland and combining religious, cultural and political agendas through the choice of script and images, first half of the eighth century (photograph Michelle P. Brown) Chi-Rho page, from a mid-eighth-century Northumbrian (?) Gospel book, with an Old English manumission added in 924 in the lower left-hand column, celebrating King Athelstan’s accession – the sacred book has the authority to bind and loose and to sacralise/legitimise even royal deeds (BL, Royal MS 1.B.vii, f. 15v) Aldred’s colophon and interlinear gloss, added in the mid-tenth century to the great cult book of St Cuthbert, the Lindisfarne Gospels, made on Holy Island c. 710-720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, f. 259r) Upper cover of the treasure binding adorning an early ninth-century Gospelbook from Tours, depicting the Last Judgement, with the bones of saints recessed within its wooden binding boards – allowing it to serve both as place of d d h d l ( dd )

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Contributors Michelle P. Brown FSA is currently Professor Emerita in Medieval Manuscript Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is also a Visiting Professor at University College London and at Baylor University and is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo. She was formerly Curator of Medieval and Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library. She delivered the Toller Lecture in 2009. John Hines is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University where he has taught in the Schools of English Studies and of History, Archaeology and Religion. His principal archaeological publications include The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the pre-Viking Period, A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-headed Brooches, Voices in the Past and (as editor and co-author) Anglo-Saxon Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework. He is a former editor of Medieval Archaeology and is general editor of the series Anglo-Saxon Studies (Boydell and Brewer). He delivered the Toller Lecture in 2014. C harles I nsley (Editor) is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, The University of Manchester. He is currently Director of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies. He has written extensively on Anglo-Saxon and Welsh charters and his edition of the Anglo-Saxon Charters of Exeter Cathedral is forthcoming, as is a biography of the first king of the English, Æthelstan (924–939). Éamonn Ó Carragáin has taught at Trinity College,

Dublin; the Queen’s University of Belfast; and University College, Cork, where he was Professor of Old and Middle English (1975–2007). His publications include The city of Rome and the world of Bede (Jarrow Lecture for 1994) and Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical images and the Old English poems of the Dream of the Rood tradition (London

and Toronto, 2005). He delivered the Toller Lecture in 2012.

G ale R. O wen -C rocker (Editor) is Professor

Emerita, The University of Manchester, having previously been Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture and Director of the Manchester Centre for AngloSaxon Studies. Her books include The Four Funerals in Beowulf, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, The Bayeux Tapestry: Collected Papers and An Encyclopedia of Dress and Textiles of the British Isles, c.450–1450. She directed the production of a database of dress/ textile terms in all languages of the British Isles (http://lexisproject.arts.manchester.ac.uk/) and is co-founder and co-editor of the journal Medieval Clothing and Textiles.

L eslie W ebster is a leading specialist in the

Anglo-Saxon field. She was formerly Keeper of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum, and senior curator of the Insular early medieval collections. She has curated a number of major exhibitions, and has written and lectured extensively on Anglo-Saxon art and archaeology. Her most recent books include Anglo-Saxon Art: a New History, and The Franks Casket, both published in 2012. Her current projects include co-editing the publication of the Staffordshire Hoard, for which she is also writing up the ecclesiastical metalwork from the assemblage. She delivered the Toller lecture in 2013.

B arbara Y orke is Professor Emerita of Early

Medieval History at the University of Winchester. Major publications include Kings and Kingdoms in Early Anglo-Saxon England, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages and The Conversion of Britain 600–800. Her most recent publication is a book on King Alfred for the Pocket Giants series of the History Press. She was recently a Council member of The Society of Antiquaries and is currently a VicePresident of the Royal Archaeological Society. She delivered the Toller lecture in 2011.

Introduction Gale R. Owen-Crocker

This volume contains five recent Toller Memorial Lectures hosted by the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS).1 MANCASS was founded in 1984, based at, but not confined to, The University of Manchester, as a cross-disciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of culture in pre-Norman England. Its first director was Professor Donald Scragg, who presided over the Centre until his retirement in 2005. He was succeeded as Director by Dr Alexander Rumble (2005–2010) and Professor Gale Owen-Crocker followed (2010–2015), each of them serving until their retirement from the University of Manchester. The present director is Dr Charles Insley. Members of the MANCASS group of scholars have been involved in major publiclyfunded research projects, including Fontes Anglo-Saxonici, The Transmission of Texts and Ideas in Anglo-Saxon England, Inventory of Script Categories and Spellings in Eleventh-Century English and The Lexis of Cloth and Clothing. Their research assistants and associates of these projects have become part of the MANCASS community and the Centre has accumulated a substantial research library which has been supplemented by a loan from the estate of Professor John Dodgeson, a bequest from former student Margaret Bailey and a gift from former student Dr John Highfield. This library is shelved in the office of the present deputy director, Dr James Paz, and may be consulted on request to him. MANCASS has also, through liaison with Professor Craig Davis of Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA, welcomed as visiting fellows several undergraduates from Smith College, USA and the University of Hamburg, Germany, who have been taught editing, indexing and bibliographical skills while assisting in the preparation of publications. The editors thank recent honorary fellow Emily Rothman for her help in the early stages of the preparation of this volume. MANCASS welcomes visiting scholars to read papers at least three times per year, and has hosted many conferences and study days, including an annual Easter Conference. The proceedings of most of these have been published, both in the series Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (Boydell and Brewer) and in individual volumes produced by a range of other scholarly publishers. The Toller

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Memorial Lectures, held on the first Monday of March each year, are the highlights of the MANCASS annual programmes. The lectures are named for Thomas Northcote Toller (1844–1930) the first professor of English Language at what was then called Manchester University. He is best known for his completion and supplementation of the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary begun by Joseph Bosworth and known familiarly to all Anglo-Saxonists as ‘Bosworth-Toller’ (Toller 1898; 1921). In recent years the Toller Lectures have been held in the magnificent historic reading room of the John Rylands Library on Deansgate, Manchester.2 Lecturers are invited from among the most distinguished Anglo-Saxon scholars of their time. The choice of speakers reflects the eclecticism of the MANCASS philosophy and most lecturers have ranged beyond the traditional boundaries of scholarship in their content. In the past, most Toller Memorial Lectures were published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, with a collection of revised and updated lectures being re-published in 2003 along with new papers concerning T. Northcote Toller and the Toller Collection in the John Rylands Library (Scragg 2003). However, with the establishment of the John Rylands Research Institute, the decision was made to prioritise the Special Collections of the Library in a revamped and renamed Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, published by Manchester University Press from 2014. Toller lectures which had already been submitted for publication were no longer required. After discussions between the recent Toller lecturers and Gale Owen-Crocker, who had invited some of them and hosted all of them, it was suggested (by Rolf Bremmer) that they be published as a collection. In the event Professor Bremmer’s Toller lecture was accepted elsewhere before negotiations were completed, and is now published (Bremmer 2015), but the editors thank him for his vigorous encouragement to bring the group of lectures to press. In order to present a viable collection, it was decided to wait for the 2015 lecture to take place, as well as for former lecturers to revise their material for publication. The editors thank the contributors for their patience and loyalty to MANCASS over this time. All the lectures presented here are the product of long careers of research. In two cases they explore in detail ideas which have featured in recent major books (Hines and Bayliss 2013; Webster 2012a). In the case of Ó’Carragáin, the lecture represents the final book which he now says he will never write. It is the nature of the lecture series to be interdisciplinary and therefore this group comprises an archaeologist (Hines), a historian (Yorke), two art historians (Webster – metalwork and carving – and Brown – books), and a liturgy and sculpture specialist (Ó’Carragáin). They have honed their crafts in a range of scholarly environments: The British Museum (Webster), The British Library (Brown), universities in England (Yorke) Wales (Hines) and Ireland (Ó’Carragáin). Their voices can be very different, yet all are cross-disciplinary scholars and it is interesting to find that the same texts and artefacts weave through several of them. Literary text is used to interpret both history and art; ecclesiastical-historical circumstances explain the adaptation of usage of a literary text; wealth and religious learning, combined with old and foreign artistic motifs are blended into the making

Introduction

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of new books with multiple functions; religio-socio-economic circumstances are the background to changes in burial ritual. The common element is transformation, the Anglo-Saxon ability to rework older material for new times and the necessary adaptation to new circumstances. John Hines, in his lecture ‘A New Chronology and New Agenda: The Problematic Sixth Century’, discusses the results of recent research studies which have major implications for the dating of recognisable cultural phases within the early AngloSaxon period, from the fifth to seventh centuries AD, in particular the sixth century. Explaining that the sequences are different for male and female, the criteria for dating the male burials based on weapons, especially shield bosses, and buckles, the female on jewellery, especially glass beads, Hines notes that the research established a steep decline in the burial of both sexes with grave-goods c. 570 followed by a resurgence of female burials c. 625–630 and the abrupt end of furnished burial for both sexes by c. 680, much earlier than previously thought. He examines in detail some changes in grave-goods, particularly the adoption of continental-style equipment for men and a change in the technology of glass production which resulted in opaque beads, as well as other changes in jewellery for women. He also suggests climate-change, atmospheric disturbance and plague as factors in the transformation of burial practices, along with the well-established theories that the conversion to Christianity and the establishment of kingdoms were the influential events. Leslie Webster’s lecture, ‘Anglo-Saxon Art: Tradition and Transformation’, discusses some of the recurrent themes visible in over six centuries of artistic creativity, from the fifth-century settlement up to and beyond the Norman Conquest. The teeming animal ornament of early metalwork was not only decorative and prestigious, but, the author argues, carried messages about mythology and the place of Man in the world, though human beings are rarely represented in surviving early art. The new imagery which came with Christianity included the human, the divine and the religious symbol, but the fascination with animal forms continued and developed. Webster identifies a fascination with visual riddles, which she compares to Anglo-Saxon textual riddles. These include complex animal-based ornament, visual puzzles of which the solutions are names, numbers or philosophical truths. Webster argues that England’s island position and geographical distance from the sources of Roman culture led to originality in the interpretation of the many new ideas and imagery which were imported. Anglo-Saxon artists were both subtle and inventive in absorbing inspiration from Rome, Byzantium and Ireland which they transformed and assimilated to older Germanic traditions. Michelle P. Brown’s ‘Strategies of Visual Literacy in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Book Culture’ ranges widely both chronologically and geographically. Beginning with a discussion of the meaning of ‘literacy’, and arguing for the inclusion of oral and visual literacy within the meanings of the term, her lecture focuses on the book (and book-cover and book-shrine) as artefact and cultural signifier. The discussion includes the cross-cultural transformation of images and script; the visual impact of the illuminated book, its prestige and richness; the functions of books as teachers,

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both as assembly points for scholars and layfolk during public exhibition as well as for private study and contemplation; the role of books as relics, objects on which oaths were sworn; as talismans in war; and repositories of information. The intertextuality of Anglo-Saxon books composed in an eclectic assemblage of art styles, scripts and liturgies is set against the production of the manuscripts, from the Lindisfarne Gospels, seen as a solitary act of technical and artistic creativity, through female scribes/artists to named individuals including Eadui Basan, who is here seen as a ‘rock star scribe’. Barbara Yorke’s lecture ‘King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at King Alfred’s Court’ examines the eclectic influences at the court of a king raised as both a warrior leader, a descendant of real and legendary Germanic kings, and a Christian. A lover of Old English poetry, presumably both heroic and biblical, Alfred’s eagerness to educate himself and his people brought him into contact with Roman philosophy and classical mythology, filtered through Carolingian interpretations. Beginning with Asser’s biography of King Alfred, and the doubts about the authenticity of its assertions, the lecture moves on to consider the philosophy expressed in the Old English prose texts of Alfred’s reign, particularly the historical, biblical and mythological figures mentioned in the Alfredian version of Boethius. The latter are discussed in the context of other Old English texts, especially the poem Beowulf, and the carved images on the whalebone Franks Casket. These aspects of the Alfred’s interests are compared with the martial image of the king which is presented in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In ‘The Vercelli Book as a Context for The Dream of the Rood’, Éamonn Ó’Carragáin examines how the text of the Old English heroic Christian poem relates to the three different environments in which it appears over three hundred years. Beginning with analysis of the art of the Brussels Cross in which a brief but recognisable extract from the poem appears, the author goes on to a detailed examination of the Ruthwell Cross, which contains a longer text, discussing the significance of the Cross’s words and images to eighth-century Northumbrian Christians. In both cases the interrelationship of words, art and shape of the Cross which holds them are investigated. The lecture continues by examining the contents of the Vercelli Book, suggesting a careful selection by an editor who held in mind the theme of the approach of death and Judgement. The collection is seen as sequential, with prose texts thematically balancing poetic ones. The lecture finally suggests that the manuscript, old fashioned in the period of the Benedictine Reform, was re-used as edifying reading for a group of eleventh-century English pilgrims on their way to Italy. The Dream, and Elene, would have prepared pilgrims for the relics they would see in Rome. The cathedral Church in Vercelli, on their route, contained the body of Saint Eusebius, famous as the founder of the way of life of canons. The person who took the Vercelli Book to Italy, may, it is suggested, have been a canon, or at least sympathetic to older forms of Anglo-Saxon spirituality associated with canons. It is an interesting exercise to compare the transformation of the Anglo-Saxon world as our lecturers have presented it with the transformation of England in the

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last six centuries. At first glance twenty-first-century life maybe very different from that of the sixteenth century. The exploitation of coal, gas, electricity and oil have transformed transport, warfare, medicine and communication which is now instant and global. Artificial light has removed the restrictions that night time placed on human activity. The country is focused on great cities. Many foodstuffs and clothing are imported. Conceptions of religion, morality, gender and social mobility have changed. Yet the Victorian Gothic architecture of Manchester’s John Rylands Library (inaugurated 1899) and London’s Houses of Parliament (begun in 1840 and incorporating surviving medieval structures) consciously invokes a fifteenth-century heritage. The ‘new’ St Paul’s Cathedral (built 1675–1710) remains an iconic feature of the capital’s skyline and the nation’s favourite poems, according to a poll conducted in 1995, included Wordsworth’s Daffodils (composed in 1804), Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (first published 1833) and Kipling’s If (written 1895). Turner (1775–1851) and Constable (1776–1837) are England’s most venerated painters. Even though science and technology change life at a rapid pace, the arts have their roots in history. Recognised masterpieces and the lives of the masters themselves are re-packaged for current audiences in new media. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet thrives in opera, ballet and film versions and in popular culture. We continue to absorb, accumulate and re-interpret the culture of our past. The England of the eleventh century, with its multiplicity of church buildings and great estates, its cities, organized crafts and trade and the seeds of industrialisation in the new, male-operated mechanical loom, was far distant from fifth-century village life. Alfred’s navy, the standardised equipment of Ethelred II’s military elite and the beginnings of cavalry warfare (used by the Anglo-Saxons in the eleventh century but alas, only by the Normans at Hastings!) made the warfare of early Anglo-Saxon England look like tribal skirmishes. Yet, though these people abandoned furnished burial abruptly about 680, they cherished its memory in the poem Beowulf, which survives for us in a manuscript dated c. 1000. Though King Alfred eagerly seized on Christian scholarship, he associated it with Germanic legendary material and understood it in terms of the heroic values of the stories on which he had been brought up. Anglo-Saxon habits of creating art with multiple levels, decorative patterns which contained puzzles for the initiated to decode, persisted from the era of pagan belief through to the literate Christian period. The Dream of the Rood poem was recycled and re-presented in different media for different audiences, and the Vercelli Book itself, which contains the longest version of the poem, was re-used for another audience well after its original compilation.

Notes

1. http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/history/research/centres/former-centres/ mancass/ 2. http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/

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References

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Bremmer, R. R. (2015) ‘Looking back at Anger: wrath in Anglo-Saxon England, Review of English Studies 275, 423–448. Hines, J. and Bayliss, A. (eds) (2013) Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: a Chronological Framework. Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33. London. Scragg, D. (2003) Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller Memorial Lectures, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies 1. Cambridge. Toller, T. N. (ed.) (1898) An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth. Oxford. Toller, T. N. (ed.) (1921) An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary: Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth: Supplement. Oxford. Webster, L. (2012a) Anglo-Saxon Art: a new History. London.

Chapter 1 A New Chronology and New Agenda: The Problematic Sixth Century John Hines

The New Chronological Framework for Early Anglo-Saxon England It is a familiar state of affairs for the positive results of a major research project to pose an entirely new set of questions as the answers to the questions initially addressed. Indeed, it is quite reasonable to expect to assess the success of a programme of research primarily by the character and importance of the further research questions it generates. The results of a thorough review and revision of Early Anglo-Saxon archaeological chronology were published recently (Hines and Bayliss 2013). This report proposed a new chronological framework for the Early Anglo-Saxon archaeological period, now confined within the fifth to seventh centuries AD, with associated calendrical date-estimates for definable phase-boundaries. The chronological scheme and the dates associated with it have wide-ranging implications for cultural history. One of the most unexpected of those is the impact of our new insights upon processes of cultural history in the sixth century AD, a period of time which had not formerly been considered to be much of a problem. A report that appears in a printed volume of some 600 pages, with several hundred figures and tables, inevitably includes too much in the way of data, analysis and interpretation for introduction in a summary manner. Experience has already taught us how difficult it can be to anticipate what sort of selection or emphasis from this report is most appropriate for different audiences and readerships: a fundamental choice is that between explaining technically and methodologically what was done and explaining as clearly as possible what the results are. The intention in the present paper is not to go over what is already in print; rather it is to focus on one particular context in which these results can be applied. This should serve as an effectively illustrated introduction to both the methods and the conclusions of the chronological analysis, by making the impact of those results particularly clear.

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It is important, however, to be clear what the results of the new chronological framework pertain to, and therefore what sort of results we have. The project involved a great deal of interpretative work and evaluative discussion in the process of working between the methods and the results. This was not a set of tasks for which the team simply defined a series of techniques, applied them, and produced some answers. The inter-relationship between different components of the project was always meant to be iterative and cyclical, refining our methods and the organization and selection of data in light of interim results. We also had to solve some purely practical problems which no idealised or theoretical ‘methods statement’ could ever have anticipated (Hines and Bayliss 2013, esp. 89–99). These points are highly relevant to the principal focus of the present paper. Of no less importance is the fact that this project was not the only piece of research in this field going on at the time. There is a wider context of relevant and complementary investigations. Largely by coincidence, 2013 also saw an analytical and interpretative volume on the massive cremation cemetery at Spong Hill in Norfolk brought together and published. The results of that work were genuinely innovative in that they have now provided us with a very large assemblage of material assigned to the fifth century AD (Hills and Lucy 2013). Only in the few years before that had we seen studies of the archaeology of the fifth century on the Continent and in southern Scandinavia move to a new level of confidence and precision, combined with comprehensiveness, especially through the analyses of the votive deposits at Nydam, southern Jutland, and Kragehul on the island of Fyn, by Andreas Rau and Rasmus Birch Iversen respectively (Rau 2010; Birch Iversen 2010). These showed how those deposits, including some material with very close parallels in England, can be correlated with the scheme of phases defined by Horst Wolfgang Böhme around the Roman Imperial frontier further west and south on the Continent, where calendrical dates can be assigned to the finds through their associations with datable coins (Böhme 1975; 1987). The Anglo-Saxon chronology project was initially designed and funded by English Heritage as ‘Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 570–720: The Chronological Basis’. The timespan then selected represented in part a particularly favourable segment of the thenavailable standard radiocarbon calibration curve, although it is evident in fact that this should have been just as effective back to circa AD 530 (Fig. 1.1). Inevitably, the project design was also guided by the understanding of the chronological sequence as it stood in the mid-1990s. That included a belief that the ‘Early Anglo-Saxon’ practice of regular furnished burial continued into the first half of the eighth century, and secondly that there may have been a major material-cultural boundary line in AngloSaxon England around AD 570, although this was questioned (Hines 1984, 16–32; Geake 1997, 1, 7–10, 25–26 and 123–125; Brugmann 2004, 42–70). Using translated German and Scandinavian terminology, some of us used to call that boundary-line the ‘end of the Migration Period’: it was a time when a large range of earlier artefact-types went out of use, the frequency of furnished burial appeared to decline markedly, and its geographical distribution also appeared to shift.

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Figure 1.1 The radiocarbon calibration curve available at the start of the project ‘Anglo-Saxon England c. AD 570–720: the chronological basis’ in the late 1990s, with the section cal AD 570–720 highlighted and the intercept line between cal AD 530 and the curve marked. Also highlighted is the area of a plateau in the calibration curve from c. cal AD 420–530 within which precise radiocarbon dating is impossible. After Hines and Bayliss 2013, fig. 2.3.

It proved necessary to construct chronological sequences for male and female graves separately. There are too few artefact-types that occur in the burials of both sexes to support a single scheme; especially in the case of artefact-types that are of chronological significance. There are some such objects, such as certain types of buckles or belt-fittings (Fig. 1.2) and of pottery, which allow us to correlate the male and female sequences once they have separately been established (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 473–476); and ultimately the provision of grave goods in both male and female graves came to a single, quite abrupt end. However, the phases within the

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Figure 1.2 Types of belt-fitting which occur in both male and female graves in Early Anglo-Saxon England. a: strap-end of form BU4-e (Buckland Dover, Kent, grave 98); b: belt-mount of form BU4-d (Bifrons, Kent, grave 43); c: shield-on-tongue buckle of form BU2-d (Buckland Dover, grave 91) (Buckland Dover, Kent, grave 91); d: shoe-shaped belt-mount of form BU2-h. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5.

chronological series are defined quite differently for males and females, and indeed more sub-phases could be identified amongst the men’s graves than amongst the women’s graves within more or less the same period of time. We also found it necessary to extend our analysis back to an earlier point in the archaeological sequence than we had originally intended: in fact, we went back to a point close to the date around AD 530, which it was noted, in respect of the radiocarbon calibration curve (cf. Fig. 1.1), was always going to be a workable parameter to start from. The reason for this, however, was simply that, with the seriation technique being used, we needed to use a longer sequence of change for the series to appear at all. In fact, the extent to which the sequences were extended was done differently between the male and female series. The male sequence actually runs well back into the fifth century. In the case of the women’s graves, however, we could rely upon a study published by Birte Brugmann in 2004 on glass beads from women’s graves in England to go back only to a threshold she labels the start of ‘group A2b’, and dates to c. 530 (Brugmann 2004, 70). In fact, we had access to Dr Brugmann’s work before it was published, and checked her conclusions very carefully. What this means in practice is that in the female series we have only grave-assemblages that include bead-types

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that did not exist before a certain, well-defined threshold, and so, obviously, cannot be earlier than that boundary-line (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 202–209, 353–364, 372–383). We made no assumptions, however, about what the true date of that threshold was. In light of these necessary and pragmatic decisions, there is a further important point to be made about the representativity of our data for the earliest parts of the Anglo-Saxon furnished burial sequence. Within the range of dates we were originally meant to analyse, that is from c. AD 570 onwards, our collection of Anglo-Saxon burials is as complete as we could possibly make it — up to the practical cut-off point in January 2005, when it was necessary to proceed to analysis without continually trying to incorporate every new find. In respect of material we would suppose, on the understandings existing when the data collection was undertaken, to pre-date c. AD 570, however, the grave-assemblages and their artefacts we have included are unquestionably just a sample. We consider it to be a good sample, but in particular it is a sample whose quality is to be judged first and foremost by its fitness for its purpose, which was to secure a reliable sequencing for the later finds. This becomes especially relevant when we talk about the relative frequency of furnished burial in various phases. From the late sixth century we can give and compare very reliable figures. Down to around AD 570 we know that more finds have been made which belong to that phase than are included in our data-sets. What came out of this in the end, then, were separate sequences of male and female burials, ordered by the similarity of their contents. These sequences are divided into chronological phases. We would not realistically expect our methods to have put every individual grave in each of these sequences into a strict, correct, chronological order: in fact we can test that mathematically as well, and the closeness of the male sequence to that ideal is as high as 89%, while that of the female sequence is at best 67% (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 294–295 and 416–422). What therefore we have to do is to see how we can group the grave-assemblages into chronologically distinct phases — a process which actually involves finding chronologically secure boundaries within the series and between burials rather than identifying focal points for clusters of burials. In this way we can identify six phases in the male sequence and five in the intrinsically less precise female sequence. Actually, our procedures allow us to define the six sequential male phases according to two different methods of partition, but really the difference in output between those partitions is not great, and this is not an issue to dwell upon here (see Hines and Bayliss 2013, 251–296 and 459–464). The present paper refers solely to the mode of partition of the sequences into chronological phases which I believe to be the most practical and most accessible in archaeological terms. This is the phasing of the archaeological sequence based upon leading types. The idea essentially is that a properly defined artefact-type must have a certain starting-point in time — a threshold at which it was first invented or designed and introduced, and before which, of course, it simply did not exist. Chronologically, the most useful artefact-types are those which will define the most precise and narrowly dated series of phases that we can identify. In practice, in the male burial

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sequence this means successive forms of shield boss, although sword-fittings can be significant too (Figs. 1.3–1.4); in the female burial sequence, as already noted, it involves the successive introduction of new types of bead worn by the women in their necklaces. Not only is there a difference in the number of phases into which we can divide the male and female sequences, but there is also one dramatic difference between the overall profiles of the two sequences through time. What essentially underlies that difference is dramatic variation in the frequency of furnished burial for men and women respectively. With both sexes, we see a very sharp drop in the numbers and frequency of chronologically identifiable furnished burials around AD 570. This was suspected to be the case when the project started; but it was important to confirm it, if possible; and it bears further discussion in culture-historical terms. This decline may have been even more severe amongst the women’s burials than it was amongst the men’s, to the extent that we had seriously to consider the possibility that the practice of burying women with grave goods in England was not in fact continuous from the sixth century to the late seventh. We concluded that the practice did carry on without a break, even if it became quite infrequent (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 339–356). Subsequently, however, Figure 1.3 Leading types for the phases AS-MA to AS-MC a profusion of women’s graves rein the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon appears around AD 625/630; at the graves and grave goods. a: shield boss of Class SB1 (AS- same time, though, the number of MA); b: shield boss of Class SB2 (AS-MB); c: shield boss well-furnished men’s graves being of form SB4-b (AS-MC). All illustrations from Hines and buried remains low (Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5. Bayliss 2013, 476–479 and 529–543).

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Figure 1.4 Leading types for the phases AS-MD to AS-MF in the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods. a: shield boss of form SB4-a (AS-ME); b: shield boss of Class SB5 (AS-MF); c–d: pyramidal sword-button and long bar-shaped sword pommel of forms SW5-b (AS-MD/E) and SW3-b (AS-MD/E/F) respectively. All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5.

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Finally, regular furnished burial came to an end for both sexes by about AD 680 (Fig. 1.5). This is both much earlier, and much more abrupt, than had previously been thought (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 464–473). There is, of course, much to discuss about that event — but that is for another time.

Specific Questions for the Sixth Century The purpose of laying the foundations for a discussion of the specific problems of the sixth century by approaching it in this careful way has been both to explain clearly just what a new situation we are in, and also to emphasize just how fundamental a chronological perspective is to the new understanding that makes the sixth century problematic. ‘The problematic sixth century’ is not a title, or even a phrase, one could imagine being used before now. For a very long time in Early Anglo-Saxon Archaeology the sixth century just had not seemed to be a particular problem. On the contrary, it was the rather secure core of the Early Anglo-Saxon Period: the period with which the muddled and obscure fifth and seventh centuries could be compared and contrasted (Høilund Nielsen 1997; Brugmann 1999; Hines 1999). It is a period in which, archaeologically, we

Figure 1.5 A frequency profile of furnished burial in the male and female sequences defined by the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods. The grey and black lines show the slightly different profiles produced by alternative interpretations and partitions of the analytical results generated from the data matrices. After Hines and Bayliss 2013, fig. 8.15.

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could, and still can, identify a lot of material to look at, which we can then use to tell quite an extensive and well-founded story: concerning social relations, the complexity and reconstruction of ethnic identities, human lifeways, use of material resources, relationship with the landscape, territoriality, and so on (Lucy 2000). It was a period that could be considered in terms of its own relative chronology, after a fashion: admittedly on a very selective basis — it was only a few classes of its finds we could put into relative sequences (e.g. Åberg 1926; Hines 1997; Suzuki 2008). Amongst the biggest questions, though, were the contrasts between this relatively well-evidenced period and those before and after. Why do we have so much less evidence from the fifth century? Was that because there were just were not many ‘Anglo-Saxons’ around before the late fifth century? And what was happening at and after the end of this sixth-century phase? Was only a small socially elite still afforded relatively richly furnished burial? Was there influence from Christian preferences on burial practice in the period of conversion (Boddington 1990; Geake 1997, 126–136)? There are two particularly interesting questions relating to the archaeology and cultural history of the sixth century in England. One of these, perhaps rather curiously, involves a historical event that had seemed to fail to appear in the archaeological sequence — or at least to fail to show the impact we might have expected it to have had. The other concerns a very dramatic change in the material-cultural sequence for which we have to try to infer the historical circumstances and causes. The first of these issues is the extraordinary events of the years AD 536–540, when a large part of the world must have been afflicted by a massive dust-veil event — an atmospheric disturbance which clouded out the sun and would have had disastrous consequences for plant- and crop-growth. This was identified in the dendrochronology of Irish bog oaks by Professor Mike Baillie of the Queen’s University, Belfast, some quarter of a century ago now, and can be paralleled in dendrochronological sequences as far afield as the Americas (Baillie 1999, 65–68 and 74–76). It can also be traced through chronicles: Irish annals record a ‘failure of bread’ in the later 530s, and even the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has records of the sun ‘growing dark’ (what reads like a simple log of an eclipse) in AD 538; and potentially as far away as China and Korea (Keys 1999, 159–190). Although Baillie was strongly inclined to argue for a comet or meteor crash on the planet as the cause, and others have supported him, the analysis of ash in datable Greenlandic ice cores has been interpreted by other scientists as supporting the view that the cause was one or quite plausibly two successive massive volcanic eruptions, possibly in central America (Dull et al. 2010; Sigl et al. 2015). This dust-veil event coincided with a dreadful epidemic, graphically described by Procopius in Constantinople, and again widely reflected in early chronicles, including those for Ireland and Wales. It has been argued that the terrible climatic conditions may well have catalysed, or at least have favoured, the lethal spread of the disease. We might not know exactly what caused these calamities and how they were inter-related (if at all), but we certainly have no reason to suppose the area of England should somehow have been shielded from them. And yet there is no obvious

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line of disruption or crisis in the Anglo-Saxon archaeological record in the first half of the sixth century that we can immediately associate with such events. The osteological study of human skeletons from Anglo-Saxon cemeteries is well able to identify the pathological signs of periods of severe stress such as hunger or malnutrition, in the forms of Harris lines in the long bones, cribra orbitalia in the eye-sockets, and enamel hypoplasia in the teeth. It is not so much the case that such features are generally absent in the Anglo-Saxon record as that they are almost normal and general. As was concluded from Corinne Duhig’s detailed study of the well-preserved skeletons from Edix Hill, Cambridgeshire, covering this period: “the incidence of stress markers [in about one in six of the adults buried] is not serious compared to other populations … many of the richer graves show stress-indicators, but those had not caused restricted development of the individuals concerned … there is no detectable link between stress-indicators and poverty or status” (Malim and Hines 1998, 154–199). Life just was hard; and periods of want were probably a familiar, recurrent, and general hazard. There is another field of archaeo-biological study to be considered here: in this case the palaeo-environmental evidence recoverable from the layers in peat bogs. It has been recognised for more than fifty years now that a ‘recurrence surface’ in the peat layers, a point in the past at which sphagnum moss started to grow profusely, represents a turning point from a distinctly warm climatic phase in the Roman Period to much cooler and wetter conditions around the transition from the Roman Period to the Anglo-Saxon or post-Roman era (Dark 2000, 25–28 and 152–154). In a book on The End of Roman Britain of 1996, Michael E. Jones incorporated this evidence into a sophisticated and, in itself, cogent model of how Roman Britain became economically unsustainable, as the environmental conditions made it impossible to produce enough agriculturally (Jones 1996, 186–243). The problem is that the key scientific study he bases himself upon on this topic, by Winifred Dickinson of Rusland Moss, Cumbria, was produced in the 1970s, and the radiocarbon dates then provided for the recurrence surface were reported and used uncalibrated (Dickinson 1975): the correction of radiocarbon dates by calibration really broke through around 1980. It is unfortunate that Jones’s otherwise careful and critical discussion of the difficulties of dating the climatic change seems to have overlooked this crucial factor. It is genuinely difficult to assemble many relevant radiocarbon age-determinations, and even more so to link them with samples whose significance can adequately be assessed. I have taken the few available radiocarbon age-determinations that reportedly fall immediately upon the recurrence surface, and reconsidered them with the advantage of the facilities now available for comparing and calibrating the results and combining the dates in a Bayesian model.1 The dating evidence being looked at in this way, it is emphasized, is so inadequate that no resultant chronological model is formally presented here. The age-determinations are very broad, and thus imprecise. It is of little real significance, therefore, that they are statistically consistent with one another and may statistically be combined. In that form the dates do point quite conclusively to a period after the

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end of Roman rule in AD 411 for the breakthrough of this climatic change. Under the most up-to-date calibration curve, the median value of the combined radiocarbon dates falls tantalizingly on cal AD 535: but this really means only that that the climatic change could equally well have begun within a period of about 120 years before this event as within a period of about 60 years after it. The fact that the independently attested climatic crisis of the late 530s is so close to the middle of this range of probability is of course very seductive, but truly, the scientific, mathematical and archaeological uncertainties inherent within these old and insufficient data are so great that we cannot treat that as anything more than a curiosity. No one, to my knowledge, has suggested that the dust-veil event itself kicked off a long-term climatic change; at most it should have made things a lot worse for a few years (Sigl et al. 2015). Indeed, to think of the AD 536 crisis as an event that fell within what was already a period of greater change then we have recognized hitherto may be the most realistic and appropriate way of approaching it. On a more secure scientific, mathematical and archaeological basis we can also state that, within the new chronological framework, the AD 536 event fell close to the commencement of the well-defined phases AS-MB in the male sequence and AS-FB in the female sequence. AS-MB began with 95% probability in the second quarter of the sixth century; at 68% probability the dating is as narrow as cal AD 535–545. Female Phase B starts with 95% probability at cal AD 510–545 and with 68% probability at cal AD 525–540 (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 459–462). Although the start dates of these two phases are similar, we do not have evidence to argue that they were perfectly coordinated: indeed it is 86% probable according to the model that start AS-FB preceded start AS-MB (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 462–464). Similarly, no direct correlation of the start of either phase with the crisis of AD 536 is possible. The start of phase AS-MB is statistically more likely to post-date AD 536 than to have preceded it; that situation, however, is reversed in the case of AS-FB. Let us take a closer look, then, at what we can see is happening around this period — in other words during the first half of the sixth century — in the material cultural record. We should start by looking at the way men were equipped and are represented by what was buried with them. As noted already, the period before the second quarter of the sixth century — quite likely up to the mid-530s themselves — has not been fully described and defined in our chronological framework. We do, however, know precisely what types of weaponry — swords, spears and shields — were in use then, and what buckles men wore, which covers a greater part of the grave-inventory (see Figs. 1.2–1.4). We find, for instance, that there was a greater degree of regionality in this earliest period than we see later, with, for instance, men in the Saxon areas as opposed to the Anglian regions likely to have carried shields with bosses of Class SB2. Both of the earliest classes of shield boss found in Anglo-Saxon England, SB-1 and SB-2, have regular parallels in form on the Continent (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 153–155 and 482–487). Within the graves of phase AS-MA which we used to establish our long male series we find types of sword-fitting and

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Figure 1.6 Buckle-types in male graves of phases AS-MA and AS-MB with dated Continental parallels. a: buckle of form BU1-a (Petersfinger, Wiltshire, grave 21: AS-MA); b: buckle of form BU2-a (Frilford, Gloucestershire, grave 13: AS-MA); c: buckle of form BU2-b (Finglesham, Kent, grave 204: AS-MB);

buckle that appear rather occasionally in England and which have parallels either on the Continent or in Scandinavia from the middle of the fifth century through to the early decades of the sixth (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 484–486). At the very least, a marked shift in degree which appears with the inception of phase AS-MB is that the most salient male equipment starts to be types — new types — with overwhelmingly Continental parallels (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 486–487) (Figs. 1.6–1.7). English men started to be equipped much more like their cross-Channel contemporaries in terms of their swords, shields and belts-fittings. At the same time the short, one-edged large knife known as the seax was introduced from the Continent. There are still elements of local tradition, especially in forms of sword-fitting, but the general shift in profile is indisputable.

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Figure 1.7 Typologically classified sword- and scabbard-fittings in male graves of phases AS-MA and AS-MB with dated Scandinavian and Continental parallels. a: sword-pommel of form SW1_a (Alton, Hampshire, grave 16: AS-MA); b: sword-pommel of form SW2-b (Bifrons, Kent, grave 39: AS-MB); c: scabbard mouth-piece of form SW 6-a (Petersfinger, Wiltshire, grave 21: AS-MA); d: scabbard mouthpiece of form SW6-d (Finglesham, Kent, grave 204: AS-MB). All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5.

AS-MB was, as has been stressed, not fully sampled and so is quantitatively underrepresented in the data-set. It is not despite this fact but actually because of it that we can confidently argue that the declining frequency of male furnished burial which is very conspicuous when we compare and contrast AS-MB with the following phase AS-MC actually started within AS-MB, and very probably indeed was already underway in the decade AD 535–545. Were the phase fully represented, this decline would be even steeper in our diagrams (cf. Fig. 1.5). It is thus gradually becoming apparent that there were big changes going on around, close to, and maybe even commencing

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in the critical years AD 536–540. We can see their consequences in a precisely dated burial record; we just cannot fully describe, or quantify, what those changes were. When we turn to the female burial sequence we see comparable changes, which if anything are even more conspicuous. Our female chronology is, as noted, fundamentally dependent on the sequence of changes of types of bead, mostly made of glass. These artefacts are both widespread and numerous in Early Anglo-Saxon women’s graves, and there are unusually few regionally specific types — most types of bead can be found anywhere in the Anglo-Saxon cultural zone in England. Birte Brugmann suggested that the currencies of bead-types could be grouped into phases in a certain way. Her bead-phases A1, A2, B1 and B2 fall in a chronological order, but in each case successive phases overlap. She also identified a special phase A2b, which starts before bead-phase B1 but ends along with the rest of bead-phase A2, abutting but not overlapping with bead-phase B2. Bead-phase C comes after everything else. While in our research and evaluation of this material we could confirm the general order of bead-types in Brugmann’s phases, we found that this model appeared overschematic (Fig. 1.8). In particular we could not reproduce her sharp boundary between the end of bead-phases A2 plus A2b and bead-phase B2: rather we have to bring types assigned to bead-phase B2 back considerably earlier. This is important, because

Figure 1.8 Diagrammatic representation of the chronological phasing of glass bead-types in Early Anglo-Saxon women’s graves: Birte Brugmann’s scheme (2004) [a] contrasted with that proposed by the new chronological framework for Anglo-Saxon graves and grave goods [b]. After Hines and Bayliss 2013, figs. 7.38–39.

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those are types identified first by Ursula Koch in a scheme for southern Germany, and Brugmann was inclined to argue that they should not appear in England any earlier than they do in Alamannic Baden-Württemberg. If, however, we effectively erase that boundary, attention shifts rather to the chronological threshold at which Group B beads are introduced. This, we can now say, is a very real material-cultural division — not only in the introduction of a new range of beads and the start of the withdrawal of older types, but also in the types of glass being used in those beads. I am now able to draw on the completed PhD research of James Peake in Cardiff which was commissioned and funded as part of the RAF Lakenheath Anglo-Saxon cemeteries project (Peake 2013). From a meticulous and comprehensive study of the RAF Lakenheath beads, with some comparative analysis of other East Anglian sites, Peake has shown that we have two distinct sets of bead within Group A. There is one set of beads that are of common European types — i.e. with close parallels on the Continent and in Scandinavia — and are overwhelmingly of a type of glass called ‘Saxon I’ and a sub-variant ‘Saxon I natron’ glass. This glass is called ‘Saxon’ simply because it was first identified in Early Anglo-Saxon finds (Freestone et al. 2008): the type of glass is also found in contemporary Italy and France; it appears, in fact, to have been manufactured in huge slabs in the Near East, in Egypt and/or Palestine, and to have been exported as ‘raw glass’ from there to the West. Also in Group A in England there are many beads of types that are peculiarly Anglo-Saxon — especially the so-called ‘Traffic Light’ red, green and yellow types — which were consistently produced from recycled Roman glass. At the overlapping transition between Group A and Group B, however, both of these sets of types and the types of glass they used were superseded, not only by new types of bead but also by a ‘Saxon II’ glass. In this phase the bead-types have particularly dominant Continental parallels. This type of glass can in fact be identified analytically as the same base glass as ‘Saxon I’ but with the addition of considerable quantities of wood ash, represented by higher levels of magnesia and potash. In practical terms, this modification produces an opaque rather than a translucent glass: whether that was an objective or the consequence of the change, it is impossible to say. Peake’s interpretation of this new style of glassworking is, not only that it was specific to north-western Europe, but also that it was probably a Continental innovation that was introduced to England. He is influenced in that view by the fact that historically the introduction of plant ash to the glass matrix has been identified as a Continental practice from the eighth and ninth centuries AD, but at present we do not have the analyses to prove that so-called ‘Saxon II’-type glass appeared first on the Continent. All we have are the shared bead-types of Anglo-Saxon Group B, which on the whole we should have to say appear in England and the closest parts of the Continent, in northern France and the Rhineland, around the same time (summarized in Hines and Bayliss 2013, 489–491). What we can confidently assert once again, however, is that this phase saw a much closer and more consistent range of material culture across England and the closer Continent.

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The second of the two ‘key questions’ relating to events within the sixth century to be highlighted is the threshold dated cal AD 555–585 at 95% probability or cal AD 565–575 at 68% probability in the female scheme (i.e with a median date of cal AD 570: AS-FB/ASFC), and cal AD 565–595 at 95% probability or cal AD 570–585 at 68% probability in the male scheme (AS-MC/AS-MD), following which furnished burial was very infrequent. What have been introduced as two distinct questions may actually be more appropriately described as the start and end of a single process: the reduction of widespread furnished burial. Our male sequence of phases actually picks out two steps in this transition. The start of phase AS-MC is dated cal AD 545–565 at 95% probability or cal AD 550–560 at 68% probability (median date cal AD 555), which has a 95% probability of lying before the start of AS-FC. The lowest point in the frequency of male burial comes in the next phase in the male series, AS-MD, the start dates of which have just been given, and which has a 92% probability of falling later than the AS-FB/AS-FC boundary. All of these phases, it is noted again, are not themselves defined by the frequency of burial but rather by the introduction of particular types of shield boss or bead respectively. Altogether, in practical terms, these data confirm that the changes in burial practices for men and women were more or less synchronous within the second half of the sixth century, and above all that this was definitely a progressive change. By the final quarter of the sixth century, it is not only the frequency of burial sufficiently well-furnished for us to be able to identify and date it that has fallen: it is also the range of artefact-types in use; and with that, the level of creativity in devising and introducing new types. Everything appears to have slowed down, and quite simply, less seems to have been being done. The number of different maleassociated artefact-types found primarily in AS-MB was 34; only three types appear first in AS-MC and are most common then; in AS-MD the figure rises slightly to five. The equivalent figures comparing AS-FB with AS-FC are 36 female-associated artefacttypes falling to 11, only two of which are actually most common within AS-FC. We continue to see a very consistent picture in terms of the character of the small but definitive range of innovations in the artefact-inventory around this threshold. The shifts in the male-associated artefacts are the introduction of shield bosses of Class SB4, buckles with triangular back-plates of Class BU3, and long-socketed spearheads of Class SP4. All of these have familiar Continental parallels and models (Hines and Bayliss 2013, 487–488). Amongst the female-associated artefacts we have opaque orange beads, pendants with Style II decoration, and the earliest cowrieshell beads in England: all with overseas parallels, although again in the case of the orange beads it is impossible to show that these occur earlier overseas than we can date them in England. While most of the earlier, very ostentatious brooch-types disappear at this point, there is a distinctively Anglo-Saxon innovation in the form of the annular brooch, with the type with a slender cast ring of round cross-section (BR3-d) being introduced, largely in the north of England; subsequently in the south we also see new types of Kentish composite brooch and the rare ‘safety-pin’ brooch too (Figs. 1.9–1.10; cf. Hines and Bayliss 2013, 566–571, tab. 10.1).

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Figure 1.9 The distribution of women’s brooch-types in the new chronological framework for AngloSaxon graves and grave goods. a: florid cruciform brooch of form BR1-a (Bergh Apton, Norfolk, grave 18: AS-FB); b: great square-headed brooch of form BR-1b (Berinsfield, Oxfordshire, grave 102: AS-FB); c: annular brooch of form BR3-b (Buckland Dover, Kent, grave 127: AS-FB/C/D); d: annular brooch of form BR3-e (Uncleby, East Yorkshire: AS-FE); e: cast saucer brooch of form BR2-a (Puddlehill, Bedfordshire, grave 10: AS-FB); f: safety-pin brooch (Swallowcliffe Down, Wiltshire: Asa-FD/E). All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5.

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Figure 1.10 The distribution of women’s brooch-types in the new chronological framework for AngloSaxon graves and grave goods (continued). a: keystone garnet disc brooch of form BR2-b1 (Mill Hill, Kent, grave 102: AS-FB); b: keystone garnet disc brooch of form BR-2b4 (Buckland Dover, Kent, grave 29: AS-FB/C/D); c: composite disc brooch of form BR2-d (Harford Farm, Caistor-by-Norwich, Norfolk grave 11: AS-FD/E). All illustrations from Hines and Bayliss 2013, Chapter 5.

There is therefore good reason to conclude that, even if it had been prepared for since before the middle of the sixth century, what happened around the 570s was a dramatic change, which was really quite comprehensive and sudden in its final realization. How is it to be interpreted? The first explanation that would suggest itself to Anglo-Saxon archaeologists would probably be some underlying social change. There are fewer relatively well-furnished graves to be found from the last two decades of the sixth century onwards because this burial practice came to be restricted to a relatively small social elite (Shephard 1979; Hines and Bayliss 2013,

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523–548). Historically, this phase can be associated with the emergence of the earliest well-attested Anglo-Saxon kingdoms: a political phenomenon that may represent the upper and outer surface of a deeper process of the stretching and consolidation of a social hierarchy. Around the middle of the sixth century, for instance, is where the ascendancy of the first reliably attested Bernician king in Northumbria, Ida at Bamburgh, can be dated; in the second half of the sixth century, the kingdom of the West Saxons coalesced, as the West Saxon Chronicles show us; from the 560s or 570s we know something of the status and ambitions of King Æthelberht of Kent (Bassett ed. 1989; Yorke 1990; Kirby 1991). Archaeologically, too, phase AS-MD is also that in which the distinctly ‘princely burials’ occur, at Prittlewell, Taplow, Broomfield and Sutton Hoo. All this is very neat, and it must all be relevant. But is it enough to account for what can see in such detail in the archaeological record? There are primarily two problems to consider against such a simple explanation. If a new ranking of society was the cause, what changed again some 50–60 years later, and apparently reversed the shift in material practice, in respect of female burial? And how do these circumstances also explain the reduction in production and creativity that characterizes the final decades of the sixth century? It is not obvious why a self-consciously special elite should be satisfied with a limited and often quite modest range of material goods. Except for the princely graves, the relatively few men’s and women’s graves that we can assign to this period rarely appear of an elite or aristocratic nature. Most of them represent continuing burial in cemeteries that had been in use almost throughout the sixth century. We may now talk of a ‘problematic sixth century’ because the most pressing current need is to identify and articulate precisely these questions, and to note how complex and multifaceted they are. One area where we can at least sketch out an appropriate hypothesis is that the social and political changes that have been summarized here may well have been followed by a particularly radical change in the organisation of craft-production: bringing it under centralized control, and limiting — even if unintentionally — the technical range and the level of creativity; and then creating the ability to control and restrict the distribution of products much more. Where that was happening we would very much like to know, and this is an issue around which the correlation of our cemetery-based studies with the steadily growing quantity and quality of Early Anglo-Saxon settlement archaeology can be a constructive research topic. One of the key problems of the sixth century, then, is the challenge of explaining a process of change which appears to have started in the first half of the sixth century and to have bottomed out around AD 570. This is a process that is defined in our new chronological framework by two thresholds; those thresholds mark the transitions at the beginning and end of the one process. It is worth emphasizing, however, that this configuration thus defines three distinct contexts: before, during and after the period of change in the middle quarters of the sixth century. It is most certainly not

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the case that the chronological research project whose results are the basis of this discussion spent a great deal of time, effort and money largely to confirm what we already knew. That is as emphatically to be asserted in relation to the sixth century as it is for the end of an Early Anglo-Saxon Period defined by the regular inclusion of grave goods in human burials around or by the year 680. At best there was a suspicion that the AD 570 threshold had already been identified when the project began; many preferred to date those changes to around the year 600, and then to explain it through kingdom-formation and the conversion to Christianity. It is now possible for AngloSaxon archaeology to treat that threshold as a securely demonstrated phenomenon, and further to be able to consider the situation either side of the threshold in more detail. Without doubt, that also means we have even more questions than answers, but in our business, that is progress.

Note

1. The radiocarbon age-determinations used are: Bolton Fell Moss, Cumbria: Hv3079 1475±149 BP; Rusland Moss, Cumbria: SRR120 1511±50 BP; SRR121 1535±50 BP and SRR [number not given] 1552±50 BP; Helsington Moss, Cumbria: Q83 1514±100 BP.

References

Åberg, N. F. (1926) The Anglo-Saxons in England. Cambridge. Baillie, M. (1999) Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets. London. Bassett, S. (ed.) (1989) The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. London. Birch Iversen, R. (2010) Kragehul Mose: Ein Kriegsbeuteopfer auf Südwestfünen. Århus. Boddington, A. (1990) ‘Models of burial, settlement and worship: the final phase reviewed’. In E. Southworth (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries: A Reappraisal, 177–199. Stroud. Böhme, H. W. (1975) Germanische Grabfunde des 4. bis 5. Jahrhunderts zwischen unterer Elbe und Loire, 2 vols. Munich. Böhme, H. W. (1987) ‘Gallien in der Spätantik: Forschungen zum Ende der Römerherrschaft in den westlichen Provinzen’, Jahrbuch der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission Mainz 34, 770–773. Brugmann, B. (1999) ‘The role of Continental artefact-types in sixth-century Kentish chronology’. In J. Hines, K. Høilund Nielsen and F. Siegmund (eds), The Pace of Change: Studies in Early-Medieval Chronology, 37–64. Oxford. Brugmann, B. (2004) Glass Beads from Early Anglo-Saxon Graves. Oxford. Dark, P. (2000) The Environment of Britain in the First Millennium A.D. London. Dickinson, W. (1975) ‘Recurrence surfaces in Rusland Moss, Cumbria (formerly North Lancashire)’, Journal of Ecology 63, 913–935. Dull, R., Southon, J. R., Kutterolf, S., Freundt, A., Wahl, D. and Sheets, P. (2010) ‘Did the TBJ Ilopango eruption cause the AD 536 event?’, American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting Abstracts 13, 23–70. Freestone, I, Hughes, M. J. and Stapleton, C. P. (2008) ‘The composition and production of AngloSaxon glass’. In V. I. Evison, Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Glass in the British Museum, 29–46. London. Geake, H. (1997) The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England, c.600–c.850. BAR British Series 261, Oxford. Hills, C. M. and Lucy, S. (2013) The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Spong Hill, North Elmham, Vol. IX. Cambridge. Hines, J. (1984) The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the pre-Viking Period. BAR British Series 124, Oxford.

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Hines, J. (1997) A New Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Great Square-headed Brooches. Research Report of the Society of Antiquaries of London, 51, Woodbridge. Hines, J. (1999) ‘The sixth-century transition in Anglian England: an analysis of female graves from Cambridgeshire’. In J. Hines, K. Høilund Nielsen and F. Siegmund (eds), The Pace of Change: Studies in Early-Medieval Chronology, 65–79. Oxford. Hines, J. and Bayliss, A. (eds) (2013) Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33. Leeds. Høilund Nielsen, K. (1997) ‘The schism of Anglo-Saxon chronology’. In C. K. Jensen and K. Høilund Nielsen (eds), Burial & Society: The Chronological and Social Analysis of Archaeological Burial Data, 71–99. Århus. Jones, M. E. (1996) The End of Roman Britain. Ithaca, NY. Keys, D. (1999) Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World. London. Kirby, D. P. (1991) The Earliest English Kings. London. Lucy, S. (2000) The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death. Stroud. Malim, T. and Hines, J. (1998) The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire, CBA Research Report 112. York. Peake, J. (2013) ‘Early Anglo-Saxon Glass Beads: Composition and Origins based on the Finds from RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk’. Unpublished Cardiff University PhD thesis. Rau, A. (2010) Nydam Mose: Die personenegebundenen Gegenstände. Grabungen 1989–99, 2 vols. Århus. Shephard, J. (1979) ‘The social identity of the individual in isolated barrows and barrow cemeteries in Anglo-Saxon England’. In B. C. Burnham and J. Kingsbury (eds), Space, Hierarchy and Society, BAR International Series 59, 47–80. Oxford. Sigl, M. et al. (2015) ‘Timing and climate forcing of volcanic eruptions for the past 2,500 years’, Nature 523, 543–549. doi:10.1038/nature14565. Suzuki, S. (2008) Anglo-Saxon Button Brooches: Typology, Genealogy, Chronology. Woodbridge. Yorke, B. (1990) Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London.

Chapter 2 Anglo-Saxon Art: Tradition and Transformation Leslie Webster

Asked to name a major work of Anglo-Saxon art, nine times out of ten, most people will respond with the Lindisfarne Gospels or the gold and garnet objects from Sutton Hoo. These celebrated objects, fabulously perfect in their artistry and craftsmanship, are rightly seen as supreme icons of Anglo-Saxon culture. But they can dazzle with their glamour, hogging the stage, and distracting from the fascinating, and much larger, story of Anglo-Saxon art from its beginnings to the Norman Conquest – and beyond. This paper presents an overview of how these and other remarkable AngloSaxon creations came about, exploring this through some of the key themes and perspectives that place them in that bigger story.1 The Anglo-Saxon period covers nearly seven centuries; equivalent to a period from the later fourteenth century to the present. Even allowing for a slower pace of change than that we experience in today’s high-tech world, this longue durée witnessed profound political, cultural, and artistic transformations. The latter are dramatic. How was Anglo-Saxon art transformed from the splendid but seemingly chaotic decoration of – for example - an early sixth-century brooch to the fluent mastery of the early ninth-century Lichfield Angel (Figs 2.1, 2.2)? What does the Franks Casket (Fig. 2.3) have in common with the Bayeux Tapestry? What thread links the brooding figure on a lid from a fifth-century cremation pot to the ultimate image of the Crucifixion (Figs 2.4, 2.5)? In part, these visible changes are products of the transformation of a pagan society into a Christian one, with all the enormous cultural shift that that implies: the journey from one to the other is a voyage of exploration and discovery in which the highly stylized northern Germanic animal art introduced by the fifth-century pagan settlers metamorphosed into the complex art of a medieval Christian polity. Of course, the Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity, which came about as a result of the Roman and Irish missions during the seventh century, is not the sole explanation for innovation and adaptability in Anglo-Saxon art; these are characteristics that manifest themselves throughout the entire period. But the degree to which change happens in the years

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Figure 2.1 Square-headed brooch from Chessell Down, Isle of Wight, early sixth century. © British Museum

after the conversion is dramatic, and exceptional. Take for example, the switch in visual vocabulary, and intellectual sensibility, between the Sutton Hoo buckle and the Ruthwell Cross (Figs 2.6, 2.7, a and b). Only about 125 years separate the two; yet they seem, conceptually and visually, worlds apart. Nothing quite like this happens in, say, later medieval art or in the transition from pagan to Christian art in the Mediterranean world; and though other early medieval Germanic peoples, such as the Franks, Lombards, Visigoths and Danes, also made the transition from paganism to Christianity, it is arguable that nowhere is the impact of the new religion quite so arrestingly visible in their art as it is in that of Anglo-Saxon England.

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Figure 2.2 Sculptured angel of the Annunciation, Lichfield Cathedral, early ninth century. © Lichfield Cathedral

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Figure 2.3 The Franks Casket, general view, early eighth century. © British Museum

Figure 2.5 Crucifixion, the Ramsey Psalter, late tenth century. © British Library Figure 2.4 Pottery lid from a cremation urn, Spong Hill, Norfolk, mid-fifth century. © Castle Museum Norwich

Figure 2.6 Gold buckle from the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 burial, first quarter of the seventh century. © British Museum

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  Figure 2.7a, b The Ruthwell Cross, details, mid-eighth century. © David Wright

The particular character of Anglo-Saxon art is also partly to do with England’s geographical situation, as a marginal place on the edge of Europe. Not that it was isolated; there was continuous traffic between England and the Continent from the earliest period of the Anglo-Saxon settlement – a migration which itself came from across the North Sea. Anglo-Saxons travelled abroad extensively – as pilgrims and missionaries, as traders, envoys and of course, as slaves. Nevertheless, England’s remoteness from the heartland of the old Roman Empire, with its traditions of naturalistic portrayal and its wide range of techniques and media, gave Anglo-Saxon artists and craftsmen more scope to develop an individual character – drawing on, but not too faithfully, influences from many foreign sources, and making something new, and different, in the course of this assimilation.

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Central to this process was the persistent adaptation of traditional styles and habits to the expression of new ideas and media; certain strands can be traced right through the fabric of Anglo-Saxon art from the first settlements of the fifth century to the Conquest. The animals on the Sutton Hoo buckle and those on the Ruthwell Cross might derive from different models, but they belong to a common tradition, not just of ornamentation, but of understanding. Basic to an understanding of early medieval art, and especially that of the Anglo-Saxons, is what one might call visual literacy. The images in figures 2.1–2.6 all encapsulate, in their very different ways, important truths, beliefs which relate to individual and collective identity, and to mankind’s place in a dangerous and unpredictable world. They are all images intended to be read, not merely seen and admired. Their meaning is sometimes instantly recognisable, rather as the decoration on the ties can denote particular affiliations in, for instance, the worlds of the military, guild companies, and gentlemen’s clubs, and be recognised by those in the know; and sometimes demands closer attention or exposition. The essentially illiterate tribal society of the fifth and sixth centuries used images, not texts, to support its spoken and sung traditions, and so decoding images – visual literacy – was deeply ingrained in Anglo-Saxon culture. The form and decoration of an early sixth-century brooch such as that from Chessell Down (Fig. 2.1) would have immediately signalled ‘Kentish high-status woman’ to an onlooker. But closer study would have revealed that in its dense jungle of patterns, it also contains a deeper message, framed in hidden images of creatures and shape-shifting animal-men hybrids, perhaps representations of gods, and of human interaction with gods; on the lower part of the brooch, a bearded visage peers out, flanked by two birds of prey – possibly an icon of Woden and his ravens, Hugin and Muninn. In the perilous environment of the period, where such natural and man-made dangers as plague, famine, war and childbirth were omnipresent, images of this kind were at the very least, intended to ward off evil. It has indeed been argued that fine metalwork of this kind was made to be worn in religious ceremonies and enactments (Magnus 1997; Hedeager 1999). Art in other media would certainly also have carried equally elaborate and meaningful decoration, and no doubt have extended our capacity to understand its social function and meaning. However, given the almost total lack of woodcarving and textiles from this early period, we depend on the evidence provided by a limited range of small-scale artefacts – high-status decorated metalwork, and the very different stamped and freehand ornament of funerary pots. The key to unlocking most of these visual mysteries is lost to us, but we can see enough to be sure that they held meaning for those that saw and wore them. A memorable literary description of just such a reading of images comes in a passage in Beowulf (lines 1687–98) where the ancient king Hrothgar examines the golden hilt of the awe-inspiring sword with which Beowulf has beheaded the monstrous Grendel and his mother. It is described as having interlacing snake patterns, and a runic inscription recording for whom it was made; but the king’s attention is first and foremost captured by an image it carries of the age-old war with giants – a war which,

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the poem tells us, led to divine retribution and the destruction of the entire race of giants in the Flood. The images on this powerful weapon deliver a message – of alienation, war, and judgment – which rumbles throughout the poem. This is of course an imagined sword; but some real-life sword fittings also manage, in the tiny space available to them, to encapsulate a larger story. A seventh-century Figure 2.8 Gold and garnet sword pommel gold and garnet sword pommel from Dynham, from Dynham, Shropshire, second quarter Shropshire, carries an image of the crucifixion of seventh century. © Ludlow Museum (Webster 2005), and a ninth-century hilt from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, bears the symbols of the four Evangelists (Figs 2.8, 2.9). Many other such compressed images illustrate the resonance possible in this kind of storytelling. This particular aptitude for reading images did not become obsolete once the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity brought wider access to literacy – especially in the monasteries, and at court. The Church itself spread its message through powerful images as well as through the Word, and its novices were taught to exercise ruminatio, patient Figure 2.9 Sword hilt, details, from meditation on both text and image. Two great Abingdon, Oxfordshire, late ninth century. After Archaeologia 50 (but very different) icons of Northumbrian Christianity, the Lindisfarne Gospels (made c. 700) and the mid-eighth-century stone cross at Ruthwell, Dumfries and Galloway, exemplify the kind of complex relationship of word and image that developed from this coming together of two different cultural traditions. The texts which accompany the images on the cross can immediately be seen to be of two very different kinds, accompanying two very different sets of images. On the broad faces of the cross, Latin texts in Roman letters accompany a programme of figural scenes drawn from the Scriptures (Fig. 2.7a); while on the narrow sides, a poetic meditation on the crucifixion in the vernacular, Old English, is written in runes, in frames which surround panels of fruiting vines peopled by living creatures, a visual symbol of Christ’s sacrifice (Fig. 2.7b). Here, the different appearance, language and layout of the two sets of inscriptions present them as images which emphasize the different significance of the figures and the vine decoration – which also need to be deciphered to be understood. A different approach to word and image is seen in many seventhand eighth-century Insular gospel manuscripts, in which the opening pages of the four gospels and certain other key passages have been transformed into magnificent

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display texts, the extravagant letters themselves barely decipherable amid the riot of decoration. This is the sacred Word expressed as an image: to take a very wellknown example, in the Lindisfarne Gospels, the passage in St Matthew’s gospel which describes the birth of Christ opens with an elaborately expanded Chi-Rho, the two Greek letters denoting Christ’s name. They symbolise Christ’s incarnation, the beginning of the Figure 2.10 Late Roman gospel story; here we are made to see that ‘the Word buckle with Oceanus between was God’ (illustrated for example in Backhouse 1981, dolphins, late fourth century. fig. 26). In both these examples, cross and gospels, After Haseloff 1984 texts are presented as images in their own right, to be understood at more than one level, decoded as well as read. They mark the continuing power of the image in a society where literacy was still the province of a very few. As a significant conveyor of beliefs, identities and power, the part that images played in structuring and understanding the spiritual and physical world continued to resonate throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. At its very end, after the terrible defeat of Hastings, the Bayeux wall-hanging (embroidered of course by Anglo-Saxon women) reminds us of the power and immediacy of the visual narrative, whether or not accompanied, as probably intended, by the recitation of chansons de geste, recounting the heroic Norman victory. With all the immediacy of an unfolding newsreel, it is the Tapestry’s animated images that grip the attention, not the brief texts; and in these, and in the enigmatic visual commentary that from time to time erupts into its beast-inhabited borders, there are sometimes hints of an alternative perspective, intelligible to those who knew how to read it; the visually literate.2 One of the most prominent themes in Anglo-Saxon art is the ubiquity of depicted animals. From the beginning, animals, much more than human images, dominated the Anglo-Saxon artistic vocabulary; and though animal ornament gradually became less important over the centuries, it never died away; its style and content was instead simply adjusted to the changing cultural circumstances. This zoomorphic ornament had its origins in fourth- and early fifth-century southern Scandinavia, where many imports of decorated Roman medallions, coins and military insignia had had a potent influence on the decoration of native prestige metalwork. The Roman repertoire of sea beasts, masks of the god Oceanus, running animals and – not least – the imperial image, were taken over and transformed into a new visual language of Germanic animals, gods and men (Figs 2.10, 2.11). For the Anglo-Saxons and other successors to Roman authority, such adaptations, along with other transformed Roman icons such as the Roman-derived helmet and shoulder claps of the Sutton Hoo royal burial, also signalled some sense of being heirs to that authority. The new style of decoration was, as already noted, a potent tool for communicating ideas and beliefs. Even its most attenuated and jumbled versions, aptly described by one commentator as ‘animal salad’, still possessed some iconic meaning, albeit at a much reduced level. Introduced into Anglo-Saxon

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Figure 2.11 Brooch fragment from Galsted, Denmark, early fifth century. © National Museum Copenhagen

England by the incomers from Scandinavia and the north-west Continent, animal art rapidly took hold, dominating Anglo-Saxon high-status metalwork throughout the fifth to seventh centuries. The earlier, densely patterned, formulaic decoration of dismembered heads, bodies and legs gave way in the second half of the sixth century to another kind of animal ornament, more symmetrical and sinuous, often based on interlacing snakes or quadrupeds (Figs 2.7, 2.12). New supplies of gold in the form of Byzantine coinage, which was flooding into the north through Lombard Italy and Merovingian Gaul at this time, helped to fuel this style. Gold’s ductility readily enabled interlacing patterns to be created in filigree wire, and this was soon copied in other techniques. Like the earlier style, this new animal style also carried social meaning, as its prominence in the Sutton Hoo royal repertoire and the prestige arms and armour of the Staffordshire hoard suggests (Leahy and Bland 2010). It probably signified ancestral power, and clan and caste status and allegiance – as seen, for instance, in certain stylistically distinctive groups of filigree and cloisonné sword fittings in the hoard, which seem to represent the presence of different elite troupes (Leahy and Bland 2010, 28–35). This was the decoration of choice for ambitious seventh-century royalty, their families and followers, as Northumbrian, Mercian, Kentish, Essex and East Anglian kings struggled for domination in endless battles fought across the heaths

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Figure 2.12 Clasp from the Taplow, Bucks., barrow burial, c. AD 600. © British Museum

and river valleys of middle England. And like its earlier version, this decoration also carried amuletic resonance; its appearance on weapons and armour was also almost certainly intended – like the crucifixion scene on the Dynham pommel (Fig. 2.8) – to bring protection to the bearer. Seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kings were not slow to see the advantages of adopting Christianity, which might bring them success and control in their expansionist agendas, and which, with the power of the universal Church behind it, could give authority to their actions. Certainly Christianity quickly made its way onto the battlefield, as the processional cross from the Staffordshire hoard, the Dynham sword pommel and the Benty Grange and York helmets, with their Christian iconography, illustrate (Fig. 2.13).3 Significantly, the processing animals that cover the cross are very close to the creatures that cover the Staffordshire hoard’s helmet fittings, signalling the interchangeability of these protecting motifs (Webster 2017). It is currently thought that the hoard may have been buried no later than c. 670, which makes this the earliest surviving piece of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical metalwork. The ornament of this cross, and of some of the later weapon fittings in the hoard, is also closely related to that of the earliest Insular gospel books, such as the Book of Durrow and a Durham gospel fragment, Durham Cathedral MS A.II.10, dating to the middle years of the seventh century (Alexander 1978, cat. nos. 6 and 5; Brown 2007, figs. 26a, 25). Such a web of connections reveals how quickly animal ornament was embraced by the new religion, where its connotations of prestige and power, as well as of protection, could readily be adapted to a Christian context. So it played a staple role in the decoration of Insular Gospel books in the seventh and eighth centuries, its swirling symmetries framing the images of the Cross on carpet pages, and shaping the holy words that began each

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gospel, and the name of Christ himself. In absorbing these creatures into the visual vocabulary of Christian worship, the Church was reflecting the spirit of Pope Gregory the Great’s famous instruction to Mellitus, Bishop of London, to adapt pagan customs and feast days to Christian usage, so that converts would be drawn to the new religion ‘by what was familiar to them’ (Bede 1:30; Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 106–109). Christianity also brought to England from the world of late Antiquity its own vocabulary of animal ornament, the so-called inhabited vine-scroll – a reference to the description of Christ in St John’s Gospel ‘I am the true vine … dwell in me as I in you’ (John 15:1–8). This image drew also on the antique image, adopted into early Christian art, of the Tree of Life on which birds and beasts feed, which was also soon identified with the wooden ‘true cross’ of Christ’s crucifixion, as an image of salvation. The motif became especially widespread in the stone sculpture of eighth-century Northumbria, as we have seen in the case of the Ruthwell Cross;

Figure 2.13 Processional cross from the Staffordshire Hoard, mid-seventh century. © Birmingham Museums Trust

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but it persisted in ever-changing guises throughout the Anglo-Saxon period. Though the vine scroll motif derives from a different cultural background, the familiar birds and beasts feeding and clambering on the fruiting plant fitted comfortably into a culture which was habituated to reading and decoding animal motifs. Different local adaptations of the vine scroll/Tree of Life and its inhabitants began to appear, and were particularly favoured in the rising kingdom of Mercia, where highly inventive versions survive. The grand altar cross from Bischofshofen near Salzburg, though probably made for a continental monastery with an Anglo-Saxon connection, such as that at Salzburg itself, was made by an Anglo-Saxon, probably Mercian, craftsman (Fig. 2.14). Its surviving face (the front has been stripped off) is embellished with a spritely menagerie of leaping deer, birds, and other creatures, clambering through and feeding on an elaborate berried plant. This iconography encapsulates both the vitis vera and the cross as the Tree of Life, the link to the true cross of Golgotha made explicit through the glass gems which stud the altar cross, a reference to the crux gemmata in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, which was built on the

Figure 2.14 Altar cross from Bischofshofen church, near Salzburg; Anglo-Saxon, late eighth century. © Salzburg, Dom Museum.

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Figure 2.15 Decoration on liturgical bowl, Ormside, Cumbria; Anglo-Saxon, late eighth century. Drawing C. Miller

site of the crucifixion, following the discovery of the true cross there by the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine. A liturgical bowl for holy water or ceremonial hand washing, found in a Viking burial at Ormside, Cumbria, has closely related decoration (Fig. 2.15). Other examples of this iconography include two chrismals, or containers for sacramental oils or the host (the so-called Gandersheim casket, and a recently discovered Anglo-Carolingian chrismal) (Webster 2012a, figs. 72, 100 and 124–126), which are prominently decorated with fruiting plants and trees, on which a variety of creatures feed. All four of these ecclesiastical objects also carry a range of other motifs and symbols of Christian significance, some of them of specifically Insular type.4 The indigenous animal ornament also continued to flourish in an unbroken tradition, throughout the eighth and ninth centuries, forming a significant decorative element in ecclesiastical metalwork, sculpture and manuscripts, as well as on secular prestige jewellery and weapon fittings. Like their sixth- and seventh-century predecessors, these artefacts are densely embellished with interlacing or confronted beasts, perhaps still conferring some vestigial sense of protection on the object or its bearer. During the ninth century, as town-based crafts and markets expanded, despite the disruptions of successive Viking campaigns, a new version of this animal style spread across the country, on humble strap-fittings, tags and buckles, as well as on the grandest of brooches. Named after a hoard of silver artefacts and coins which was buried c. 870 at Trewhiddle in Cornwall, the eponymous Trewhiddle Style manages to encompass a whole range of tones, from a light-hearted, almost comical, friskiness, to miniaturised Christian iconographies as condensed as the crucifixion scene encountered earlier on the Dynham sword pommel, as the compressed image of the Fountain of Life on the ring of King Æthelwulf of Wessex illustrates (Fig. 2.16).

2.  Anglo-Saxon Art: Tradition and Transformation Animals in this style also continued to populate ecclesiastical manuscripts in the ninth century, right up into the reign of Alfred (871–899), although surprisingly few decorated manuscripts survive from this period, considering how fervently Alfred promoted study and worship as fundamentals of the good Christian life (Webster 2015). Later still, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the enduring fascination with animal ornament ensured that, whether on its own, or embedded in acanthus foliage, it remained a significant element in both secular and sacred contexts (Fig. 2:17). Birds and beasts decorate not only strap-ends, brooches and censer covers, but church sculpture, and the lavishly decorated initials of fine church manuscripts, where similar creatures munch on letters. Based in part on classicising continental models, the sumptuous new styles of manuscript presentation which developed under the Benedictine Reform movement of the tenth century could not suppress the irrepressible. Scandinavian Viking imports also gave animal ornament a new impetus, especially in the stone sculpture and metalwork of the area of Viking settlement, the Danelaw, while the advent of a Danish king, Cnut, to the English throne in 1016 established Anglo-Scandinavian versions of animal decoration as an important strand in the repertoire of southern English craftsmen. Following the 1066 Conquest, its afterlife was long and influential, as the development of English Romanesque art, and the populous menageries of the Bayeux Tapestry borders graphically demonstrate. In contrast to the persistence of animal ornament in the

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Figure 2.16 Gold ring of King Æthelwulf of Wessex, mid-ninth century. © British Museum

Figure 2.17 Walrus ivory pen case (detail), mid-eleventh century. © British Museum

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Anglo-Saxon repertoire, however, the history of the human image in Anglo-Saxon art could hardly be more different. The human figure is scarcely visible in the zoomorphic jungle of early Anglo-Saxon art, though the sophistication and confident realisation of some of the rare human images from the preChristian period suggest that there must have been a figural tradition in woodcarving. The watcher over the dead that sealed a fifth-century cremation urn from a cemetery at Spong Hill, Norfolk, is an extraordinary powerful and sophisticated image, linking the worlds of the living and the dead; but it is unique – no other image of this kind survives (Fig. 2.4). There are highly stylized human faces and profiled animal-men on a number of items of fifth- and sixth-century high-status metalwork (e.g. Figure 2.18 Gilded silver figure of a Fig. 2.1), but the only other complete Anglo-Saxon human woman, Halesworth, images from this period are the well-known warrior images 5 Suffolk, early seventh associated mainly with helmets and male buckles, and a series century. © PAS of delicately modelled, stylized silver and bronze small threedimensional upright figures, probably amulets, which seem to date to the first half of the seventh century (Fig. 2:18) (Webster 2012a, 38, fig.21; Brundle 2013, fig. 4; Pestell 2013, fig. 5.6c). Images such as these belong to pre-Christian belief systems, and were probably connected to cult ceremonies. However, though these figures may embody or refer to myths and legends, no evidence survives for an Anglo-Saxon tradition of narrative art prior to the adoption of Christianity in the seventh century, of the kind that we see in the early eighth-century Franks Casket (Fig. 2.3) or the eleventh-century Old English Hexateuch (Temple 1976, cat. no. 86; also www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay. aspx?ref=Cotton_MS_Claudius_B_IV). All that changed with the coming of Christianity. The Church introduced a very different set of contexts for exploring the nature of the human image, including new ways of portraying it, and the development of extended visual narratives. Along with many other radically transformational things brought to England by the Roman missionaries and their Anglo-Saxon successors – such as books, icons, Byzantine silks, stone architecture and sculpture, window glazing, church music, manuscript painting, reading and writing in Latin and the vernacular – it is arguable that the most transforming were the new ways of visualising and exploring the human (and divine) image. A degree of stylisation was present in the depiction of the human figure in some contemporary Roman and pre-iconoclastic Byzantine art, and this must have been reflected in some of the manuscripts and icons which we know were brought here, to Canterbury and to Jarrow and Monkwearmouth (e.g. Bailey 2009; Webster and Backhouse 1991, cat. no. 1). It can also be inferred that some imported objects must have been in a more naturalistic, classical, style, like the precious ivory box which

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must have served as a model for the (very un-naturalistic) Franks Casket, which clearly copies a container very like the fourth-century Italian Brescia reliquary (Webster 2012b, figs 48, 54). As the case of the Franks Casket also illustrates, not only the organisation and style of these imports could be modified in the hands of Anglo-Saxon artists and craftsmen, but the content too could be adapted to fit local conditions and expectations. Both strands, the stylized linear treatment and the more naturalistic, appear in the way in which Anglo-Saxon painters and sculptors assimilated and adapted these new versions of the human image. St Cuthbert’s coffin, made at Lindisfarne for his translation in 698, shows a confident mastery of a firm linear figural style (Fig. 2.19). In the c. 700 Lindisfarne Gospels and the c. 750 Durham Cassiodorus manuscript, the figures of the Evangelists and of Christ and David are also flat and incorporeal, their physical bodies invisible beneath the Figure 2.19 St Cuthbert’s swathing linear patterns of their garments (Alexander 1978, coffin, figure of Christ, cat. no. 17). The spiritual message, not the physical nature, c. AD 698. Drawing of these figures is paramount in these images. Two slightly © author later southern English manuscripts, the Vespasian Psalter and the magnificent Stockholm Codex Aureus continue the same stylized approach to the depiction of the human figure (Alexander 1978, cat. nos. 29, 30). These examples show Anglo-Saxon artists drawing on their own traditions of emphatic use of line and pattern, in response to the stylization of some of the imported Mediterranean exemplars. By contrast, and at much the same time, the Ruthwell Cross (Fig. 2.7a), and a number of other imposing Northumbrian monuments such as those at Otley, West Yorkshire (Coatsworth 2008, fig. 564) and Easby in North Yorkshire (Lang 2001, figs 195–196), exhibit a much more naturalistic, classical style of figural representation. This is an extraordinary accomplishment in a culture where only a hundred years earlier, stone carving, let alone a tradition of Romanising figural art, had not existed. But these severely authentic exercises in classical style also draw on native tradition in their overall design, using vine scroll animal ornament and in the case of the Ruthwell Cross, a vernacular poem on the crucifixion, carved in runes, to deliver their message of redemption. As Mercia attained the height of its power during the late eighth and early ninth centuries, new developments in the treatment of the human figure emerged; most famously, in the great series of figural sculptures in minster churches throughout the Midlands, such as those at Breedon, Castor, Fletton and Lichfield, where the tremendous painted angel of the Annunciation is caught in the act of alighting gently to deliver the momentous message to Mary (Fig. 2.2). The sensation of lightly

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floating bodies, their draperies fluttering about them, is a hallmark of these Mercian sculptures, a response to the growing influence of Carolingian court products, themselves drawing on earlier classical and Byzantine sources. The Mercian Barberini Gospels, perhaps made at the monastery of Medehamstede (now Peterborough), is a supreme manuscript version of this illusionistic style, here combined with exuberant displays of that distinctive Mercian animal ornament that we saw earlier (Alexander 1978 cat. no. 36; Webster and Backhouse 1991, cat. no. 160, 205–207; Webster 2012a, 112–113, fig.74). From the troubled years of the middle and later ninth century, when the Danish Great Army was regularly campaigning in England, very little figural art survives to match the manuscripts and sculpture associated with Mercian supremacy, and its development is harder to trace. The badly damaged Royal Bible, made at Canterbury c. 820–40, is the sole representative of what must have been a thriving production of ambitious display manuscripts there; its surviving purple opening to St Luke’s gospel, with the figure of God blessing above the symbol of St Luke, shows a clear debt to the grand Carolingian manuscript style (Alexander 1978, cat. no. 32; www.bl.uk/ manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Royal_MS_1_E_VI&index=25). From Alfred’s reign, the supremely crafted Alfred Jewel and the Fuller Brooch (see further below), together with a handful of other items of metalwork and sculpture, show that sophisticated iconographies involving the human image were developed for court and church, as the descriptions in Asser’s Life of the king suggest (Pratt 2003; Hinton 2008; Webster 2015; Keynes and Lapidge 1983, esp. Ch. 91); but these are only glimpses of what must have been, and constrained by the medium and scale of the objects involved. Close links with more naturalistic, classicising Carolingian figure painting are visible in the fragments of wall-painting from Winchester, which carries an accomplished scene of saints and is dated by its archaeological context to before the year 900 (Backhouse, Turner and Webster 1984, cat. no. 25; Webster 2012a, fig. 10). But it is not until the reigns of Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan (924/5–939) and his successors that we can begin to see how figural art was changing in Anglo-Saxon court and church circles. Among the many gifts Athelstan donated to the shrine of St Cuthbert in c. 934 was a copy of Bede’s Lives of St Cuthbert, with a dedication page showing the king presenting the book to the saint, framed with lush acanthus housing birds and beasts (Fig. 2.20) (Temple 1976 cat. no. 6; Webster 2012a, 170, fig.128). The image, the first surviving AngloSaxon depiction of royal patronage in the Carolingian manner, exhibits a confident assimilation of continental styles of figural representation in the realistically modelled figures of the king and saint, set within the classical architectural representation of Cuthbert’s shrine. However, different approaches to the human image begin to appear shortly after Athelstan’s death in 939, when, under the patronage of his successor Edgar, two of Athelstan’s (and Edgar’s) protégés, the bishops Dunstan and Ethelwold, instigated major monastic reforms, bringing the lax rule of the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monasteries into line with strict continental practice. That brought a demand for

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Figure 2.20 Dedication page from a copy of Bede’s Lives of St Cuthbert, showing King Athelstan presenting the book to the saint’s shrine at Chester-le-Street, Co Durham, before c. 934. © Corpus Christi College Cambridge

new kinds of illustrated liturgical books, and with them came new models of figural representation. But the art associated with this new Reform movement took the new models and once again, recast them in a distinctively Anglo-Saxon manner. Two main strands are apparent, each deriving from different Carolingian centres of production – a solid, carefully modelled, naturalistic style associated with the Carolingian court schools (already visible in the manuscripts of Athelstan’s reign), and a more animated, expressionistic style originating in the east of France, in centres at Reims and Metz. The first, generally known as the Winchester Style, though in fact common to several other monastic centres, is known from sumptuous display manuscripts such as the Benedictional of St Ethelwold (963–984) and the New Minster

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Charter dedication, with their exquisitely painted miniatures, framed by gold-adorned borders of lushly sprouting acanthus foliage (Temple 1976, cat. nos. 23 and 16). Delicate line drawings of figures and ivory carvings also reflect this style. Yet that Anglo-Saxon fascination with the play of line, and surface patterning, is once again predominant. The agitated draperies of the figures and the surging rhythms of the background decoration combine in some depictions to produce an almost overwhelming effect of movement and emotion, which becomes even more exaggerated in the second style, sometimes known as the ‘Utrecht’ Style.6 This highly mannered style is especially prominent in the depiction of the human image. Animated gestures and a sense of urgent movement impel these figures, who strike what Lewis Carroll famously described as ‘Anglo-Saxon attitudes’. In other images, shivering cascades of draperies envelope the figures, obliterating the physical body beneath their folds (Fig. 2.5). The fragile, quivering lines of the garments sometimes seem to echo the emotional charge of the image – seen at its most dramatic in scenes of the Crucifixion, where ivory carvings equal the great manuscripts in their capacity to transmit emotion through this subtle agitation (Fig. 2.21). This style continued to evolve, and by the eve of the Conquest, the delicate flickering line of earlier manuscript depictions of the human figure had hardened into a play on angularities and rigidity – yet still retained that Anglo-Saxon fascination with linear patterning (Webster 2012a, 190–191, figs 147–50).

Figure 2.21 Walrus ivory Virgin and St John from a Crucifixion group, late tenth century. © St Omer, Musée Sandelin

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As we’ve seen, the current of line and pattern in the presentation of the human body which flows through so many of these images, from the Lindisfarne Gospels to the Tiberius Psalter (Temple 1976, cat. no. 66; Backhouse, Turner and Webster 1984, colour plate XX), suggests a continuing sense of the human (and divine) figure as something more than the physical body. Solidly envisaged and naturalistically modelled figures, such as the figures of Athelstan and St Cuthbert in the frontispiece to the copy of Bede’s Lives of St Cuthbert (Fig. 2.20), are the exceptions, not the norm. The supremacy of the shifting, pattern-making line is something not so much absorbed from the imported models available to these artists – indeed, they often rejected the naturalistic style of the exemplar, as we saw in the case of the Franks Casket – but is part of that long tradition of stylisation, richly patterned surfaces, and linear rhythms that has come down from the earliest phases of Anglo-Saxon art. This Anglo-Saxon interest in complex surfaces and the intangible mystery of what lies beneath is also reflected in the final strand I want to explore here; the importance of riddles and other visual tricks in their art. The Anglo-Saxon mindset certainly delighted in such things; their poetry is full of it. In its use of ‘kenning’ metaphors, for instance, where the body is banhus, ‘bone-house’, and the sea is the swanrade, ‘swan road’, there is a kind of verbal counterpart to the compressed formulae of animal ornament. They too need to be decoded, and provide a rich verbal texturing, equivalent to the densely textured surfaces we have encountered in the Anglo-Saxon visual arts. The fondness for riddles in particular, with their ingenious word-play and cryptic inventiveness, is reflected in the numerous Anglo-Saxon examples that survive. They were intended to divert, of course; some of them are packed with more double entendre than a Carry On film. But they were also used in teaching, to stretch the mind and hone its agility; and they also taught the reader to discover, as the great scholar and riddle-writer, Aldhelm, wrote in the Preface to his collection of riddles, the Enigmata, ‘the secret riddles of created things’ (Lapidge and Rosier 2009, 70). This is actually a good description of what goes on in some Anglo-Saxon visual art. We’ve seen how accustomed Anglo-Saxons were to decoding images, and so it’s no surprise to encounter eye-teasing images – especially involving animal motifs – that were intended to be read in two different ways (Webster 2003). The passion for these visual riddles is also persistent; it appears in some of the earliest ornament on metalwork, and continues right through to a number of enigmatic visual comments in the Bayeux Tapestry. It is present in such shape-shifters as the animal/human hybrids on sixth-century brooches, where the image can be read in more than one way, depending on how it is turned (Leigh 1984), and in the human mask on the Sutton Hoo helmet that morphs into a dragon with outspread wings; and it provides an eerie image of a horned creature, when the elaborate sword pommel from Beckley, Oxfordshire, is turned the other way up (Fig. 2.22) (Webster 2012a, 35 and fig.17). Sometimes the play can be more elaborate, as on a ninth-century ring decorated with a rebus on the owner’s or maker’s name (Fig. 2.23). Here the elements of a male

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name, Beadwulf or Beaduwulf, are represented in the Old English names of the four animals depicted clockwise around the bezel, from the top. The first three give us their initials – B from ber, bear; EA from earn, eagle; D or DU from duc, duck; and the final animal, the wolf, its whole name, WULF (Webster and Okasha 2014). Subtler still is the cosmological play on sacred numbers, and the three biblical categories of creatures that inhabit earth, air and water, that are concealed in the elegant decoration of the Gandersheim casket (Marth 2000). The Fuller Brooch, a masterpiece of Alfred’s court craftsmen, which reflects the king’s interest in the renewal of Christian learning, presents a compact message about the getting of wisdom which also has to be puzzled out from the initially baffling images (Fig. 2.24). Its superb condition, virtuoso execution, and its perplexing iconography for years led some to think it was a forgery; but its authenticity was no longer in doubt when the images were finally deciphered as the Five Senses – Sight, the paramount sense, is at the centre, with the other four around it in attitudes appropriate to their function, and further surrounded by symbols of God’s creation (Bruce-Mitford 1955, 173– 190; Backhouse, Turner and Webster 1984, 19, cat. no. 11). In fact, through its very subtle iconography, it proclaims to initiates a very Alfredian emphasis on the primacy of Sight as a pathway to the gaining of spiritual wisdom, a suitable adornment, perhaps, for someone in court circles (Pratt 2003, 206–220). The famous Alfred Jewel is another of these subtle Alfredian puzzles. Thought Figure 2.22 Sword pommel from near Beckley, to be the handle of a manuscript pointer, Oxfordshire, late eighth century. © British it was one of several made to accompany Museum copies of Alfred’s translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, which the king ordered to be sent to all his bishops, to instruct them how to conduct themselves, and especially how to care for their flocks. This, too, has a much debated iconography, though most would now agree that the enamelled figure beneath the rock crystal cover is – once again – a personification of Sight as the means by which spiritual Wisdom is to be attained – that is, by reading and learning (Pratt 2003; Webster 2003a). An image of the Tree of Life which adorns the back of the jewel reinforces the Figure 2.23 Gold finger-ring, East Anglia, mid-ninth century. © Christie’s Christian message.

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But the best known and most extended example of the Anglo-Saxon fondness for presenting serious themes through riddles is the Franks Casket (Fig. 2.3) (Webster 2012b). Made in early eighth-century Northumbria, this is a three-dimensional riddle in itself; and right from the start, the inscription on the first panel that you encounter when you go to unlock the box warns us to expect a brain-teasing ride by presenting the viewer with a riddle about the whale-bone from which the box was made. The casket is carved with a complicated series of carefully contrasted scenes, which are meant – one discovers – to be read in pairs. These are drawn from Germanic legend as well as from Roman and Judaeo-Christian tradition, framed by commentaries in runic and Roman letters. The texts – which are certainly also meant to be seen as images – play many games with the reader; they run backwards, upside down, switch between languages and alphabets, and the inscription on one panel is actually partially encoded. The highly stylised images are teeming with detail, and again require some unpacking to arrive at the story. All the narratives appear to centre on the nature of good rule, on Christian salvation, and the divine rule to which earthly kings are subject. The combined message of these scenes is a moral sermon on how a Christian ruler should conduct himself; and the answer to the over-arching riddle that is the casket itself is to be found in the contents for which it was made – most probably, an exemplary text such as the Psalms.

Figure 2.24 The Fuller Brooch, late ninth century. © British Museum

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They are rich in instruction and meditation on the godly life, including the conduct of kings, and King David, their supposed author, was thus regularly presented by early medieval Christian writers as a model for contemporary rulers. The Franks Casket is a fitting object with which to end this brief survey, because it’s an object which takes from both old and new to get its message across; it’s based on a fine late Roman ivory reliquary casket, and its message is a wholly Christian one; yet its learned maker was entirely comfortable in weaving the old pagan stories into a new narrative of salvation. Poised chronologically at the tipping point where the old pagan beliefs finally ceded to Christianity, the casket is a perfect illustration of the coming together of two traditions, and the transformation of both into something new (and rather strange). There are more beautiful and elegant Anglo-Saxon objects; but few which so perfectly encapsulate the essential nature of the preoccupations of the artists on this outpost of Europe, interpreting new ideas using traditional themes, and expressing them in entirely new ways. That is the particular genius of Anglo-Saxon art.

Notes

1. This paper draws on themes discussed in Webster 2012a, and which can be explored in greater detail there, and in sources listed in the bibliography for this paper. 2. See for example the enigmatic scene labelled ‘ubi unus clericus et Ælfgiva’, where a cleric reaches out to touch a noble lady; this is accompanied by a naked man gallivanting and gesturing in the border below, in a kind of parody of the main image (Wilson 1985, 178). 3. The Benty Grange helmet has a silver cross riveted to its nasal; and the crown of the York helmet has two crossing bands which carry a Christian invocation and the name Oshere – presumably that of the owner; Webster and Backhouse 1991, cat. nos. 46 and 47. 4. For detailed discussion of the Gandersheim Casket, see Marth 2000, and for the AngloCarolingian chrismal, see Webster 2014. 5. For example, on the Sutton Hoo and Staffordshire helmet foils, and on the buckles from Finglesham, Kent, grave 95, and Ayton (Chadwick Hawkes and Grainger 2006, 21; Blackwell 2007; Webster 2012a, 38, fig. 22). 6. The name derives from a Carolingian mid-ninth-century illuminated psalter, now in Utrecht, Netherlands (Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32). This lavish and exquisitely illustrated manuscript was made at Hautvillers, near Reims, but had been brought to Canterbury by c. 1000, when a lively copy (the first of three later ones) was made by Anglo-Saxon scribes (the Harley Psalter, British Library MS Harley 603; Temple 1976, cat. no. 64). The animated impressionistic style of the Utrecht Psalter and related Carolingian manuscripts was very influential on Anglo-Saxon art of the late tenth and early eleventh century.

References

Alexander, J. J. G. (1978) Insular Manuscripts, Sixth to the Ninth Century. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, vol.1. London. Backhouse, J. (1981) The Lindisfarne Gospels. London. Backhouse, J., Turner, D. H. and Webster, L. (eds) (1984) The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art: 966–1066. London.

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Bailey, R. N. (2009) ‘Anglo-Saxon Art: some Forms, Ordering and their Meanings’. In S. Crawford, H. Hamerow and L. Webster (eds.), Form and Order in the Anglo-Saxon World (Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 16), 18–30. Oxford. Blackwell, A. (2007) ‘An Anglo-Saxon figure-decorated plaque from Ayton (Scottish Borders), its parallels and implications’, Medieval Archaeology 51, 165–172. Brown, M. P. (2007) Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age. London. Bruce-Mitford, R. L. S. (1955) ‘Late Saxon disc brooches’. In D. B. Harden (ed.), Dark Age Britain: Studies presented to E.T. Leeds, 171–201. London. Brundle, L. (2013) ‘The body on display: exploring the role and use of figurines in early Anglo-Saxon England’, Journal of Social Archaeology 13.2, 197–219. Chadwick Hawkes, S. and Grainger, G. (2006) The Anglo-Saxon Cemetery at Finglesham, Kent. Oxford. Coatsworth, E. (2008) Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture VIII, Western Yorkshire. Oxford. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (eds) (1969) Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford. Hedeager, L. (1999) ‘Skandinavisk dyreornamentik. Symbolisk repræsentation af en førkristen kosmologi’. In S. Fuglestvedt et al. (eds), Et hus med mange rom: Vennebok til Bjørn Myhre på 60 årsdagen, 219–237. Stavanger. Hinton, D. A. (2008) The Alfred Jewel and other late Anglo-Saxon decorated Metalwork. Oxford. Keynes, S. D. and Lapidge, M. (eds) (1983) Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and other contemporary Sources. Harmondsworth. Lang, J. (2001) Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture VI, Northern Yorkshire. Oxford. Lapidge, M. and Rosier, J. L. (trans.) (2009) Aldhelm: The Poetic Works. Cambridge. Leahy, K. and Bland, R. (2010) The Staffordshire Hoard. London. Leigh, D. (1984) ‘Ambiguity in Anglo-Saxon Style 1’, Antiquaries Journal 64, 34–42. Magnus, B. (1997) ‘The Firebed of the Serpent; myth and religion in the Migration period mirrored through some golden objects’. In L. Webster and M. Brown (eds.), The Transformation of the Roman World AD 400–900, 194–207. London. Marth, R. (ed.) (2000) Das Gandersheimer Runenkästchen. Internationales Kolloquium Braunschweig 24–26 Marz 1999. Braunschweig. Pestell, T. (2013) ‘Paganism in Early-Anglo-Saxon East Anglia’. In T. A. Heslop, E. Mellings and M.  Thøfner (eds), Art, Faith and Place in East Anglia from Prehistory to the Present, 66–87. Cambridge. Pratt, D. (2003) ‘Persuasion and innovation at the court of Alfred the Great’. In C. Cubitt (ed.), Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: the Proceedings of the First Alcuin Conference, 189–221. Turnhout. Temple, E. (1976) Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts 900–1066. A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 2. London. Webster, L. (2003a) ‘Ædificia nova; treasures of Alfred’s reign’. In T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great, 79–103. Aldershot. Webster, L. (2003b) ‘Encrypted visions: style and sense in the Anglo-Saxon minor arts, A.D.400–900’. In C. E. Karkov and G. H. Brown (eds), Anglo-Saxon Styles, 11–30. Albany, NY. Webster, L. (2005) ‘Visual literacy in a protoliterate age’. In P. Hermann (ed.), Literacy in Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian Culture. Studies in Northern Civilization 16, 21–46. Viborg. Webster, L. (2012a) Anglo-Saxon Art: a new History. London. Webster L. (2012b) The Franks Casket. London. Webster, L. (2014b) ‘A recently discovered Anglo-Carolingian chrismatory’. In J. Robinson, L. de Beer and A. Harnden (eds), Matter of Faith: An Interdisciplinary Study of Relics and Relic Veneration in the Medieval Period, British Museum Research Publications 195, 66–74. London. Webster, L. (2015) ‘The Art of Alfred and his Times’. In N. Discenza and P. Szarmach (eds), A Companion to Alfred the Great, 65–110. Leiden.

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Webster, L. (forthcoming 2017) ‘Imagining Identities: The Case of the Staffordshire Hoard’. In J. D. Niles, S. Klein, and J. Wilcox (eds), Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination, Proceedings of the ISAS conference, Madison 2012, AMCRS Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies 6. Tempe, AZ. Webster, L. and Backhouse, J. (eds) (1991) The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture AD 600–900. London. Webster, L. and Okasha, E. (2014) ‘What’s in a name? An inscribed ninth-century Anglo-Saxon ring’. In J. Cotton et al. (eds), Hidden Histories and Records of Antiquity: Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Medieval London presented to John Clark, Curator Emeritus, Museum of London (LAMAS Special Paper 17), 129–132. London. Wilson, D. M. (1985) The Bayeux Tapestry. London.

Chapter 3 King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred Barbara Yorke

When all that is left of the lives of so many Anglo-Saxon kings is one-dimensional, it is with some relief that the historian turns to the multi-faceted career of King Alfred. His biography by Asser provides the type of information that we generally lack for other Anglo-Saxon rulers (Stevenson 1904; Keynes and Lapidge 1983). We learn something of the king’s childhood and relations with other members of his family. We appear to be made privy to some of his innermost thoughts, morals and personal ambitions, many of which seem to be supported by the ethical framework promoted in the translations that claim to have been made by King Alfred himself. However, one does not have to go as far as branding Asser’s biography as a forgery to have some reservations about the historicity of the portrait of the king.1 Asser does give us much valuable information drawn from his life at court, but some of his detailed vignettes, such as that of the boy Alfred beating his older brothers to win a book of poetry whose contents he has learnt by heart, lose plausibility on close examination (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 23; Lerer 1991, 61–96; Abels, 1998, 55–57). Some apparent actions of the king, such as his regular division of his revenues, appear to be closely modelled on the biblical example of King Solomon (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 99–102; Kempshall 2001), and the reputed allocation of half the royal revenue to ecclesiastical purposes is certainly at variance with the king’s division of his wealth in his will (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 173–178). The teachings of Gregory the Great provided Asser with the king’s sense of personal responsibility for the moral welfare of himself and his people, as well as consolation for his illness (Kempshall 2001; Kershaw 2001; Pratt 2001). The translations associated with Alfred seem to support both the king’s interest in, and internalisation of, Gregorian responsibility and Solomonic wisdom (Pratt 2007a), but are these Alfred’s own ideals or those that the learned circle around him wished him to espouse (Godden 2007; Godden 2009; Pratt 2007b)? Or to put it another way, had Alfred himself made such a complete transformation from traditional ruler and warleader to philosopher king as these written sources seem to suggest?

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Modern biographers of King Alfred have had to grapple with such issues. Richard Abels has described how he set out with the intention of pulling down Alfred from his pedestal (Abels 2006, 73), but found instead that he had produced a portrait with much in common with those of Charles Plummer of 1902 and of Alfred Smyth in 1995 (Plummer 1902; Smyth 1995), in spite of the latter’s rejection of Asser’s biography. That Smyth’s depiction of Alfred’s character and behaviour could emerge as similar in many respects to that sketched by Asser, but without making use of the latter’s Vita of the king, could be seen to support inadvertently the genuineness of Asser’s portrayal. What it may really be showing us is a consistent ideal of royal behaviour that was constructed by the scholarly circle around the king. The ideal may be one of which the king approved, even one that he would like to think that he embodied, but it is nevertheless a literary construct and one that might have been hard to transpose completely to the realities of life as king in ninth-century England. The problem with Alfred is that we are well-provided with how he, or an improved, idealised version of him, appeared to his scholarly circle, but we do not get to see the battle-hardened king interacting with the laymen of his court and army, relationships that in the end were more crucial for the survival of himself and his kingdom. One suspects that the models that stood him in good stead in his relationships in the secular world were rather different from those provided by the biblical Solomon and Pope Gregory the Great. Unfortunately for our hopes of reconstructing them, many of his role models are likely to have come from a largely lost oral tradition of heroes, one in which behaviour may have been no less idealistic, but probably rather different in import. Pursuit of them may, however, bring us closer to aspects of the king that are not part of the Latin written traditions that dominate the study of his reign. One need not doubt that the king was stimulated and strengthened by the study of key Latin texts that he apparently undertook in adult life, but, according to Asser, he frequently lamented that he had been brought up in a rather different oral tradition (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 22). The story of the young Alfred learning by heart the contents of a book of poetry does, if nothing else, underline the importance attached to the traditions of Old English verse in his upbringing. Asser writes of the young Alfred: ‘He was a careful listener, by day and night, to English poems, most frequently hearing them recited by others, and he readily retained them in his memory’ (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 23). Asser no doubt wished to present a progression in Alfred’s quest for wisdom from the Old English poems through to the Latin texts that he studied with him, but he also reveals that Alfred’s more advanced scholarly studies co-existed with his concern for mastery of Old English verse. Among the kingly activities that Asser describes the Alfred he knew undertaking was ‘reading aloud from books in English and above all learning English poems [carmina Saxonica] by heart’ (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 76). When Alfred oversaw the education at the royal court of his elder son Edward and youngest daughter Ælfthryth it included learning the Psalms ‘and

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 49 books in English, and especially English poems’ (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 75). Is it possible that Alfred’s skills in the recitation of Old English verse could lie behind the story recorded by William of Malmesbury of how he went disguised as a ‘minstrel’ (ioculatoriae professor artis) to the Viking camp to discover Guthrum’s battle plans (Mynors, Thomson and Winterbottom 1998, II. 121.5; 182–185)? 2 This legend may derive not so much from Asser’s account, or the existence of Alfred’s Old English prose translations, but from a tradition of Alfred’s knowledge of Old English poetry, and perhaps of his skills as a performer of it. One could recall here the respect accorded to Norse verse at Scandinavian courts, and the expectation that those aspiring to high status should be able to understand its allusions and refer to them when it was apposite (Whaley 2004). Although Old English verse may have been simpler in form and more accessible, its cultural resonance may have been not dissimilar. Beowulf, Deor and Waldere all seem to assume an audience that will be able to understand allusions to a wide range of Germanic heroes and legends that seem to have been freely adapted in Beowulf to suit the author’s own purposes (Orchard 2003, 98–129, 169–202). It would be entirely in keeping with what we appear to know of Alfred’s character that he would want to be able to top any other member of his court in performance of traditional verse or allusion to its esoteric content. Asser does not unfortunately tell us more about the contents of the Old English poems by which Alfred set such store. Some overtly Christian poetry in Old English had, of course, existed since the poem on the creation attributed to Caedmon that was known to Bede (Colgrave and Mynors 1969, IV, 24: 414–421; O’Donnell 2005). However, Old English verse drawing on biblical and other Christian themes is notoriously hard to date, and the greater part of it survives in manuscripts that date to after the late-tenth-century Benedictine reform (Scragg 1991).3 The tone of Asser’s account of the shortcomings in Alfred’s early education suggests that the poetry was more likely to have been of ‘the valiant deeds of the heroes of old’ that had inspired the young Guthlac to an early military career (Colgrave 1956, 80–81). Some may have dealt with West Saxon heroes of the past, and it is possible that the foundation legend that seems to lie behind the Cerdic and Cynric annals in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle could have been recorded in poetic form (Stenton 1971, 20–26; Sims-Williams 1983; Yorke 1989). The whole issue of an established oral tradition of Germanic heroic verse is a controversial one (Frank 1991). By definition the evidence for an oral tradition has disappeared, and so divergent views are possible on what might once have existed. Beowulf in its final Christianised, literary form has inevitably had to do duty for what must once have been a much more extensive oral oeuvre. The poem opens with an exhortation to its listeners and contains several references to the oral transmission of its contents (Orchard 2003, 98–129). Allusions to the stories of many other heroes are made in the poem and there is an assumption that the audience can supply missing information in order to understand the references. We can also

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be fairly confident that a version of Beowulf was known in Wessex before the reign of Alfred from what appear to be traces of an eighth-century archetype in the text (Lapidge 2000; Davis 2006), and, above all, by the appearance of names of leading characters in the poem in the extended genealogy for Æthelwulf the father of Alfred in the entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 855, that is known also in other versions (Sisam 1953; Meaney 1989; 2003). The fact that the poem centres on individuals who were claimed as ancestors of the West Saxon royal house no doubt helps explain why it is the only complete heroic poem to have survived, albeit adapted to the style and purposes of its final literary author (Orchard 2003, passim). The hero in the posited early West Saxon archetype was probably known as Beaw (or Beow), the form which appears in Æthelwulf ’s genealogy where he is said to be the son of Sceldwa, the son of Heremod, with Sceaf as a more distant ancestor, ‘the son of Noah … born in Noah’s ark’ (Whitelock, Douglas, and Tucker 1962, 43–44; Hill 1987; Anlezark 2002). Beowulf implies that there could have been many more poems of distant and mythical heroes of which we now have little knowledge. Some light may be thrown by the Franks Casket which was discovered in Auzon in France in the nineteenth century, but attributed, as Leslie Webster in particular has argued, on ‘runological, philological and art-historical grounds to northern England in the first half of the eighth century’ (Webster 1999, 229; Webster 2012; Wood 1990). The casket famously combines scenes involving biblical and classical characters with others that can be presumed to have been drawn from Germanic myths. The latter include the lid panel with Ægil the archer defending his home, and the right end panel, in the Bargello Museum, Florence, with its enigmatic scenes of horse, warrior, burial mound, horseheaded being and three matronae. Neither of these stories is otherwise known, though Ægil is possibly the same as Eigil the brother of Weland described in the thirteenthcentury Điðrekssaga as a mighty archer (Orchard 1997, 95–96, 347–348). It can only be a presumption that they have come from lost legends of the Anglo-Saxons that have no exact counterpart in recorded Scandinavian or German traditions. However, knowledge of a third Germanic story on the casket, that of Weland the smith on the front panel (Fig. 3.1) seems to have been more widespread. The iconography of the casket scene can be elucidated with the help of allusions in the Old English poem Deor, and compared with the more detailed accounts in the Old Norse Vọlundarkviða of the Elder Edda, and the thirteenth-century Điðrekssaga, as well as with his appearances in Middle German literature (Davidson 1958; Davidson 1969; Orchard 1997, 389–391; Hall 2007, 39–47; McKinnell 1990). What is particularly interesting for our purposes is that a reference in the Old English translations of Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, the prose version of which is one of the translations attributed to King Alfred and his circle (an issue that will be considered further below), suggests that Weland’s myth was one of those known to the king. Consideration of this extract may potentially reveal something of the attitudes of King Alfred himself towards

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 51

Figure 3.1 Front panel, Franks Casket (copyright and permission The Trustees of the British Museum)

such heroes, or, at the very least, of attitudes towards Weland when the Old English translations were made. The riff on Weland occurs in response to a passage in Boethius’s original on the emptiness of worldly fame and of death as the great leveller: Death covers poor and mighty skulls alike and levels low and lofty things. Where rest the bones now of Fabricius, tried and true? What is Brutus or stern Cato now? Thin reputation leaves its mark, an empty name, in spare inscriptions lingers on. You mortals all die utterly without a name! No reputations make you great. (Relihan 2001, II, 7, l. 13–21, 45)

It may have been the name ‘Fabricius’ with its links to faber ‘smith’ that inspired the allusions to Weland the goldsmith in the Old English translations (Godden and Irvine 2009, II: 326-7).

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The Old English prose version at first appears to be making the same point as the Latin original but substituting the bones of Weland for those of Fabricius. In fact, it reaches the opposite conclusion about the importance of earthly fame: Where now are the bones of the famous and wise goldsmith Weland? (I said wise (wisan) because the craftsman (cræftegan) can never lose his skill (cræft) nor can it be easily taken from him any more than the sun can be moved from its place.) Where are now Weland’s bones, or who knows now where they were? (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 19, ll. 16–21, p. 283; translation Godden and Irvine II, p. 30.) prose citations are from the B text

The Old English prose translation agrees with the Latin original that burial places of the heroes of the past are of little relevance. What is implied, but not explicitly stated in the Old English versions, is that before full acceptance of Christianity such sites did have considerable significance for the Anglo-Saxons. The author of the poetic version of the Old English Boethius assumes that the allusion is to burial in a barrow: Who now is aware of wise Weland’s bones, In what barrow lying they litter the ground. (Sedgefield 1900, 194; Godden and Irvine 2009, C, metre 10 [translation on p. 126])

Although there is more doubt over whether the poetic version of the Old English Boethius should be associated with Alfred’s court (Griffith 2009), it is not altogether ruled out in the recent edition that the prose and verse translation were produced at the same time (Godden and Irvine 2009, I, 146–151). It is probably safe to assume that the West Saxon court in the ninth century would be familiar with Wayland’s Smithy (Fig. 3.2) on Ashdown (Oxon), close to the site of a victorious battle over the Danes by Alfred and his brother Æthelred in 871 (Grinsell 1939, 13–21).4 The name of Wayland’s Smithy is recorded in the bounds of an early-tenth-century charter (Sawyer 1968, no. 564),5 and so was presumably current in the reign of Alfred. It is in origin a Neolithic long barrow, and its association with Weland can be seen as part of an appropriation of prehistoric burial mounds and other structures in early Anglo-Saxon culture, that has many other early medieval parallels, and was probably intended to legitimise ownership of land or underpin status (Williams 1997; 1998). What ceremonies or ritual practices may once have occurred at such sites is not known; possibly they Figure 3.2 Wayland’s Smithy on Ashdown (photograph were regarded as gateways for heroes in the underworld (Yorke 2015). Sarah Barbara Yorke)

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 53 Semple has shown how after conversion to Christianity barrows gradually lost their positive associations to become the haunt of demons (Semple 1998). The Old English Boethius translations can be seen as part of this process, and they reject any numinous associations for the burial places of heroes. But the Old English prose Boethius did not follow its original in suggesting that ‘fame’ itself was transitory, rather the fame of individuals like Weland was as enduring as the sun. Furthermore, the goldsmith Weland was famed for being ‘wise’ (like Brutus) for he was a man of cræft. The epithet ‘the wise’ (which was also given to Weland in Vọlundarkviða) (Hall 2007, 41) is one that we associate with Alfred himself. The pursuit and acquisition of ‘wisdom’ is one of the leitmotifs that links the texts, both Old English and Latin, which were produced at Alfred’s court, and in Solomonic guise was deemed one of the most desirable royal attributes (Shippey 1979; Pratt 2007a, 115–120, 317–327). Craeft was another one of the key-words that recur in the Alfredian translations, always in a positive sense (Payne 1968, 64–66; Clemoes 1992, 223–237; Szarmach 1997; Discenza 2005, 87–114; Pratt 2007a, 287–295). Cræft was used in the Old English Boethius to translate Latin virtus, but without the latter’s exclusively moral dimension, and with an extension of meaning to also embrace practical skills and the exercise of power. Famously another passage in the Old English Boethius describes the cræft of a king and the tools which were needed to carry it out correctly (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 17, ll. 11–25, 277–278). It appears that the Old English prose Boethius not only approved of Weland, but felt that he possessed characteristics of wisdom and craeft that were to be particularly admired. ‘Wisdom’ was directly associated with King Alfred by Asser, and craeft was an attribute deemed appropriate for kings in the translations. The unique description of Weland as ‘a goldsmith’ in the Old English Boethius may also link him with King Alfred (Coatsworth and Pinder 2002, 181–190). Asser refers to the significant portion of his revenue that Alfred assigned to his craftsmen ‘skilled in every earthly craft (aedificium)’, including goldsmiths who made treasures for the king, some of which he had apparently designed himself (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, Ch. 101 and 91). The aestel as reading-aid is considered to have been one such invention, and the Alfred Jewel is seen as the most deluxe version, almost certainly produced by the royal workshops (Pratt 2003; Webster 2003; Hinton 2008). However, the fame and craeft that are commended in Weland in the Old English Boethius may have been rooted in other aspects of his legend that take us further away from Asser’s carefully orchestrated portrait of an ideal Christian king. The Old English Boethius’s admiration of Weland is all the more surprising as the story of Weland, as told most fully in the Old Norse Vọlundarkviða, and alluded in Deor and on the Frank’s Casket, appears to us (and presumably also would have done to Alfred’s scholarly advisers) to be far from admirable or an appropriate role-model for Christian kings. Chadwick commented that the tale of Weland differed from other stories of heroic literature ‘in the cruelty, treachery and vindictiveness ascribed to the chief character’ (Chadwick 1926, 133). According to the various traditions that

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survive Weland the skilful smith was captured by his enemy King Nithhad who had him lamed and imprisoned on an island, and forced him to work for him. Weland’s awkwardly bent leg on the Franks Casket may represent this laming. There Weland plotted a terrible revenge for his humiliation. He slew Nithhad’s two sons and made cups from their skulls, one of which he hands to Beadohild their sister on the Franks Casket. Then he raped Beadohild and made good his escape through some sort of flying device with the help of his brother Eigil.6 On the Franks Casket a small figure, possibly Eigil, appears to be strangling birds, presumably to make some sort of flying suit, the frame of which seems to be depicted hanging behind the centre-facing female figure (which may be another depiction of Beadohild) (Kopár 2012, 7–10). Weland’s ascension by such means was depicted on Anglo-Scandinavian sculptures (Lang 1976; Bailey 1980, 103–116). The pairing of Weland’s revenge with the nativity of Christ on the front panel of the Franks Casket has naturally occasioned some surprise, and one common interpretation has been to see them as a positive and negative pairing. Richard Abels, for instance, in his interesting analysis of the casket as a commentary on gift-giving, contrasts the ‘positive’ gifts of the Magi with Weland’s ‘negative’ gift to Beadohild, and suggested that revenge for bad deeds was the necessary concomitant of rewards for good behaviour (Abels 2009).7 The recognition of a further Weland scene on the casket by James Lang raises the likelihood that the actions of Weland were interpreted by its designer in a positive way (as the translator(s) of the Old English Boethius also seem to have done) (Lang 1999, 247–255). The bottom register of the back panel (Fig. 3.3), which has the Emperor Titus’s ‘revenge’ on the Jews of Jerusalem in AD 70 above it, has on the left-hand side an enthroned figure with a small confined figure squatting beneath it. James Lang has provided a strong case on iconographical grounds for the two figures being Nithhad and Weland. Nithhad clutches in one hand one of the skull goblets, as depicted in the Weland scene on the front panel, while Weland extends another to him. One of the Weland figure’s legs is at an awkward angle and he supports himself with a staff, both appropriate for someone who has been lamed. To their right are two further figures that appear to be associated with them, and next to these two figures in runes is the word dom ‘judgement’. The word dom, with its positive associations of good judgement,8 seems to imply that Weland had taken a just revenge on Nithhad as Titus had done on the Jews (as Christ had prophesised). The back panel and the front panel would therefore seem to be closely related. The latter is divided vertically with scenes concerning Weland and Christ, while the former is divided horizontally with scenes showing the revenge exacted for both figures. The Ark of the Covenant occupies a central position on the back panel, cutting through both scenes and so stressing their interconnection. Lang’s analysis transforms interpretation of the legend of Weland on the Frank’s Casket by suggesting that the ‘judgement’ that Weland handed out to King Nithhad, and members of his family, was deemed an appropriate response. Was this how the story was also interpreted in the Old English Boethius? The theme of the circumstances

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 55

Figure 3.3 Back panel, Franks Casket (copyright and permission The Trustees of the British Museum)

in which one might justly take up arms against a ruler is one that recurs in Alfredian sources (Nelson 1993; Leneghan 2011). The translation of Boethius opens with a lengthy assertion that Boethius had been justified in plotting against the tyrannical Theodoric  –  there is no equivalent justification in the original (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 1; Payne 1968, 12–13). In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle annal for 755 Cynewulf is depicted as rightly taking the throne from Sigebert because of the latter’s ‘unjust acts’ and because his actions had the support of the witan, unlike the subsequent rebellion and revenge of Sigebert’s brother Cyneheard against Cynewulf (Yorke 2010; Leneghan 2011). There are even possible parallels between the Chronicle’s account of Cynewulf defending himself against Cyneheard’s attack and another scene portrayed on the Franks Casket depicting Ægil’s defence of his home. Like Cynewulf, Ægil seems to be shown as being surprised when alone with a woman, and as a lone warrior he defends himself bravely in a doorway within a fortified enclosure. Possibly a heroic story of Ægil has influenced the presentation of the Chronicle entry for 755, adding another layer of significance for its Anglo-Saxon audience. If this Ægil is indeed to be equated with Eigil the brother of Weland in the Norse account (Neuman de Vegvar 1987, 262; Webster 1999, 235; Orchard 1997, 94; Page 1973, 181),9 it would emphasize the importance accorded to the story of Weland in Anglo-Saxon culture, and suggest that there could have been aspects of Anglo-Saxon accounts of Weland and his family that were not preserved in other versions.

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At this point it would be very helpful if we knew more about the circumstances in which the Franks Casket was commissioned and the nature of its intended audience. The casket has been identified plausibly by Leslie Webster with a reliquary that stood on the high altar of St Julian of Brioude, not far from Auzon where it came to light in the nineteenth century (Webster 2012, 55–60; Webster 2007). This reliquary is first recorded at Brioude in 1291, but the date and circumstances in which it came there are quite unknown. The casket was not necessarily originally commissioned as a reliquary, and its iconographic programme, taken as a whole, might seem more appropriate in a courtly context, as Richard Abels has cogently argued (Abels 2009, 562–566). Given the usual assumption that the casket was made in Northumbria, some commentators have been attracted to the reign of King Aldfrith of Northumbria (685–705) as a likely time for the casket’s production (Neuman de Vegvar 1987, 258–259; Abels 2009, 564–565). Aldfrith was an unusually learned king for he had apparently spent much of his early life in Irish monastic schools, and is known to have received a series of high profile gifts from religious houses on his accession (Yorke 2009). Aldfrith, probably unusually among early Anglo-Saxon kings, might have readily appreciated the Casket’s allusions and analogies. But ultimately we do not know the circumstances of the casket’s production. It could also have been appropriate for the household of a bishop which had to span ecclesiastical and secular worlds; inevitably Bishop Wilfrid comes to mind (Wood 1990). The prominence of female characters, especially on the front panel, might, on the other hand, suggest a female patron or recipient. The circumstances of its production must remain an enigma, but what can more certainly be said is that it was produced at a time when positive analogies could be drawn between Germanic, classical and biblical exemplars in complex layers of interpretation, and, that something of this approach may have survived into the period when the Old English Boethius was produced (see Webster in this volume). How far should we see Weland’s presence alongside biblical characters as surprising? The problem with Weland from a Christian perspective was not just ‘the cruelty … and vindictiveness’ (Chadwick 1926, 133) – after all some of the behaviour of exemplary Old Testament kings was not above approach – but the issue of what sort of being he was, and what powers helped him to achieve his ends. Although, as we shall see in more detail below, part of the process at conversion was the transformation to human form of Germanic heroes who may originally have had more complex identities, it was not entirely possible to retain the stories and obliterate all supernatural elements. In the Old English Boethius and the Franks Casket Weland appears to be presented as a human smith, and in Deor he is described as ‘a resolute hero’ (Krapp and Dobbie 1936, 178 ll. 1–6). However, even in the Anglo-Saxon sources, there are also hints of supernatural powers associated with Weland. The armour that he is said to have made that was worn by Beowulf seems to have provided more than ordinary protection as Grendel’s mother was unable to pierce it with her talons (Dobbie 1953, 16, l. 455a).10 Weland’s escape by flying in Northumbrian iconography, to which there seems to be allusion on the Franks Casket, is hardly normal human behaviour

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 57 (Lang 1976; Kopár 2012, 3–22). In Scandinavian tradition Weland’s otherworldliness is more apparent. In the Volundarvika he is described as álfa lioði ‘member/ruler of the elves’ and as visialfa ‘wise elf ’; its prose introduction makes him the son of a Finnish king – often a sign of shamanic or other magical skills in Scandinavian literature (Orchard 1997, 389–391; Hall 2007, 38–47). In the opening stanzas Volundr and his two brothers have an encounter with three otherworldly females, perhaps disir or valkyrie, and their disappearance enabled his capture by King Nithhad (Hall 2007, 38–47; McKinnell 1990, 2–4).11 According to Điðrekssaga Volundr’s father was a giant and appears to have been identical with the Wade of English folklore (Davidson 1958, 149–152). Volundr/Weland also has much in common with other supernatural smiths of the Germanic world, many of whom were described as giants or dwarfs (Hinton 1998; Headeager 2011, 140–147). Weland was not the only mythological character whose fame and craeft were admired in the Old English translation of Boethius for the classical hero Hercules, acknowledged in the translation as a son of Jove (Godden and Irvine 2009, I, Ch. 16, line 75, 274), is referred to in comparable terms. Two passages relating to Hercules are recounted in the Old English Boethius, both prompted by references in the Latin work, but developed in original ways (Irvine 2003).12 Like Weland, Hercules is presented as a hero whose behaviour is worthy of emulation. We are told that Hercules’s killing of King Bosiris was a justified homicide because of the ruler’s tyrannical practice of putting his guests to death (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 16, ll. 75–79; Irvine 2003, 172–174). Hercules revenged their deaths by killing the king ‘very rightly in God’s judgement (dome)’ according to the Old English translation, the very term which appears to justify Weland’s revenge on the Franks Casket (Lang 1999, 250). In a second passage Hercules is described as famous (formaere) and admired for the craeft he displayed in getting rid of the hydra by building a pyre of wood around it and setting fire to it (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 39, ll. 89–98; Irvine 2003, 174–176). As with the Weland episode, contemplation of Hercules’s actions leads to an aphorism: ‘If someone embarks on [a task] then he leaves it with difficulty: he never comes to a clear conclusion unless he has an understanding as keen as fire’. Hercules’s craeft is clearly not a practical skill in the way that Weland’s smithying could arguably be described, but rather the ability to deduce the best way out of a difficulty through a practical solution. It may well have been Weland’s similar ingenuity in orchestrating revenge from a position of weakness, and making a successful escape, that was the cræft admired in him, perhaps by the king himself. Did Alfred hope that he possessed similar craeft? Susan Irvine’s conclusion on the second Hercules extract was that ‘[Alfred] is presenting Hercules as a kind of prototype of himself … the concept of a task which requires a combination of cræft and the appropriate tools for its successful execution is exactly how Alfred envisages his own role as king elsewhere’ (Irvine 2003, 175).13 The admiration of Hercules is all the more surprising, as Susan Irvine has also observed, because the predominant view in contemporary Carolingian culture, including apparently at the royal court, was a negative one reflecting the condemnation

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by certain patristic authors of classical mythology (Irvine 2003, 185–188; Nees 1991). In line with this train of thought, for instance, Ælfric depicted Hercules as ‘an immense giant who killed all his neighbours’ (Skeat 1881–1900, II: 384, ll. 112–114; Irvine 2003, 181–183). Hercules is included among the monsters of the Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus which was probably compiled in Wessex in the early eighth century, perhaps by one of Aldhelm’s students at Malmesbury (Lapidge 1982). Andy Orchard notes its author’s ambiguous attitude towards Hercules (Orchard 1995, 86–115). He is included among the monsters, but was also the slayer of them. The author exclaims ‘Who does not admire the courage and weaponry of Hercules?’ (Orchard 1995, 264–267). He was the type of hero with whom any fan of Germanic heroic verse could identify. The Liber monstrorum provides evidence that the stories of Hercules were known in Wessex before the reign of Alfred, and apparently independently from the Frankish courts. The destruction of the hydra by fire is a unique feature of the Old English translation of Boethius, and so may reflect a variation of the legend as it circulated in Wessex. A reference in the Old English translation to Circe binding Ulysses’s men with chains and fetters seems also to have no known textual parallel (Irvine 1996). It seems worth considering whether the traditional stories that King Alfred apparently continued to value after he began his translations of Latin texts might have included tales not just about Germanic heroes such as Weland, but also some classical heroes such as Hercules and Ulysses. The Liber monstrorum appears to have been the work of an early West Saxon author who could combine elements of Christian, classical and traditional stories and learning; a characteristic of the early post-conversion phase that also saw the production of the Franks Casket. Classical mythological stories seem to have circulated in some Irish ecclesiastical centres, and had been encountered by Aldhelm who larded his writings with classical mythological allusions even after his re-education by Archbishop Theodore (Orchard 1994, 126–224; Herren 1998; Dempsey 1999). Aldhelm, it should be remembered was not only a leading member of the West Saxon church, but closely related to the royal house (Lapidge 2007, 17–22).14 It is also possible that the stories could have been absorbed by the secular elite of Wessex from a different direction. Classical mythology was undoubtedly known to the elites of late Roman Britain as they depicted well-known heroes such as Hercules or Orpheus (another whose legend is alluded to in the Old English Boethius) on mosaics that were particularly plentiful in the late fourth century in western Wessex (Henig 1995, 138–173; Scott 2000, 113–144). Although much remains obscure about the early development of the West Saxon kingdom, a certain rapprochement of Anglo-Saxon and British can be assumed at different stages of West Saxon expansion. Old English language and culture came to dominate, but some aspects of indigenous culture can be traced within it (Higham 2007). Cerdic, claimed as the founder of the West Saxon royal house, bears a name derived from that of the Catavellaunian ruler Caractacus – and may even have been a manifestation of him (Parsons 1997). Might not the highly entertaining stories of the classical myths have been very welcome in the Anglo-Saxon halls, and have been

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 59 part of the story-telling repertoire on which Alfred had been brought up?15 It would not have been surprising if, from being circulated orally, that the stories relayed in the Old English Boethius acquired some distinctive features not represented in any known written text. An eclectic mixture of Germanic and classical heroes, of symbolic and otherworldly beings, are also to be found in royal genealogies that can presumably be seen as a rare survival of court culture, even if composed in the form we have them by clerics and influenced by biblical exemplars. That of Wessex, of which versions appear in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s biography, is the supreme example, though lacking a classical dimension (Neuman de Vegvar 1999, 256–267).16 An extraordinary range of Germanic gods, including Geat and Woden, symbolic beings such as Sceaf (sheaf) and Sceald (shield), the archetypal Germanic hero Beowulf in the form Beow, as well as Cerdic/Caratacus have been identified in its upper reaches (Sisam 1953; Meaney 1989; Moisl 1981; North 1997). Wherever these beings may have come from, they have been transformed into ancestral heroes in the written genealogical tradition created for the Anglo-Saxon royal courts. This was part of what proved to be a somewhat controversial pact that helped ensure the conversion of the royal houses. Such historisation of the mythic has a long history in European civilisation from the classical period onwards (Cooke 1927; Seznec 1953; Faulkner 1978–9; Johnson 1995). At an early stage in the conversion process, perhaps following successful Irish precedents (Charles-Edwards 2000, 185–201), some churchmen in Anglo-Saxon England promoted the process of euhemerisation whereby gods and other mythological beings could continue to exist and play their part in court culture under the guise of human heroes. Bishop Daniel recommended this course of action in his letter to Boniface providing advice on how to convert fellow Germanic peoples (Tangl 1916, no. 23; Whitelock 1979, v.1 no.167, 795–797). When Bede said that the royal families of many kingdoms claimed their descent from Woden, he was presumably indicating that the erstwhile god should be seen as a human progenitor (Colgrave and Mynors 1969, I: 15, 30–31). Woden’s incorporation in the biblically-inspired genealogies implies the same, and may have been the source of Bede’s information (John 1992). A lengthy passage in the Old English Boethius, with no exact precedent in the original, explains the principles of euhemerisation, and the misapprehensions of past peoples that Jupiter/Jove was a god not a king (Godden and Irvine 2009, Ch. 35 ll.117–140; Irvine 2003, 180–181). Through such reasoning it was possible in the Old English Boethius to present Hercules, son of Jove, as a hero worth emulating. Weland in the Old English Boethius and on the Franks Casket may have owed his presentation as a human hero to a similar transformation. By the same process, Beowulf in spite of some impressive supernatural skills, such as being able to operate underwater for long periods, is presented as a human warrior ‘whose soul departed from him to seek the glory of the righteous’ (Dobbie 1953, 87 l.2820; Hill 1988). A further transformative stage involved typology where parallels between mythological and biblical scenes were drawn, and it was possible to suggest a

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prefiguring in classical or other myths of biblical messages or personages along comparable lines to those drawn between the Old and New Testaments. The use of pre-Christian imagery and characters in a Christian context in the late Roman world is well attested, including on mosaics from late Roman Wessex (Scott 2000, 155–166). Was such an interpetatio Christiana extended to Germanic heroes in the post-conversion phase of cultural openness? The positive pairing of Weland and Christ on the Franks Casket discussed above raises the possibility that Weland was being presented there as an analogue or ‘type’ of Christ. Weland’s appearance on the later northern sculptures is also capable of carrying a comparable interpretation through allusion to the Resurrection or Ascension of Christ (Thompson 2004, 163–168). In this context the identification of Weland as a goldsmith in the Old English prose Boethius is of particular interest. For in early Christian commentaries, including those of Bede, Joseph and Jesus were not carpenters but metal smiths (Bradley 1991). Bede identified Christ with the Messianic goldsmith of Malachi 3, 2–3. Elizabeth Coatsworth and Michael Pinder considered that the tools and products associated with Weland on the Franks Casket identified him specifically as a goldsmith (Coatsworth and Pinder 2002, 187–190), adding a potential further dimension to the pairing of Christ and Weland on the front panel. King Alfred’s patronage of goldsmiths, referred to by Asser but also supported by surviving artworks associated with him (Pratt 2003; Webster 2003; Hinton 2008; Chadwick 1926, 133), provides an additional layer of interest, if not further support for an association of Weland’s craeft with that of the king. Such adaptation of the heroic world is fully in keeping with Patrick Wormald’s classic interpretation of how the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy was achieved (Wormald 1978). The linking of traditional Germanic and biblical worlds is likely have been a feature of the culture of royal courts in the Middle Saxon period (as the genealogies also suggest), but one which, like the recital of oral poetry, has left scarcely any imprint in the surviving written record as it is not an approach to which the exemplary writers whose work does survive wanted to subscribe. For although such heroic transformations may have become an established tradition in certain circles in Anglo-Saxon England, even to the extent of Weland appearing as a type of Christ, that does not mean that everyone approved of the mingling of the biblical and the non-biblical. Ecclesiastical concerns about the legitimacy and wisdom of such accommodation, fuelled by similar anxieties recorded by patristic authors, intensified under the influence of the Carolingian Renaissance. ‘What has Ingeld to do with Christ?’ Alcuin famously demanded of an Anglo-Saxon episcopal correspondent (Dümmler 1895; Bullough 1993; Garrison 2005; Yorke 2013). The remnants of the pre-Christian past were gradually demonised (Semple 1998), but the Christian binary system was rather a blunt instrument and there was not necessarily complete accord on where the line should be drawn between the human and the supernatural, or between acceptable and unacceptable beings (Hall 2007, 51–52). Those who in one context might be humanised heroes, could be classified in

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 61 another as members of the race of giants, the progeny of Cain (Orchard 1995, 58–82), or, as in the Liber monstrorum, as monsters. Hercules appears to have been included amongst the monsters of the Liber monstrorum, but even so its author cannot help remarking ‘who does not admire the courage and weaponry of Hercules?’ (Orchard 1995, 114–115, 264–267; Irvine 2003, 183–184). A more surprising inclusion in the same work is Hygelac, not the respected, and apparently normally-sized, king of the Geats in Beowulf, also known to Gregory of Tours (Chambers 1967, 2–4, 341–342, 381–387), but a giant who should be shunned: and there are monsters of amazing size, like King Hygelac, who ruled the Geats and was killed by the Franks; whom no horse could carry from the age of twelve. His bones are preserved on an island in the inner Rhine where it breaks into the ocean, and they are shown as wonder to travellers from afar. (Orchard 1995, 105–106)

Germanic heroic figures appear to have been equated, in some ecclesiastical circles, with the giant warriors like Nimrod and Goliath who, as Cassian had explained, were descendants of Cain through Cham/Ham who had survived the Flood; some of this finds its way into the Old English Boethius (Godden and Irvine 2009, Ch. 35, V:117–140, 333; Orchard 1995, 58–82; Hall 2007, 66–84). They included the monstrous smith Tubal-Cain described in Genesis, and many of the supernatural smiths of Germanic legend were portrayed as giants (Davidson 1958). Even if Weland had elfish rather than giant origins, he could still fall the wrong side of the human/monster divide in the Christian binary division. In Beowulf elves were included with eotenas, orcneas and gigantes, respectively Germanic, classical and biblical monsters, as the progeny of Cain (Dobbie 1953, 6, ll. 109–114; Hall 2007, 66–74). This was a broad brush approach that did not distinguish different degrees of malignity between various supernatural beings, or separate those with positive heroic virtues from those evilly-disposed towards men. The fact that ‘Ælf’ entered the Anglo-Saxon naming lexicon presumably means that it at one time had positive associations (Hall 2007, 55–62). Alfred himself, of course, bore an ælf name; in fact, the Old Norse visialfa ‘wise elf ’ applied to Weland could almost be a rendering of his name. In the Old English translation of Boethius the downgrading of burial mounds that had once had positive associations with heroes and mythological beings seems to have been accepted, but there was not the type of blanket condemnation of all heroes from the mythic past that was increasingly the norm in continental ecclesiastical circles. On the contrary, Weland and Hercules are presented as practitioners of cræft, one of the desirable traits that was promoted throughout the translation. Although cræft was used in the Old English Boethius to translate virtus it was not identical with it (Clemoes 1992, 223–229). In a telling passage with no exact equivalent in the original we read ‘that those who have the power in this world cannot do, they cannot give from their riches any cræft to those who love it, if they do not have it in their nature’ (Sedgefield 1900, 62, ll. 29–31; Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 30, ll. 30–36,

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305). Cræft was the instinctive reaction necessary for survival in the tricky situations that mythological heroes might find themselves in, or which human kings like Alfred might need in the heat of battle or during an intensive military campaign. It was the correct decision in such circumstances, but not necessarily a moral one. Cræft can be linked with ellen used many times in Beowulf to denote, according to Peter Clemoes, ‘a mental energy for fighting’ (Clemoes 1992, 217). It was applied uniquely in the Old English Boethius to stand for fortitudo, the third of the cardinal virtues (Clemoes 1992, 222–223; Szarmach 1997). Other passages in the Old English Boethius depart from the original to praise weorðgeorn, those ‘eager for honour’ who have obtained ‘great glory by their good deeds’; such individuals are promoted as famous examples from the past who contemporaries should strive to emulate (Godden and Irvine 2009, I: Ch. 40 ll. 61–71, 372; Orchard 1995, 170). Similarly, the translation rejects Boethius’s condemnation of woruldsælda, the earthly rewards that fortune can bring such as wealth, earthly power, respect and joy in pleasure (Otten 1964; Payne 1968, 62–71; Pratt 2007a, 280–287; Godden and Irvine 2009, I: 64–65). In other words, the Old English translation goes against its Latin original to commend the pursuit of worldly fame, wealth and power that seem to be hallmarks of the heroes of traditional Germanic verse. It also praises heroes whose origins were otherworldly and whose behaviour in a strict Christian context could be judged as morally dubious. Surely here we have a glimpse of elusive traditional Anglo-Saxon court culture – elusive because so little of it has been recorded – asserting itself over the purist ecclesiastical. The Old English translation of Boethius not only promotes mythological heroes as worthy of emulation and subverts some of the original’s arguments, but promotes ideas of free will that seem to conflict with Christian views of the role of God (Marenbon, 2003, 117–145; Payne 1968, 78–108; Pratt 2007a, 295–302; Godden and Irvine 2009, I: 65–66). Malcolm Godden has felt that such aspects count against the traditional attribution of the work to Alfred and do not square with what is known of the king and his court (Godden 2009).17 Such a judgement is only valid if it is assumed that the king was identical with the literary construct drawn from the works of his learned circle. On the contrary, one might argue, unorthodox views on matters such as free will might fit a scenario in which a king like Alfred, who was interested in such issues, but not raised in an ecclesiastical environment, could overrule his ecclesiastical advisers. In the Old English Boethius we seem to see a struggle between ecclesiastical interpretation informed by Carolingian commentary, presumably promoted by the court scholars, and the intrusion of interpretations that are not supported by the text, and have their closest analogues in heroic Old English verse. One explanation could be that these interventions represent the views of a king known to have been raised on a diet of (presumably Christianised) heroic literature and, as the preface to Pastoral Care suggests, used to imposing his views on churchmen (Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 124–127; Pratt 2007a, 193–213). Of course, we do not know exactly how the Old English

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 63 Boethius was produced (Godden and Irvine 2009, 59–61; Nauta 2009, 257).18 One might imagine that some of the court scholars would do much of the preliminary work of interpretation and would assemble material with the aid of continental commentaries, perhaps also relying considerably on what the two continental scholars, Grimbald and John, had learnt in their own studies (Otten 1964, passim; Discenza 2005, 131; Pratt 2007a, 271–277; Godden and Irvine 2009, I: 50–61). Then a final version would be hammered out with the king, and expressed in his own words, or accommodated by a delegated amanuensis to the king’s views. The result was sometimes a rather uneasy compromise of the different traditions that the participants brought to the table. The promotion of mythological heroes as positive Christian exemplars, the unBoethian emphasis on the acceptability of worldly goods if correctly bestowed and on the pursuit of worldly fame as an admirable ambition, can be seen as aspirations so integral to Alfred’s own concept of kingship that he could not accept their rejection in the original text. A robust defence of the heroes of the past as positive role-models, including some patently mythological heroes of dubious morality, is mounted in the Old English translation of Boethius and arguably reflects the court culture in which Alfred was raised in which Old English heroic verse was deemed to play an important role. It is a culture that seems to have accommodated the transformations of the conversion period which could allow Weland to emerge as a type of Christ. The reputation that one left behind was an important aspect of that culture,19 and Alfred was probably only unusual among kings in his concern to be commemorated in the written record. The text which best conveys how the king wished to be remembered is unlikely to have been Asser’s biography of Alfred. The circumstances behind the production of Asser’s biography are not known, nor whether the king ever saw it or sanctioned its contents (Stevenson 1904, xi-cxxxi; J. Campbell 1986; Keynes and Lapidge 1983, 48–58; Abels 1998, 10–14, 318–326). It is not clear whether the work should be seen as completed or whether it was abandoned at a late stage when the circumstances for which it was being prepared changed (Pratt 2007a, 107–111). But what can probably be said with some certainty was that it was never widely copied or distributed in England, for only one manuscript survived the end of the Middle Ages. The work that includes the history of Alfred’s reign that was widely circulated, and so arguably represented how the king wished to be remembered was the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Here the concentration is above all on the king as a successful warleader against the Vikings. Other information for his reign is kept to a minimum, and the king’s role is highlighted by the omission of the names of his ealdormen, in contrast to earlier entries up to that point, and to the version of the annals for his reign used by Æthelweard for his Latin Chronicle (A. Campbell 1962). Alfred takes his place alongside other great warrior kings of his family and the mythic leaders of the Saxon adventus in a work that opens with the attempted conquest of Britain by the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, and also traced the descent of the king’s own father from a motley array of former gods and Germanic heroes. This was the company in which Alfred wished

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to be remembered. War was Alfred’s priority; it was what he had been raised to do. It was not necessarily incompatible with being a good Christian, but to be successful might sometimes call for some dubious or amoral behaviour. Alfred was, of course, much more than just a warleader, but in seeking to reconstruct him we need to go beyond the philosopher king of the literary texts to try to recover the mindset of a warrior who not only accepted the biblical Solomon as a model to be emulated, but also the Germanic hero Weland.

Notes

1. For forgery claims see Galbraith 1964 and Smyth 1995. For rebuttals see Whitelock 1968, Keynes 1996. 2. For a sceptical view of this legend and of bards and the public performance of Old English poetry see Frank 1993. 3. However, the poems attributed to Cynewulf are usually dated to the late eighth or ninth centuries: Anderson 1983. Clemoes 1992, at 213, suggests that the book of poetry Alfred reputedly won from his mother was of religious verse as Asser says it was ‘divine inspiration’ which prompted him to do so. 4. The legend of Wayland’s Smithy seems to have been first described by the antiquarian Francis Wise in 1738 with considerable embellishments of his own to link it with the battle including use of the burial mound for the defeated Danish king and the nearby White Horse of Uffington carved on the orders of Alfred to celebrate his victory; Grinsell, 1939, 13–21. 5. Sawyer 1968, no. 564, a grant in 955 from King Eadred to his minister Ælfheah of land at Compton Beauchamp, Berkshire. See also Sawyer 1968, no. 367, a charter of 903 for Princes Risborough whose bounds refer to Welandes stocc ‘Weland’s post’. Grinsell 1939, 19 points to further burial mounds in the vicinity that may have been named from Beahhild (Beadohild) and her son by Weland, Wittich (Widia). 6. For summaries and discussions of the legend see Davidson 1958, 145–59; Davidson 1969, 216–26; Orchard 1997, 389–91; Hall 2007, 39–47; McKinnell 1990, 1–27. 7. Abels 2009 contains full references to the many studies and interpretation of the Franks Casket. See in particular, Souers 1943; Becker 1973); Neuman de Vegvar 1987. 8. Alfred’s laws were recorded as his Domboc; for this and the importance of just judgement and Christian kingship in works produced at Alfred’s court, see Pratt 2007a, 214–41. 9. All are doubtful about the identification. 10. Presumably it was the mail-shirt that Beowulf wore when he battled with Grendel’s mother beneath the mere (lines 1500–5; 1548–54). See also the sword Mimming in the poem Waldere which is also said to the work of Weland. 11. McKinnell, 2-4 links them with wider archetypal stories of otherworldly swan-maidens. 12. As Irvine notes (177) a third allusion in the original (iv,7) to some of the labours of Hercules has not been included in the Old English version. 13. The final allusion is to the famous passage relating to the tools of kingship cited above. 14. Lapidge’s confident assertion that Aldhelm was the son of King Centwine goes beyond what can be certainly deduced from the available evidence. William of Malmesbury who provided the statement of descent from King ‘Kenten’ was convinced this was not the same person as King Centwine: Winterbottom 2007, 502. 15. Classical stories could have circulated as vernacular accounts without necessarily being rendered into Old English verse.

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 65 16. Caesar is included in the East Anglian royal genealogy. Coinage of the province, a bone plaque found at Larling in Norfolk and the Undley bracteate from Suffolk depict the legend of Romulus and Remus, also to be found on the Franks Casket Neuman de Vegvar 1999). 17. This is but part of Godden’s argument that the translation is more likely to have been the work of a clerical author working in the reigns of Edward the Elder or Athelstan. The fact that the Boethius translation seems to reflect surviving commentaries from the early tenth century is not necessarily a problem if it is allowed that what was known to Grimbald or John through oral teaching was not necessarily recorded in any surviving text from their lifetimes. 18. William of Malmesbury (Winterbottom 2007, II: 122–4) gives a prominent role to Asser in the initial preparation and, controversially, this has been linked with comments ‘in a Welsh hand’ made in one of the earliest manuscripts containing glosses to Boethius that is now in the Vatican library; Godden and Irvine 2003, 59–61; Nauta 2009, 257. 19. Compare the concluding epitaph on Beowulf (ll. 3181–2): ‘he was the man most gracious and fair-minded/kindest to his people and keenest to win fame’, and the well-known passage from Ch. 17 of the Old English Boethius (Godden and Irvine 2003, 133): ‘I desired to live worthily as long as I lived, and to leave after my life, to the men who should come after me, the memory of me in good works’.

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Cooke, J. D. (1927) ‘Euhemerisation: a mediaeval interpretation of classical paganism’, Speculum 2, 396–410. Davidson, H. E. (1958) ‘Weland the Smith’, Folklore 69, 145–159. Davidson, H. E. (1969) ‘The Smith and the Goddess’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 3, 216–226. Davis, C. R. (2006) ‘An Ethnic Dating of Beowulf’, Anglo-Saxon England 35, 111–129. Dempsey, G. T. (1999) ‘Aldhelm of Malmesbury and the Irish’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 99, 1–22. Discenza, G. N. (2005) The King’s English: Strategies of Translation in the Old English Boethius. Albany NY. Dobbie, E. V. K. (ed.) (1953) Beowulf and Judith, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records IV. New York. Dümmler E. (ed.) (1895) ‘Alcuini Epistolae’, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Epistolae IV, 181–184, no. 124. Berlin. Faulkner, A. (1978–9) ‘Descent from the Gods’, Mediaeval Scandinavia 11, 92–125. Frank, R. (1991) ‘Germanic Legend in Old English Literature’. In M. Godden and M. Lapidge (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, 88–106. Cambridge. Frank, R. (1993) ‘The Search for the Anglo-Saxon Oral Poet (Toller lecture 1992)’. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75(1): 11–36. Galbraith, V. H. (1964) ‘Who wrote Asser’s Life of Alfred?’. In V. H. Galbraith, An Introduction to the Study of History, 88–128. London. Garrison, M. (2005) ‘Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?’. In K. O’Brien O’Keefe and A. Orchard (eds), Latin Learning and English Lore: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature for Michael Lapidge, 237–259. Toronto. Godden, M. (2007) ‘Did King Alfred Write Anything?’, Medium Ævum 76(1): 1–23. Godden, M. (2009) ‘The Alfredian Project and its Aftermath: rethinking the literary history of the ninth and tenth centuries’. Proceedings of the British Academy 162, 93–112. Godden, M. and Irvine, S. (eds) (2009) The Old English Boethius: An edition of the Old English versions of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae. 2 vols. Oxford. Griffith, M. (2009) ‘The Composition of the Metres’. In M.  Godden and S.  Irvine, S. (eds) The Old English Boethius: An edition of the Old English versions of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, 80–134. Oxford. Grinsell, L. V. (1939) White Horse Hill and the Surrounding Country. London. Hall, A. (2007) Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: Matters of belief, health, gender and identity. Woodbridge. Headeager, L. (2011) Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000. Abingdon. Henig, M. (1995) The Art of Roman Britain. London. Herren, M. (1998) ‘Scholarly Contacts Between the Irish and Southern English in the Seventh Century’, Peritia 12, 24–53. Higham, N. J. (ed.) (2007) Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge. Hill, T. D. (1987) ‘The Myth of the Ark-Born Son of Noah and the West Saxon Royal Genealogical Tables’, Harvard Theological Review 80, 379–383. Hill, T. D. (1988) ‘The “Variegated Obit” as an Historiographical Motif in Old English Poetry and Anglo-Latin Historical Literature’, Traditio 44, 101–124. Hinton, D. (1998) ‘Anglo-Saxon Smiths and Myths (Toller lecture 1997)’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 80, 3–21. Hinton, D. (2008) The Alfred Jewel and Other Late Anglo-Saxon Decorated Metalwork. Oxford. Irvine, S. (1996) ‘Ulysses and Circe in King Alfred’s Boethius: a classical myth transformed’. In M. J. Toswell, and E. M. Tyler (eds) Studies in English Language and Literature: ‘Doubt Wisely’ – Papers in Honour of E. G. Stanley, 387–401. London. Irvine, S. (2003) ‘Wrestling with Hercules: King Alfred and the Classical Past’. In C. Cubitt (ed.) Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages, 171–188. Turnhout. John, E. (1992) ‘The Point of Woden’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 5, 127–134. Johnson, D. F. (1995) ‘Euhemerisation Versus Demonisation: the Pagan Gods and Ælfric’s De Falsis Diis’. In T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen and A. A. MacDonald (eds), Pagans and Christians: the interplay

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 67 between Christian-Latin and traditional Germanic cultures in early medieval Europe, Germania Latina 2, 35–69. Groningen. Kempshall, M. (2001) ‘No Bishop, No King: the Ministerial Ideology of Kingship and Asser’s Res gestae Aelfredi’. In R. Gameson and H. Leyser (eds), Belief and Culture in the Middle Ages: studies presented to Henry Mayr-Harting, 106–127. Oxford. Kershaw, P. (2001) ‘Illness, Power and Prayer in Asser’s Life of King Alfred’, Early Medieval Europe 10(2), 201–224. Keynes, S. (1996) ‘On the Authenticity of Asser’s Life of King Alfred’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 47(3), 529–551. Keynes, S. and Lapidge, M. (1983) Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. Harmondsworth. Kopár, L. (2012) Gods and Settlers: The iconography of Norse Mythology in Anglo-Scandinavian Sculpture. Turnhout. Krapp, G. P. and Dobbie, E. V. K. (eds) (1936) The Exeter Book, The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records III. New York and London. Lang, J. (1976) ‘Sigurd and Weland in Pre-Conquest Carving from Northern England’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 48, 83–94. Lang, J. (1999) ‘The Imagery of the Franks Casket: Another Approach’. In J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age, 247–255. Stroud. Lapidge, M. (1982) ‘Beowulf, Aldhelm, the Liber monstrorum, and Wessex’, Studi Medievali 23, 151–192. Lapidge, M. (2000) ‘The Archetype of Beowulf’’, Anglo-Saxon England 29, 5–42. Lapidge, M. (2007) ‘The Career of Aldhelm’, Anglo-Saxon England 36, 15–70. Leneghan, F. (2011) ‘Royal Wisdom and the Alfredian Context of Cynewulf and Cyneheard’, AngloSaxon England 39, 71–104. Lerer, S. (1991) Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature. Lincoln, NE. Marenbon, J. (2003) Boethius. Oxford. McKinnell, J. (1990) ‘The Context of Vọlundarkviða’, Saga Book of the Viking Society 23, 1–27. Meaney, A. L. (1989) ‘Scyld Scefing and the Dating of Beowulf – Again (Toller lecture 1988)’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 71, 7–40. Meaney, A.  L. (2003) ‘Scyld Scefing and the Dating of Beowulf – Again’. In D. Scragg (ed.) Textual and material culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller lectures, 23–74. Cambridge. Moisl, H. (1981) ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies and Germanic Oral Tradition’, Journal of Medieval History 7, 215–248. Mynors, R. A. B, Thomson, R. M. and Winterbottom, M. (eds.) (1998) William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regum Anglorum, Vol. 1. Oxford. Nauta, L. (2009) ‘The Consolation: the Latin Commentary Tradition, 800–1700’. In J. Marenbon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Boethius, 255–278. Cambridge. Nees, L. (1991) A Tainted Mantle: Hercules and the Classical Tradition at the Carolingian Court. Philadelphia PA. Nelson, J. L. (1993) ‘The Political Ideas of Alfred of Wessex’. In A. J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, 125–138. London. Neuman de Vegvar, C. L. (1987) The Northumbrian Renaissance: A Study in the Transmission of Style. London and Toronto. Neuman de Vegvar, C. L. (1999) ‘The Travelling Twins: Romulus and Remus in Anglo-Saxon England’. In J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age, 256–267. Stroud. North, R. (1997) Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. Cambridge. O’Donnell, D. (2005) Caedmon’s Hymn: a multi-media study, archive and edition. Cambridge. Orchard, A. (1994) The Poetic Art of Aldhelm. Cambridge. Orchard, A. (1995) Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the monsters of the Beowulf manuscript. Toronto.

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Orchard, A. (1997) Norse Myth and Legend. London. Orchard, A. (2003) A Critical Companion to Beowulf. Cambridge. Otten, K. (1964) König Alfreds Boethius, Studien zur englischen Philologie, Neue Folge 3. Tübingen. Page, R. I. (1973) An Introduction to English Runes. London. Parsons, D. (1997) ‘British *Caraticos, Old English Cerdic’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 33: 1–8. Payne, F. A. (1968) King Alfred and Boethius: An analysis of the Old English version of the consolation of Philosophy. Madison, WI. Plummer, C. (1902) The Life and Times of Alfred the Great. Oxford. Pratt, D. (2001) ‘The Illnesses of King Alfred the Great’, Anglo-Saxon England 30: 39–90. Pratt, D. (2003) ‘Invention and Persuasion at the Court of King Alfred the Great’. In C. Cubitt (ed.) Court Culture in the Early Middle Ages: the proceedings of the first Alcuin conference, 189–221. Turnhout. Pratt, D. (2007a) The Political Thought of King Alfred the Great. Cambridge. Pratt, D. (2007b) ‘The Writings on Alfred the Great’. In P. Wormald and J. L. Nelson (eds), Lay Intellectuals in the Carolingian World, 162–91. Cambridge. Relihan, J. C. (ed.) (2001) Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy. Indianopolis, IN. Sawyer, P. H. (1968) Anglo-Saxon Charters: An annotated list and bibliography. London; revised version at http://www.esawyer.org.uk. Scott, S. (2000) Art and Society in Fourth-Century Britain: Villa Mosaics in Context, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monograph 53. Oxford. Scragg, D. (1991) ‘The Nature of Old English Verse’. In M. Godden and M. Lapidge (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, 55–70. Cambridge. Scragg, D. (ed.) (2003) Textual and Material Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Thomas Northcote Toller and the Toller lectures. Cambridge. Sedgefield, W. J. (1900) King Alfred’s Version of the Consolations of Boethius Done into Modern English with an Introduction. Oxford. Semple, S. (1998) ‘A Fear of the Past: the place of the prehistoric burial mound in the ideology of middle and later Anglo-Saxon England’, World Archaeology 30, 109–126. Seznec, J. (1953) The Survival of Pagan Gods: the mythological tradition and its place in Renaissance humanism and the arts, trans. B. Sessions. Princeton, NJ. Shippey, T. A. (1979) ‘Wealth and Wisdom in King Alfred’s Preface to the Old English Pastoral Care’, English Historical Review 94, 346–355. Sims-Williams, P. (1983) ‘The Settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle’, Anglo-Saxon England 12, 1–41. Sisam, K. (1953) ‘Anglo-Saxon Royal Genealogies’, Proceedings of the British Academy 39, 287–348. Skeat, W. W. (ed.) (1881–1900) Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, Early English Text Society, original series 76, 82, 94 and 114. London. Smyth, A. P. (1995) King Alfred the Great. Oxford. Souers, P. W. (1943) ‘The Wayland Scene on the Franks Casket’, Speculum 18, 104–111. Stenton, F. (1971) Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. Oxford. Stevenson, W. H. (ed.) (1904, reprinted with addition 1959) Asser’s Life of King Alfred. Oxford. Szarmach, P. (1997) ‘Alfred’s Boethius and the Four Cardinal Virtues’. In J. Roberts, J. L. Nelson and M. Godden (eds), Alfred the Wise: Studies in honour of Janet Bately on the occasion of her sixty-fifth birthday, 223–235. Cambridge. Tangl, M. (ed.) (1916) Die Briefe des heiligen Bonifatius und Lullus, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Epistolae selectae 1. Berlin. Thompson, V. (2004) Dying and Death in Later Anglo-Saxon England. Woodbridge. Webster, L. (1999) ‘The Iconographic Programme of the Frank’s Casket’. In J. Hawkes and S. Mills (eds), Northumbria’s Golden Age, 227–246. Stroud.

3.  King Alfred and Weland: Tradition and Transformation at the Court of King Alfred 69 Webster, L. (2003) ‘Ædificia Nova: treasures of Alfred’s reign’. In T. Reuter (ed.), Alfred the Great: Papers from the eleventh-centenary conferences, 79–103. Aldershot. Webster, L. (2007) ‘Le Coffret d’Auzon: son histoire et sa signification’. In A. Dubreucq, C. LauransonRosaz and B. Sanial (eds), St Julien et les Origines de Brioude, 314–330. Brioude. Webster, L. (2012) The Franks Casket. London. Whaley, D. (2004) ‘Skaldic Poetry’. In R. McTurk (ed.), A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, 479–502. Oxford. Whitelock, D. (1968) The Genuine Asser, Stenton lecture 1967. Reading. Whitelock, D. (ed.) (1979) English Historical Documents, Vol 1. 2nd edn. London. Whitelock, D., Douglas, D.C. and Tucker, S.I. (eds) (1962) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. London. Williams, H. (1997) ‘Ancient Landscapes and the Dead: the reuse of prehistoric and Roman monuments in early Anglo-Saxon burial sites’, Medieval Archaeology 41, 1–31. Williams, H. (1998) ‘Monuments and the Past in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, World Archaeology 30, 90–108. Winterbottom, M. (ed.) (2007) William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, I: Text and Translation. Oxford. Wise, F. (1738) A Letter to Dr Mead Concerning Some Antiquities in Berkshire. Oxford. Wittig, J. S. (1983) ‘King Alfred’s Boethius and its Latin Sources: A Reconsideration’, Anglo-Saxon England 11, 157–198. Wood, I. (1990) ‘Ripon, Francia and the Franks Casket in the Early Middle Ages’, Northern History 26, 1–16. Wormald, P. (1978) ‘Bede, Beowulf and the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxon Aristocracy’, reprinted in S. Baxter (ed.) (2006) The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and its Historian, 30–105. Oxford. Yorke, B. (1989) ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight and the Origins of Wessex’. In S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 84–96. London. Yorke, B. (2009) Rex Doctissimus: Bede and King Aldfrith of Northumbria. Jarrow Lecture. Newcastleupon-Tyne. Yorke, B. (2010) ‘The Representation of Early West Saxon History in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. In Alice Jorgensen (ed.), Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Language, Literature and History, 141–160. Turnhout. Yorke, B. (2013) ‘Ingeld, Weland and Christ’. Quaestio Insularis, 14, 1–14. Yorke, B. (2015) ‘The Fate of Otherworldly Beings after the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons’. In Christiane Ruhman and Vera Brieske (eds), Dying Gods – Traditional Beliefs in Northern and Eastern Europe in the Time of Christianisation, Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung 5, 167–176. Hanover.

Chapter 4 Strategies of Visual Literacy in Insular and Anglo-Saxon Book Culture Michelle P. Brown

All too often, discussions of literacy are limited to the ability to read and write – or the comparative lack thereof. And yet reading and writing are but two independent modes of communication that are inextricably interwoven with linguistics, orality, visual narrative graphicacy and semiotics (M. P. Brown 2011, M. P. Brown et al. forthcoming). Attempts to compare literacy rates in early medieval Britain with those of the Roman Empire or modern Europe have been flawed by a preoccupation with the extent to which the practical skills of reading and writing penetrated into ordinary secular society and by post-modern hang-ups on the distinction between clerical and lay sectors. In ancient Rome and its territories ordinary folk may have been able to scrawl the odd word of graffiti on walls, or scratch a curse against their neighbour on a lead plaque or pottery sherd, but is this really evidence of full widespread literacy? Is it any more telling than inscriptions on Anglo-Saxon weaponry, jewellery and even a fossilised sea anemone excavated in the Ald Wic, the heart of the ‘mart of many nations’, or the boast of an Anglo-Scandinavian bone-carver in late tenthcentury Lincoln that ‘Orm made a really good comb this time!’ Slaves could indeed serve as secretaries, but more likely because they had enjoyed a higher status in an earlier existence rather than having been born into the lowest echelon of society, whilst who is to say that the estate manager who wrote a note of eels and other rental renders due from Ely Abbey’s estates in the early eleventh century was not a layman educated in the monastic classroom or in one of the proto-grammar schools established for the sons of freemen by Alfred the Great, rather than a monk? Whilst for the post-medieval period the icon of the egalitarian nature of print, as opposed to the manuscript tradition, has been decidedly over-gilded. Most early printed editions were more limited and costly in their print runs than most medieval handcopied best-sellers and it was not until the educational reforms of the late

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nineteenth century that the broad base of society was able, theoretically, to access them directly. Even today concern is rightly expressed concerning declining literacy rates in Britain and one wonders how many people get beyond heavily illustrated tabloids and magazines for their reading matter, or compose more than text messages. Most may have heard of Virgil, but few have read his works in their own tongue, let alone in the language of composition and most of us would therefore be considered illiterate by Bede and his peers. For high level literacy is, and always has been, the preserve of an educated elite. During the early Middle Ages this happened to consist primarily of religious personnel. For literacy is more complex than simply the ability to read, and to write; one needs to take full account of the reader as viewer and the reader as listener. Is an unsighted reader who listens to audio-books illiterate? Are modern viewers of adaptations of the works of Jane Austen, on TV or cinema screen, or those who recognize the abbreviated semiotics of a ‘still’ of Colin Firth striding manfully from a lake as a cipher for Pride and Prejudice of necessity any more profoundly literate than their early medieval counterparts for whom an image of the Crucifixion or Sigurd conjured up popular heroic narratives? The ability to ‘read’ has, after all, as much to do with the ability to comprehend meaning as with the technical ability to decipher graphic symbols and translate them into words. Oral and visual literacy play as essential a part in communicating text as the written word ever has – and often an even greater role for a wider audience. During the early Middle Ages, the act of writing was essentially the preserve of professional scribes and highly educated scholars and the sustained act of reading generally one of public performance or private meditation and study. We should not judge a people’s literacy by the deployment of these skills alone, but also by its response to the impact of text conveyed across time and space and to the power of its new primary vehicle, the book. There were a number of strategies of visual literacy deployed in the Insular and Anglo-Saxon world and which I shall discuss here: the semiotics of sign and symbol; the use of cultural indicators; decoration and script; pictorial narrative; symbolism; multivalence; sacred figurae; iconic and aniconic; the book as icon. The fundamental link between the spoken and written word is best expressed through an image, which explains the inclusion in some Byzantine, pre-Carolingian and Insular Gospelbooks of the inspiring or dictating figure, of which a well-known example is the Lindisfarne Gospels’ Matthew miniature (Fig. 4.1). The ‘Monarchian prologues’ (attributed to Priscillian) reinforced the idea of committing oral tradition to writing, stating the authority from whom each Evangelist was thought to have heard their Gospel: Matthew from Christ, Mark from Peter, Luke from Paul and John from the Holy Spirit. One level of reading of the Lindisfarne Matthew image might therefore support an identification of the Polonius figure behind the curtain with Christ who is revealed when the curtain of the Temple is drawn aside, inspiring the writing Evangelist and fulfilling and reinterpreting the Old Testament. The process

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of transmission and integration of Scripture is thus conveyed, in the manner of Ezra and his bookcase in the Codex Amiatinus (M. P. Brown 2000, 2003, Ch. 5, 2011). Ceolfrith is thought to have brought a copy of Cassiodorus’s Codex Grandior back from Italy to Wearmouth/Jarrow (Plummer 1896 2.16, 1956 1.379; Migne 1844–64, 70, 109a, b; Fischer 1962; Meyvaert 1996, 2005; Henderson 1993; Marsden 1995a, 1995b). Amiatinus preserved elements of its imagery, including diagrams of transmission and of the Temple (Lampe 1969, 116–117; Marsden 1995a, Ch. 5; M. P. Brown 2003, 155–171; Meyvaert 1996, 2005), but rather than simply copying one of Cassiodorus’ editions, as often suggested, Wearmouth/Jarrow mounted a major editorial project, locating themselves within the prime lines of transmission of sacred text. Amiatinus was no antiquarian facsimile or adaptation of a Cassiodoran edition, but a dynamic work of scholarly compilation and emendation. It achieved a version of the Vulgate by excavation, compilation and interpretation, emulating Jerome’s own process of distillation from different ‘vulgata’ traditions.1 It also exhibits the influence of commentaries by Bede – in all probability also one of the project’s directors – and, although we cannot be certain which of the hands is actually his, surely one of its scribes. The ‘Ezra’ miniature should perhaps be read not only as an image of Cassiodorus adapted with reference to the great preserver of Judaic Scriptures, Ezra the Scribe, but a homage to the ongoing process of rediscovery and emendation of sacred text (Roth 1953, 37; Meyvaert 1996, 2005). The bookcase behind the scribe contains nine volumes, alluding to Cassiodorus’ Novem Codices but labelled as the editions of others such as St Augustine, indicating a living tradition.2 This is an important adjustment to perception of the image, indicating that those responsible for the Ceolfrith Bibles were not attempting ‘authorized’ editions, but authoritative ones, improving upon the best sources they could find in order to carry forward the process of understanding the Word. It would have been anathema to them to view their work as the ‘last word’, unlike Islamic tradition, for the process of transmission and exploration was a divinely inspired, perpetual one. The figure of the scribe is not only Ezra (who memorized and ‘reconstructed’ the Judaic sacred books after their destruction by the Babylonians), but also represents the Old and New Testament authors, Cassiodorus and other biblical editors and Bede, the prophetic priestly scribe.3 It also invites the viewer to continue participating in transmission. At a time when church buildings and parochial structure were under early development pastoral ministry was largely peripatetic, as were books which, in the eyes of Bede, could also function as pastors (Bonner 1989; G. H. Brown 1996). Sacred texts served as assembly points. Like ‘field’ or ‘preaching’ crosses such as that at Bewcastle. Cassiodorus felt that they could also act as teachers. In his Institutiones he observes that the antiqui could found schools with oral instruction, whilst for the moderni books must suffice instead of teachers (Fridh 1973, 3.5.3, 3.9.1, 3.31.4, 4.51.2, 7.15.1, 8.14.2, 8.25.1, 11.1.19; Stansbury 1999, 60). His plans, under Pope Agapetus, to found schools in Rome having been confounded, his

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Figure 4.1 St Matthew, conceptualising the process of biblical transmission, from the Lindisfarne Gospels, Holy Island, c. 710-720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, f. 25v)

monastery, the Vivarium, produced such long-distance teachers, some travelling as far afield as Northumbria. George Henderson has suggested that the image which once adorned Pope Agapetus’ library in Rome depicted him seated amongst ‘holy men’ represented as ‘fictive books stacked in a fictive bookcase’ – which may have influenced the iconography of transmission so neatly encapsulated in Wearmouth/ Jarrow’s Ezra miniature (O’Reilly 2001; Henderson 1993, 85). Within this tradition Bede’s own literary pastoral ministry reinforces the concept of the scholar-priest, informed and inspired by Scripture and by the Church Fathers in the form of the

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books which were their voices and adding to their number the instructors which were his own literary works. This dynamic is emphasized further in the Touronian Vivian Bible of 845, which contains a miniature illustrating the inception and diffusion of Jerome’s Vulgate, in which he is shown as an author, teacher (of male and female pupils) and distributor of copies of his work which fill the churches (Paris, BNF, MS lat. 1, f. 3v; McKitterick 1995, 50-51 and pl. 8). This also depicts an armarium containing earlier written authorities (M. P. Brown 2000). Most people’s knowledge of Scripture, however, continued to be oral and visual. They heard it through preaching, prayer and images – adorning the personal belongings of the wealthy, carved on wayside crosses or adorning church buildings which gave a glimpse of the world to come through their beauty. Books were prominently displayed and read from during public worship and used for devotions and study by literate clergy and some wealthy lay folk; but it was through public recitation of snippets of Scripture, sermons, poems, images, storytelling and song that most people gained their knowledge of the Bible – just as many do today. The modern mind questions how many people would have accessed the great manuscripts of the age, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells. And yet, during the early Middle Ages, as today, these great cult-books were the most visible and well-known. To draw an analogy: in 1992 a conference was held on the Book of Kells at Trinity College Dublin. The handful of us who had been privileged to handle the actual iconic manuscript itself took advantage of the occasion to discuss the intricacies of its manufacture – the equivalent, so to speak, of those who might have planned and undertaken the original project. The conference delegates, the equivalent of the monastic community that claimed ownership of the book were conducting their own ongoing discussion of its meaning. Some of us ventured out into the field, to village halls and libraries – field crosses and meeting places in an earlier age – to spread the word, using the idea of the book as a springboard into people’s lives. The media and sponsors demanded their own privileged ‘show and tell’ in return for PR and perhaps a donation of champagne for a reception, or calfskins from which to manufacture vellum to make the book. Meanwhile, a curvilinear strand of latter-day pilgrims, motivated by curiosity, national pride or faith, interlaced around the claustral college quad to spend a few minutes beholding the mysterious, dimly lit iconic object itself. This, collectively, is a community of reading. The majority of this community, just as today, would not be able to handle the book itself, or would ever actually read the Scriptures it contains. Yet a knowledge of significance, acquired via secondary sources, such as reproductions and word of mouth, has led countless such pilgrims to visit the shrines that such books inhabit – whether in medieval monasteries or modern libraries. These ‘readers’ are as much a part of such books’ intended audiences as the fully literate/latinate monastic scholar, and books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels and monuments such as the Ruthwell Cross are their meeting places. For the great illuminated manuscripts

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and carved monuments were the movies of their day. Then, as now, you did not need to be able to understand them completely, or penetrate all their nuances, in order to participate in the community of communication that they inhabited. Much valuable work in charting the role of literacy in this shift has already been undertaken,4 but interpretations have varied. Despite the extent of the corpus of inscriptions in runes and in roman characters from Anglo-Saxon England, Elisabeth Okasha is of the opinion that their function was largely symbolic and that very few could read them (Okasha 1971, 1983), whilst Susan Kelly and Simon Keynes have pointed to the evidence for the escalating importance of vernacular documents for English laypeople from the ninth century onwards. What nonetheless remains intriguingly elusive, even considering the limited survival rate of available evidence, is a coherent insight into perceptions of the book and its significance as an instrument of cultural change during one of the most transformative periods of British history. In Antiquity the author composed text mentally and proclaimed it orally, perhaps dictating to notaries inscribing on tablets – the voice activation of its day – their works subsequently being copied and disseminated by commercial publishers. During the early Middle Ages monastic scribes transcribed works as part of their service of monastic humility and ‘published’ them as part of a process of evangelisation and social reform, ruminating on content and transforming themselves into living libraries. The barbarian warlords and heirs of Rome were transformed into kingly highpriests, and their followers into societies regulated by codified laws, documented land tenure and common religious observance. The role of Scripture and its enshrinement in the tabernacle of the book was to play a defining role in this process, marking the transition from late classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages. The Insular peoples only embraced full written literacy, despite their earlier limited use of ogham and runes, as an adjunct to conversion to Christianity and, faced with the challenges of learning Latin as a foreign language – and how to think in its idiom and to write it grammatically – made major contributions to book production. Studying the works of early grammarians, such as Donatus, inspired native grammarians such as Asperius, the ‘Anonymus ad Cuimnanum’ and Virgilius Maro (Richter 1988, 143–146, 256, 535, 550–553, 560, 564, 676). An omnivorous approach to learning blossomed into a desire to understand and master written language and this did not stop at the ancient sacred languages of the Mediterranean and the development of a rich Hiberno-Latin tradition but extended into the written vernacular. In the process, Insular scribes evolved their own distinctive system of script, promoted decoration to help navigate, memorise and understand the text and integrated their indigenous styles of art and poetry. Due largely to their enthusiastic espousal of its potential, the medieval codex assumed much of its distinctive appearance and apparatus. Words are not the only form of text, however. As Gregory the Great realised, images also play a crucial role in communication. As early as the fourth century the Gnostic sects of Egypt had introduced symbolic decoration into their papyri (an early example being the crux ansata in Bodl. Bruce 96) and during the fifth and sixth centuries

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images began to be applied to Scripture – great didactic picture cycles illustrating books such as the Byzantine Vienna Genesis and the Syriac Rabbula Gospels, dated 586 (respectively Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Theol. Gr. 31 and Florence, Bibl. Medicea-Laur., MS Plut. I.56; Weitzmann 1977; Pächt 1986; Nordenfalk 1988; de Hamel 1986; Alexander 1992). Pictures had not found favour with classical bibliophiles, but Italian publishers now also illustrated old literary favourites by Virgil, Terence and Homer (Weitzmann 1977; Wright 1993). The use of opulent materials, with gold and silver Scriptures on purple pages, also imparted imperial stature to the grandest Byzantine, Syriac and Italian volumes, incurring the disapprobium of St Jerome who said that attention might better be lavished on understanding the contents and dispersing wealth to the poor: Codex Brixianus (Brescia, Bibl. Civica Queriniana); Golden Canon Tables (London, BL, Additional MSS 5111–5112). In Rome the Church and book arts were stimulated around 600 by Pope Gregory the Great, whose own approach to images and icons was informed by that of St Catherine’s, Sinai, and Byzantium (M. P. Brown forthcoming d). Books from Gregory’s Rome feature elegant uncial script of late Roman form, and introduce initials decorated with the Christian motifs of the cross and fish – perhaps influenced in this by pre-iconoclast Byzantine books. The St Augustine Gospels, said to have accompanied Augustine when sent by Gregory to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon in 597 (and on which the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury still take their oaths) also features didactic images. These reintroduced pictorial narrative into the post-Roman art of these islands and take the form of a page of New Testament narrative scenes, arranged as a framed picture cycle of the sort found on later Byzantine iconostasis screens and in strips on the walls of Roman basilicas such as Sta Maria Maggiore, and a classical author portrait of St Luke, identified by his apocalyptic symbol, the bull, of a sort encountered amongst the Early Christian mosaics of Rome (e.g. Sta Pudenziana). Luke is flanked by ‘cartoon-strip’ scenes from the life of Christ. These are highly reminiscent of the carved wooden doors to the basilica of one of Gregory’s favourite monasteries in Rome, Sta Sabina, and form an open portal through which the viewer can encounter the author and enter the text (Markus 1997; Ganz 2002; M. P. Brown 2006a). The influence of such imagery can still be seen enduring into the mid-ninth century in works such as the Kentish Royal Bible and the West Mercian Book of Cerne (respectively BL, Royal MS 1.E.vi and Cambridge, University Library, MS Ll. 1.10; see M. P. Brown 1996). These are not just visual quotes, and demonstrate two significant Insular contributions to the development of strategies of visual literacy. In the Royal Bible the bull of the St Augustine’s Gospel is combined with motifs from Ravennate art (the Pantocrator in the Royal Bible resembling that at Sant’Apollinare in Classe), the illusionistic painterly style and opulent display of materials of Charlemagne’s Court School, and lettering adorned in the manner of contemporary Southumbrian ‘Trewhiddle style’ metalwork, forming a visual synthesis of cultural references, in this cases grounded in resonances of imperium. This relies on the complex semiotics of cultural signifiers, with specific materials, styles of decoration and motifs triggering

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sets of associations in the mind of the ‘readers’ that permitted them to decode authorial artistic intent. As we shall see, this potential had earlier been fully explored in the Lindisfarne Gospels. In Cerne a more exegetical approach is adopted in which the half-length St Augustine Gospels’ bull forms part of a new iconography grounded in devotional meditation on Scripture. Serving to introduce a Gospel extract narrating the Passion, the symbol is no longer used to identify the human figure of St Luke; the roles are reversed in a visual exploration of the complementary nature of the human and divine natures of Christ and the aspects of these expounded in each Gospel. Luke focuses upon Christ’s humanity and his sacrifice, emphasised by the calf or bull, the immolatory victim, an association reinforced by the image’s inscription ‘forman accepit vituli’, the wording of which contains an oblique reference to the ‘formam serui accipiens’ in Philippians 2:7, which says that Christ ‘… made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!’, the authoritative statement of the relationship between Incarnation and Atonement, read as the Epistle on Passion Sunday (M. P. Brown 1998). Such a reading of the image is grounded in assumptions of inter-textuality and the ability of keywords and iconographic elements to stimulate mental connections with texts stored in the viewer’s inner library. As such, the image becomes not only a visual exegetical meditation but a sacred figura, or schematic representation of the divine and of Logos. A less complex, but equally inter-textual, device in Cerne is the major initial that opens St Matthew’s Passion narrative (f. 3r). The bow of the e is inhabited by a lion-like quadruped with a human head. Is this just whimsical ornament, or a visual allusion to the Early Christian Physiologus, or Marvels of the East, exploring the Christological and moral interpretation of the semi-mythical inhabitants and creatures of Africa and Asia? If so, this beast is a manticore, the harbinger of death – an appropriate herald of the account of the Passion and a memento mori. Such use of symbolic creatures within the menagerie of later medieval marginal grotesques is well known, but its appearance in Cerne is one of the earliest in art (M. P. Brown 1996). Nor is it unparalleled within the Insular corpus. A ninthcentury Pictish gravestone from Meigle bears a lively carving of a Pict running like mad from a manticore, whom he regards over his shoulder with panic – again, an imminent portent of death. The extensive Pictish vocabulary of symbols, perhaps imbued with hieroglyphic and/or ideographic significance, plays a significant role in Insular semiotics. Another Insular instance of Physiologan imagery occurs in the filigree panels on the eighth-century Irish Derrynaflan paten. The disposition of the animal imagery thereon is far from random, as indicated by the marking up of each of the numerous individual metalwork components with symbols and letters, indicating how they should be assembled. As if this elaborate procedure were not enough, at some point

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before the paten was buried during mid-ninth-century Viking raids, the components were disassembled and marked up for a different arrangement. I have suggested that this may relate to the Early Christian practice, attested in Visigothic Spain and Ireland, of laying out the Eucharistic bread upon the paten in different designs according to liturgical feasts. The ninth-century Irish Stowe Missal includes a vernacular tract on the Mass which allows for the bread to be set out in the form of a ring-headed cross, with different social groups partaking from specific parts (monks from one section, nuns from another, married layfolk from yet another, and so forth). Earlier, in Spain, the host might be arranged in the shape of a human figure – a literal and symbolic embodiment of Christ (M. P. Brown 1993). The Marvels of the East figured again in later Anglo-Saxon books, in anthologies such as the Scientific Miscellany (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B. v) and the Beowulf codex, where the monstrous races provide a context for Grendel and his mother. Here, however, the images appear as an established picture cycle of illustrative column pictures. Such works stressed the shared inheritance of Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Norman parallel cultures, sprung from a common Germanic, and ultimately biblical, stock, a trend found from Alfred’s reforms, with the inclusion of Othere’s Voyage alongside the Old English Orosius (which survives in an early tenth-century copy: BL, Add. MS 47967). It culminated in the Anglo-Saxon world map, the first of the medieval mappae mundi, the thirteenth-century Hereford example serving as an altar reredos as a visual summary of Creation. The Anglo-Saxon map also forms part of the Scientific Miscellany (BL, Cotton MS Tiberius B. v, f. 56v) and depicts Britain and Ireland, with their outlying archipelagos, as part of a Scandinavian empire linked via trading and pilgrimage routes to the Holy Land, with Jerusalem as the umbilical centre-point of the world, and with the outlying lands of legend, as recounted by the Marvels of the East. The monstrous races that it describes are not conflated onto the map here, as they would later be on the Hereford mappa mundi, but they are depicted elsewhere in the volume. A mythical beast that occurs outside of the Physiologan context is the senmurv, a creature of Persian pedigree, which is formed of body parts representing the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. One such inhabits a major initial in the Royal Prayerbook (BL, Royal MS 2. A. xx, f. 17r), a Mercian prayerbook perhaps made in the diocese of Worcester in the early ninth century for and probably by a woman, its devotional theme of Christ as the sanus et salus of humankind indicating that she may have been a physician or midwife. Such exotic eastern elements are a feature of Mercian art of the age of Offa and Coenwulf, with their international aspirations in trade and diplomacy. The monastic church at Breedon-on-the-Hill houses what may be the remains of a carved Byzantine-style iconostasis screen, with Virgin and Apostles, and architectural friezes inhabited by Syrian lion-hunts, centaurs and workers in the vineyard, whilst Offa minted golden mancuses at the royal centre of Tamworth, modelled upon contemporary Abassid dinars minted in Baghdad and with his own name next to that of Allah.

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The introduction of realistic animals might also be replete with significance, for an appreciation of the semiotic potential of motifs and symbols was inherent within pre-Christian Celtic and Germanic art and merged with Early Christian symbolism to great effect. Thus the creature that has swallowed an unheeding procession of sea-birds in the margins of the St Luke incipit page of the Lindisfarne Gospels (f. 139r; Fig. 4.2) is a recognisable feline, rather than the generic elephant cum vacuum cleaner beastie of Germanic Style II art. One is also reminded of the ninth-century Irish poem in which the scribe chases wisdom on the page whilst his cat, Pangur Bán, chases his prey – both equally content in their allotted tasks. This naturalistic representation facilitates an intertextual reading as both the cat that threatens to pounce on the unwary in Early Christian lore and feline Cruithne, the Celtic Cerberus, guardian of the entrance to the underworld (M. P. Brown 2003; Lewis 1980). Another unlikely sentinel may be the naked priapic figure who crouches further down the central column of the first Canon Table in the Mercian Barberini Gospels (Vatican, Barb. lat. 570, f. 1r; M. P. Brown 2007). Its colophon beseeches prayer for one Wigbald, whom I have identified as probably the archdeacon (or, less probably, a hermit of the same name) at Medeshamstede (Peterborough), mentioned in a charter of 786 × 796.5 This shivering soul clutches his beard and touches his genitals (an ancient protective gesture),

Figure 4.2 Cross carpet-page and decorated incipit page commencing St Luke’s Gospel in the Lindisfarne Gospels, Holy Island, c. 710-720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, ff. 138v-139r)

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defending them from the beasts which advance from the forest of interlace to attack his head and bare buttocks. Henderson has interpreted him as a denizen of Hell or the archheretic, Arius, citing some interesting iconographic parallels, including the wrestling beard-pullers in the Book of Kells (Henderson 2001, 163–165). Other interpretations also present themselves. The beard is a well-known symbol of masculinity. In contemporary Welsh law-codes a man could divorce his wife for casting aspersions on his beard (she, in turn, could divorce him for obesity) and beard-pullers are to be found in early medieval art, from the pages of the Book of Kells and the carved panels of Irish high-crosses to Viking metalwork (Gjaeder 1964; M. P. Brown 2011b). An apotropaic function may have been intended – as in protecting itself, the figure also protects the volume from evil and theft, in the manner of the anathemas in medieval books. While paganism lingered on, the protective role of ancient fertility gods, such as the Germanic Frikko/Old Norse Freyr would have been well-known and ripe for conversion into a Christian context. The phallus had performed an ancient, amuletic function in the Greek and Roman world and in northern European Prehistory. In a Christian context it could also function in connection with the cults of saints, such as that of Sts Cosmas and Damian (whose church by the forum in Rome would have been much-frequented by Anglo-Saxon pilgrims), with waxen phalli being sold to pilgrims in Isernia as ex-voto offerings to the physician-saints (Mellinkoff 2004, I, Ch. 6). The figure might also signify the forces of chaos, kept at bay by the Word of God – encapsulated in the sacred numbers of the Canon Tables which themselves embodied that Word (M. P. Brown 2003, 166–167, 179–182 and 301). These extraordinarily frank carvings were not erotic in function, but part of clerical campaign against immorality (Weir and Jerman 1986). The figure reminds the reader to abandon temptations of the flesh in the face of the Gospels and the promise of salvation they contain, and provides protection against temptation, rather like the Romanesque sheelagh-na-gigs. The use of such images as potent gatekeepers into the Christian faith was fully understood by Gregory the Great, and his perception fused readily with that of the peoples of the North West who had, for many centuries, signalled status and belief through ornament and symbol. Gregory’s world view was also wider geographically than we might think; two years after his envoy, Augustine, arrived in Canterbury Gregory was also dispatching gifts with his legate to St Catherine’s, Sinai, which was still in the process of being supplied with its early treasures, such as its impressive encaustic icons. Gregory’s perception of the didactic and contemplative function of images may have owed much to those of pre-iconoclastic Byzantium and the Christian Orient, which in turn informed those of early Christian Britain (M. P. Brown 2012 and forthcoming e). For the visual literacy of the early Middle Ages is characterised by the interaction of words to be seen and images to be read. The highly visual nature of the way in which the Word is adorned in the Lindisfarne Gospels is the key to its enduring impact. Its mode of visual discourse is largely ornamental and symbolic, rather than narrative, however. It is iconic in its aniconic visual language. For the issue of idolatry was still being actively discussed not only in Judaic and Islamic but also in Christian circles,

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despite the injunction of Gregory the Great, in a letter addressed around 600 to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, censuring his destruction of images on the grounds that It is one thing to adore a picture, another to learn what is to be adored through the history told by the picture. What Scripture presents to readers, a picture presents to the gaze of the unlearned. For in it even the ignorant see what they ought to follow, in it the illiterate read. (Ayerst and Fisher 1977, 101-2; Chazelle 1990; M. P. Brown 2000)

Byzantine book production had flourished during the Early Christian period, readily embracing imagery (although little now survives), but hit an all-time low during the Iconoclast Controversy from the 720s until 787. Imagery was largely outlawed throughout Byzantine territory, only the book and the cross being acceptable public manifestations of belief. With the Council of Nicaea (787) and the accession of Empress Irene (797–802) images were reinstated despite an iconoclastic resurgence in 814-843. The making of icons is termed iconography – as the name suggests, you do not paint icons but write them, as an act of prayer and spiritual meditation, grounded in text, as images to be read. This was how Insular artist-scribes, such as Bishop Eadfrith, approached the making of books such as the Lindisfarne Gospels. Unity and the avoidance of schism were major considerations for its maker, apparent in the careful balancing of iconic and aniconic features at a time when iconoclasm was advancing. The text is entered through architecturally framed Canon Tables, a concordance system which, to quote Nordenfalk, formed ‘an impressive atrium at the entrance of the sacred text itself ’ – an invitation and means of entering the Holy of Holies through a numeric encapsulation of Christ’s ministry (Nordenfalk 1992, 30, 18; M. P. Brown 2003, Ch. 5). Its evangelist miniatures sit like framed icons on the page, but function as sacred figurae, portraying aspects of Christ’s nature obliquely through their symbolism and forming a neat visual summary of the English espousal of catholic orthodoxy in its stance on the relationship of the integrated human and divine will, with Matthew and Luke, symbols of Christ’s vulnerability, depicted as bearded and ageing in mortal fashion, whilst Mark and John, symbols of Christ’s triumph and immortality are shown youthful and clean-shaven (M. P. Brown 2003, 49–350; forthcoming c). Texts are introduced by exquisite cross carpet-pages, indebted to Coptic art and recalling the Crux Gemmata (the jewelled cross, symbol of the Second Coming) and the prayer mats sometimes used in northern Europe at this time, including England, as well as in the Middle East (M. P. Brown 2003; forthcoming c). They prepare the entry onto the holy ground of sacred text, whilst the facing incipits explode across the page in a riot of ornament, the letters themselves becoming a celebration of the divine (as in later Islamic art) – the word made flesh or, rather, the Word made word. Such books are portals of prayer. Just as St Cuthbert struggled with his demons on Inner Farne on behalf of all Creation, so the bishop-monk who produced the Lindisfarne Gospels as Cuthbert’s cult-book undertook an heroic solitary feat of patience and of spiritual and physical endurance in the desert of the book, as part of the Apostolic mission of bringing the Word of God to the furthest outposts of the known world,

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enshrining it there within the new Temple of the Word and embodiment of Christ – the Book. He devised new technologies (the lead pencil, the lightbox and a new chemical mastery of pigments) to achieve a complex vision in which lections from several sources were synthesized into a new decorative programme designed to articulate the text and to enshrine Jerome’s ‘Vulgate’ and lections from the liturgy, as practised at the time of manufacture around 710–720, and incorporating some up-to-the-minute papal thinking as part of what I have suggested is a complex visual statement of adherence to the Orthodoxy of Chalcedon and a celebration of different traditions within it (M. P. Brown 2003, 182–199; forthcoming c). The liturgies of the Columban Church, Naples, Aquileia and stational liturgy only just introduced in Rome are marked by the system of decoration in the Lindisfarne Gospels. We cannot be sure whether these represent the active observance of different liturgical traditions on Holy Island – like contemporary Anglican mixed use of the Book of Common Prayer at morning prayer and evensong, of Common Worship on Sundays and perhaps a Taizé service on a week night – or whether the statement was a purely symbolic, ecumenical one.6 For the maker of the Lindisfarne Gospels would appear to have been the first to articulate and navigate text with the aid of a systematic programme of decoration. The hierarchy of initials and litterae notabiliores, with variations in scale, colour and detail, served to mark different sorts of text division: Gospels, prefaces, chapters, Eusebian sections and lections. In this he pre-empted Hugh of St Victor who taught students to commit text to memory with the aid of the visual mnemonics of mise-en-page and decoration. Bishop Eadfrith’s approach was undoubtedly shaped by the contribution of earlier Insular scribes who had already developed decorated initials with display scripts accomplishing a diminuendo into the script of the text, and devised formal half-uncial hands for penning Scripture and calligraphic minuscules for less formal works. They were also beginning to normalise word order and introduce word separation and systematic punctuation by distinctiones (series of points) to overcome the inherent difficulties of classical scriptio continua, to clarify legibility and assist grammatical comprehension – devices which were also being introduced into Hebrew texts around this time to facilitate correct public reading. Pilgrims to St Cuthbert’s shrine would have been greeted by the visual impact of its vision of a more harmonious, colourful world to come (Fig. 4.2), so different from the chaotic, earth-coloured realities of the present, and by its subtle blending of Celtic, Germanic, Pictish, Roman, Greek and Middle Eastern motifs, ornament and letter forms, recognising resonances from their own cultural backgrounds and making them feel a welcome part of a new whole. Thus a woman of Irish extract might recall, through the La Tène spiralwork, the brooch inherited from her Celtic grandmother, or a man be reminded by the interlaced menagerie of beasts of the beltbuckle worn by his German great-grandfather, whilst serving as a federal auxillary in the imperial Roman forces. These visual repertoires, by which people had signified their identities for generations, were woven into a harmonious and exotic synthesis

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embracing and expressing an oecumen that stretched from the deserts of Syria and Egypt to the Atlantic seaboard. This was a Gospelbook that enshrined ideals and was intended to be seen and to inspire. We think of it as one of the most iconic of books, very seldom handled even by senior scholars, and yet through exhibition, publication, media coverage and its inspiration of derivative artwork it is now one of the most widely seen books in Britain. This would also have been true at the time that it was first displayed as a focus of pilgrimage on Holy Island, at the heart of a community of reading that, although largely illiterate in conventional terms, was well-acquainted with words to be seen and images to be read. Thus Insular experiments in the expression of a new, cumulative and collaborative identity were pursued to most eloquent extent in the visual esperanto of art (M. P. Brown 2003, Ch. 5).7 Yet before the eighth century was done, such crosscultural synthesis was becoming unacceptable, at least in cultivated circles, and another of Northumbria’s scholar sons, Alcuin, would demand affrontedly of the Lindisfarne community, which permitted such songs at table ‘What has Ingeld to do with Christ?’.8 There were, nonetheless, subsequent attempts to assert traditional ties to ancient and imperial worlds, and to a northern Scandinavian trading empire with shared Germanic folk roots and vernacular orality. Such was the climate that cultivated the Beowulf manuscript (perhaps, like The Dream of the Rood, the literary culmination of an evolving work (M. P. Brown 2013–2014) with its heroes and other monstrous races, the Old English compendia of poetry, and sculptural monuments such as the Nunburnholme and Gosforth crosses with their juxtaposed images of Crucifixion and scenes from Scandinavian mythology. During the early eleventh century such intersections of identities reached new levels of visual narrative expression in the Old English Hexateuch and the Old English Genesis manuscripts (BL, Cotton MS Claudius B. iv and Bodleian, Junius MS 11). These conflated vernacular paraphrases of Old Testament texts with picture cycles of largely Early Christian origin, adapted to reflect the interests of contemporary ‘communities of reading’, including women, and emphasizing the Anglo-Saxon people’s own sense of exile and journey from their original Germanic homelands to England as the new ‘children of Israel’. Iconographic, like legal, law of precedence, demanded that innovatio should be distilled from traditio, were it not to occasion the sort of accusations of heretical intent levelled earlier at an indignant Bede.9 Thus details of dress and artefacts might be updated to reflect contemporary society, and details exploring theological and exegetical nuance introduced, but within a recognisable compositional structure. In the Hexateuch, Pharaoh hanging his baker (Fig. 4.3) becomes the English monarch and his witan dispensing legal judgement. The English thereby asserted their own cultural and linguistic identity and set themselves within the biblical landscape (Old English Hexateuch, London, BL, MS Cotton Claudius B. iv; Dodwell and Clemoes 1974; Barnhouse and Withers, 2000; Withers 2007. Old English Genesis, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 11; Karkov 2006; Muir 2004).

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Figure 4.3 Pharoah executing his baker – a biblical episode visualised as a contemporary Anglo-Saxon ruler and witan enacting legal process. The Old English Hexateuch, Canterbury, c. 1000 (BL, Cotton MS Claudius B. iv, f. 59r)

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Pictorial narrative of the Early Christian tradition also features in Insular and Anglo-Saxon art, for example, on the Hovingham and Wirksworth Slabs and in the Vespasian Psalter with its King David harping page, the Durham Gospels Crucifixion and the Royal Bible, where monumental inscriptions describe the images on pages long since lost. During the late tenth and early eleventh centuries it would reach an apogee in the extensive picture cycles of books such as the Junius MS, the Old English Hexateuch and the Harley Psalter. Some two centuries after it was made in the diocese of Hautvilliers, during the 830s, one of the greatest monuments of Carolingian book production, the Utrecht Psalter, was obtained by the Christ Church scriptorium in order to make its own version for the Archbishop. This they did, in the form of the Harley Psalter (BL, Harley MS 603), the first of four English responses to the iconic Carolingian prototype, itself probably indebted to Early Christian models. The fact that exemplar and ‘copies’ survive make this one of the most influential case studies in the medieval transmission of text and image. The Utrecht Psalter caused mayhem in the Christ Church cloister. The Harley Psalter’s unfinished pages bear witness to its impact. It usually fell to the scribes to lay out the pages and to undertake their work first, leaving appropriate spaces for illumination. However, it was the extensive cycle of picture poems in the Utrecht Psalter that primarily recommended it, and so on this occasion the mise-en-page fell to the artists. Eadui Basan was both artist and scribe and one senses his divided loyalties as he laboured on this project. For this was no straightforward exercise in copying: the text of the Carolingian exemplar was the Gallicanum, whilst the version used at Christ Church was the Romanum, and its stately rustic capitals were replaced in its English descendent by smaller caroline minuscule script. This meant that the words and their ‘font size’, so to speak, were different and altered the shape of the text blocks, making it well-nigh impossible for the scribes to impose their text and squeeze it into the spaces left by the artists, whilst keeping text and illustration marching in step. The scribes therefore rebelled and took over the layout process, leaving too little space for the artists. Even though they disbound the Utrecht Psalter to see how it was assembled, the project proved too great, and despite still being worked on in the twelfth century, was left incomplete. In the process, however, the Christ Church scriptorium learned a tremendous amount concerning book production and the relationship between text and image, that would stand it in good stead during subsequent centuries and which also helped to inform the role of picture cycles within new vernacular translations and compositions. The key to the innermost realms of visual reading lay, however, in the grasp of the principle of multivalence: why settle for only one, literal, meaning when you can simultaneously explore deeper levels of allegorical meaning? The relentless rational pursuit of literal meaning espoused by the scholastics during the twelfth century was yet to come. John Cassian, one of the founding figures of eastern and western monasticism, had advocated the deployment of three sorts of spiritual knowledge in order to understand Scripture: allegory, anagoge and tropology (Cassian, Conlationes, XIV.viii, Petschenig 1888, 404–405; Parkes 1997, 12). History deals with real

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past events, whereas allegory relates to prefigured mysteries. Anagoge goes beyond such mysteries to penetrate the secrets of heaven itself, whilst tropology interprets all three for the moral edification and instruction of the present. For other than the learned scholar, well-versed in exegesis, such layered meaning might be difficult to ‘read’ – although the taste for riddles and conundrums probably extended to the secular sphere (see Webster in this volume). Art rendered it more accessible. Thus, the miniature depicting the Temptation of Christ in the Book of Kells can also be interpreted as a sacred figura (schematic diagram) embodying the theological concept of the Communion of Saints, with Christ as the head of the Church, flanked by onlookers symbolising the Church Militant  –  those believers currently alive – whilst angels representing the Church Triumphant – those already in heaven – hover above and those awaiting liberation from Purgatory – the Church Expectant – inhabit a lower realm presided over by the figure of Osiris, God of the Dead (M. P. Brown 2003, Ch 5; Farr 1997). Aldhelm and Bede were both well-versed in such reading skills and applied them to their writings, informed by the foremost libraries and images of the day. Bede relates in the Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow that Benedict Biscop brought back many holy pictures of the saints to adorn the church of St Peter he had built: a painting of the Mother of God, the Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, and one of each of the twelve apostles which he fixed round the central arch on a wooden entablature reaching from wall to wall; pictures of incidents in the gospels with which he decorated the south wall, and scenes from St John’s vision of the apocalypse for the north wall. Thus all who entered the church, even those who could not read, were able, whichever way they looked, to contemplate the dear face of Christ and His saints, even if only in a picture, to put themselves more firmly in mind of the Lord’s Incarnation and, as they saw the decisive moment of the Last Judgement before their very eyes be brought to examine their conscience with all due severity. (Bede, Lives of the Abbots, Ch. 6; Farmer 1983, 190–191)

Biscop thereby implemented Pope Gregory’s concept of didactic imagery. Around 685 he returned from his fifth visit to Rome with a large supply of sacred books and no less a stock of sacred pictures than on previous journeys … His treasures included a set of pictures for the monastery and church of the blessed apostle Paul, consisting of scenes, very skillfully arranged, to show how the Old Testament foreshadowed the New. In one set, for instance, the picture of Isaac carrying the wood on which he was to be burnt as a sacrifice was placed immediately below that of Christ carrying the cross on which He was about to suffer. Similarly, the Son of Man up on the cross was paired with the serpent raised up by Moses in the desert. (Bede, Lives of the Abbots, Ch. 6; Farmer 1983, 194)

Thus the images which covered the walls of Wearmouth/Jarrow’s churches visually summarised the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, illustrated by means of didactic typology, a genre favoured by Jerome and embraced by Bede. Ælfric would likewise later instruct the lay patron of his Old English paraphrase of the Torah

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(the Old English Hexateuch) how to excavate the hidden treasures of Scripture by employing spiritual understanding (spiritalis intelligentia, Old English gastlice andgit), illustrating this by examples such as Joseph saving the people from starvation being a type of Christ who saves humanity from the hungers of Hell (Parkes 1997, 13–14; Wilcox 1994, 116–119). The Irish scholar John Scottus Eriugena would carry such an Insular approach at the heart of the Carolingian Empire. The Carolingian stance on imagery, however, remained conflicted. It was employed to emphasise the interdependence of Church and State, the emperor combining the symbolic roles of king and priest, but many churchmen remained troubled by the implications of imagery and idolatry. The official Carolingian response took the form of the Libri Carolini compiled by Theodulf of Orléans, who hailed from iconoclastic Mozarabic Spain, in which the primacy of the word was asserted over images which, although permitted, were deemed to possess no inherent holiness or iconic value (Diebold 2000, 100–101, 117–118). Copies of Scripture produced from this time until c. 810 (when the Lorsch Gospels once more dared feature an image of Christ in Majesty) are noticeably devoid of pictures of the divine, preferring biblical illustrations or evangelist portraits. This of course left ample scope for the development of ruler iconography which was also rapidly adopted by Anglo-Saxon monarchs, from Athelstan who was depicted presenting St Cuthbert with a copy of his Lives, as part of his promotion of the saint’s relocated shrine to secure the community’s support in his re-integration of the North, to Cnut who, with his English predecessor’s widow, Emma, had himself depicted bestowing a resplendent golden altar-cross in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey (BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r; Fig. 4.4), Emma clutching her skirts in a Byzantine gesture of purity (Mütherich and Gaehde 1976; Deshman 1980; Dutton and Kessler 1997; McKitterick 1990a). Such acts of patronage formed an important part of Cnut’s attempts to regain public opinion – or at least the parts of it that really mattered, the ecclesiastical and lay aristocracy of English society – following his appropriation of the English throne. Sandy Heslop has pointed to the role of books as prestigious gifts as part of this strategy. There was certainly a spate of production of costly, opulently illuminated manuscripts during the early eleventh century, with Gospelbooks and Psalters, the mainstays of private devotions and liturgical participation, predominating. These include several written and illuminated by one of the greatest craftsmen of his day, Eadui the Fat (Eadui Basan) who has left us a colophon, around 1020, in the Eadui Codex (Hanover, Kestner Museum, WM XXIa 36, f. 183v). It is now well-known that this monk of Christ Church Canterbury attracted the attention of Cnut and was pulled out of the monastic scriptorium to serve in the production of prestigious gift-books and impressive royal charters which date his floruit to at least 1013–1023. Such activities may have coloured the mind of Eadui’s contemporary at Christ Church, Ælfric Bata, when he wrote disapprovingly of the phenomenon of what we might term ‘rock star scribes’, who instead of teaching in the scriptorium as they ought, were out on the road or at court enjoying fame and wealth. Eadui embodies the phenomenon of the

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Figure 4.4 Cnut and Emma presenting a golden cross in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester, 1020s (BL, Stowe MS 944, f. 6r)

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emergent identity of the artist in western art. He may even have left us a self-portrait, in the Eadui Psalter (BL, Arundel MS 155, f. 133r), as the monk who embraces the feet of his order’s founding father, St Benedict. The sacred space inhabited by the saint is fully painted, whilst the Christ Church brethren, living or dead, upon whom he bestows his Rule are depicted in ethereal tinted drawing. Eadui, or perhaps his abbot, is also fully painted, even though his bottom protrudes from sacred space into the other zone. When Cnut wished to mollify the Wolf, that erstwhile outspoken advocate of English resistance to Scandinavian rule, Archbishop Wulfstan of York, he may have done so by commissioning as a gift to him a de luxe illuminated Gospelbook – the York Gospels (York, Cathedral Library MS 1) – with display openings to each of the four Gospels written and illuminated by his own artist-scribe, by royal appointment, Eadui Basan (M. P. Brown 2011c, 136–139). Its evangelist miniatures speak of an eirenic stability, all is calm, in the wake of national upheaval, and the Wolf need no longer mobilise his flock against this benign Christian king, and his Normanno-English queen. When that queen later responded to popular suspicions of her complicity in the murder of one of her sons by English Æthelred, in favour of those by her Danish spouse, it was in the form of a book – her Encomium, in which she is depicted enthroned and wearing a crown so large that noone could doubt her royal status, even during her exile abroad (BL, Add. MS 33241, f.1v). The Norman monkish author-scribe presents his work to this embodiment of royal dignity, also redolent of later Norman personifications of Philosophy, as she appeared to console Boethius during his unwarranted fall from public office. The later Anglo-Saxon period witnessed significant high-level aristocratic female patronage (Heslop 1990; Gameson 1997; McGurk and Rosenthal 1995). The Gospelbook commissioned by Judith, Countess of Flanders (1032–1094) shortly after she came to England in 1051 as the wife of Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumbria, is a masterly display of status and cultural affiliation. Its treasure binding is one of the most opulent of its age, in true imperial Ottonian and Byzantine fashion, and endows the book with all the overt sacred significance of those carried in procession during the liturgy in leading churches of the day. Its image of the Crucifixion (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS 709, f. 1v) is executed in a supremely elegant expression of late Winchester Style illumination, oozing gold and costly pigments. Clinging to the base of the Rood is a female figure  –  either the earliest occurrence in art of the Magdalene in such an iconography, or perhaps even intended to depict Countess Judith herself as the repentent recipient of salvation. A golden rectangle at her waist may be a belt, or might it be a Gospelbook peeping from her pocket? For Christ is flanked by St John and the Virgin. John holds the Gospelbook in which his testimony is recorded but here a new feature occurs: the Virgin also holds a book. This highly unusual iconography must surely have arisen from the female patronage of the manuscript, and recalls the earlier Mercian image of the Virgin at Breedon-on-the-Hill (Fig. 4.5), carved around 800 – a panel that may once have formed part of a Byzantine-style iconostasis screen.

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It depicts the Virgin in the traditional pose of the Hodegetria (Indicator of the Way), but her right hand gestures not to the Christ-child cradled by her left arm, but to a Gospelbook with a decorated cover – the embodiment of Logos (M. P. Brown 2012). Both images serve as an injunction to the viewer to be, like Christ’s mother, both the bearer of the Word and the indicator of the way. For the book itself could serve a symbolic and active intercessory iconic function. The power of writing was reinforced by a growing perception during the early Middle Ages of the iconic nature of the book in a religious context. Insular secular rulers were quick to perceive the value of this powerful medium, and of a literate clerical administration, and enlisted the support of church personnel in penning law-codes, charters and genealogies to help establish secure, legitimate states (S.  Kelly 1990; M. P. Brown 2011c). Augustine had been quick to commit King Ethelberht of Kent’s Germanic law-code to the ‘safe-keeping’ of writing, thereby beginning the processes of transliterating Old English into the Roman script and integrating the Church into the social structure and property-owning classes by introducing the codification of social currency (Mayr-Harting 1977; M. P. Brown 2006a). Early English kings soon took pride in tracing their newly Christianised, integrated ancestry back through historical figures to pagan deities such as Woden (see Yorke in this volume) and thence back to the biblical Adam and tracing their antecedents not only through the songs of bards and scops, but through the columns of a book, just as Christ’s genealogy opened the holy Gospelbook (Liber). Just as the deeds of the heroes of generations past were lauded in song, so the biblical forefathers were celebrated in the feasting hall. The account of Bede’s death, written by his pupil Cuthbert, bears witness to his love of song, ‘for he knew our poems well’ (Sherley-Price 1955, 358). The Franks Casket, a Northumbrian eighth-century whalebone box, has even been proposed as a book reliquary, Leslie Webster suggesting that it contained not a religious tome per se, but a Northumbrian royal genealogy (Webster 2010). Such books were penned by clerics and helped to legitimise the rule of their owners as Christian princes whose ancestors, traditions and beliefs were presented as world history within the context of a Christian eternity, just as their descent from historical and semimythical figures was traced to Germanic gods and Old Testament patriarchs. Thus the iconography of the casket related scenes from Jewish, perhaps Greek, Roman, Germanic and Christian traditions, captioned in runes and roman capitals, juxtaposing and synthesising them to provide a visual genealogy of power and redemption for a contemporary English audience. Thus the bird whose feathers enabled the vengeful Weland the Smith to escape his enemy, Nithhad, becomes the Holy Spirit, guiding the Magi to salvation in the form of the Christ-child, on one face of the Franks Casket. Not only letter forms and iconographies and myths, but whole mindsets and socioethical codes are juxtaposed and mutually accommodated. Similarly, at another point during the eighth century an English reader would gloss the word thalaria, the winged sandals of Mercury, as ‘fether homa’, Weland’s garment of feathers, in a copy of Servius’s commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, bk IV, attesting to the level of assimilation

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Figure 4.5 The Virgin, a Mercian adaptation of the Byzantine iconography of the Virgin Hodegetria, the ‘Indicator of the Way’, in which she holds the Gospel book as the symbol of God incarnate, rather than the conventional Christ-child. Breedon-on-the-Hill (Leics.), c. 800 (photograph Michelle P. Brown)

and association attained by Insular readers (Spangenberg, Pfarrbibliothek, s.n.; Lowe, 1971, no. 1806; Parkes 1997, 11). Another English verse of this era is carved in Roman capitals and runes on the Ruthwell Cross in the ancient British kingdom of Rheged in southwest Scotland. This monument, a visual meditation in stone on the Passion of Christ and the religious life, is a potent statement of Northumbrian political and monastic cultural influence in recently annexed British territory (Ó Carragáin 1994, 2005; Figs 2.7, 4.6). In the late tenth century this verse was expanded to form The Dream of the Rood, in which the cross laments its role in the crucifixion of the young warrior, Christ (see also Ó Carragáin in this volume). Bede’s aspirations for reframing heroic northern culture in Christian guise were being fulfilled. Stressing a shared, participative world history with their biblical and Roman counterparts was a preoccupation of both Insular ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Unlike their continental counterparts, however, the earliest extant English charters, although dating from the 670s onwards, are written not in the excessively cursive scripts inherited from the late Roman bureaucracy, such as those of the Merovingian and Ravennate chanceries, which resemble the wanderings of a demented spider, but in the stately high-grade uncials used for Scripture. Perceptions of the auctoritas of writing

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Figure 4.7 Chi-Rho page, from a mid-eighth-century Northumbrian (?) Gospel book, with an Old English manumission added in 924 in the lower left-hand column, celebrating King Athelstan’s accession – the sacred book has the authority to bind and loose and to sacralise/legitimise even royal deeds (BL, Royal MS 1.B.vii, f. 15v)

Figure 4.6 The Ruthwell Cross, panel probably depicting a Northumbrian king with accompanying runic Old English inscription, standing in recently annexed British territory in what is now southern Scotland and combining religious, cultural and political agendas through the choice of script and images, first half of the eighth century (photograph Michelle P. Brown)

in the context of sacred text and liturgical ritual thus served to imbue such instruments of government with enhanced authority, stressed by an imposing visual appearance. By the early ninth century Archbishop Wulfred of Canterbury could present a court with a large, impressive document penned in the elegant ‘mannered minuscule’ that he and his scriptorium had devised expressly for such a purpose and thereby assert the primacy of written evidence at law over age-old oral witness. Forgeries soon proliferated.

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The symbolic use of scripts with specific ‘ethnic’ cultural connotations may be seen in the sporadic use of Greek words and letters in western Latin books: for example, London, BL, Royal MS 1. B. vii, a mid-eighth-century Northumbrian Gospelbook, in the decorated Chi-Rho opening (Fig. 4.7). This sacred name, composed of the first two letters of ‘Christ’ in Greek, introduces Matthew’s Nativity narrative and was often elevated to major decorative status. Here, the scribe has not only inserted the Greek characters for the sacred name of Christ but has outwitted himself, reinterpreting the ‘rho’, denoted by a character resembling the Latin ‘p’, for the Greek character ‘pi’ (what he has written is ‘hippy’ autem – more Godspell than Greek) (Webster and M. P. Brown 1997, 245–246; Alexander 1978, nos 35 and 20; Lowe 1972, 215 and 213; M.  P.  Brown 2003, 55–56, fig. 25). Conversely, Latin letters were sometimes used in Byzantium as ‘exotics’ alongside Greek on medals and coin weights.10 The impact of runes on the scriptorium can be seen as an ingredient (along with Latin, Greek and Ogham letters) in the distinctive angular display script of the Lindisfarne Gospels (Fig. 4.2) in which I have suggested that the artist/scribe was actively designing a cultural hybrid as part of an aesthetic programme promoting combined agendas (M. P. Brown 2003, 227–243, 331–345; forthcoming c). A generation later the Lichfield Gospels (Lichfield, Cathedral Library, MS 1), made in a house affiliated to Lindisfarne (as its artist was permitted to study each of the major display openings of the Lindisfarne Gospels), carried the process further, introducing actual runes into its display script. M. P. Brown 2003, 227–243). Ray Page has suggested that the epigraphic runes on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses, the Franks Casket and the Cuthbert coffin are indebted to the approach of such scribes (Page 1989, 1995). Such public displays formed positive cultural statements of ‘Englishness’ and its relationships to Graeco-Roman past and international Christian present. When the name of a woman, Osgyth, was carved on her name-stone on Holy Island around 700 it was in parallel bilingual form, in Latin characters and runes. Was this for pragmatic purposes, so that her monastic and secular peers could each decipher her name, or a symbolic visual allusion to her temporal vernacular origins and eternal, Latinate aspirations? The Scientific Miscellany (BL, MS Cotton Tiberius B. v) displays another important aspect of the English approach to script as a cultural signifier – the parallel translation, in which not only are Latin and Old English accorded codicological parity, but script is used to reaffirm their complementary but distinct status (McGurk et al. 1983). During the tenth-century ecclesiastical reform movement, the practice evolved of writing English in versions of the traditional Anglo-Saxon minuscule (of ultimately Insular derivation) and of employing an English version of Caroline minuscule for Latin texts (M. P. Brown 1999, 58–59, 64–67, 70–71). This is the ultimate visual manifestation of the perennially ambiguous English response to Europeanism. In other regions that had preserved their indigenous script identities, in the face of the imperial expansionism of Caroline minuscule, there was either a tenacious universal adherence to local practices, as in the Beneventan remnants of Lombardic Italy where Beneventan minuscule endured, in pockets, until the thirteenth century, or a gradual

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contamination and replacement by Caroline features, as in northern Visigothic Spain. In Anglo-Saxon England, although an importation of Carolingian palaeographical, codicological and artistic features can be observed throughout the ninth and tenth centuries, the distinctive identity of Anglo-Saxon minuscule is preserved intact and, although the two script types continue to interact with one another, even into the twelfth century (see Roberts 2005), nowhere else is the practice adopted of using one as a local vernacular idiom and the other as a Latin universal. The visible authority of the sacred book was affirmed by its public display. Royal and episcopal oaths might be sworn upon the Bible during coronation ceremonies to validate rule: a little ninth-century Gospelbook from Carolingian Lobbes was used at the coronation of Anglo-Saxon kings, perhaps from as early as the 920s (Coronation Gospels, London, BL, Cotton MS Tiberius A. ii; Turner, Webster and Backhouse 1984, no. 3). Likewise, ‘Books of the high altar’ served as the sacred ground upon which solemn oaths and legal transactions were enacted (we still swear oaths in court upon sacred texts), and in which they were recorded. In the mid-ninth century the Welshman Gelhi swapped his best horse for the Lichfield Gospels and presented it to the altar of St Teilo at Llandeilo Fawr, Carmathenshire, where documents in Latin and the earliest extant written Welsh were entered in the margins. These include the first post-Roman manumission of a slave (Bleiddudd ap Sulren, at p. 218). The Bodmin Gospels, a Breton import to Cornwall likewise had manumissions and oaths entered into it at the altar of St Petroc in Bodmin at a similar period. An interest in Celtic manuscripts and in asserting imperium over Celtic territories may subsequently have motivated King Athelstan’s adoption of this custom, of possible British origin given the models just cited, evidenced by his manumission of slaves recorded in an Insular Gospelbook (BL, Royal MS 1. B. vii; Fig. 4.7), which he presented to the high altar of Christ Church, Canterbury. Just as relics acquired their potency through contact with the saint, so documents acquired extra validity through visible association with sacred text on the altar. The Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells also served as books of the high altar, legitimising by their sacrality transactions enacted before them and documents entered into them. Such books became relics themselves, through association with saints. A particularly evocative example is an early ninth-century Gospelbook from Tours (BL, Additional MS 11848) in a splendid treasure binding, depicting the Last Judgement, with the bones of saints recessed within its wooden binding boards – allowing it to serve both as place of adjudication, shrine and altar. Visible consumption of wealth continued to play an important part in this, as in the Byzantine and Carolingian contexts. The Anglo-Saxon monastery of Minster-in-Thanet in Kent is also known from Boniface’s correspondence during the 730s with its abbess, Eadburh, to have been supplying his German mission with impressively penned, sumptuously gilded copies of Scripture. He requested that, following her earlier gift of books, she write him a copy of the Epistles of St Peter, elegantly penned in gold script to impress potential converts, using gold which he sent her for the purpose (Whitelock

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1979, no. 172–173, 811–812). The great illuminated manuscripts dripping with gold that are usually attributed to Canterbury – the Vespasian Psalter (Alexander 1978) and the Stockholm Codex Aureus (Alexander 1978; Gameson 2003) – are just as likely to have been made by the nuns of Thanet as the monks of Canterbury (M. P. Brown 2001). In Merovingian Gaul the supply of liturgical books for cathedrals and monasteries was likewise undertaken by the nuns of Rebais, Faremoutiers-en-Brie, Jouarre and Chelles (McKitterick 1989, 22-26; M. P. Brown 2001, 2005). The burgeoning of the Benedictine Reform Movement during Edgar’s reign is celebrated in the New Minster Charter of c. 966 (Cotton MS Vespasian A. viii, f. 2v) where he is depicted in the manner of the Carolingian and Ottonian emperors, prostrate before Christ, whom he served as rex et sacerdos. The Virgin and St Peter witness and affirm his role in an opulent setting of purple page adorned with gold and rich acanthus foliage, sprung from imperial stock. Rulers were not the only ones who knew how to use such potent book-based imagery. When, in the 980s, Bishop Æthelwold c o m m i s s i o n e d h i s W i n ch e s t e r artist-scribe, Godeman, to make the book that only he would be seen with in public performance of the liturgy – the book of episcopal blessings for the feast days of the year, now known as the Benedictional of St Ethelwold, he told him to use plenty of gold and colour – recalling Boniface’s request to Eadburh. This specification was recorded by Godeman in the poem, penned in golden ink, with which he commenced the volume and within which he refers to his patronbishop and saint in the making as the ‘son of thunder’, an allusion to the biblical terminology used of those other powerful apostles of Christ, Sts James and John. The contribution that this book would Figure 4.8 Aldred’s colophon and interlinear gloss, have made to Æthelwold’s panoply added in the mid-10th century to the great cult book of episcopal power as he appeared, of St Cuthbert, the Lindisfarne Gospels, made on centre stage, beneath the chancel Holy Island c. 710–720 (BL, Cotton MS Nero D. iv, arch of Winchester’s great Minster f. 259r) would have been immense.

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A Middle Eastern appreciation of the iconic status of the book as an object of veneration was also transmitted to the West through the practice of enshrining sacred texts within treasure bindings. Ivories or bejewelled metalwork plates attached to wooden binding boards are found on Byzantine, Coptic, Armenian, Irish, Anglo-Saxon, Carolingian, and Ottonian books (including the Lindau Gospels, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MSM 1, and the Codex Aureus of Charles the Bald, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000; M. P. Brown 2006b nos. 66, 67, 74; Lowden 2007, 13–47; M. B. Brown forthcoming a). In Coptic Egypt and Ireland metalwork shrines (Old Irish cumdach) also occurred. 11 The names of those responsible for commissioning and making such visible and valuable contributions to the glorification of the Word were occasionally incorporated into the designs of such metalwork shrines, as on the Shrine of the Stowe Missal

Figure 4.9 Upper cover of the treasure binding adorning an early ninth-century Gospelbook from Tours, depicting the Last Judgement, with the bones of saints recessed within its wooden binding boards – allowing it to serve both as place of adjudication, shrine and altar (BL, Add. MS 11848)

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where the royal patrons and the metalworker are named. Reference to such a piece of metalwork adorning the volume may have occasioned the recollection of the name of Billfrith, the anchorite who made the treasure binding or cumdach for the Lindisfarne Gospels, in Aldred’s colophon added in the mid-tenth century (Bilfrith presbiter in The Durham Liber Vitae, BL, Cotton MS Domitian A. vii, f. 18r column 2; M. P. Brown 2003, 400). Aldred marked his entry to the community by glossing one of the major focal points of the Cuthbertine cult – the Lindisfarne Gospels. Although written in the Northumbrian dialect (which we might imagine was no longer the first language of much of the region’s Scandinavian population), the more continuous passages of Aldred’s interlinear Old English gloss (Fig. 4.8) – the earliest surviving translation of the Gospels into English – reveal a preoccupation with the reforming agenda of the West Saxon house and its prelates. A concern with clerical celibacy, simony and other abuses prevails, and it may be surmised that Aldred would have had powerful backing in order to parachute into a house with such venerable traditions and be permitted to ‘improve’ (as he puts it in his colophon), or deface, its foremost cult-book. English was thereby visibly enshrined, on the pages of a book of the high-altar par excellence, as one of the lingua sacra, in succession to Hebrew, Greek and Latin. What more potent a symbol could there have been of the North’s reintegration into England? Colophons are comparatively rare in the West, but occur more frequently in Insular manuscripts (especially from Irish backgrounds). In Armenian books, however, they are common and detailed, rendering the book an intercessory vehicle for scribe and patron. Redeeming such intercessors from captivity by non-Christians and restoring them to the Church was a pious act also recorded within Armenian manuscripts (Nersessian/British Library Board 1978, 61–62; Mathews and Wieck, 1994, xv) – and in two Insular Gospelbooks retrieved from Vikings during the ninth century: the Lichfield Gospels, retrieved for Mother Church by Gelhi, and the Stockholm Codex Aureus which, during the mid-ninth century, was redeemed from a Viking army, in return for bullion, by Ealdorman Alfred of Surrey or Kent and his wife, Werburh, and presented to Canterbury Cathedral, for the good of their souls (Gameson 2001; and on the Aldred colophon M. P. Brown 2016). Later in the Middle Ages a Psalter, long thought to be by St Columba’s own hand (but now considered to slightly post-date his death), gained its name, the ‘Cathach, or battler, of Columcille’, from the fact that its Irish hereditary keepers carried it, enshrined, before them into battle to ensure divine favour, a practice encountered earlier in Armenia, where gospelbooks preceded armies into battle as a palladium, in place of Byzantium’s icon (Nersessian 1987, p. 11). The book had become one of the most powerful icons and talismans. The earliest extant western binding – the St Cuthbert Gospel – was made in Wearmouth/Jarrow in the 690s in the ‘Coptic’ technique; tangible evidence of the links between these far-flung regions. It was found inside St Cuthbert’s coffin in 1104

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and was probably placed inside in 698 when his relics were translated to the new shrine at Lindisfarne. The invisible presence of the book inside the coffin – like those encased in metalwork shrines – was evidently of powerful significance. An earlier case of Scripture included in a burial is the earliest extant complete Coptic Psalter (Cairo, Coptic Museum, MS Lib. 6614). This was lovingly placed, open, as a pillow beneath the head of a young teenage girl around 400 in a humble cemetery at Al-Mudil. An older analogy, for both, might be the ancient Egyptian practice of interring the Book of the Dead with the deceased to aid their passage into the afterlife. The small bone peg, shaped like the ancient Egyptian key of life, which was used to unlock the book reinforces this connection. The deceased bishops of Sinai were placed, fully vested, in wooden mummy cases, a practice which recalls not only ancient Egyptian practice but the contemporary ensrhinement of St Cuthbert’s imperishable body in his painted wooden coffin with his Book of Life (M. P. Brown forthcoming a, b). The designs on some early Coptic bindings resemble the decoration of their internal cross-carpet pages. The late eighth-century Irish metalwork Lough Kinale book-shrine likewise carries a design resembling Insular carpet pages. It was tossed into an Irish lake during the ninth century when a disgruntled Viking raider found that all it contained was an old book (E.  P. Kelly 1994). This marked the beginning of a challenge to the iconic status of the book, which nonetheless even now remains one of our greatest cultural icons. After centuries of print culture we are only now, in the electronic environment, beginning to resume the complex cognitive challenges of fully integrated word, sound and image pursued during the Middle Ages, and initiated in early medieval Britain and Ireland.

Notes

1. The Codex Amiatinus has, in the absence of fuller evidence, been taken as representative of the other two Ceolfrith Bibles. Bede simply says that Ceolfrith added the three locally produced pandects to the one he brought back from Rome. 2. That the image of Ezra is likely to have originated at the Vivarium is reinforced by Cassiodorus’ Institutiones (5.22, 12.3), in which he lists sacred books and refers to an image of the Tabernacle and to diagrams of the arrangements of the biblical books, all of which are perpetuated in the Codex Amiatinus (Corsano 1987). 3. M. P. Brown 2003, where the extension of the multivalent reading of this image to include the contemporary scribe – i.e. Bede and his brethren – was proposed; for further exploration of the Bedan identification, see Meyvaert 2005. 4. The admirable collection of essays McKitterick 1990b acknowledged such inter-relationships and began to explore them in relation to the successors to imperial Rome. The seminal Clanchy 1998 and Carruthers 1990 have established the complex medieval paradigm of mnemonics, in which the written text resides. Nicholas Brooks, Susan Kelly and Simon Keynes have explored the implications of Anglo-Saxon document creation and retention, the late and lamented Patrick Wormald likewise illuminated the deep waters of law-making and law-breaking, David Dumville and others have helped to draw the subtle distinctions in practice between the AngloSaxons and their Celtic neighbours, Michael Lapidge and Helmut Gneuss have opened the doors of Anglo-Saxon England’s libraries, Malcolm Parkes has set forth the subtleties of what

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he terms ‘the written manifestation of substance of language’, Ray Page, Elisabeth Okasha and much-missed John Higgitt have fathomed the mystical world of runes and other inscriptions, whilst palaeographers and art historians such as Julian Brown, Jennifer O’Reilly, Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Carol Farr, Catherine Karkov, Jane Hawkes and myself have explored new ways of viewing script and image. These, along with many other individual and collective contributions have helped us to reconstruct what we can of the material evidence and its interpretation. For a recent overview and discussion see M. P. Brown 2011c. 5. For details of this charter, see Sawyer 1968, no. 1412. It survives only in copies of mid-twelfthcentury date (London, Soc. Antiquaries 60, f. 41) and thirteenth-century date (Peterborough, D.C., 1, f. 131) but has been accepted by Sawyer and Whitelock as genuine. It is printed in Birch 1885-1899; repr. 1964, no. 271. This form of the personal name Wigbald was cited by Searle 1897, 487, along with the other occurrences of the name in its various forms, as rehearsed above. The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England Database (http://www.pase.ac.uk/) lists only two Wigbalds: the scribe mentioned in the colophon of the Barberini Gospels and a moneyer. No Wigbealds or other variant name-forms appear. 6. Another important contributory factor in determining which textual recension was favoured was the liturgy. Christopher de Hamel has suggested that the popularity of the ‘Vulgate’ in the ‘Italo-Northumbrian’ family may stem from its use for readings in the reformed liturgy that was introduced to Northumbria from Rome at the beginning of the eighth century. The lections marked by initials in the Lindisfarne Gospels, however, show that the liturgy of Rome could be selectively adapted, rather than aped as a cultural import, to make an effective statement of social synthesis (de Hamel 2001, Ch. 1; M. P. Brown 2003, Ch. 5). 7. M. P. Brown 2003 Ch. 5. 8. Alcuin raised this question in a letter dated 797 which has traditionally been thought to be addressed to Bishop Higbald of Lindisfarne (Bullough 1993). 9. His friend Bishop Acca of Hexham also had to encourage Bede to defend himself against similar criticism concerning his exegesis on the Evangelists and their symbols. Acca’s letter to Bede appears as part of the preface to Bede’s Commentary on Luke (Hurst 1960, 5–6); on Bede’s defence of his interpretation of the Evangelists, Stansbury 1999, 72. As Bede is quick to point out in his reply to Acca, his critics’ attacks stemmed from their own ignorance which meant that, as they were less well-read than he, they were unaware of his implicit allusions to earlier authorities (Commentary on Luke; Hurst 1960, 7–8). By way of practical response, he effectively introduced footnotes, inserting s-shaped marginal marks beside biblical quotations and alphabetic characters to denote authors cited (M. P. Brown 2011a). 10. Buckton 1994, no. 82, for example, illustrates a glass coin weight from the reign of Justinian which features inscriptions in Greek and Latin (M. P. Brown 2003, 228, fig. 92). 11. Ó Floinn 1994. The earliest surviving example (c. 600) of what may be a book-shrine forms part of the Coptic Treasure of Archbishop Abraham of Harmonthis (Cairo, Coptic Museum), whilst early treasure bindings are the gold and silver Sion Treasure book covers, made in Constantinople during the second half of the sixth century (Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks, inv. no. BZ 1963.36.8); M. P. Brown 2003, 212; for the Sion Treasure bindings, see M. P. Brown 2006b, no. 67.

References

Alexander, J. J. G. (1978) Insular Manuscripts, 6th to the 9th Century. London. Alexander, J. J. G. (1992) Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work. New Haven CT. Ayerst, D. and Fisher, A. (1977) Records of Christianity II. Oxford. Barnhouse, R. and Withers, B. (eds) (2000) The Old English Hexateuch: Aspects and Approaches. Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor, MI.

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Birch, W. de G. (1885–1899; repr. 1964) Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols and index. London. Bonner, G. (1989) ‘St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street’. In G. Bonner et al. (eds), St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200, 387–397. Woodbridge. Brown, G. H. (1997) Bede the Educator, Jarrow Lecture. Jarrow. Brown, M.  P. (1993) ‘Paten and Purpose: the Derrynaflan Paten Inscriptions’. In J.  Higgitt and M. Spearman (eds), The Age of Migrating Ideas, 162–167. Edinburgh. Brown, M. P. (1996) The Book of Cerne. London & Toronto. Brown, M. P. (1998) ‘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, Quadrini di Romano Barbarica, 109–127. Rome. Brown, M. P. (1999) A Guide to Western Historical Scripts, revised ed. London and Toronto. Brown, M. P. (2000) ‘In the Beginning was the Word’: Books and Faith in the Age of Bede, Jarrow Lecture. Jarrow. Brown, M. P. (2001) ‘Female book-ownership and production in Anglo-Saxon England: the Evidence of the Ninth-Century Prayerbooks’. In C. Kay and L. Sylvester (eds), Lexis and Texts in Early English: Papers in Honour of Jane Roberts, 45–67. Amsterdam. Brown, M. P. (2003) The Lindisfarne Gospels: Society, Spirituality and the Scribe. London and Toronto. Brown, M. P. (2005) ‘Mercian Manuscripts? The “Tiberius” Group and its Historical Context’. In M. P. Brown and C. A. Farr (eds), Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe, 278–291. 2nd ed. London. Brown, M. P. (2006a) How Christianity Came to Britain and Ireland. Oxford. Brown, M. P. (2006b) In the Beginning: Bibles before the year 1000. Washington DC. Brown, M. P. (2007) ‘The Barberini Gospels: Context and Intertextuality’. In A. Minnis and J. Roberts (eds), Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and its Insular Context in honour of Eamonn Ó Carragáin, 89–116. Turnhout. Brown, M. P. (2011a) ‘Bede’s Life in Context: Materiality and Spirituality’. In S. de Gregorio (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bede, 3–24. Cambridge. Brown, M. P. (2011b) ‘Bearded Sages and Beautiful Boys: Insular and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to the Iconography of the Beard’. In E. Mullins and D. Scully (eds), Listen, O Isles, unto me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly, 278–290. Cork. Brown, M. P. (2011c) The Book and the Transformation of Britain, c. 550–1050. London and Chicago. Brown, M. P. (2012) ‘The Eastwardness of Things: Relationships between the Christian Cultures of the Middle East and the Insular World’. In M. Hussey and J. D. Niles (eds), The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Interactions of Words, Text, and Print in Honor of A. N. Doane, 17–49. Turnhout. Brown, M. P. (2013–2014) ‘Beowulf and the Origins of the Old English Vernacular’, SELIM 20, 81–120. Brown, M. P. (2016) ‘A good woman’s son’: Aspects of Aldred’s Agenda in Glossing the Lindisfarne Gospels’. In Julia Fernández Cuesta and Sara M. Pons-Sanz (eds), The Old English Gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, ANGB 51, 13–36. Berlin. Brown, M. P. (forthcoming a) ‘Concealed and Revealed: Insular visualisations of the Word’. In D. Ganz and B. Schellewald (eds), Clothing Sacred Scripture. Book Art and Book Religions in the Middle Ages. Berlin. Brown, M. P. (forthcoming b) ‘Imagining, Imaging and Experiencing the East in Insular and AngloSaxon Cultures: New Evidence for Contact’. In J. D. Niles, et al. (eds), Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination, Proceedings of the ISAS conference, Madison, 2012 ACMRS Essays in Anglo-Saxon Studies 6, 48–88. Tempe, AZ. Brown, M. P. (forthcoming c) ‘Reading the Lindisfarne Gospels: Text, Image, Context’. In R. G. Gameson (ed.), The Lindisfarne Gospels. Leiden. Brown, M. P. (forthcoming d). ‘The Bridge in the Desert: towards establishing an historical context for the newly discovered Latin manuscripts of St Catherine’s Sinai’. In Rivista degli Studi Orientali (Supplement). Brown, M. P. (forthcoming e) The Latin Manuscripts of the Holy Monastery of St Catherine’s, Sinai.

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Brown, M. P., Garipzanov, I, and Tilghman, B. C. (eds) forthcoming. Visualcy, Literacy, Graphicacy: Graphic Devices and the Early Decorated Book. Woodbridge. Buckton, D. (1994) Byzantium. Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture. London. Bullough, D. A. (1993) ‘What has Ingeld to do with Lindisfarne?’. Anglo-Saxon England 22, 93–125. Carruthers, M. (1990). The Book of Memory: A study of memory in medieval culture. Cambridge. Chazelle, C. (1990) ‘Pictures, Books and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I’s Letters to Serenus of Marseilles’. Word and Image 6:2, 138–153. Clanchy, M. (1998) From Memory to Written Record. 2nd ed., Oxford. Corsano, K. (1987) ‘The First Quire of the Codex Amiatinus’. Scriptorium 41:1, 3–34. de Hamel, C. (1986) A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. Oxford. de Hamel, C. (2001) The Book: a history of the Bible. London. Deshman, R. (1980) ‘The Exalted Servant: The Ruler Theology of the Prayerbook of Charles the Bald’. Viator 11, 385–417. Diebold, W. (2000) Word and Image: A History of Early Medieval Art. Boulder, CO. Dodwell, C. R. and P. Clemoes (1974) The Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 18. Copenhagen. Dutton, P.  and H.  Kessler (1997) The Poetry and Painting of the First Bible of Charles the Bald. Ann Arbor, MI. Farmer, D. H. (ed.) (1983) The Age of Bede. revised ed., Harmondsworth. Farr, C. A. (1997) The Book of Kells, its Function and Audience. London and Toronto. Fischer, B. (1962) ‘Codex Amiatinus und Cassiodor’. Biblische Zeitschrift, N.F.vi. Paderborn. Fridh, A. (ed.) (1973) Magni Aurelii Cassiodori Variarum Libri XII, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 96. Turnhout. Gameson, R. G. (1997) ‘The Gospels of Margaret of Scotland and the Literacy of an Eleventh-Century Queen’. In L. Smith and J. Taylor (eds), Women and the Book, 148–171. Woodbridge. Gameson, R. G. (2001) The Scribe Speaks? Colophons in Early English Manuscripts, H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lectures 12. Cambridge. Gameson, R. G. (2003) The Stockholm Codex Aureus, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 28. Copenhagen. Ganz, D. (2002) ‘Roman Manuscripts in Francia and Anglo-Saxon England’. In Roma fra Oriente e Occidente, Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, XLIX, 607–649. Spoleto. Gjaedar, P. (1964) ‘The Beard as an Iconographical Feature in the Viking Period and the Early Middle Ages’. Acta Archaeologica 35, 95–114. Henderson, G. (1993) ‘Cassiodorus and Eadfrith Once Again’. In M. Spearman and J. Higgitt (eds), The Age of Migrating Ideas, 82–91. Edinburgh. Henderson, G. (2001) ‘The Barberini Gospels (Rome, Vatican, Biblioteca Apostolica Barberini Lat. 570) as a Paradigm of Insular Art’. In M. Redknap et al. (eds), Pattern and Purpose in Insular Art. Oxford. Heslop, T. A. (1990) ‘The production of de luxe manuscripts and the patronage of King Cnut and Queen Emma’. Anglo-Saxon England 19, 151–195. Hurst, D. (ed.) (1960) Beda Venerabilis Opera exegetica 3. In Lucae evangelium expositio. In Marci evangelium expositio. Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (CCSL) 120. Turnhout. Karkov, C. (2006) Intertextuality and Intervisuality: Narrative Strategies in the Junius 11 MS. Cambridge. Kelly, E. P. (1994) ‘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, 280–289. Aldershot. Kelly, S. (1990) ‘Anglo-Saxon Lay Society and the Written Word’. In R. McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Mediaeval Europe, 36–62. Cambridge. Lampe, G. (ed.) (1969) Cambridge History of the Bible II. Cambridge.

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Lewis, S. (1980) ‘Sacred Calligraphy: the Chi Rho Page in the Book of Kells’. Traditio 26, 139–159. Lowden, J. (2007) ‘The Word Made Visible: the Exterior of the Early Christian Book as Visual Argument’. In W.  Klingshirn and L.  Safran (eds), The Early Christian Book, 13–47. Washington DC. Lowe, E. A. (1971, 1972) Codices Latini antiquiores: a palaeographical guide to Latin manuscripts prior to the ninth century. Suppl. and Part 2. Oxford. Markus, R. (1997) Gregory the Great and His World. Cambridge. Marsden, R. (1995a) ‘Job in his place: the Ezra miniature in the Codex Amiatinus’. Scriptorium 49, 3–15. Marsden, R. (1995b) The Text of the Old Testament in Anglo-Saxon England, Cambridge Studies in AngloSaxon England 15. Cambridge. Mathews, T. F. and Wieck, R. S. (eds) (1994) Treasures in Heaven: Armenian Illuminated Manuscripts. New York. Mayr-Harting, H. (1977) The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford. McGurk, P. and Rosenthal, J. (1995) ‘The Anglo-Saxon Gospel Books of Judith, Countess of Flanders’. Anglo-Saxon England 24, 251–308. McGurk, P., Dumville, D. N., Godden, M. R. and Knock, A. (1983) An Eleventh-Century Anglo-Saxon Illustrated Miscellany, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile 21. Copenhagen. McKitterick, R. (1989) Carolingians and the Written Word. Cambridge. McKitterick, R. (1990a) ‘Text and Image in the Carolingian World’. In R.  McKitterick, The Uses of Literacy, Cambridge, 297–318. McKitterick, R. (ed.) (1990b) The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe. Cambridge. McKitterick, R. (1995) ‘Essai sur les representations de l’ecrit dans les manuscrits carolingiens’, Révue française d’histoire du livre, 86–87, 37–64. Mellinkoff, R. (2004) The Protective Power of Medieval Visual Motifs and Themes. 2 vols. Los Angeles. Meyvaert, P. (1996) ‘Bede, Cassiodorus and the Codex Amiatinus’. Speculum 71, 827–883. Meyvaert, P. (2005) ‘The date of Bede’s In Ezram and his image of Ezra in the Codex Amiatinus’. Speculum 80, 1087–133. Migne, J.-P. (1844–1864) Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Paris. Muir, B. J. (2004) Bodleian, MS Junius 11 (CD-Rom, Bodleian Digital Texts 1). Oxford. Mütherich, F. and J. Gaehde (1976) Carolingian Painting. London. Nersessian, V./British Library Board (1978) The Christian Orient. London. Nersessian, V. (1987) Armenian Illuminated Gospel Books. London. Nordenfalk, C. (1988) Early Medieval Book Illumination. New York. Nordenfalk, C. (1992) Studies in the History of Book Illumination. London. Ó Carragáin, E. (1994) The City of Rome and the World of Bede, Jarrow Lecture. Newcastle upon Tyne. Ó Carragáin, E. (2005) Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the Dream of the Rood Tradition. London and Toronto. Ó Floinn, R. (1994) Irish Shrines and Reliquaries of the Middle Ages. Dublin. O’ Reilly, J. (2001) ‘The Library of Scripture: Views from the Vivarium and Wearmouth-Jarrow’. In P. Binski et al. (eds), New Offerings, Ancient Treasures. Essays in Medieval Art for George Henderson, 3–39. Stroud. Okasha, E. (1971) Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions. Cambridge. Okasha, E. (1983) ‘A Supplement to Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions’. Anglo-Saxon England 11, 83–118. Pächt, O. (1986) Book Illumination in the Middle Ages: An Introduction. London. Page, R. I. (1989) ‘Roman and Runic on St Cuthbert’s Coffin’. In G. Bonner et al. (eds), St Cuthbert, His Cult and His Community to AD 1200. Woodbridge. Page, R. I. (1995) Runes and Runic Inscriptions: Collected Essays on Anglo-Saxon and Viking Inscription, ed. D. Parsons. Rochester, NY.

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Parkes, M. B. (1997) ‘Rædan, areccan, smeagan: How the Anglo-Saxons read’. Anglo-Saxon England 26, 1–22. Petschenig, M. (ed.) (1888) Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 17. Vienna. Plummer, C. (ed.) (1896) Historiam ecclesiasticam gentis Anglorum; Historiam abbatum; Epistolam ad Ecgberctum. Oxford. Plummer, C. (ed.) (1956) Bedae Opera Historica. Oxford. Richter, M. (1988) Medieval Ireland, the Enduring Tradition. Basingstoke. Roberts, J. (2005) Guide to Scripts Used in English Writing up to 1500. London and Toronto. Roth, C. (1953) ‘Antecedents of Christian Art’. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16, 24–44. Sawyer, P. H. (1968) Anglo-Saxon Charters, an Annotated List and Bibliography. London; revised version at http://www.esawyer.org.uk. Searle, W. G. (1897) Onomasticon Anglo-Saxonicum. A list of Anglo-Saxon proper names from the time of Bede to that of King John. Cambridge. Sherley-Price, L. (1955) Bede A History of the English Church and People. Harmondsworth. Stansbury, M. (1999) ‘Early Medieval Biblical Commentaries, Their Writers and Readers’. In K. Hauck (ed.) Frümittelalterliche Studien, Herausgegeben von H. Keller und C. Meier, 50–82. Berlin and New York. Turner, D., L. Webster and J. Backhouse (eds) (1984) The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966–1066. London. Webster, L. (2010) The Franks Casket. London. Webster, L. and M. P. Brown (eds) (1997) The Transformation of the Roman World. London. Weir, A. and J. Jerman (1986) Images of Lust. Sexual Carvings on Medieval Churches. London. Weitzmann, K. (1997) Late Antique and Early Christian Book Illumination. London. Whitelock, D. (ed.) (1979) English Historical Documents I, revised ed. London. Wilcox, J. (ed.) (1994) Aelfric’s Prefaces. Durham Medieval Texts 9. Durham. Withers, B. (2007) The Illustrated Old English Hexateuch. London and Toronto. Wright, D. H. (1993) The Vatican Virgil. Berkeley, CA.

Chapter 5 The Vercelli Book as a Context for The Dream of the Rood Éamonn Ó Carragáin

The Dream of the Rood tradition consists of three distinct poems on the death of Christ, all of which have versions of the same striking narrative.1 Two of these poems survive as inscriptions which form integral parts of major works of art: the eleventh-century Brussels Cross and the early eighth-century Ruthwell Cross (Figs 2.7, 4.6). Varieties or epitomes of this narrative, then, were chosen for inscription by two commissioners who lived three centuries apart and at opposite ends of Anglo-Saxon territories. Each commissioner was able to collaborate with a designer and artist(s) of the highest quality. This suggests that the heroic narrative was known over a long period, at least in clerical and monastic circles: that its vividness and theological originality continued to be appreciated, perhaps widely, for some three centuries. The incorporation of elements of this narrative into visual works of art of the highest quality suggests that the visual qualities of the narrative were particularly valued, and that some of these visual qualities may have inspired, not simply the vernacular inscriptions of the Ruthwell and Brussels crosses, but other visual elements in these crosses. The following discussion will concentrate on the manuscript context provided for the longest version of this narrative, in the Vercelli Book. In that manuscript, the narrative has its own ‘internal’ dream-vision frame: the dream-vision frame would inspire the charming nineteenth-century title, The Dream of the Rood. But before turning to the Vercelli Book, I wish briefly to enquire what versions of the narrative lay behind the Brussels and Ruthwell crosses? Do the designs of these crosses indicate that the commissioners knew aspects of the poem not directly incorporated into the crosses by actual quotation or verbal reminiscence of passages in the poem? Both the Ruthwell and Brussels poems take the form of an ekphrastic inscription: narrative verse which reminds onlookers what is signified by the cross on which it is inscribed, in order to encourage them to react seriously to it. The designer of each of these crosses must have edited the ekphrastic inscription from a longer, perhaps orally transmitted,

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song. Did the versions of the narrative sung at Ruthwell and much later in Wessex (where the Brussels Cross was made) at all approximate to The Dream of the Rood as it has been preserved for us in the Vercelli Book? The Brussels Cross preserves the latest of the three surviving versions of the narrative to have come down to us, and the shortest (van Ypersele de Strihou 2000; Ó Carragáin 2005, 339–354). The cross was probably made in Wessex about AD 1025–1050: the most promising context for the cross is the Benedictine Revival, an ecclesiastical reform-movement which found support among the Wessex nobility. The poem is inscribed on narrow strips of silver, altogether ten distinct pieces, nailed to form a continual band that adorns the narrow sides of an oaken cross (54.9 × 27.7cm). At the crossing of the oak, a smaller cross-shape slot was hollowed out, at least 1cm deep, measuring 7cm vertically and 14cm horizontally. This empty hollow once held a relic (described as late as 1925, but now lost) evidently believed to have come from the True Cross. The presence of such a fragment, however small, would have made the reliquary itself a relic, by contact, of Christ’s Cross (Webster 1984, 90; van Ypersele de Strihou 2000, 35). Drahmal, the metal-worker who produced the cross, inscribed his name prominently on its silver-gilt back. The strips of silver on the narrow sides tell us that the cross was commissioned by two Wessex noblemen, Æþelmær and Aþelwold, for the welfare of the soul of their dead brother Ælfric. The brothers are not now otherwise identifiable, and therefore we do not know which Wessex church the reliquary cross was intended for, or kept in. The reliquary cross was taken to the Continent, possibly during the disturbances of the reign of Stephen in the midtwelfth century. It was in Brussels from the early seventeenth century, and about 1650 came into the possession of the Cathedral of St Gudule in Brussels, where it is still preserved. In 1793 French revolutionary troops, in need of hard cash to supplement their swiftly-devaluing paper assignats, looted the jewels which, as we know from earlier descriptions of the reliquary, decorated its front. The Brussels Cross was intended to be carried in procession. The vernacular inscription on the narrow sides was designed to make it easy for any cleric who participated in a religious ceremony in which the cross was displayed, to read it, realise that the reliquary contained a portion of the True Cross, and respond to the donors’ request for prayers for the soul of their dead brother Ælfric. The inscription could not usually be read during the ceremony itself; but when clerics gathered around the cross, say in a sacristy before or after the ceremony, one of them could ask the cross-bearer to tilt the cross forward, so that the jewelled front faced downwards. In this way the reliquary would, in the words of the Dream (line 59b), ‘bow to the hands of the men’. Any of the gathered clerics could then easily read the distych, and the two-stress phrases which followed it, by moving around the cross from left to right. Æþelmær and Aþelwold are likely to have intended that the community of reformed monk-clerics, to whom they had presented the cross, would pray continually for their dead brother. Dr Griffin Murray (2014, 151-2) has recently shown that the designers of the Irish processional Cross of Cong, one of the great treasures of Irish twelfth-century

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art, formatted its inscription in a similar, easily legible and hence practical, format. The designer of the Brussels cross, Drahmal, inscribed his own name, and achievement, on the transom of the silver-gilt back of the cross: + DRAHMAL ME WORHTE :+ Drahmal made me :-

Drahmal gave a voice to the reliquary, ensuring that it would proclaim his skill. It did this in eschatological terms: his name is just to the left of the image of the Lamb of God, helpfully labelled (‘agnu/s dī’), at the crossing. Drahmal’s name is placed so that it can be read just ‘before’ the glorified lamb and ‘after’ the angel-symbol of the Evangelist St Matthew, at the beginning of the ‘line’ of words and images which covers the horizontal beam of the cross. The phrase which describes his achievement (‘me worhte’) can be read just ‘after’ the Agnus Dei and before the lion-symbol for St Mark which comes, like a positura mark, at the end of the right arm, and so of this ‘sentence’ of words and images. Senior clerics or (perhaps) noble laity who followed close behind the cross-bearer in a procession, for example, could read Drahmal’s name, note his skill, and perhaps think of future work for him to do. It might even be suggested that Drahmal stole a march on his noble patrons, making his own implied bid for remembrance and prayer easy to see, and placing it in a position of honour amidst images of Christ’s second coming (the Evangelist-beasts and the Agnus Dei, as in Revelation 4:1–11). In contrast, as we have noted, the names of the commissioners could only be read with ease by those clerics who examined the reliquary in detail, either before the ceremony or on their return to the sacristy. The designer of the Brussels Cross (perhaps Drahmal himself? Or a cleric who advised him?) epitomized the Dream of the Rood narrative in a memorable distych: ROD IS MIN NAMA GEO IC RIICNÆ KYNING BÆR BYFYGENDE BLODE BESTEMED ‘Rood’ is my name: long ago, trembling and drenched with blood, I bore a powerful king.

The designer supplemented this distych with further explanatory phrases, not in verse but in rhythmic prose. Such rhythmical prose, made up of two-stress phrases, is like that which we find, for example, in Vercelli Homilies II and XXI (see below, p. 117). In the following transcription I have demarcated the two-stress phrases by laying it out as verse and inserting extra spaces between each phrase: ÞAS RODE HET   ÆÞLMÆR WYRICAN OND AÐELWOLD HYS BEROÞO[R]   CRISTE TO LOFE FOR ÆLFRICES SAULE   HYRA BEROÞOR. Æþelmær ordered this cross to be made, and Aðelwold his brother:   to the honour of Christ, for the soul of Ælfric,   their brother.

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What can the Brussels inscription tell us about the longer version of the narrative from which it was edited? It was certainly edited with care. Like the Drahmal inscription, it makes the oaken reliquary speak, as the Dream has its tree/Cross speak. The first word of the Brussels distych (ROD), and the second verse of its first line (GEO IC RICNE CYNING), is designed to recall the initial dilemma of the Cross in the Dream, when Christ advances towards it: Rod wæs ic aræred . ahof ic ricne cyning Heofona hlaford . hyldan me ne dorste . [105r19–20; Dream 44–45]2 I was raised up, a Cross: I raised aloft a mighty king, Lord of the heavens; I dared not bow down.

It also recalls the moment, a little later in the Dream, when all creation laments Christ, ‘the powerful king’, a shining figure amidst the darkness, who like a king reigns from the Cross: weop eal gesceaft cwiðdon cyninges fyll crist wæs on rode [105r 28–29, Dream 55b–56]. All creation wept, Lamented the death of the king: Christ was on the Rood.

The second line of the distych creates a startling new unity between the beginning of the Dream’s crucifixion narrative and its end. It fuses the moment when Christ first embraces the instrument of his death, . bifode ic þa me se beorn ymbclypte . [105r 17; Dream 42a] I trembled as the warrior embraced me,

with the moment when, after Christ is dead, his right side is pierced with a spear so that the upright or tree of the Cross is drenched in his blood. In the Dream, this is the moment when the Cross, having overcome its terrible dilemma and borne its Lord to his death, achieves its most intimate union with Christ: bysmeredon hie unc butu ætgædere   eall ic wæs mid blode bestemed . begoten of þæs guman sidan .   siððan he hæfde his gast onsended .

(105r 22–24. Dream 48–49).

They mocked the pair of us together: I was all drenched in blood poured from the man’s side, after he had sent forth his spirit.

In this new reworking of the Dream narrative, the cross trembles, not when Christ first embraces it, but when Christ’s blood, drenching it, baptizes it (as it were) for its role as a central Christian symbol throughout future ages, until Christ returns in glory and the end of the world’s history.

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The Anglo-Saxon clerics who were able to examine the Brussels Cross are likely, initially, to have admired the jewels which adorned its front. These symbolized the glory which they and their society accorded to the Cross, as the instrument of Christ’s heroic death: Eall þæt beacen wæs Begoten mid golde   gimmas stodon fægere æt foldan sceatum.   swylce þær fife wæron uppe onþam eaxle ge spanne   [104v 9–12; Dream, 6–9]. All that shining symbol was encrusted with gold: gems stood out beautiful over the ends of the earth; likewise there were five above on the shoulder-span …

Clerics, who could examine the cross closely, are likely to have appreciated the abrupt contrast between the jewelled front, representing the honour in which the Cross was rightfully held in the present age, and the narrative of long-past suffering (‘GEO’) epitomized in the distych inscribed on the narrow right side3 of the Brussels Cross. On the back of the cross, a vast historical pattern was brought to completion. At the second coming of Christ in glory, the prayers of the donors and artificer would be fulfilled. Then, Ælfric would be reunited with his brothers; and all three, with Drahmal himself to make a fourth, would be united in adoration of the glorified Lamb of God. To interpret the Brussels verse distych in isolation from the rest of this unified artefact is to misunderstand the function, within the reliquary, of the distych and its supplementary two-stress phrases. The designer epitomized the crucifixionnarrative of the Dream, not just in the verse distych, but in the symbolic structure of the whole reliquary. The jewels which adorned its front symbolised the present glory in which the Cross is held (cf. Dream 1–27); on its right side, the distych epitomized the suffering of the first Good Friday (cf. Dream 28–94); on the other narrow sides, the implied request by Æþelmær and Aðelwold for prayers for soul of their dead brother Ælfric provides a close parallel for the Dreamer’s awareness of the death of his friends, and his hope of salvation through the Cross (Dream 122–135); the back of the cross provided a visual epitome of the Dreamer’s faith in the future coming of Christ in glory (cf. Dream 95–149). The parallels between the integrated structure of the Brussels reliquary and that of the Vercelli Dream are too strong to be coincidental. It seems likely that the Brussels designer knew and valued a poem which was quite close, in phrases, themes and structure, to the Vercelli Dream of the Rood. The earliest of our three texts comes from Northumbria in the age of Bede and forms an original, and equally integral, element in the design of the Ruthwell Cross. In the brief description which follows, I assume that the Ruthwell Cross was originally erected out of doors, and that it was originally oriented as the Bewcastle Cross still is, that is, the two-panel sequence common to both crosses (Christ acclaimed by the

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beasts and, directly above it, John the Baptist standing, holding the Agnus Dei in his left arm, while he points across his body to it with his right forefinger)4 originally faced west. If this hypothesis is correct, the first half of the poem faced north, towards cold and darkness. It was appropriate that the designer of the cross should place the grim verses describing the terrible dilemma of the Cross, and its mockery by its enemies, on the narrow side which, inauspiciously, faced north:   [Ahof] ic riicnæ kyninc . heafunæs hlafard hælda ic ni dorstæ [b]ismæradu unket men ba æt[g]ad[re]   [lines 5-75] I lifted up a powerful king. The lord of heaven I dared not tilt. men mocked the pair of us together …

Central to the Ruthwell narrative, as to the Vercelli Dream, is the terrible challenge the Cross had to face on the first Good Friday: to become the killer of its Lord, to bear him to his heroic death. The first Good Friday was believed to have happened on 25 March, the Spring Equinox in the Julian Calendar (which in Northumbria, following Rome, had just begun to be celebrated as the Feast of the Annunciation). The layout of the poem on the narrow sides urges us to move from the first column of verse (on the right) to the second column (on the left): that is, from right to left, sunwise. Continuing this direction, we come from the narrow north side to the broad east side, on which the morning sun would have shone. As we move from north to east, the terrible dilemma posed in the opening lines of the poem is followed by the fruitful dilemma of Mary the Virgin: ‘How can this happen, as I know not man?’ (Luke 1:34). In Luke’s gospel, the Annunciation, at which the angel Gabriel greets Mary as ‘blessed among women’ (‘benedicta tu in mulieribus’, Luke 1:28), is directly followed by the Visitation, in which her aged cousin Elisabeth also affirms that Mary is ‘blessed among women’ (‘benedicta tu inter mulieres’, Luke 1:42). The Annunciation and Visitation scenes together celebrate the implied growth of Christ in Mary’s womb. However, the Ruthwell designer placed two figural panels between the Annunciation and the Visitation scenes. These interpolated panels bring together two basic Christian turning points, faith and repentance. Faith is represented by the healing of the man born blind; immediately above that panel, in a moving image of repentance and love, the woman who was a sinner (identified in the period with Mary Magdalen) washes the feet of Christ with her tears and dries them with her hair. The designer’s master-stroke was to place these icons of faith and repentance within an envelopepattern formed by icons of the Annunciation (below) and Visitation (above). The four panels, read in sequence from the foot of the shaft to the upper stone, encouraged the audience to understand that the conception and growth of Christ in Mary’s womb were models for the conception (in faith) and growth (in repentance) of every woman and man in the baptismal womb of the Church. It was not simply that, during Lenten ceremonies (the ‘scrutinies’), the Church was described as pregnant, longing to bring

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both her catechumens and her repentant sinners to new birth at Easter; in addition individual Christians, male or female, were encouraged to grow (in Lent and in life) towards spiritual maturity so that, like Mary, they could each bear Christ to others in speech and action, and in this way become ‘brother and sister and mother’ to Christ (Matthew 12:50; see Ó Carragáin 2005, 120-79). The designer established a close unity between the four-icon sequence and the archer-panel which he placed just above the Visitation icon. This panel encourages onlookers to see the unborn babies, hidden as yet within the wombs of Mary and Elisabeth, as ‘chosen arrows’ hidden in God’s quiver. These two chosen ones will appear, fully visible in the glory of the heavenly liturgy, on the opposite side of the upper stone, where John the Baptist points at, and thus acclaims, Christ as the Agnus Dei (Ó Carragáin 2009). When we continue to follow the hint provided by the poem’s sunwise layout, and move from the broad east side to the narrow south side, we find that the second half of the Ruthwell poem, inscribed around the vine-scroll on that side, provides remarkable contrasts to the horrors of the north side. On the north side, the Cross and Christ were together mocked by their enemies; now on the south side, the followers of Christ come to the Cross from afar, eager and noble. The Cross which, in the narrative of the north side, ‘could not tilt, but had to stand fast’ now bows down to the hands of the men: it hands on to them the dead body (lic) of Christ to contemplate. This unique narrative was inspired, not directly by the gospel narratives, but rather by eighth-century Good Friday ceremonies in which, at the ninth hour on Good Friday, Northumbrian Christian communities gathered to worship the Cross, and (increasingly, from the early eighth century onward) receive the Eucharist. I know of no other place, in Christian writings, nor in Christian art, where the Cross bows down in this way to hand on Christ to his followers. The startling Ruthwell (and Vercelli) narratives have clear Eucharistic overtones. At Ruthwell, the Eucharistic implications are resolved when, again following the hint provided by the poem’s layout, we complete our circuit of the Cross, and come to the second broad side. On this west side we find the most powerful sequence of Eucharistic icons in early medieval art: Christ is ‘handed on’ to the Ruthwell audience in human form (in the icon of the flight into, or perhaps return from, Egypt) as the fulfilment of the manna which sustained the Israelites in the desert; he is recognized in symbolic form in the loaf broken by the monks Paul and Anthony. At the top of the lower stone, Christ is acclaimed once more in human form by the converted beasts in the desert. On the upper stone, he is once more acclaimed in symbolic form, as the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world, by the pointing finger of John the Baptist. On the (now lost) transom of the cross, we may assume that Christ was again represented: surrounded and adored, in the heavenly liturgy, by the four Evangelist-beasts of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse 4:1–11). Because the transom of the cross is missing, we cannot be sure whether, surrounded by the Evangelist-beasts, he was adored in human form (as in a bust-portrait) or in symbolic form (as the Agnus Dei): the nearby monastery of Hoddom provided analogues for either image (Ó Carragáin 2005, 34–35).

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The Ruthwell poem was carefully edited so as to encourage its monastic or clerical audience to react to the dynamic programme of the cross in the course of each day and each year. The sun shone only indirectly on the poetic images of dilemma and mockery of the narrow north side: terrible verbal images which nevertheless, paradoxically, surround a great image of the vine-scroll, the Tree of Life. Each day, the sun first shone directly on the catechumenal images of growth and repentance of the first broad (originally east) side. By midday, the sun shone on the southern narrow side, another great Tree of Life around which the second half of the poem is inscribed, telling of how the Cross, on Good Friday evening, handed on the dead body (lic) of Christ to his gathered followers. As set out on the Ruthwell Cross, the second half of the poem posed an urgent challenge to any Christian community at Ruthwell. On the first Good Friday evening, the followers contemplated the ‘limb-weary’ body of Christ. How can Christ, now resurrected and living, be adored and contemplated at present and at Ruthwell? The answer was to be found in the uniquely-rich set of icons on the west side. They all refer to the recognition of Christ in the Eucharist, and they culminate (on the upper stone) in icons of the heavenly liturgy (the Agnus Dei and the Evangelists with their beasts), of which earthly liturgies were a foretaste. From what sort of text was the Ruthwell poem edited? The designer had each half of the poem inscribed around an inhabited vine-scroll, the noblest visual images of the Tree of Life to survive from Anglo-Saxon England. It is reasonable to suppose that the designer was inspired by an early version of the opening vision of the Dream, in which that Tree of Life is a central image. The unified programme of the first broad side makes it clear how Mary’s courageous response to the challenge of Gabriel, fortitudo Dei (his name meant ‘the strength or courage of God’; Ó Carragáin 2005, 84–85), led her to bear Christ into human life and provide a model for the growth of faith and repentance in all men and women. The idea that the Virgin Mary is ‘blessed among women’ is central both to the Annunciation (Luke 1:28) and to the Visitation (Luke 1:42). It is likely that the designer knew a version of the poem which already compared the honour given to the Cross, who on 25 March, faced with the courage of Christ, obediently bore him to his death, with the honour given ‘for the sake of all humankind’ to Mary, who, in response to the angel who personified the courage of God, bore Christ into life: Hwæt me þa geweorðode wuldres ealdor ofer holmwudu heofon rices weard . swylce swa he his modor eac marian sylfe ælmihtig God . for ealle men geweorðode ofer eall wifa cynn . (105v 23–26; Dream 90–94) Indeed the Lord of Glory honoured me the Guardian of the heavenly kingdom [honoured me] above hill-trees, just as he likewise honoured his mother, Mary herself, above all women, for the sake of all humankind.

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The Ruthwell Cross programme culminates, on the upper stone of the west side, in a vision of the heavenly liturgy. Its iconographic programme is, for Anglo-Saxon sculpture, uniquely faithful to the themes of early Christian art in combining the ideas of divine justice and divine mercy: a theme particularly explicit in the two panels common to the Ruthwell and Bewcastle crosses (Christ acclaimed by the beasts and, directly above, John the Baptist acclaiming the Agnus Dei: on the theme, see also Ó Carragáin 2012). As it is a public monument, Ruthwell has nothing that directly corresponds to the Vercelli Dreamer’s description of his isolation and the death of his friends (lines 124–144: the related Bewcastle Cross, with its request for prayers for souls, presumably of dead local aristocrats, is closer to this aspect of the Dream). However, texts describing the fates, after death, of just and unjust souls were circulating in Northumbrian clerical circles with which the commissioner of the Ruthwell Cross may well have been in contact, in particular, the circle which included Bishop Pehthelm of Whithorn, Bishop Acca of Hexham, and Acca’s great admirer, Bede (Ó Carragáin 2012, 380). It is reasonable to think that all major elements of the Dream, including major themes of the second part of the poem (in particular, the comparison between the Cross and Mary; and the Cross as psychopomp at death and protector at the Last Judgement), formed part of the Dream of the Rood tradition almost three centuries before the Vercelli Book was compiled. This brings us to the manuscript which preserves for us the most extended version of the narrative, the Vercelli Book (Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, MS CXVII). All the texts of the Vercelli book are written by a single scribe, ‘in a stylish and distinctive Anglo-Saxon minuscule of the late tenth century’ (Sisam 1976, 20; see now also Scragg 2012, no. 1032). He seems to have preserved some headings and some features of layout from his exemplars. It seems to have been the scribe himself who, when he considered the collection to be complete, determined the present sequence of quires by providing the quire signatures: a roman numeral at the head of the first page of each of the nineteen quires, and a capital letter at the foot of the last page of each. Both Donald Scragg (Scragg 1973) and Celia Sisam (Sisam 1976, 37–44), demonstrated that the scribe made unintelligent errors in copying: errors which suggest that he did not understand Latin, and which were not corrected. Nevertheless, I hope to demonstrate that the collection shows signs of intelligent editing and of the thematic grouping of texts, sometimes amounting to large-scale planning. We are left with a paradox: the scribe seems to have been relatively unlearned, to have copied ‘mechanically’ a collection which nevertheless shows signs of intelligent large-scale editing. The paradox is best resolved by suggesting that the neat and dogged scribe was working under the direction of an intelligent collector of religious texts in prose and verse. This Collector had clear ideas of what sort of texts he wanted for the collection. The Collector would not have been too troubled to correct the occasional errors the scribe made, because he intended to use the book for his own personal spiritual reading, rather than for communal use. He may already have been familiar with the

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homilies and verse, as he himself had chosen them from various exemplars as these became available to him, and as he himself had decided to bring them together in the present sequence, in the present manuscript. I shall refer to this directing editor as the ‘Collector’. In this discussion I will be concerned to get inside his (or her) mind. It is best, I think, to preserve a certain deliberate ambiguity in attributing certain features of the manuscript to the ‘scribe’ or to the ‘Collector’: we cannot be precise about where the ‘strategic’ responsibilities of the ‘Collector’ left off and the ‘tactical’ responsibilities of the ‘scribe’ came into play. There have been a number of excellent analyses of the makeup and contents of the Vercelli Book. Those by Donald Scragg (Scragg 1973) and Celia Sisam (Sisam 1976) are the classic accounts. These have been supplemented by two further fine accounts in recent years. Peter Lucas (Lucas 2011) has provided a first-rate fresh analysis of the palaeographic features of the manuscript. Since this lecture was delivered in Manchester in 2012, Francis Leneghan has published his important paper (Leneghan 2013) on the themes of action and contemplation in the Vercelli Book. Francis Leneghan follows in the path of, and complements, Mary Clayton’s classic account (Clayton 1985) of the range of pre-Ælfrician preaching in England. I have learned much from these studies, but my approach differs from all of them. I am concerned with the ways in which, within the Vercelli collection, certain groups of texts (which often combine prose and verse lections) were designed to be read in sequence. I shall argue that the Collector included some texts in order to complement or even to counterbalance the companion-texts with which he had grouped them. If this is so, the placing of a text within a coherent group of texts can provide hints of why the Collector valued it, and how he used it. We can to a certain extent judge a text by the immediate company it keeps in the collection. In this way, the Vercelli collection can provide a primary critical context for the reception-history of The Dream of the Rood: its reception by the Collector himself, by other early readers of his collection (however few they were) and by the unnamed person who brought the book, perhaps on pilgrimage, to Vercelli. We cannot know whether the Vercelli Collector was a man or woman: to save time I will use the pronoun ‘he’, but scholars have argued strongly that she might have been a woman (for a balanced review of the question, see Zacher 2009a, 209–210; 2009b). We can be certain that he was single-minded in the spiritual reading he chose, whether in prose or verse. The Collector had clear principles in choosing texts for this collection: he only chose explicitly religious texts, and ensured that, every so often, when reading through the collection, he would be reminded of the approach of death and Judgement. The Collector collected some thirty-five lections of verse (sixteen unnumbered lections in Andreas and Fates; fifteen (numbered) lections in Elene; and four unnumbered lections which culminate in The Dream of the Rood), but he always arranged these lections so that, reading the collection, he could move smoothly from text to text within a group. Some of the groups are entirely in prose. In others, the

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reader is encouraged to move smoothly from verse to its neighbouring prose, or from a prose lection to one in verse. The last two quires of the manuscript provide a good example of the Collector’s methods. They form a unified group of quires or, to use the term which Malcolm Parkes and Pamela Robinson have made popular (see Robinson 1987), a separate ‘booklet’. As it is the third such independent group of quires in the manuscript, it shall be referred to as ‘Booklet C’. The whole of the first quire, and most of the second, is occupied by the fifteen lections which we now know as the poem Elene. It is concerned with the finding of the Holy Cross by the Empress Helena. The poem tells how the Empress Helena induces Judas/Cyriacus to reveal the secret hiding place of the True Cross by inflicting on him a regime of forced starvation, imprisoning him in a deep pit for a full week: Heht þa swa cwicne corðre lædan Scufan scyldigne scealcas ne gældon in drygne seaþ þær he duguða leas siomode in sorgum .vii. nihta first under hearmlocan hungre geþreatod   (127v 25–28, Elene 691–695) She ordered him to be led away by her soldiers, and to be thrust alive, in his guilt – her followers did not hesitate – into a dry pit; and there, in shame, he remained in sorrow for seven days and nights, in painful bonds, afflicted with hunger […]

In the end, worn out by this extreme, if supervised, starvation diet, Judas gives in. He repents of his opposition to Elene, and promises to conceal no longer where the True Cross is hidden: Ic adreogan ne mæg, Ne leng helan be ðam lifes treo, þeah ic aer mid dysige þurhdrifen wære, Ond ðæt soð to late seolf gecneowe :- (128r2–4; Elene 705–708, end of lection VIII). I cannot endure it, nor conceal any longer [the truth] about the tree of life, although up to now I was embued with folly, and have come too late to realise that truth.

In quire XIX, now the last quire of the collection, the final numbered lections of the poem are followed immediately by an additional lection. This last lection is unnumbered: but otherwise its layout is similar to that of any of the fifteen preceding lections of Elene. The last lection comprises an excerpt from an Old English translation of Felix’s prose life of the hermit saint, Guthlac. This excerpt begins abruptly with an account of the barrow in which Guthlac took up his life as a hermit, and undertook his heroic struggles against the devils who would tempt him:

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Éamonn Ó Carragáin Wæs þær in þam sprecenan iglande sum mycel hlæw of eorþan geworht þone ylcan hlæw iu geara men bræcon ond dolfon for feos þingum ða wæs þær on oðre sidan ðæs hlæwes gedolfen swylce mycel seaþ on þæm seaþe ufan se eadiga wer guðlac him hus ond eardung stowe getimbrode (133v 7–11, Homily XXIII, 1–5)

There was in the aforementioned island a great barrow made of earth; long ago men had broken into and dug that barrow for the sake of treasure; likewise, on the other side of the barrow a great pit was dug: over that pit the blessed man Guthlac constructed a house and dwelling-place for himself.

It is of interest that this barrow is equipped with a deep pit, and that it is in this pit (presumably constructing a roof over it) that Guthlac endures his heroic siege against the devils. The word for pit here, seaþ, is the same word which, as we have seen, was used in Elene (693a) to describe the pit in which the Empress imprisons, and starves, the recalcitrant Judas. In his desert seaþ, Guthlac is attacked by devils, who tempt him to pride. They suggest to him that a mere one- or two-day fast is not enough. One should fast for a whole seven days. Only such a fast would make Guthlac like God himself, who took six days to create the world and then permitted himself to rest on the seventh day: Þin fæsten ne sceal beon þæt a twega daga fyrst […] ac on seofon nihta fyrste fæsten bið to clænsigeanne se man swa on syx dagum ærest god ealles middangeardes fægernesse gehiwode ond on þam seofeðan hine ræste swa þonne gedafenað þane man gelice syx daga fæsten þone gast frætewigean ond þonne þy seofeðan dæge mete þycgan ond his lichoman ræstan (134v 7–13; Homily XXIII, 68–74)

Your fast must not be just for one day […] but a fast needs to last seven days to cleanse a person. Just as at the beginning God created all the beauty of creation in six days, and rested on the seventh, so a man should adorn his spirit by six days’ fast, and then eat and rest on the seventh day.

The close parallels to, and contrasts with, Elene are hardly a matter of coincidence. It is likely that the Collector added the Guthlac excerpt deliberately, as the sixteenth section in his two-quire booklet C, to remind himself, and other possible readers, that extended fasts, when not undertaken under the close supervision of a spiritual director, could be a temptation to pride and could lead a person (in particular, a solitary hermit?) to spiritual disaster. It is worthwhile noting in passing that, within Booklet C, the epilogue to Elene (numbered as lection XV) provides us with good evidence of how the Vercelli Collector himself is likely to have read the verse and prose of that booklet (and others) as a unity. In the epilogue, Cynewulf describes how he has striven hard, with the help of divine grace, to penetrate into the spiritual meaning

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of those writings he has found on the cross. For Cynewulf, this effort of prayerful reading was urgent, because his life and the world itself is coming to an end, and the day is soon coming when the Lord himself will give his definitive judgement on each person’s activities. Cynewulf ’s urgent efforts to sift out what is valuable from his texts are intended to prepare himself and his readers for the coming act of the divine intelligence which, in its Judgement, will tell every being the truth about their actions (see Ó Carragáin 2001, 187-91; also Ó Carragáin 1981). We can be sure that the Vercelli Collector agreed with Cynewulf. The Collector preserved another text which summed up the tradition with memorable brevity: swa swa isidorius cwæð mid þam gebedum ge beoð geclænsode ond mid þam readingum ge bioð intimbrede (15v1–3, in Booklet A; Homily III, 127–128).

[…] as Isidore said: with prayers you are cleansed and with readings you are built up.

Let us now turn to the booklet in which this brief epitome of meditative reading occurs. The first three quires of the Vercelli Book form another independent group of quires. This first booklet in the collection is also an impressive example of the Collector’s editorial interests. The booklet begins with a close paraphrase of the Good Friday lection, the Passion of Christ according to St John. Then, at a later date (see Sisam 1976, 37), the Collector decided to add Homilies II and III to this Passion narrative. Homily II provides a vivid account of the Last Judgement, partially in rhythmic prose. The Collector evidently felt that the imminent return of Christ in Judgement provided him with an urgent motivation for meditating on the Passion of Christ. At the Last Judgement, the instruments of the Passion, including the Cross itself, would be seen by sinners as a Judgement against their sins: ond on þam dæge bið dryhtnes rod blode flowende betwox wolcnum . ond in þam dæge bið dryhtnes onsyn swiðe egeslicu ond ondryslicu ond on þam hiwe þe he wæs þa hine iudeas swungon ond ahengon ond hiora spatlum him on spiwon (9v 8–14; Homily II, 7–10).

On that day the Lord’s Cross will be flowing with blood in the clouds, and on that day the Lord’s countenance will be very terrible and dreadful, and will appear as He was when the Jews scourged and crucified him, and spat their spittle at him.

In Homily III, we return to the present life, a life devoted to ascetic practices (including, as we have seen, reading and prayer). But the Collector felt that the best motivation for the ascetic life was the approach of Judgement: Booklet A ends with Homily IV, which Don Scragg has justly called ‘one of the most dramatic and successful of all the addresses of the soul to the body in Old English literature’

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(Scragg 1992, 88). Homily IV does not repeat the vivid images of the Last Judgement in Homily II. Instead, it relates the coming Judgement much more thoroughly to the reader’s life than Homily II had done. Homily IV describes how the devil ‘each day bends his bow at us and wants to shoot his arrows [of temptation] at us’ (Homily IV, 319–320). Homily IV encourages in the reader a full interiorization of the eschatological perspective dramatized, in general scenes, in Homily II. That progression is important in understanding the Collector’s methods: we will see it again in the ordered progression between the second and sixth homilies in Booklet B (Homilies VI–X), five lections for which the scribe (perhaps under the instructions of the Collector, or perhaps to remind himself of the importance of preserving texts in the right order) provided roman numerals at the end of each homily (Homily VI, the first homily in the booklet, did not need any such mnemonic numbering). The Vercelli Collector had an interesting attitude to the liturgical year. He cannot have intended his collection of texts to provide any system of homilies or readings ‘per annum’, throughout the year, of the kind a monastic community would require. In looking at Booklet A (Homilies I-IV) we have begun to appreciate the indirect way in which the liturgical year was valued by the Collector. Homily I paraphrased the Gospel for Good Friday: the central feast in Lent and Passiontide. But then, instead of providing more readings for Lent and Passiontide, the Collector chooses homilies which enabled him to explore, for himself and perhaps for other readers, and at any season of the year, the eschatological and ascetic implications of that penitential season. After all, as Homily II makes clear, the instruments of the Passion will be seen again when Christ returns in Judgement: the necessity of reforming one’s life is correspondingly urgent. In short, the Collector used the atmosphere, and the central gospel narrative, of Lent and Holy Week as a devotional stimulus to repentance. Arranged in sequence as they are, the four lections of Booklet A could be used for spiritual reading at any season. No doubt the Vercelli Collector would have agreed with St Benedict of Nursia, who felt that his life should always be Lenten in character (Benedictine Rule, Ch. 49.1; Fry 1980, 252): though, as we shall see, it is unlikely that he was a monk in the late tenth-century sense, living in community with an elaborate round of liturgical observance. This tendency to conjure up the themes of a particular liturgical season, but then to subordinate the liturgical reminiscences to ascetic themes which could be used at any time, is clearly seen in Booklet B, Quires Four to Seventeen, the largest booklet in the collection. The booklet begins with an extremely ambitious piece of editing (Homily V-Andreas-Fates-Homilies VI–X). Like the gathering of Booklet A, the collecting of this part of Booklet B was accomplished in various stages, no doubt as suitable materials came to hand. The heading to the first homily in the Booklet, Homily V, firmly establishes the relevance of the liturgical season of Advent: the heading to Homily V proclaims ‘TO MIDDAN WINTRA. OSTENDE NOBIS DOMINE’, ‘At Midwinter: Show us, O Lord, thy mercy [and grant us thy salvation]’. Versions of the chant ‘Ostende nobis domine’ (based on Psalm 84/85:8) were sung, particularly, on

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the first Sunday of Advent (for Mass chants see Hesbert 1935, nos. 1a, 6 and 8, also no. 199a; for Office chants see Hesbert and Prévost 1963–79, vol. 1, 6 and vol. 4, 335). The homily tells of the Nativity, and of the significance of the Pax Romana within which the Nativity took place. Next follows the long poem Andreas, with its added epilogue The Fates of the Apostles: the added lection of Fates generalizes the theme of Andreas, placing that saint’s pilgrimage in the context of the martyrdoms of the other apostles. The Feast of St Andrew falls on 30 November, always on or near the First Sunday of Advent. Just after the sixteen verse lections of Andreas and Fates, their framing is completed by Homily VI: that homily returns us to the Advent season, as its heading makes clear: ‘INCIPIT NARRARE MIRACULA QUE FACTA FUERANT ANTE ADUENTUM SALUATORIS NOSTRI DOMINI NOSTRI IESU CHRISTI’. Although we have returned to the themes and atmosphere of the Advent season, this heading is not a rubric: it provides no indication of any particular feast in Advent on which the lection could be read to a congregation. The Vercelli Collector seems to have felt that liturgical seasons were of devotional importance, but that this importance was overridden by the necessity for ascesis, which he valued as the most sensible preparation for the imminent end of his own life and of the world itself. After the ascetic material of Homily VII, the source of which has recently been brilliantly set forth by Samantha Zacher (2009b), the Collector completed his Advent Booklet with no less than three eschatological homilies: first, a vivid general account of the Last Judgement in Homily VIII, followed by even more extended and searching analyses of the Last Judgement in Homilies IX and X. Again we start with a liturgical season, Advent, and end with a resounding statement of the importance of preparing for the last things, Homilies VIII to X: the scribe emphasized the progression between the homilies by placing a roman numeral after each: as these numerals indicate, Homily X, the last in the sequence of eschatological homilies, is the sixth homily in Booklet B. Homilies XI–XV provide another clear example of the Collector’s preoccupation with eschatology, with preparing for the last things. The four homilies seem to have come from a single exemplar: three Rogationtide homilies, no doubt included for their ascetic themes, plus a more general ascetic homily: as its heading indicates, the Collector valued it as ‘an educational homily’ (lar spel) ‘to be used at any time one wishes’ (Homily XIV, fo. 76v 8–9). In the liturgical year, the Rogation Days were a prelude to the major feast of the Ascension: but if the Collector had access to an Ascension homily, he omitted it: a good indication that his primary interest was in the ascetic life, not in liturgical celebration. Instead, the Collector supplements the ascetic Rogation-set of XI–XIV with another dramatic account of the end of the world. The scribe clearly labelled it as such: ‘ALIA OMELIA DE DIE IVDICII’ (80v 7; Homily XV). The scribe may have copied this heading from his exemplar; or, perhaps under the guidance of the Collector, he may have adapted it, for instance by the addition of the word ‘ALIA’, ‘another’. Whether the heading was adapted or simply copied, the heading makes perfect sense within Booklet B of the Vercelli Book: this heading

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marks a return to Last Judgement material, i.e. to the concerns last fully developed in Homilies VIII–X. Booket B had begun with a well-planned Advent section, which, with its complementary eschatological material, stretches down to Homily X. It made sense for the Collector to add to the booklet more material related to the season after Christmas, as that material came his way: Homilies XVI (OMELIA EPYFFANIA DOMINI, fo. 85v 8) and XVII (DE PURIFICATIONE. SANCTA MARIA, fo. 90v 22). But, immediately after these, the scribe copied Homily XVIII, DE SANCTO MARTINO CONFESSORE, fo. 94v 24. Once more, the devotional progression from Homily XVI to Homily XVIII is devotional rather than liturgical. The St Martin homily may, of course, have been included because the compiler, as a cleric, had a particular veneration for the great Gaulish saint. It may also have had something to do with the fact that St Martin, like St Andrew, was associated with the mid-winter season of Advent: the Gallican Advent began after Martinmass, 11 November (Martimort 1986, vol. 4, 92). But the eschatological preoccupations of the Collector lead me to suspect that he was above all attracted to the St Martin homily because of its emphasis on the proximity of death and the presence of threatening devils, who are ready to swallow souls in just the way that greedy diving birds, cormorants or mergansers (scealfras, Homily XVIII, 231) gulp back fish. A striking feature of the St Martin homily is its long account of his edifying and happy death, surrounded by his monks, the fitting end to his life of heroic saintliness. But this long account of a saintly death posed a practical problem for the Vercelli Collector: how could the homily be applied to the spiritual condition of a less perfect Christian? We have seen that, when Elene described the efficacy of supervised fasting as a path to enlightenment and conversion, the Collector was uneasy with that idea, and countered it with the Guthlac excerpt which presented excessive fasting as a temptation of the devil. Now, he refused to allow himself (or other possible readers) to relax too comfortably into thoughts of a happy death. Instead, he provided a salutary shock when at the end of the St Martin homily, the reader turned over the page. The homily ends on fol. 104r. Overleaf, on fol. 104v, the less-than-saintly reader received a sudden urgent warning to think of their own perilous situation in the here and now. After the optimistic conclusion of Homily XVIII, the abrupt change of tone was calculated to brace any reader to the task in hand: Huru ðæs behofað   hæleða æghwylc þæt he his sawle sið sið   sylfa geþence hu þæt bið deoplic   þonne se deað cymeð asyndred þa sybbe   þe ær samod wæron lic ond sawle   (101v 1–4, Soul and Body I, 1–5a) Indeed it behoves every man to meditate on his soul’s journey: journey: how terrible it will be when death comes, and broken is the former relationship between body and soul.

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The new sequence of four verse lections, which begins with Soul and Body and ends with The Dream of the Rood, provides a psychological counterweight to St Martin’s peaceful death. Ordinary men and women must prepare actively for death, so as to avoid the damnation that faces the evil soul. The damned soul visits its body at midnight, and berates it for the sins which has led its soul to damnation: the lection ends with the terrifying image of the work of the eager worm Gifer, biting into flesh, eyes, bone (fo. 103r 13–20; Soul and Body I, 116–126). The second lection in the sequence, in which a saved soul visits its body to praise it because it was ascetic during its life, presents the other side of the stark choice, damnation or salvation, which the reader is encouraged to face. The two Soul and Body lections imagine a time when choice is no longer possible: a time when the body is frozen in death, a prey to eager worms, and when the soul’s eternal fate is already determined. A missing folio has deprived us of the end of the praise of the good soul for its body and the beginning of the third verse lection in the sequence, which modern scholars have labelled Homiletic Fragment I. With this third lection we move back from the time after death to a time when, before death, choice is still possible. But the vision of the poem is still pessimistic and gloomy: the theme of this third lection is that, in these evil times near the end of the world, one can trust nobody. People nowadays speak fair to one’s face but have treachery in their hearts. They are like bees, in that they have honey in their mouths but a sting in their tail. It would be difficult to imagine a more abrupt and consoling counterweight to this grim vision of universal treachery and untrustworthiness than the opening of the fourth and final lection in the series: Hwæt ic swefna cyst secgan wylle [104v 7, Dream line 1] Now: I will tell of the best of dreams […]

The Dream provides exactly what a clerical reader, working his way through the sequence of four verse lections, needed at this point: a vision that is trustworthy, a patron that can be relied upon. The vivid images of treachery and betrayal in the preceding lection prepared readers for the pun at the beginning of the Dream (line 4) between the neuter noun treo, ‘tree, wood’ and the feminine noun treow, ‘fidelity, faith, pledge, grace’. This final lection provides what the reader needs: consolation, something to trust. It is not impossible that the Collector himself, or someone in his circle, may have composed the two central lections (lection two, ‘the good soul speaks to its body’ and lection three, the vision of universal untrustworthiness) so as to link the terrifying images of the midnight visit of the Bad Soul to its body (the first lection) with the fourth lection, the midnight vision of The Dream of the Rood. After all, both the first lection and the fourth are explicitly placed at night (Soul and Body I, 10; Dream, 1–3). The manuscript presentation of each lection is similar: an opening paragraph sets the scene, and both in the case of Soul and Body I and of the Dream, each opening paragraph is, unusually, set off by a positura mark before the text continues with a prominent capital letter (compare fo. 101v 10, Soul 14–15 with the layout of fo. 104v

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16–17, Dream 12–13). What is certain is that, at this stage in Booklet B, the Collector was editing carefully and consistently. The scribe recopied lines 22 and following of the Dream, on to what is now the beginning of Quire XV (Sisam 1976, 39). In effect, the scribe did a careful job of splicing, recopying all of Quire XV so as to link Quires XVI and XVII to the preceding material in Booklet B, that is, so as to splice Homilies XIX–XXII on to this long and complex booklet. Homilies XIX-XXI are a unified set of Rogation homilies, with a close unity: they begin with the creation of the world, and end with a vivid account of the Last Judgement (an account which incorporates the account in Booklet A Homily II (on this, see Zacher 2009a, 63-105). Once more, this set of Rogation homilies lacks any homily for the feast of the Ascension. Once more, they are followed by eschatological material, yet another ‘Soul and Body’ text. Don Scragg (Scragg 1973) demonstrated that this text, though we call it Homily XXII, is not really a homily, but a series of excerpts edited from the De Lamentatione Animae Peccatricis by Isidore of Seville. Once more, as in Homily IV and the first part of the verse Soul and Body, we are in the presence of a sinful soul and its lamentations. The Collector clearly felt that this grim theme was important to his spiritual life and to that of any other readers who might use the collection. This new Soul and Body text is the last item in Booklet B. The end of the lamentations of the sinful soul occupies the first two folios of a new quire. Perhaps the rest of the new quire remained blank; perhaps it contained other texts. If it did, these texts were cut away and, as at present bound, the end of Homily XXII (the lamentations of the sinful soul), lead directly to the next quire and to Booklet C, the fifteen lections of Elene and the unnumbered sixteenth lection about Guthlac’s temptations and happy death. As we have already seen, the Guthlac text, though now labelled Homily XXIII, was also a set of edited excerpts. It is possible that, when compiling this part of the collection, the Collector was running out of suitable homilies, and was therefore instead choosing excerpts from longer literary works, such as Isidore’s De Lamentatione and Felix’s Life of Guthlac. It is also possible that at this stage in gathering his spiritual reading, the Collector was becoming more independent-minded, more sure of himself, more determined to provide texts (excerpts if necessary) that reflected his recurrent preoccupations. Let us sum up the ways in which The Dream of the Rood contributes to the Vercelli Collection. An interest in the Cross is found throughout the Vercelli Book: that book begins with an extended account of the Passion and Good Friday (Homily I), contains several homilies in which the Cross reappears in the heavens at the end of the world, contains the Dream of the Rood in which the Cross appears at midnight and is promised as a saving symbol at the Last Day, and ends with Booklet C, in which the major text is Elene, which recounts the finding of the True Cross by the Empress Helena. In the first place, the Dream not only provides a consoling fourth lection to counterbalance the gloomy Soul and Body poem, set in a world in which repentance is no longer possible, and of the Homiletic Fragment, a treacherous world in which you can trust nobody. It

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also provides a much more consoling image of the role of the Cross on the Last Day than is found elsewhere in the collection. When the dreamer in The Dream of the Rood is first of all frightened by the visionary tree, saying ‘Syllic waes se sigebeam ond ic synnum fah, forwundod mid wommum’ (‘beautiful was the victorious tree and I was stained with sins, grievously wounded with the marks of sin’, Dream 13–14) he is reacting in the way the average reader of the Vercelli homilies might be expected to when faced with such a vision, familiar as he would already be with the terrifying appearance of the Cross on the Last Day in judgement against sinners. Only gradually will the poem reveal to the Dreamer that in this case the visionary Cross brings, not Judgement but salvation: that it will take care of him even if he is at a loss for words on the Last Day, and indeed that it will come and fetch him here on earth, bring him to heaven, and set him down in eternal happiness. The idea of being brought physically to heaven was certainly important for the Vercelli Collector, because in the Guthlac excerpt, Homily XXIII, he has St Bartholomew fetch Guthlac in precisely the same way, save him from the attacking devils, and bring him to heaven (fo. 105v 19–28; Homily XXIII, 142–152). The comparison between the Cross and St Mary in The Dream of the Rood is likely to have been also important to the Vercelli Collector: he expected that St Mary would be one of the patrons who, like St Peter, would save a third of the sinners from damnation on the Day of Judgement (Homily XV, 141–149). When the vision of The Dream of the Rood has come to an end, the Dreamer immediately plunges into prayer: that was important to the Vercelli Collector, who saw reading and prayer as a dialogue: when we pray we speak to God, when we read God speaks with us. The epilogue to the poem Elene has a similar view of spiritual reading: the effort of chewing over a text is rewarded by spiritual illumination, freedom from depression, an ability to express oneself in prayer. In short, the Vercelli Collector is likely to have valued The Dream of the Rood, not just for the beauty of the opening vision or Good Friday narrative, but equally for reasons less popular with modern readers or, indeed, editors: the comparison between the Cross and Mary, the role of the Cross as patron and psychopomp, the role of the Dreamer as model for the reader’s own prayer to the Cross. A final question, to end this discussion: Why did the Vercelli Book end up in the Cathedral library of Vercelli, a small city on the plain of Lombardy, half-way between Milan and Turin? In a recent, and characteristically brilliant, article, Elaine Treharne (Treharne 2007) has assimilated the Vercelli Book to the Benedictine revival, and has even suggested that it might have been a bishop’s book: an anthology compiled for personal use by a bishop of that reformed version of Anglo-Saxon clericalism. The article is both learned and persuasive; however, I fear I am not convinced by it. There is not a single item in the Vercelli Book that is specifically monastic, and it has no texts by the major authors of the revival, such as Ælfric or Wulfstan. As long ago as 1972, when I told him about the recurring and personal devotional preoccupations I was discovering in the collection, Malcolm Parkes directed me to the important article by Eric John (John 1966). It was Malcolm Parkes who pointed out to me that

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the crucial difference between canons, and monks strictly so called, was that canons could have personal property; and therefore that it was likely to be a canon, rather than a monk, who could plan a personal devotional collection like the Vercelli Book. This was the line I followed in my doctoral thesis of 1975: that, while the Vercelli Collector certainly practised spiritual reading in forms recommended (by Cynewulf and others) within the dominant monastic spiritual tradition of the age (and that therefore the collection could in general terms be called ‘a monastic florilegium’), the Collector was much more likely to be a canon rather than a monk (Ó Carragáin 1975, vol. I, 47–49). As Professor Charles Wright and earlier scholars have pointed out, the Vercelli Book contains texts which seem critical, if anything, of the revival, with references to the interference of the King and other laity in the affairs and property of the Church (Wright 2002). The Vercelli Book seems to have languished, not much read, for perhaps two generations in England, perhaps kept by the ecclesiastical community within which the Collector had lived. If during this period the community was reformed, and became an up-to-date Benedictine house, the book must have come to be seen increasingly as not very useful, and as old fashioned. Its original compiler, as we have seen, had a taste for texts which by his time (in the late tenth century) were being replaced by the new prose of the Benedictine Revival. The book was not suitable for communal use. After all, it mingled prose and old-fashioned verse in a frustrating way, which required readers to read prose and verse in sequence and work out for themselves the ways in which the juxtaposed texts complemented each other. In a very irritating manner, it provided no headings or descriptions for the majority of its texts: no one could page casually through the manuscript and easily work out where he was in it. The book was too idiosyncratic; too much of a once-off compilation made for the needs of a single person: a senior canon, perhaps. Perhaps the Vercelli Book reached Italy because of two factors: a reformed English community (now more strictly monastic) was happy to get rid of an increasingly old-fashioned book, and some cleric who felt that, at least, the book would provide good reading for a group of English pilgrims on their way to Italy, perhaps to Rome. There is no reason for us to think that the Vercelli Book was compiled for use on an actual pilgrimage. Nevertheless, the longer it lay around in the local collection of English books, the possibility of using it for reading on a pilgrimage is likely to have become more evident. It contains two extended and vivid accounts of journeys into foreign countries, the verse account of St Andrew’s perilous expedition among the cannibalistic Mermydonians and the account, also extended and also in verse, of St Helena’s voyage to discover the secret location of the True Cross and to bring back some of its relics to Rome. The fact that, in the poem Andreas, Christ himself appears, disguised, to act as a companion and guide to Andrew on his perilous expedition, would also have appealed to a pilgrim. Such verse texts as Andreas, Elene and The Dream of the Rood were clearly designed for reading aloud, or indeed

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perhaps for a form of chanting. But the homiletic form of most of the prose texts, with their exhortations to an audience as ‘Dearly Beloved brethren’, would also have made the prose texts suitable for reading out to a group of pilgrims on their long and arduous way to Italy. The emphasis throughout the collection on the nearness of death and the fragility of life, was particularly suitable for physical pilgrimage, which acted out the Christian idea that we have here no lasting dwelling, but must seek that which is to come. If, perhaps having left the Vercelli Book at Vercelli for safe keeping, the pilgrimage got as far as Rome, the pilgrims would not only be able to contemplate and pray at the relics of the Passion which St Helena had brought to Rome and which were kept in the chapel of St Helena at the basilica of Holy Cross in Jerusalem, the so-called Sessorian basilica. Indeed, it was to that basilica that the pope and his followers came at the ninth hour on Good Friday to worship the relics of the Cross, in the way that, in The Dream of the Rood, the followers of the Cross come from afar to receive the body of Christ from the Cross. Quite apart from Holy Cross in Jerusalem, pilgrims would at Rome have been able to see several apse mosaics in which the Cross appears on the Last Day in the clouds of heaven, such as the apse mosaic of the Lateran basilica and that of Santa Pudenziana (Ó Carragáin 2005, Ó Carragáin 2012). But why did the Vercelli Book end up, not at Rome, but at Vercelli? In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the cathedral town of Vercelli had one outstanding claim to fame. In its cathedral Church it contained the body of St Eusebius, the fourth-century bishop of Vercelli. He was famous as the founder of the way of life of canons: he had encouraged the priests of his diocese to live in community, to recite the Office in common, but without embracing poverty. In other words, his canons could still have individual possessions, such as individual manuscripts, for their own private use. St Eusebius of Vercelli represented an older form of communal clerical life: he lived a century before St Benedict of Nursia. The spiritual traditions handed on from St Eusebius came from a rather different spiritual world from the reformed Benedictinism of St Benedict of Aniane in the ninth century, or of that monk’s tenth-century English followers such as Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald. I would like to suggest that the man who persuaded an Anglo-Saxon library to part with this vernacular anthology of prose and verse, to allow him to bring it away for reading in sequence to his companions on pilgrimage, was a sympathizer with the older spirituality associated with canons (Ó Carragáin 1998). I like to think that he may have been an old man, like the Dreamer of The Dream of the Rood. It would be fitting if such a man, feeling himself somewhat of a misfit in one of the highly organized monasteries of the Benedictine Revival should, by bringing the manuscript on pilgrimage, have preserved for us one of the great poetic triumphs of early Christian England, of the world of Theodore of Canterbury, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, Pehthelm of Whithorn, Acca of Hexham and Bede of Wearmouth-Jarrow: The Dream of the Rood.

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Notes

1. This lecture is dedicated to the memory of two friends who have died in recent years. Professor Malcolm B. Parkes kindly discussed the contents of the Vercelli Book with me in detail, on a number of occasions, in the early 1970s. I owe very much to him, including the suggestion that the book was a canon’s book. Gerald Roberts provided, over forty years, hospitality, friendship, and lively debate on a wide variety of topics; at their hospitable table Gerald listened patiently while Jane Roberts and I discussed matters Anglo-Saxon (the only subject he balked at was the Ruthwell Cross). In addition I wish particularly to thank Professors Jane Roberts and Samantha Zacher for their generous assistance and encouragement. 2. When quoting from texts in the Vercelli Book, I give the punctuation and capitalization of the manuscript. I refer in the first instance to the manuscript folio, and the place of the quotation on the manuscript page. However, for the reader’s convenience I set poetry out as Old English verse is usually set out in modern editions, and also give the line references found in modern editions. I set prose out as continuous prose, giving references to the folio of the manuscript, and to the place of the quotation in the manuscript page. I follow this with a reference to the page and lines of Donald Scragg’s edition (1992) of the Vercelli Homilies; I also give the modern number of the homily, where this is not clear from the context. 3. From the perspective of the onlooker, the distych is on the left side of the cross. But if we think of the form of the reliquary as analogous to that of a human body, with the jewelled side as its front and the Agnus Dei, surrounded by the Evangelists, as its back, the distych runs up its right side. The Brussels Cross can thus be said to ‘bleed’ on its right side, like the visionary tree/ Cross in the Dream (‘swætan on þa swiðran healfe’ [104v 22; Dream 20a]). The initial letter ‘b’ of the verse ‘blode bestemed’ is placed several centimetres below the crossing, and followed by interlace ornament; the rest of the word ‘[b]lode’, with its alliterating companion ‘bestemed’, covers the terminal of the right arm. Divided thus between upright and arm-terminal, all of the verse ‘blode bestemed’ can be seen at once, when looked at from the right side of the cross. The layout gives a particular intensity to the phrase, ‘[b]lode bestemed’, by placing it startlingly close to the eye of the onlooker. The verse, laid out thus, encourages the onlooker to recall at once the spear-wound in Christ’s right side, and also the nail-wound in his right hand. For the layout of the distych, see Ó Carragáin 2005, 340, fig. 55 and discussion at 346. On the imagery of this verse, see also Ó Carragáin 1983. 4. Paul Meyvaert repeatedly argued (most recently in Meyvaert 2011) that in the Agnus Dei panels the human figure is seated, and that in his right arm he holds a book. Meyvaert never looked at the Ruthwell or Bewcastle crosses, and based his observations on photographs. I follow the unanimous accounts of these panels by the following five scholars, each of whom has closely and repeatedly examined both monuments, and each of whom has kindly discussed the panel with me: Rosemary Cramp, Richard Bailey, Jim Lang, Jane Hawkes and Catherine Karkov. 5. In quotations from the Ruthwell poem I give a somewhat simplified form of the transcription, punctuation and lineation to be found, together with photographs, in Ó Carragáin 2005, xxii–xxix.

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Treharne, Elaine (2007) ‘The form and function of the Vercelli Book’. 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, 253–266. Turnhout. van Ypersele de Strihou, A. (2000) Le Trésor de la cathédrale des Saints Michel et Gudule à Bruxelles. Brussels. Webster, L. (1984) ‘The Brussels Cross’. In J. Backhouse, D. H. Turner and L. Webster (eds) The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 90–92, No. 75. London. Wright, Charles D. (2002) ‘Vercelli Homilies XI–XIII and the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine reform; tailored sources and implied audiences’. In C. Muessig (ed.) Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, 203–227. Leiden. Zacher, S. (2009a) Preaching the Converted: the style and rhetoric of the Vercelli Book homilies. Toronto. Zacher, S. (2009b) ‘The source of Vercelli VII: an address to women’. In S. Zacher and A. Orchard, New Readings in the Vercelli Book, pp. 98–150. Toronto. Zacher, S. and Orchard, A. (eds) (2009) New Readings in the Vercelli Book, Toronto.

Index

Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formerly Berkshire 28 Abraham, archbishop of Harmonthis 100n.11 Acca, bishop of Hexham 100n9, 113, 125 Adam, first man in the Bible 91 Advent 118–120 Ægil/Eigil, legendary brother of Weland, archer 50, 54–55 Ælfgiva, figure in the Bayeux Tapestry 44n.2 Ælfheah, minister 64n.5 Ælfric Bata, monk of Christ Church, Canterbury 88 Ælfric, homilist, monk of Eynsham, abbot of Cerne 58, 87, 123 Ælfric, otherwise unknown, memorialised in the Brussels Cross 106–107, 109 Ælfthryth, youngest daughter of King Alfred 48 Æthelberht/Ethelberht, king of Kent 19, 91 Æthelred, king of the West Saxons 52 Æthelred/Ethelred II, king of the English xvii, 90 Æthelwold/Ethelwold, St, bishop of Winchester 96, 125 Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons 34–35 Æþelmær and Aþelwold, patrons of the Brussels Cross 106–107, 109 Æthelweard Chronicle 63 Africa 78 Agapetus I, Pope 73–74 Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) 107, 109–113, 126nn.3, 4 Alcuin of York 60, 84, 100n.8 Ald Wic, London 71 Aldfrith, king of the Northumbrians 56 Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, bishop of Sherborne 41, 58, 64n.14, 87, 125 Aldred, scribe, provost of community of St Cuthbert at Chester-le-Street 96, 98 Alfred Jewel 38, 42, 53 Alfred, ‘the Great’, king of the West Saxons xvi–xvii, 35, 38, 42–43, 47–64, 71, 79, Alfred, ealdorman and Werburh, rescuers of Codex Aureus 98

Allah, Islamic name for God 79 Al-Mudil, Egypt, cemetery 99 Andreas, Old English poem 114, 118–119, 124 Andrew, St, 120, 124 Feast of 119 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle xvi, 9, 49–50, 55, 59, 63 Anonymus ad Cuimnanum, Irish grammatical text addressed to Cumianus (?of Bobbio) 76 Antiquity 32, 76 Apostles 79, 87, 96, 119 Aquileia, Italy 83 Arius, priest of Alexandria, heretic 81 Ark of Noah 50 Ark of the Covenant 54 Armenia, Armenian culture 97–98 Asia 78 Asperius, Irish grammarian of Latin 76 Asser, bishop of Sherborne, Life of Alfred xvi, 38, 47–49, 53, 59–60, 63, 64n.3, 65n.18 Athelstan, king of the English 38–39, 41, 65n.17, 88, 94–95 Atlantic Ocean 84 Atonement 78 Augustine, St, of Canterbury, missionary to the Anglo-Saxons 77, 81, 91 Augustine, St, of Hippo, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, Church Father 73 Austen, Jane, Pride and Prejudice 72 Auzon, France 50, 56 Ayton, Scottish Borders 45n.5 Babylonians 73 Baden-Württemberg, Germany 15 Baghdad, now Iraq 79 Bailey, Margaret xiii Bailey, Richard 126n.4 Bamburgh, Northumberland 19 Bartholomew, St 123 Bayeux Tapestry 23, 29, 35, 41 Beadohild, legendary daughter of King Nithhad 54, 64n.5 Beadwulf/Beaduwulf, owner or maker of ring 42 Beaw/Beow, mythical figure 50, 59

130

Index

Bede, St, ‘The Venerable’, monk of Jarrow [Ecclesiastical History] 49, 59–60, 73–74, 84, 87, 91–92, 99nn.1, 3, 100n.9, 109, 113, 125; Commentary on Luke 100n.9 Life of St Cuthbert 38–39; Lives of the Abbots 87 Benedict Biscop, founder of Jarrow/ Monkwearmouth 87 Benedict, St, of Aniane 125 Benedict, St, of Nursia 90, 118, 125 Benedictine Reform/revival 96, 106, 123–125 Benedictine Rule 124–125 Beowulf, fictional hero of poem Beowulf 27, 56, 59, 64n.10 Beowulf, Old English poem xvi–xvii, 27, 49–50, 61–62, 65n.19 Bernicia 19 Bewcastle, Cumbria, Cross 73, 94, 109, 113, 126n.4 Bible, New Testament 60, 73, 87; Old Testament 56, 60, 72, 73, 77, 84, 87, 91; Apocalypse (Revelation) 4:1–11, 107, 111; John 15:1–8 32; Luke 38, 80; 1:28 110, 112, 1:34 110, 1:42 110, 112; Malachi 3, 2–3 60; Matthew 29, 72, 78, 94; 12:50 111; Philippians 2:7 78 Billfrith, anchorite and metalworker of Lindisfarne 98 Birch Iversen, Rasmus 2 Bischofshofen, Austria, cross 33 Bodmin, Cornwall, church of St Petroc 95 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy xvi, 50–63, 65nn.17, 18, 90 Boniface, St, missionary, archbishop of Mainz 59, 95–96 Book of Common Prayer 83 Book of Life 98 Book of the Dead 99 Book shrines xv, 95, 97, 99 Bosworth, Joseph xiv Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire 79, 90 Bremmer, Rolf H., Jnr xiv Brescia, Italy, reliquary 37 Brioude, France, church of St Julian 56 Brooks, Nicholas 99n.4 Broomfield, Essex, barrow burial 19 Brown, Julian 100n.4 Brown, Michelle P. xiv–xv Brussels, Belgium, Cross xvi, 105–109, 126n.3

Brussels, Belgium, Cathedral of St Gudule 106 Byzantium, Byzantine culture xv, 30, 36, 38, 72, 77, 79, 81–82, 88, 90–91, 94, 95, 97 Caedmon, Anglo-Saxon poet 49 Cain, biblical son of Adam 60–61 Cairo, Egypt, Coptic Museum 100n.11 Canon Tables 81–82 Canterbury, Kent 36, 38, 45n.6, 81, 85, 96; archbishops of 77; Christ Church Cathedral 88, 95, 98 Caractacus, Catavellaunian ruler 58 Carolingian culture xvi, 34, 38–39, 44n.4, 45n.6, 57, 60, 62, 86, 88, 95–97 Carroll, Lewis 40 Carruthers, Mary 99n.4 Carry On films 41 Cassian, John, fifth-century theologian 61, 86 Cassiodorus, Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, Roman statesman, writer and eventually monk 73–74; Codex Grandior 73; Institutiones 73, 99n.2; Novem Codices 73, Vivarium 74, 99n.2 Castor, Northamptonshire 37 Ceolfrith, St, abbot of Jarrow/ Monkwearmouth 73, 99n.1 Centwine, king of Wessex 64n.14 Cerdic, legendary founder of West Saxon royal house 49, 58–59 Cham/Ham, biblical son of Noah 61 Chelles, France, abbey 96 Chessell Down, Isle of Wight 24, 27 China 9 Church Fathers 74 Church Militant 87 Church Triumphant 87 Circe, Greek mythological witch 58 Clanchy, Michael 99n.4 Clayton, Mary 114 Cnut, king of England, Denmark and Norway 35, 88–90 Coenwulf, king of the Mercians 79 Common Worship 83 Constable, John, artist xvii Constantine I, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, Roman Emperor 34 Constantinople 9, 100n.11 Coptic art 82, 97–99, 100n.11 Court School of Charlemagne 39, 77

Index Cross xvi, 31–34, 44n.3, 73–75, 77–82, 87–89, 92, 98, 105–106, 108–113, 117, 122–123, 125, 126n.3; Crux ansata 76; Crux Gemmata 33, 82; True Cross 32–4, 106, 115, 122, 124; Holy Cross 115, 125 Cong, Co. Mayo, Ireland, Cross of 106 Cruithne, Celtic equivalent of Cerberus 80 Compton Beauchamp, Berkshire 64n.5 Columba, St 98; Columban Church 83 Cuthbert, abbot of Wearmouth, pupil of Bede 91 Cuthbert, St, bishop of Lindisfarne 41, 82, 88, 98; coffin 37, 94, 98; cult 82, 98; shrine 38–39, 94; see also Bede, Lives of St Cuthbert, Manuscripts, England, London, Additional 89000 (St Cuthbert’s Gospel) Cyneheard, prince of Wessex 55 Cynewulf, Anglo-Saxon poet 64, 116–117, 124 Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons 55 Cynric, king of the West Saxons 49 Danes 24, 52 Daniel, bishop of Winchester 59 David, biblical king 37, 44, 86 Davis, Craig xiii de Hamel, Christopher 100n.6 Deor, Old English poem 49–50, 53, 56 Derrynaflan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland, paten 78 Dodgeson, John xiii Donatus, Aelius, Roman grammarian 76 Drahmal, maker of the Brussels Cross 107–9 Dream of the Rood, The, Old English poem xvi–xvii, 84, 92, 105–125, 126n.3 Dumville, David 99n.4 Dunstan, St, archbishop of Canterbury 38, 125 Dynham, Ludlow, Shropshire 28, 34 Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne 82–83 Eadred, king of the English 64n.5 Eadui Basan, scribe/artist xvi, 86, 88 Easby, North Yorkshire 37 East Anglia 15, 42 Easter 111; MANCASS Easter Conferences xiii Edgar, king of England 38, 96 Edix Hill, Cambridgeshire 10 Edward ‘the Elder’, king of England 48, 65n.17 Egypt 15, 76, 84, 97–98; Flight into 111 Eigil see Ægil

131 Elder Edda, thirteenth-century compilation of Icelandic poetic texts 50 Elene, Old English poem xvi, 114–116, 120, 122–124 Elisabeth, St 111; Visitation 110 Ely, Cambridgeshire, abbey 71 Emma (Ælfgifu), queen of Ethelred II and of Cnut 88–89 Essex 30 Ethelberht see Æthelberht Ethelred II see Æthelred Ethelwold see Æthelwold Eucharist 79, 111–112 Eusebius, Eusebius Pamphili, bishop of Caesarea Maritima, Eusebian sections 83 Eusebius, St, bishop of Vercelli xvi, 125 Evangelists 28, 37, 99n.9, 126n.3; see also John, Luke, Matthew, Mark Ezra, Old Testament figure 73–74, 99n.2 Fabricius, legendary Roman figure 51–52 Faremoutiers-en-Brie, France, abbey 96 Farne Islands, Northumberland 82 Farr, Carol 100n.4 Fates of the Apostles, The, Old English poem 114, 118–119 Felix, Life of St Guthlac 115, 122 Finglesham, Kent 12–13, 45n.5 Firth, Colin 72 Five Senses 42 Fletton, Cambridgeshire 37 Flood, biblical event 28, 61 Fontes Anglo-Saxonici xiii France 15, 39 Franks, Frankish people 24, 58, 61 Franks Casket xvi, 23, 25, 36–37, 41, 43–44, 50–51, 53–60, 64nn.7, 16, 91, 94 Frikko, northern god, Germanic version of Freyr 81 Fuller Brooch 38, 42–43 Gabriel, St, archangel 110, 112 Gallican calendar 120; Gallican Psalter 86 Gandersheim Casket 34, 42, 44n.4 Gaul 30, 96, 120 Geats, historical or legendary Scandinavian people 61 Geat, germanic god 59

132 Gelhi, one-time owner of Lichfield Gospels 95, 98 Germany 15 Gifer, worm in Soul and Body I 121 Gneuss, Helmut 99n.4 Gnostics 76 Godeman, scribe 96 Golgotha, biblical place 33 Goliath, biblical giant 61 Good Friday 109–112, 117–118, 122–123, 125 Gosforth, Cumbria, Cross 84 Gospelbooks 72, 88, 91, 96–98 Great Army (Viking) 38 Greek culture 83, 91 Greenland 9 Gregory I, St, ‘the Great’, Pope 32, 47–48, 76–77, 81–82, 87; Pastoral Care 42 Gregory, St, bishop of Tours 61 Grendel, monster in Beowulf 27, 79 Grendel’s Mother, monster in Beowulf 27, 56, 64n.10, 79 Grimbald, abbot of New Minster, Winchester, 65n.17 Guthlac, St, in Felix’s Life 49, 115–116, 120, 122–123 Halesworth, Suffolk, figure 36 Hamburg, Germany, University of xiii Hautvillers, near Reims, France 45n.6 Hawkes, Jane 100n.4, 126n.4 Helena, Roman Empress 34, 115, 122, 124–125 Hell 81, 88 Henderson, George 74, 81 Hercules, legendary Greek hero 57–59, 61, 64n.12 Hereford Cathedral, mappa mundi 79 Heremod, legendary Scandinavian king 50 Heslop, T. A. (Sandy) 88 Hiberno-Latin culture 76 Higbald, bishop of Lindisfarne 100n.8 Higgitt, John 100n.4 Highfield, John xiii Hines, John xiv–xv Hoddom, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland 111 Holy Land 79 Holy Week 118 Homer, ancient Greek poet 77 Hovingham, North Yorkshire, sculpture 86

Index Hrothgar, king of the Danes in Beowulf 27 Hugh of St Victor, Hugo of Saint-Victor, twelfth-century theologian 83 Hugin and Muninn, Woden’s ravens 27 Hygelac, king of the Geats in Beowulf 61 Iconoclast Controversy 82, 88 Ida, son of Eoppa, leader of the Angles 19 Ingeld, legendary Scandinavian or German prince 60, 84 Insley, Charles xiii Inventory of Script Categories and Spellings in Eleventh-Century English, research project xiii Ireland, Irish culture xiv–xv, 9, 23, 56, 58–59, 79, 80–81, 83, 97–99, 106 Irene of Athens, Irene Sarantapechaina, Byzantine Empress 82 Isaac, biblical son of Abraham 87 Isernia, Italy 81 Isidore, bishop of Seville, De Lamentione Animae Peccatricis 117, 122 Israelites 111 Italy xvi, 15, 30, 73, 94, 124–125 James, St, apostle 96 Jarrow, Co. Durham, monastery and church of St Peter 36, 73–74, 87, 98, 125 Jerome, St, Eusebius Hieronymous Sophronius, Church Father 73, 75, 77, 83, 87 Jerusalem, Israel, Church of the Holy Sepulchre 33 Jesus Christ 28, 32, 37, 54, 60, 63, 72, 77–79, 82–84, 87–88, 91–92, 94, 96, 106–108, 110–112, 119, 124; Annunciation and Visitation 110, 112; Ascension 60; Chi-Rho 93–94; Christ-child 91–92; Crucifixion 32, 90, 92, 105, 109, 112, 125, 126n.3; Flight into Egypt 111; Incarnation 29; Nativity 29, 54, 119; Pantocrator 77; Passion 92, 117; Second Coming and Last Judgement 107–109, 117–118; Temptation 87; vine 32 John Scottus Eriugena, ninth-century Irish theologian 88 John, Eric 123 John, St ‘The Evangelist’ 40, 72, 82, 87, 90, 96, 117 John, St, ‘The Baptist’ 110–111, 113 John, abbot of Athelney 63, 65n.17

Index Joseph of Nazareth, New Testament biblical character 60 Joseph, Old Testament biblical character 88 Jouarre, France, abbey 96 Jove/Jupiter, classical god 57, 59 Judas/Cyriacus, character in Elene 115–116 Judith of Flanders, wife of Tostig Godwinson 90 Julian Calendar 110 Julius Caesar 63, 64n.16 Jutland, Denmark and Germany 2 Karkov, Catherine 100n.4, 126n.4 Kelly, Susan 76, 99n.4 Kent 98 Keynes, Simon 76, 99n.4 Kipling, Rudyard, If xvii Korea 9 Kragehul, Fyn, Denmark, votive deposits 2 La Tène art 83 Lakenheath, Suffolk 15 Lang, Jim 126n.4 Language, Hebrew 83, 98; Greek 29, 94, 98, 100n.10; Latin 28, 36, 48, 52–53, 57–58, 62–63, 75–76, 94–95, 98, 100n.10, 113; Old English xvi, 28, 36, 41, 48–63, 64nn.2,12,15, 65n.19, 79, 84–86, 88, 91, 93–94, 98, 115, 117, 126n.2; Welsh 81n.4, 95 Lapidge, Michael 64n.14, 99n.4 Larling, Norfolk 64n.16 Last Day 122–123, 125 Last Judgement 87, 95, 98, 113, 117–120, 122 Leneghan, Francis 114 Lent 110–111, 118 Lexis of Cloth and Clothing, research project xiii Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, AngloLatin prose text 58, 61 Lichfield, Staffordshire Angel sculpture 23, 25, 37; see also Manuscripts, England, Lichfield Lincoln 71 Lindisfarne (Holy Island), Northumberland 37, 83–84, 94, 98; see also Manuscripts, England, British Library Cotton Nero D. iv Llandeilo Fawr, Carmathenshire, Wales, church of St Teilo 95 Lobbes, Belgium 95 Logos 78, 91 Lombardy, Lombards, Lombard culture 24, 30, 94, 123

133 London, British Museum xiv; British Library xiv; Houses of Parliament xvii; St Paul’s Cathedral xvii Lough Kinale, Ireland, book-shrine 99 Lucas, Peter 114 Luke, St, Evangelist 38, 72, 77–78, 80, 82, 110 Magi, biblical figures 54, 91 Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England 58 Manchester, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester xiv; Centre for AngloSaxon Studies (MANCASS) xiii; John Rylands Library xiv, xvii; John Rylands Research Institute xiv; Manchester University Press xiv; Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies xiii; Toller Memorial Lectures xiii–xiv; University xiii–xiv Manumissions 94–95; of Bleiddad ap Sulren 95 Manuscripts, Austria, Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. theol. gr. 31 (Vienna Genesis) 77; Egypt, Cairo, Coptic Museum, Lib. 6614 (Coptic Psalter) 99; England, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 286 (Gospels of St Augustine) 77–78; University Library, Ll. 1. 10 (Book of Cerne) 77–78; Durham, Cathedral Dean and Chapter Library B.II.30 (Durham Cassiodorus) 37; A.II.17 (Durham Gospels) 86; Lichfield, Cathedral Library 1 (Lichfield Gospels) 94–95, 98; London, British Library, Additional 5111–2 (Golden Canon Tables) 77; Additional 9381 (Bodmin Gospels, St Petroc Gospels) 95; Additional 11848 (Tours Gospels) 95, 97; Additional 33241 (Encomium Emmae Reginae) 90; Additional 47967 (Orosius) 79; Additional 49598 (Benedictional of Ethelwold) 39, 96; Additional 89000 (St Cuthbert’s Gospel, Stonyhurst Gospel) 98; Arundel 155 (Eadui Psalter) 90; Cotton Claudius B. iv (Old English Hexateuch) 36, 84–86, 88; Cotton Claudius B. vi (Charters, Sawyer S64) 64n.5; Cotton Domitian A. vii (Durham Liber Vitae) 98; Cotton Nero D. iv (Lindisfarne Gospels) xvi, 23, 28–29, 37, 41, 72–73, 75, 78, 80–85, 94, 96, 98, 100n.6; Cotton Tiberius A. ii (Coronation Gospels) 95; Cotton Tiberius B. v (Miscellany) 79, 94; Cotton

134

Index

Tiberius C. vi (Tiberius Psalter) 41; Cotton Vespasian A. i (Vespasian Psalter) 37, 86, 96; Cotton Vespasian A. viii (New Minster Charter) 39–40, 96; Cotton Vitellius A. xv (Beowulf codex) 79, 84; Harley 603 (Harley Psalter) 45n.6, 86; Royal 1. B. vii (Gospels) 94–95; Royal 1 E. vi (Royal Bible) 38, 77, 86; Royal 2. A. xx (Royal Prayerbook) 79; Stowe 944 (Liber Vitae) 88–89; Stowe Charters 22 (Sawyer 367) 64n.5; Society of Antiquaries 60 (charter Sawyer 1412) 80, 100n.5; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bruce 96, 76; Junius 11 (Caedmon Manuscript, Junius Manuscript) 84 Peterborough, D. C., 1 (charter, Sawyer 1412) 80, 100n.5; York, Cathedral Library 1 (York Gospels) 90; France, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, lat.1 (Vivian Bible, First Bible of Charles the Bald) 75; Germany, Hanover, Kestner Museum, WM XXIa 36 (Eadui Codex) 88; Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 14000 (Codex Aureus of Charles the Bald) 97; Spangenberg, Pfarrrbibliothek, s.n. (Servius’s Commentary on Aeneid) 91; Ireland, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, s.n. (Cathach of St Columba) 98; D II 3 (Stowe Missal) 79, 97–98; Trinity College Library, A. I. (58) (Book of Kells) 75, 81, 87, 95; Italy, Brescia, Bibl. Civica Queriniana (Codex Brixianus) 77; Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Amiatino 1 (Codex Amiatinus) 73, 98n.1; Cod. Plut. I, 56 (Rabbula Gospels) 77; Rome, Vatican, Barb. lat. 570 (Barberini Gospels) 38, 80, 100n.5; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Pal. lat. 50, and Alba Iulia, Biblioteca Documenta Batthyaneum, s.n (Lorsch Gospels) 88; Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare CXVII (Vercelli Book) xvi–xvii, 105–106, 109–111, 113–114, 116–120, 122–125, 126nn.1,2; Netherlands, Utrecht, Universiteitsbibliotheek, MS Bibl. Rhenotraiectinae I Nr 32 (Utrecht Psalter) 45n.6, 86; Sweden, Stockholm Kungliga Biblioteket A. 135 (Codex Aureus) 37, 96; USA, New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MSM 1 (Lindau Gospels) 97; Pierpont Morgan Library 709 (Judith Gospels) 90 Martin, St 120–121 Martinmas 120

Mary Magdalen, St 110 Mary St, Virgin 37, 87, 110–113, 123; Annunciation 38, 110, 112; Hodegetria 91; Nativity 54, 119; Visitation 110, 112 Mass 79, 119 Matthew, St, Evangelist 29, 72–73, 78, 82, 94, 107 McKitterick, Rosamund 99n.4 Medehamstede (Peterborough, Cambridgeshire) 38 Meigle, Strathmore, Scotland 78 Mercia 20, 33, 37–38, 77, 79–80, 90 Mermydonians, cannibals in Andreas 124 Merovingians, Merovingian culture 30, 92, 96 Metz, France 39 Meyvaert, Paul 126n.4 Milan, Italy 123 Minster-in-Thanet, Kent, nunnery 95 Monkwearmouth, Wearmouth, Co. Durham, church of St Paul, monastery 36, 73–74, 87, 98, 125 Moses, Old Testament prophet 87 Murray, Griffin 106 Naples, Italy 83 Nicaea, now Turkey, Second Council of 82 Nimrod, biblical giant 61 Nithhad, mythical king 54, 57, 91 Nordenfalk, Carl 82 Norman Conquest xv, 23, 27, 35, 40 North Sea 26 Northumbria, Northumbrian culture xvi, 19, 28, 30, 32, 37, 43, 56, 74, 84, 91–94, 98, 100n.6, 109–111, 113 Nunburnholme, East Yorkshire, Cross 84 Nydam, Sundeved, Denmark, votive deposits 2 Ó Carragáin, Éamonn xvi, 100n.4 O’Reilly, Jennifer 100n.4 Offa, king of the Mercians 79 Okasha, Elisabeth 76, 100n.4 Orm, comb-maker 71 Ormside, Cumbria, formerly Westmorland, bowl 34 Orosius, Paulus Orosius, Historiarum Adversum Paganos 79 Orpheus, mythical Greek musician and king 58 Osgyth, memorialised on Lindisfarne grave-marker 94 Osiris, Egyptian god of the Dead 87

Index

135

Oswald, St, archbishop of York 125 Othere, Scandinavian traveller 79 Otley, West Yorkshire 37 Owen-Crocker, Gale xii–xiv

Rumble, Alexander xiii Ruthwell, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, Cross xvi, 24, 26–28, 32, 37, 75, 92–4, 105–106, 109–113, 126nn.4, 5

Page, R. I. 94, 100n.4 Palestine 15 Pangur Bán, cat 80 Parkes, Malcolm B. 99n.4, 115, 123, 126n.1 Passion Sunday 78 Paul, St, apostle, 72, 87 Paul, St (of Thebes) and Anthony, St, desert fathers 111 Pax Romana 119 Paz, James xiii Pehthelm, bishop of Whithorn 113, 125 Peter, St 123; Epistles 95 Pharoah, Egyptian ruler 85 Philosophy, personification of 90 Physiologus or Marvels of the East 78–79 Picts, Pictish culture 78, 83 Polonius, character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet 72 Princes Risborough 64n.5 Priscillian, bishop of Avila 72 Prittlewell, Essex, chamber burial 19 Psalter 88; Coptic 98; Gallican 86; Roman 86

Salzburg, Austria, monastery 33 Scandinavia, Scandinavian people and culture 2, 12–13, 15, 29–30, 35, 49–50, 54, 57, 71, 79, 84, 90, 98 Sceaf, legendary figure, symbolic of sheaf, supposed son of Noah 50, 59 Sceald, legendary figure, symbolic of shield 59 Sceldwa, supposed father of Æthelwulf 50 Scragg, Donald xiii, 113–114, 117, 122, 126n.2 Script xv–xvi, 72, 76, 91–96, 99n.4; Anglo-Saxon minuscule 83, 94–95, 113; Beneventan miniscule 94; Caroline minuscule 86, 94; Greek 29, 94, 100n.10; half-uncial 83; initial letters 42, 77–79, 83, 99n.6, 126n.3; Insular 83; litterae notabiliores 83; Ogham 76, 94; Roman 28, 43, 91–92; runes 27–28, 37, 43, 54, 76, 91–92, 94, 99n.4; uncial 77, 92 Scripture 28, 73–78, 82–83, 86, 88, 93–95, 98 Senmurv 79 Serenus, bishop of Marseilles (Masillia) 82 Servius, Maurus Servius Honoratus, Commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid 91 Shakespeare, William, Romeo and Juliet xvii Sheelagh-na-gigs 81 Sigebert, king of the West Saxons 55 Sight, predominant of the Five Senses 42 Sigurd the Volsung, legendary Norse hero 72 Sinai, Egypt, bishops 98; church of St Catherine 77, 81 Sion Treasure book covers 100n.11 Sisam, Celia 113–114 Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, USA xiii Solomon, biblical king 47–48, 53, 64 Soul and Body, Old English poems 120–122 Spain 79, 88, 95 Spong Hill, Norfolk, cemetery 2, 25, 36 Spring Equinox 110 St Julian of Brioude, church near Auzon, France 56 St Omer, France, ivories 40 Staffordshire hoard 30–32, 45n.5 Stephen, king of England 106 Style II art 16, 80

Ravenna, Italy 92; church of Sant’Apollinare in Classe 77 Rau, Andreas 2 Rebais, France, abbey 96 Reims, France 39 Rheged, British kingdom 92 Rhineland 15 Riddles xv, 41, 43–44, 87 Roberts, Gerald 126n.1 Roberts, Jane 126n.1 Robinson, Pamela 115 Rogationtide 119, 122 Romanesque art 35, 81 Rome xv; church of Saints Cosmas and Damian 81; Sta Maria Maggiore 77; Sta Pudenziana 77, 125; monastery of Sta Sabina 77; Papal Archbasilica of St. John in the Lateran 125; Santa Croce in Gerusalemme; Roman Britain 10–11, 58, 80; Christianity 23, 36, 73, 77, 91–92; culture xv–xvi, 15, 28–29, 36–37, 43, 60, 76–77, 81, 83, 91–92, 94; Empire 2, 26, 63, 71 Romulus and Remus 64n.16 Rothman, Emily xiii

136 Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, ship burial 19, 23–25, 27, 29–30, 41, 45n.5 Syria, Syrian culture 77, 79, 84 Taizé services 83 Tamworth, Staffordshire 79 Taplow, Buckinghamshire, barrow burial 19, 31 Tennyson, Alfred, The Lady of Shalott xvii Terence, Publius Terentius Afer, Roman playwright 77 Theodore, ‘of Tarsus’, archbishop of Canterbury 58, 125 Theodulf, bishop of Orléans, Libri Carolini 88 Điðrekssaga, thirteenth-century Norse version of a Life of Dietrich von Bern 50, 57 Titus, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, Roman Emperor 54 Toller, Thomas Northcote xiv Torah (Hexateuch) 88 Tostig Godwinson, earl of Northumbria 90 Tours, France 95, 97 Transmission of Texts and Ideas in Anglo-Saxon England, research project xiii Treasure bindings 90, 95–96, 98, 100n.11 Tree of Life 32–33, 42, 112, 115 Treharne, Elaine 123 Trewhiddle Style 34, 77 Tubal-Cain, biblical figure 61 Turin, Italy 123 Turner, J. M. W., artist xvii Ulysses, legendary Greek hero 58 Undley, Suffolk 64n.16 Utrecht Style 40, 45n.6 Vercelli Homilies 107, 114, 116–123, 125, 126n.2; Homiletic Fragment I 121–122 Vercelli, cathedral Church xvi, 125 Viking people, Viking culture 34–35, 49, 63, 79, 81, 98–99

Index Virgil, Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman poet 72, 77, 91 Virgilius Maro, seventh-century grammarian, possibly Irish 76 Visigoths, Visigothic culture 24, 79, 95 Vọlundarkviða, Old Norse poetic version of the Weland story 50, 53 Volundr (Scandinavian name for Weland?) 57 Vulgate 73, 75, 83, 100n.6 Wade, mythical figure, possibly Volundr’s father 57 Waldere, Old English poem 49, 64n.10 Wales, Welsh culture xiv, 9, 65, 81, 95 Wayland’s Smithy, on Ashdown, Oxfordshire, England 52, 64n.4 Webster, Leslie xiv–xv, 50, 56, 91 Weland, Wayland, legendary smith xvi, 50–63, 64nn.4, 5, 10, 91 Wessex, West Saxons 19, 50, 58–60, 106 Wigbald, archdeacon or hermit of Medehamstede 80, 99n.5 Wilfrid, bishop of York 56 William of Malmesbury, twelfth-century chronicler 49, 64n.14, 65n.18 Winchester, Hampshire 38, 96; New Minster 89; Winchester Style 39, 90 Wirksworth, Derbyshire, sculpture 86 Woden, Northern god 27, 59, 91 Worcester 79 Word of God 81, 83 Wordsworth, William, Daffodils xvii Wormald, Patrick 60, 99n.4 Wright, Charles 124 Wulfred, archbishop of Canterbury 93 Wulfstan, homilist, archbishop of York, bishop of Worcester 90, 123 Yorke, Barbara xiv, xvi Zacher, Samantha 119, 126n.1