This book originated as a series of papers delivered at a Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Lite... more This book originated as a series of papers delivered at a Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture in Honor of J. E. Cross, held in conjunction with the 30th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 1996. The purpose of that symposium was to bring together a number of friends and admirers of Professor Cross to celebrate his remarkably rich career as a scholar of Old English and Insular Latin literature; Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; and medieval sermons, saints' lives, and apocrypha. Just over a decade earlier, a group of colleagues had honored Professor Cross with a Festschrift published as a special volume of Leeds Studies in English, but in the years since that collection appeared, Professor Cross had managed to launch into the most productive period of his entire career, producing over thirty new articles and books since 1984, including his ground-breaking monograph on the Pembroke 25 homiliary, a facsimile edition of the Copenhagen Wulfstan manuscript for the series Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, a book on the Gospel of Nicodemus and Vindicta Salvatoris apocrypha from the St Omer 202 homiliary, and an edition and translation of Archbishop Wulfstan's canon laws. Surely these achievements were worthy of fresh recognition, we reasoned, and a small cohort of Professor Cross's friends accordingly began conspiring to host a symposium in his honor with an eye toward producing a second Festschrift. Kalamazoo was the logical site for this event. Professor Cross had frequented the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo for as long as any of us could remember, had chaired and presented in numerous sessions, and was a plenary speaker in 1990. It was also at Kalamazoo that Professor Cross initiated discussions of a plan to revise and update J. D. A. Ogilvy's Books Known to the English, 597-1066, an ambitious project that has since given rise to two large collaborative ventures to which many Anglo-Saxonists around the world now contribute: Fontes Anglo-Saxonici and Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Kalamazoo was thus a perfect match for Professor Cross, and with the kind indulgence of the Medieval Congress program committee, we proceeded to organize five sessions for the 1996 meeting on Irish and Anglo-Saxon studies as a tribute to Professor Cross's work in these areas. The timing, as it turned out, proved meaningful: Professor Cross died unexpectedly the following December, just seven months after the symposium, and the Kalamazoo conference was consequently the last opportunity most of us had to see him.
CAMBR1DGE STUD1ES 1N ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND ED1TORS S1MON KEYNES M1CHAEL LAP1DGE Editors' prefa... more CAMBR1DGE STUD1ES 1N ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND ED1TORS S1MON KEYNES M1CHAEL LAP1DGE Editors' preface Cambridge Studses in Anglo-Saxon England is a series of scholarly texrs and monographs intended to advance our knowledge of all ...
“Hiberno-Latin literature” refers to Latin writings by native speakers of Irish, whether or not t... more “Hiberno-Latin literature” refers to Latin writings by native speakers of Irish, whether or not they were written in Ireland, and whether or not they differ linguistically from other medieval Latin texts. (An exception must be made for St. Patrick, a Briton by birth who spent most of his adult life in Ireland and wrote his surviving works there.) Hiberno-Latin literature in the earlier Middle Ages is virtually all of monastic or clerical authorship and predominantly on religious subjects. The tradition begins with the writings of the missionary Patrick in the 5th century and of the expatriate Columbanus in the late 5th to early 6th century; reaches a high point in the 7th century with some remarkably original but mostly anonymous or pseudonymous theological writings and poetry; shifts mainly to the Continent in the 8th and 9th centuries with the Irish peregrini, such as the poet-scholars Sedulius Scottus and Iohannes Scottus Eriugena; and declines over the course of the 10th through 12th centuries, though with a final flourish in the influential Visio Tnugdali by Marcus of Regensburg. In addition to texts of known Irish authorship, there are also those (especially in the category of biblical commentaries) for which Irish authorship has been postulated but also disputed, and others that occupy a marginal status as putatively “Insular” (or “Irish-influenced”). A further marginal category comprises Irish versions or revisions of non-Irish texts (for example, many liturgical texts). This entry will focus on Reference Works, General Overviews, Journals, Major Named Authors, Major Genres, Thematic Studies, Historical and Cultural Contexts, and Hiberno-Latin Language.
In the Old English poem Guthlac A, after Guthlac has taken possession of the beorg, the poet cata... more In the Old English poem Guthlac A, after Guthlac has taken possession of the beorg, the poet catalogues the temptations the saint has overcome: Oft ϸurh reorde abead ϸam ϸe ϸrowera ϸeawas lufedon Godes ærendu ϸa him gæst onwrah lifes snyttru, ϸæt he his lichoman wynna forwyrnde 7 woruldblissa, seftra setla 7 symbeldaga, swylce eac idelra eagena wynna, gierelan gielplices: him waes Godes egsa mara in gemyndum ϸonne he menniscum ϸrymme æfter ϸonce ϸegan wolde. (160b-169)
The Old English Genesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin... more The Old English Genesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin sprouted and spread in evil branches from the blood of the murdered Abel:Critical discussion of this passage has reflected a basic disagreement about the presence of allegory in the poem. Bernard F. Huppé finds three levels of meaning in the passage:Literally, the descendants of Cain, born after his sins, are a progeny of affliction, because they perished in the Flood. Symbolically, they are children of affliction because they dwell in the City of Babylon, of which Cain is the spiritual founder. In its moral significance Cain's sin represents the earthly beginning of all mortal, Babylonian sin …
The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad so... more The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad soul to the angels or demons who lead them to heaven or hell at the moment of death, was adapted independently by three Anglo-Saxon homilists. Versions of this legend survive in an Old English Rogationtide homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 114, 102v–105v, in a homily Be heofonwarum and be helwarum in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A. ix, 21v–23v, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 302, pp. 71–3, and in a Lenten homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85/86, fos. 25–40. In 1935 Rudolf Willard published a study of the exemplum, with a detailed comparison between the three Old English versions, an Irish version, and a single Latin version in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 2628 (s. xi). Two years later Willard published a second Latin version from Oxford, University College 61 (s. xiv). Other texts of the Latin sermon have subsequently come to light.
A group of half-lines in Cynewulf's poetry that take the form þurh + demonstrative pronoun + ... more A group of half-lines in Cynewulf's poetry that take the form þurh + demonstrative pronoun + adjective + gesceap/gesceaft constitutes a distinctively Cynewulfian realization of a more widespread formulaic system (x X gesceaft). Only Cynewulf substitutes (in two closely similar contexts) gesceap for gesceaft, and Cynewulf consistently uses both words to refer to a specific ‘created thing’ instead of to ‘creation’. Within the system as a whole, the specific referent of gesceaft in the sense ‘creation’ (heaven, or earth, or all of creation) is often clarified by deixis, specifically in the type of demonstrative pronoun that modifies the word. Cynewulf's choice of the distal pronoun þæt likewise indicates that the apparently ambiguous referents of gesceap/gesceaft in Juliana 273b and 728a and Elene 789a are heavenly or unearthly things, and analysis of context as well as Christian-Latin analogues supports a specific identification of the referent in each case. While availing him...
This book originated as a series of papers delivered at a Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Lite... more This book originated as a series of papers delivered at a Symposium on Irish and Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture in Honor of J. E. Cross, held in conjunction with the 30th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 1996. The purpose of that symposium was to bring together a number of friends and admirers of Professor Cross to celebrate his remarkably rich career as a scholar of Old English and Insular Latin literature; Anglo-Saxon manuscripts; and medieval sermons, saints' lives, and apocrypha. Just over a decade earlier, a group of colleagues had honored Professor Cross with a Festschrift published as a special volume of Leeds Studies in English, but in the years since that collection appeared, Professor Cross had managed to launch into the most productive period of his entire career, producing over thirty new articles and books since 1984, including his ground-breaking monograph on the Pembroke 25 homiliary, a facsimile edition of the Copenhagen Wulfstan manuscript for the series Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, a book on the Gospel of Nicodemus and Vindicta Salvatoris apocrypha from the St Omer 202 homiliary, and an edition and translation of Archbishop Wulfstan's canon laws. Surely these achievements were worthy of fresh recognition, we reasoned, and a small cohort of Professor Cross's friends accordingly began conspiring to host a symposium in his honor with an eye toward producing a second Festschrift. Kalamazoo was the logical site for this event. Professor Cross had frequented the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo for as long as any of us could remember, had chaired and presented in numerous sessions, and was a plenary speaker in 1990. It was also at Kalamazoo that Professor Cross initiated discussions of a plan to revise and update J. D. A. Ogilvy's Books Known to the English, 597-1066, an ambitious project that has since given rise to two large collaborative ventures to which many Anglo-Saxonists around the world now contribute: Fontes Anglo-Saxonici and Sources of Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture. Kalamazoo was thus a perfect match for Professor Cross, and with the kind indulgence of the Medieval Congress program committee, we proceeded to organize five sessions for the 1996 meeting on Irish and Anglo-Saxon studies as a tribute to Professor Cross's work in these areas. The timing, as it turned out, proved meaningful: Professor Cross died unexpectedly the following December, just seven months after the symposium, and the Kalamazoo conference was consequently the last opportunity most of us had to see him.
CAMBR1DGE STUD1ES 1N ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND ED1TORS S1MON KEYNES M1CHAEL LAP1DGE Editors' prefa... more CAMBR1DGE STUD1ES 1N ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND ED1TORS S1MON KEYNES M1CHAEL LAP1DGE Editors' preface Cambridge Studses in Anglo-Saxon England is a series of scholarly texrs and monographs intended to advance our knowledge of all ...
“Hiberno-Latin literature” refers to Latin writings by native speakers of Irish, whether or not t... more “Hiberno-Latin literature” refers to Latin writings by native speakers of Irish, whether or not they were written in Ireland, and whether or not they differ linguistically from other medieval Latin texts. (An exception must be made for St. Patrick, a Briton by birth who spent most of his adult life in Ireland and wrote his surviving works there.) Hiberno-Latin literature in the earlier Middle Ages is virtually all of monastic or clerical authorship and predominantly on religious subjects. The tradition begins with the writings of the missionary Patrick in the 5th century and of the expatriate Columbanus in the late 5th to early 6th century; reaches a high point in the 7th century with some remarkably original but mostly anonymous or pseudonymous theological writings and poetry; shifts mainly to the Continent in the 8th and 9th centuries with the Irish peregrini, such as the poet-scholars Sedulius Scottus and Iohannes Scottus Eriugena; and declines over the course of the 10th through 12th centuries, though with a final flourish in the influential Visio Tnugdali by Marcus of Regensburg. In addition to texts of known Irish authorship, there are also those (especially in the category of biblical commentaries) for which Irish authorship has been postulated but also disputed, and others that occupy a marginal status as putatively “Insular” (or “Irish-influenced”). A further marginal category comprises Irish versions or revisions of non-Irish texts (for example, many liturgical texts). This entry will focus on Reference Works, General Overviews, Journals, Major Named Authors, Major Genres, Thematic Studies, Historical and Cultural Contexts, and Hiberno-Latin Language.
In the Old English poem Guthlac A, after Guthlac has taken possession of the beorg, the poet cata... more In the Old English poem Guthlac A, after Guthlac has taken possession of the beorg, the poet catalogues the temptations the saint has overcome: Oft ϸurh reorde abead ϸam ϸe ϸrowera ϸeawas lufedon Godes ærendu ϸa him gæst onwrah lifes snyttru, ϸæt he his lichoman wynna forwyrnde 7 woruldblissa, seftra setla 7 symbeldaga, swylce eac idelra eagena wynna, gierelan gielplices: him waes Godes egsa mara in gemyndum ϸonne he menniscum ϸrymme æfter ϸonce ϸegan wolde. (160b-169)
The Old English Genesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin... more The Old English Genesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin sprouted and spread in evil branches from the blood of the murdered Abel:Critical discussion of this passage has reflected a basic disagreement about the presence of allegory in the poem. Bernard F. Huppé finds three levels of meaning in the passage:Literally, the descendants of Cain, born after his sins, are a progeny of affliction, because they perished in the Flood. Symbolically, they are children of affliction because they dwell in the City of Babylon, of which Cain is the spiritual founder. In its moral significance Cain's sin represents the earthly beginning of all mortal, Babylonian sin …
The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad so... more The so-called ‘Three Utterances’ exemplum, which tells of the exclamations of a good and a bad soul to the angels or demons who lead them to heaven or hell at the moment of death, was adapted independently by three Anglo-Saxon homilists. Versions of this legend survive in an Old English Rogationtide homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 114, 102v–105v, in a homily Be heofonwarum and be helwarum in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina A. ix, 21v–23v, and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 302, pp. 71–3, and in a Lenten homily in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 85/86, fos. 25–40. In 1935 Rudolf Willard published a study of the exemplum, with a detailed comparison between the three Old English versions, an Irish version, and a single Latin version in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, lat. 2628 (s. xi). Two years later Willard published a second Latin version from Oxford, University College 61 (s. xiv). Other texts of the Latin sermon have subsequently come to light.
A group of half-lines in Cynewulf's poetry that take the form þurh + demonstrative pronoun + ... more A group of half-lines in Cynewulf's poetry that take the form þurh + demonstrative pronoun + adjective + gesceap/gesceaft constitutes a distinctively Cynewulfian realization of a more widespread formulaic system (x X gesceaft). Only Cynewulf substitutes (in two closely similar contexts) gesceap for gesceaft, and Cynewulf consistently uses both words to refer to a specific ‘created thing’ instead of to ‘creation’. Within the system as a whole, the specific referent of gesceaft in the sense ‘creation’ (heaven, or earth, or all of creation) is often clarified by deixis, specifically in the type of demonstrative pronoun that modifies the word. Cynewulf's choice of the distal pronoun þæt likewise indicates that the apparently ambiguous referents of gesceap/gesceaft in Juliana 273b and 728a and Elene 789a are heavenly or unearthly things, and analysis of context as well as Christian-Latin analogues supports a specific identification of the referent in each case. While availing him...
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