Anglo-Saxons. Studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart. Edited by simon keynes and alfred p. smyth. Pp. 320. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005. Cloth, £55.00.

Abstract

This volume brings together 17 essays on a wide variety of subjects within Anglo-Saxon studies, ranging from literary and linguistic analyses to history, art history, history of medicine and numismatics. The collection indicates the diversity of current work in Anglo-Saxon studies, and encompasses a broad range of scholarly backgrounds and perspectives. This variety of content is a fitting reflection of Roy Hart's own broad range of interests in the period, as is the recurrent emphasis on local studies and focused case analyses that serve to illuminate wider questions. As always with edited collections, it falls upon the reader to navigate their own way through the dialogues and debates implicit between different essays and their approaches. As with the best collections, this volume allows us to listen in on current conversations, controversies and emerging consensuses in Anglo-Saxon studies. The essay by Richard and Fiona Gameson that opens the collection examines the changing status of Augustine, first archbishop of Canterbury, in a number of Anglo-Saxon and later accounts. Overshadowed by Gregory in Bede's Ecclesiastical History, Augustine's role is strengthened through the re-ordering of material in the Old English translation, and grows in later accounts as the archbishop is increasingly connected to local legends and traditions—though he remains a figure of ambivalence or paradox for many commentators. Paul Szarmach's essay on ‘The “poetic turn of mind” of the translator of the OE Bede’ also considers the altered presentation of the Augustine–Gregory relationship in the Old English version of the History, but argues that the changes are purely structural and aesthetic rather than political. Szarmach also notes that a portrait in the Leningrad Bede, now believed to be a stylised image of Gregory, is labelled by a later hand ‘augustinus’—an amusing footnote on the continued fluctuation of Augustine's status in relation to Gregory in medieval popular perception.