Fornication and Conversion in Early Medieval England

The Phoenix and the Interlingual Dimensions of Early English Literary Culture

In the words of its own historians, pre-Norman Britain held five languages and four peoples. Yet in modern scholarship, Old English is too often studied separately from the other languages that surrounded it. This Element offers a comprehensive synthesis of the evidence from the pre-Norman period that situates Old English as one of several living languages that together formed the basis of a vibrant oral and written literary culture in early medieval Britain. Each section centres around a key thematic topic and is illustrated through a series of memorable case studies that encapsulate the extent to which multilingualism appeared in every facet of life in early medieval Britain: religious and scholarly; political and military; economic and cultural; intellectual and artistic. The Element makes an overall argument for the dynamic extent of transcultural literary and linguistic culture in early medieval Britain before the arrival of the Normans.

The complexities of identifying and understanding settlement hierarchy in early medieval England (c. 5th–11th centuries) is the focus of much debate. Within this field of enquiry, settlement arrangements, architecture, landholding patterns and material culture are commonly used in the identification of a range of settlement types. These include royal complexes, monastic institutions, towns and trading/production sites such as emporia. This same evidence is also used to interpret the status and role of these sites in early medieval England. This paper advances the current understanding of settlement hierarchy through an assessment of rural settlements and their material culture. These settlements have received comparatively less scholarly attention than higher profile early medieval sites such as elite, ecclesiastical and urban centres, yet represent a rich source of information. Through analysis of material culture as evidence for the consumption, economic and social functions which characterise rural settlements, a picture of what were inherently complex communities is presented. The findings further support the need to reassess settlement hierarchy in early medieval England and a new hierarchical model is proposed.

Reviewed by: Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture by Michael D. J. Bintley Sybil Jack Bintley, Michael D. J., Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture (Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 45), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020; hardback; pp. 231; 13 b/w illustrations; R.R.P €75.00; ISBN 9782503583846. While not all scholars of the early medieval period will accept Michael Bintley's views, this book is an invaluable introduction to some new approaches to interpretation of the period between the departure of the Romans and the coming of the Normans in England, such as those of John Blair and Éamonn Ó Carragáin. In this book Bintley hopes to open further areas for future research. He is primarily interested in changing our understanding of the ways in which the authors of contemporary vernacular literary works presented the links between people and the places in which they lived. [End Page 195] The texts that survive from any period are important, but they have a particular place in any largely non-literate society, such as early medieval England. Before archaeological excavation in England revealed some of the material remains of the period after the departure of Rome, investigation into why and where literature and poetry were composed, and in what language and how they were disseminated, provided almost the sole insight on the ordering of a society both lay and religious where knowledge was spread by oral presentation. Well-known authors such as Gildas and Bede, who set out the myths of the communities' origins and their narratives of events, were the basis for classical historical analysis even when their attribution of the destruction of the communities to religious failure was abandoned. As Bintley shows, in the years since World War II this classical presentation has been modified as archaeologists have uncovered numerous sites of many different types from this period across England. Scholars since extended their vision to examine how space was structured and perceived by people from all parts of society and interdisciplinary studies soon followed, one of the earliest being Audrey Meaney's PhD thesis (University of Cambridge) in 1959 on A Correlation of Literary and Archaeological Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Heathenism. Bintley's study introduces an analysis of the material settlements that interprets the physical remains in the light of widely accepted social practices that are held to bind society together, such as gift exchange, oath swearing, and ritual feasting. The spiritual understanding of landscape at the time is brought into the explanations of how towns were shaped for a strongly ecclesiastical purpose. He examines closely the role of the Church in the form and nature in which particular structures were created and interpreted as critical to their role. That the secular buildings were almost invariably wooden, while religious buildings were normally stone (and often of older, Roman stone reused), is presented as a critical cultural signifier. The apparently disorganized village layouts are seen as relating to different expectations of community interaction and integration from those that had preceded them. Bintley makes clear the different situations at different times such the slow regeneration of towns and the special approach to interurban space immediately after the departure of the Romans and the effect of the Viking invasions and the need for strongholds. Some of his arguments are still heavily dependent on interpretations of more recent texts, such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, that create an image of a directing elite, starting in the eighth century, and getting more authoritative in the Alfredian ninth century—when pivotal change in the conceptualizing of the function of a town was occurring and the creation or recreation of governing institutions, and the development of philosophical arguments about the definition of the role of a king, the duty of the community, and the creation of bonds across social strata and secular and religious interests began to emerge. Bintley seems concerned to establish the continuities in social and settlement culture throughout the period and to show not only how a familiar legacy was developed, but also how there was a constant return to grief [End Page 196] about intellectual ignorance and the loss...

Reviewed by: Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England by Benjamin A. Saltzman Mahel Hamroun Benjamin A. Saltzman, Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2019) xv + 339 pp., 12 ills. Equal parts conceptual history and literary criticism, Benjamin A. Saltzman's first book, Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England, is an ambitious work. Weaving together a dazzling array of sources and scholarship, Bonds of Secrecy interrogates the ethics of secrecy in a society bound by an omniscient God. The belief that God had ultimate control over the concealment and revelation of secrets both shaped and was shaped by the institutions of the early medieval English world and produced, in turn, a culture of scrutiny that profoundly informed literary practice. Part 1 considers the problem of secrecy in early medieval English legal institutions. Through the analysis of secular law codes and diplomatic sources, the first chapter demonstrates the myriad ways in which early medieval English law was preoccupied with "crimes of concealment" (23). Saltzman argues that this preoccupation reflects efforts by emerging English institutions of power to [End Page 297] maintain legal authority. Secrecy was a threat because it undermined the political epistemology which underpinned that authority—after all, "what is unknown to the sovereign cannot be governed" (19). For this reason, the regulation of both major and minor crimes of concealment would increasingly come to resemble that of treason. Yet crimes of concealment were difficult to regulate. Judicial testimony—a crucial part of early medieval English legal procedure—was "particularly hospitable to deliberate acts of concealment," simultaneously offering the promise of proof and the potential for concealment (20). Cognizant of their own limitations in ensuring the authenticity of such testimonies, early medieval English kings deployed the juridical supervision of God to bolster their authority, harnessing God's omniscience through oaths and ordeals. As the second chapter reveals, such reliance on God primed the law for dealing with situations in which testimony was "not just obscured but inaccessible" (60). Through the close reading of the 53rd law of King Ine's code, which (among other things) considers the vouching of a dead man's grave to warranty, Saltzman presents the grave as a special site for secrecy and potential truth: with the hand of God, "even the silence of death could be transcended" (61). Part 2 of the book moves from the royal court to the monastery, where the "secrets of one's heart" emerge as subjects of particularly stringent scrutiny (70). Secrecy was not, however, always bad. Chapters 3 and 4 draw from monastic rules and hagiography to explore the tensions between desirable and undesirable forms of secrecy within the monastic ideal. Contrary to modern universalist notions of secrecy, Saltzman reveals that discourses of secrecy in early English monastic communities were highly contingent on the specific traditions and actions from which they stemmed. This contingency, coupled with the distinct precision of monastic scrutiny, created spaces for sanctioned—even encouraged—forms of secrecy. The difference hinged on the acknowledgement of God's omniscience. If crimes of concealment represented a theft of knowledge from the crown in secular law, in the monastic context they were effectively theft from God. As Saltzman reminds us, however, stealing knowledge from an omniscient God was an exercise in futility. Illicit secrecy was therefore dangerous, not because it deprived God of knowledge, but because it signaled disbelief in God's omniscience. Such disbelief, Saltzman argues, was tantamount to surrendering oneself to the devil, an egregious crime for one ostensibly bound in servitude to God. Confession, conversely, becomes an act of faith, freeing oneself from the devil's shackles and delivering one's soul into God's possession. The purest expression of this deliverance was, perhaps paradoxically, itself form of secrecy: a "deliberate and conscientious" separation from other human beings in service of an equally deliberate and conscientious openness to God (81). This secrecy, which Saltzman calls "spiritual secrecy," came to be a fundamental feature of early English monastic life (96). Indeed, early English monastic architecture encouraged spatial separation in...

Reviewed by: Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives ed. by Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper Timothy D. Arner thijs porck and harriet soper, eds., Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2022. Pp. xii, 369. isbn: 978–90–04–49929–4. $194. Early Medieval English Life Courses: Cultural-Historical Perspectives literally considers some age-old questions: how does the human body change throughout its lifetime? What is the relationship between physical, emotional, and intellectual maturity? How is the biological process of aging conditioned by one’s social environment? The essays in this volume look for answers in a range of sources from pre-Conquest England, and, in so doing, provide a rich account of perspectives on the stages of human development. The collection helpfully groups the essays into four sections with three essays in each. Part I is dedicated to ‘Defining and Dividing the Life Course,’ with the first two essays examining how stages of the human life course were classified in early medieval English texts. Thijs Porck’s ‘The Ages of Man and the Ages of Woman in Early Medieval England: From Bede to Byrhtferth of Ramsey and the Tractatus de quaternario’ describes different approaches to categorizing life stages in Old English [End Page 102] and Anglo-Norman manuscripts. Tracing aging schemata as represented through three key works, Porck demonstrates that ‘early medieval English authors stuck to a flexible but uniform definition of the human life course’ (p. 45), and he identifies a significant shift in this paradigm during the twelfth century. Daria Izdebska’s essay surveys vocabulary for describing the stages of life throughout the Old English corpus, linking the various words used to describe infancy, youth, maturity, and old age to their Latin equivalents and to the Old English lexemes associated with these phases. These essays are followed by a discussion of an individual’s particular and influential understanding of aging and maturity, as Darren Barber’s ‘Alcuin and the Student Life Cycle’ highlights Alcuin’s writings about how one’s development through the stages of youth allows greater possibilities for moral and spiritual education. The second set of essays on ‘The Life Course and the Human Body’ considers the discourse around significant bodily changes or events. Jacqueline Fay’s ‘Treating Age in Medical Texts from Early Medieval England’ offers the field’s first look at ‘how, or even if, Old English medieval remedies are inflected by age’ (p. 118) and how these texts define normative and non-normative bodies with regard to age, gender, and bodily strength. Caroline R. Batten examines Old English obstetric remedies, demonstrating how the pregnant female body is more consistently associated with death than the creation and nurturing of life. In ‘The Theology of Puberty in Early Medieval England,’ Elaine Flowers shows how ‘the biological process of puberty in pre-Conquest England . . . generated theological consequences associated with leaving an age of spiritual innocence behind’ (p. 160). Focusing almost exclusively on the male body as a pubescent subject, theological discourse describes sexual temptation as both a challenge and opportunity for young men to demonstrate moral understanding and self-control. The essays in ‘Part III: Intergenerational Dynamics’ concern how names, knowledge, and goods are passed down to create a sense of individual identity within a community. James Chetwood’s essay on naming and renaming demonstrates how names were bestowed not only at birth but throughout one’s life to signal familial and social bonds. Just as Flowers’ essay in Part II considers the theological discourse regarding bodily processes, Katherine Cross examines how eighth- and ninth-century ecclesiastical texts refer to the weaning of infants as both a natural life process and a metaphor for spiritual instruction. Amy Faulkner’s essay on treasure describes how Genesis A presents an ideal model for aristocratic inheritance that Beowulf shows to be prone to disruption. The volume’s final section considers ‘Life Beyond the Human.’ Gale R. Owen-Crocker demonstrates how object biography can reveal ‘The Life Course of Artefacts’ as she examines the Orkney Hood, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Sutton Hoo Hanging Bowl and Shield, and early English manuscripts. The final essay places the linear life course of human development alongside the...

Environment, Society and Landscape in Early Medieval England, by Tom Williamson. Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2013. viii, 270 pp. $80.00 US (cloth). Tom Williamson tackles a tried-and-true landscape history question in his latest book on early medieval England: why do regional settlement differences appear the way they do? Because of the paucity of written evidence from the period, Williamson blends historical documents, archaeological investigations, and modern landscape configurations to propose some answers to the question. His thesis is that the landscape patterns of the early Saxon settlement, particularly the fifth to eighth centuries, are largely due to environmental factors, rather than cultural or social ones. The first two chapters set up the background material. In chapter one, Williamson gives readers an overview of the historiography of early medieval settlement in England, including how ethnicity, demographics, and social structures have been treated. He is particularly keen to discredit the model, which deals with the breaking up of large estates into smaller and smaller units over time. In the second chapter, Williamson outlines the physical geography of England, including soil, rainfall, bedrock, and drainage basin information. In each of the following chapters Williamson argues against a prevailing settlement theory using environmental variables. Watershed boundaries are more important than military conquest in establishing settlement areas of immigrants (chapter three). Co-axial are the result of resource linkage in topographic contexts rather than evidence of planning (chapter four). The different landholding patterns in east and west, which are usually explained by Viking invasions, are more attributable to climatic factors that created more risk for agricultural production in the west (chapter five). The big issue Williamson wants to address is the supposed differences between champion landscapes of nucleated villages with communal agriculture and areas of individually worked property. This takes up the remainder of the book (chapters six through nine). Williamson takes issue with scholars who portray these types as homogenous landscapes dictated by tenurial or social factors. He believes that the typologies are far too simple since landscapes are variable and depend on local environmental factors. He attacks the dichotomy of champion/woodland landscape on multiple fronts. First, he forcefully argues that woodland landscapes do not indicate late or dispersed settlement. Second, he writes that the prominent theory of nucleation of settlement in the Saxon period is a myth, positing instead that seemingly planned settlements were much more irregular and gradually developed in place. …

Book Review| April 01 2018 Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. By Allen Frantzen. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014. Pp. xi + 290; 7 illustrations. $90. Debby Banham Debby Banham University of Cambridge Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2018) 117 (2): 263–265. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.117.2.0263 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Debby Banham; Food, Eating and Identity in Early Medieval England. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 April 2018; 117 (2): 263–265. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.117.2.0263 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This Element covers the art produced in early medieval England from the departure of the Romans to the early twelfth century, an art that shows the input of multi-ethnic artists, patrons, and influences as it develops over the centuries. Art in early medieval England is an art of migrants and colonisers and the Element considers the way in which it was defined and developed by the different groups that travelled to or settled on the island. It also explores some of the key forms and images that define the art of the period and the role of both material and artist/patron in their creation. Art is an expression of identity, whether individual, regional, national, religious, or institutional, and this volume sheds light on the way art in early medieval England was and continues to be used to define particular identities, including that of the island on which it was produced.

The earliest English writers left little comment on their literary forms. In contrast to the grammatical treatises of late antiquity or critical studies of contemporary and modern literature, early medieval English writing offers only sparse contemporaneous self-commentary, often in brief or conventional notes along the way to other things. But Old English and Latin literature had lively and evolving practices of literary form and formal innovation. Literary Form in Early Medieval England examines both more and lesser known forms, considering the multilingual landscape of early medieval England and showing that Old English literary forms do not simply end with the rupture of the Norman Conquest but continue in surprising ways. Literary Form in Early Medieval England offers a concise tour of what we do know of literary forms, both those that have received more attention and those that have been relatively overlooked, across the first six centuries of English literature.

"Kinship and Lordship in Early Medieval England: The Story of Cynewulf and Cyneheard." In an entry for 757 (corrected from 755), the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recounts a complex story culminating in two battles of 786 between the followers of Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, and the œtheling Cyneheard. Previous commentators have frequently argued that by favorably portraying warriors who fought their own kin in order to support or avenge their lords, this story shows that by the later eighth century a warrior's legal duty to his lord superseded his obligations to his own kin. A close reading of the story shows, however, that this conventional interpretation lacks solid textual support and, instead, rests on several questionable assumptions about law and politics in early medieval England.

Reviewed by: 'Charms', Liturgies, and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England by Ciaran Arthur Ilona Tuomi Keywords Anglo-Saxon magic, divination, Anglo-Saxon charms, galdor, Christianity, paganism, the Exeter Book, Beowulf, Vercelli Book, Vitellius Psalter, liturgy, gibberish charms, early medieval England ciaran arthur. 'Charms', Liturgies, and Secret Rites in Early Medieval England. Anglo-Saxon Studies 32. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018. Pp. viii + 252; 3 illustrations. Having heard Ciaran Arthur present his studies on Anglo-Saxon charms (back then without the scare quotes), I was very excited to learn that he has published a full monograph on the topic. And I, for one, am very pleased by the result: Arthur's new publication is fresh, original, provocative, and well presented. It is also timely; for even if charm studies are very much alive and strong at the moment, and one hardly sees a medieval charms paper without the manuscript context being discussed, Arthur's work develops the study of the manuscript contexts into a full argument about textual genres. One might wonder why Arthur has chosen to include those scare quotes around the word "charm" in his title. This becomes very evident already in the Introduction as Arthur states that his book "offers a re-evaluation of the concept of'charms' in Anglo-Saxon culture and proposes an alternative reading of these rituals as mainstream Christian rites." He then lists three principal issues that his publication engages with: 1) "the translation of the Old English noun 'galdor' as 'charm'"; 2) "the manuscript contexts of rituals that are included in this corpus"; and 3) "the phenomenon of'gibberish' writing that is used as a defining characteristic of'charms'" (2). Plenty of water has flowed under the bridge since the antiquarian Thomas Oswald Cockayne completed his three-volume work Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England in 1866. As Arthur relates, Cockayne identified a total of thirty-two rituals from ten Anglo-Saxon manuscripts as belonging to the "charm" tradition (3). After this, as is shown in Arthur's overview of the historiography of the genre, scholars have added more rituals to this corpus. In short, traditional "understandings of'charms' have imposed connotations of magic, paganism, occultism, and superstition onto definitions of the Old English galdor" (17). Arthur endeavours to set the record straight by going back to the primary texts and contexts—both the manuscript contexts and the greater historical milieu in which these texts were written down by the medieval scribes—in order to argue that "'charms' were written down as experimental Christian rituals in late Anglo-Saxon England." According to Arthur, once these texts are read in their proper manuscript contexts, they "raise critical questions about Anglo-Saxon paganism, and they offer important insights into early English Christianity" (2). Arthur's book is divided into three parts according to the three core issues ofhis study, the first ofwhich engages with the translation ofthe Old English noun galdor (pl. galdru) as "charm." In Chapter 1, "Kill or Cure: Anglo-Saxon [End Page 164] Understanding of Galdor," Arthur explores the different non-ritual texts which use this word. Given that the Toronto Dictionary of Old English offers a wealth of definitions for the word galdor (including "poem," "song," "incantation," "charm," "spell," "illusion," "deception," "snake-charmer," "enchanter," "wizard," "divination," "soothsaying," "prophesying," "necromancy," "communication with the dead," "sorcery," and "sound/call of a horn"), I salute Arthur for having risen to the challenge of thoroughly investigating the instances in which the word actually appears and how the AngloSaxon scribes used it (21). This emic approach is not always covered in scholarship—even though, in my opinion, it is crucial in studying charms (or "charms") in any given language group at an any given time period. Arthur thus ploughs through examples in which the word galdor appears. The non-condemnatory instances of using the word (outside the actual ritual use) are found in saints' lives, wisdom poems, two riddles, and in the Old English epic poem Beowulf, where galdor is used to describe "the sound of a horn in battle and a supernatural barrier that protects the dragon's hoard" (24). According to Arthur, most surviving appearances of galdor (this means over one hundred...

Book Review| April 01 2019 Angels in Early Medieval England Angels in Early Medieval England. By Richard Sowerby. Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xv + 256; 12 illustrations. $95. Jill Fitzgerald Jill Fitzgerald United States Naval Academy Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2019) 118 (2): 252–254. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.2.0252 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jill Fitzgerald; Angels in Early Medieval England. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 April 2019; 118 (2): 252–254. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.2.0252 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2019 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2019 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Essays exploring the literary, material, scholarly and linguistic ties between the Continent and early medieval England. "Anglo-Saxons were tied to the Continent in many ways", Rolf H. Bremmer Jr once observed. Throughout the early Middle Ages, a crucial phase for Anglo-Continental contact, cultural connections between the English and their neighbours across the North Sea developed in a number of forms, from missionary activities to political contacts, intellectual exchanges and military confrontations, with people, books, texts, artefacts and ideas travelling back and forth. The language and culture of the Anglo-Saxons became once again part of the scholarly exchange between England and the Continent during the early modern period, when philologists from either side of the North Sea laboured on the recovery of Old English and made new connections between Old English, the other Old Germanic languages, and more distant tongues. This volume investigates these dynamic interactions between Anglo-Saxons and the Continent. Contributors break new ground in shared traditions in runic writing, legal ideas in England and Frisia, moments of transcultural and translingual contact, the influence of continental texts in early medieval England, the manuscripts which provide unique glimpses of the dissemination of texts and ideas, and early modern attempts to apply Old English to novel purposes. They thus form an appropriate tribute to the inspirational scholarship of Rolf H. Bremmer Jr in the field of Old English philology.

How were the dead remembered in early medieval Britain? Originally published in 2006, this innovative study demonstrates how perceptions of the past and the dead, and hence social identities, were constructed through mortuary practices and commemoration between c. 400–1100 AD. Drawing on archaeological evidence from across Britain, including archaeological discoveries, Howard Williams presents a fresh interpretation of the significance of portable artefacts, the body, structures, monuments and landscapes in early medieval mortuary practices. He argues that materials and spaces were used in ritual performances that served as 'technologies of remembrance', practices that created shared 'social' memories intended to link past, present and future. Through the deployment of material culture, early medieval societies were therefore selectively remembering and forgetting their ancestors and their history. Throwing light on an important aspect of medieval society, this book is essential reading for archaeologists and historians with an interest in the early medieval period.