The Ruin: An Old English Mnemonic?

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...

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...

Next to Beowulf, Cædmon's Hymn is probably the most famous poem in Old English, and the fact that Bede admired it heightens its intrinsic interest. The poem, brief as it is, consists of two parts. The first four lines praise God as the originator of all miracles, and the next five relate his creation of heaven and earth: Nu scylun hergan hefaenricaes uard, metudæs maecti, end his modgidanc, uerc uuldurfadur— sue he uundra gihuaes, eci dryctin, or astelidæ!5 He aerist scop eordu barnum heben til hrofe, haleg sceppend; tha middungeard, moncynnæs uard, eci dryctin, æfter tiadæ firum foldu, frea allmectig.1(Now we2 ought to praise the Guardian of the kingdom of heaven, the might of the Ruler and his deliberation, the work[s] of the Father of glory—as he, the eternal Lord, established the beginning of each of miracles. He first created for the children of earth3 heaven4 as a roof, the holy Creator; then5 afterwards the Guardian of the human race, the eternal Lord, Almighty God, prepared6 the world, the earth7 for human beings.)The conceptual content of the last five lines seems at first quite simple. God first created heaven as a roof, then the earth. Specialists in the field of Old English have been familiar with these lines for so long that we tend to take for granted the alteration that Cædmon's poem works upon its Biblical source. The first verse of Genesis states simply that in the beginning God created heaven and earth: In principio creavit Deus caelum et terram (Gn 1:1).8 In Cædmon's poem, however, the syntactic relationship between the elements of the last phrase in the sentence has been altered, and a figurative dimension has been added to the spare directness of the Biblical verse. The OE equivalents of caelum and terram, heben and middungeard/foldu, have been positioned in an explicit temporal sequence: first (ærist) God created heaven; then afterwards (tha . . . æfter) he created earth for humanity.9 And since heaven is now explicitly identified as a roof, what it covers, the earth, is implicitly a floor or foundation.10 The word foldu in l. 9a literally means “ground” as well as “earth.”11 Lori Ann Garner has observed that “the Anglo-Saxons typically did not build houses on stone foundations,” but that “secular structures, including houses, were most typically built directly on the ground.”12 Thus, following the explicit comparison heben = hrof, foldu can refer both to “the earth” ( = terram of Gn 1:1) as the tenor of the metaphor and to “the ground” ( = arida “dry land” of Gn 1:9, cf. DOE, s.v. “folde” sense 2) as the vehicle. The term foldu in l. 9a is not a simple case of synonymous variation of middungeard in l. 7a, which is a broader term that (like Latin mundus) embraces not just the “earth” but also the encircling sea and the zones between the earth and the firmament.13In Cædmon's Hymn all creation is thus a vast building shaped for human habitation. The architectural image has often been remarked and has recently been explored productively and at length by Faith Wallis.14 What has gone largely unremarked is the miraculous and paradoxical nature of the temporal sequence: first the roof, then the floor.15 Yet for Cædmon, the fact that God, the divine architect, could raise the roof before he had prepared the floor was indeed “the beginning of each of miracles” (ll. 3b–4).16Despite their apparent simplicity, these lines of Cædmon's Hymn are thus more than a direct paraphrase of Genesis 1:1. They involve both a gloss upon the Biblical text and a figurative association with the process of building a roofed structure, but with a pointed (albeit implicit) distinction between the way divine and human architects go about that process. In this paper we will draw attention to close parallels for this figure—notably in sermons by the Greek Father John Chrysostom—in order to demonstrate, not that Cædmon himself was necessarily steeped in exegetical learning when he composed the poem, but that he had become familiar with a Christian Hexaemeral and homiletic theme that other evidence suggests circulated in Latin in early Northumbria.A somewhat remote analogue has been cited from Bede's commentary on Genesis: Nam humana fragilitas cum aliquid operatur, uerbi gratia cum domum aedificamus, in principio operis materiam preparamus et post hoc principium fodimus in altum; deinde immittimus lapides in fundamentum, deinde parietes augescentibus lapidum ordinibus apponimus; sicque paulatim ad perfectionem operis propositi proficiendo peruenimus. Deus autem cuius omnipotens manus est ad explendum onus suum, non eguit mora temporum qui, sicut scriptum est, Omnia quaecumque uoluit fecit. Vnde benedictum est quia In principio creauit Deus caelum et terram, ut aperte detur intellegi quia utrumque simul ab eo factum est quamuis utrumque simul ab homine dici non possit.17(For when human frailty does anything, for instance, when we build a house, at the beginning of the job we prepare the building materials, and after this beginning we dig down into the earth; then we set stones into the foundation, and then we build up the walls with rising courses of stone; and so, progressing slowly, we come to the completion of the work that has been planned. But God, whose ability to complete his work is unlimited, he who, as it is written, has done all things whatsoever he would [Ps 113:11], had no need of a delay of time. Hence it is well said that In the beginning God created heaven and earth [Gn 1:1], in order that it may be clearly understood that he did both simultaneously, although it could not be said simultaneously in human language.)In this passage, for which no source has been identified,18 Bede compares God's creation to the construction of a house and also emphasizes the difference between our mode of construction, from the ground up, and God's swift and potent act of creation by commandment. A few pages earlier, quoting from Rufinus's translation of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones, Bede had explained that God “made heaven and earth, like one house,” but divided it into two parts, “so that the upper region would serve as a home for the angels and the lower for men.”19 Bede, however, does not make the point that the creation of the caelum preceded the creation of terra, emphasizing instead (as do most patristic authorities, as discussed further below) that God created heaven and earth simultaneously.20Closer parallels for the Cædmonian architectural paradox, with an explicit distinction between divine and human architects, do occur in patristic and early medieval Christian literature. Particularly clear examples of this tradition of Hexaemeral exegesis occur in two sermons by John Chrysostom. The first occurs in Sermon 1 of his shorter series of eight sermons on Genesis, preached at Antioch in the spring of 386: “ Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησɛν ὁ θɛὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γὴν.” Τί τοῦτο; Πρῶτον τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐποίησɛν, ɛἶτα τὴν γὴν; Πρῶτον τὸν ὄροϕον, ɛἶτα τὸ ἔδαϕος; Οὐ γὰρ ἀνάγκῃ ϕύσɛως ὑπόκɛιται, οὐδὲ ἀκολουθίᾳ τέχνης δουλɛύɛι. Καὶ γὰρ καὶ ϕύσɛως καὶ τέχνης τῶν ὄντων ἁπάντων ἡ βούλησις τοῦ θɛοῦ δημιοργὸς καὶ τɛχνίτης ἐστίν. “ Ἡ dὲ γῆ ἧν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκɛύαστος.” Τίνος ἔνɛκɛν τὸν μὲν οὐρανὸν ἀπαρτισθέντα παρήγαγɛ, τὴν δὲ γὴν κατὰ μικρὸν αὐτὸν τɛχνιτɛύɛιν ϕησὶν ὁ Μωϋσῆς; Ἵνα ἐν τῷ βɛλτίονι στοιχɛίῳ μαθὼν αὐτοῦ τὴν δύναμιν πληροϕορηθῇς ὅτι καὶ ταύτην ἐδύνατο, καθάπɛρ ἐκɛῖνον, ἀπηρτισμένην παραγαγɛῖν.21(In the beginning God made heaven and earth [Gn 1:1]. What comes first: first heaven and then earth? First the roof and then the floor? He is not subject to the necessity of nature, of course, nor confined to the process of workmanship: God's will is the creator and artificer of all things coming from nature and workmanship. Now, the earth was invisible and unfinished [Gn 1:2]. Why, on the one hand, did He produce heaven in a complete state while, on the other, Moses says He constructed earth in stages? So that you would learn His power from the superior element and thus be fully assured that He had the power to produce the latter in a finished state as He had the former.)22Chrysostom revisits this idea in the second homily of his second, longer series of sixty-seven homilies on Genesis, delivered at Antioch during the Lenten seasons of 388 and 389:23Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησɛν ὁ θɛὸς τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν. Ὂρα καὶ ὲξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ τῆς δημιουργίας τρόπου τὴν θɛίαν ϕύσιν διαλάμπουσαν, ὡς ἀπɛναντίας τῇ ἁνθρωπίνῃ συνηθɛίᾳ τὴν δημιουργίαν ποιɛῖται, πρότɛρον τὸν οὐρανὸν τɛίνας, καὶ τότɛ τὴν γῆν ὑποστορέσας, πρότɛρον τὸν ὄροϕον, καὶ τότɛ τὸν θɛμέλιον. Τίς ɛἶδɛ; τίς ἦχουσɛν; Ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ τῆς ἀνθροπίνης δημιουργίας οὐκ ἄν τοῦτο γένοιτ’ ἄν ποτɛ ὅταν δὲ ὁ Θɛὸς κɛλɛύῃ, πάντα τῷ βουλήματι αὐτοῦ ɛἴκɛι καὶ παραχωρɛῖ. Μὴ τοίνυν ἀνθρωπίνῳ λογισμῷ τὰ τοῦ Θɛοῦ ἔργα πɛριɛργαζώμɛθα, ἀλλ’ ὲκ τῶν ἔργων ὀδηγούμɛνοι, θαυμάζωμɛν τὸν τɛχνίτην. Τὰ γὰρ ἀόρατα αὐτοῦ, ϕησὶν, ἀπὸ κτίσɛως κόσμου τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμɛνα καθορᾶται.24(“In the beginning God made heaven and earth” [Gn 1:1]. Notice how the divine nature shines out of the very manner of creation, how he executes his creation in a way contrary to human procedures, first stretching out the heavens and then laying out the earth beneath, first the roof and then the foundation. Who has ever seen the like? Who has ever heard of it? No matter what human beings produce, this could never have happened—whereas when God decides, everything yields to his will and becomes possible. So don't pry too closely with human reasoning into the works of God; instead, let the works lead you to marvel at their maker. Scripture says, remember, “What the eye cannot see in him has come into view from the creation of the world and are understood through the things he has made” [Rom 1:20].)25These parallels with Cædmon's Hymn are particularly clear-cut, since their exegesis of Genesis 1:1 expresses the same enigmatic metaphor with which Cædmon embellished his poetic paraphrase of Creation. Now Cædmon was presumably illiterate, and even the most learned monks at Whitby would probably have had very little knowledge of Greek beyond the alphabet and perhaps some glossary-derived Biblical and ecclesiastical vocabulary;26 so Chrysostom's sermons may seem an unlikely influence, however striking an analogue they afford. Yet it is indeed very possible that one or both of these sermons on Genesis may have been available in Latin translation in early medieval England, and if so, Cædmon might have become familiar with Chrysostom's memorable image through sermons or other forms of pastoral instruction at Whitby. At least one of Chrysostom's homilies on Genesis—either his Sermon 3 (PG 54:592) or his Homily 9 (PG 53:78–79)—was known to Augustine of Hippo and was referred to by him in his Contra Iulianum 1.25 (PL 44:647).27 Much closer to home, and much nearer to Cædmon's time, there is also evidence that Chrysostom's homilies on Genesis were known to Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury. One of the Pentateuch glosses associated with the school of Theodore and Hadrian explicitly attributes to “Iohannes” the image of Adam as a “king,” which indeed occurs in Chrysostom's Homily 8 and Sermon 2 on Genesis, although it was also an Hexaemeral commonplace.28 It thus seems likely, if not certain, that Chrysostom's homilies on Genesis were known to Theodore and that at least one of these sermons was cited in his Canterbury seminars.29Moreover, Chrysostom's Sermon 1 on Genesis was also available in the early Middle Ages in a Latin translation that included the passage with the architectural image of Creation. This sermon was translated into Latin already by the early fifth century and circulated in the collection of thirty-eight Latin sermons (including many by or attributed to Chrysostom) that was first described by André Wilmart and is now known as the Wilmart collection.30 The Latin translation of Chrysostom's Sermon 1 on Genesis is thus sometimes referred to as Sermo Wilmart 26, De ieiuniis et Geneseos lectione. The Wilmart collection traveled widely,31 and at least parts of it were circulating in Northumbria as early as the eighth century. In Rosalind Love's view, it is likely that Bede had access to the entire collection.32Sermo Wilmart 26 is, therefore, the likeliest vehicle by which Chrysostom's exegesis of Genesis 1:1 might have been known in early medieval England during Cædmon's time. Its Latin version of the Greek passage quoted above reads as follows: Cur autem primum coelum fecit, deinde terram, ante tectum, quam solum? Vides in hoc nihil esse simile humanis artibus, nec hominum regulis uoluntatem seruari diuinam. Apud nos adminiculis et fulcimentis opus est, ibi uero uoluntas opus efficit, et praebet sermo uirtutem. Terra autem erat inuisibilis et incomposita. Quam ob causam coelum perfectum condidit, terram uero paulatim compositum esse refert Moses? Vt audiens tu quia melioribus elementis perfectum extitit opus eius, certus sis, quia et terram perfectam poterat producere, sicut et coelum.33(But why did he make heaven first, then the earth, the roof before the floor? You see in this nothing like human crafts, nor the divine will observing the rules of men. With us there is need of props and supports, but with Him the will brings about the work, and the word provides the power. But the earth was invisible and unformed [Gn 1:2]. For what reason does Moses record that He created heaven in a complete state, but the earth was constructed in stages? So that as you listen you might be sure that, since His work was finished in its superior elements, He was also capable of creating earth in a finished state, just as [He did] heaven.)A Joca monachorum dialogue that survives in a ninth-century Continental manuscript, but which may well preserve a much older tradition, adapted Chrysostom's architectural paradox as a pious riddle: “Qui [sic; read Quis] antea tectum fecit quam sol[um]? Dominus; celus [sic] antequam terram.”34 (Who made a roof before the floor? The Lord; heaven before earth.) To our knowledge this riddle does not occur in any other Joca monachorum or related dialogue,35 and the manuscript is much later than Cædmon's Hymn; yet it suffices to show how the image of Creation as a kind of divine act of reverse engineering could migrate from Hexaemeral exegesis to popular religious instruction (as indeed Chrysostom hoped material from his sermons on Genesis would trickle down even to domestics: see pp. 472–73 below). The wording of the Joca question suggests that it is based ultimately, perhaps even directly, on Sermo Wilmart 26 (compare Chrysostom's phrase ante tectum quam solum). And like Chrysostom, the riddle-master assumed that the Biblical phrase “heaven and earth” implies a temporal sequence and was untroubled by its potential contradiction of the doctrine of the simultaneity of Creation.This image of Creation as an architectural paradox was not unique to Chrysostom but had a wider currency. Frank Egleston Robbins has noted that the image of God as an all-powerful architect created the roof before the floor a Hexaemeral in Greek In to Chrysostom, it is by of Antioch in his he the process of creation to his καὶ τὸ τῶν τὴν τῶν καὶ καὶ τὸ αὐτοῦ γὰρ καὶ καὶ τὴν τὸν θɛοῦ δὲ τὸ ἐν μὲν οὐκ ὄντων τὰ καὶ τὰ γὰρ καὶ ὁ τὴν τοῦ “ Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησɛν ὁ θɛὸς τὸν τὸν δὲ καὶ δὲ τὴν τῶν καὶ τὸ τὸν οὐρανὸν τοῦ θɛοῦ τὰ τῇ as for of the creation by from beneath, with what is on earth, it is human and quite in to For is to build from the ground and cannot on the roof in he has the foundation. But what God is to do is by that he first things out of the just as he For things with are possible with God For this reason the by of the creation of the heaven, which was like a roof, and he the beginning God made [Gn 1:1]. is to that through the heaven was as we have just What he “earth” is to a and foundation. is the of the is the heaven created by God was like a the with the to Chrysostom his architectural image from passage later in the in of of The in is as there is also evidence that at least the Genesis of his commentary was in the Canterbury and also in Theodore of and the evidence for the Canterbury as follows: The striking about many of these parallels is that, with few the are in no other patristic and in the few the other patristic source in question is in which a of . . . these can be the of evidence suggests that the had access to in at least that of it to Genesis, or some as yet source to which by the Canterbury parallels cited by and have recently been by the of by of the which were into the Canterbury glosses might indeed well be of could not any other source for and they have no in the by however, are to a source to or are in the or In of the Canterbury glosses on is more the Latin could least in have the or the instead of is as to the Canterbury did in fact have access to the Genesis commentary of but in view of the unique it does seem more likely than passage in reads as follows: τὸν ɛἶτα τὸν ὄροϕον, ɛἶτα τὸ γὰρ ἀνάγκῃ ϕύσɛως οὐδὲ ἀκολουθίᾳ τέχνης δουλɛύɛι. τὸν δὲ οὐρανὸν τὸν καὶ καὶ καὶ ὁ θɛὸς ὡς it is why he first created heaven, then the earth, first the roof, then the But there is no for God is not subject to the of nature and is not a to the sequence of a God created heaven as it and for all time, just as if were building a little house with the of a was this Hexaemeral theme confined to Greek from the Latin version of Chrysostom's Sermon 1 on Genesis and the Joca monachorum dialogue that we have Robbins to a Latin the of Deus in in fecit et in ut in et autem in in autem materiam in in the first beginning of all miracles, and in the first established the and through his when in his and with he all and into a with a and that he made out of he and in and all things in their were into one like a of we have he some and in a of structure, and other been he divided into he divided unformed matter into many And so, one and the same suggests was up into a unformed he divided this matter into many The world was established in the unformed a and and its was in when the was seen to be and in by a most of the this passage is and to to the created as an and an that the of the world was in the can also had been or The of the thus into So Robbins seems in this passage to the Greek Hexaemeral tradition he For however, the or is not the but the of unformed matter that God created first God then created from this the of the into the of heaven before the lower one of the the construction of heaven and earth with the doctrine of the simultaneity of Creation by that all created things that were the were made at the same For Bede, the doctrine of simultaneity how he the metaphor of Creation as a miraculous kind of it was miraculous not God the human sequence of laying the before the roof, but God built the and roof at the same For Chrysostom, did not the doctrine of the sequence caelum et terram in Genesis was to be literally as that God created heaven before the earth, and he that temporal sequence as an architectural and engineering paradox, as by Chrysostom, is by and very by Yet all these Creation to the building of a house, and all that God's construction was the we have just the of the architectural metaphor and paradox by does not as close a for Cædmon's Hymn as does its by Chrysostom. however, a for in the OE poem when he the above passage by that the first beginning of all miracles” [sic] Deus which is very close indeed to Cædmon's he, the eternal Lord, established the beginning of each of miracles” he uundra gihuaes, eci dryctin, or Now the Cædmon, been composed probably in the or early The of are but to the most its probably at Canterbury during also at during before to he composed the The school of is the likely might have become familiar with the of we familiar with the Hexaemeral theme of the miraculous of a no more than would be that he learned it from Chrysostom's Genesis also at Canterbury. is, however, no evidence for the of the in England to the although there is also no reason to that it could not have been known there seems to have adapted his on Creation as the of all from an the De the shorter and probably of which was composed before For says very the same in very the same established the foundation, as it of all and Creation as the of all miracles, and both the image of a fundamentum, although the De does not this architectural image as the like does go on to that God created all things simultaneously, but he the of all miracles” as the creation of all things from the De that the the of all miracles” as a of God's act of Creation was in Latin of the of Genesis already by Cædmon's time, and the that this was also with the architectural paradox of the world first been by heaven in a Latin composed not very long after Cædmon's time, by an may have been in England during Cædmon's time. The De was known to Bede, but the evidence is and there is no manuscript evidence for its in England before the The De was probably known to whose on God as in his In to both Bede and the De all we can is that the between the by Cædmon he, the eternal Lord, established the beginning of each of established the foundation, as it of all and the first beginning of all seems too striking to be so if Cædmon's does not the De then both Cædmon some Whitby religious and probably on some these how the at could have from Hexaemeral tradition the metaphor of God as a divine architect whose are so that he was to raise the roof of heaven before he the floor or of the earth, as well as an of the of Creation as the of all The passage from Sermo Wilmart 26 is the so indeed the most likely possible Cædmon's architectural image of God's presumably Cædmon before his or at any before his as religious and associated with cannot have been very and him a for the religious have to him out from the of the and to Bede, it was Cædmon's miraculous and the poem that it Yet even if Cædmon did some kind of or it is to that in Bede's the to Cædmon does not to him the content of his poem, its Cædmon would presumably have been made of this Hexaemeral tradition in a more through a sermon preached at Whitby or through some other mode of Christian the

Reviewing the unprecedented volume of medical material from early medieval England that survives primarily in Anglo-Norman translations of the twelfth century and Latin manuscripts of English origin, Monica Green remarks that 'were it not for certain key elements suggesting southern Italian origin (e.g.unique elements of materia medica with Arabic names and preparations such as syrups), it would be nearly impossible to tell, on the basis of the manuscript evidence, that "Salerno" was not on the Thames!' 1 Green's article is primarily concerned with the survival of Latin texts belonging to the early Salernitan corpus of the long twelfth century and their reception in Anglo-Norman England, as documented by Tony Hunt and Ruth Dean, but does not fail to mention the older vernacular corpus of Old English medical compilations, which she describes as 'a truly unique phenomenon ' . 2 This study is primarily concerned with the textual evidence in Latin and Old English for the understanding of human physiology in early medieval England from the period before Monica Green's long twelfth century.While the pre-Norman period is often held to end in the year 1066, the year 1100 serves more globally as an approximate milestone in the history of medicine.The eleventh century saw the production and dissemination of a new textual tradition of medicine translated from Arabic by Constantinus Africanus, heavily associated with the famed medical school at Salerno.This watershed gave rise to the terms 'Pre-Salernitan' and 'Salernitan' , respectively, to refer to early medieval medicine before and after 1100.Two useful points of contrast exist between the pre-Salernitan and Salernitan periods.The first is that the majority of those physicians engaging with scholarly medical texts in the earlier period were monastically educated: with the exception of Salerno, the university as an institution did not exist until the late eleventh century, and 1 Green, 'Salerno on the Thames' , p. 222. 2 Green, 'Salerno on the Thames' , p. 220.

The Phoenix and the Interlingual Dimensions of Early English Literary Culture

A Quintilian Anniversary and Its Meaning

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.

Meanings of Water in Early Medieval England. Edited by Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark. Studies in the Early Middle Ages, volume 47. Turnhout: Brepols, 2021. 289 pp. €80.00 hardcover. - Volume 91 Issue 3

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.

A Corpus of Early Medieval Inscribed Stones and Stone Sculpture in Wales. Volume II: South-West Wales, by Nancy Edwards. ( Cardiff: U. of Wales P., 2007; pp. 568. £70).<br></br>
\nThis splendid volume, one of three planned to cover the whole of Wales, is an important work of scholarship which gives historians, archaeologists, linguists and epigraphers access to one of the most important collections of early medieval sculpture in Europe. This Welsh material is of fundamental importance to our understanding of the development of the Insular Celtic languages, at a period from the fifth to seventh centuries when the Brittonic (Welsh) and Goidelic (Gaelic) branches were undergoing rapid fission. The stones also represent the major body of artefactual evidence for the early medieval period in Wales, given the continuing difficulty in discovering archaeological sites of the period. This volume is a truly interdisciplinary study, combining art historical, archaeological and linguistic approaches. Although based on the format of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture, the volume pays special attention to the language of the inscriptions (with a chapter by Patrick Sims-Williams), and their landscape context.
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\nA series of eleven introductory chapters detail the historical, archaeological and geological background, followed by a series on aspects of the inscribed stones and sculpture, the inscriptions, and finally a summarising chapter on the development of stone-carving in Wales. These chapters are all extremely useful, giving sound analyses of the material, in much greater depth than in the Anglo-Saxon Corpus. For this reviewer, highlights included: a discussion of the original locations of the early inscribed stones, most of which can be shown to be associated with churches, in contrast to north Wales, and thus often provide the earliest evidence for these sites; illustration that the roman-letter inscriptions are not derived from Roman lapidary capitals and later Continental uncial book-hand, but from the general late-Roman cursive tradition and a range of lesser scripts; the definitive decoupling of the famous Voteporix stone from Gildas’ tyrant Vorptipor; and the discussion of the location of the cross-carved stones which are shown to be associated with parish churches rather than important monasteries, and demonstrate the early medieval origins of the parish system in this area.
\n<br></br>
\nHowever, the meat of the volume lies in the catalogue of 216 monuments. These are well presented, with excellent photographs of all the decorated faces, often taken using modern lighting techniques. There are outline drawings of all the inscriptions, along with a selection of the decorated sculpture. The entries on each stone are of the highest quality, with comprehensive critical discussion of any antiquarian accounts (often important in preserving lost information), the language and epigraphy of the inscriptions, and the decorative elements. The production of the volume cannot be faulted, though one might have expected some colour illustrations. The eight pages of comparative scale drawings of a large number of the stones, following the model of the Scottish Royal Commission's corpus of the West Highland sculpture, are particularly useful. The entries are organised by county and parish but, unless one is familiar with the location of every Welsh parish (these are not shown on any map), it is difficult to locate individual stones on the maps. It might have been better to have used the catalogue numbers on the location maps, and also on the page headers for ease of cross-referencing. Given the current debate on the best means of recording and presenting these complex three-dimensional monuments, the one surprising omission is any discussion of the recording methods employed. It is not clear whether the outline drawings of the inscriptions were prepared independently or under supervision, why only some of the other stones were drawn, or why the fully shaded drawings used by the Scottish Royal Commission were not employed. Cost was no doubt a major factor in these decisions, but some acknowledgment that there are alternatives, and that these can affect the interpretation of the monument, would have been welcome.
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\nThe difficulties of carrying out this work cannot be overestimated. Most of the monuments are in remote rural locations, often in locked or disused churches, some requiring complicated negotiations to gain access, as well as co-ordination of access between the geologists, photographers and illustrators. Many months of fieldwork were required, and Dr Edwards is to be commended for her dedication to this project. The Board of Celtic Studies, the National Museum of Wales, and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales are to be congratulated on supporting this venture. Overall, this volume is an outstanding achievement and an essential work of scholarship and reference for anyone with an interest in early medieval Britain.

The food supply of the temperate lands of early-medieval western Europe, and the ways in which its peoples dealt with the central problem of feeding themselves, has been subjected to a variety of interpretations in recent years.1 Vern Bullough and Cameron Campbell's study of the medieval diet and female longevity concluded that early-medieval women suffered from iron deficiencies triggered jointly by poor nutrition and frequent childbearing and that these deficiencies contributed substantially to their average early age of death.2 Ann Hagen's overview of AngloSaxon patterns of food production and consumption suggested that most of the early English population routinely lived at marginally adequate or outright substandard levels of nutrition.3 Similar conclusions were reached by Renee Doehaerd in her study of the early-medieval economy.4 Michel Rouche, on the other hand, asserted that the typical Carolingian-including the peasants-had access to a monotonous, but abundant, supply of foodstuffs and may have consumed an average of 6,000-9,000 calories per day.5 Richard Hodges likewise decided that Anglo-Saxon peasants were reasonably well fed, based on the heavy food rents

Members of the Society of Jesus, as didacticians (and humanists), were aware of the importance of the memoria for the delivery of speech. For this reason, they did not omit this opus oratoris in rhetorical studies intended for their students. An example of this is the textbook De arte rhetorica libri tres ex Aristotele, Cicerone, et Quintiliano praecipue deprompti by the Portuguese Jesuit Cipriano de Soarez (1524–1593). The aim of the research was to trace the influence of Rhetorica ad Herennium, De oratore by Marcus Tulius Cicero and Institutio oratoria by Marcus Fabius Quintilian on the rhetorical theory presented by Soarez concerning ars memorativa. An attempt was also made to determine what the teaching of rhetoric looked like in Jesuit colleges, which was helped by the Ratio studiorum treatise (1599). In the course of comparative analysis, it was found that the Portuguese teacher mainly drew on Marcus Fabius Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria.  

<i>The Material Fall of Roman Britain, 300–525 CE</i> By Robin Fleming. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2021. Pp. 303. $45. ISBN 978-0-8122-5244-6 (cloth).

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. …

Reviewed by: The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland by Lindy Brady Donato Sitaro (bio) Lindy Brady, The origin legends of early medieval Britain and Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN 9781009225618 (hardback), 9781009225670 (ebook). x + 272 pages. $99.00. Origin myths and legends are prominent features of early medieval writings and mentalities. They became a popular genre, an ever-growing corpus of traditions and pseudo-histories, and eventually a late-antique/early medieval 'scholarly preoccupation', as underlined by Brady & Wadden in the foreword to their edited volume Origin legends in early medieval Western Europe (2022: 4). Despite not being the first recorded origines gentium, the Insular origin myths stand out as precious hermeneutic objects for scholars of early medieval culture, as part of a genre 'that has shaped national identity and collective history from the early medieval period to the present day', as we read in the synopsis. The variety of their approach and their richness in contents and traditions make the British, Irish, Pictish, and Anglo-Saxon origin narratives a perfect subject for a dedicated volume. Discussing these apparently divergent narratives in comparative terms was not an easy task, but Brady bravely attempts it in a relatively compact and easily readable book. Divided into five main chapters, the book is prefaced by a 27-page introductory section, eloquently titled 'The anachronism of nationalism', where modern scholarly debate around the contested concepts of ethnicity, post-Roman identities, and early medieval writers' agendas is summarized and discussed. Brady's approach consciously differs from the two major historiographical standpoints on ethnic identities, as it neither gives excessive weight to the influence of Classical ethnography (as Goffart did), [End Page 156] nor does it look too far forward by extending the effects of enduring ethnic identities from the Migration Period deep into the Middle Ages (as in certain readings by Wolfram and Pohl). Brady decides to look 'sideways' (21) to explore the textual and conceptual interrelations between the origin legends of the British Isles without attempting to construct from the texts a straightforward idea of the development of ethnic identities. She looks at the development of origin stories within and among the texts surveyed, more than outside and beyond them. For this reason, the interpretative keywords for Brady's analysis of the sources are 'discourse' and 'development' (3). Her assessment that the concepts enshrined in early medieval origin narratives were communicating and were part of a shared intellectual milieu is repeated throughout the introduction and beyond (1, 4, 16, 21, 63, 227, 229). This assumption finds support in the first chapter through a survey of the textual history of the Insular works containing origin stories: Gildas's De excidio, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica, the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, and the later Irish Lebor Bretnach and Lebor gabála Érenn. While the first two works are referred to in cursory fashion as embryonic nuclei of traditions that would develop later, the latter three pseudo-histories are discussed in depth throughout the book. The Historia Brittonum is given a justified pre-eminence as 'a valuable microcosm of the intellectual connections which form the focus of the study' (16). After the presentation of the sources, the proper narratological analysis begins: chapters 2, 3, and 4 focus on exile, kin-slaying, and intermarriage and incest, respectively. Having established the interrelated nature of the Insular writings in chapter 1, Brady is able to conduct a comparative survey of shared concepts and their development within three concentric levels of investigation corresponding to the three-part structure of these chapters: (i) first she explores the wider conceptual resonance of the motif in literature, usually through comparison with biblical and classical archetypes; (ii) then she outlines the recurrence of historical episodes involving the motif (cases of exiles or kin-slayers in the early medieval Insular context); and finally (iii) she considers the meaning of the motif within the Insular origin narratives. The second part of these themed chapters, the attempt to show 'resonances of these topics in [historical] early insular society' (138), could have been the trickiest. However, Brady addresses the eventual collision between literary motifs and the 'hard facts' drawn from legal and historical records through...