‘WiĐ His Wyrd’ in the Old EnglishMonasteriales Indicia

Abstract

THE Monasteriales Indicia is a sign language for Anglo-Saxon Benedictine monks bound by a vow of silence. It was copied in British Library, MS Cotton Tiberius A. III, alongside with a Latin version of the Rule of St Benedict, Ælfric’s Colloquy , an Old English translation of Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis , a vernacular prose life of St Margaret and, most famously, one of the two copies of the Regularis Concordia , preceded by the drawing of King Edgar seated between St Dunstan and St Æthelwold. Friedrich Kluge, the first editor of the text, dated the manuscript around 1050, and this dating is still accepted today. 1 The text was edited and translated several times in the century since Kluge first presented it to the public in 1885. 2 No Latin source is known, although there exist similar Cistercian sign languages composed in the second half of the eleventh century. 3