De Virginitate Research Articles

Jerome on Virginity. A commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) by Neil Adkin

Jerome on Virginity. A commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) by Neil Adkin. Cambridge: Francis Cairns 2003. XXXV, 458 S. (ARCA. Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs. 42.) 75 £.

Review: Jerome on Virginity. A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22)

Jerome on Virginity. A Commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22) Neil Adkin Pp. xxxvi + 458 (ARCA: Classical and Medieval Texts, Papers and Monographs, 42.)Cambridge Francis Cairns 2003 0 905205 38 3 £75/$120

An Analysis of Ephrem the Syrian's Views on the Temptation of Christ as Exemplified in His Hymn De Virginitate XII

Ephrem the Syrian's twelfth hymn in the cycle De Virginitate is translated and analysed. This hymn describes the temptation of Christ by Satan as a contest in which Satan tried to humiliate Christ, but was defeated and humiliated himself. By carefully constructing polarities between Satan and Christ and between Satan and Adam, Ephrem draws the reader's attention to a soteriological polarity that is formed between Christ and Adam. It is concluded that Ephrem's main concern was to highlight the soteriological role of Christ for his audience through this particular explication of the text of Matthew 4.

The image of adornment in Aldhelm’s De virginitate: Cyprian and his influence

An examination of the image of adornment in Aldhelm’s De virginitate, detailing the influence of Cyprian, an important transmitter of patristic thinking on the subject. Aldhelm transforms the image from a purely physical idea to a spiritual one, seeing it as a symbol of inner virginity.

Contrast and Contrivance in Ephrem the Syrian's Hymn De Virginitate XLIV

This paper is an attempt to present a literary, ideological and social-critical analysis of Ephrem the Syrian's hymn De Virginitate XLIV. It seems that the various antitheses within the hymn serve as the infrastructure of a number of polarities. The most important of these is the polarity between the Jews and Christians. The purpose of the hymn therefore seems to have been to constitute an invective against the Jewish contemporaries of the author.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury’s social theology: the barbaric heroic ideal christianised

Aldhelm’s De virginitate was the major product of his scholarly energies. In it Aldhelm, in a fixation on virginity as the means of living on earth the angelic life, moved beyond simple sexual rigorism to a radical exaltation of the preservation of physical virginity through the advocacy of both castration and suicide. It is further argued that the prime motivating factor in Aldhelm’s doing so was his desire to establish, for his Anglo-Saxon audience, a new paradigm of a christianised heroic ideal for both male and female, a way of living a truly christian life in terms commensurate with the violent norms of the barbaric heroic code.

The transmission of the ‘Digby’ corpus of bilingual glosses to Aldhelm'sProsa de virginitate

Aldhelm of Malmesbury'sProsa de virginitate(hereafterPdv) can be called one of the most enduring works of Anglo-Saxon scholarship. Immensely influential in Aldhelm's lifetime, the text continued to be popular in England and on the Continent until Viking invasions put an end to native learning in the last half of the ninth century. Yet by the 920s interest in Aldhelm's prose treatise had revived, inaugurating a new movement in ‘hermeneutic’ Latin that lasted, in some centres, beyond the turn of the twelfth century. Fourteen English manuscripts ofPdvdocument the renewed interest in Aldhelm's work. Most of these manuscripts are heavily glossed, and, indeed, some preserve about 25,000 bilingual annotations ranging from single letters or symbols to entire paragraphs copied verbatim from Isidore'sEtymologiae. The density of glossing is astounding, when contrasted with the length ofPdv, about 20,000 words.

Before History, Before Difference: Bodies, Metaphor, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon England

Before History, Before Difference: Bodies, Metaphor, and the Church in Anglo-Saxon England Clare A. Lees (bio) and Gillian R. Overing (bio) . . . she was thrust—despoiled of her own clothes, to the infamous disgrace of her family—into the loathsome harlotry of a brothel, where the detestable wantonness of prostitutes runs wild and the shameless impudence of whores is disgustingly flaunted, nevertheless, walled about by the shining splendour of a mighty light, she gazed on angelic faces and was covered with her Lord’s robes. —Agnes, Aldhelm’s prose De Virginitate They dragged then the maiden to the harlot’s house, but she at once met there an angel of God shining, such that no man was able to look on her or touch her because of that mighty light, for that house all shone like the sun in day, and the more eagerly they gazed on her, the more their eyes were dazzled. —Agnes, Ælfric, Lives of Saints Few cultural historians, and even fewer cultural theorists, would place the study of Anglo-Saxon England at the heart of contemporary debates about the role of history within cultural studies. Indeed, Anglo-Saxon England has been characterized as different from other periods of English history in that it is most frequently located “before history.” Narratives of Western history often elide the early medieval period; its history, compressed beyond recognition or simply omitted, is downplayed in favor of that of Greek and Roman worlds and that of the more modern West, beginning with the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, historians recognize the emergence of the individual (and the heretic), as well as familiar clerical and secular institutions (Gregorian reforms, Lateran councils, clerical celibacy, marriage, the universities, towns, a money economy). The medieval world starts to resemble, however precariously, the modern. Although much work has recently loosened the hold of this master paradigm on the analysis and writing of medieval history after the Anglo-Saxon period,1 the period itself remains emphatically pre-historical—at the origin, though not at the beginning.2 Whether from simple ignorance of this earlier period or for reasons largely unconscious and/or disciplinary, debates in medieval studies on the nature of subjectivity and identity, gender, the body, and sexuality, representation and power continue to operate from, or are conditioned by, the premisses of this master paradigm.3 Cultural history before the twelfth century is thus alienated, offering a history different [End Page 315] from later periods, yet one whose difference goes unrecognized and uncontested. The continuing processes of differentiation that construct the Anglo-Saxon period can be seen in a variety of contexts, whether in terms of origins (and their connections to European and North American nationalism), periodization (that is, not post-Conquest England), social formations (tribal to civil state), language (not Latin, not Middle English), religion (pagans and/or Christians), gender (the so-called “golden age” of Anglo-Saxon women), or sexuality (no sex please, we’re Anglo-Saxon).4 From the more conventional standpoint of a developmental model of history, Anglo-Saxon England is originary—inescapably different from and often irrelevant to subsequent medieval periods. Commonly held distinctions for periodization (to which we do not necessarily subscribe) are that the Anglo-Saxon period traditionally ends around 1066: excluding the problem of when to locate the “early medieval,” the medieval period itself usually extends either to 1400 or 1500, depending on one’s views on when “high medieval” begins and ends, and on where and when one locates the Renaissance; the newer term, “Early Modern” can encompass late medieval through to the late seventeenth century and beyond. The Anglo-Saxonist working within the field might find these continually asserted and often commutable distinctions as puzzling and arbitrary as the Modernist. What such periodic gradations do elucidate, however, is an ongoing process of dependent differentiation, where one period defines itself against another, and where each preceding period is necessarily constructed as “pre-historical.” Definition by means of difference, therefore, is not limited to the Anglo-Saxon period. The long view, moreover, elucidates a further analogy: that of the larger processes by which history constructs difference and difference is constructed historically to those...

Aldhelm’s De virginitate—patristic pastiche or innovative exposition?

Aldhelm’s De virginitate exists within a network of writings focused on the eulogisation of a very central christian ideal, virginitas. Initially, it will be argued that Aldhelm is drawing on the works of the Greek and Latin Fathers. This will be followed by a discussion on the three states of perfection. Finally, there is an exploration of Aldhelm’s concept of virginity. It will be argued that Aldhelm’s ideal is as much a reflection of the contemporary situation as an indication of his indebtedness to a patristic tradition.

Drypoint Glossing in a Tenth-Century Manuscript of Aldhelm's Prose Treatise on Virginity

Aldhelm of Malmesbury (ca. 640–709/710) conceived and practiced an idiosyncratic style of Latin prose called “hermeneutic,” which was characterized mainly by lexical peculiarities: neologisms, graecisms, archaisms, poeticisms, distributive numerals, and other varieties of contrived or recherché diction. The principal model of the hermeneutic prose style was, of course, Aldhelm's treatise on virginity, theProsa de virginitate(hereafterPdv). Aldhelm probably wrote the work in the 670s. Partly — if not mainly — because of this influential treatise, hermeneutic Latin became a vogue in seventh- and eighth-century England, and practitioners of it flourished on the continent, too. Alas, ninth-century Viking incursions put an end not only to hermeneutic latinity but also to native literature. Not until the 920s would interest in hermeneutic Latin be renewed, and after a few more decades Aldhelm's prose work became one of the most intensively studied books in Anglo-Saxon England. In fact, the complexity of Aldhelm's prose led to copious glossing.

Anglo-Saxon Women and the Church: Sharing a Common Fate

The conversionary dynamic - more laws for times like these some special irregularities in - Theodore's Penitnential and the case of Saint Aethelthryth Aldhelm's De Virginitate - Soldiers of Christ and Brides of the Lamb confessors and spiritual mentors - hagiographic ideals and the Boniface circle the advice of women and Eddius's Life of Wilfrid a beautiful friendship ruined - Bede's revisionist writing of Aeffled in the Life Cuthbert' queen conversters and the conversion of the queen - Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the royal marriage rewriting female lives - Hild of Whitby and monastic women in Bede's Ecclesiastical History Rudolph of Fulda's Life of Leobba - an elegy for the double monsatery.

The continuance of Aldhelm Studies in Post-Conquest England and Glosses to the Prosa de Virginitate in Hereford, Cath. Lib. MS. P.I.17

Aldhelm de Malmesbury (640-710) fait partie des hommes de lettres les plus influents de l'Angleterre anglo-saxonne. Sa Prosa de Virginitate, un traite theorique sur la virginite, fourmille de figures rhetoriques complexes et a engendre de nombreux imitateurs. Ainsi, les frequentes gloses attestent de la lecture et de l'etude intensives du manuscrit; elles sont d'ordre lexical, morphologique, verbal. Le manuscrit Hereford P.I.17 montre que l'etude du traite d'Aldhelm s'est largement poursuivie aux X e et XI e siecles a Canterbury et Winchester; elle s'est etendue a Abingdon durant les XII e et XIII e siecles

Tertullian in Jerome (Epist. 22,37, 1f.)1

In this short passage of the Libellus de virginitate servanda (epist. 22) Jerome incorporates a number of striking formulations from Tertullian's De oratione and De corona. The influence of Ambrose's De virginibus would also seem to be discernible. Jerome systematically enhances the stylistic finesse of the material he borrows. At the same time its inclusion also entails inconcinnities.

A Rediscovered Illuminated Manuscript of St. Ildefonsus's De Virginitate Beatae Mariae in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid

In the fall of 1978 a lost illuminated manuscript of St. Ildefonsus's De Virginitate Beatae Mariae, once belonging to the Colección Lázaro Galdeano, was rediscovered in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid. Its miniatures are among the few surviving examples of Late Romanesque illumination in Spain, and a comparison of their style with miniatures in a Beatus Apocalypse Commentary manuscript (New York, Morgan Library, M. 429) completed in 1220 permits a dating of the codex to the early 13th century. Further comparisons with a contemporary illuminated version of the De Virginitate treatise strongly suggest a Toledan provenance. The miniatures illustrate episodes in the life of Ildefonsus, some based upon passages from the text of the treatise and others deriving from a "vita" attributed to an 8th-century Toledan bishop. The strong biographical emphasis of these scenes differs from earlier illuminated copies of the treatise such as the Parma Ildefonsus. All of the miniatures in the rediscovered De Virginitate involve the act of speaking or dialogue, and are examples of the eloquence frequently mentioned by Ildefonsus's medieval biographers. Further, contemporary interest in the author may have been inspired by the anti-heretical thrust of the De Virginitate text and its reflection of Christian attitudes toward Islam in the 12th and 13th centuries.

ÆLFRIC'S DE VIRGINITATE , lines 35–54

Journal Article ÆLFRIC'S DE VIRGINITATE , lines 35–54 Get access MARY CLAYTON MARY CLAYTON University CollegeDublin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 32, Issue 1, March 1985, Pages 8–10, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/32-1-8 Published: 01 March 1985

The Uses of Association: Hands and Feasts in Beowulf

The Beowulf Poet's extraordinary facility in using a vast and diverse word-hoard has long excited students of the poem. Among the critical studies, discussions of vocabulary rank high in number, and almost every conceivable approach to the subject has been investigated either in part or with a high degree of thoroughness. Single words, such as ealuscerwen, and groups of related words, such as rime-words, kennings, and words of Christian content or reference, have received close attention, as well as larger lexical patterns, such as variation and the formulaic texture, while further studies have compared the vocabulary with that of other Old English poems or Nordic literatures. Aside from purely lexicographical or etymological inquiries, there are three perspectives to which these many discussions generally belong: 1) descriptive: usually statistical observations about the number of compounds relative to simplices or of formulas relative to the whole vocabulary of the poem, or a comparison of the frequency of certain lexical types with other poems, or a classification of the habits of word-formation; 2) figurative and appellative: the types of verbal figures and their analogues elsewhere in Old English and Old Norse; and 3) usage: the use of words in particular contexts or for specific effects, and the structural use of synonymic substitution and variation. The first emphasis is important because it reveals the composition and its formative strata of the poem's total vocabulary, and also the lexical relationships with other poetry or poetic traditions. The second serves to isolate a lexical stratum which is by nature exclusively poetic and to observe how much of this stratum is probably original and how much traditional. But it is the third perspective which is interested most essentially in the poet, since here the attempt is made to discern the many ways by which he has used language significantly to dramatize, emphasize, elucidate, intimate, and so on. Much that has been written in this category has concerned itself with the larger patterns of variation as a characterizing, describing, or structural device, rather than with smaller, more confined, strokes of verbal association and verbal play. A well-known instance of the latter is the epithet for Grendel, healoegn (142) which, in its context, wherein a bona fide hall-thane anxiously seeks out a hiding place as protection against the intruder, may with complete justification be termed ironic, and the same thing may be said of a similar appellation used later for both Grendel and Beowulf, renweardas (770), There are also hints here and there that the poet may have been influenced by learned Latin figures. Many years ago Albert Cook compared flod blode weol (1422; Exodus 463, flod blod gewod) to Aldhelm's fluenta cruenta (De Virginitate, 2600), and more recently H. D. Meritt called attention to the similarity between Hrothgar's warning that in death “eagena bearhtm / forsiteo ond forsworces” (1766b-67a) and Aldhelm's “ferreus leti somnus palpebrarum conuolatus non tricaverit” (De Virg. Prose, 321.7, ed. Ewald). It is in the smaller strokes, I think, that the poet's acumen and craft are most incisively contained, and it is to some of these that the present discussion is devoted.

Notes on Cyprian's De habitu virginum, Its Source and Influence

The chief purpose of this paper is to discuss the influence which the De habitu virginum of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage in the middle of the third century, may have exerted upon the De virginitate of Aldhelm, the earliest outstanding writer of seventh-century England. Cyprian himself was strongly influenced by Tertullian, as Sister Angela Elizabeth Keenan thoroughly demonstrated in her doctoral dissertation. Incidentally, Sister Angela Elizabeth refers to Aldhelm's quoting from chapter five of De habitu virginum. This reference led me to find out whether there might be other instances of Cyprian's influence on the De virginitate.

The Text of the De Virginitate of Athanasius

The edition of the “De Virginitate” of Athanasius by Eduard von der Goltz (Texte und Untersuchungen xxix, 1905) is one of the most important contributions made in modern times to the knowledge of the text of Athanasius, because of its full discussion of the variant readings of the manuscripts. The work, however, was handicapped by incomplete knowledge of the Patmos MS. (P), which von der Goltz regarded as the best, and by almost complete ignorance of the two Vatopedi MSS. quoted by him under the symbols W1 and W2, but in the present article designated A and K, since that nomenclature was adopted in the first article on their contents in the Journal of Theological Studies, vol. v, 1903, pp. 108 ff.A visit to Athos and Patmos in 1925 has made it possible to build a little further on von der Goltz's foundation, and to correct some of the errors inevitable to the conditions under which he worked. We shall here give:(I) A fuller account of P.(II) A list of corrections to be made in von der Goltz's collation of P.(III) A collation, with von der Goltz's edition, of the text of the two Vatopedi MSS. A and K, and of a third MS. in the same library, which we call Q.(IV) Some discussion of the general problem of the text of the “De Virginitate.”

Remarks on the Corpus Glossary

In the Introduction to his Old English Glosses, published in 1900, the late Professor Napier asserted that Aldhelm glosses are to be found in the Corpus Glossary. He did not attempt any elaborate argument, but contented himself with giving a list of sixty-four instances in which the lemmata of the Corpus Glossary (none of the words, it is important to remark, being in the normal dictionary form, but all in inflexional forms differing from this) coincide entirely (i.e., including the inflexions) with words occurring in the text of the De Virginitate. Of these lemmata, twenty-three occur also in the Epinal and Erfurt Glossaries, and must therefore have existed in the common archetype of the three collections. Napier's conclusion was that the compiler of the archetype had before him one Aldhelm glossary, and that the author of the Corpus Glossary, who rearranged the material of the archetype and made extensive additions, had among his sources another and an independent glossary.