English Martyrology Research Articles

WONDER and AWE in the Old English Martyrology: Expression, Feeling Norms and Narrative Motifs

ABSTRACT Following recent research on the conceptualisation and expression of amazement and on cognitive models for wonder and awe, this paper examines these two emotional responses in the Old English Martyrology (OEM). Using different Old English lexical resources, and a bilingual edition of the OEM this paper analyses these two aesthetic emotions with the aim of determining what role they played in the emotional community where this text was composed. Additional aims include establishing whether there is a secular dimension to these emotions and whether it is censored in this text. This research argues that, while the author of the OEM does employ the terms in these two lexical domains in instances of emotional education, the text also contains examples where these emotional experiences are more consistent with how they are described in contemporary aesthetic emotion models, unlike other Old English hagiographical writings, where these emotions are fundamentally religious and spiritual responses.

The Inflection of Latin Feminine Proper Names in the Old English Martyrology

This paper focuses on the inflections of Latin feminine names in Old English. Whereas most Latin loanwords are perfectly integrated and behave like Old English words as far as their morphology is concerned, like scientific loans, names can take inflectional endings from both Latin and Old English. Ruiz Narbona (2023) has shown that, in the case of masculine names, the distribution of both types of inflections followed certain clear patterns. Following the model of that study, the analysis of the 125 tokens from the Old English Martyrology shows that certain rules can also be established in the case of feminine names. In general terms, the inflections of these names are modelled after Old English weak n-stems, although nominative inflections are invariably Latin. The case with the more widespread variation is the genitive, where both Old English and Latin inflections are consistently used. The latter, however, are heavily restricted to introductory sections and function solely as post-modifiers.

The inflection of Latin masculine proper names inThe Old English Martyrology

AbstractThis paper focuses on the inflectional morphology of Latin masculine proper names in Old English. Most common Latin loans are perfectly integrated into the Old English system. Latin proper names, however, like late scholarly loans, show both Latin and Old English inflectional endings in an apparently chaotic distribution. By analysing a selection of 833 tokens fromThe Old English Martyrology, this paper shows that despite variation, a clear pattern resulting from a combination of the Latin and Old English systems can be detected. While the inflectional endings of one language dominate in some cases, e.g. Latin in the nominative and Old English in the dative, other inflections, e.g. the genitive thematic vowel + ‑s,result from a combination of both languages based on phonetic or spelling similarities. The result is a mixed paradigm predominantly modelled after Old Englisha-stem nouns.

Liturgy and Learning: The Encyclopaedic Function of the Old English Martyrology

This article examines the broad, encyclopaedic ambit of the scholarly information contained in the ninth-century Old English Martyrology. Martyrologies generally serve as para-liturgical resources outlining the contours of the liturgical year and the biographies of the saints commemorated throughout its course. However, the Old English Martyrology, the earliest European example of a vernacular, prose martyrology, adapts the genre into a more multivalent, scholarly handbook that instructs and informs its users—generally, practitioners of the liturgy—in a variety of topics. Subjects covered in the text include geography, language, hagiography, temporal reckoning, computus, astronomy, cosmology, meteorology, science, liturgy, and learning of a general Christian nature pertaining to the saints and the liturgical year. The present volume considers the impact of liturgy upon various facets of medieval intellectual, cultural, religious, political, and social life. The article at hand considers how the liturgical year is used as the framework around which instruction, edification, and general ecclesiastical learning might be imparted. While liturgical texts generally constitute formulae to be enacted by practitioners, para-liturgical resources provide background information that is germane to the liturgy, the liturgical year, and ecclesiastical life. This article begins with an examination of the development of the kalendar of the saints and the genre and form of the martyrology. It moves on to examine the different types of scholarly learning contained in the Old English Martyrology, the purpose of such details for the professional religious user, and what this information tells us about the text’s application. Overall, this article considers the Old English Martyrology as an interdisciplinary manual dealing with liturgy, the liturgical cycle of the saints, and the subjects it impinges upon.

Onomasiological Profiles of Old English Texts

Abstract This article discusses proof-of-concept research into the structure of the vocabularies of three Old English texts, Beowulf, Andreas and the Old English Martyrology. With the help of the Web application Evoke, which makes A Thesaurus of Old English (TOE) available in Linguistic Linked Data form, the words that occur in these three texts have been tagged within the existing onomasiological structure of TOE. This tagging process has resulted in prototypes of ‘textual thesauri’ for each of the three texts; such thesauri allow researchers to analyse the ‘onomasiological profile’ of a text, using the statistical tools that are built into Evoke. Since the same overarching structure has been used for all three texts, these texts can now be compared on an onomasiological level. As the article demonstrates, this comparative approach gives rise to novel research questions, as new and distinctive patterns of vocabulary use come to the surface. The semantic fields discussed include “War” and “Animals”.

Understanding the Church’s Past: Usuard’s Martyrology in Tenth-and Eleventh-century England

The ninth century witnessed the compilation of martyrologies in both the Latin Frankish world of the Carolingians and the vernacular world of Anglo-Saxon Wessex. Yet this phenomenon has been treated very differently by modern scholars of these two cultures. For Carolingianists these martyrologies represent a public, shared text, one which was read aloud in chapter as part of the daily life of religious communities across the Frankish kingdoms, and which, as Rosamond McKitterick has suggested, should be viewed as contributing to those communities’ understanding of their Christian past. For recent Anglo-Saxon scholars, the vernacular text known as the Old English Martyrology is rather a work compiled to support private, devotional reading, and better understood as an encyclopaedia of arcane information. This article investigates the reception of one Frankish compilation in tenth- and eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England, that of Usuard, and compares it to that of the Old English Martyrology. It asks how far both texts should in fact be viewed as historical texts. It concludes with a case study of how they were both read in one late eleventh-century community, Exeter, and suggests that this community, at least, was able to maintain two overlapping but different views of its past and its place in wider Church history.

Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, eds., A Companion to Alfred the Great. (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. Pp. xiv, 469; 11 black-and-white and 4 color figures. $218. ISBN: 978-90-04-27484-6.Table of contents available online at http://www.brill.com/products/book/companion-alfred-great (accessed 3 March 2016)

Nicole Guenther Discenza and Paul E. Szarmach, eds., <i>A Companion to Alfred the Great</i>. (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 58.) Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. Pp. xiv, 469; 11 black-and-white and 4 color figures. $218. ISBN: 978-90-04-27484-6.Table of contents available online at http://www.brill.com/products/book/companion-alfred-great (accessed 3 March 2016)

Redeeming Wastelands, Building Communities in the Old English Guthlac A

Although ecocriticism has recently flourished in the scholarship of medieval English literature, the majority of attention has focused on Middle English literature;1 as Alfred K. Siewers notes, “Modern scholarship long believed that descriptions of nature in Anglo-Saxon literature tended to be more alienated and distanced in tone and theme than those in neighboring contemporary Insular literary cultures” (199). However, when we examine the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, ecological concerns appear, even if seemingly on the margins. Such is the case, I argue, for the Old English poem Guthlac A, found in the late tenth-century Exeter Book, which details the religious life of Saint Guthlac. Guthlac, a member of the Mercian royal family born in 673 AD, abandoned a successful military life in order to enter a monastery at the age of twenty-four.2 A few years later, in 701 AD, he withdrew from the secular world even further by removing himself to the wild fens of East Anglia, where he lived for thirteen years, constantly repulsing demonic attacks, as attested by the various accounts of his life. In 740 AD, approximately thirty years after Guthlac’s death, which occurred in 714 AD, a monk of Crowland by the name of Felix composed the first-known hagiography of Guthlac, the Vita Sancti Guthlaci. Vernacular accounts soon appeared in various Old English texts, specifically, the Old English Martyrology, the Vercelli Homily XXIII, and an Old English prose Life.

Mann and Gender in Old English Prose: A Pilot Study

It has long been known that OE mann was used in gender-neutral as well as gender-specific contexts. Because of the enormous volume of its attestations in Old English prose, the more precise usage patterns of mann remain, however, largely uncharted, and existing lexicographical tools provide only a basic picture. This article aims to present a preliminary study of the various uses of mann as attested in Old English prose, particularly in its surprisingly consistent use by an individual author, namely that of the ninth-century Old English Martyrology. Patterns emerging from this text are then tested against other prose material. Particular attention is paid to gender-specific usage, examples of which are shown to be exceptional for a word which largely occurs in gender-neutral contexts.

Christine Rauer (ed. and trsl.),The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary, Anglo-Saxon Texts, 10

Christine Rauer (ed. and trsl.),<i>The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary</i>, Anglo-Saxon Texts, 10

The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary

The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary

ChristineRauer, ed. and trans.: The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013; pp. xii + 400.

ChristineRauer, ed. and trans.: The Old English Martyrology: Edition, Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013; pp. xii + 400.

The Earliest Women's Writing? Anglo-Saxon Literary Cultures and Communities

Who were the first women writers in the English literary tradition? This question continues to preoccupy feminist scholars in the twenty-first century, but very few would look back to the centuries before the Norman invasions in order to find the answer. Focusing on the religious houses of Ely and Whitby in the seventh and early eighth centuries, this article reviews some of the surviving evidence of the first monastic women's writing. Looking for traces of early texts by women, it re-examines the lives of the abbesses Æthelthryth of Ely and Hild of Whitby found in the fourth book of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, alongside the account of Hild found in the Old English Martyrology, and, more speculatively, it reconsiders the case for women's involvement in the production of the anonymous first Life of Gregory the Great. This article argues that texts by women were “overwritten” by the earliest male monastic writers, a process reinforced by later scholarship. By focusing on texts associated with religious houses ruled by women, and by seeing them as the productions not of individuals but of communities, it is possible to get a fuller and more balanced understanding of women's writing in this earliest period of English literary history.

Direct Speech, Intercession, and Prayer in the Old English Martyrology

One of the most distinctive narrative features of the Old English Martyrology is its frequent use of direct speech, which has never been analysed in context. This article aims to chart the extent of this usage, potential reasons for its presence, and its aesthetic effect on the reader. Many direct speeches contain prayers directed at God by persecuted saints and other individuals appealing for help and protection. For the Anglo-Saxon readers of this text and its author, these prayers must have highlighted the saints' potential for intercession, representing a key feature of a text rooted in popular religion.

Errors and Textual Problems in the Old English Martyrology

Ninth-century Old English prose texts were composed by authors not famed for their linguistic skills and experienced a relatively long transmission until the end of the Anglo-Saxon period; unsurprisingly, they present a considerable number of authorial and scribal errors in the copies in which they survive. But editors of Old English texts have tended to discuss authorial translation errors individually, in textual notes, and often apologetically. Similarly, scribal errors are rarely studied in context, usually edited out of the modern edited text and at best confined to a textual apparatus. This article charts errors made by the author of the Old English Martyrology, who struggled to control his very considerable encyclopaedic knowledge in language often not conducive to accurate transmission; scribal errors arising from this language are also analysed. The authorial and scribal errors apparent particularly in the eleventh-century copies of this text point to a very difficult reading experience faced by readers in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

St Agnes of Rome: A Review of the Latin Sources Employed for her Entry in the Old English Martyrology

St Agnes of Rome: A Review of the Latin Sources Employed for her Entry in the Old English Martyrology

Locating Ludica in The Old English Martyrology

Locating Ludica in The Old English Martyrology

Pelagia's Cloak in the Old English Martyrology

Pelagia's Cloak in the Old English Martyrology

Old English Blanca in the Old English Martyrology

THE ninth-century Old English Martyrology describes the humiliation of pope Marcellus I at the hands of the governor of Rome, Maxentius:1 Đone papan Maxentius, Romeburge ealdormon, nedde þæt he his fullwihte wiðsoce ond deofolgeldum gelyfde. Ða he þæt ne geðafode, þa het he on ðæs papan ciericean gestællan his blancan ond monig oðer neat, ond he genydde þone papan þæt he þæm þenade, ond on ðæm ðeowdome he geendade his lif.2 Hoc audito Maxentius misit et tenuit iterum beatum Marcellum et iussit ut in eadem ecclesia plancas externi et ibidem animalia catabuli congregata starent et ipsis beatus Marcellus deserviret. Qui tamen in servitio animalium nudus amicto cilicio defunctus est.4

Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England (review)

Reviewed by: Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England Christine Rauer Ælfric and the Cult of Saints in Late Anglo-Saxon England. By Mechthild Gretsch. [Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, Volume 34.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 263. $90.00, £47.50.) The modern world has become used to attributing to each decade of the twentieth century its own distinct feel and pervading ethos, which distinguishes, say, the Sixties from the Eighties or the Thirties. It is intriguing to think that Anglo-Saxon authors also had a similar sense of the various periods in their recent past which they liked to look back upon. In her new monograph, Mechthild Gretsch examines a number of saints' cults not from the point of view of the modern scholar, but through the eyes of Ælfric, the Anglo-Saxon abbot of Eynsham working in the later tenth and early eleventh centuries. Her aim is to examine how Ælfric reacted to the developing cults of Gregory, Cuthbert, Benedict, Swithun, and Æthelthryth and their literary manifestations. Gretsch starts off with a detailed demonstration that these five saints indeed held unusually prominent positions in Ælfric's sanctorale (pp. 1-20). Idiosyncrasies in Ælfric's choice of feasts relating to these saints are shown not to be coincidental, but intentionally symmetrical: it is part of Gretsch's argument here to demonstrate that some of Ælfric's hagiographical choices parallel the commemoration of saints in London, British Library, Add. 49598, the Benedictional of Æthelwold, a highlight of tenth-century book production from within Ælfric's cultural milieu. What follows are "five monographs en miniature" (p. viii) which deal with the main saints in turn, and which in themselves represent important publications not just on Ælfric but on earlier Anglo-Saxon hagiography. [End Page 630] Little can be added to the many interesting points Gretsch makes: the feast given for Eugenia ("peculiar indeed," p. 7) need not necessarily have come from the Cotton-Corpus Legendary, but is already in the Old English Martyrology, a text known to have been in late Anglo-Saxon Winchester, Glastonbury, and Exeter. In a forthcoming publication I will be discussing John Frankis's suggestion that Ælfric knew and used the Martyrology, and Gretsch is here opening up some interesting questions. Similarly, the focus on the depositions of Gregory, Benedict, and Cuthbert (p. 14) is also paralleled in the Martyrology. The Martyrology also seems to testify to at least some version of Paul the Deacon's interpolated Life of Gregory reaching Anglo-Saxon England (pp. 61-62). Some might object to the suggestion that "in our days saints are rarely culted" (p. 247), and a look at the Vatican's web site would also suggest otherwise. Perhaps some readers would have appreciated a plate showing the Benedictional's "Choir of Confessors." Apart from these minor points, however, nothing much seems to be missing from this fascinating monograph, which is full of openings and ideas for further lines of enquiry (now highlighted in the margins of this reviewer's copy). There can be only few modern Anglo-Saxonists who would have been able to produce this nuanced picture of Ælfric's cultural milieu which tries "to move beyond the written word" (p. 18) and which is to be greeted with enthusiastic applause. Apart from the two tiniest typos on pp. 235 and 250 no further slips could be found in this exceptionally accurate study. Christine Rauer University of St Andrews Copyright © 2007 The Catholic University of America Press