One of the most magnificent examples of early Insular manuscript production, the “Lindisfarne” Gospels stands as a testament not only to the skill and sophistication of the community that produced it, but also to the desire, centuries after its creation, to communicate the Word to all the ranks of the faithful through the provision of a full English gloss.1 This gloss, completed around the year 950 by the priest and scribe Aldred, was an undertaking that must have required a dedicated intellect as well as access to a range of textual resources. Indeed, we know that Aldred took his task very seriously, and his frequent insertion of two, three, and even four possible glosses for individual lemmata demonstrates his commitment to honoring the living Word and communicating its truth as faithfully as possible to his fellow brothers. Several scholars, such as Alan S. C. Ross, Sara M. Pons-Sanz, and Tadashi Kotake have dedicated considerable attention to the grammatical and linguistic features of these glosses, as well as their relationship to their sister glosses in the MacRegol Gospels.2 On the other hand, with the exception of W. J. P. Boyd's important 1975 study of Aldred's marginal annotations, tracing the precise sources upon which his glossing activity relies is a project (ripe for further inquiry) whose parameters remain quite poorly defined.3 Notwithstanding a handful of quite useful contributions, this is especially true for Aldred's longer marginal comments, which range beyond the more linguistic utility of his interlinear glosses and expand on or respond to the Scripture text.4 In this article, then, I hope to shed some further light on our understanding of Aldred's textual milieu: we may now add Bede's poem De die iudicii to the list of sources with which Aldred engaged in creative and sophisticated ways. This identification, together with other recent discoveries about Aldred's activity in the gospel book, contributes to a picture of a scribe/scholar deeply sensitive to the ability of poetry to express divine revelation and one who stands as a type of poet in his own right.Much work needs to be done to clarify the full range of sources to which Aldred had access while preparing his longer marginal glosses. We can, however, say one thing with certainty—that Aldred honored Bede as a voice of authority; he cites Bede explicitly in his gloss to John 19:37 on fol. 255 recto. The gospel passage reads: “et iterum alia scriptura dicit videbunt in quem transfixerunt” (And again another scripture saith: They shall look on him whom they pierced).5 The context is the final stage of the crucifixion, after the Roman soldier has pierced Jesus's side with his lance, and John is quoting from Zechariah 12:10, “et aspicient ad me quem confixerunt” (and they shall look upon me, whom they have pierced), to explain that these things have happened in order to fulfill the Scriptures. In the center margin to the left of the words “Et iterum alia scriptura,” Aldred has written “in Zacharia,” signaling that he is aware of John's Old Testament source. To the right of and glossing the word “videbunt,” a second, longer marginal note (and the one we are concerned with here) explains: I(d est) in die examinis ivdicii. districti Ivdicis.Ðvs bede ðe breoma boecera cvæð.(That is, on the day of the weighing of judgment, of the severe Judge. Thus said the renowned writer Bede.)6If we combine the scripture passage and its gloss, we get something like: “And again another scripture says: ‘they will look upon him whom they pierced,’ that is, they will look upon him on the day of judgment.”This association of John 19:37, and thus of Zechariah 12:10, with the end times is ultimately authorized by the apostle himself in Revelation 1:7, where he again draws upon the Old Testament passage to unveil its consummation in the fullness of time. John's dual use of this scripture thus tells us that Zechariah 12:10 looks forward both to the crucifixion, to the pierced body of Jesus, from which, according to Zechariah 13:1, “in die illa erit fons patens domui David et habitantibus Hierusalem in ablutionem peccatoris et menstruatae” (In that day there shall be a fountain open to the house of David, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem: for the washing of the sinner, and of the unclean woman), and to the second coming.Bede also understood John 19:37 in this way and, drawing on a tradition that has its roots in early patristic writings, further connects it explicitly to the day of judgment.7 Writing in one of his Gospel homilies on why the Lord retained in his resurrected body the marks of his passion, for example, Bede explains that it was in part “ad extremum ut etiam reprobi in iudicio signa eiusdem passionis aspiciant sicut scriptum est, videbunt in quem transfixerunt, ac se iustissime damnandos intellegant” (So that indeed the condemned in judgment may behold the signs of the same passion, just as it is written, “They will look upon him whom they pierced,” and know themselves most justly to be damned).8 Similarly, in another homily, Bede clarifies that “Nam et reprobi in iudicio christum uidebunt sed sicut scriptum est: videbunt in quem transfixerunt. Soli autem regem in decore suo uidebunt oculi iustorum” (For even the condemned in judgment will see Christ, yet just as it is written: “they will look upon him whom they pierced.” However, only the eyes of the righteous will see the king in his beauty).9 That is to say, the damned shall only look upon the terrible judge, with fear and lamentation.We can tell from these brief quotations, then, that when Aldred claims Bede's authority for his gloss to John 19:37, he is being faithful to how the earlier scholar understood this gospel passage. Where exactly among Bede's collected works Aldred sources his gloss, however, is a question that has hitherto eluded identification. Indeed, when Boyd approached the question he was forced to conclude despairingly that “It has proved impossible to pin down the precise reference in Bede. Aldred may have derived his explanation from Bede's Explanatio Apocalypsis, in which Bede on Revelation 1:7 writes: In eadem illum forma videntes judicem potentem, in qua velut minimum iudicaverunt, sera semetipsos poenitentia lamentabunt.”10I want to suggest that we can, in fact, confidently identify the reference in Bede: rather than in one of his exegetical works, it is in his poem De die iudicii, verses 8–9, an altogether appropriate source and wholly consistent with the interpretive tradition around John 19:37.11Each word of Aldred's citation is accounted for and paralleled in these two lines of Bede's poem. (Of course, there is a very slight difference in the declined endings of diem and examine.) So far as I have been able to discover, this is the only place in Bede's work that all five of these words appear together in sequence.12But why this source? Certainly, Bede reiterates the doomsday interpretation of John 19:37 in several places, but De die iudicii contains no direct or obvious reference to this passage. I can only conclude that, for Aldred, the link was associative: John 19:37 is connected to Judgment Day throughout, and when Aldred thinks about Judgment Day he thinks of Bede—Bede the poet, and his De die iudicii. And he cites Bede's poem with a poetic line of his own, bearing the hallmark alliteration of his native verse tradition, and composed for all we know by Aldred on the spot for this very occasion —“Ðus bede ðe broema boecera cuæð.”13It would be possible to stop here with the reference in Bede identified, a single, long-standing mystery solved. Yet to do so would be to miss the larger pattern of Aldred's poetic engagement with this gospel book. Indeed, his reference to Bede is hardly the only time that Aldred ornaments his longer marginal notes with poetic elements. Note, for example, his fondness for alliteration, as on fol. 56va, in his marginal glosses to Matthew 14:26: ða apos(toli) woendon þ(æt)te he woere yfel wiht ⁊ walde hea besuica(The apostles believed that he was an evil creature and wished to deceive them),on fol. 214ra, on John 2:4: (vel) hvæd gebyreð ðe ⁊ me to wirc anne wvndar ær min fæder vælle of heofnv(m) gelefa(Or, “what does it pertain to you and me to work a miracle before my Father will give leave from heaven?”),and on fol. 255ra, on John 19:30: (id est) þ(æt) vitgadom ⁊ allra canone cwido ða ðe ymb christ(us) ðrovng acveden væs (vel) weron(That is, the prophecy and the sayings of all the canons which were spoken about the passion of Christ).In these passages he achieves thereby a sort of poetically-flavored prose not dissimilar to that often remarked in Aelfric's homilies.14To appreciate fully, however, what Aldred is up to with his poetic citation of Bede's apocalyptic verses, as well as with these other alliterating glosses, we need to turn to his colophon at the end of John's Gospel, on fol. 259rb. Francis Newton, Francis Newton Jr., and I have previously written about this text in great detail.15 I cannot hope to recreate the argument we set out, nor do justice to the colophon in all of its richness and complexity. However, in the space that remains I would like to draw specific attention to its poetic texture and structure.16 For it is there that Aldred's sensitivity to poetry and deep metaphor really emerges fully grown, giving us a picture of a scholar/scribe who is a type of poet in his own right.The poetic nature of the colophon centers on Aldred's overriding metaphoric conception of the Gospel book as building or early medieval hall.17 Aldred wastes no time in establishing this symbolic structure, defining in the hexameters that begin the colophon the terms in which he will poetically describe the gospel book throughout. They read: Litera me pandat, sermonis fida ministra;Omnes, alme, meos fratres [ex] voce saluta.(May the letter, faithful servant of the Word, throw me open; to all my brothers, O nourishing one, grant a greeting [with your] voice.)It had not been recognized before, and is crucial to note again here, that Aldred has borrowed for his hexameters almost the whole of the second line and part of the first line of Ovid's Tristia 3.7 (first identified by the present writer): Vade salutatum, subito perarata, Perillam,littera, sermonis fida ministra mei.18(Go, just dashed-off as you are, go greet Perilla, / O letter, faithful servant of my word).Aldred is signaling, at the end of John's gospel, his sophistication and depth with a bold quotation from pagan antiquity by the “playful poet of tender loves” (tenerorum lusor amorum). This is fitting, as John himself is the Evangelist of Love, and called the “beloved disciple” in John 21:20: “vidit illum discipulum quem diligebat Iesus” ([Peter] saw that disciple whom Jesus loved).19 And indeed, Aldred's hexameters should be understood as an exchange with the “beloved disciple.” John is the first to speak: “May the letter, faithful servant of the Word, throw me open (that is, throw open the doors of my text).” Aldred's gloss is the letter, a servant (ministra) to welcome readers or hearers. The second hexameter bears Aldred's (or his gloss's) response to the gospel writer: “To all my brothers, O nourishing one [nourishing suggests the early medieval feasting hall], grant a greeting [with your] voice.” The expression is elevated, but here Aldred is also addressing an unfortunate but by no means uncommon reality; in his time very few of the brothers were educated in Latin.20 What emerges from these charming lines, then, is the powerful and deeply moving conception of the gloss as providing an entrance through language into the gospels for those members of the community who were ignorant of Latin and thus had been excluded from entering into the mystery of the gospels. Now, however, with the gospels communicated in their own native tongue, all members of the community can enter into the house/hall of the Lord and partake of his feast.The verb pando belongs firmly in the poetic register as well. Here, together with “the noun ministra in apposition with the subject litera,” it “vividly represents the volume as a building to which the servant-gloss throws open the doors.”21 As we see in his use of Ovid, Aldred was clearly sensitive to the usages of poetry. It is tantalizing to think that Aldred may have discovered this word in the concluding verses of the poem that accompanies the colophon to the MacRegol Gospels (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Auct. D. 2. 19, fol. 169v), where again it is associated with St. John: Iohannis fremit ore leo similisque rudenti intonatIntonat eterne pandens misteria uite.22(John roars out, a lion in voice, and thunders like one growling. He thunders, throwing open the mysteries of eternal life).It is pleasing to imagine Aldred reading these hexameters and finding in them inspiration through association with his own glossing labor. Here in MacRegol it is John who throws open in his gospel the closed doors of the mysteries of eternal life, thundering out truth like a roaring lion. And it is Aldred's servant gloss, in turn, that again throws open these very doors of divine mystery, closed to the brethren by ignorance and the barriers of language. If Aldred read MacRegol's colophon (and he may have),23 so rich and poetic an association could not have eluded his notice.Aldred constructs his poetic/metaphoric understanding of the book also in his description of his own scribal activity. After telling how he, unworthy and most wretched priest, glossed the book in English (“Aldred presbyter indignus ⁊ misserrimus mið godes fultumæ & sancti cuðberhtes hit ofer gloesade on englisc”), and homed (or domiciled) John together with the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which he dedicates to God and Cuthbert, the bishop, and the community, respectively (“⁊ hine gihamadi mið ðæm ðriim dælum: Matheus dæl gode ⁊ sancte cuðberhti; Marcus dæl ðæm biscop; ⁊ lucas dæl ðæm hiorode”), Aldred tells us something further: that he did this together with eight ores of silver by way of introduction (“⁊ æht ora seolfres mið to inlade”). With John's gospel, whose gloss Aldred executed as a personal act of devotion to the saint and for the benefit of his own soul, another four ores are associated (“⁊ sancti iohannis dæl fore hine seolfne id est fore his sawle ⁊ feower ora seolfres mið gode ⁊ sancti cuðberti”).At least since the publication of Bosworth and Toller's dictionary in 1898,24 when turning to these lines scholars immediately assumed they understood what Aldred was saying; namely, that he secured his entrance into the monastic community through payment, partially in the form of interlinear glosses to the first three gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and partially in the form of silver coins (ora seolfres).25 This reading is problematic for a number of reasons.26 Not least of these is that Aldred in his gloss to Matthew 10:8 (fol. 45ra) denounces in no uncertain terms the very buying and selling of church offices (simony) that he is supposedly admitting to in the colophon: Cuæð to ðæm apostolum ⁊ biscopum æft(er) him f(or)ðmest. unboht ge had fengon ⁊ unboht (vel) unceap buta æhuelcum worðe seallas ðæm ðe sie wyrðe (vel) worð bið in lare ⁊ in ðæwu(m) ⁊ in clænnise ⁊ in cystum: ⁊ in lichoma hælo f(or)ðon bisc(op) scæl cunnege ⁊ leornege ðone preost georne buta ær geleornade.(He [Christ] said to the apostles and the bishops foremost after him: “Freely have you received orders; give [them] freely,” at no cost, and without any payment, to those who are worthy in learning and in conduct and in chastity and in bodily health and in virtue; therefore the bishop must test and instruct the priest rigorously, unless he has learned beforehand).27At its root, however, we believe the simoniacal interpretation is based on a misunderstanding of the words ora and to inlade, the latter a dis legomenon. Ora admits of three definitions: the first, derived from the Latin ora, orae, means “border, edge, margin, bank”; the second means metal in an unreduced state; and the third signifies a form of currency introduced by the Danes.28 In our article, my collaborators and I argued that in lieu of the third, the first meaning, edge or border, should be considered.29 Under this reading, necessarily greatly simplified here, “what Aldred did was to add edges of silver to selected pages of the gospels, eight in the texts of Mathew, Mark, and Luke, and four in the text of John.”30It must be said that these borders have not survived in the manuscript as we have it today. However, the manuscript has suffered clipping on one or more occasions in the past, and extensive enough clipping at that to have sheared part of the border around one of the Gospel-writers’ portraits (fol. 137v). There may also have been practical reasons for removing Aldred's borders: silver has the nasty tendency to oxidize over time, disfiguring once lovely features and marring the page significantly. Yet one can get an idea of what such borders would have looked like in practice, if not to the same degree of richness, in the borders surrounding the gospel texts in the MacRegol Gospels on fols. 1v-3r, 50v, 52v-53r, 85v-86r, and 168v-169v. It is remarkable to note as well that the MacRegol Gospels contains twelve such borders—though not silver—an exact fit with what Aldred tells us in his colophon.31These borders, then, the “ora seolfres” that Aldred added, would have functioned as the most tangible expression of his overriding conception of the gospel book as a holy structure, whose pages represent the entranceways to the palaces of holy scripture and to the saving truth and mysteries of God. They are the sumptuous thresholds that, through the eye's delight, welcome in the faithful to the Word. This visual metaphor, moreover, serves above all to complement and reinforce the profound imagery of Aldred's opening prayer: “Litera me pandat sermonis fida ministra; / Omnes, alme, meos fratres [ex] voce saluta.” The gloss, written here in the brothers’ native Old English tongue, has allowed for even the Latinless to enter these portals and receive the nourishing mysteries of heaven.This poetic metaphor of the gospel book as building or hall, which began with the Ovid quotation in the colophon's opening two hexameters, runs to the very end. Like the four gospel writers, in the final two lines Aldred (again using metaphoric language) sums up the tetrad of creators who constructed (construxerunt) or decorated (ornaverunt) this gospel book: Eadfrið, oeðilwald, billfrið, aldredhoc evange(lium) d(e)o & cuðberhto construxer(un)t (vel) ornaverunt(Eadfrith, Æthelwald, Billfrith, Aldred constructed [or decorated] this gospel book for God and Cuthbert).These four makers, according to Aldred's understanding, built up this book as a holy edifice for the faithful to enter. And the gloss is the gatekeeper, permitting entrance through the portals of language to the saving Word.32Finally, Aldred has also added, to the right of the colophon, a brief account of his own pedigree, couched in two nonquantitative, rhyming verses in Latin: Alfredi natus Aldredus vocor,Bonae mulieris filius eximius loquor.(Of Aelfred born, Aldred I am called, / famous [as a] good woman's son I speak).Attached to the text proper by means of signes de renvoi, these two musical lines giving Aldred's pedigree complement and respond to what may be termed the Pedigree of the Gospels and the Pedigree of the Gospel Book which largely comprise the first half of the colophon.33These facts of Aldred's poetic activity in the “Lindisfarne” Gospels bear meaningfully on one of the more recent discussions of his role in the history of the book. In a 2006 paper, Jane Roberts argued that beneath the colophon there lies a core Old English poem, lost to time and history but preserved embedded and integrated within the layers of Aldred's text.34 By paring away what she considers the “more garrulous descriptive phrases” of Aldred's history of the book, she isolated a number of phrases that she says “leapt” from the page as easily assemblable verses.35 The result of her “excavation” is a six-line composition bearing an account of the gospel book's earliest material origins: Eadfrið biscop ðis boc avratallvm ðæm halgvm ðe in eolonde sint.Eðilvald biscob hit vta giðryde,gibelde sva he vel cuðe. Billfrið se oncregigyrede hit mið golde ⁊ mið gimmvm ec,mið svlfre ofergylde, faconleas feah.36(Bishop Eadfrith wrote this book for all the holy ones who are in this island. Bishop Æthelwold pressed it on the outside, bound it as he well knew how. Billfrith the anchorite adorned it with gold and with gems also, over-gilded it with silver — guileless treasure.)There is a clear purpose to Roberts's argument for such a poem. One of the problems with Aldred's colophon has always been the distance of over two hundred years between its own creation and the events it purports to relate. This distance, together with other concerns, has prompted a number of scholars to question the identity of the colophon as a reliable witness to the history of the gospel book.37 If the information that Aldred provides could be stabilized by reference to an earlier documentary tradition, though, then the “Lindisfarne” Gospels would remain a fixed point in the landscape of Insular manuscripts otherwise sorely wanting in dependable landmarks.Despite its benefits, however, there are numerous problems with this argument.38 One of the more obvious concerns is the sometimes cavalier way in which Roberts arrives at her text, in one instance emending a word (gihrinade to gigyrede) simply because she “could not resist” making it “metrically more satisfying.”39 The final line of her conjectured poem is also metrically out of sorts: mið svlfre ofergylde, faconleas feahRoberts tortures it into shape by placing alliterative stress on syllables that should never bear it (fre and fer in the on-verse) and passes without comment the presence of double alliteration in the off-verse (faconleasfeah). The former is unthinkable; the latter is not ordinarily countenanced in recognized Old English poetry.40Yet perhaps the most troubling issue with Roberts's treatment of the colophon is its failure to really see Aldred. Whether intentionally or not, it follows in a tradition of attempting to abstract a secondary layer of what is supposedly Aldred's “spin” in order to isolate the primary matter of genuine historical and artistic interest of which the scribe is merely the recorder.41 I am afraid we have been unwilling to imagine him capable of much more than stitching these separate elements together. Much less have we considered that the colophon's poeticism might be the product of Aldred's own fertile mind. But we don't need a hypothetical Old English poem to explain this poeticism. Indeed, it is the simpler and safer approach to ascribe these features to Aldred's demonstrable penchant for poetic flair, rather than stitch together from the text's severed members a poem for which no positive evidence exists. If we begin with the text of the colophon as it actually stands, what we find is a highly ordered and sophisticated composition embellished in much the same manner as the three alliterating marginal glosses noted above.42 We see a poetically sensitive scribe/scholar himself, one who uses prose laced with poetic ornament both in the colophon and elsewhere throughout the book. And Aldred's use of, and poetic engagement with, Bede as a poet further confirms and enriches this identity, as did his engagement with Ovid as a poet.To conclude, I have attempted first of all to show that Aldred's source in Bede for his marginal comment to John 19:37 is none other than Bede's De die iudicii, verses 8–9. But this identification, combined with an understanding of Aldred's highly sophisticated, poetic activity in his colophon at the end of John's Gospel and elsewhere in the gospel book, accomplishes something of even deeper significance: not only does it enlarge our understanding of his textual resources, it also (and most importantly) further illuminates for us Aldred's identity as a mind keenly sensitive to both his native Old English and adopted Latin poetic traditions.