Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:15:42.855Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2021

Get access

Summary

The Old English verse Menologium is a lively poem which takes the reader through the cycle of the year: the changing months and seasons of the natural year and the feasts and commemorations of the liturgical year, from Christmas and back to Christmas. Written in the characteristic heroic diction and traditional metre of Old English poetry, it opens with a eulogy to the birth of Christ as Heavenly Ruler, ‘glory of kings’ and ‘guardian of the kingdom of heaven’, in a passage reminiscent of the well known Cædmon's Hymn. The months and seasons are personified as they leave the ‘dwelling places’ or ‘come to town’ and there follow short cameo narratives akin to the poem Fates of the Apostles commemorating the apostles, martyrs and confessors of the Church. At one point the poem even quotes directly from the Old English Metrical Psalms. As a summary of the basics of the Christian, as well as the natural, year current in late Anglo-Saxon England, the Menologium is a unique and important piece of Old English poetry. Like Chronicle poems such as The Coronation of Edgar, and like the computistical treatises of Ælfric and Byrhtferth, the poem is didactic and informative on the regular feasts of the year, and it could well have been used as a practical timepiece for reading the dates of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for which it serves as a kind of Prologue in the manuscript.

In the last 300 years, the fact that at least seventeen different edited texts of the Menologium, published or unpublished, have been available demonstrates the high level of interest among Anglo-Saxonists. It is, however, also true that the interest has not necessarily led to serious critical analysis; the Menologium scholarship which began with George Hickes in the early eighteenth century has become inactive, and there remains ample room for debate, even of such fundamental issues as its overall nature and purpose, structure and content, and sources and analogues. With this situation in mind, the present critical edition is offered, along with a full introduction covering these fundamentals of the poem.

The Menologium in fact exhibits several notable features. Together with Maxims II, it occurs in its unique manuscript (London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B.i) just before the C-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Preface
  • Edited by Kazutomo Karasawa
  • Book: The Old English Metrical Calendar (<I>Menologium</I>)
  • Online publication: 04 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782044918.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Preface
  • Edited by Kazutomo Karasawa
  • Book: The Old English Metrical Calendar (<I>Menologium</I>)
  • Online publication: 04 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782044918.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Edited by Kazutomo Karasawa
  • Book: The Old English Metrical Calendar (<I>Menologium</I>)
  • Online publication: 04 June 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781782044918.001
Available formats
×