¹ Ker, N. R., Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957; reissued with Appendix, 1990), pp. 99–105 (no. 58)Google Scholar. See also Godden, M., Ælfric's Catholic Homilies. The Second Series. Text, EETS ss 5 (London, 1979), xxxiii–xxxviiGoogle Scholar; and Treharne, E. M., ‘Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 303 and Lives of Saints Margaret, Giles and Nicholas’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Manchester Univ., 1992), pp. 78–145.Google Scholar

² The first text is incomplete, consisting of only four lines: it is probably the homily for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. See Ker, , Catalogue, p. 99.Google Scholar

³ Godden, , Catholic Homilies, pp. xxxiii–xxxiv.Google Scholar

⁴ Ibid. pp. xxxiv–xxxv.

⁵ See Pope, J. C., Homilies of Ælfric. A Supplementary Collection, EETS os 259–60 (London, 1967–1968) I, 143, n. 3Google Scholar, where Pope also states in relation to non-liturgical narrative pieces that ‘There are important treatments of Old Testament narrative in the double Mid-lent homily, CH. xii (1) and (2)’; and ibid. II, 614–15, in reference to De doctrina apostolica (article 64 in CCCC 303). See Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 104–5 for the last twelve texts.Google Scholar

⁶ Skeat, W. W., Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, EETS os 76, 82, 94 and 114 (London, 1881–1900; repr. as 2 vols., 1966) I, 282 and 424 respectively.Google Scholar

⁷ Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 104–5 (articles 68–70).Google Scholar

⁸ In the context of this manuscript, there are no other blank spaces left between texts at all.

⁹ This would be a production schedule both in terras of what was copied and in terms of the space allowed for the copying.

¹⁰ At p. 202, on the last page of the second scribe's stint, an especially adapted text, De inclusis, is copied as an eighteen-line quire-filler. See Scragg, D. G., The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts, EETS os 300 (Oxford, 1992), xxix.Google Scholar

¹¹ The texts are not just ill-fitting in a physical sense: the Latin text is the only extended piece of Latin in the extant manuscript; the rest of the manuscript is homiletic and hagiographic in nature while these excommunication texts are basically ceremonial, though the Old English piece has been adapted to begin in a homiletic fashion (see below).

¹² It is possible that there were no titles for these two pieces in the source manuscript as, analogously, only some of the formulas printed by Liebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1913–1916) I, 432–41Google Scholar, have titles. A half-line space has been left by the scribe after the copying of the text preceding the Latin formula; such a space is all that is commonly left in this manuscript for the subsequent cramped insertion of respective titles.

¹³ See Ker, , Catalogue, p. xxvii for the distinctions made between Latin and vernacular scripts.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Such differences may indicate that the Latin was not copied immediately after the preceding homily, but as there appears to be no change in the ink colour at this point, this cannot be certain.

¹⁵ Such a source might be similar in nature to the Textus Roffensis, a collection of laws and liturgical directions and formulas in both Latin and the vernacular. See Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 443–7 (no. 373).Google Scholar

¹⁶ For adaptations in the Old English, see below, p. 207.

¹⁷ For the occurrences of these words, I have used A Microfiche Concordance to Old English, compiled by diPaolo Healey, A. and Venezky, R. L. (Toronto, 1980).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Although the word alder appears at line 4 of the Old English text; this word (in this form) only otherwise occurs in two late eleventh-century charters. See the Microfiche Concordance, s.v.

¹⁹ See below, p. 206.

²⁰ See Scragg, , Vercelli Homilies, p. xxix.Google Scholar

²¹ For the sources of CCCC 303 and its origin, see Treharne, , ‘Corpus 303 and Lives of Saints’, pp. 91–144.Google Scholar

²² II Cnut 68 states, for example, that a distinction should be made in the issuing of the judgement between the old and young, rich and poor, free and enslaved, sound and sick, and voluntary or involuntary committal of sin. See Robertson, A. J., The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 206–7.Google Scholar

²³ See, for example, Vodola, E., Excommunication in the Middle Ages (Berkeley, CA, 1986)Google Scholar; Logan, F. D., Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Medieval England. A Study in Legal Proceedings from the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Centuries (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar; Little, L. K., Benedictine Maledictions: Liturgical Cursing in Romanesque France (Ithaca, NY, 1993), pp. 36–44Google Scholar; and Rodes, R. Jr., Ecclesiastical Administration in Medieval England. The Anglo-Saxons to the Reformation (Bloomington, IN, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁴ See Vodola, , Excommunication, pp. 5–7.Google Scholar

²⁵ Bettenson, H., Documents of the Christian Church (London, 1946), p. 109.Google Scholar

²⁶ Ibid. p. 66.

²¹ Ibid. p. 103.

²⁸ Lines 4–5 of the Latin formula for excommunication printed in the Appendix below. This particular phrase is also found in the Latin formulas printed in Liebermann, Gesetze I, 432–41.Google Scholar

²⁹ The penitentials will not be examined here. For the importance of the penitentials, see McNeill, J. T. and Gamer, H. M., Medieval Handbooks of Penance (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Frantzen, A. J., The Literature of Penance in Anglo-Saxon England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1983)Google Scholar; and Oakley, T. P., English Penitential Discipline and Anglo-Saxon Law in their Joint Influence (New York, 1923).Google Scholar

³⁰ See also Wormald, C. P., ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, in Ethelred the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference, ed. Hill, D., BAR Brit. ser. 59 (1978), 47–103Google Scholar; Keynes, S., The Diplomas of King Æthelred the Unready 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McKitterick, R., The Frankish Church and the Carolingian Reforms, 789–895 (London, 1977).Google Scholar

³¹ Whitelock, D., Brett, M. and Brooke, C.N.L., Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church AD 871–1204, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1981) I, 408.Google Scholar

³² Ibid. I, 412: ‘It befits bishops that they never pronounce a curse on any man, unless they must of necessity. If anyone does so of necessity for great transgressions, and the man still will not submit to right, it is then to be announced to all colleagues, and they are all then to pronounce the same on him, and announce that to him. Then let him submit afterwards and atone the more deeply, if he cares about God's mercy and blessing.’ (Interestingly, Whitelock translates curs as ‘excommunication’ with no reference to the nature of this curse.) This is an important piece of evidence for the method of excommunication and may derive, in part, from a source used frequently by Wulfstan – the Excerptiones Pseudo-Ecgberti, §50: ‘Nontemere quemquam communione privet episcopus, et ne quem alius episcopus ab aecclesia expulerit, sive clericum sive laicum, suscipiat alius’, ibid. I, 412.

³³ Ker, N. R., ‘Three Old English Texts in a Salisbury Pontifical, Cotton Tiberius C. i’, The Anglo-Saxons: Studies in some Aspects of their History and Culture presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Clemoes, P. (London, 1959), pp. 262–79, at 263.Google Scholar

³⁴ See Liebermann, , Gesetze I, 432–3Google Scholar. The source of this text is likely to be either Regino of Prüm or Burchard of Worms. See PL 132, for Regino's De ecdesiasticis disciplinis, ch. 409 (cols. 360–1), and PL 140 for Burchard of Worms's Decretum, especially ch. 3 (cols. 857–8).

³⁵ Bethurum, D., The Homilies of Wulfstan (Oxford, 1957), p. 235 (no. xiv)Google Scholar: [in my translation] ‘Dear men, on Wednesday, which is Ash Wednesday, in many places, bishops exclude from church those who are heinously guilty of public sin, for their own need. And afterwards, on the Thursday before Easter, those who have eagerly remedied their sins that Lent as directed to them go into the church; and then the bishop reads the absolution over them.’ This Wulfstanian piece may be derived itself from Regino or Burchard: see PL 132, col. 362 for Regino's ‘Reconciliation of Penitents’ and PL 140, col. 878 for Burchard's similar text.

³⁶ The phrase on manegan stowan in the text just cited suggests to Bethurum, , Homilies, p. 344Google Scholar, that Wulfstan was discussing public ceremonies of dismissal and reconciliation that may not have been universally practised. C. P. Wormald has pointed out to me, however, that the phrase may merely indicate the implementation of excommunication in any given place as and when the need arose.

³⁷ See for example, III Edgar, ch. 5 and II Cnut, ch. 18 in Robertson, , Laws, pp. 27 and 183Google Scholar, which explain that ‘the bishop of the diocese and the ealdorman shall be present and shall direct the observance of both ecclesiastical and secular law’.

³⁸ The Law of Alfred and Gutbrum, ch. 3 in Attenborough, F. L., The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge, 1922), p. 103.Google Scholar

³⁹ ‘If anyone slays a minister of the altar, he shall be an outlaw from God and men, unless he make amends to the best of his ability by pilgrimage and likewise to the kin’: Whitelock, Councils and Synods I, 491. It is pointed out by Whitelock (ibid. n. 2) that this crime in the Poenitentiale Pseudo-Theodori III.11 is to be punished by from eight to fourteen years' exile, according to the rank of the slain cleric.

⁴⁰ Flyman glosses profugus (meaning both ‘fugitive’ and ‘exile’) in, for example, Ælfric's Glossary. The genitive adjectival form, flymena, together with wiðersacena, glosses apostatarum in Aldhelm's De laude virginitatis, meaning ‘of apostates’ – those who abandon or betray a religion. See the Microfiche Concordance to Old English, s.v.

⁴¹ Robertson, , Laws, p. 197Google Scholar: ‘from God and from men he is to be outlawed’.

⁴² ‘And he who henceforth anywhere violates the just decrees of God or of men shall render full compensation in whatever way is fitting, whether by making amends required by the ecclesiastical authority or by paying the penalty demanded by the secular law’: ibid. pp. 104–5.

⁴³ ‘And if anyone has [taken a woman dedicated to God or a nun as a wife], he is to be an outlaw before God and excommunicated from all Christendom, and to forfeit to the King all that he owns, unless he desists quickly and atones very deeply to God’: Whitelock, , Councils and Synods I, 440 (ch. 17).Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Wormald, C. P., ‘A Handlist of Anglo-Saxon Lawsuits’, ASE 17 (1988), 247–81 (hereafter Wormald, with reference to no. of lawsuit).Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Robertson, , Laws, p. 7.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ ‘And he who keeps under his protection an excommunicated man [strictly, an outlaw of God], beyond the term fixed by the king, shall be in danger of forfeiting his life and all his property to the deputies of Christ who hold and govern Christendom and the kingdom, as long as God grants’: ibid. pp. 128–9.

⁴⁷ ‘Concerning excommunicates [strictly, an outlaw of God (translated as Dei fugitiuum in the Quadripartitus)]. If anyone unlawfully maintains an excommunicated person, he shall deliver him up in accordance with the law, and pay compensation to him to whom it belongs, and to the king a sum equivalent to his wergeld. § 1 If anyone keeps and maintains an excommunicated man or an outlaw, it shall be at the risk of losing his life and all his property’: ibid. pp. 206–7.

⁴⁸ Ibid. pp. 10–11.

⁴⁹ ‘And if any excommunicated man, unless it be one who is a suppliant for protection, remains anywhere near the king, before he has readily submitted to the amends required by the Church, it shall be at the risk of losing his life or his possessions’: ibid. pp. 86–7.

⁵⁰ Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 432–3.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Oakley, , Anglo-Saxon Laws, p. 147Google Scholar. The evidence provided by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (see below, p. 200) and the need to reform and unify practices seen in the law codes of Wulfstanian influence, and later the Episcopal Laws of William I, would suggest that excommunication was not highly feared by some persistent offenders; on the contrary, it was ignored.

⁵² Pollock, F. and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1898) I, 478.Google Scholar

⁵³ ‘We enjoin that apostates and those who are cast out from the fellowship of God and of men shall depart from the land unless they submit and make amends to the utmost of their ability’: Robertson, , Laws, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ It might also be possible to interpret The Wife's Lament (for which see The Old English Elegies: a Critical Edition and Genre Study, ed. Klinck, A. (Montreal, 1992), pp. 93–4) for example, as the plaintive voice of one exiled through excommunication.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Scragg, , Vercelli Homilies, p. 161Google Scholar. In my own translation this reads: ‘And the priest who has had a nun or a secular man who has had a concubine or committed incest are all to be excommunicated from the community of heaven- and earth-dwellers’ righteousness. No man is to sing a mass in a place where the excommunicate might be; neither the Eucharist nor sanctified bread is to be given [him]; nor may they be given a grave within a hallowed church; nor even borne to a heathen grave; but they are to be carted (to a dunghill?), without a coffin, unless they repented. And if the masspriests know anything of this [sin] and will not guide the excommunicate and forbid him from his wicked deeds, unless they receive money from him; or if those who ought to speak our words take money from him and keep silent and do not reveal it to us, then they are all excommunicated from God's blessing and from ours, unless they will remedy it.’

⁵⁶ C. P. Wormald informs me that there is recent archaeological evidence to show that bodies of criminals, and perhaps of excommunicates, were thrown haphazardly into graves without signs of Christian burial.

⁵⁷ See above, n. 29 for references to the penitentials. See also Whitelock, , Councils and Synods I, 213, 280 and 290–300Google Scholar for the Pastoral Letters of Ælfric. Boniface, , in his Epistolae, ed. Tangl, M., MGH, Epistolae Selectae I (1916), 169–70 (no. 78)Google Scholar mentions that members of the laity who seize hold of monasteries should be excommunicated. I would like to thank Dr C. Cubitt for this latter reference. The Regula Sancti Benedicti also employs specifically monastic forms of excommunication which, in many ways, parallel those of the laws and homilies.

⁵⁸ ‘Men living in illicit unions shall turn to a righteous life repenting of their sins, or they shall be excluded from the communion of the Church’: Attenborough, , Laws, p. 25.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Robertson, , Laws, pp. 6–7 and 112–13 respectively.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Wormald, , ‘Æthelred the Lawmaker’, states at p. 48Google Scholar: ‘Many of our [law] texts are therefore something in the nature of minutes of what was orally decreed, rather than statute law in their own right. They probably owe their preservation and extant form to those who used, rather than those who issued them.’ Wulfstan seems, then, to have had a particular concern to enforce excommunication.

⁶¹ Bethurum, , Homilies, p. 86Google Scholar. Bethurum notes the influence of Insular and Carolingian penitentials such as the pseudo-Bede and pseudo-Ecgbert texts on the codes of the eleventh century.

⁶² Vodola, E., ‘Sovereignty and Tabu: Evolution of the Sanction against Communication with Excommunicates. Part I: Gregory VII’, Studies in Church History, Subsidia 9: The Church and Sovereignty c. 590–1918, ed. Wood, D. (Oxford, 1991), pp. 35–55.Google Scholar

⁶³ Robertson, , Laws, pp. 234–5Google Scholar. See also Logan, , Excommunication and the Secular Arm, p. 18, for the details of the ecclesiastical and secular courts.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Robertson, , Laws, p. 234; translated at p. 235Google Scholar: ‘If indeed anyone, puffed up with pride, disdains or refuses to appear before the bishop's court, he shall be summoned once, twice and three times. But if even then he will not come to make amends, he shall be excommunicated. And if there is need to enforce this, the power and authority of the king or the sheriff shall be employed.’

⁶⁵ See Vodola, , Excommunication, pp. 20–35Google Scholar for this crucial period and the efforts of Pope Gregory VII to formulate certain aspects of excommunication.

⁶⁶ The most prolific canonistic works of the earlier centuries include the Collectio Dionysio-Hadriana, the Hispana and the pseudo-Isidore decretals. See, for example, Brooke, Z. N., The English Church and the Papacy from the Conquest to the Reign of John (Cambridge, 1931), pp. 84–105.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ This is no. 317 in Gneuss, H., ‘A Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100’, ASE 9 (1980), 1–60, at 22.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Brooke, , English Church and Papacy, pp. 57–83.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See nos. 43, 144, 179, 265, 318 and 712 in Gneuss, ‘Preliminary List’.

⁷⁰ Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 432–41Google Scholar. Liebermann dates these texts according to the estimated date of origin of their sources, rather than that of the extant manuscript itself. Oddly, he does not include the Latin formula for excommunication that precedes the Old English version in CCCC 303.

⁷¹ Ker, , Catalogue, p. 73.Google Scholar

⁷² Ibid. pp. 50–1.

⁷³ Ibid. p. 121.

⁷⁴ Ibid. pp. 446–7. See Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 440–1 for the examples of excommunication formulas in manuscripts later than the twelfth century.Google Scholar

⁷⁵ See above, pp. 185–8.

⁷⁶ Liebermann, Die Gesetze, notes the influence of Frankish liturgical texts on, for instance, the excommunication texts that he prints as nos. I and II (I, 432–4); he also gives a very detailed analysis of the similarities between texts and the conciliar authorities for portions of the texts. This subsequent analysis makes extensive use of Liebermann's editions of these excommunication texts.

⁷⁷ The Latin texts, for example, vary in the names of the saints they invoke: the Latin version in CCCC 303 invokes the Virgin Mary and St Michael by name; the text in CCCC 422, p. 310, invokes Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and all the apostles individually (for which, see Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 436)Google Scholar. Similarly, the texts vary in the thoroughness of damnation: the Latin text in CCCC 303 damns those who are ‘walking, sitting, awake, sleeping, riding, sailing, talking, silent, eating, drinking’ while the version in CCCC 190 does not specify the situation of those to be damned at all (for the latter, see ibid. I, 434).

⁷⁸ CCCC 146, for example, has ‘Maledicti sint a planta pedis usque ad uerticem capitis, nisi resipuerint et ad satisfactionem uenerint. Amen. Et sicut extinguitur hec candela, sic extinguantur candelabra eorum cum diabolis in inferno. Fiat, fiat, fiat! Amen' followed by the congregation's responses (ibid. I, 435); CCCC 422 (p. 14) has: ‘Et sicut extinguuntur iste lucerne, ita iaceant eorum anime in inferno exstincte cum diabolo et angelis eius; nisi resipiscant et ad emendacionem congruam ueniant. Fiat, fiat, fiat! Amen.’ (ibid. I, 436). It should be noted here that Liebermann gives the latter text as deriving from CCCC 422, p. 16Google Scholar; Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 119 and 121Google Scholar states that this same text is found at p. 14 of the manuscript. I have followed Ker in this instance.

⁷⁹ See, for example, Lallemant, W.M. Ave, ‘Early Frankish Society as Reflected in Contemporary Sources, Sixth and Seventh Centuries’ (unpubl. PhD dissertation, Rice Univ., 1981), for the texts of the early Frankish councils.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ PL 132, col. 362. The same text exists as Burchard, Decretum, X1.6 in PL 140, cols. 859–60.

⁸¹ PL 140, cols. 857–60. For these conciliar texts, see Les canons des conciles merovingiens (VIe–VIIe siècles), ed. Gaudemet, J. and Basdevant, B., Sources chrétiennes 353 and 354 (Paris, 1989) I, 67–91 and II, 349–401 respectively.Google Scholar

⁸² In view of the fact that there is no extant manuscript of Regino's work listed in Gneuss, it would seem more likely that the transmission of the excommunication formula came into England via Burchard or some other continental source.

⁸³ Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 434 and 436–7 respectively.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ The text in the Textus Roffensis, fol. 98 (ibid. I, 439), invokes St Andrew, patron saint of Rochester Cathedral, the place of origin of this manuscript. The Old English text in CCCC 303 uniquely refers to St Nicholas, whose vernacular Life, not coincidentally it seems, is unique to this manuscript also (see below).

⁸⁵ These responses are also included in Tiberius C. i (the Romano-German Pontifical with definite links to Regino of Prüm, as indicated by Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 432–3)Google Scholar printed in Liebermann, ibid. I, 433. See also above, n. 33.

⁸⁶ Ibid. I, 439.

⁸⁷ Vodola, , Excommunication, p. 3.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 433 (14). This is also in Regino and Burchard, chs. CCCCIX and XI. 3 respectively. See above, n. 80.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ In addition, in the twelfth century, the copying of semi-legal or pastoral material into otherwise generally homiletic codices is not uncommon: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 343, for example, contains the first and second Old English Letters of Ælfric to Wulfstan; London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D. xiv also contains part of Ælfric's first letter as an addition to blank leaves in the manuscript. See Ker, , Catalogue, pp. 271–7 (item 209).Google Scholar

⁹⁰ Line references refer to the editions of the texts which form the appendix of this essay.

⁹¹ This suggests that the source text's script had a long Insular r, with a rounded shoulder, which the scribe of CCCC 303 mistook for n. (This scribe has trouble distinguishing Insular characters in his sources throughout his stint in CCCC 303.) To have an Insular form of r in the script of the source Latin text indicates perhaps that the source was copied at an English scriptorium at a time when the Insular minuscule forms were still being used in writing Latin texts. This might place the date of the source any time up to the ‘early years of the eleventh century’. See Ker, , Catalogue, pp. xxv–xxvi.Google Scholar

⁹² Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 438. It seems clear that the Latin version in CCCC 303 provided the basis for the vernacular adaptation.Google Scholar

⁹³ The circumstantial evidence provided by the dates of copying of the other excommunication formulas suggests that all these texts were only introduced into England in the eleventh century. However, as D.G. Scragg pointed out to me, there are no loanwords in the Old English apart from the early ecclesiastical Latin candel.

⁹⁴ For the cult of St Nicholas in England, see The Old English Life of St Nicholas, ed. Treharne, E. M., Leeds Texts and Monographs (forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁹⁵ Richards, M. P., Texts and their Traditions in the Medieval Library of Rochester Cathedral Priory, Trans, of the Amer. Philosophical Soc. 78. 3 (Philadelphia, PA, 1988), 91Google Scholar. See Scragg, , Vercelli Homilies, pp. 52 and 90, for such homiletic openings.Google Scholar

⁹⁶ Liebermann, , Die Gesetze I, 434 and 439–40 respectively.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ For example, the sinners Dathan and Abiron, included in the Latin, are omitted in the Old English. This excision of what might be regarded as peripheral material is not unique to this text. Other unique items in CCCC 303 – particularly the Lives of SS Margaret, Giles and Nicholas — show the same translational techniques of removing unfamiliar or non-essential names and vague details present in the sources.

⁹⁸ Danet, B. and Bogoch, B.,‘“Whoever alters this, may God turn His face from him on the Day of Judgement”: Curses in Anglo-Saxon Documents’, Jnl of Amer. Folklore 105 (1992), 132–65, at 142–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Their examples are taken from Anglo-Saxon writs and land grants, none of which specifically focuses on theft or removal of the document, but rather on curses against the overturning of the legal contents of the document.

⁹⁹ For a very interesting and relevant discussion of the stylistic features of Old English curses, see ibid. pp. 152–6.

¹⁰⁰ Angelsächsische Homilien und Heiligenleben, ed. Assmann, B., Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel, 1889), 170–80. In my translation this reads: ‘I deprived some of speech, and some of their hearing; some of their feet, and some of their hands, and through that, they became cripples; some I deprived of sight, and some of their understanding; some I deceived while they were sleeping, and some, moreover, when awake.’Google Scholar

¹⁰¹ It is a common motif, Christ himself saying in Matt. XVIII.9 ‘Et si oculus tuus scandalizat te erue eum et proice abs te; bonum tibi est unoculum in vitam intrare quam duos oculos habentem mitti in gehennam ignis.’ See also, for example, McC, M.. Gatch's comments on Soul and Body I and II in ‘Perceptions of Eternity’, The Cambridge Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Godden, M. and Lapidge, M. (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 190–205, at 199–200.Google Scholar

¹⁰² In the ceremony of excommunication, while it is theologically acceptable to damn the body, the soul cannot be condemned on earth: the two entities are disparate.

¹⁰³ I would like to thank C. P. Wormald and P. Pulsiano for their comments on a draft of this paper which was presented to the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists' Conference at Wadham College, Oxford in August 1993. I am especially grateful to D.G. Scragg for his comments and generous help in preparing this paper for publication.