In the long history of the Insular system of scripts, the tenth century marks for England a decisive stage. Within the narrow confines of that eraq we may observe numerous ecclesiastical developments which bear on the history of book production: attempts at a scriptorial reform; the reception of external stimuli of an artistic and technical nature; the creation of a new ‘Square minuscule’ form of Insular script; the deliberate imitation in England (for the first time since its emergence in northwestern Francia in the later eighth century) of the Caroline minuscule, probably not unconnected with an increasing rate of impartation of foreign book; a monastic revolution within the English church (supported by the monarchy but led by Benedictine ideologues drawing inspiration in large part from continental models of reform) some of whose proponents probably favoured Caroline writing as a matter of principle; a growing tendency on the part of scribes to write different scripts for Latin and the vernacular; a considerable growth in the writing of vernacular manuscripts whose output seems to have increased geometrically during the 175 years from King Alfred's literary and educational reform to the Norman Conquest; and finally the abandonment of the Square minuscule as a vehicle for Latin writing, coincident with its transmutation into another variety of Insular script whose use in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was restricted to English-language matter.

Scholarship on The Dream of the Rood has long entertained the suspicion that the poem might be the product of composite authorship. Recent criticism has tended to reject this possibility on aesthetic grounds, but the present article identifies new metrical and lexical reasons to believe that The Dream of the Rood contains contributions from at least two poets. It reconstructs the poem's textual history and contends that lines 1–77 represent an original core to which a later poet added lines 78–156.

In his Latin preface to the First Series of Catholic Homilies, Ælfric lists six source authors: Augustine, Jerome, Bede, Gregory, Smaragdus and Haymo. The fact that Haymo is named in a phrase of his own at the end, ‘et aliquando Haymonem’, and is specified as being used ‘aliquando’, suggests that he was in some sense a supplementary source, as modern studies have tended to confirm. Smaragdus, by contrast, stands with Augustine, Jerome, Bede and Gregory as if Ælfric, in thinking back over the work he had done for the Catholic Homilies, had found Smaragdus as useful as the others and had consulted him about as frequently. Yet it is a puzzling fact that modern source studies have identified very little material drawn from Smaragdus's exegetical Expositio libri comitis. It is possible, of course, that Ælfric's claim to have used Smaragdus was unjustified, but although medieval writers often made false claims, Ælfric did not habitually do so; on the contrary, he was very conscious of his relationship to authoritative sources and, when he named an authority, his claims were usually as reliable as contemporary traditions allowed.

The Old English Genesis A, in a moralizing expansion of the biblical narrative, describes how sin sprouted and spread in evil branches from the blood of the murdered Abel:

Critical discussion of this passage has reflected a basic disagreement about the presence of allegory in the poem. Bernard F. Huppé finds three levels of meaning in the passage:

Literally, the descendants of Cain, born after his sins, are a progeny of affliction, because they perished in the Flood. Symbolically, they are children of affliction because they dwell in the City of Babylon, of which Cain is the spiritual founder. In its moral significance Cain's sin represents the earthly beginning of all mortal, Babylonian sin …

I list newly found additional leaves of six manuscripts already described in 1957 (12, 73, 79, 81, 139 and 332). New leaves of 12 were to be expected: probably there are still more to find. The other five are all ‘principal manuscripts’ (Catalogue, pp. xv–xix), but the new leaves of 139 do not contain any English. 73, 79 and 81 are binding fragments: new fragments like this are likely to turn up from time to time. On the other hand the new leaf of 332, also a binding fragment, is a surprise. How does it come to be associated with a leaf of 73 inside a binding made not earlier than 1636? Were these leaves taken over from an earlier binding, the work of the binder of SP. 4 and SP. 260 at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, who used the strips of 73 now at Corpus (Catalogue, p. 122) ? And does 332 have some connection with Archbishop Parker? Neither supposition presents difficulty. 332 remained at Worcester until the seventeenth century, but it is more than likely that John Joscelyn, Parker's Latin secretary, examined it at Worcester (cf. Catalogue, p. lii). Did he excise the leaves containing this sermon for the common of a confessor and convey them to Parker and were they then abandoned as being mere duplicates of what Parker already had in 41 and 43?

Scholars have long disputed whether or not Beowulf reflects the influence of Classical Latin literature. This essay examines the motif of the ‘poisoned place’ present in a range of texts known to the Anglo-Saxons, most famously represented by Avernus in the Aeneid. While Grendel's mere presents the best-known poisonous locale in Old English poetry, another is found in the dense and enigmatic poem Solomon and Saturn II. The relationship between these poems is discussed beside a consideration of the possibility that their use of the ‘Avernian tradition’ points to the influence of Latin epic on their Anglo-Saxon authors.

The Vita Ædwardi regis, written probably in the late 1060s, is a major source for our knowledge of the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–66). The discovery by Henry Summerson of the complete text of a hitherto incomplete poem in the Vita Ædwardi, describing a ship given to the king by Earl Godwine, on the occasion of the king's accession in 1042, contributes significantly to our understanding of the poem itself, and bears at the same time on the relationship between the Encomium Emmae reginae and Vita Ædwardi, and between the Vita Ædwardi and the later eleventh- or early-twelfth-century source common to John of Worcester's Chronicle and to William of Malmesbury's Gesta regum Anglorum. These matters are pursued further, in a preliminary exploration of the wider significance of Dr Summerson's discovery.

It is well known that sources for the Anglo-Saxon period are unevenly distributed, and that we are particularly badly off for reliable evidence relating to East Anglia, especially in the period before the Viking raids and settlements. The main reason for this lies in the effects of those raids and settlements, for not only were the monasteries destroyed, but the two East Anglian sees of Dommoc and Elmham ceased to exist, and only Elmham was restored, and not, as far as our evidence goes, much before 955. Henceforward there was only one bishop for the whole of East Anglia, though at times it appears to have had a centre for Suffolk at Hoxne as well as one at Elmham. The East Anglian see was transferred to Thetford in 1071–2, and eventually about 1095 to Norwich. With such breaks in continuity it is not to be wondered that no pre-Viking age manuscripts or charters have come down by preservation in East Anglian churches, and it is doubtful how far any information in post-Conquest writers is likely to go back on genuine tradition. What we know about the early church in East Anglia comes from evidence preserved elsewhere, except in as far as the finds at Sutton Hoo have implications concerning the conversion of this kingdom. Our main source is Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, but this can be supplemented by some pieces of evidence from other sources, and it may be worth while to assemble these and study their implications.

I present here an edition of three Anglo-Latin poems from a Cambridge University Library manuscript, Kk. 5.34, 71r–80r. In addition to these three poems the manuscript contains important recensions of the Aetna, the Culex, Ausonius's Technopaegnion and the late Latin Carmen de ponderibus. These recensions have occupied the interest of previous editors and almost no attention has been given to the Anglo-Latin poems. These Anglo-Latin poems are nevertheless of considerable interest to the study of Anglo-Latinity and of medieval Latin in general. I have named them the Altercatio magistri et discipuli, the Responsio discipuli and the Carmen de libero arbitrio respectively, for reasons which will become clear in the following discussion.

The illustrated manuscripts of later Anglo-Saxon England are justly famed for their beauty. The expense lavished on the most elaborate of them is paralleled in Western Europe at the time only in late-tenth- and eleventh-century Germany. Neither France, Spain nor Italy can offer anything that is comparable to this sustained luxury production. Modern art-historical scholarship on the Anglo-Saxon material has not really attempted to explain this phenomenal industry beyond implying that the vast majority of these books were made in monastic scriptoria and for the use of the church. If this implication is correct, it begs the questions, ‘where did the money come from?’ and ‘whence the desire to spend it in this way?’ Perhaps the questions are not asked because the answers in general terms seem rather obvious. Expenditure on any particular luxury item is usually in part a question of fashion, and fashion in certain circumstances becomes a priority which determines that surplus money is directed towards its indulgence. Doubtless a response along these lines could be fleshed out by a discussion of the sources of income of the Anglo-Saxon church and of its aspirations to conspicuous display. But any exploration of monastic wealth and rivalry for prestige which attempts to explain book production at this period would be based on the assumption, and it is no more than an assumption, that the phenomenon is to be accounted for by ecclesiastical patronage. The arguments brought forward in this paper will be directed towards a different end: that many of the most famous English illuminated books of this period owe their creation to royal money, and that they were produced, sometimes without a particular recipient in mind, to be given as presents which would help cement allegiance to the crown and serve as an indication of the donor's piety. But what is the evidence for this upturn in the production of de luxe manuscripts?

In their admirable edition of The Wanderer Dunning and Bliss give the meaning ‘as when’ for swa in line 43b

pinceð him on mode pæt he his mondryhten

clyppe ond cysse, ond on cneo lecge

honda ond heafod, swa he hwilum ær

in geardagum giefstolas breac (41–4)

and defend their gloss in the following words: ‘Here literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments.’ And in his latest book, Stanley B. Greenfield approves: ‘Thus Bliss–Dunning…can properly say that though usage of swa meaning “as when” here “would be unique”, but [sic] “literary considerations must outweigh linguistic arguments”.’ I do not approve. I would say that Dunning and Bliss have let literary considerations outweigh not linguistic arguments, but linguistic facts. Hence my title.

A certain ‘Descidia Parisiace polis’, which can safely be identified with the work of Abbo of Saint-Germain-des-Prés now commonly known as the Bella Parisiacae Urbis, is listed among the books given by Æthelwold to the monastery of Peterborough. We shall never know if Æthelwold's gift corresponds to any of the surviving manuscripts of Abbo's poem – though probably it does not – but the inventory gives evidence of the popularity of his work in England. In the following pages I shall consider the genesis and successive fortune of Abbo's poem and provide a new assessment of the value of the Bella Parisiacae Urbis. This assessment is a necessary first step to the understanding of the reasons for the success of his poem – and specifically of its third book – in England, as is witnessed by the number of English manuscripts containing the Latin text and by the Old English gloss which was added to this small, intriguing work.

The mortal remains of the Venerable Bede rest today in the cathedral church of Christ and Blessed Mary the Virgin, Durham. They were brought there in the early eleventh century by one Ælfred Westou, priest and sacrist of Durham and an enthusiastic amateur of that characteristically medieval form of devotion expressed in the acquisition, by fair means or foul, of the relics of the saints to the greater glory of God. The removal of Bede's remains to Durham, involving as it did considerable preliminary planning and solitary nocturnal vigil before the final successful snatch, was one of his more brilliant coups, upon which he seems especially to have preened himself. The bones were first kept in the coffin of St Cuthbert, being subsequently removed to a reliquary near the saint's tomb. In 1370 they were placed in the Galilee Chapel, where they now lie under a plain table-tomb of blue marble, made in 1542 after the medieval shrine had been defaced. Bede himself would certainly have preferred that his body should have been left in its grave among his brethren at Jarrow, there to await the coming of Christ which he so ardently desired to see; but if a removal had to be made, we need not doubt that he would have been content to lie at Durham, near but not too near the shrine of St Cuthbert, the great saint and patron of the north, under a modest tombstone, so much more in keeping with his nature than the earlier and richer shrine, despoiled by the commissioners of Henry VIII.

King Alfred's translations successively develop the metaphors of eagan modes and scip modes to render the implicit and explicit psychological contexts of nautical and ocular images in their Latin source-texts. The increasing complexity and independence of the metaphorical modification evident in the Old English translations suggest the order in which Alfred translated and reveal his maturing conception of epistemology, particularly the theory of illumination. In Pastoral Care, Consolations of Philosophy, Metres of Boethius, and, especially, Soliloquies, the interplay of these psychosomatic metaphors functions not as rhetorical flourish or stylistic ornamentation but as a means for Alfred to model his inferences about epistemological phenomena.

In the years which followed the Norman Conquest, the Old English aristocracy was largely deprived of its lands and offices, both lay and ecclesiastical. The resistance of the English nobility to the Norman Conquest made a large contribution to its own eclipse, but it is rarely that we are afforded a glimpse of the fortunes of an individual. The historian may, however, dwell in some detail on the career of one man, Edgar the Ætheling. Episodes from his life are preserved in a variety of works composed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains several entries relating to his activities after 1066, and the D version shows a special interest in Edgar and his family. Among Latin histories, those of John of Worcester, William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis follow his activities, although none of these authors was well informed about his life. Edgar appears not to have made a strongly favourable impression upon any of them: to the anonymous compilers of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he was the rightful heir to the throne of England, but to both William and Orderic he was indolent. There is little difficulty involved in bringing together the known episodes of his life, and although his royal blood makes him a far from typical example the picture that emerges gives a useful insight into how one Englishman fared in the unstable political climate of the years immediately preceding the Norman Conquest, and in its aftermath. It is intended here to assemble the evidence for the life of Edgar and to treat him not as a footnote to history, which is how he has often fared at the hands of historians, but as a character of no small importance in the history of the Norman Conquest of England.

Manige men beoð þe beforan oþrum mannum hwæethugu god begangaþ 7 raþe hie hit anforlataþ, forþan þe Crist sylfa cwaæþ pæt he nelle gehyran þæs gimleasan 7 þæs forgytenan mannes gebedrædene. Ne þæt to nahte nyt ne bið þæt man godne mete ete oþþe þæt betste win on gebeorscipe drince gif þæt gelimpeþ þæt he hit eft spiwende anforlæteþ, þæt he ær to blisse nam 7 to lichoman nyttnesse. Swa we þonne þa gastlican lare unwæriice ne sceolan anforlætan, þe ure saul big leofaþ 7 feded bið. Swa se lichoma buton mete 7 drence leofian ne mæg, swa þonne seo saul gif heo ne bið mid godes worde feded gastlice hungre 7 þurste heo bið cwelmed. Forþon myccle swiþor we sceolan þencan be þæm gastlicum þingum þonne be þæm lichomlicum

The Frankish Annals of Lindisfarne and Kent lie at the root of the ‘making of history’ in Anglo-Saxon England. They are brief ‘paschal annals’, recording mainly the accession or burials of Kentish and Northumbrian kings between 616 and 704, and are found in the margins of Easter tables in one Anglo-Saxon and six Frankish manuscripts dating from c. 740-c. 830. These annals are not well known, but they deserve close attention since they provide factual details not just of ‘what happened’ in early Anglo-Saxon England, but also how such historical data was collected, copied, and transmitted across generations. Crucially, the annals contain chronological details that are not found in any other source, not even in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, and they are a unique source for those details. The evidence points to the variety of formats and contexts in which precise chronological details were first recorded in Anglo-Saxon England, and shows that these annals are a very rare piece of independent evidence not just for the history of the seventh century, but also for the type of ‘raw material’ that was available to Bede at Jarrow in the early decades of the eighth.

Junius II in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is the only one of the four principal manuscripts of Old English poetry to be illustrated. The pictures are important not only because they form one of the most extensive sets of Genesis illustrations of the early Middle Ages but also because the text which they illustrate is a composite one, 600 lines of which were translated into Old English from an Old Saxon poem probably of the second quarter of the ninth century. By tracing the sources of these illustrations one can throw light on the history and transmission of the text as well as on the history of manuscript art in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

The story of how Domne Eafe acquired the land for her monastery at Thanet when her brothers were murdered by a councillor of her cousin, Ecgberht of Kent (664–73), is variously related in a number of Latin and Old English works. The full version (involving Domne Eafe's tame hind and the death of the councillor) is found in three Latin Lives. These are: a passio of the murdered princes attributed to Byrhtferth, which is the earliest recorded account of the foundation of Thanet, dated c. 1000, and written for the monks at Ramsey, who believed the relics translated to their monastery in 978 × 992 to be those of Domne Eafe's brothers; Goscelin's Vita S. Mildrethae, dated 1089 × 1099, and written for the monks at St Augustine's, Canterbury, who acquired the relics of Mildrith from Thanet in 1030; a passio of the murdered princes found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 285, also from Ramsey, which was composed sometime between the mid-eleventh century and the early thirteenth.

Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus has traditionally posed problems of interpretation in terms of both form (its apparently bipartite structure) and content (as a digest of the rules of rhetoric combined with an exposition of the four cardinal virtues). However, a close reading of the sources from which Alcuin was drawing his argument (Cicero, Julius Victor, Fortunatianus, Marius Victorinus, Cassiodorus and, above all, Augustine and Quintilian) suggests why he should have chosen to emphasize the connection between rhetoric and the virtues in this particular way.