The fifth-century Italian manuscript of Jerome's Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Würzburg, Universitätsbibliothek, M. p. th. q. 2, which M. Adriaen takes as the base of his recent edition, is interesting to English scholars on various counts. On ir it bears a very early Old English inscription, in Anglo-Saxon majuscule which Lowe and Bischoff date c. 700:

Cuthsuuithae. boec.

thaerae abbatissan.

(‘a book of Cuthswith the abbess’). In all probability this was written in England itself rather than at an Anglo-Saxon centre on the continent, in view of the chronology of the English missions. The commentary is in ‘a beautiful bold uncial of the oldest type’, but six leaves of the manuscript's original 114 (fols. 10, 13, 63, 68, 81 and 82) were replaced by leaves of a thicker parchment, in England according to Lowe and Bischoff. It is not known why this was necessary, nor where the text was taken from. Lowe dates the writing of these later leaves to the seventh century. He observes that they were ‘written, if one may judge from the syllable-by-syllable copying, by a scribe for whom Latin was an alien tongue and who was not completely sure of his uncial characters’. D. H. Wright remarks that their example of an English scribe ‘doing his unequal best to reproduce the unfamiliar letter forms’ is not a very helpful illustration of the relationship of English uncial to Italian models, ‘for the script he writes has no style of its own, and therefore no future’. The main interest of the manuscript in the history of English uncial is as an illustration of foreign models which were available; it is, in Lowe's words, ‘the oldest extant uncial manuscript that was at hand to serve as a model in an English scriptorium’.

A considerable body of evidence shows that the kings of later Anglo-Saxon England concerned themselves very seriously with the cult of relics. No doubt this involvement arose in part from their piety; but as I hope to show there are grounds for thinking that it also derived from the importance of relics and relic-cults as instruments of royal policy, expressing and reinforcing the kings' power and position. I shall consider in turn three aspects of royal activity with regard to relics: firstly the collection and donation of relics by the kings in order to increase their prestige and to symbolize their political status; secondly the use of relics in the processes of government; and thirdly royal patronage of particular relic-cults as an expedient to political influence.

In part I of this study I concluded that some of the most unusual characteristics of Grendel and his mother (and their ambience) bear a striking likeness to, and may derive from, concepts of a race of cannibalistic giants descended from Cain in an ancient Jewish pseudepigraphical Noah book or (if, as some think, there was no Noah book) pseudepigraphical traditions designated as Noachic. I now take up the second question posed at the beginning of my part I, namely, what knowledge that such a race (or races) survived the Flood is the poet likely to have had? It is a real question, for, after all, if all mankind and all living creatures – except the prescribed Noah contingent – were destroyed by the Flood (Genesis vi and vii), without some authority the Beowulf poet would not have come to the belief that some of Cain's evil progeny had survived. We should not doubt the reality of that belief. For one thing, we can be confident that he believed in the physical actuality of monsters. They formed part of the repertoire of medieval belief, especially evident (though not exclusively so) when mystical–popular–folkloristic impulses asserted themselves. In the Middle Ages monsters were not regarded as imagined fictions, nor understood as spiritual–metaphorical symbols. Secondly, to suggest that in deriving his monsters from Cain the Beowulf poet was ‘merely employing a metaphor for the society of reprobates’ and that ‘it is unlikely that Grendel was identified with the race of Cain with any save figurative intent’ is surely inadequate. The narrator's two statements about the line of descent from Cain to Grendel and his mother are neither vague nor obliquely hinted; on the contrary, they are markedly definite.

When writing about the tenth-century ecclesiastical reform in England thirteen years ago, Eric John rightly pointed out that ‘the tenth and early eleventh centuries are the least studied and most taken for granted periods of both English and Continental history’. But today, this contention is no longer true: investigation into different aspects of the monastic revival has resulted in a considerable number of special publications. In particular, the millennial celebrations marking the deaths of the leading reformers, Æthelwold (d. 984), Dunstan (d. 988) and Oswald (d. 992), have been accompanied by a reassessment of their activities and achievements, the fruits of which are assembled in three collections of essays by experts in a variety of fields. The renewed interest in the reform era has naturally drawn scholarly attention to the primary sources which provide first-hand information about the thought, aims and strategies of the reformers. Among such documents, the Regularis Concordia (henceforth RC) plays a major part as an object of historical and liturgical research; besides, it has turned out in recent years that the Latin text and especially the Old English interlinear gloss of the consuetudinary also offer important material for the philologist and the historical linguist.

Specimens of the several substantive coin-types issued in the name of King Æthelred the Unready (978–1016) survive in their thousands, especially (and for good historical reasons) in Scandinavia; but very few specimens are recorded of his highly distinctive Agnus Dei type. In a checklist of recorded specimens published in 2007 (ASE 36, pp. 215–20), details were given of seventeen coins; and the type was set in the context of the English response to the viking invasion of England in 1009, led by Thorkel the Tall. A further four specimens came to light in 2008–10, one in England and three in Denmark. An updated checklist of the enlarged corpus of Agnus Dei coins is here accompanied by a complete set of illustrations; and the opportunity is taken to review some of the historical and numismatic matters raised by this remarkable type.

In the preface to F. M. Stenton's collected papers Lady Stenton notes that the publication of Anglo-Saxon England in 1943 marked the culmination of a life-time spent largely preparing for and writing a book in which ‘place-names, coins and charters, wills and pleas, archaeology and the laws of the Anglo-Saxons were all for the first time adequately used to produce a balanced narrative, supported by Domesday Book and the twelfth-century charters which made it easier to understand the earlier material’. Indeed, with the exception of archaeology, Sir Frank had been actively engaged in all these fields of research, as is revealed by the list of his published works, and it seemed unlikely at the time that it would ever be necessary to make major adjustments to the view of the Scandinavian settlements that he presented. Only twelve years had passed, however, when voices of dissent began to arise and the first of three papers that were to herald two decades of controversy about the Vikings in England was published. The present review examines the most significant contributions to the ensuing debate and considers whether it has, in fact, been necessary to depart substantially from the views held by Stenton.

Aldhelm of Malmesbury was one of the most prolific and influential scholars of early Anglo-Saxon England. His contemporary fame rested partly on the fact that he had been a pilgrim to Rome. This article presents new evidence for Aldhelm's literary debt to the epigraphy of early Christian Rome. Two ninth-century manuscripts from Reims contain an anthology of six epigrams which derive largely from verse inscriptions in Old St Peter's. Aldhelm quoted two of these, de Petro and de Andrea, almost verbatim in his Carmina Ecclesiastica. It is likely that Aldhelm knew these verses from first-hand observation rather than via the pages of a manuscript sylloge.

What type of liturgy did St Willibrord, the Anglo-Saxon apostle of Frisia (d. 739), use? This is one of the most intriguing questions which a liturgist or historian of this period can ask. In order to answer such a question one has to consider a series of problems concerning the liturgical background of Willibrord himself and, by implication, of his period. With what form of liturgy was Willibrord familiar before he embarked on his mission to Frisia? What liturgy did he find on the Continent when he arrived, and did he attempt to borrow anything from what he found? These and similar questions need to be asked before any clear and coherent picture of the type of liturgy used by Willibrord can be drawn, and since, unfortunately, they cannot be answered with utter certainty, this article will offer some thoughts on the matter, without attempting to provide a solution or a clear-cut answer.

The subjects of this paper are four eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon gospel-books and their patron, Judith, countess of Flanders. Two of them, with their distinguished late Anglo-Saxon illuminations and their precious silver-gilt bindings, are among the more celebrated treasures of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. The remaining two, which are now preserved at the Hessische Landesbibliothek in Fulda, and at the Archives of Monte Cassino, may no longer have jewelled covers, but are still luxury books of the highest quality.

Individualized portraiture is rarely found in early medieval art. Personalities or groups were more often identified by context or inscription or some significant motif. To those who knew the biblical stories and legends, individuals portrayed in scenes such as Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, or Moses and the brazen serpent, or the Last Supper, could be easily identified. Iconographical motifs not only served to identify particular prophets, apostles, saints and others, but also often established the character of certain groups. In the latter case, costume played an important part, and especially the head-dress. In western medieval European art a king can be recognized by his crown, a monk by his tonsure, a bishop by his mitre, a divine being by its nimbus and so on. While there were variations and some exceptions, nevertheless head-dress and costume were useful devices for ordinary labelling.

The element OE hām, ‘a village, a village community, an estate, a manor, a homestead’, is generally reckoned to belong to an early stratum of English place-names. Within this stratum, and especially in the type in -ingham from OE -ingahām, it is associated with place-names from OE -ingas and -inga- (the genitive composition form). The same common antiquity is noted on the continent between place-names from OHG -heim and those from OHG -ing. In recent years an attempt has been made at a re-appraisal of the value of the place-name from OE -ingas, -inga-, including the numerous -ingahām type, as evidence of the progress of the English settlements, while other recent work has seen the beginning of an examination of the place-names containing OE -hām and the compounds wīc-hīm, hīm-tūn, hām-stede and hām-st(e)all: the distribution of the compound wāc-hām has been shown to be related very particularly to Roman roads and Roman archaeology, and it has been recognized that in Cheshire (see fig. 1), place-names in -ham from -hām and in -ingham (<-ing(a)hām) are distributed in a pattern based on the run of the Roman roads.

The ‘Fonthill Letter’ is a document sent by Ordlaf, ealdorman of Wiltshire from 897 onwards, to King Edward the Elder (899–924). It was intended to be used as evidence in a lawsuit which one Æthelhelm Higa had instituted against the bishop of Winchester, claiming possession of five hides at Fonthill in Wiltshire, which Ealdorman Ordlaf had given to the bishop in exchange for five hides in another part of Wiltshire. The letter traces the intricate history of the Fonthill estate, relating the sequence of events by which it had come into Ordlaf's possession through his godson Helmstan, who had distinguished himself by having been twice convicted of theft. Eventually, the letter served its purpose: Æthelhelm Higa withdrew from the suit.

Probably it is generally recognized that present-day apprehension of the text of Beowulf owes a great deal to scholars of the first half of the nineteenth century, for most editions carry numerous textual notes attributing readings to authorities such as Grundtvig, Kemble, Thorpe and Grein. But often realization of the debt remains only vague. Much of the achievement of the first editors is, in fact, difficult to define, because it consisted in a gradual development of editorial standards and practices through the solution of many individual problems of word and line division, the establishment of numerous particular sentence structures and the identification of a number of proper names. The readings which editors have felt obliged to supply in order to restore those lost because of damage to the manuscript or to repair scribal errors or omissions can, however, be identified and quantified, and analysis shows that well over half of all such readings adopted by editors from 1950 onwards had been proposed by 1857. It is therefore the nature and significance of the readings supplied by that date which this article aims at demonstrating.

The problem to be discussed in this paper concerns the organization of those Viking armies which under the leadership of Swein Forkbeard and his son Cnut succeeded in conquering England in the second decade of the eleventh century: were the forces of these kings privately organized, like the ones operating in the ninth century, or were they state armies recruited on the basis of a public obligation on all free men to serve the king in war?

This passage from The Wanderer demonstrates some of the rhetorical techniques which have been noted in Old English texts. Its most striking features are the rhetorical questions and the figure of anaphora which is produced by the repetition of ‘Hwær’. Another rhetorical element is the use of the theme (topos) of ubi sunt (‘where are…?’) to lament the loss of past joys. In classical antiquity, features such as these, which served to create effective discourse, were the products of ars rhetorica. This art was distinguished from the more basic subject of ars grammatica in that rhetoric, the ‘ars … bene dicendi’ (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria II.xvii.37), aimed at the good production of text (for oral delivery) with the aim of persuading the listeners to take or adopt some form of action or belief, whereas grammar, the ‘recte loquendi scientia’, was responsible for correct speech and also for the interpretation of poetical texts (‘poetarum enarratio’: Quintilian, Institutio oratoria I.iv.2). In terms of classical rhetoric, the above passage from The Wanderer could be analysed according to the three phases of the production of a text (partes artis) which pertain to both written and oral discourse: inventio (finding topics such as the ubi sunt), dispositio (arranging the parts of the text) and elocutio (embellishing the text stylistically, for example with rhetorical questions and other figures and tropes).

How and under what circumstances did the Anglo-Saxons acquire their knowledge of how to compose a text effectively?

One of the most distinctive features of Beowulf is the presentation of Grendel and his mother as members of Cain's monstrous progeny. What knowledge of a race (or races) of giants and monsters descended from Cain, and of their survival after the Flood, is the poet likely to have had? I take up the first part of this question in this article and the second part in an article to be published later in Anglo-Saxon England.

It is a decade since the British Museum published its catalogue of late Anglo-Saxon metal-work – ‘late’ in this context meaning between the eighth century and the eleventh – and the only museum with a comparable collection has now produced an equivalent volume. Probably there will not be any more such catalogues, for no other museum has enough metal-work to make a separate publication worthwhile, although composite catalogues, like the numismatists' sylloges, could be produced; for example, Cambridge, Ipswich, King's Lynn and Norwich would make a substantial East Anglian contribution. Except for catalogues, it seems unlikely that there will ever be books devoted exclusively to the metal-work of post-pagan England, since this is not a subject that can be isolated from its archaeological and art-historical contexts. If there is a distinction between archaeology and art history, metal-work, since it is relevant to both, provides a bridge between them, although often a minor one.

Insular Latinity – its origins, characteristics, affiliations and dissemination – has attracted much attention in the last decade. One area which has benefited from this increased interest is the investigation of the Latin grammars written by Insular scholars: consider, for example, the editions of Insular grammatical writings recently published in the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. But it is noteworthy that the Anglo-Latin grammarians have profited far less from this upsurge in interest than their Irish counterparts. Although Anglo-Latin as well as Hiberno-Latin texts have been among those recently edited, and have been the subject of several specialized studies, they have failed to excite scholarly attention to the same extent as the Irish works. Their origin, history, relationship and cultural context have not yet been satisfactorily established. Studies such as the series of articles by Louis Holtz, tracing the evolution of the study of grammar in Ireland and the relationship of the surviving texts to one another, are lacking for the Anglo-Latin grammarians. Yet the unknown factors in early England are scarcely fewer. To take one example, the fundamental problem of the rôle of the Irish in the creation of an Anglo-Latin grammatical tradition has hardly been touched upon. Indeed, that the Anglo-Saxons can even be credited with a grammatical tradition of their own has been questioned. Too often, the few surviving Anglo-Latin grammars are held up as an isolated phenomenon and contrasted with the prolific outpourings of a diligent host of Irish anonymi. It is the purpose of this article to investigate the evidence for the study of Latin grammar in England south of the Humber up to the time of its best-known manifestations, the grammars of Tatwine and Boniface, in the early eighth century.

The Middle Ages inherited from antiquity a tradition of reading which embraced the four functions of grammatical studies (grammaticae officia): lectio, emendatio, enarratio and iudicium. Lectio was the process whereby a reader had to identify elements of the text — letters, syllables, words and sentences (discretio) — in order to read it aloud according to the accentuation required by the sense (pronuntiatio). Emendatio, a process entailed by the realities of manuscript transmission, required a reader (or his teacher) to correct the text in his copy, and sometimes tempted him to ‘improve’ it. Enarratio was the process of examining features of vocabulary, rhetorical and literary form, and above all of interpreting the subject matter of the text (explanatio). ludicium was the process of exercising judgement of the aesthetic qualities or the moral and philosophical value of the text (bene dictorum conprobatio).

The bulk of Old English literature, both poetry and prose, has come down to us in manuscripts of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Most of the texts in these late manuscripts are written in a form of Old English called late West Saxon. This dialect was used not only by West Saxon scribes and authors of that period but also by their contemporaries from other dialect areas, and the scribes employed it even when they were copying much earlier Old English texts, such as the early West Saxon Alfredian prose texts or the early Anglian glosses in the Vespasian Psalter. Late West Saxon thus cannot be looked upon as a regionally restricted dialect but – with certain reservations – as a written standard current in all of late Anglo-Saxon England.