I The general theme of the conference was ‘Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination’.

Three keynote addresses were delivered.

Michelle P. Brown, University of London, ‘Imagining the Exotic: Insular Attitudes to the Cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East’.

Anna Gannon, University of Cambridge, ‘A Debt and an Honour: New Approaches to Coin Studies’.

Leslie Webster, British Museum, ‘Image, Identity, and the Staff ordshire Hoard’.

The following thirty-seven papers were delivered.

This article investigates the relationship of the Wilfrid and Cuthbert Lives, confirming that Bede re-presented the life of Cuthbert in response to Wilfridian criticism. It then examines why that was necessary c. 720, arguing that it fits not just with a probable episcopal interregnum at Lindisfarne after Eadfrith's death, as suggested by Kirby, but also with Acca's promotion of St Oswald and Heavenfield, which undercut Lindisfarne's cult of St Cuthbert and status as the mother church of Bernicia. At stake were both Lindisfarne's survival as an episcopal see and its distinctive type of monkbishops. These represented a different model of episcopacy, championed by Bede, from that espoused by the Wilfridians.

Boniface and Bede relied for the most part on the same sources of information for learning about the early Anglo-Saxon church, yet their accounts differ on a number of crucial points pertaining to church organization and the importance of London as an ecclesiastical centre. The present article takes a close look at Boniface's methods of conducting research into the past, and asks how they compared with Bede's. By focusing on Boniface's account of an early-seventh-century Lundunensis synodus, it is asked whether Boniface offers a viable alternative to Bede, and to what extent his account challenges the prevalent historiographical narrative of the foundation and growth of the church in Anglo-Saxon England.

The article argues from an empirical study of the alliterative and metrical characteristics of the speeches of Genesis A that the poet made a concerted attempt to differentiate between the spoken language of God and that of mortal speakers. In particular the analysis shows that divine language is highly patterned, alliteratively ornate and unusually hypermetric. The most extreme effects are generated by the genres of benediction and malediction. The evidence shows that the poet was also able to use the rules of his poetics effectively for rhetorical ends. An attempt is made finally to link this characterising of the divine voice with the Biblical vox tonantis.

The belief that monsters had a human genealogy originating at a point of transgressive sexual behaviour is something attested to in early medieval texts that either circulated or were written in Anglo-Saxon England. The Hiberno-Latin Reference Bible, a widely known text of the period, and the Old English poem Genesis A both suggest that the sexual deviancy of the progenitors of monsters is perceivable as reiterated stigmata on the monstrous bodies of their progeny. It is within this context of theological exegesis and poetic imagination that the Anglo-Saxon drawings of monsters in The Wonders of the East were produced. What one sees in the depiction of monsters therein is a performance of sexual monstrosity that links monsters to their human forbears; but also, by means of the illustrated interaction of monster and human, the monster is brought perilously close to the here-and-now of the Anglo-Saxon reader-viewer's imagined world.

The Codex ‘Lindisfarnensis’ (London, British Library, Cotton Nero D. iv, early eighth century) was glossed in Old English by the tenth-century priest Aldred. Aldred's colophon purports to give information about the eighth-century makers of the manuscript, at Lindisfarne. What is actually reliable about this highly literary colophon is Aldred's purpose in writing the gloss: to give the Evangelists a voice to address ‘all the brothers’ – particularly the Latinless. We propose new interpretations of three OE words (gihamadi, inlad, ora) misunderstood before. Aldred was learned; his sources extend from Ovid through the Fathers to contemporary texts.

The Old English text by Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, known as ‘King Edgar's Establishment of Monasteries’ (EEM) is here viewed as an expression of royal ideology. The article argues that the final section of EEM, in the first person, should be interpreted as words attributed to Edgar himself. This re-reading strengthens the case for dating EEM to the period 966 x c. 970, and for suspecting a female audience. It is argued that EEM accompanied an early, feminized version of Æthelwold's translation of the Rule of St Benedict. This model of religious life related to the responsibility of Edgar's queen, Ælfthryth, for female houses, and reflected her alliance with Æthelwold. EEM offered a distinctive view of English ecclesiastical history subtly tailored to these purposes. The final section of EEM presented a sophisticated defence of female monastic endowment. Ælfthryth's role provides an important context for understanding the politics and representation of Æthelred's kingship in the 990s.

On numerous occasions Ælfric of Cerne, and of Eynsham, refers to the long-standing patrons of his career and oeuvre, Ealdorman Æthelweard and his son Æthelmær. Ælfric is, however, our sole witness to this patronage. As a result, we get only his view of their relationship, and there are blind spots which, in our enthusiasm for the unusual wealth of personal information from an Anglo-Saxon author, we tend to ignore. In this article I examine Ealdorman Æthelweard's Chronicon for what it might reveal about its author, and his background; and I suggest that it brings into clearer focus his own role in an unparalleled case of literary patronage in Anglo-Saxon England.

An investigation of Ælfric's shame-vocabulary allows us to divide his shame concept into three areas: being (a)shamed, active shaming, and the shameful. The prototypical scenario of shame is humiliation or exposure before others. However, Ælfric asks his audience to imagine this kind of public, worldly shame in relation to failures to live up to Christian ideals; he thus encourages the ethicization and psychologization of shame. In addition, readers are invited to read to find Christian moral symbolism in narratives of shaming, while the emotive label of ‘shameful’ cues rejection and disgust towards what is wrong and pagan. Ælfric's appeals to shame promote self-scrutiny and the performance of a Christian identity. With respect to Anglo-Saxon shame in general, Ælfric offers a case-study in the flexibility of shame and its importance as a mode of knowing and performing the self.

Ne sceamige nanum menn þæt he anum lareowe his gyltas cyðe · forðan þe se þe nele his synna on ðissere worulde andettan mid soðre behreowsunge · him sceal sceamian ætforan gode ælmihtigum · and ætforan his engla weorodum · and ætforan eallum mannum · and ætforan eallum deoflum æt ðam micclan dome · þær we eall gegaderode beoð · Þær beoð cuðe ure ealra dæda eallum þam werodum · and seðe ne mæg for sceame his gyltas anum menn ge-andettan · him sceal þonne sceamian · ætforan heofonwarum · and eorð-warum · and hel-warum · and seo sceamu him bið endeleas.

A little over five per cent of surviving Anglo-Saxon charters contain some reference to money or purchase. These cover a multitude of transactions: gifts, sales, bequests, annual renders, and so on. They provide a valuable insight into Anglo-Saxon perceptions of wealth and a detailed view of one specific area of exchange. Gold and precious-metal objects emerge as especially prominent, at the expense of silver coin. The formulation of these documents, however, presents a number of obstacles to interpretation, particularly in that no definitive distinction between charters of gift and sale developed in Anglo-Saxon England. Diverse forms of transactions can be exemplified among them – outright purchase, payment for book-right (with or without an earlier claim to the land in question) and gifts to neutralize potential challenges of title – but these show little correlation with ‘price’ or with the complex social background to every act of exchange.

Starting with evidence from law-codes, this article traces how penance was increasingly integrated into later Anglo-Saxon legal culture, arguing that this process opened the way for ritualized acts of satisfaction to become a regular feature of contemporary dispute settlement. The rituals used in such contexts often borrowed symbols and concepts from the world of penance, with the central idea being that an offender who repented and humbled himself was worthy of pardon. A few detailed accounts of such settlements survive and to these we may add cases of restitution and political reconciliation, which witness a similar logic. Taken together, these suggest that the stark contrasts often drawn between English and continental (particularly German) disputing in these years are in need of some revision. Far from being ‘fiercely punitive’, later Anglo-Saxon justice was characterized by a complex mix of formalized punishments and more informal means of settlement, not unlike what is visible in the Ottonian Reich.

This article tries to explore the question of whether the Anglo-Saxons in the tenth and eleventh centuries actually had an interest in elaborate and socially distinctive food preparations – whether, to use words that have been employed and defined by anthropologists and other social scientists, their food practices distinguished ‘cooking’ from ‘cuisine’, or even ‘gastronomy’. Through the study of written sources and archaeological data, we address several issues which can tell us about the Anglo-Saxons’ attitude towards food: the existence of proper kitchens and specialized cooks; the question of ‘privileged foods’ – categories of food widely recognized as suitable for social elites; and the ways by which recipes were transmitted. The answer is that the Anglo-Saxons may have known some forms of elaborate ‘cooking’, that ‘cuisine’ may have existed but cannot be identifi ed as such, and that ‘gastronomy’ was not a part of their thought world.

If one is familiar with medieval inscriptions that, so to speak, frame images, what is most striking about the rune verses on the lower twelve-foot shaft of the Ruthwell Cross is their vertical orientation in the four long borders. In my earlier monastic days, while installing electricity in the church of Quarr abbey, I spent hours at the top of a tall ladder drilling holes through the brick courses. So, later, while studying the problems presented by the Ruthwell Cross I rather easily imagined myself up a ladder facing this tall Cross and chiselling runes. From such a ladder position, chiselling vertical letters/runes seemed the easiest way and most rational way to proceed, and given that such a disposition of the runes seemed unique to this monument I concluded, too hastily I now admit, that was how the Ruthwell rune cutter had worked. Such a view suggested there had been a time lag between the making of the monument, when all the chiselling work must have been done with it lying flat on the ground, and the insertion of the runic verses at a later date, made from a ladder, after the cross had been erected. I presented my argument on ‘The Date of the Runic Verses’ as an Appendix to ‘An Apocalypse Panel on the Ruthwell Cross’ – an article dating from 1978, but only published in 1982. Familiarity with Ray Page's work on runes led me to wonder how he would react to my theory, so I had written him in the winter of 1975. He was a recognized and respected authority on runes, and since he is no longer with us, the answer I received may be worth putting on record.