Features of the two illuminations from the first quire of the Codex Amiatinus, the bifolium of the tabernacle of Moses (6v and 7r, formerly 2v/II and 7r/III) and the miniature of the Jewish priest Ezra, who is identified by inscription (2r, formerly 4r/V), correspond more closely with text from the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus than with the parallel accounts in Scripture. Cassiodorus had the Jewish Antiquities of Flavius Josephus rendered from Greek into Latin, referring to the seventh chapter (that is, chapter 6) of book 3 as the source for his illustration of the tabernacle of Moses; and this illumination, according to Bede, was available as a model at Wearmouth–Jarrow. It appears that Bede also took part in fashioning the miniature of Ezra, both the verse inscription and the image itself, which also reflects more closely passages from Cassiodorus’ so-called Latin Josephus than the corresponding sections of the Bible.

Bede frequently used dating formulas to frame his narrative. In some cases these simply reflect the wording of his sources, whether he states that he is quoting from them or not. More often, however, the types of phrasing he uses reflect conscious construction on his part. Such formulas drew attention to key people and passages in the work and so assisted in the achievement of Bede's authorial intentions in the Historia ecclesiastica. These phrases also imitated and developed previous exemplars from earlier historiography thus enabling Bede to situate and validate his work within the genre.

The second Beowulf scribe often begins the letter <e> with a thick downstroke as for the letter <i>, to which he adds a head and tongue sometimes thinner than the downstroke. On some damaged folios it is debatable whether a certain letter should be read as <i> itself or the remains of <e> in which the head and tongue of <e> are very obscure or simply gone. Further, on fols. 179 and 198v, a later hand, attempting to retrace obscure letters, occasionally restored a letter as <i> that the palaeographic evidence hints was once <e>. At other places the later hand restored a letter as <i> for which there is no evidence for <e> but where <e> is expected. Although the question of <i> for <e> and <e> for <i> is complex, careful study of the comparative evidence, beginning with the eighteenth-century transcripts, A and B, allows us to reach reasonable conclusions.

Lichfield Cathedral had a scriptorium and library in the early eleventh century. As a non-monastic establishment run by bishops and secular canons, Lichfield was not dissolved during the Reformation and undoubtedly kept some of its books. In 1563, Laurence Nowell, Dean of Lichfield Cathedral, subscribed the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, the main tenets of the Anglican Church. That year, someone wrote Laurence Nowell and the momentous date 1563 on the first page of the codex. The damage to the beginning and end of the codex suggests that a Reformer, deeming them unsuitable on religious grounds, excised the surviving texts from their original contexts. For a Reformer, the Life of St Christopher supported the Papist superstition of invoking and venerating saints, while Judith unduly showcased a non-canonical story from the Apocrypha. In this light, the Reformers unintentionally saved Beowulf and the rest of the Nowell Codex because they disapproved of them.

This article, which builds on an older publication of the author’s, argues on the basis of nautical, linguistic and logical evidence that some widely accepted opinions on the meaning of the Old English words in the title cannot be upheld any further.

This article examines the connections between Asser's Life of King Alfred and the tenthcentury Welsh poem Armes Prydein Vawr. It studies the use of the place-name Santwic ‘Sandwich’ in Armes Prydein, and presents evidence that this form derives from a written source. An investigation of the sources containing this place-name before the late tenth century raises the distinct possibility that Asser's Life was the source drawn upon by the Welsh poet. Examination of the context in which Sandwich occurs in Asser and Armes Prydein highlights striking similarities in usage, strengthening the argument for a connection between the two texts. Further correspondences between these works are noted before discussing the potential implications of this new finding for our understanding of Asser (and his reception) and Armes Prydein more generally.

This article reassesses the Second English Coronation Ordo in the light of its relationship to Carolingian sources. The dependence of the Ordo on a distinctive West Frankish source, here termed the Leiden Ordo, has many implications, since the Leiden Ordo seems likely to have been composed for the anointing of Charles the Straightforward by Fulk of Rheims in January 893. This finding provides a probable context for the importing of West Frankish ordines in King Alfred's dealings with Rheims. It also strengthens the case for placing the Second Ordo in the mid- or late 890s, rather than early in Athelstan's reign. Anointing practices were directly implicated in the ‘crisis of authority’ affecting the Carolingian world in the late ninth century. The new understanding of the Second Ordo adds a further dimension to King Alfred's efforts to promote the ‘kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons’, and has wider implications for the development of royal ordines in western Europe.

An abiding concern for scholars of the presence of music in Anglo-Saxon England is whether parochial witnesses can reflect a more comprehensive reality. This article discusses a hitherto undiscovered source of information pertinent to this topic. Its conclusions are not as precise as one would want, due to the source's fragmentary nature, but they help us address music in a wider world nevertheless.

This article analyses the uses of Latin and Old English in the charters of Worcester cathedral, which represents one of the largest and most linguistically interesting of the surviving Anglo-Saxon archives. Specifically focused on the period encompassing the episcopates of Wærferth and Oswald (c. 870 to 992), this survey examines a time of intense administrative activity at Worcester, contemporaneous with significant transformations in the political and cultural life of Anglo-Saxon England more generally. In doing so, this article argues that when writing in either Latin or the vernacular, charter draftsmen responded to a number of variables; language choice did not simply reflect varying levels of literacy. Furthermore, the frequent cases of code-switching found in tenth-century Worcester documents mark this community out as exceptional, suggesting that attitudes towards the interaction between the two languages could vary considerably between institutions.

Given his frequently expressed hostility to pagans, Wulfstan's apparent commendation of their devotion at the beginning of the Sermo Lupi has long been a source of scholarly frustration. While the passage is without parallel in Wulfstan's Old English writings, it is mirrored closely by several other texts in Wulfstanian manuscripts, including a previously unedited tract titled De ueneratione sacerdotum. These tracts provide the best analogues for the passage in the Sermo Lupi, explaining how it came to be written and giving a glimpse into how Wulfstan composed the sermon.

This article presents the first fruits of a long-term project which aims to identify all the landholders named in Domesday Book, and to build up a picture of English landed society before and after the Norman conquest. The first part describes the project's methods and illustrates them with a selection of short profiles of individuals whose careers add distinctive colour to the emerging picture. The second offers firstly an analysis of the social distribution of landed wealth in England in 1066 and 1086, quantifying the numbers of landholders in different groups defined by the amount of the land assigned to them in Domesday. We then turn to a spatial analysis of landed society, using maps to illustrate the geographical distribution of landholding. In doing so, we offer fresh perspectives on the transformation of English landed society in the aftermath of conquest.