This article demonstrates that some 180 of the 2,400 text glosses in the ‘Leiden Glossary’ derive from an epitome of the Etymologiae. A reconstruction of this lost source shows that it consisted of abbreviated entries from all twenty of Isidore's books, with selected books heavily glossed in Old English. Mirroring the encyclopedic scope of the Etymologiae, this seventh-century epitome was extensively excerpted by glossary-compilers and gave thousands of English words their first written form.

Manuscript Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 6298 contains an as yet unexamined fragment of the second batch of the gospel glosses (EvII) from the biblical commentaries of the Canterbury School inserted as an addition in 3r of the manuscript. In this article, I describe this fragment, and I attempt to contextualize its insertion into the manuscript. It seems likely that the glosses were entered into the manuscript, together with some additional excerpts in the same folio, either in one of the centres in the Anglo-Saxon missionary area in Germany, where the manuscript originated, or at Freising, where the manuscript was kept at a later date.

This article re-examines the use of place-names in the early prose Lives of Cuthbert and provides an additional explanation for Bede's removal of many of the place-names that greatly localize the events in the anonymous Life. I argue that the author of the anonymous Life was following a common Irish hagiographic practice of using place-names as propaganda to create a network of churches, monasteries, or lands under the authority of the paruchia of a saint's leading church. Bede's deliberate choice to remove certain place-names that were outside Lindisfarne's diocese, or even its immediate sphere of influence, suggests that he was aware of this agenda and intentionally revised these details in order to set right the Northumbrian ecclesiastical landscape.

Three contexts characterized by the occasional appearance of Old English poetic diction outside of Old English poetry — debased verse, rhythmical prose, and prose passages with rhetorical heightening — have been surveyed by previous scholars, but no serious consideration has been given to the use of poetic lexis to be found in the surviving glosses and glossaries. The article first looks at some examples in these non-poetic texts of poetic words used as markers of the heroic, the elegiac, the sublime, the exotic and the monstrous, before moving on to a detailed analysis of a significant discovery. The glosses and glossary batches to Aldhelm's extended simile in De Virginitate comparing the educational development of Christian nuns to the exertions of various athletes display (when taken together) a unique cluster of poetic diction, comparable in density (and perhaps also in motivation) to that found only in the most enriched passages of traditional heroic poetry.

Cynewulf's runic signatures have long been understood as a playful means of preserving the poet's name, resembling Latin anagrams or the scrambled runes of Old English riddles. This essay re-evaluates the signatures' function, arguing that their form graphically enacts the concerns about the body, death and salvation that saturate each of Cynewulf's epilogues. When read through the lens of the common medieval grammatical analogy that equates the word's letters to the body and the word's meaning to the soul, the scattered letters of the signatures become a figure of Cynewulf's broken and sinful body; like the worm-eaten flesh described in the epilogue to Fates, Cynewulf's own name is reduced to its most elemental form. The reader's reassembly and comprehension of the dismembered signature as the name CYN(E)WULF thus create a simulacrum of the reconstituted body and its reunion with the soul at the resurrection, anticipating the salvation that Cynewulf asks his readers to help secure with their prayers.

The monstrosity of Grendel and his mother have long held the interest of Beowulf-scholars. Examining the bodily attributes of both figures in order to detect inter-textual patterns of diction, this article focuses on depictions of the monsters' skin, hands and blood. In analysing these attributes, it becomes clear that the Beowulf-poet's chosen descriptors align the monstrous body with manmade objects in general and with weapons and armour in particular. This blurring of body and human artifact creates an environment for monstrous existence that is between and outside of both human culture and nature.

The brief litany of saints in the Leofric Missal is the oldest complete extant specimen of the sevenfold-fivefold-threefold prayer used for baptism on Holy Saturday. This continental innovation became widespread in Anglo-Saxon England, and was used in Ireland into the twelfth century. The petitions of this special form, probably from an English source, appear in the brief litany of the Corpus Irish Missal, alongside invocations either standardized by the scribe or adapted from a continental source. Through the evolution of the sevenfold-fivefold-threefold litany over time and across cultures, we see concrete evidence of the patterns of cultural transmission that shaped early medieval Europe.

This article examines liturgical language and motifs potentially interwoven with the Old English prose account of ‘St Andrew amongst the Cannibals’, located in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 198. The article traces in detail the possible parallels between the liturgy of the Mass and the language of the account, and then considers explanations for liturgical elements in the saintly legend and what this may contribute to our aesthetic understanding of that account.

There is a persistent view that Old English texts were mostly written to be read or heard by people with no knowledge of Latin, or little understanding of it, especially the laity. This is not surprising because it is what the texts themselves tend to say. In this article I argue that these statements about audience reflect two rhetorical devices and should not be understood literally. This has implications for our understanding of the reasons why writers chose to use Old English and their attitudes towards translation of various kinds into the vernacular.

This article takes literary representations of Cnut, the Danish conqueror of England, as a case study of the construction of English identity in the eleventh century. It traces representations of Cnut in four literary texts composed over the course of the century: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Knútsdrápur, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, and Osbern of Canterbury's Translatio Sancti Ælfegi. Each of these texts constructs a politically useful national—ethnic identity through the figure of Cnut, using the mechanisms of kingship, piety and devotion, language, place and literary tradition to work through the particular exigencies faced by the audiences that they seek to address.

This article examines the evidence for books associated with kings in Anglo-Saxon England, making the case for the ninth century as the key period of change. A wide variety of books were probably present in the household of later Anglo-Saxon kings. There was a degree of connection between the gift of books by kings and practices of ownership. The donation of gospel-books to favoured churches played a distinctive role, emphasizing the king's position in ecclesiastical leadership. In a number of cases, gospel-books associated with kings subsequently acted as a repository for documents, entered in blank spaces or additional leaves by scribes at the recipient church. Certain aspects of this practice strengthen the case for identifying two late Anglo-Saxon gospel-books as royal gifts. Books given by kings had a numinous quality arising from their royal associations. The possible strategies underpinning the dissemination of this ‘royal’ culture are explored.