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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 May 2017
This article explores the possibility that the vernacular (Old English) may have been used in the baptismal rite in Anglo-Saxon England before the middle of the eighth century. Statements made by Bede (d. 735) and Boniface (d. 754), provisions in the Canons of the Council of Clofesho (747) and the probable existence of a lost Old English exemplar for the ‘Old Saxon’ or ‘Utrecht’ baptismal promise (Palatinus latinus 755, fols 6v–7r), all suggest that it was. The use of the vernacular was most attractive in a context of ongoing Christianization, where the faith commitment of the baptizand was foregrounded and his or her understanding of the rite correspondingly highly valued. Later, the shift of focus towards the correct pronunciation of the Trinitarian formula and the increase of general knowledge about the baptismal rite reduced the impetus for translation, and Latin became the standard language of baptism. The translation and non-translation of the baptismal rite reflect broader concerns about the place of the Church of the English and its ethnic and cultural particularity within the universal Church, and particularly its relationship with Rome.
1 ‘[Uilfrid] huic uerbum fidei et lauacrum salutis ministrabat . . . Itaque episcopus concedente, immo multum gaudente rege primos prouinciae duces ac milites sacrosancto fonte abluebat; uerum presbyteri Eappa et Padda et Burghelm et Oiddi ceteram plebem . . . baptizabant’: Bede, Historia ecclesiastica [hereafter: HE] 4.13 (Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and transl. Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, OMT [Oxford, 1969], 372, transl. 373).
2 Sarah, Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”: The Administration of Baptism in Early Anglo-Saxon England’, in Blair, John and Sharpe, Richard, eds, Pastoral Care before the Parish (Leicester and New York, 1992), 171–92Google Scholar, at 172.
3 Studies of medieval baptism include Fisher, John Douglas Close, Christian Initiation: Baptism in the Medieval West: A Study in the Disintegration of the Primitive Rite of Initiation, Alcuin Club Collections 47 (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Cramer, Peter John, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c.200–c.1150 (Cambridge and New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Keefe, Susan A., Water and the Word: Baptism and the Education of the Clergy in the Carolingian Empire, 2 vols, Publications in Medieval Studies (Notre Dame, IN, 2002)Google Scholar; Spinks, Bryan D., Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament to the Council of Trent (Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2006)Google Scholar. For Anglo-Saxon England, see Lynch, Joseph H., Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca, NY, and London, 1998)Google Scholar; Bedingfield, M. Bradford, The Dramatic Liturgy of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge 2002), 171–90Google Scholar; Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”’.
4 Fadda, Anna Maria Luiselli, ‘The Vernacular and the Propagation of the Faith in Anglo-Saxon Missionary Activity’, in Holtrop, Pieter N. and McLeod, Hugh, eds, Missions and Missionaries, SCH S 13 (Woodbridge, 2000), 1–15Google Scholar.
5 Hall, Alaric, ‘Interlinguistic Communication in Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum’, in Interfaces between Language and Culture in Medieval England: A Festschrift for Matti Kilpiö, ed. Hall, Alaric et al. (Leiden 2012), 37–80Google Scholar; Scharer, Anton, ‘The Role of Language in Bede's Ecclesiastical History’, in idem, Changing Perspectives on England and the Continent in the Early Middle Ages (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2014)Google Scholar, art. II, at 1–8.
6 Forbes, Helen Foxhall, Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an Age of Faith, Studies in Early Medieval Britain (Farnham, 2013), 103–11Google Scholar, quotation at 104.
7 Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, 176–7.
8 This does not, however, mean that there were no multilingual Anglo-Saxons, or that all Old English texts were meant for a monolingual audience: Gittos, Helen, ‘The Audience for Old English Texts: Ælfric, Rhetoric and “the Edification of the Simple”’, Anglo-Saxon England 43 (2014), 231–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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10 ‘Latinam . . . linguam aeque ut propriam in qua nati sunt norunt’: HE 4.2 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and transl. Colgrave and Mynors, 334, transl. 335).
11 ‘[I]n singulis uiculis praedicando Dei uerbo et consecrandis mysteriis caelestibus, ac maxime peragendis sacri baptismatis officiis, ubi opportunitas ingruerit . . . sed idiotas, hoc est eos qui propriae tantum linguae notitiam habent, haec ipsa sua lingua discere . . . et ipse multiae saepe sacerdotibus idiotis haec utraque, et symbolum uidelicet et dominicam orationem, in linguam Anglorum translatam optuli’: Bede, Letter to Ecgbert, in Grocock, C. and Wood, I. N., The Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, OMT (Oxford, 2013), 130–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar (Farmer, D. H., Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People [London and New York, 1990], 339–40Google Scholar).
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13 Ibid.
14 Lynch, Christianizing Kinship, 175–6; but see Catherine Cubitt, ‘Pastoral Care and Conciliar Canons: The Provisions of the 747 Council of Clofesho’, in Blair and Sharpe, eds, Pastoral Care before the Parish, 193–211, at 196, for an alternative explanation.
15 ‘[C]upiens eum . . . ordinari episcopum, quatinus suae gentis et linguae habens antistitem, tanto prefectius cum subiectis sibi populis uel uerbis imburetur fide uel mysteriis, quanto haec non per interpretem, sed per cognati et contribulis uiri linguam simul manumque susciperet’: Bede, in Grocock and Wood, Abbots of Wearmouth and Jarrow, 26–8 (D. H. Farmer, The Age of Bede [London, 1998], 189).
16 Howlett, D. R., ed., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar, s.vv. ‘Mysterium, Misterium’.
17 Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”’, 172; Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 127.
18 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Palatinus Latinus, MS 577, fols 6v–7r.
19 ‘6vo: Forsachistu diobolae. & respondeat. ec forsacho diabolae. end allum diobolgeldę respondeat. end ec forsacho allum diobolgeldae. end allum dioboles uuercum. respondeat. end ec forsacho allum dioboles uuercum and uuordum thunaer ende uuoden ende saxnote ende allvm them unholdum the hira genotas sint. 7ro: gelobistu in got alamehtigan fadaer. ec gelobo in got alamehtigan fadaer. gelobistu in crist godes suno. ec gelobo in crist gotes suno. gelobistu in halogan gast. ec gelobo in halogan gast’: Gysseling, Maurits, Corpus van Middelnederlandse teksten (tot en met het jaar 1300), II.1: Fragmenten (The Hague, 1980), 26Google Scholar. I have substituted punctuation where Gysseling has line-breaks.
20 Lasch, Agathe, ‘Das altsächsische Taufgelöbnis’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 36 (1935), 92–133Google Scholar; Foerste, William, Untersuchungen zur westfälischen Sprache des 9. Jahrhunderts., Münstersche Forschungen 2 (Marburg, 1950), 92–8Google Scholar, esp. 93; Machielsen, D. L., ‘De angelsaksische herkomst van de zogenaamde Oudsaksische Doopbelofte. Een bijdrage tot de externe taalgeschiedenis’, Leuvense Bijdragen 50 (1961), 97–124Google Scholar; Gysseling, Corpus, 22–6.
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23 Fisher, Christian Initiation, 16–17.
24 Cramer, Baptism and Change, 186; Phelan, Owen M., ‘Forging Traditional Liturgy: Exegesis, Mission, and Medieval Baptism’, RHE 107 (2012), 833–9Google Scholar.
25 Gittos, Helen, ‘Is there any Evidence for the Liturgy of Parish Churches in Late Anglo-Saxon England? The Red Book of Darley and the Status of Old English’, in Tinti, Francesca, ed., Pastoral Care in Late Anglo-Saxon England, Anglo-Saxon Studies 6 (Woodbridge, 2005), 63–82Google Scholar, at 80.
26 Ibid. 78–80.
27 Compare canon 27 of the Statuta Bonifatii: ‘Nullus sit presbiter, qui in ipsa lingua, qua nati sunt, baptizandos abrenuntiationes vel confessiones aperte interrogare non studeat, ut intellegant, quae abrenuntiant vel quae confitentur; et qui taliter agere dedignantur, secedat in parrochia’: MGH Capitula Episcoporum 3, 364.
28 Wagner, Andreas, ‘Taufe als Willensakt? Zum Verständnis der frühmittelalterlichen Taufgelöbnisse und zur Begründung ihrer volkssprachigen Übersetzung’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 125 (1996), 297–321.Google Scholar
29 Cited in Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 129.
30 Nelson, Janet L., ‘Liturgy or Law: Misconceived Alternatives’, in Early Medieval Studies in Memory of Patrick Wormald, ed. Baxter, Stephen David et al., Studies in Early Medieval Britain (Farnham, 2009), 433–47Google Scholar.
31 Ibid. 444–6; Gittos, ‘Liturgy of Parish Churches’, 80 n. 101.
32 Cramer, Baptism and Change, 130–40.
33 Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit’”, 178.
34 MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 141 (letter 68). For this he was reprimanded by Pope Zacharias (741–52): it was the priest's Trinitarian intentions that counted, and the baptisms were to be considered valid. On later medieval philosophical debates regarding intentional versus conventional meaning, see Rosier-Catach, I., ‘Speech Act and Intentional Meaning in the Medieval Philosophy of Language’, Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 52 (2010), 55–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35 Bede, Expositio actuum apostolorum 10 (CChr.SL 121, 3–99).
36 ‘Illi . . . qui baptizati sunt per diversitate et declinatione linguarum gentilitatis’: MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 73 (letter 45); ET The Letters of Saint Boniface, intro. Thomas F. X. Noble, transl. Ephraim Emerton (New York, 2000), 73.
37 MGH Epp. Sel. 1, 73 (letter 45).
38 On Theodore, see Lapidge, Michael, ed., Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 11 (Cambridge, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the knowledge of Greek in Anglo-Saxon England, see Bodden, Mary Catherine, ‘Evidence for Knowledge of Greek in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 217–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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40 Dekker, Kees, ‘Pentecost and Linguistic Self-Consciousness in Anglo-Saxon England: Bede and Ælfric’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005), 345–72.Google Scholar On the status of Old English for Bede, see also Gittos, ‘Audience for Old English Texts’, 260.
41 Stanton, Robert, The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England (Cambridge and Rochester, NY, 2002), 70Google Scholar.
42 HE 1.1 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and transl. Colgrave and Mynors, 16).
43 Howe, Nicholas, ‘Rome: Capital of Anglo-Saxon England’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 34 (2004), 147–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brooks, Nicholas, ‘Canterbury, Rome and the Construction of English Identity’, in Early Medieval Rome and the Christian West: Essays in Honour of Donald A. Bullough, ed. Smith, Julia M. H., Medieval Mediterranean 28 (Leiden and Boston, 2000), 221–46Google Scholar. Cf, in this volume, Simon Ditchfield, ‘Translating Christianity in an Age of Reformations’, 164–95, at 178.
44 Pfaff, Richard William, The Liturgy in Medieval England: A History (Cambridge, 2009), 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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46 Ibid. 2.2 (Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and transl. Colgrave and Mynors, 138).
47 Falluomini, Carla, ‘Fullwiht and the Baptismal Rite in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglia – Zeitschrift für englische Philologie 128 (2011), 391–405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
48 Such concerns are well documented in relation to the unbaptized. Consider, for instance, the woman who, fearing for her unbaptized child, sought the help of St Wilfrid: Stephanus, Eddius, The Life of Bishop Wilfrid, ed. and transl. Colgrave, Bertram (Cambridge and New York, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 18; Foot, ‘“By Water in the Spirit”’, 190.
49 Perhaps the use of Old English was one way in which the Anglo-Saxon baptismal rite could be distinguished from the British, especially if the Britons were seen by the Anglo-Saxons ‘to be characterized not by their Celtic speech, but by their living use of Latin’, as Harvey has suggested: Harvey, ‘Cambro-Romance’, 201.
50 Wormald, Patrick, ‘The Venerable Bede and the ‘Church of the English’, in Baxter, Stephen David, ed., The Times of Bede: Studies in Early English Christian Society and Its Historian (Malden, MA, 2006), 207–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Foot, Sarah, Bede's Church, Jarrow Lecture (Jarrow, 2012), 1–18Google Scholar.
51 Cuthbert, Cuthbert's Letter on the Death of Bede, in Bede, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and transl. Colgrave and Mynors, 579–87, at 580–2.
52 Cramer, Baptism and Change, 202.
53 Forbes, Heaven and Earth, 104–8; Spinks, Early and Medieval Rituals, 132–3.
54 Blair, John, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford, 2005), 168.Google Scholar