Anglo-Saxon charters: the work of the last twenty years

1974 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 211-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Old English ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Local Character ◽  
Christ Church

1973 is an auspicious year for the study of the charters of the pre-Conquest period. At the time of writing, the publication of Professor A. Campbell's Anglo-Saxon Charters I, The Charters of Rochester is imminent. This is the first volume in a series in which the entire corpus of pre-Conquest charters is to be edited with full critical apparatus, with detailed analysis of their diplomatic, palaeographical, topographical and linguistic features and with extensive glossaries and indices. Professor Campbell's volume is part of a collaborative enterprise organized by a committee of The British Academy and The Royal Historical Society. When the series is complete, historians will no longer need to reiterate W. H. Stevenson's famous dictum, ‘It cannot be said that the Old English charters have yet been edited.’ One significant feature of the scheme deserves to be noted here; each volume will cover the charters of an archive that was in existence towards the end of the Old English period. Thus there will be one volume for Rochester, another for Christ Church, Canterbury, another for Exeter, another for Burton Abbey, and so on. Small archives will be grouped together with others from the same region or diocese to form suitable volumes. In this way the organization of the edition will itself reveal the local character of Anglo-Saxon charters which is so marked throughout their history. It will also bring to light the work of forgers for individual churches developing their claims to particular lands and rights by means of charters of apparently widely differing dates.

Chronicle F and Canterbury Post-1066

After Alfred ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 268-296
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Church History ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
New Situation ◽  
The Voice

This chapter considers the range of work on Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles at Canterbury after the Norman Conquest, including additions to Chronicles A and B, and the making of the bilingual Latin and Old English Chronicle F. The scribe of Chronicle F and his monastic house, Christ Church, connected to Canterbury’s archbishops, emerge as major players. The range, which included contact with Chronicle D, the use of Chronicle /E, and the making of a brief Chronicle I, suggests a conscious engagement with the tradition of vernacular chronicle writing and an awareness of what united it. The voice of F is more overtly monastic, with Christ Church history incorporated into the story. The bilingual F, including new Latin annals, some on Norman history, in both F and /E, addressed a new mixed audience and the new situation the Conquest had created. Additions on popes and their relations with archbishops address wider European changes.

Why English is not dead: A rejoinder to Emonds and Faarlund

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Concerted Effort ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
West Germanic ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Counter Argument

AbstractThis article argues against the claim by Emonds and Faarlund (2014,English: The language of the vikings. Palacký University: Olomouc) that English died out after the Norman Conquest, and was replaced by a North Germanic variety referred to as “Anglicised Norse”, which had been formed in the Danelaw area in a concerted effort by the Norse and Anglo-Saxon populations, presumably to overthrow the ruling French elite. Emonds and Faarlund base their claim on the existence of some 20–25 linguistic features which are said to have been absent from Old English, but which are present in Present-Day English and in Scandinavian languages. This article argues that genetic affiliation cannot be inferred from shared syntactic, morphological or lexical features, which may easily result from independent convergence in historically related languages. The main counter-argument, however, is chronological: the majority of the features adduced are indeed attested in Old English and often in other West Germanic languages also, and hence may not be attributed to Old Norse; nor can features which are not attested in English until late Middle English or early Modern English come from Old Norse. The continuity of English in the written record likewise renders the suggested scenario highly unlikely.

Miracles in architectural settings: Christ Church, Canterbury and St Clement's, Sandwich in the Old English Vision of Leofric

1993 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 227-252
Author(s):  
Milton McC. Gatch
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Art Historians ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Medieval Liturgy ◽  
Language Literature

The ‘Old English Vision of Leofric, Earl of Mercia’ was first printed in a philological journal in 1908. It contains extremely interesting information about the arrangement and furnishings of two major Anglo-Saxon churches, Christ Church, Canterbury, and St Clement's Church, Sandwich. The Visio Leofrici is the only testimony, written or (apparently) archaeological, to the existence of St Clement's before the Conquest; it confirms and deepens aspects of our exclusively documentary knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon cathedral at Canterbury, which was destroyed by fire in 1067. Thus, it is particularly unfortunate that the Vision of Leofric, which has had but slight attention from students of language, literature or religious visions, has attracted even less notice from archaeologists, art historians and students of medieval liturgy.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Jones
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Two Phases ◽  
Scholarly Contribution ◽  
Anglophone World ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter contextualizes the philological study of language during the nineteenth century as a branch of the evolutionary sciences. It sketches in outline the two phases of poetic Anglo-Saxonism for which the rest of the book will subsequently argue in more detail. Moreover, the relationship between Anglo-Saxonism and nineteenth-century medievalism more generally is articulated, and historical analogies are drawn between nineteenth-century Anglo-Saxonism and more recent political events in the Anglophone world. Finally, the scholarly contribution of Fossil Poetry itself is contextualized within English Studies; it is argued that ‘reception’ is one of the primary objects of Anglo-Saxon or Old English studies, and not merely a secondary object of that field’s study.

Anglo-Saxon Glosses and Grammars

2020 ◽  
pp. 942-956
Author(s):  
Patrizia Lendinara
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon

This chapter surveys Old English glosses of Latin works in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts and discusses the format of glosses, the types of texts that were glossed, hermeneutic texts, merographs, dry-point glosses, glossae collectae, class glossaries, and alphabetical glossaries. The author also treats the production and study of grammar in Anglo-Saxon England, touching on the works of Bede, Tatwine, Boniface, Alcuin, Priscian, and Aelfric.

scholarly journals The northern world of the Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 275-305
Author(s):  
Helen Appleton
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Mediterranean

AbstractThe Anglo-Saxon mappa mundi, sometimes known as the Cotton map or Cottoniana, is found on folio 56v of London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, which dates from the first half of the eleventh century. This unique survivor from the period presents a detailed image of the inhabited world, centred on the Mediterranean. The map’s distinctive cartography, with its emphasis on islands, seas and urban spaces, reflects an Insular, West Saxon geographic imagination. As Evelyn Edson has observed, the mappa mundi appears to be copy of an earlier, larger map. This article argues that the mappa mundi’s focus on urban space, translatio imperii and Scandinavia is reminiscent of the Old English Orosius, and that it originates from a similar milieu. The mappa mundi’s northern perspective, together with its obvious dependence on and emulation of Carolingian cartography, suggest that its lost exemplar originated in the assertive England of the earlier tenth century.

The Cult of St Edmund, King and Martyr in Medieval Ireland

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Young
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Patron Saint ◽  
12Th Century ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Medieval Ireland ◽  
The Middle Ages

St Edmund, king and martyr (an Anglo-Saxon king martyred by the Vikings in 869) was one of the most venerated English saints in Ireland from the 12th century. In Dublin, St Edmund had his own chapel in Christ Church Cathedral and a guild, while Athassel Priory in County Tipperary claimed to possess a miraculous image of the saint. In the late 14th century the coat of arms ascribed to St Edmund became the emblem of the king of England’s lordship of Ireland, and the name Edmund (or its Irish equivalent Éamon) was widespread in the country by the end of the Middle Ages. This article argues that the cult of St Edmund, the traditional patron saint of the English people, served to reassure the English of Ireland of their Englishness, and challenges the idea that St Edmund was introduced to Ireland as a heavenly patron of the Anglo-Norman conquest.

The Metrical Epilogue to the Alfredian Pastoral Care: a postscript from Junius

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 43-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Lucas
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Studies ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Germanic Studies

When Old English studies were in their infancy in the seventeenth century, scholars such as Franciscus junius (1591–1677) had very little to study in print. With no grammar and no dictionary (until Somner's in 1659) they had to teach themselves the language from original sources. Junius, whose interest in Germanic studies became active in the early 1650s, was so proficient, not only at Old English, but also at the cognate languages that he became virtually the founding-father of Germanic philology. Over the years Junius made transcripts in his own distinctive imitation-Anglo-Saxon minuscule script of many Old English texts, transcripts that have subsequently proved invaluable, especially where the original manuscripts have been damaged or lost.

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