The Preface to the Old English Bede: authorship, transmission, and connection with the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 31-93
Author(s):  
Greg Waite
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
British Library ◽  
The West ◽  
Actual Creation

AbstractLexical and stylistic features indicate that the Preface to the Old English Bede was composed by a writer different from the anonymous Mercian who translated the body of the text. The Preface, therefore, cannot be taken to reveal aspects of the original translator's aims or attitude to the text. Recently discovered collations of the burnt manuscript London, British Library, Cotton Otho B. xi, made by John Smith prior to the 1731 fire, provide further insight, indicating that a copy of the West Saxon Genealogical Regnal List was attached to the Preface by the mid-tenth century. Thus the origins of the Preface may lie in an Alfredian or post-Alfredian initiative to disseminate the translation at some time later than its actual creation.

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.

Two composite texts from Archbishop Wulfstan's ‘commonplace book’: theDe ecclesiastica consuetudineand theInstitutio beati Amalarii de ecclesiasticis officiis

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 233-271
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Editorial Work

The great monument of tenth-century Anglo-Saxon monastic liturgy, theRegularis concordia, has been particularly fortunate in its twentieth-century devotees. The most prominent was Dom Thomas Symons, who published numerous learned articles on the text and, in 1953, an edition and translation that are still immensely valuable. More recently, Lucia Kornexl has re-edited theConcordiawith its continuous Old English gloss from London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius A. iii, and provided an exhaustive collation against the second Latin copy in London, British Library, Cotton Faustina B. iii. Building on this detailed editorial work, Kornexl's introductory chapters also suggest new and helpful ways of regarding the transmission of this text and the authority of its two extant manuscripts.

scholarly journals The Homiliary of Angers in tenth-century England

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 163-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Winfried Rudolf
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
First Time ◽  
Made In

AbstractLatin manuscripts used for preaching the Anglo-Saxon laity in the tenth century survive in relatively rare numbers. This paper contributes a new text to the known preaching resources from that century in identifying the Homiliary of Angers as the text preserved on the flyleaves of London, British Library, MS Sloane 280. While these fragments, made in Kent and edited here for the first time, cast new light on the importance of this plain and unadorned Latin collection for the composition of Old English temporale homilies before Ælfric, they also represent the oldest surviving manuscript evidence of the text.

Wynflæd's wardrobe

1979 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 195-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gale R. Owen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Relative Value

An Old English document, composed probably in the middle of the tenth century and extant in a not very careful, mutilated, eleventh-century copy, London, British Library, Cotton Charter, VIII, 38, lists the bequests of a woman named Wynflæd. The bequests of clothing in this will are particularly interesting. Anglo-Saxon testaments do not itemize elaborate garments as do some English wills of the later Middle Ages; they refer to clothing only rarely, and then sometimes in general terms. Wynflæd's will is unusual in mentioning several different items of clothing and in specifying them more precisely. Descriptive references to non-military clothing are uncommon in Old English texts generally. Although many garment-names are documented, some which occur only in glossaries or translations from Latin may never have been in common use in England and some words are of uncertain meaning. In most cases the sex of the wearer of a named garment and the relative value of the garment are unknown. The garment-names in Wynflæd's will, by contrast, refer to items of clothing which were certainly worn by women at a known date and were valuable enough to be bequeathed.

Domiciling the evangelists in Anglo-Saxon England: a fresh reading of Aldred's colophon in the ‘Lindisfarne Gospels’

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 101-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis L. Newton ◽  
Francis L. Newton ◽  
Christopher R. J. Scheirer
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Lindisfarne Gospels

AbstractThe 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.

‘Judith’: The Homily and the Poem

Traditio ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Pringle
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
English Poem ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Conspiracy Of Silence ◽  
Book Of Judith ◽  
The Church ◽  
Recent Interpretation

Recent interpretations of the Old English poem Judith have discussed it either in the light of the interpretations suggested by Ælfric, or in terms of widely known patristic treatments which antedate the poem. Thus Professor J. E. Cross refers to Ælfric's Letter to Sigeweard, and discusses the poem as an exhortation intended for ‘contemporary stiffening’ of resistance to the invading Danes. Professor B. F. Huppé, who cites both the Letter to Sigeweard and the peroration of Ælfric's homily on Judith, revives an interpretation originally proposed by T. G. Foster in 1892, and later supported by A. S. Cook in his 1904 edition of the poem: that the heroine Judith was meant to represent Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians, in her victorious exploits against the Vikings of the eastern Danelaw, so that the poem is a celebration of English success in countering Danish attacks. This particular interpretation was discussed by Timmer in his introduction to the Methuen edition of Judith, and dismissed, primarily for the reason that there is no evidence that an Old English poem written about a religious figure could symbolize a secular hero. A perhaps more compelling reason for dismissing Huppé's interpretation is the West Saxon ‘conspiracy of silence’ about Æthelflæd: a southern poet of the tenth century would hardly have praised the Mercian leader when West Saxon policy was to cast ‘a blanket of official silence over all [her] achievements.’ In more general terms, however, Huppé agrees with Cross that the poem is a patriotic work, with ‘direct relevance’ to the situation in England, and he elaborates on the idea that the heroine is depicted as an example of ‘heroic virtue.’ In this, his interpretation relates to a third recent interpretation, that of Jackson J. Campbell. Like Huppé, Campbell considers the poem in the light of the exegetical commentaries on the Vulgate Book of Judith. There are not a great number of these, but they are all similar, or easy to relate to one another. The Fathers discuss Judith tropologically as an example of chaste widowhood, or simply as an example of chastity, ‘chaste purity’ (Aldhelm), the life of the dedicated contemplative, vowed to chastity (Jerome); in this case Holofernes represents the flesh, or carnal temptation, ‘the vice of the wicked flesh’ (Aldhelm). Secondly, they see her as a type of the Church, cutting off the head of the Old Serpent symbolized by Holofernes. Most Anglo-Saxons who knew the story of Judith would probably have known these stock interpretations; in particular Campbell shows how the poem suggests the interpretation that Judith is a type of Ecclesia.

Bald's Leechbook: its sources and their use in its compilation

1983 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 153-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. L. Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Important Place ◽  
Medieval Latin ◽  
The Third ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Distinct Unit ◽  
Medical Writings

Among the surviving medical writings in Old English, Bald's Leechbook holds a deservedly important place. It is preserved uniquely in London, British Library, Royal 12. D. xvii, a manuscript which may be dated on palaeographical grounds to the mid-tenth century (s. xmed), and which may arguably be attributed to a scriptorium at Winchester.1 Linguistic evidence suggests that this manuscript is in turn a copy of a manuscript written perhaps half a century earlier. Although it is written by one scribe throughout, the manuscript contains three distinct books. A metrical colophon at the end of the second book contains the hexameter ‘Bald habet hunc librum Cild quem conscribere iussit’. Neither Bald nor Cild can be identified, and the ambiguity of conscribere in medieval Latin makes it difficult to determine whether Bald ordered Cild to compile the book or simply to transcribe it. (Because of this ambiguity, I shall refer to the person responsible as the ‘compiler’.) In any case, it is clear that the first two books form a distinct unit, and it is these two books that are customarily described as Bald's Leechbook2 (a practice I shall follow in the present essay). The third book is a collection of medical recipes, of lesser scholarly import, entirely separate from and unrelated to Bald's Leechbook; it will not be discussed further here.

The excavation of a Buddhist temple complex of the Qocho Uyghur kingdom in the middle of the west zone of the Tuyoq caves in Shanshan County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-112
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Autonomous Region ◽  
Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region ◽  
Buddhist Temple ◽  
Temple Complex ◽  
The Buddha ◽  
And Storage

AbstractIn 2016, remains of a ground-level Buddhist temple complex were found in the middle of the west zone of the Tuyoq caves in Shanshan (Piqan) County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This Buddhist temple complex consisted of the Buddha hall, dorms for monks, and storage facilities. In the Buddha hall, many murals of bodhisattvas, devas, and donors were found, and artifacts such as household utensils made of clay, wooden architectural components, textiles, and manuscript fragments were unearthed. The date of this Buddhist temple complex was the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom from the latter half of the tenth century to the latter half of the fourteenth century; the excavation is very important for understanding the distribution of the construction centers and the iconographical composition of the Buddhist cave temples and monasteries in the Qocho Uyghurs kingdom period.

Habemus Corpora: Reapproaching Philological Problems in the Age of ‘Big’ Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-127
Author(s):  
Mark Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Language ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
British Library ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Major Task ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
Primary Focus

Abstract This paper demonstrates the potential of new methodologies for using existing corpora of medieval English to better contextualise linguistic variants, a major task of philology and a key underpinning of our ability to answer major literary-historical questions, such as when, where and to what purpose medieval texts and manuscripts were produced. The primary focus of the article is the assistance these methods can offer in dating the composition of texts, which it illustrates with a case study of the “Old” English Life of St Neot, uniquely preserved in the mid-twelfth-century South-Eastern homiliary, London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian D.xiv, fols. 4–169. While the Life has recently been dated around 1100, examining its orthography, lexis, syntax and style alongside that of all other English-language texts surviving from before 1150 using new techniques for searching the Dictionary of Old English Corpus suggests it is very unlikely to be this late. The article closes with some reflections on what book-historical research should prioritise as it further evolves into the digital age.

scholarly journals Religion, Belonging, and Active Citizenship: A Systematic Review of Literature on Muslim Youth in Australia

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 237
Author(s):  
Mehmet Ozalp ◽  
Mirela Ćufurović
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
The Body ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Review Of Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Important Conclusion ◽  
Muslim Youth ◽  
Effective Manner ◽  
The Impact

Muslim youth have been under scrutiny over the last two decades from a radicalisation and countering violent extremism lens. This bias has largely carried itself to research conducted on Muslim youth in the West. This article undertakes a systematic review and analysis of literature conducted on Muslim youth in the West and in Australia in the last two decades since 11 September 2001. The body of literature in this field can be grouped under three main themes: (1) the impact of terrorism policies and discourse on Muslim youth and their disengaged identities, (2) the relationship between religion (Islam) and civic engagement of Muslim youth, and (3) Muslim youth as active citizens. An important conclusion of this review is that most of the research is dated. There have been significant changes in the development of youth as they quickly evolve and adapt. The systematic review of literature exposed a number of gaps in the research: the current literature ignores generic adolescent factors and external social factors other than Islam that also influence Muslim youth; studies that examine both online and traditional activism and volunteering space are needed to understand the dynamics of change and shift; research needs to focus on Muslim youth who were born and raised in Australia rather than focus only on migrant youth; the ways some Muslim youth use their unique sense of identity as Australian Muslims to become successful citizens engaged in positive action is not known; how Muslim youth use avenues other than their faith to express themselves in civic engagement and their commitment to society is underexplored; it is not known the degree to which bonding networks influence the identity formation and transformation of Muslim youth; there is no research done to examine how adult–youth partnership is managed in organisations that successfully integrate youth in their leadership; there is a need to include Australian Muslim youth individual accounts of their active citizenship; there is a need to understand the process of positive Muslim youth transformations as a complement to the current focus on the radicalisation process. Addressing these gaps will allow a more complete understanding of Muslim youth in the West and inform educational and social policies in a more effective manner.

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