The Old English Benedictine Rule: writing for women and men

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
Linguistic Level

The Regula S. Benedicti was known and used in early Anglo-Saxon England, but it was not until the mid-tenth-century Benedictine reform that the RSB became established as the supreme and exclusive rule governing the monasteries of England. The tenth-century monastic reform movement, undertaken by Dunstan, Æthelwold and Oswald during the reign of Edgar (959–75), sought to revitalize monasticism in England which, according to the standards of these reformers, had ceased to exist during the ninth century. They took as a basis for restoring monastic life the RSB, which was regarded by them as the main embodiment of the essential principles of western monasticism, and in this capacity it was established as the primary document governing English monastic life. By elevating the status of the RSB as the central text of monastic practice in England and the basis of a uniform way of life the reformers raised for themselves the problem of ensuring that the RSB would be understood in detail by all monks, nuns and novices, whatever their background. Evidence of various attempts to make the text accessible, both at the linguistic level and at the level of substance, survives in manuscripts dating from the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries; the most important of these attempts is a vernacular translation of the RSB.

Monastic tower-naves and tower-nave origins

2019 ◽  
pp. 109-132
Author(s):  
Michael G. Shapland
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
High Status ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Monastic Life ◽  
Secular Power

This chapter traces the origins of the tower-nave form in Anglo-Saxon monasteries, where they occur from at least the early eighth century onwards. It seeks the architectural meanings underlying the tower form, which were drawn from Carolingian and Late Antique practice and related to high-status secular power and burial. Thus, many monastic tower-naves in England were constructed as private, often royal, chapels and burying-places, as a result of the expression of these meanings by their builders. The evidence for monastic tower-naves increases significantly during the mid–late tenth century, a period which coincided with the Monastic Reform, whose leaders were personally responsible for this apparent spate of tower-nave construction. These tower-naves were built in seeming fulfilment of key tenets of the Reform movement: the patronage of the king in monastic life, the regularization of burial practices, and the increased emphasis on the integrity of monastic space.

Vernacular Chronicles c.1000

After Alfred ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 149-174
Author(s):  
Pauline Stafford
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Latin Translation ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Original Manuscript ◽  
Benedictine Reform

This chapter provides an overview of vernacular chronicling c. ad 1000. It discusses both work on the surviving manuscript of Chronicle A and Chronicle G, a copy of Chronicle A produced at this time. G is one of the few Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles to survive in an original manuscript setting alongside other works. This is used to underline the probable episcopal connections of G and A with Winchester and further to illuminate the reception of Bede. The chapter covers the production now of a Latin translation of a vernacular chronicle by a layman, Ealdorman Æthelweard. It places in the hands of Wulfstan II, archbishop of York, a copy of the Northern Recension, an important textual ancestor of Chronicle D, and considers the unusual references to women in D’s tenth-century annals. The chapter provides a conspectus of vernacular chronicling at the height of the so-called Monastic (or Benedictine) reform movement.

The Leofric Missal and tenth-century English art

1977 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 145-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Deshman
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
History Of

One of the most crucial and problematic periods in the history of English medieval art is the tenth century. Already in the first half of the century there were signs of renewed artistic activity after the comparatively barren period of the ninth century when the Viking invasions rent the fabric of Anglo-Saxon society. But a full revival did not occur until the second half of the tenth century under the impetus of monastic reform and strong royal support. It was then that English artists created the so-called ‘Winchester Style’, which was to exercise a powerful influence in England and also on the continent for more than a century. Despite the research of many scholars, most notably Homburger and Wormald, there are still many more questions than answers about the sources and development of tenth-century English art. Among the most important works from this time are the Anglo-Saxon drawings and initial which were added to the so-called Leofric Missal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 579). Through a consideration of their style, technique, ornament and iconography I hope to take a step towards a clearer understanding of this period of artistic renaissance.

Perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon past in the tenth-century monastic reform movement

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 61-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Coates
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
The Past ◽  
State Of Affairs

Retrospection is a recognized characteristic of reform movements. An appeal to the past legitimates ideological concerns which seek to replace a state of affairs considered decadent and decayed. Reforming rhetoric depends on the past as a means of proving its value and credibility. Such preservation of the past as a key organizing principle in transforming events is necessarily selective and often has a tendency towards schematization and simplification. Not only does the reforming agenda determine what aspects of the past are remembered, and hence what aspects are buried, but it also determines who is responsible for the act of remembering itself. ‘Different groups of people remember things in different ways.’ The purpose of this paper is to examine the manner in which the Anglo-Saxon past was perceived and utilized during the tenth-century monastic reform movement. It will be shown how, under an influence which was heavily Benedictine in inspiration, the collective memory of monks created a picture of the Anglo-Saxon past which was ‘all of a piece and all monastic’. The past was closely linked to the exercise of power. It will thus be shown how this monastic view of the past competed with an alternative tenth-century view and was ultimately to triumph over its competitor.

scholarly journals Illustrations of damnation in late Anglo-Saxon manuscripts

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Semple
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
Religious Devotion ◽  
Divine Punishment

‘Many tribulations and hardships shall arise in this world before its end, and they are heralds of the eternal perdition to evil men, who shall afterwards suffer eternally in the black hell for their sins.’ These words, composed by Ælfric in the last decade of the tenth century, reflect a preoccupation in the late Anglo-Saxon Church with perdition and the infernal punishments that awaited sinners and heathens. Perhaps stimulated in part by anxiety at the approach of the millennium, both Ælfric and Wulfstan (archbishop of York, 1002–23) show an overt concern with the continuation of paganism and the evil deeds of mankind in their sermons and homilies. Their works stress the terrible judgement that awaited sinners and heathens and the infernal torment to follow. The Viking raids and incursions, during the late eighth to ninth and late tenth centuries, partially inspired the great anxiety apparent in the late Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical leadership. Not only were these events perceived as divine punishment for a lack of religious devotion and fervour in the English people, but the arrival of Scandinavian settlers in the late ninth century may have reintroduced pagan practice and belief into England.

Two pre-Conquest manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey

1987 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P. Carley
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Early History ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fine Collection ◽  
Irish School ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

The earliest identified surviving manuscripts from Glastonbury Abbey date from the ninth and tenth centuries, but there are reliable post-Conquest traditions claiming that valuable books were found at the monastery as early as the reign of Ine, king of the West Saxons (688–726). By the tenth century at the latest there are reports of an ‘Irish school’ at Glastonbury, famous for its learning and books, and St Dunstan's earliest biographer, the anonymous. B., relates that Dunstan himself studied with the Irish at Glastonbury. During Dunstan's abbacy (940–56) – that is, at the period when most historians would place the beginnings of the English tenth-century reform movement – there was a general revival at Glastonbury which included a concerted policy of book acquisition and the establishment of a productive scriptorium. Not surprisingly, Dunstan's abbacy was viewed by the community ever afterwards as one of the most glorious periods in the early history of the monastery, especially since the later Anglo-Saxon abbots showed a marked falling off in devotion and loyalty to the intellectual inheritance of their monastery. Æthelweard and Æthelnoth, the last two Anglo-Saxon abbots, were especially reprehensible, and confiscated lands and ornaments for the benefit of their own kin. Nor did the situation improve immediately after the Conquest: the first Norman abbot, Thurstan, actually had to call in soldiers to quell his unruly monks. In spite of these disruptions, a fine collection of pre-Conquest books seems to have survived more or less intact into the twelfth century; when the seasoned traveller and connoisseur of books, William of Malmesbury, saw the collection in the late 1120s he was greatly impressed: ‘tanta librorum pulchritudo et antiquitas exuberat’.

An Unknown Late Anglo-Saxon Text About old St Peter's in Rome

1990 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-117
Author(s):  
Veronica Ortenberg
Keyword(s):  
Present Note ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
British Library ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English History ◽  
Short Text ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

Ms Royal 2. B.V. in the British Library, London, is a tenth-century Psalter from Winchester, possibly from Nunnaminster. On the last folios of this MS (189-190) were added in the late tenth century, miscellaneous computistical entries, which include the years ofChrist, the ages of the world, the ages and generations, the numbering and reckoning of years and the number of years from the Creation to the foundation of Rome. Two texts, the ‘De longitudine mundi’ (fol. 189) and ‘Longitudo, latitudo et altitudo templi et tabernaculum (sic)’ (fols. 189randv) precede, and another, ‘De area Noe’ (fol. 189v) follows a short text entitled ‘De aedificatio (sic) ecclesie sancti Petri apostoli’ at folio 189v.With the exception of this last, all these texts are also found in a ninth-century MS, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B.VI (fols. 106-70). To the best of my knowledge, the ‘De aedificatio[ne]’ does not exist in any other manuscript, and there is no known source for it. The present note aims solely at bringing this text to light and providing an edition of it; an examination of its implications for English history and architecture will be provided elsewhere.

Anglo-Saxon Towers of Lordship

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael G. Shapland
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Dual Function ◽  
High Status ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Monastic Reform ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Social ◽  
Secular Power

It has long been assumed that England lay outside the Western European tradition of castle-building until after the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is now becoming apparent that Anglo-Saxon lords were constructing free-standing towers at their residences all across England during the tenth and eleventh centuries. Initially these towers were exclusively of timber, and quite modest in scale. There followed the ‘tower-nave’ churches, towers with only a tiny chapel located inside, which appear to have had a dual function as buildings of elite worship and symbols of secular power and authority. This book gathers together the evidence for these remarkable buildings, many of which still stand incorporated into the fabric of Norman and later parish churches and castles. It traces their origin in monasteries, where kings and bishops drew upon Continental European practice to construct centrally planned, tower-like chapels for private worship and burial, and to mark gates and important entrances, particularly within the context of the tenth-century Monastic Reform. Adopted by the secular aristocracy to adorn their own manorial sites, many of the known examples would have provided strategic advantage as watchtowers over roads, rivers, and beacon systems, and acted as focal points for the mustering of troops. The tower-nave form persisted into early Norman England, where it may have influenced a variety of high-status building types. The aim of this book is to establish the tower-nave as an important Anglo-Saxon building type, and to explore the social, architectural, and landscape contexts in which they operated.

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