The lady and the letter: Two ecclesiastical analogies in the Old English Soliloquies

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Jasmine Jones
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Capital ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Old English ◽  
Church And State ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Heaven And Earth ◽  
Practical Implications

This article analyses two ecclesiastical analogies in the Old English Soliloquies: the analogy of the lady and the analogy of the letter. It argues for a more nuanced and practical interpretation of Alfred’s analogies in the Old English Soliloquies than has previously been put forward. The analogies original to Alfred as well as those derived from Augustine’s Soliloquia, which he manipulates and omits, are designed to be useful, with practical implications for Anglo-Saxon society. Since his prose preface to Pastoral Care suggests that the demise of the Angelcynn is contingent on the demise of the English Church, Alfred’s analogies in Soliloquies prompt the reintegration of these two infrastructures, Church and state, to reconsolidate the Angelcynn and recover its sacred and secular ar (‘favour with God’ and ‘cultural capital’). By encouraging responses in the individual reader —recourse to the sacramental Church and renewed commitment to reading and prayer— Alfred’s analogies, particularly of the lady and the letter, seek to cultivate the Gregorian “mixed life”. Alfred thus aims to revive the terrestrial and celestial favour of the Angelcynn by fusing the concerns of Ecclesia and state, heaven and earth, contemplative, and active.

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.

The Junius Psalter gloss: its historical and cultural context

2000 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 85-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mechthild Gretsch
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Benedictine Reform ◽  
The Individual

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Junius 27 (S.C. 5139), the Junius Psalter, was written, Latin text and Old English gloss, probably at Winchester and presumably during the reign of King Edward the Elder. Junius 27 is one of the twenty-nine complete or almost complete psalters written or owned in Anglo-Saxon England which have survived. (In addition to these twenty-nine complete psalters, eight minor fragments of further psalters are still extant.) This substantial number of surviving manuscripts and fragments is explained by the paramount importance of the psalms in the liturgy of the Christian church, both in mass and especially in Office. Junius 27 is also one of the ten psalters from Anglo-Saxon England bearing an interlinear Old English gloss to the entire psalter. (In addition there are two psalters with a substantial amount of glossing in Old English, though not full interlinear versions.) Since our concern in the first part of this article will be with the nature of the Old English glossing in the Junius Psalter, and its relationship to other glossed psalters, it is appropriate at the outset to provide a list of the psalters in question. At the beginning of each of the following items I give the siglum and the name by which the individual psalters are traditionally referred to by psalter scholars. An asterisk indicates that the Latin text is a Psalterium Romanum (the version in almost universal use in England before the Benedictine reform); unmarked manuscripts contain the Psalterium Gallicanum. For full descriptions of the manuscripts, see N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon.

Signs That Sing

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Maring
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Ritual Studies ◽  
Dream Of The Rood ◽  
English Verse ◽  
The Battle Of Maldon ◽  
Hybrid Texts ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
Practical Implications

Signs That Sing argues that Anglo-Saxon poets wrote by drawing from a broad range of verbal resources: oral tradition, ecclesiastical literature, and Christian liturgy. Hybrid oral, written, and liturgical ways of speaking form a fundamental poetic strategy in Old English verse. In the field of medieval literature, written oral-traditional idioms, such as formulaic systems, themes, typescenes, and story patterns, are commonly recognized as hybrid expressions. Signs That Sing describes two other major types of hybrid poetic expression: ritual signs and idioms that fuse oral and literate modes of interpretation. This book demonstrates how hybrid expressions play meaningful roles in Advent Lyrics (Christ I), “Alms-Giving,” Andreas, The Battle of Maldon, Beowulf, Deor, The Dream of the Rood, Genesis A/B, The Gifts of Men, Soul and Body I and II, Thureth, Widsith, and select riddles. By viewing hybrid expressions as a creative resource for Anglo-Saxon poets, we are in a better position to appreciate the rhetorical complexity of their poems. Ultimately, Signs That Sing presents new ways of reading and interpreting Old English poems, while offering scholars of orality and ritual studies theoretical and practical implications for the study of hybrid texts.

For Pastoral Care and Political Gain: Ælfric of Eynsham's Preaching on Marital Celibacy

Traditio ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 39-78
Author(s):  
Robert K. Upchurch
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Old English ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
English Word ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Virgin Birth ◽  
Good Works ◽  
The Devil

Writing early in the last decade of the tenth century, the Anglo-Saxon monk Ælfric begins his Second Series ofCatholic Homilieswith a sermon for Christmas Day. The second of five Old English sermons he wrote for the Nativity, it combines dense doctrinal matters with concrete advice about how Christians should commemorate the birth of Christ. After discussing Christ's Incarnation and Virgin Birth, and the Old Testament prophecies anticipating his appearance, Ælfric concludes the sermon with a series of instructions directing believers how to conduct themselves at Christmas. Of particular interest is his singling out ofclænnyss, an Old English word for “chastity” or “purity,” as the virtue to be most highly prized among the laity:We sceolon eac cristes acennednysse. and his gebyrdtide mid gastlicere blisse wurðian. and us sylfe mid godum weorcum geglengan. and us mid godes lofsangum gebysgian. and ða oing onscunian. ðe crist forbytt. pæt sind leahtras. and deofles weorc. and ða ðing lufian ðe god bebead. pæt is eadmodnys. and mildheortnys. rihtwisnys. and soðfæstnys. ælmesdreda. and gemetfræstnys. gepyld and cleennyss; pas ðing lufað god and huru ða clænnysse ðe he sylf ðurh hine. and ðurh pæt clæne mreden his modor astealde; Swa eac ealle his geferan ðe him filigdon ealle hí weeron on clænnysse wuniende. and se mæsta dæl prera manna pe gode geðeoð purh clsennysse hi geðeoð. (CHII.1.277–87)[We ought also to honor the birth and nativity of Christ with spiritual joy, and adorn ourselves with good works, and occupy ourselves with songs of praise to God, and shun those things which Christ forbids, which are sins and works of the devil, and love those things which God commanded, that is humility and mercy, justice and truth, almsgiving and self-control, patience and chastity. These things God loves, and especially chastity, which he established through himself and the chaste virgin, his mother. So also all of his companions who followed him were living in chastity, and the greatest portion of those men who achieve favor with God achieve it through chastity.]

scholarly journals Did the English Really Think They Were God's Elect in the Anglo-Saxon Period?

2014 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 721-737 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE MOLYNEAUX
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Old English ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Divine Election

This article challenges the contention that during the Anglo-Saxon period the English considered themselves God's specially chosen people, like the Old Testament Israelites. The texts upon which this interpretation has been based are re-analysed; particular attention is devoted to the writings of Gildas, Bede, Alcuin and Wulfstan, the prose preface of the Old English ‘Pastoral care’, and the introduction to King Alfred's legislation. The English could see themselves as a Christian people, and thus among God's chosen, but they do not appear to have claimed to be the beneficiaries of a more particularist form of divine election.

The mind, perception and the reflexivity of forgetting in Alfred's Pastoral Care

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
pp. 147-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Saltzman
Keyword(s):  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Mind Perception ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThe verb forgytan is used reflexively six times in the extant Old English corpus, and all six instances are found in King Alfred's translation of Gregory the Great's Regula pastoralis. As the translation adopts from its Latin source the concept of what I call ‘completely reflexive forgetting’ (the forgetting of one's self), it adjusts the concept for an Anglo-Saxon audience by reimagining and reconfiguring the logistics of the mind and its mechanisms of perception. Completely reflexive forgetting is thus imagined as the process by which a ruler ceases to perceive himself from within (as God always does) and begins perceiving himself from without (from the perspective of his subjects), thereby slipping into a perpetually totalizing state of self-concealment.When we forget, something doesn't just slip away from us. Forgetting itself slips into a concealing, and indeed in such a way that we ourselves, along with our relation to what is forgotten, fall into concealment.Martin Heidegger, ‘Aletheia (Heraclitus, Fragment B 16)’

The representation of the mind as an enclosure in Old English poetry

2006 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 57-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt Mize
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Social Harm ◽  
Material Wealth ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Pass Through ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThe frequent representation of the mind as a potentially secure enclosure in Old English poetry has unrecognized implications for interpretation. The mind as imagined by Anglo-Saxon poets exhibits both capabilities of an enclosure: containment and exclusion; but the most common image is one of containment, specifically of reified thoughts, knowledge or discourse as figurative treasure objects. This model's interaction with traditional value systems invests it with ethical meaning: what is inside or outside of the mind either should or should not be allowed to pass through its boundary. Mental valuables are closely analogous to material wealth and are subject to the same imperatives for their management and use. The poetry also reflects anxiety about the privacy of the individual mind, which allows the accumulation and concealment of a perverse hord of deceit, sin or folly that can cause social harm through a failure of containment.

The Differential Effectiveness of the Cognitive Interview Instructions for Enhancing Witnesses’ Memory of a Familiar Event

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magali Ginet ◽  
Jacques Py ◽  
Cindy Colomb
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Interview ◽  
Critical Event ◽  
Surgical Operation ◽  
Differential Effectiveness ◽  
Correct Information ◽  
Control Instruction ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Practical Implications

This study examines the influence of familiarity on witnesses’ memory and the individual effectiveness of each of the four cognitive interview instructions in improving witnesses’ recall of scripted events. Participants (N = 195), either familiar or unfamiliar with the hospital script, were presented with a video of a surgical operation. One week later, an interviewer used one of the four cognitive interview instructions or a control instruction to ask them about the video. Participants familiar with the surgery context recalled significantly more correct information and, in particular, more consistent and irrelevant details than those unfamiliar with the surgery context. Furthermore, the results confirmed the effectiveness of all four cognitive interview mnemonics in enhancing the amount of correct information reported, irrespective of the participants’ familiarity with the critical event. However, their efficacy differed depending on the category of details considered. The practical implications of these results are discussed.

PREPARING PUBLIC SERVANTS IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: ARCHETYPAL APPROACH

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (14) ◽  
pp. 255-263
Author(s):  
Oleh Ivanovich Rohulskyi
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
German Model ◽  
Managerial Positions ◽  
A Chain ◽  
The Individual

The article describes the main components of the institutional framework of an archetypical approach to public administration. It is determined that the system of preparation of public servants is based on a chain of universal foundations of archetype, in particular, it is influenced by the principle of formation of personnel in the public service, formed on the basis of public opinion. Based on two basic principles relating to admission to public service, three basic models of training civil servants in the European country are defined: German. French and Anglo-Saxon. We analyze each of the models and define the archetypes that influenced their formation and development. The advantages of each model are determined, in particular, the benefits are: the German model of training managers is the balancing between the theoretical knowledge and practical skills that a public servant receives during training, but as a disadvantage one can distinguish the orientation of preparation for legal orientation, which limits the ability to hold managerial positions for many employees The French model of professional training of public servants should include a well-balanced understanding of tasks, namely: decentralization and territorial organization of public services, communication, support of territorial communities, in-depth knowledge and understanding of the need for cooperation with institutions of the European Commonwealth, high-quality human resource management and orientation towards environmentally friendly innovations, such a model of training of public servants is holistic, costly and effective; The Anglo-Saxon model of training of public servants is its orientation towards the implementation of the concept of public administration and the individual approach to employee training, taking into account all the specifics of its activities, providing for the formation of personnel capable of solving specific problems. It is concluded that today in most European countries dominated by mixed models that include elements of different models.

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