scholarly journals The Tension between Heroic Masculinity and the Christian Self in the Old English Andreas

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 87-107
Author(s):  
Jacek Olesiejko
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Literature ◽  
The Military ◽  
Military Masculinity ◽  
The Devil

The article’s aim is to elucidate the religious transformations of the secular notions of identity and masculinity in Andreas. Andreas is a religious poem composed in Anglo-Saxon England around the ninth century. It is an adaptation of the Latin recension of the Acts of the Apostle Andrew, but the poet uses heroic diction borrowed from Old English secular poetry to rework the metaphor of miles Christi that is ubiquitous in Christian literature. The poet uses the military metaphor to inculcate the Christian notion of masculinity as the inversion of the secular perception of manliness. He draws upon a paradox, attested in the early Christian writings, that spiritual masculinity is true manliness, superior to military masculinity, and that it is expressed through patient suffering and the acknowledgment of defeat. The poem inverts the notions of war and victory to depict the physical defeat of the martyr as a spiritual victory over sin and the devil.

The sources of the Old English Martyrology

2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 89-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Rauer
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Martyrology ◽  
Literary Legacy

For much of the ninth century, Anglo-Saxon interest in literary culture was apparently not as great as it could have been. Medieval and modern commentators have spoken of a pronounced early-ninth-century neglect of English libraries, which seems to have affected contemporary literature as well as the literary legacy which had been inherited from the seventh and eighth centuries. It appears that fewer books and texts were produced; the Latin texts produced may to some extent have been of inferior linguistic quality, and were, so it would seem, used with greater difficulties by a smaller and less educated readership. Comparatively fewer books seem to have survived the ninth century than any other period of Anglo-Saxon history.

scholarly journals Aldhelm and Old St Peter's, Rome

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 7-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Story
Keyword(s):  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
New Evidence

AbstractAldhelm of Malmesbury was one of the most prolific and influential scholars of early Anglo-Saxon England. His contemporary fame rested partly on the fact that he had been a pilgrim to Rome. This article presents new evidence for Aldhelm's literary debt to the epigraphy of early Christian Rome. Two ninth-century manuscripts from Reims contain an anthology of six epigrams which derive largely from verse inscriptions in Old St Peter's. Aldhelm quoted two of these, de Petro and de Andrea, almost verbatim in his Carmina Ecclesiastica. It is likely that Aldhelm knew these verses from first-hand observation rather than via the pages of a manuscript sylloge.

From Worm to Wyvern

2021 ◽  
pp. 84-136
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Central Body ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Sea Monster ◽  
Classical Culture ◽  
The Devil

How did the classical dragon, essentially just a massive snake in form, a worm, evolve, in early Christian culture, into the very particular fantasy creature we know as a ‘dragon’ today in the West? It is argued that the dragon acquired its animalian head and more bulbous central body from another well-established creature of classical fantasy, the ancient sea-monster (kētos), this by virtue of the fact that, whilst dragon and sea-monster had remained largely distinct creatures in classical culture, they had been confounded by the Septuagint. Its wings, however, and probably too in effect its two legs (the latter placed in the position of the sea-monster’s front flippers), it derived rather from demons and the Devil, the latter being associated with snakes already in the Old Testament, and then spectacularly so in the New Testament’s Revelation. By the ninth century AD these two developments had crystallized in the wyvern-type dragon.

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.]

Bald's Leechbook and the Physica Plinii

1992 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 87-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. N. Adams ◽  
Marilyn Deegan
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Late Ninth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Source Materials

The study of the sources of the Anglo-Saxon medical texts began more than a hundred years ago with T.O. Cockayne's monumental edition of most of the medical, magical and herbal material extant in Old English. Cockayne demonstrated that the most significant text in this corpus, the late ninth-century compilation known as Bald's Leechbook, drew on an impressive range of Latin source materials. Recent work by C.H. Talbot and M.L. Cameron has further extended our knowledge of the classical texts which underlie the Leechbook. Among the significant sources is the text known as the Physica Plinii. Although the Physica survives in several recensions, there has as yet been no systematic study of the relationship between these recensions and the version of the Latin text used by the Old English compiler. The present article investigates Bald's Leechbook as a witness to the history of the Physica Plinii, and demonstrates the complexity of the transmission of the latter work.

‘Id est, crux Christi’: tracing the Old English Motif of the Celestial Rood

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 43-73
Author(s):  
Brandon W. Hawk
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Complex Matrix ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Literary Images ◽  
Specific Source ◽  
Christian Origins

AbstractThe celestial cross is a prominent motif in Old English texts, and, rather than deriving from a single specific source, the figure provides a case study with implications for understanding the variety of backgrounds that often contribute to Anglo-Saxon conceptions of specific literary images. Tracing the development of the motif from its early Christian origins to its role in Anglo-Saxon England reveals a persistent correlation to eschatology, the importance of the liturgy in its dissemination, and a complex matrix of associations that must be accounted for in considering the Old English settings in which the image exists. An examination of these literary settings further helps to interpret the ways in which Anglo-Saxon authors used this matrix of associations for the celestial cross in their conceptions of the Judgement Day.

Dry-point glosses to Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis in Beinecke 401

1994 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 195-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip G. Rusche
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Yale University ◽  
English Manuscript

Yale University, Beinecke Library, 401 contains twenty-six leaves of a ninth-century English manuscript of Aldhelm's De laudibus virginitatis. The manuscript has 189 Old English glosses in ink which were published by A. S. Napier in 1900. Napier also noted the presence of dry-point glosses in the manuscript, and in 1961 H.D. Meritt published twenty-six of these. I have found a total of 160 dry-point glosses and gloss fragments to 153 lemmata in the manuscript, which, other than Meritt's twenty-six, have not been printed before. Dry-point glosses are often neglected in studies of glossing, no doubt due to the difficulty of reading marks scratched into the parchment without ink; I have therefore prefaced my list of glosses and their lemmata with a discussion of dry-point glossing and what it can reveal concerning education in Anglo-Saxon England.

An edition of the four sermons attributed to Candidus Witto

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 7-67
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Introductory Discussion

AbstractIn 1891, Germain Morin identified a set of brief, anonymous Latin sermons that he controversially attributed to Alcuin’s Anglo-Saxon pupil named ‘Witto’ or ‘Wizo’ in Old English, ‘Candidus’ in Latin. The texts in question are of considerable interest but have remained unprinted and thus scarcely known. The present article offers an edition of them, based on all the known manuscripts, as well as a translation and commentary. An introductory discussion reviews the state of scholarship on Candidus’s career and writings, then examines in detail the content and sources of the four texts, the evidence supporting their attribution to Candidus, and some points of comparison between the items here edited and other Latin sermons produced at Carolingian centres in the early ninth century.

The probable derivation of most of the illustrations in Junius II from an illustrated Old Saxon Genesis

1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 133-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Raw
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Old English ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Bodleian Library ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Old Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
History Of

Junius II in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is the only one of the four principal manuscripts of Old English poetry to be illustrated. The pictures are important not only because they form one of the most extensive sets of Genesis illustrations of the early Middle Ages but also because the text which they illustrate is a composite one, 600 lines of which were translated into Old English from an Old Saxon poem probably of the second quarter of the ninth century. By tracing the sources of these illustrations one can throw light on the history and transmission of the text as well as on the history of manuscript art in the late Anglo-Saxon period.

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