scholarly journals Provenance of the cross sign of 806 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a possible lunar halo over continental Europe?

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-92
Author(s):  
Yuta Uchikawa ◽  
Les Cowley ◽  
Hisashi Hayakawa ◽  
David M. Willis ◽  
F. Richard Stephenson

Abstract. While graphical records of astronomical/meteorological events before telescopic observations are of particular interest, they have frequently undergone multiple instances of copying and may have been modified from the original. Here, we analyse a graphical record of the cross sign of 806 CE in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (ASC), which has been considered one of the earliest datable halo drawings in British records, whereas another cross sign in 776 CE has been associated with the aurora. However, philological studies have revealed the later 806 event is derived from continental European annals. Here, records and drawings for the 806 event have been philologically traced back to mid-ninth-century continental European manuscripts (MSS) and the probable observational site identified as the area of Sens in northern France. The possible lunar halos at that time have been comprehensively examined by numerical ray tracing. Combined with calculations of twilight sky brightness, they identify a visibility window supporting monastic observation. Cruciform halos are shown to be fainter and rarer than brighter and more commonplace lunar halos. Physically credible cloud ice crystal variations can reproduce all the manuscript renditions. The manuscript records prove less-than-desirable detail, but what is presented is fully consistent with a lunar-halo interpretation. Finally, the possible societal impacts of such celestial events have been mentioned in the context of contemporary coins in Anglo-Saxon England and the Carolingian Empire. These analyses show that we need to trace their provenance back as far as possible, to best reconstruct the original event, even if graphical records are available for given astronomical/meteorological events.

Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov

This chapter shows the unquestionable role of the sign of the cross as the primary sign of divine authority in Carolingian material and manuscript culture, a role partly achieved at the expense of the diminishing symbolic importance of the late antique christograms. It also analyses the appearance of new cruciform devices in the ninth century as well as the adaptation of the early Byzantine tradition of cruciform invocational monograms in Carolingian manuscript culture, as exemplified in the Bible of San Paolo fuori le mura and several other religious manuscripts. The final section examines some Carolingian carmina figurata and, most importantly, Hrabanus Maurus’ In honorem sanctae crucis, as a window into Carolingian graphicacy and the paramount importance of the sign of the cross as its ultimate organizing principle.


1995 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Nicholas Orchard

Of all the services held in a saint's honour in the course of his or her feast-day, mass was the most important: and central to the mass were the prayers invoking the saint's intercession said by the celebrant. Together with the canon, these ‘proper’ prayers – by the ninth century normally a collect (collecta), secret (super oblata or secreta), preface (prefatio) and postcommunion (ad complendum or postcommunio) – formed the backbone around which chant and readings were arranged, and they were gathered together in the sacramentary, the book used by the celebrant alone. Further forms might be provided as ‘alternatives’ (aliae orationes); for the conclusion of mass (super populum); and occasionally, for vespers of the day before the feast and of the feast itself (ad vesperas), but generally speaking, these are rare. As ‘informal’ cults became formal, or prize relics came to hand, so the need for new suites of prayers arose. These could be composed afresh, ‘borrowed’ from existing saints' masses (an easy option, necessitating little more than the insertion of the new saint's name in the relevant prayers); or if the precentor's creative powers failed him completely, they could be taken from the ‘commons’, that is, from the series of ready-made masses contained in almost every medieval sacramentary or missal for a ‘confessor’, a ‘martyr’ or a ‘virgin’, and so on. Some houses attracted the services of gifted writers; other seem not to have been so fortunate. It is my intention to analyse here the genesis and dissemination of a mass from a house of the former class which throws interesting light on the liturgical links between England and the Continent in the eighth century.


2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 231-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Semple

‘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.


2003 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 147-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohini Jayatilaka

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.


2005 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry M. Straka ◽  
Edward R. Mansell

Abstract A single-moment bulk microphysics scheme with multiple ice precipitation categories is described. It has 2 liquid hydrometeor categories (cloud droplets and rain) and 10 ice categories that are characterized by habit, size, and density—two ice crystal habits (column and plate), rimed cloud ice, snow (ice crystal aggregates), three categories of graupel with different densities and intercepts, frozen drops, small hail, and large hail. The concept of riming history is implemented for conversions among the graupel and frozen drops categories. The multiple precipitation ice categories allow a range of particle densities and fall velocities for simulating a variety of convective storms with minimal parameter tuning. The scheme is applied to two cases—an idealized continental multicell storm that demonstrates the ice precipitation process, and a small Florida maritime storm in which the warm rain process is important.


2003 ◽  
Vol 83 ◽  
pp. 433-441
Author(s):  
Richard Jewell

This note discusses several recent English finds of early medieval ornamental metalwork shown at the Society of Antiquaries on 16 May 2002: most notably, a Romanesque mount with open-work foliate decoration having clear parallels with Norman and Anglo-Norman ornament of c 1100–25. Four ninth-century Anglo-Saxon strapends are also described and illustrated, two of which have decorative features with links to contemporary larger-scale works but rarer within the corpus of strap-ends; the other two being unusual examples of East Anglian niello and silver-wire inlay.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (22) ◽  
pp. 16461-16480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia C. Sullivan ◽  
Christian Barthlott ◽  
Jonathan Crosier ◽  
Ilya Zhukov ◽  
Athanasios Nenes ◽  
...  

Abstract. Secondary ice production via processes like rime splintering, frozen droplet shattering, and breakup upon ice hydrometeor collision have been proposed to explain discrepancies between in-cloud ice crystal and ice-nucleating particle numbers. To understand the impact of this additional ice crystal generation on surface precipitation, we present one of the first studies to implement frozen droplet shattering and ice–ice collisional breakup parameterizations in a mesoscale model. We simulate a cold frontal rainband from the Aerosol Properties, PRocesses, And InfluenceS on the Earth's Climate campaign and investigate the impact of the new parameterizations on the simulated ice crystal number concentrations (ICNC) and precipitation. Near the convective regions of the rainband, contributions to ICNC can be as large from secondary production as from primary nucleation, but ICNCs greater than 50 L−1 remain underestimated by the model. The addition of the secondary production parameterizations also clearly intensifies the differences in both accumulated precipitation and precipitation rate between the convective towers and non-convective gap regions. We suggest, then, that secondary ice production parameterizations be included in large-scale models on the basis of large hydrometeor concentration and convective activity criteria.


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