Language and Community in Early England

Imagining Distance in Medieval Literature

Emily Butler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317196891
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Literature

This book examines the development of English as a written vernacular and identifies that development as a process of community building that occurred in a multilingual context. Moving through the eighth century to the thirteenth century, and finally to the sixteenth-century antiquarians who collected medieval manuscripts, it suggests that this important period in the history of English can only be understood if we loosen our insistence on a sharp divide between Old and Middle English and place the textuality of this period in the framework of a multilingual matrix. The book examines a wide range of materials, including the works of Bede, the Alfredian circle, and Wulfstan, as well as the mid-eleventh-century Encomium Emmae Reginae, the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, the Ancrene Wisse, and Matthew Parker's study of Old English manuscripts. Engaging foundational theories of textual community and intellectual community, this book provides a crucial link with linguistic distance. Perceptions of distance, whether between English and other languages or between different forms of English, are fundamental to the formation of textual community, since the awareness of shared language that can shape or reinforce a sense of communal identity only has meaning by contrast with other languages or varieties. The book argues that the precocious rise of English as a written vernacular has its basis in precisely these communal negotiations of linguistic distance, the effects of which were still playing out in the religious and political upheavals of the sixteenth century. Ultimately, the book argues that the tension of linguistic distance provides the necessary energy for the community-building activities of annotation and glossing, translation, compilation, and other uses of texts and manuscripts. This will be an important volume for literary scholars of the medieval period, and those working on the early modern period, both on literary topics and on historical studies of English nationalism. It will also appeal to those with interests in sociolinguistics, history of the English language, and medieval religious history.

1 Latinity and the English People

The Venerable Bede (c. 673–735), one of the most important authors from the Anglo-Saxon period, produced a wide range of Latin works that nevertheless helped to shape a sense of English identity and to frame English-language textuality. Focusing on Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica, this chapter will begin to illustrate how Latin can take on potentially unifying roles, especially as envisioned in Bede’s understanding of the Pentecost, but it will also become clear how conceptions of Englishness and an English language can serve unifying functions in a landscape populated by speakers of a variety of languages.

It is clear in the Historia ecclesiastica that Bede was interested in different kinds of linguistic boundaries, both those between different languages and those between written and spoken forms of communication. In particular, performativity is a crucial element of his understanding of the Pentecost and of some of the linguistic miracles described in the Historia ecclesiastica. His focus both on textual scholarship and on the related ideals of reform and redemption informs his approach to language, as he balances contact with, even immersion in, the Latin tradition with the diversity of languages in Britain and in the wider Christian world. It is with the intersection of Bede’s theological, linguistic, and textual habits that this chapter concerns itself, exploring the way that Bede envisions textual and spiritual communities.

Northumbrian Context

By the time Bede reached adulthood, Northumbria was unusual in that we have relatively abundant evidence of individuals, texts, and physical books, beyond what is seen elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon England before the late ninth century and the scholarly circle at the court of Alfred the Great (r. 871–899). Consequently, we have a much fuller picture of the workings of this textual community than we do for any others from this period. Much, though certainly not all, of this information comes from Bede’s own Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, completed in 731. In addition to Bede’s information about individuals and institutions, a number of books produced or used in this milieu can be identified, some of which have survived and others of which are now lost to us. From an inventory of Bede’s sources alone, it is clear that the library at Wearmouth-Jarrow as Bede knew it was one of the largest in Anglo-Saxon England, including even the eleventh-century libraries from which inventories survive, with the Wearmouth-Jarrow collection containing something like 250 titles in as many as 200 volumes or more.¹ The fact that little is known of the later whereabouts of these books mirrors the fate of the other major libraries of early Anglo-Saxon England.²

One other factor that distinguishes Northumbria, and especially Wearmouth-Jarrow, in the seventh and eighth centuries is that it is not only possible to identify books that were products of Northumbrian scriptoria, but to fill in a more detailed and notably interconnected history for these books, such as the Codex Amiatinus, intended for St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, and its two sister pandects, which were meant to remain at Wearmouth and Jarrow but which are now lost. Produced before Ceolfrith left for Rome in 716, the Codex Amiatinus and other texts produced during Ceolfrith’s abbacy may then have provided a direct model for the script and other decorative features of the Lindisfarne Gospels. This would mean that the Lindisfarne Gospels were likely produced during or after the editorial and scribal activity of Ceolfrith’s abbacy, pushing the date of production past the traditional 698 and into the eighth century,³ and we might wonder which other manuscripts were influenced by this seemingly busy site of production. Michelle Brown’s suggestion that the Lindisfarne Gospels were made at Lindisfarne at some point in the period 710–21, when Bishop Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Bede “seem to have been actively collaborating in determining the future direction of the cult of St. Cuthbert as part of a broader religious and political agenda” is a reminder that the monastery was a nexus of royal and ecclesiastical power, as well as textual production.⁴

Much of this increased visibility of the activities of the textual community may be due to the influence on Northumbria of the Irish Church, which was already solidly established. The Irish, who were among the first non-Romance speakers to study Latin, brought a strong tradition of writing in both Latin and their own vernacular.⁵ The accommodating attitude of many Irish clerics towards the cultivation of vernacular Irish literature may well have influenced Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards vernacular literature of their own.⁶ O’Neill has even argued that Ireland is the most likely site for the development of the Old English alphabet, in what must have been “a learned, deliberative process rather than–as is sometimes suggested–an ad hoc accommodation to meet a need to record in writing Old English personal and place-names.”⁷ Whatever the truth of this may be, the relatively high concentration of monastic foundations in the north of England or Scotland either established by the Irish or located in heavily Irish territory provided the critical mass for more large-scale, collaborative activity than was feasible south of the Humber before the founding of the school at Canterbury.

Lindisfarne, founded in 635 by Aidan and also known as Holy Island, is famous for the Viking attack of 793, but it had been the center of the mission to Northumbria after Aidan was brought in by Oswald to evangelize and serve as bishop. The success of the original foundation of St. Peter’s at Wearmouth by Benedict Biscop in 674 led to the foundation of its sister house, St. Paul’s, at Jarrow in 681. Under the leadership of Abbot Ceolfrith, the double house achieved an impressive stature as a producer of high-quality books and the home of the equally impressive Bede. His reputation was already great enough that Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, commissioned Bede to rewrite the prose Life of Cuthbert in 720. Iona, founded off the western coast of what is now Scotland in 563 after Columba left Ireland, mainly served the Irish kingdom of Dalriada and was not Northumbrian territory, but by the time Augustine arrived in Kent in 597, two English Christians were already living at Iona. In addition, Iona is probably where Oswald and Oswiu spent at least part of their exile during the ascendancy of King Edwin (r. Deira 616–33), and Aldhelm and Aldfrith also appear to have spent time there, as we shall see.⁸ The alphabetical poem, Altus prosator, was probably composed at Iona by Columba in the late sixth century or by another Iona monk in the late sixth or seventh century, and it displays the fondness for foreign and exotic vocabulary that characterizes “Hisperic” Latin, including the Hisperica famina and the works of Aldhelm.⁹

Books tell us a great deal about the varied cultural influences at work in Anglo-Saxon England and especially in Northumbria, where Irish influence was strong.¹⁰ What Michelle Brown has called “cultural cross-references” appearing in books and other artifacts reveal both the wide-ranging influences at work in Anglo-Saxon England and the Anglo-Saxon culture that cultivated these contacts and allowed their influence to take hold to varying degrees.¹¹ The Irish greatly influenced Anglo-Saxon scriptoria in the codicological aspects of book production, such as pricking, ruling, and the arrangement of leaves in quires, but the images in Northumbrian manuscripts show a debt to Italian, Coptic, and other wide-ranging influences. Likewise, the Irish script system was heavily influential in Anglo-Saxon England, but individual Roman scripts had their own impact, as in the distinctively Anglo-Saxon use of rustic capitals as a display script. Although some of the Irish missionaries are more famous, Anglo-Saxon missionaries such as Willibrord (658–739) and Boniface (c. 675–754) also brought Insular influence to Continental scriptoria.¹²

The details of the script and decorative features of the Lindisfarne Gospels lay bare a variety of influences from all corners of the Christian world, but in their combination and the innovations introduced, Michelle Brown detects an expression of political and linguistic identity emerging in Northumbria but positioning itself within the wider Christian “œcumen.”¹³ In other Northumbrian books, it is codicological features that reveal the breadth of cultural contacts in this period. The St. Cuthbert Gospel (London, British Library, MS Add 89000), previously known as the Stonyhurst Gospel (BL, MS Loan 74) but recently acquired on a permanent basis by the British Library, retains its original late seventh-century binding, betraying its Mediterranean influences with a sewing pattern drawn from the Coptic/Egyptian/Byzantine tradition. The decorative features on the goatskin cover, on the other hand, have been taken to show Islamic influence, making the book unique, certainly among surviving Northumbrian productions, in this combination of structural and decorative influences.¹⁴

The most prominent sites where or for whose use books were produced are the monastic foundations already mentioned: Wearmouth-Jarrow produced the Codex Amiatinus and its two sister pandects, as well as copies of Bede’s works, whereas Lindisfarne probably produced its famous gospel book and certainly commissioned Bede to rework the anonymous prose life of St. Cuthbert, a Lindisfarne bishop of the late seventh century. This is only one of a number of examples of collaboration between Wearmouth-Jarrow and Lindisfarne. Books were also moving between other sites in Northumbria at this time. The Durham Gospels, for instance, were produced at a Columban foundation, probably either Melrose or Lindisfarne, around 700 but brought to Durham in the early Middle Ages, most likely in the wake of Viking attacks.¹⁵

It has often been noted that there is a sharp distinction in the surviving evidence of writing from the early Anglo-Saxon period, with the Northumbrian survivals mostly books or fragments of books of a scholarly or ecclesiastical bent, whereas the survivals from the south of England are almost exclusively land-charters or law codes.¹⁶ The Northumbrian church did produce land-charters, and Liudhard, the chaplain who accompanied Bertha when she married Æthelberht, may well have taken some books with him, which would mean that books were being used in Kent even before Augustine’s arrival.¹⁷ So, the discrepancy is intriguing. Susan Kelly suggests that the Irish, with their deep sense of bilingualism (as non-Romance speakers who learned Latin), may have been especially adept at training Anglo-Saxons (more non-Romance speakers) in “literacy skills,” thus giving literacy a deeper foundation in the Northumbrian church.¹⁸ Richard Emms, on the other hand, wonders if Kent was already in possession of a sufficient number of imported books for churches and monasteries to function without necessitating significant scribal production. There is evidence of the importation of books by Liudhard in the late sixth century and by Augustine in 597 and 601, but the main evidence of textual production in Kent is the survival of Æthelberht’s laws and the presence of a notary at the Council of Hertford in 672.¹⁹

In fact, it is reasonable to suggest that the scriptorium at Wearmouth- Jarrow did a great deal on its own to shift the balance of survivals from Northumbria, producing not only books for liturgical use at its own and other churches, but also supplying copies of other works, especially those of Bede. At least nine surviving manuscripts of various texts are written in the same uncial script that was used during the abbacy of Ceolfrith to complete the Codex Amiatinus,²⁰ but by the mid-e...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Community and Distance
• 1 Latinity and the English People
• 2 Crafting a Textual Kingdom in Wessex
• 3 Preaching and Politics in a Time of Conquest
• 4 Old and Newer English in the West Midlands
• 5 Shewing the Auncient Fayth: An Elizabethan Sequel
• Conclusion
• Index of Manuscripts
• General Index