Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

Laura C. Lambdin, Robert T. Lambdin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136594250
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written 500 to 1500 A.D., a period that gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential works, such as Dante's Commedia, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. While its emphasis is upon medieval English texts and society, this reference also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and Middle Age culture. Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory, and of genre entries, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. Each entry concludes with a brief biography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.

A

ABELARD, PETER (1079–1142)

A philosopher and theologian, Peter Abelard openly disagreed with many of the foremost contemporary scholars, generating some innovative ideas and dialectic techniques. Abelard was born in Pallet, a village about ten miles east of Nantes in Brittany. He began his career as a wanderer, gathering knowledge from scholars he encountered during his travels, most notably Roscelin the Nominalist. He became a permanent pupil of William of Champeaux at the Cathedral School in Paris, but soon separated from him because of a heated difference of opinion. This argument effectively banished him from Paris. After returning to his native land to recover his failing health, he returned to France and established schools at Melun and later at Corbeil in 1101. His next project was to found a school at Mont Sainte-Geneviève in 1108. His fame as a teacher spread after he accepted a position at the Cathedral School in Paris. He detailed this situation in his Historia Calamitatum, or the Story of my calamities. People flocked to hear him speak, but his ego grew in proportion to his renown. Abelard’s divergent doctrines and his opinionated personality led him to many disputes with authority throughout his career. These disagreements only enhanced his reputation.

As a result of his outspoken nature, Abelard’s next controversy involved the Benedictine monks at the Abbey of St. Denis; he had taken the vow of this order after his doomed love affair with a woman named Heloise. Abelard criticized the name of their patron saint, and the astonished monks banished him to a “branch” monastery. There he again challenged the authorities, especially on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Abelard was finally summoned to appear before a papal council at Soissons in 1121. This council, headed by the bishop of Prantese, sentenced Abelard to burn his book on the Holy Trinity and to subsequent imprisonment in the Abbey of St. Medard. Instead, Abelard fled to a desert near Troyes and successfully resumed his teachings.

In 1125, Abelard’s stature as a monk was renewed, and he accepted a post as the abbot of the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys in Brittany. The monks there were unaccepting of Abelard and even allegedly attempted to poison him. Driven from the monastery, Abelard began to teach in Paris again, reviving some of the fame and popularity he had experienced twenty years earlier. Some of his more famous pupils included Arnold of Brescia and *John of Salisbury. Yet Abelard’s teachings were too controversial for him to escape opposition--this time St. *Bernard of Clairvaux disputed his trinitarian theory. A hearing was held at Sens in 1141, in which Abelard was condemned. Peter of Cluny defended Abelard to the papal authorities and invited Abelard to reside safely at Cluny. He died there in 1142.

Peter Abelard’s biographical information is taken primarily from the Story of My Calamities and also his letters to his lover Heloise. He was the author of many theological and philosophical works, including Dialectica, an important four-volume philosophical treatise. His other philosophical works include Glossulae in Porphyrium, De Generibus et Speciebus, Scito Teipsum, seu Ethica, Tractatus de Unitate et Trinitate Divina, and Theologia Christiana. In these and other writings his mode of philosophical inquiry most often rests on the discussion of *Aristotle’s theories and those of Aristotle’s pupils. Abelard’s argumentative essay *Sic et Non is his most famous work; it presents evidence both for and against various theological opinions without reaching a definitive conclusion. This method influenced Abelard’s successors, including Alexander of Hales and St. Thomas *Aquinas.

Abelard used this dialectic technique of “pro” and “con” to express his controversial theories of morality. In regard to the concept of sin, Abelard emphasized the intention behind the “sinful” act. The psychological element— the notion that the thought of sinning is actually worse than the sin itself— confused the traditional distinctions between good and evil. Abelard held that the “intention of sinning was a formal contempt of God.” This belief also obscured the link between faith and good works. Abelard’s definition of faith was a source of further debate, for he dismissed theologians such as St. Bernard who advocated blind and unquestioning faith, instead stressing reason as the key to faith. Abelard’s view negated the necessity for “mysteries of the faith,” a concept freely and conveniently used by the Catholic clergy. Yet although his teachings angered his contemporaries, Abelard was not particularly influential in his time, contributing only minimally to popular ecclesiastical thought.

After Abelard’s death, however, philosophers and theologians began to subject his writings to closer scrutiny. His former pupil *Peter Lombard was chiefly responsible for this change. Peter Abelard is now widely regarded as a significant contributor to scholastic theory in the early Middle Ages.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ferguson, Chris D. “Autobiography as Therapy: Guibert de Nogent, Peter Abelard, and the Making of Medieval Autobiography.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 13:2 (Fall 1983), 187–212; Jussila, Paivi. Peter Abelard on Imagery: Theory and Practice, with Special Reference to his Hymns. Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1995; C. J. Mews. “The Sententie of Peter Abelard.” Reserches de Theologie Ancienne et Medievale 53 (1986), 130–84.

Anna Shealy

ACROSTIC

An acrostic is a composition in which a set of letters, usually the first but also in the middle or at the end of each line, spells out a coded word. One of the best examples of this is the Old Testament’s 119th Psalm. *Cynewulf, an Old English poet, signed his name in acrostic runes.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Indictor, Nyr. “Alphabet Poems: A Brief History.” Word Ways 28:3 (August 1995), 131–35; Stephenson, William. “The Acrostic ‘Fictio’ in Robert Henryson’s ‘The Testament of Cresseid’ (Lines 58–63).” Chaucer Review 29:2 (1994), 163–65.

Robert T. Lambdin

ADAM A twelfth-century *Anglo-Norman play of three scenes, Adam serves as a cusp in the evolution of Middle English Dramas. The first scene illustrates Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise, while the second concentrates upon the antics of Cain and Abel; the third is the Prophets’ Play. Adam is important for the development of the English mystery play cycles (see Drama, Medieval) because its lines are composed in both the vernacular and Latin. Thus Adam is clearly one of the earliest examples of the church reaching out to the people and presenting homiletic notions in a language to which they could relate. Of additional interest is the idea that this play was known to be performed at the church door which further indicates the progression of medieval drama.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beadle, Richard ed. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; Bevington, David. “Castles in the Air: The Morality Plays.” in The Theatre of Medieval Europe. Eckehard Simon, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. 97–116; Bevington, David. Medieval Drama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975; Diller, Hans Jurgen. The Middle English Mystery Play: A Study in Dramatic Speech and Form. Frances Wessels, Trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992; Hardison, O. B. Christian Rite and Christian Drama in the Middle Ages. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1965; Ricks, Christopher, ed. English Drama to 1710. New York: Peter Bedrick, 1987; Simon, Echehard, ed. The Theatre of Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993; Taylor, Jerome, and Alan H. Nelson, eds. Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972; Young, Karl. The Drama of the Medieval Church. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.

Robert T. Lambdin

ÆLFRIC (955–1010) In largely illiterate tenth-century England, Abbot Ælfric was an outstanding source of didactic literature during his eighteen years at the monastery at Cerne and his last five years at the monastery at Eynsham. His work was part of a long-range plan to institute the Benedictine Rule in the monastic system and to equip the boys in the monastic schools, the monks, and the secular clergy with adequate knowledge for teaching and living the Christian faith. One of the means essential to this purpose was to furnish priests with homilies to be read on appropriate Sundays in the church calendar. Hence Ælfric’s first work was a collection of forty Catholic Homilies (989), arranged according to the church year. The second series, of forty-five homilies, was completed in 992. About two-thirds of the eighty-five sermons are strictly homiletic; the rest are narratives, topical discourses, or simple exegeses of scripture. Of the homilies, fifty-six are indebted to such church fathers as *Augustine, *Jerome, *Bede, *Gregory the Great, Smaragdus, and Haymo. However, seldom did Ælfric produce a straightforward translation; rather, he wove together material from several sources and added his own commentary.

He was hesitant to translate the Bible into the vernacular (outside his homilies) for fear the texts would be misinterpreted by the poorly educated. He did however, at the urging of his ealdorman Æthelweard and his son Æthemaer, translate twenty-four chapters of Genesis, a section of Numbers, summaries of Joshua, and Judges, and portions of Esther, Judith, the Maccabees, and Job. Late editors added other translators’ versions of the rest of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy to produce the so-called Old English Heptateuch. Also while at Cerne, he translated St. Basil’s Hexameron and Admonitio and wrote the Letter for Wulfsige. The Hexameron is an account of the week of Creation. Ælfric added material from Bede’s commentaries on Genesis. The Admonitio was intended for the instruction of new monks. It presents such virtues as chastity, love of God and one’s neighbor, and the avoidance of worldliness and avarice. The Letter for Wulfsige was written at the request of the bishop of Sherborne as a pastoral letter on the duties of the clergy. The main body of the Letter explains the need for celibacy, the divisions of the orders, the behavior of a good priest, and the Eucharist.

Additionally the Grammar, a Colloquy, Interrogationes, De Falsis Deis, De XII Abusivis, De Temporibus Anni, and Lives of the Saintsmust be added to the list. The Grammar was the first such grammar of any language to be written in English. Ælfric’s chief contribution was the invention of a complete set of English equivalents for the traditional terms of Greek and Latin grammarians. The Latin-English glossary appended to the grammar arranged its items according to subject, beginning with words having to do with God and Creation, followed by words on the parts of the body, society, and family, and on the birds, fish, animals, and so on. The Colloquy is a textbook in the form of a Latin dialogue, using a rare series of brief descriptions of the daily lives of common people. The Interrogationes Sigewulfi in Genesin is an English translation of a catechetical handbook on Genesis written by the eighth-century scholar Alcuin. De Temporibus Anni is a treatise on chronology and astronomy, concerned chiefly with the divisions of the solar year, a major difference between the Celtic and Roman church calendars. Some of his homilies are hagiological, but the collection of Lives (998) was intended for private reading. Some of the saints are biblical characters; most are Roman martyrs or famous clergy; a number are English, several drawn from Bede’s hagiographic accounts.

Ælfric as homilist, hagiographer, translator, linguist, and teacher reveals a mastery of English prose that makes him the central figure in Old English literary prose. Both his rhythmical style, characteristic of the Lives and other later works, and the non-rhythmical style of the earlier homilies are marked by clarity, balance, and carefully controlled variety. In the preface to the second collection of homilies he stated that he sought to avoid verbosity and strange expressions, using instead the plain words and simple speech of the people. Recent studies have shown that the best Old English prose had significant influence on later English literature.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clayton, Mary. “Ælfric’s ‘Judith’: Manipulative or Manipulated?” Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), 215–27; Fausboll, Else. “More Ælfric Fragments.” English Studies 76:4 (July 1995), 302–06; Hurt, James. Ælfric. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972; Magennis, Hugh. “Contrasting Narrative Emphases in the Old English Poem ‘Judith’ and Ælfiic’s Paraphrase of the Book of Judith.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 96:1 (1995), 61–66; Pope, John C. “Introduction” to Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection. Early English Text Society 259. London: Oxford University Press, 1967; Powell, Timothy E. “The ‘Three Orders’ of Society in Anglo-Saxon England.” Anglo-Saxon England 23 (1994), 103–32; White, Caroline L. Ælfric: A New Study of His Life and Writings. Yale Studies in English, 2. Boston: Lamson, Wolffe and Company, 1898.

Esther Smith

ÆTHELWOLD (c. 908–94) Æthelwold of Winchester was admitted to the monastery at Glastonbury under *Dunstan; There he favored the Benedictine Rule that had worked its way over from Fleury in France. In 963, upon Dunstan’s ascension to the position of archbishop of Canterbury, Æthelwold was appointed bishop of Winchester. Æthelwold along with Dunstan and Oswald developed the Benedictine reforms; as a result of their efforts, secular clergy from various monasteries in and around Winchester were expelled and replaced with monks. In this way Æthelwold was at least partly responsible for a great shift in monastic thought in the late tenth century. Æthelwold was the mentor of *Ælfric, and he contributed to Britain’s learning revival with his translation of the Rule of St. Benedict (c. 960) as well as his own Regularis Concordia.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hofstetter, Walter. “Winchester and the Standardization of Old English Vocabulary.” Anglo-Saxon England. 17 (1988), 139–61; Schipper, W. “Dry Point Compilation Notes in the Benedictional of St. Aethelwold” British Library Journal 20:1 (Spring 1994), 17–34; Speed, Diane. “Text and Meaning in the South English Legendary Lives of Æthelwold.” Notes and Queries 41(239):3 (September 1994), 295–301.

Robert T. Lambdin

ALFONSO X (“El Sabio”). King of Castile from 1252 until his death in 1284, Alfonso X was also known as the learned or wise monarch. Although he failed to sustain the efforts of his father, Ferdinand III, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Encyclopedia
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• About the Contributors