A New Critical History of Old English Literature

Stanley B. Greenfield, Daniel G. Calder

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9780814732625
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry is, without question, the major literary achievement of the early Middle Ages (c. 700-1100). In no other vernacular language does such a vast store of verbal treasures exist for so extended a period of time. For twenty years the definitive guide to that literature has been Stanley B. Greenfield's 1965 Critical History of Old English Literature. Now this classic has been extensively revised and updated to make it more valuable than ever to both the student and scholar.

CHAPTER 1

The Anglo-Latin Background

Most surviving Old English literature was composed and transmitted by Christian churchmen. This statement probably holds true even of apparently secular literature, but it is unquestionably true of the obviously ecclesiastical literature: homilies, saints’ lives, translations of Christian-Latin texts, ecclesiastical legislation, prayers. Any literate person in the Anglo-Saxon period would have been trained by the Church, either in a monastery, cathedral, lesser canonry, or small minster. If we are properly to understand Old English literature, we must know something of the circumstances and context in which it was composed; in short, we must study the Anglo-Saxon church.¹

In Anglo-Saxon times, the language of Christianity was Latin. The word of God per se was transmitted in a Latin Bible. The sacraments of baptism, marriage, and burial were conducted in Latin, as were the Mass and other church ceremonies, such as the consecration of a king. In monasteries, all parts of the Divine Office (that is, the daily cycle of prayers and hymns) were in Latin; moreover, monks were obliged to speak the language among themselves. Learning to read and write necessarily implied the study of Latin, and a critical examination of Old English literature should best begin with some reflections on the workings of the Anglo-Saxon school. Since most of our rather sparse evidence pertains to monastic schools, we may consider a typical monastic education.

The young oblate or novice was received into the monastery at approximately the age of seven. From the outset he was expected to participate in the Divine Office, even though he would not at first have been able to understand a word. Since the Office consists almost entirely of psalmody and hymnody, the beginner would first have committed the Latin psalter to memory. His teacher would have aided memorization by means of literal explanations: hence, presumably, the complete Old English interlinear glosses of Latin texts in many Anglo-Saxon psalters. So too with the hymns. Because they were mostly composed in late antiquity and presented greater syntactical difficulties than the psalms, they were often recast in simple Latin prose and then provided with word-for-word interlinear glosses.²

By the time he had committed to memory long tracts from the Latin psalter and hymnal, the young student was ready for the rules of Latin grammar. In the early Anglo-Saxon period the teacher would have relied principally on the Ars Minor of Donatus, a fourth-century Latin grammarian, together with various Late Latin commentaries on Donatus. However, since these works were meant for Latin-speaking audiences and did not meet the needs of English-speaking students, a number of Anglo-Saxon scholars compiled Latin grammars of their own: Boniface and Tatwine in the early period, Alcuin and Ælfric in the later.³ At this stage the student would also have received some elementary instruction in Latin metrics; here again, since the metrical treatises handed down from late antiquity hardly sufficed for speakers of a Germanic tongue, Aldhelm, Bede, and Boniface set about composing elementary metrical treatises for their Anglo-Saxon students. The novice was expected to speak as well as read Latin, and apparently learned to do so from Latin “colloquies,” that is, model dialogues between master and students concerning business of the day, intended to impart the vocabulary necessary to discuss daily affairs; in the later period Ælfric and his student, Ælfric Bata, composed such pedagogical exercises (see chapter 3).

After the novice had learned the rudiments of Latin grammar and meter, he proceeded to those Latin texts which constituted the medieval curriculum, a course lasting some ten years. The novices read the texts with minute attention: word for word, line for line. Probably the master dictated a passage and the students transcribed it onto wax tablets; by class on the following day they had to learn the text thoroughly. They then erased the passage and replaced it with the next. The curriculum-texts came in order of difficulty. Of course, those studied would have varied from place to place and from time to time;⁴ and our information for Anglo-Saxon England is incomplete.

Nevertheless, we may deduce from surviving booklists⁵ and manuscripts⁶ that the Anglo-Saxon curriculum included study of the following texts—listed in order of difficulty: the Disticha Catonis, a collection of two-line moral maxims by an unknown Late Latin poet; the Epigrammata of Prosper of Aquitaine (died c. 455), a collection of some 106 epigrams, each of which is a metrical version of a moral maxim by St. Augustine; the Evangelia, a hexametrical version of the gospel narrative of Christ’s life by the early fourth-century Spanish priest Juvencus; the Carmen Paschale of the fifth-century poet Caelius Sedulius, whose poem is, like Juvencus’, an account of Christ’s life, but with extensive allegorical and typological amplification; the Psychomachia, by the fourth-century Spanish poet Prudentius, an allegorical account of the struggle between the Virtues and the Vices; the early sixth-century Roman poet Arator’s De Actibus Apostolorum, a hexametrical account in two books of the lives of SS. Peter and Paul as told in the biblical Acts of the Apostles; and the Poema de Mosaicae Historiae Gestis by Alcimus Avitus of Vienne (fl. 500), a hexametrical version of Genesis, as far as the Crossing of the Red Sea.⁷

The curriculum may have included other texts as well. In particular, Vergil’s Aeneid and Lucan’s Pharsalia seem to have been known throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and in the later part, the Satires of Persius and the De Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius come to the fore. But the staple of the curriculum remained the Christian-Latin poems. Study of these poems would have determined the tastes of the literate Anglo-Saxon and affected the form of Old English literature. Specific examples of such influence are the translation of the Disticha Catonis into Old English (see chapter 3); the collections of maxims in verse (Maxims I and II and Precepts); the number of surviving Christian allegories (The Seafarer, The Phoenix, and Physiologus); and the large proportion of Old English biblical verse-narrative, including all the poems of the Junius manuscript (Genesis B is very largely based on Alcimus Avitus) and Judith.

When the student had completed his secondary education in curriculum texts, he pursued either the study of the scientific quadrivium (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and harmony), or, if he became a monk, spent the remainder of his life reading Scripture and the patristic authorities. There is little evidence that the quadrivium was widely studied in Anglo-Saxon England, but meditation on the writings of Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory would have been the lifelong occupation of a monk.

The large body of surviving Anglo-Latin compositions proves that schools flourished in Anglo-Saxon England. The English were among the earliest non-Latin-speaking peoples in Europe who had to master Latin after their conversion to Christianity, a task which they undertook with great zeal. As a result, many Anglo-Latin writings spread throughout Europe during the early Middle Ages. Proud of their achievement, the Anglo-Saxons often composed a Latin which is characterized by a lavish display of vocabulary designed to impress by the arcane nature of its learning; it abounds in obscure, learned-sounding words, such as archaisms, grecisms, and neologisms. Because this vocabulary often derived from certain Greek-Latin glossaries known as Hermeneumata, the style is usually referred to as “hermeneutic.”⁸ This recherché style commended much Anglo-Latin literature to medieval audiences, but also makes it seem alien to modern literary taste. Nevertheless, we must remember that the literate Anglo-Saxon expressed himself in both Old English and Latin; if we are to understand properly the context of Old English literature, we must have some notion of the range and nature of Anglo-Latin literature.⁹

We shall begin this survey of Anglo-Latin writings with early Southumbria (Mercia, Wessex, and Kent), before moving on to consider Northumbria. We may assume that Latin schools were first established in England with the arrival in 597 of Augustine and the Roman monks dispatched by Pope Gregory the Great. The first task of these monks would have been the training of a native English clergy capable of reading the Latin Bible and performing the Latin liturgy. They obviously enjoyed some success, for a generation later, in the 630s, a bishop of East Anglia, assisted by masters and teachers from Kent, established a new school based on this Kentish model.¹⁰ And by 644, Ithamar, bishop of Rochester, was consecrated as the first native bishop, followed soon by the first native archbishop, Deusdedit (655–64). Unfortunately, Augustine and his companions appear to have left no Latin writings, although a gospel-book they brought to England may still survive, and some of the earliest Anglo-Saxon charters may show the influence of chancery documents they first introduced into England (see chapter 4).¹¹

The arrival of Theodore of Tarsus in 669 and of his colleague, the African Hadrian, shortly after put Latin learning in England on a more secure basis. Theodore became archbishop of Canterbury (669–90) and Hadrian abbot of the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul (later St. Augustine’s) nearby. They established a school in Canterbury to which students from all over England flocked. Bede describes it in glowing terms:

And because both of them were extremely learned in sacred and secular literature, they attracted a crowd of students into whose minds they daily poured the streams of wholesome learning. They gave their hearers instruction not only in the books of the holy Scripture but also in the art of meter, astronomy, and ecclesiastical computation. As evidence of this, some of their students still survive who know Latin and Greek just as well as their native tongue. Never had there been such happy times since the English first came to Britain. …¹²

Very few writings of Theodore (and none of Hadrian) survive, but later glossaries reveal the impact and range of his teaching. These preserve his explanations of various biblical passages and other texts, and display an amazing knowledge of earlier authorities, including many Greek patristic authors otherwise unknown in the Latin West.¹³

Among those who studied with Theodore and Hadrian was Aldhetm (died 709), who may justly be called the first English man of letters; indeed, it is doubtful whether the Anglo-Saxons ever produced a man of greater learning or literary enterprise. Aid-helm was born in Wessex, possibly around 640, of a noble family with royal connections. He studied at Canterbury in the early 670s, before becoming abbot of Malmesbury in 673 or 674 and eventually bishop of Sherborne in 706. The range of Aldhelm’s Latin writings is impressive.¹⁴ His prose writings include a collection of ten letters addressed to various persons on a variety of subjects: the question of Easter reckoning (in a letter to Geraint, king of Dumnonia), the difficulties of metrical and computistical studies (in a letter to the bishop of Wessex), and the advantages of English over Irish education (in letters to his students Heahfrith and Wihtfrith). He also addressed a massive epistle, the so-called Epistola ad Acircium, to King Aldfrith of Northumbria (685–705), with whom he evidently enjoyed a close relationship. The preface to this treatise contains a long discussion of the allegorical significance of the number 7; but two distinct yet complementary treatises on Latin metrics, the De Metris and De Pedum Regulis, make up its main part. Aldhelm was perhaps the earliest Anglo-Saxon to attempt to explain the difficulties of metrical composition for his students. The Epistola ad Acircium also includes a collection of 100 metrical Enigmata (see below), which illustrate the properties of the hexameter.

Aldhelm’s longest and most influential work was a treatise on virginity (De Virginitate), addressed to Abbess Hildelith and a sorority of nuns at Barking Abbey, near London. In its opening chapters Aldhelm follows several patristic authorities in recognizing three grades of virginity, though he departs from them in emphasizing the state of castitas. In his description, this state pertains to those who have formerly been married, but who have rejected their spouses in favor of the celibate life—the situation of some of the nuns at Barking. Following this lengthy...