Source of Wisdom: Old English and Early Medieval Latin Studies in Honour of Thomas D. Hill gathers nineteen new essays, in five sections, on Old English and early medieval Latin literature. These lively, varied contributions pay tribute to the wide-ranging scholarship of Thomas Hill.
Part I presents three essays on Beowulf. Joseph Harris connects the beasts of battle topos in Beowulf to a broad Germanic tradition. This religious tradition often presents the beasts singly or in groups of two and persistently links them to death and prophecy. Harris compares the Beowulf-poet's use of the topos with analogues, noting particularly, "Beowulf's full realization of the beasts-of-battle topos (3021b–7), with its animal voices in a miniature drama, stands out from its OE colleagues like the leek above the grasses" (13).
In his contribution, James H. Morey points out that the Beowulf poet tells how, and at whose hand, most Swedish and Geatish kings died. Because we know how Beowulf's kin died, we cannot blame him, Morey argues, whereas the Danes' unspecified fates suggest fratricide. He argues that the alliteration of "Hunferth" (the manuscript’s spelling) with royal names, and the use of heafodmæg ("close relation"), imply that Hunferth is a royal relation, who "killed as many as four (or more) kin, and at least two" (40). The king honors Hunferth, Morey suggests, because "Hrothgar owes his kingship to the kin-slayer who sits at his feet" (43). Despite this dubious proposition, the chapter calls deserved attention to the "variegated obits" in Beowulf. Good kings die of yldo or adl, others of ecghete; "it takes all three fates [yldo, ecghete, adl] to bring Beowulf down" (44).
Frederick M. Biggs's brief essay rejects two notions: that "Folio 179 of the Beowulf Manuscript" is a palimpsest altered by the second scribe to join two poems better (Kiernan's argument), and that it was erased to correct an omission (Berkhout). Scribe B's stint begins on f. 179, mid-sentence, which indicates copying from an exemplum rather than joining a new poem. The text under the "touched up" words matches those words too closely for the page to be a palimpsest; perhaps it was damaged by exposure (as Leonard Boyle suggested), and worsened by retouching and later reagents.
Part II treats "Old English Religious and Sapiential Poetry." James W. Earl examines Augustinian theology of the Word in Dream of the Rood and Ælfric. For Augustine, the divine Trinity mirrors an internal human trinity of knowledge and love mediated by word. The Cross takes on Christ's humanity and language, speaking for a silent Savior. Ælfric never deals directly with this aspect of Augustine, Earl suggests in a not entirely satisfying conclusion, perhaps because it has become so much a structure of medieval thought he need not explain it.
James W. Marchand approaches Dream of the Rood via the Leaps of Christ. He demonstrates the motif's origin in Song of Songs 2:8 and Ps 18:6–7, its transmission by Church Fathers and the Roman Breviary, and its realization in Cynewulf's Christ II. Dreamcontinues this now largely forgotten tradition, Marchand declares. He translates gestah in 40b not "climb" or even "ascend," but "leap," as Cynewulf used astag (Christ II, 727b). He thus preserves the tradition of the Leaps, but his insistence that the verb literally means "leap" is not fully supported by the evidence of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, where the verb is often used for ascending a mountain, or to heaven, or descending to hell, or to bed; these people probably do not "leap."
Scholars have sometimes deemed the architectural images in Christ I disjointed. Johanna Kramer finds rather that the images form a cycle, turning from Christ as cornerstone of a glorious house to the ruined house that is fallen humanity, which needs Christ to save or repair it--a cycle that the liturgical year celebrates. She reveals similar imagery in the Book of Kells: the Temptation Scene accompanying the Gospel of Luke shows Christ as literally the head of a building and Christians as the stones in the foundation, rejecting a blackened devil off to Christ's left side. Her detailed close readings of poem and image inform each other in a fascinating example of cross-disciplinary work.
Sachi Shimomura also finds repetition and cyclic time in Old English literature and monastic life, which stress conversatio, good words. The narrator of The Wife's Lament is trapped in a bitter cycle of bad memories and a bleak present, but she moves past unproductive repetition to remember a winlicran wic ("pleasant dwelling") with her husband. Once she can think of his sorrow, she can then generalize in gnomic words that fill a social purpose. Shimomura concludes that similar patterns appear in other Old English poems: Beowulf ends Grendel's repetitive slaughters and brings wise words to the hall, and The Wanderer also moves beyond his memories to produce wisdom.
Alice Sheppard categorizes The Wanderer as a gyd, an individual lament that unfolds into broader meaning (she too cites The Wife's Lament). Sheppard finds process paramount: it is important to exchange proverbs, even if the content is not profound. The anhaga still wants to exchange words with his lord and kin, but he moves to thinking through (geondþencan) proverbs, becoming snottor on mode as he reaches more generalized wisdom that he shares as proverbs. The Wanderer occupies the center of the Exeter Book physically and interpretively, teaching readers to understand gydda, riddles, and wisdom texts. Shimomura and Sheppard's contributions complement each other nicely in their attention to repetition and the social construction of meaning with close readings of key poems.
The third section focuses on Old English prose. Paul E. Szarmach compares "Alfred's Nero" in the Old English Boethius with the Nero of the Latin Consolation of Philosophy and glosses thereon. He finds both the OE prose and its corresponding meter for the Latin II met. 6 emphasize the problems of a powerful man giving play to evil desires, as does an early English gloss on the Latin meter; all elaborate the theme suggested by the very spare Latin meter. Alfred's translation of Latin III met. 4 shares nothing with the commentaries except what the text already makes clear, showing his use of glosses to be selective and his interests divergent from the glossators'. In III prose 5, Boethius tells us that Nero allowed Seneca to choose his method of death; both Alfred and commentaries supply details of his death not in the source text. Szarmach finds that "Alfred, Boethius, and the commentaries form an intertextual system" to which Alfred actively contributes (156), and that the commentaries provide "context and contrast for Alfred's message and method" (161).
Joseph Wittig's work on the Latin "Remigian" glosses to the Consolation would fit better in the Latin section of the book than the Old English, but the chapter's placement in no way diminishes its contribution to a field long tangled and neglected. Wittig edits and analyzes ten sample passages from over sixty manuscripts. Only two manuscripts even contain attributions to Remigius, he notes, one for a specific line and one before the introduction to the text. Wittig argues that the "Remigian" commentary has little to do with Remigius and grew from numerous short glosses gathered and elaborated, then sometimes abridged, discarded, or miscopied later. "[R]ather than testifying to the gradual decay of an individual, original achievement the glosses as we have them indicate, I think, much active involvement with Boethius's text, by many individuals, and in many centres of learning" (183). His appendices correct Courcelle's 1967 list of manuscripts with "Remigian" commentary, list and comment upon the manuscripts from which he worked, and group them into gloss types and by date and provenance. This impressive essay not only illuminates a particular family of glosses but provides insight into the activities of commentators and copyists in general.
David F. Johnson examines editions of and scholarship on the Old English Dialogues and finds them sorely wanting (and with good reason). As a treasure trove of hagiographical stories, he writes, the text has more in common with Ælfric's saints' lives than with other Alfredian translations, and so it should be studied with the former rather than the latter. Surprisingly, the most welcome part of his chapter appears only in a footnote, where he announces that he and Rolf Bremmer are currently working on a much-needed new edition of the Dialogues.
E. Gordon Whatley studies the warriors in Ælfric's Lives of Saints. As he notes, a saint such as Edmund, abandoning his weapons to accept martyrdom, may look like a pacifist to us—but Edmund does so only when all chance of defeating the Danes is lost. Edmund risks only his own life. Other saintly warriors' behaviors seem to conform to notions of just war, though we cannot know for certain if Ælfric knew Ambrose and Augustine's writings on the topic. Sometimes the state and God require soldiers to defend their people, as the Maccabees do, though warriors should never enjoy killing. "The somewhat paradoxical process by which a fabled group of passive, weaponless victims—the soldier martyrs of late antiquity—became the violent patron saints of crusading knights and medieval kings is thus seen to be well underway in Ælfric's Lives of Saints" (230–1).
Charles D. Wright identifies Pseudo-Augustine, Sermo App. 125, as a previously unknown source for the Old English homilies Fadda I and Blickling I. This Sermo not only discusses purity, it offers Mary as an answer to Eve and the women at Christ's tomb as evidence that women no longer all bear the taint of the Fall. The two anonymous homilists use the same source to take different positions in the Benedictine Reform. The Fadda I homilist silently alters his source to emphasize Eve's sin and omits the positive valuation of women while emphasizing chastity as bodily purity. Blickling I takes clænness more broadly, tying it to mercy. Wright concludes that source study illuminates the approaches and ideologies of different writers and translators.
Thomas N. Hall seeks an even more elusive source in his quest to find why Adrian and Ritheus announces that Christ was born through Mary's right breast. Cross and Hill's edition of the text noted a number of analogues, and Hall extends the list with Irish and English stories of birth from mothers' sides or caesarian section. He then takes up Cross and Hill's suggestion that the dialogue here responds to docetism, the heresy that Christ was not a real, physical human being (and thus had no real birth). So that physical birth would not rupture Mary's virginity, some texts posited that Christ exited from a place other than the vagina. The right side has more positive associations than the left, and the breast may have seemed a better location for birth than other suggested sites, such as the armpit. While the case remains unproven, Hall's witty essay suggests useful ways to think about the text.
Two essays comprise Part Four, "Old English beyond the Conquest." Andrew Galloway finds the origins of the phrase "holding court" (healdan curt, a mix of English and French) in the earlier hired healdan, used by the First Continuator of the Peterborough Chronicle. Later historians relied on this chronicler as a source, taking up not only his terminology but also his keen interest in the court and sense of the court as an abstract, permanent body. Galloway's close readings and philological analyses remind us that Anglo-Norman court culture had English roots too.
Susan E. Deskis traces Old English alliterative proverbs into Middle English. Not all alliterative collocations from Old English show a continuous tradition; if OE phrases that correspond to ME proverbs are not themselves proverbs or have different syntax, Deskis rejects them as sources. She does show continuity with a few proverbs found both in written OE and ME, though she notes that proverbs tend to be more oral than written. She presents her essay as preliminary work in a largely untilled field.
The final section, "Early Medieval Latin," includes three essays (though see also Wittig's chapter, above, with OE Prose). In the first, Danuta Shanzer studies Bede's oft-complimented style in the Historia ecclesiastica. While his smooth, clear, correct Latin seems normal to us, she notes that it does not closely resemble that of Augustine or Gregory, let alone possible influences closer to home, particularly Gildas and Aldhelm. Focusing on Bede’s periodic sentences, Shanzer aruges that Orosius may have had some influence, but Rufinus of Aquileia is Bede's closest stylistic model, though Rufinus's tone and content differ greatly.
Michael W. Herren's contribution treats the Cosmography of Aethicus Ister. He now rejects the text's ascription to Virgilius Maro Grammaticus, because its orthography betrays no Insular origins while its grammar points to a Merovingian author. Herren suggests we have instead an unknown Frankish scholar who spent time in England, where he learned Greek vocabulary and read some Irish works. He takes issue with Prinz's edition, particularly for not emending or punctuating enough. He presents twenty-three short passages from Prinz, commenting on cruxes and offering corrections, translations, and, sometimes, fragments of his own edition to replace Prinz's passage. His chapter serves mainly to whet appetites for the new edition he is preparing for Oxford Medieval Texts.
In the final chapter, Michael Twomey investigates the early English tradition of the Revelationes of Pseudo-Methodius. Two Continental Latin recensions of this late seventh-century Syriac work proved popular as an anti-Islamic apocalypse. In England, only one copy of the first recension is extant. That recension most closely reflects the Syriac, offering a world chronicle from Creation through various empires to Islam, the last Roman emperor, the Antichrist, and the end of the world. The second recension skips from the Ishmaelites to the rise of Muslims—omitting all secular empires to focus on religious, and particularly scriptural, history. Twomey argues that the second recension was copied shortly after the first at Salisbury, because the second better fit English concerns. Muslims were distant; English scholars focused on Biblical history, as in West Saxon genealogies that add Noah's fourth, post-diluvian, son. The second recension of the Revelationeswould have fed appetites for further details on Biblical people.
These varied essays are of high quality and hold much of interest for scholars of Old English and early medieval Latin. Appendix 1 lists the honoree's astounding 180 publications (through 2007); Appendix 2, the dissertations he directed. A list of contributors follows, then the very welcome Index of Manuscripts and General Index. Most of the essays have helpful subheaders, and the volume is attractive and fairly free of errors (though Marchand's essay has slight mistakes in line citations). The book has been in preparation for years and changed publishers, but the results are worth the wait.