Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr., the honorand of the present volume, retired from the university of Leiden after a career of more than thirty years of teaching and research in 2017, an occasion which was marked by a Festschrift called Frisian through the Ages (Amsterdam, 2017). At Leiden, he uniquely held two professorial chairs, one for “Frisian Language and Linguistics” and one for “English Philology, with a particular focus on the Middle Ages.” The present volume marks his seventy-fifth birthday in 2025 and honours the major contributions he has made, and continues to make, to the field of medieval English philology. The philological studies in this volume follow many of his interests and are indebted to the lines of scholarship he initiated. Indeed, this Festschrift includes seven pages of “Selected Publications on Old English Philology by Rolf. H. Bremmer,” which give an impression of Bremmer’s impressive scholarly range.
The introductory section of the book, evocatively called “Old English Philology across the North Sea: Origins, Innovations, and Connections,” comprehensively sketches the multifaceted output of this versatile scholar, highlighting not only his work in “actual” medieval English philology, but also his important work on the history of the discipline—featuring such early modern luminaries as Richard Verstegan (c. 1550-1640), Johannes de Laet (1581-1649), Franciscus Junius, Jr. (1591-1677), and his nineteenth-century Leiden predecessor, Pieter Jacob Cosijn (1840-1899)—as well as Bremmer’s innovative use of digital tools and his special hall-mark, the study of the cultural connections between the continent and early medieval England.
The first part proper of the volume is entitled “Parallels and Differences” and consists of two chapters, exploring the intimate linguistic and cultural links between early medieval England and Frisia: John Hines (“The ‘Anglo-Frisian’ Runic Zone: From Context to Concept”) reviews the concept of a distinct Anglo-Frisian branch of runic script tradition. Surveying new evidence for the chronology of developments in England and Frisia, he establishes that such similarities were likely the result of geographical proximity and continued interaction, rather than just reflecting a common origin. Andrew Rabin (“The Evolution of Legal Reasoning in England and Frisia, 900-1300”) compares Old English and Old Frisian legal practices, tracing the development of differing concepts of legal reasoning between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. While the two legal traditions initially resembled each other closely, the emergence of the Common Law and the renewed authority of the Corpus iuris civilis, one of the most important compilations of Roman law, caused the two systems to diverge.
The second section, entitled “Interactions,” features cultural and political contacts between Anglo-Saxons and various other peoples on the European Continent: Saxons, Franks, and Normans. Gale Owen-Crocker (“International Conversations: Multilingualism among Elite Anglo-Saxons and Normans”) focuses on the practicalities of communicating with people speaking different languages, discussing various types of multilingualism from a wide range of evidence including placenames, Old English poetry, and the Tapestry of Bayeux. Concetta Giliberto (“Two Anglo-Saxon Missionaries in Saxony: Ewald the Black and Ewald the White”) instead reconstructs the lives and legacies of two Anglo-Saxon missionaries martyred in Saxony. Richard North(“‘Worse than Heathens’: English Kings and Charlemagne in 786-96”), finally, reviews the interactions between king Offa of Mercia, rulers of Northumbria, and Charlemagne, demonstrating the close connections between European religious and political elites on both sides of the North Sea.
The third section, “Intellectual Influences,” consists of four contributions. Loredana Teresi (“The Iconography of the oculi mentis on the Fuller Brooch as a Visual Kenning”) explores the Continental inspirations for the so-called Fuller Brooch, associated with the court of king Alfred, and shows that its iconography testifies to cultural links between the Continent and England. David Johnson (“Consuming (in) the Dialogi: Food and Gardens in Werferth’s Old English Dialogues”) discusses the reception of one of the central texts of Alfred´s renowned educational program: Gregory the Great’s Dialogues. Concentrating on miracle stories concerning of food, he shows these were of particular interest to a thirteenth-century reader on one of the manuscripts of Werferth, the so-called Tremulous Hand of Worcester, thus showing how engagement with Old English texts continued well beyond the Norman Conquest. Instead, Thomas Hall (“The Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts of Caesarius of Arles”) surveys the extant manuscript evidence for the transmission of this early Christian author in England. Especially his sermons are shown to have been actively translated and adapted, and as such have left their mark on early English law, literature, and preaching. Claudia Di Sciacca(“Criss-Crossing the Channel: Isidore, Aldhelm, Thomas and All That (Monstruous) Jazz”), finally, shows how the anonymous Liber monstrorum, written by an anonymous Englishman from the circle around Aldhelm of Malmesbury, draws on sources such as Jerome and Isidore of Seville, but in its turn also influenced later texts, such as the thirteenth-century Liber de rerum natura by Thomas of Cantimpré, thus demonstrating that intellectual influence was not a one-way street from the continent to England, but a case of mutual exchange.
The last section, entitled “Manuscript Connections,” features individual manuscripts that reveal the close cultural connections between the Continent and early medieval England. Anina Seiler (“Mæw or Med (‘Seagull’)? Mercian Dialect Features in an Early Old English Glossary from the Continent”) showcases the eight-century Cod. Sang. 913 from St Gall and reveals that the Anglo-Saxon missionary, whose personal notebook this must have been, was a speaker of the Mercian dialect Old English who had likely also learned Old High German. Patrizia Lendinara (“Riddling across the Channel: The Poems on fols 1r and 35r-v of Brussels, KRB, ms. 1828-30”) instead studies the eleventh-century additions to a manuscript with demonstrable English connections kept in the Bibliothèque royale. These additions consist of eight Latin poems, one of which is attributed to Alcuin, all of which show narrative strategies and stylistic formulae shared by composers and readers of riddles on both sides of the Channel. Finally, László Sándor Chardonnens and Kees Dekker (“Quid Saxonica cum magia? Old English in an Early Modern Magic Manuscript”) focus on an early-modern manuscript: London, BL, Sloane MS 3822, in which magical materials from Continental sources are combined with a collection of Insular letterforms, as well as the Lord’s Prayer in Old English. Through their presentation and analysis of this previously unedited material, the authors lay bare new dimensions to the study of magic and Old English in early modern Continental Europe.
Despite the huge variety and focus of the different contributions to this Festschrift, a feature typical of honorary volumes of this kind, the fact that they are framed by reflections on the work of the honorand nonetheless gives the book a sense of unity. This handsome volume is therefore to be considered as a worthy appreciation of Rolf Bremmer´s published work by his colleagues and former students.